Bridgeline Digital, Inc.

you may press star one on your phone to enter the question queue at any time. And we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Thomas Winnhausen. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Thomas Winnhausen. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Bridgeline Digital Inc. I'm pleased to welcome you to our Fiscal 2025 first quarter conference call. On the call with us today is Ari Khan, Bridgeline's President and CEO, who will begin the call with a discussion of our business highlights. I will then update you on our financial results for the quarter. We will conclude by taking questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding Bridgeline that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meeting of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future results or events. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time. We will expressly disclaim and assume no obligation to inform you if they do. The results report today should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, regulatory, and other factors could cause Bridgeline's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward-looking statements made today. For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may have an impact on our business, please review the reports and documents filed from time to time by Bridgeline Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, please note that on the call this afternoon, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures when commenting on the company's financial performance. We provide a reconciliation of our GAAP financials to these non-GAAP measures in our earnings release. You can obtain a copy of the earnings release by visiting our website. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Ari Conn, Bridgeline's president and CEO. Ari?

Thank you, Tom. Good afternoon, everyone. In Q1 of FY25, Bridgeline signed 28 licensed sales, adding 2.7 million in new contracts and 800,000 in annual contract value. Our sales cycle is now only 105 days with an 18% win rate on qualified leads, world-class numbers. This means it's time to invest in sales. The market is hot, our products outperform our competition. Last year, we released eight AI-based products that are blowing the competition away, garnering strong analyst support and delivering key value to our customers. We invested in R&D and it has paid off. We are the leader in AI-powered e-commerce search. Our growth is limited only by our marketing budget, not by market size, not by customer demand, not by competition. Now is the time to reallocate resources from R&D to sales and marketing. It's time to go all in on growth. Our revenue can broadly be broken into two product groups. The core revenue comes from our Hawke Search products and its e-commerce 360 embeddings, including WuRank. This revenue is 2.1 million with double-digit growth, net revenue retention of 107%, cash payback better than 20 months. Essentially, all of our new sales are core products. Our non-core products that represent the balance of our revenue include most of our professional services. And these products generate strong growth margins with minimal operating expenses and they help fund growth in core. With momentum in sales, a leading position in AI, and a market shifting to adopt our AI products, we've made bold company-wide changes to invest more into sales and marketing and seize this opportunity. These changes go all the way to the board level, including the addition of healthcare industry veteran and business development expert, Michael Keslack, whose expertise and network will help BridgeLine expand into additional markets. I recently had the acronym FOMO, fear of missing out on my mind. That's exactly the mindset driving our growth strategy. With the market shifting fast, we're seizing the moment to expand our customer base. Our board and team are in full growth mode and I'm committed to investing in new customer wins to ensure that we stay ahead. Let's take a look at Q1 sales, the second best sales quarter in the company's history. We sold 28 licenses for 2.7 million in total contract value, adding 800,000 in ARR. Here's a few of our new customers. Brady Plus, a leading B2B e-commerce provider is leveraging Hawke's Search AI to improve its search functionality and deliver more seamless digital experience. John Dodge, a major supplier in janitorial and restoration industry, has also integrated Hawke's Search to enhance product discovery and optimize site navigation. Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance is using Hawke's Search to stream search across its extensive product catalog. Montefiore Health System has chosen Hawke's Search to power a more intuitive and efficient search experience for its users. The leading supplier of plumbing industry has chosen Hawke's Search Smart Search to power their product discovery experience. The plumbing supplier will leverage Smart Search's visual and concept search features to enhance customer experience and drive growth. Another major supplier in the plumbing industry successfully launched Hawke's Search to power its online search. All this, not to mention, expanded subscription of a Fortune 100 consumer electronics customer who's powering over a million dollars an hour in online sales with Hawke's Search. This momentum positions us for continued growth in 2025 as we expand our reach in B2B e-commerce and healthcare, providing cutting edge AI search solutions to drive revenue and enhance customer engagement. Our 2024 investments at R&D have opened the door to partners whose customers need the latest AI-powered e-commerce tools. Our partners bring us customers thanks to our expanded product line and joint marketing events, lowering the cost per lead for both sides. We released our BigCommerce Catalyst connector just this week. The press release announcement will be issued soon. Catalyst will give e-commerce customers a drag and drop tool to seamlessly upgrade their online stores to our Hawke's Search suite. BigCommerce has been one of our strongest partners and we expect our Catalyst release to make it even easier for their customers to upgrade to Hawke's Search. X Engage and Optimizely continue to be leading partners who bring us large sales that close quickly on Hawke's Search. Many of our B2B manufacturing distributor customers are on this ecosystem. Hawke's Search is listed as a top paid app in the Optimizely store. Bridge Line earned Mobileco's Partner of the Year award for its role in advanced mobile engagement for distributors. This quarter Hawke's Search has also joined forces with Oral Commerce, a leading B2B commerce platform to bring AI driven search and merchandising to manufacturers and distributors. Importantly, in partnership with Salesforce, Hawke's Search has also launched the Hawke's Search AI powered product discovery engine for Salesforce B2B commerce. Salesforce customers can now access Hawke's Search directly from the AppExchange, deploy the connector instantly and see immediate improvements in e-commerce performance. Partnerships will be an important part of our -to-market strategy this year, but we're also greatly expanding our marketing budget. We've generated notable sales in recent years by focusing on specific verticals and joining industry conferences and associations. In the fastener industry, we won several customers by attending conferences like the International Franchise Expo and Fastener Fair in Vegas. B2B electronics and plumbing distributors have been strong with conferences such as B2B Online Chicago and Modern Distribution Management SHIP generating sales. We have expanded our budget and will be targeting new B2B verticals, including advertising and vertical markets and hosting more in-person events to generate even more leads and convert into customers this year. Last year was a transformative year in our product suite with eight AI products being launched. This year is going to be transformative in growth with our budget reallocated from R&D to sales and marketing so that we can capitalize on the market demand and on the strong competitive position that our innovation efforts have placed us within. This time I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Tom Wintowsen, Tom?

Thanks Ari, I'll provide an update of our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended December 31st, 2024. Total revenue for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024 was 3.8 million compared to 3.8 million in the prior year period. Going into each component of revenue, our subscription and license revenue, which is comprised of sales, licenses, maintenance and hosting revenue for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024 was 3 million, down 1% from 3.1 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of total revenue, subscription and license revenue was 80% of total revenue for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. Services revenue of 700,000 for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024 was up 11% from 700,000 as rounded in the prior year first quarter. As a percentage of total revenue, services revenue account for 20% of total revenue for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. Cost of revenue was 1.3 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, an increase from 1.2 million in the prior year period. And as a result, gross profit was 2.5 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, down 1% from a rounded 2.6 million in the prior year period. Overall, gross profit margin was 67% for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, compared to 68% in the prior year period. Gross services gross margin was 51% for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, compared to 44% in the same period, an increase of 7%. And subscription and license gross margins were 71% for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to 73% in the prior year period. Operating expenses were 3.0 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, down 4% compared to 3.2 million in the prior year period. Going below OPEX, the change in fair value of our liability classified warrants resulted in a non-cash loss of 114,000 compared to a non-cash gain of 18,000 in the prior year period. Moving to the bottom line, our net loss was 0.6 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, compared to a net loss of 0.6 million in the prior year period. Just to even up for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024 was negative 193,000 compared to negative 117,000 in the prior year comparable period. Moving on to our balance sheet, the December 31st, 2024, the company had cash of 1.5 million and accounts receivable of 1.2 million. Our total debt outstanding as of December 31st, 2024 was under 400,000 euros and approximately 409,000 USD. The weighted average interest rate of that debt is approximately .1% with payments due through the year 2028. And we have no other debt to remaining earnouts from any of our previous acquisitions. And at December 31st, 2024, our total assets were 15.5 million and total liabilities were 6 million. Finally, I'll give an update on our cap table, which as of December 31st, 2024, included 10.4 million outstanding shares, 39,000 shares of series C preferred stock on an as converted basis, 800,000 warrants and 2.1 million options. As a reminder, in September 24, nearly 900,000 warrants with an exercise price of $4 expired. The remaining 800,000 warrants consists primarily of 180,000 warrants with a $2.85 exercise price expiring in May 26 and 592,000 warrants with a $2.51 exercise price expiring in November 2026. BridgeRand looks forward to continued growth and success in fiscal 2025 and beyond as we continue our focus on revenue growth, product innovation, customer success and delivering shareholder value. Thank you for joining us on the call today. And at this time, we'd like to open the call to questions and answers. Moderator?

Certainly. Everyone at this time, we conduct the question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Please hold a lollipop for questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from Casey Ryan from West Park Capital. Your line is live.

Thank you, Ari, Tom, nice quarter. Thanks,

Casey.

Yeah, you bet. It sounds like we're hitting an inflection point with what you're seeing in the market and the success with HawkeSearch. So I have a couple questions around that. First of all, I think you called out 2.1 million was kind of from what you're calling the core product, right? So sort of WuRank plus HawkeSearch in the core. And then services were about 700,000. So it looks like taking 2.8 million that services is like, one third of what HawkeSearch sales are or sort of that core software sale is, is that a ratio that will sort of continue to be consistent, so that if we played it out and the core revenue was higher, services would be higher or is that not gonna sort of hold longterm?

It actually adds up a little bit different than that. I'm gonna have Tom bring it down for you.

The services, right, I think Ari's comments, we had services of 700,000 for the quarter and those are not all core. So I think you mentioned that in what you said.

Yeah, here's how it is. So we got 2.1 million dollars in revenue for our core product line. That's both services and subscription. About 80% of that, a little bit north of 80% is subscription and so like 19% is services, whatever that mass is. That's what this comes out to be. That's core revenue. Core revenue is growing by double digit. That's what we're declaring. We're not going into more detail right now. Yeah, and that's got the net revenue retention of 107, cash payback better than 20 months. Then the rest of the revenue for the company, services and subscription is the non-core. Got it, okay. And the reality is that we're kind of seeing the non-core declining, has historically been declining and knocking out the growth in the core. This year FY25, we're providing better clarity on that for everybody so that we can see that breakthrough growth coming in, double digit growth from core.

From core, right, okay. Okay, good. So this is sort of a helpful way to sort of frame it. So tell me about, for the core products, I guess talk a little bit about how you see the sales. It sounds like the 18% win rate's very strong. But tell me what you see from sort of the lead gen or interest side, if that's expanding sort of at a faster rate or a faster rate than maybe we had seen in revenues.

Or talk about qualitatively

maybe if it's possible about the pipeline. Perfect,

perfect, yeah, that's the thing that's got me super excited right now. So qualitatively, we've got leads that are coming in at a higher rate than we've ever had before on a per dollar basis. And that's represented by a very strong CAC payback. So customer acquisition costs are very efficient. Coming from -to-face conferences, these narrow verticals, industry verticals like fasteners and plumbing and things like that. So we're not so much going to the technology conferences as we are to where our customer's conferences are. And then out of those, what we call a qualified lead, which is not a very high bar, qualified lead for us, it's an objective measurement, meaning that that person has contacted us twice, not us sending them an email, but them filling out a form on a landing page, sending us an email or calling us two times, and has given us an indication of what their budget is and an indication of who the person is who will make the ultimate decision, that's it. We're seeing 18% conversion to a win out of someone that just goes that far, a lead that just goes that far with us. And what that tells me is that we've got the right products, we're in the right market, and we need to go all in on sales and marketing immediately and take advantage, because that kind of a win rate's not going to be here forever and that's my FOMO comment. Go, go, go time.

Yeah, well, listen, I took notice of that 18% win rate and yeah, it makes perfect sense that we should expand that as rapidly as possible, right? Especially considering that low bar to sort of measuring the qualified lead perspective. So that's very exciting. And so one thing else about the pipeline, I guess, is it possible that people can go from lead to sort of customer through self-service entirely? It sounds like maybe there's some functionality that where people can sort of enable Hawk Search on their own or do you always have to touch them in some way?

Well, so with our connectors, the Salesforce AppExchange connector and the BigCommerce Catalyst connector, people could go directly on their own, but the reality is that's not how it works. There's typically a digital agency or systems integrator that's involved who's managing their broader website and we have salespeople that do have conversations. So the entire sales cycle from the very first time that they hit our system way before their qualified lead, all the way to either buying or not buying from us, but closing one way or the other, is 105 days on average. And our sales team is currently two, what we call BDRs, Business Development Reps, those are inside salespeople that are making the initial contact, plus two BDEs, Business Development Executives, who are actually running the deal, plus a working manager, that's our outside sales team. We also have our customer success sales team, because we've released so many products, our customers don't own all of them yet. So we also have a three-person team that is selling to our existing customers. So that's the sales org. On the marketing side, we've got a working VP of marketing, a graphics person, an event coordinator, and then an FDO consultant, halftime. So that's who's doing the marketing. That team by itself right now is not the first place for us to expand. Our first place that we expand is we're just gonna go to more conferences with that team, make everybody stay up all night, every night, run so many deals into them that they're choking on them, and then we'll keep on adding more and more people after those guys are so rich they stop working for us because of their commissions.

Right, got

it, okay.

Well, and so you guys didn't offer any formal guidance around revenue, but sort of, have you gotten a comfort around sort of looking at your sort of pipeline, I guess, and saying it's 105 days, which is a quarter, right, roughly, so you say, okay, you know, have you guys built out a model where you feel you have some confidence, even if the numbers are internal, that you say we sort of understand where revenues will come in if things continue? Yeah, we actually have,

yeah, we do have pretty good confidence, and there's volatility on the company, our size, which is one of the reasons why we're not doing guidance, but we, so we've got our revenue broken into two halves. We've got our core and our non-core. If it's a non-core, that's renewal of existing customers, so that's pretty easy to forecast, because we know all of them, and we know whether they're redoing or not, and we do sell core products into that non-core group as well, but those are also highly forecastable. On the core side of winning new logos, that's the part that's less forecastable, but that's 105 days, which is not very long. As you mentioned, it's one quarter, so that's good visibility. Boy, I really like selling in that model more than the old days when I used to sell these three quarter deals that find out to the last minute, so we do internally have a good sense for that, and that's important, because we run on a shoestring budget and we don't have a lot of room for missing something on the financial side.

Right, okay, okay, terrific. Well, look, it sounds like a real shift in tone here, and I think it's very positive, and yeah, we're excited to see where we go as we get it moving to 25, so thanks for the time and a great quarter again. Thank you, Casey.

Thank you. Once again, everyone, if you have any questions or comments, please press star then one on your phone. Your next question is coming from Howard Halpert from Track Taglet's Brothers. Your line is live.

Congratulations on the quarter and the customer wins. Keep it going. Howard, let's hear your voice. So in terms of overall operating expenses, we're gonna see the shift from research and development to sales and marketing and only maybe a incremental increase in overall operating expenses? That's

right, so we're gonna hold the operating expenses more or less where they're at, and instead we're just shifting personnel and consultants and so forth so that we'll be investing more on that marketing side, and GNA is already running a pretty tight shift with three people, four, four people in it altogether, and but R&D really killed it last year, did a great job, released a lot of stuff, and now it's time to sell what they built.

Okay, and you talk about maybe the opportunity, new partnership opportunities and potentially new verticals or new sectors within verticals.

Yeah, yeah, so on the partnership side, that's an important and relatively new sales channel for us. You have two types of partners. We've got what we call ISVs, and these are content management and e-commerce platforms. They include BigCommerce, Optimizely, Salesforce, Magento, and these platforms, we typically will have connectors that allow us to seamlessly integrate with them, and they have marketplaces where we can put our software and their customers can buy from us. They're important partners for us because their customers have already built their website, which takes a lot of money and takes a lot of time and slows deals down, so now it's a matter of just enhancing their website with whatever their default search capabilities were with our Hawke Search AI-powered search. The second category of partner is the digital agency, also called the systems integrator. So these are the teams that actually implement, do the initial implementation of an e-commerce site, but then they have an ongoing relationship with the end online store to continually update their site, and they are very influential in the selection of technologies that are launched on that site. So they will recommend Hawke Search. These are companies like American Eagle, they're like Gorilla, and there's a lot of 50 person local market system integrators slash digital agencies that we partner with. So that's half of the channel, and systems integrators and ISVs are involved in basically every deal, but then the other half of the channel is direct marketing, and this is where we are finding a lot of progress with vertical physical human conferences. We're seeing progress where we have our own customer conference, but then we invite a partner and have them bring their customers as well, so it becomes a joint customer conference with cross sales across the two customer bases, and then we of course do a lot of online marketing with webinars and virtual conferences, and even Google AdWords that bring in a lot of leads.

Okay, so really the emphasis is gonna be on the current verticals that you're in, and then just sort of migrate to potential new verticals slowly and then add them into the mix?

That's exactly right Howard, because we see a great return on investment when we reach critical mass and a narrow vertical and have specific referenceable customers. The reality is that although we, meaning Bridgeline, live in the technology world on a -to-day basis and can generalize and create analogies between how we might implement one site and another one, when we're working with someone who is an expert in the plumbing world, they don't necessarily have the familiarity with our type of software to see how what we implemented for a hospital might be analogous to what their needs are. So after we want a couple of plumbing customers, then we really hit critical mass, we've got the specific example websites and the specific customer references that make all the difference in the world.

Okay, and you feel that's why the 105 days could actually start coming down in some of those core verticals?

That's right, in the core verticals, we see faster sales cycles thanks to the references and the case studies and example websites. Also the 105 comes down when we are working closely with our partners on those joint customer conferences, for instance, because the relationship just gets accelerated due to the partner relationship.

Okay, well, keep up the great work, guys.

Thank you very much, Daisaku.

Thank you, there are no further questions in the queue. I will now hand the conference back to management for closing remarks, please go ahead.

Everybody, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate the continued support of our customers, our partners, our shareholders, we're obviously very excited about the business and ongoing growth prospects. We look forward to speaking with you again in our second quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. It'll be in May 2025, until then, be well.

Thank you, everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.