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spk00: Greetings, and welcome to Forens Inc. Third Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are now in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal comments and webcasts. Participants today from Forens are Max Bygod, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Daniel Barton, Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Vesey, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management's remarks today may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by those forward-looking statements due to a variety of important factors, including those discussed in the risk factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 31, 2022. Estimating financial performance accurately for future performance is difficult as it involves assumptions and internal estimates that may prove to be incorrect and is based on plans and circumstances that may change. There is therefore a significant risk that actual results could differ materially from the outlook provided today. Any forward-looking statements made on the call today represent the company's views as of this date. and the company undertakes no obligation to update them except as required by law. Words such as estimates, projected, expect, anticipate, forecast, planned, intend, believe, seek, may, will, should, future, propose, and variations of these words or similar expressions or versions of such words or expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding future growth, anticipated performance, and prospects. Today's presenters will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on our call, such as adjusted EBITDA, which the company believes may be important to investors to assess its operating performance and should be considered a supplement to and not a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of the comparable gap metric can be found in today's press release and webcast, both of which are available on the company's website. Those numbers are unaudited, and any statement regarding the company's anticipated performance may be subject to change, including as a result of risk related to the changes in the cannabis and healthcare markets and risk related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the events in Ukraine. Today's call and webcast is being recorded. A copy of the recording webcast, as well as the full transcript and copies of today's press release and SEC filings, will be available at forian.com forward slash investors. I am now pleased to introduce the company's Executive Chairman, Max Weigott. Please go ahead.
spk02: Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today to review 4IN's 2022 third quarter financial and business performance. 4IN provides innovative software solutions, proprietary data, and predictive analytics to optimize the operational, clinical, and financial performance of our healthcare, cannabis, and government customers. I am pleased to share that we had a strong fiscal quarter with improvements in all key metrics. Strong demand continues for innovative and business-critical products in the markets we serve, and as a result, we are delivering an attractive combination of organic growth and improved profitability. We are still on course in our plan to reach a positive adjusted EBITDA in 2023. Our healthcare information business continues to be our key growth driver as we sign more important wins with new customers and expanded existing customer revenue through cross-sales of additional offerings. Our team has industry-leading deep domain expertise, and we take a customer-focused approach in partnering with our clients from the initial sale to support, ensuring we create value for our customers, and drive growth for foreign through upsell and cross-sale successes. These qualities combine to position us to continue to grow our healthcare base. With a multitude of data assets, we have the size, scope, and coverage of data to compete for increasingly large contracts, and our unique technology and delivery capabilities enable us to provide accurate and timely offerings. Our BioTrack business competes in a very different and competitive market, but its scale, offerings, and the number of government contracts identify it as a leader in the space. As additional states award new contracts, The entire legal U.S. cannabis market can continue to grow responsibly. We believe as new states come online, we are well positioned to maintain and grow BioTrack as a leading software provider to the legal cannabis industry. Now, for some key highlights from the quarter. First, overall third quarter revenue grew by 45% year over year, including healthcare information growth of 101%. In the third quarter, the company generated revenue of $7.2 million and net loss of $5.1 million and adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.1 million, respectively. I will hand it over now to our CEO, Dan, for his remarks. Dan?
spk01: Thanks, Max. I am very pleased with our third quarter 2022 results. We had strong revenue growth driven primarily by our healthcare information business. As Max mentioned, top line revenue grew by 45% year over year to $7.2 million. As we discussed on last quarter's call, we continue to execute against our cost optimization efforts, which netted improvement in net loss and adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 million and $2 million this quarter, respectively. We are on track to exceed the high end of our revenue guidance for the year of $27 million. Additionally, we expect both strong revenue growth and improved operational cost to continue, setting the foundation to be adjusted even a positive in the second half of 2023. As I mentioned, healthcare information revenue continues to demonstrate strong growth. Market demand has not slowed, showing the value our clients see in and derive from foreign information and analytics products. We offer our clients the optionality of open, closed, and hybrid information products and analytics on a subscription basis or one-time sale. Almost all of our business is subscription-based. Clients use our information products for commercial, clinical, operational, and payer-based analytics to help drive and measure their sales and marketing initiatives, inform R&D, track product outcomes, and optimize operations. Our healthcare information pipeline continues to grow. We saw the highest revenue in a quarter to date at $4.3 million, which represented 101% year-on-year growth. We expect the growth to continue due to the fact that sales are strong and we signed the highest amount of total deal, total contract value in any quarter to date. This brings our contracted backlog to $29.3 million, covering 2023 and beyond. If you were to include contracted backlog with termination rights, the total backlog amount is substantially greater than the $29.3 million. We continue to diversify client portfolio in the third quarter, And in Q3, we nearly surpassed our entire annual net new number of contracts. New client penetration in life sciences continues with another significant win in the quarter, and we are now upselling and cross-selling to existing customers. As our platform is industry agnostic, we have the opportunity to offer product and services and other healthcare verticals, further enhancing our ability to grow this business. Our brand continues to expand across life sciences as well. Clients have powered their RWE research efforts, leveraging Forian products that are expertise in hybrid data and analytics and power our Kronos offering. Research into the rare disease spinal muscular atrophy in infants informed by Kronos will be presented at the ISPOR Europe Conference in November. The Kronos Hybrid Healthcare Information product is a best-in-class solution when it comes to studying patient longitudinal disease burden in all disease states and particularly in the rare disease arena offering substantial growth opportunity for our business. FireTrack commercial software new sales were positive in the quarter, building on the momentum of second quarter. These sales were driven in states that have expanded the number of available licenses, which demonstrates our ability to generate new sales as states launch their medical marijuana programs or expand into adult use. I have mentioned before the nature of this marketplace being competitive and fragmented. We are experiencing our share of anticipated churn with our commercial software. New sales are covering the churn, leading to flat growth in the business. One important thing to note is that our cultivator and manufacturer customer base for BioTrack has a strong footprint as we deliver high-value software to these non-retail customers, in addition to our retail customers. This strong footprint provides additional opportunity as new geographies start to open their recreational programs like New York. We also have opportunities for expanding incremental business in key growth markets such as Illinois, Florida, Mississippi, and Georgia, to name a few. We do not expect any federal regulation changes in the near term, although we continue to hear along with everyone else some form of banking legislation is on the horizon. While we are not impacted either way based on federal regulation, any movement on passing banking or other cannabis legislation would be good for everyone in the cannabis industry. As I spoke about last quarter, we're implementing our cost improvement initiatives and prioritizing our investment spending to capitalize on near-term growth opportunities, such as healthcare information products, higher-track commercial, and state government business. In summary, we are well positioned based on the foundation we have put in place this year. Subscription revenue is growing nicely, driving very good year-on-year and sequential quarterly revenue growth. Our cost management initiatives are well underway, and we are focused on supporting near-term revenue opportunities. We are confident in hitting the high end of our guidance range for revenue this year and being cash flow positive in the second half of 2023. It has been a great effort by the entire team. I will now turn it over to Mike to run through the financials in detail.
spk03: Thanks, Dan. Today I will provide an overview of 4M's financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2022. As previously disclosed in our SEC filings, 4AM completed the business combination of Helix Technologies and Moore Analytics on March 2nd, 2021. As a result, the operations of Helix are included in our financial results beginning March 2nd, 2021. The press release issued today presents 4AM's third quarter 2021 and 2022 financial results on a gap basis. As in prior quarters, we've also reported adjusted EBITDA. which management uses as a measure to track the performance of the business. As noted, the press release and these presentation materials include a detailed reconciliation of adjusted EBITDAs to net loss. Our consolidated revenues of $7.2 million for the quarter were up $2.2 million compared to the prior year. As in prior quarters, our year-over-year growth was driven by healthcare information products. In many cases, our information contracts provide for continuing information deliverables to our customers over a multi-year period, providing a predictable recurring revenue stream. As a result, we've seen sequential increases in our healthcare revenue in each quarter since we began reporting as a public company, resulting from both new customers and sales of new products to our existing customer base. The net loss for the third quarter decreased 1.9 million from the same quarter last year to 5.1 million. The decrease in net loss was primarily driven by a decrease in loss from operations of $2.4 million, partially offset by changes in other income items such as interest, foreign currency-related impacts, and market adjustments for warrants. The improvement in loss from operations resulted from the $2.2 million of recurring revenue growth discussed above and a $200,000 reduction in operating expenses resulting from lower G&A expenses. partially offset by increased spending on research, development, and sales expenses when compared to the same quarter last year. As you will note in our earnings release, operating expenses for the third quarter included $2 million of stock-based compensation expense and $800,000 of depreciation and amortization. Adjusted EBITDA which excludes the stock compensation, depreciation, amortization, and certain other non-cash costs for the third quarter, was negative $2.1 million compared to negative $4.1 million in the same quarter last year and negative $3.2 million in the previous quarter this year. As discussed on our previous earning calls, we expect to begin to reap the benefits of operating leverage during the second half of 2022 and 2023 as we realize continued sequential revenue growth with a lower level of incremental expense growth going forward. Our third quarter results have provided some early validation of that thesis. As noted earlier, a reconciliation of our net loss to adjusted EBITDA, along with an explanation of the reconciling items, is included in today's earnings release. As in prior periods, the primary adjustments reconciling net loss to adjusted EBITDA are stock compensation, depreciation and amortization, non-recurring transaction expenses, market-to-market adjustments related to outstanding warrants, foreign currency-related impacts, and certain other non-recurring transactions. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $20.6 million of cash and marketable securities with no maturities to our convertible notes prior to September 2025. Regarding our financial outlook for 2022, we are on track to exceed the high end of our previously issued guidance of revenue growth of 60% over 2021, or $27 million, and expect to be able to realize the benefits of our revenue growth in the form of improved adjusted EBITDA loss during the second half of 2022, while achieving a positive adjusted EBITDA contribution in the second half of 2023. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator, who will open the line for questions.
spk00: Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star 1-1 on your telephone. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Again, that is star 1-1 if you have a question. And our first question comes from the line of John Engel with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yes. In the last quarter, you said that this quarter is going to be an inflection point. Why is that? Hi, Mr. Engel.
spk02: Yeah. Last quarter, we said that this quarter is going to be an inflection point because it's really the first quarter where you can see that the revenue growth is really dropping down to the bottom line, as well as the decrease in the incremental capital expenditures and operating expenditures. So what you're seeing is us getting the benefits of what we've been doing internally with not only cost saving strategies, but highly profitable revenue growth.
spk05: I have a second question. Thank you. What is your market size and industries that you will be doing business within the analytical business? Because I see you mentioning the bio track of the cannabis and this perception versus reality. And there are people, my intuitive feeling is, they look at cannabis, which has absolutely been a trade wreck so far in the marketplace. And is that being heavy on your stock, which seems not to be improving?
spk02: Sure. Our, how we look at our business, the healthcare information business, really serves the global informatics space. A lot of our competition, as you can see in our 10K, comes from different divisions of IQVIA or ICON, among others, where we can really serve the gambit of players that serve upon healthcare and the life sciences. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. In our 10K, we sort some sources that believe it's going to be around $70 billion in 2025. But irrespectively, we're at our stage of growth where we believe we're still a kind of a small fish in a large pond and have ability to grow without restraints, which, as you said, is very different from the cannabis space that is dependent on regulation change for really dramatic growth. Thank you. Thank you.
spk00: One moment for our next question, please. And it's from Eric Martinucci with Lake Street Capital. Please go ahead.
spk04: Yes, curious to know, last quarter you mentioned an uptick in one-time data purchases. especially in emerging biopharma. Did we see those translate into longer-term contracts this quarter?
spk01: Yeah, this is Ben. We actually saw both. We did see an uptick in the one-time sales in the healthcare information side. And in some cases, those one-time sales did turn into a longer-term subscription deal. And in some cases, the one time sale was sufficient for that particular use case for the client. Although we continue to talk with those clients and would think that as their needs become greater or more longer term, we're going to be able to also support those clients with subscription-based contracts.
spk04: Okay. And then obviously you guys are very confident in the current tempo of the business. You've your revenue range to better than the high end of the $27 million for the year, but did you see any signs of weakness in the macro from any particular customer groups, whether it be Emerging BioPharm or hospitals, clinical care studies?
spk01: You know, right now, we aren't seeing any softness in demand from our healthcare clients. The industry continues to grow in and of itself, as well as, you know, Max mentioned the informatics part of the industry is also growing. Our products and services provide value to help our clients compete more effectively in a competitive marketplace in a competitive environment. through their investment in us and our services and the types of things that our clients can do around understanding the products, understanding the consumer, understanding the marketplaces, better designing and measuring their own sales and marketing campaigns, informing their R&D. These are the types of things that make our services extremely valuable to our clients and help them compete more effectively in this day and age.
spk04: Mm-hmm. Okay. And then on the BioTrac side of the business, you talked about improved sales there. Any change in the retention level for your install base?
spk01: No, not really. I think that we have seen, as I said, you know, really positive momentum stemming from second quarter forward into this quarter. And we're seeing what we anticipated from the level of churn that we expected based upon the fact that this market is extremely competitive and fragmented. So we do see our share of churn, but we also have the new sales, which allows this business to continue to be a flat business at this point.
spk04: Okay. And then one of the key things I like to look at is the contracted but unbilled. Could you give me that number again?
spk03: Yeah. Hey, Eric, it's Mike. At the end of the quarter, it was a little above $29 million. And that represents the non-cancellable portion of contracts that we have in-house. And most of those contracts, or a good portion of those contracts, also include option years, which we don't We don't count from kind of a gap basis of contracted future obligations, but we think they provide opportunities for renewals of option years beyond the kind of contracted backlog. And, of course, they also offer good sales opportunities to go back and sell additional service to those customers. So we're starting to see. you know, in some of our current period sales situations where we're going back to customers that we signed maybe a year or two ago where we're adding additional services as well.
spk04: And is that, I've only got three quarters worth of history on the contracted but unbilled, but that $29 million looks like a record number for me. Is that correct?
spk03: Yes, it's definitely a record because we pretty much started from a, you know, a standing start in end of 2020. End of December, it was around $20 million. Okay, so it's $29 million now.
spk04: Okay, and then lastly, the operating expense side is actually a little bit below the expectations I had modeled, and I didn't have the revenue number as high as you guys actually achieved. Was there any one-time items, you know, benefits that you recognized in the quarter? Or is this a number that we can project forward?
spk03: Yeah. Nothing material. I mean, there's always some variability from quarter to quarter, you know, in all our lines. But, you know, in our G&A line, for example, you know, based on some seasonality of when we have certain work done. But there's nothing material. The things that you probably want to note, Eric, is that the R&D spending, you know, it has been ramping up. You know, we're probably at a point now where it's, you know, kind of flat. But in Q4, we expect that to start coming down. And you'll also notice that our CapEx spend, you know, where it was up around, you know, $800,000 last quarter, when you get a chance to look at the Q, you'll see that's about nil this quarter. So the R&D spend overall is, you know, ramping down. And we said we're, you know, looking to reap some of the benefits on the investments that we made over the past year or so and work ourselves towards a, you know, close to cash flow positive situation just so we have, you know, kind of the future is more in our hands to make discretionary investments at that point.
spk04: Okay. And I actually have one more question on the cash. You finished the quarter with $20.6 million of cash. Where do you expect to finish the year cash-wise?
spk03: Yeah, you know, I don't think we're going to give a projected cash number because the working capital tends to flip around a little bit. And you'll see our receivables are up a little bit at the end of this quarter. And we actually collected that in the beginning of October. So if we, you know, what I'm saying is we have a strong December, right? Our working capital goes up and our cash goes down. But I think if you look at our overall EBITDA burn decreasing from $2 million where we have today, In the long run, we won't require a lot of cash beyond that. So I think when you're trending it out over a number of quarters, I would simply take our EBITDA burn and say that's going to be the reduction in cash until we get it to break even. Got it.
spk04: Well, congrats on the strong quarter and the healthy outlook. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude our third quarter call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.
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