illumin Holdings Inc.

Good morning, everyone. Before we begin the official remarks, I will read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking information. Certain information to be discussed during this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable security laws, including, among others, statements concerning the company's objectives, the company's strategy to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to management's beliefs, plans, estimates and intentions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management and are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Please refer to the cautionary statement and risk factors identified in our filings with CDAR for a more detailed explanation of the inherent risks and uncertainties that could affect such forward-looking statements. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Simon Cairn, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Steve. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. I'll start off by reviewing some of the highlights from the quarter, which demonstrate the success of the customer-centric approach we started applying in the second half of 2024. I'll also discuss the testing we're doing around enhanced marketing and sales initiatives, which have contributed to our growth in self-service, managed service, and our exchange services revenue lines. Then I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Elliot Muchnick, who will review the highlights of our fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial and operating results. After that, we'll be happy to take your questions. For the fourth quarter, we delivered strong year-over-year revenue growth of 35%. This growth was driven by increases across all our revenue lines, including self-service, managed service, and our exchange services businesses. Most notably, we continue to see considerable revenue growth in Illumine self-service, which grew 45% year-over-year and 55% sequentially. Illumine self-service represented 26% of total company revenue for the fourth quarter, up from 23% in the third quarter and 24% in the same period last year. What's important to point out is that this self-service growth came from a variety of inputs similar to what we saw in Q3. For example, during the fourth quarter, we onboarded 23 new self-service customers, driven by strong customer interest in both our standard self-service option as well as our newer hybrid or guided edition of self-service that we launched in Q3. In addition to new customers, revenue growth in self-service was also fueled by improving average revenue per customer. largely due to our customers finding more value in the new features we launched in Q3 and Q4, such as programmatic guarantee and our consistently improving support for CTV, which I'll talk about more shortly. Further supporting our revenue growth and self-service, existing customers have indicated they are very pleased with the recent platform enhancements we've made, including our integration with walled gardens like Meta, resulting in better customer stickiness. This integration extends our ability to drive exceptional campaign performance across both the open web and now into and through walled gardens. resulting in improved overall conversion for that brand and a lot less work for said brand when compared to the traditional legacy single channel focused campaign planning tools. This multi-channel approach we've been employing in self-service has been paying off with existing customers, increasing their stickiness as they stay on the platform longer, which was the core intent in originally launching self-service. As a second example of improving stickiness, More of our existing customers are now testing and trying out more advanced features such as Pathlight, an AI-driven tool that delivers real-time recommendations in the campaign planning and performance analysis stages, enabling quick adjustments and readjustments to get that extra awareness or conversion performance, all supported by our recently revised automated reporting, which enables our customers to focus on insights from reporting rather than just building reports. Our efforts are delivering better performance for customers with less effort on their behalf, and we believe this will drive even further stickiness over time. This product and platform focus on better conversion, better insights, and more automated workflows better positions us not just as another DSP or just another vendor, but rather as a key partner in our customers' marketing success, creating both a reliance on our technology and a trust in our team. This focus on conversion, insights, and more automated workflows are a manifestation of our customer-centric approach that we want to build upon to deliver more value to our customers, our investors, and ourselves over the next several quarters. Further complementing these platform improvements, we are also expanding the types of programmatic deals that advertisers want to use when planning their marketing campaigns, such as programmatic guarantee, or PG, for CTV channels, as well as our forthcoming forecasting tool that we expect to launch in Q2. As CTV grows on our platform in terms of adoptability, it's important we pre-position ourselves for a win here. Hence our efforts during the last couple of quarters to expand CTV audience support, allow for more automated reporting, and now providing support for more deal types such as programmatic guarantee. to drive further stickiness in the second half of 2025. In the near future, we expect to release our AI-driven forecasting tools for programmatic channels, including open web, CTV, and digital out of home. Until now, AI-driven forecasting has been available only to exclusive brands, willing to pay a premium within exclusive applications. With a Lumens campaign forecaster, self-service challenger brands and agency customers can access the convenience of integrated, cross-channel forecasts at no additional cost while up-leveling their speed to market and increasing their confidence in their digital marketing buys by utilizing a Lumens self-service, all without having to commit to big upfront contracts. We expect to launch this feature in the coming weeks. Accompanying these platforms, our quarterly results also reflect the success of our enhanced sales initiatives, which have been targeting higher spend clients. So, in addition to reaching more customers, we will continue to refine our sales and marketing efforts to be more strategic and effective, manifested in the revisions we're making to Illumine's self-service go-to-market strategy. We believe all these changes we've been implementing are expanding our addressable market and positioning our company for further Illumine self-service customer growth in both the near and long term. We are continually testing and refining our marketing, sales tactics, and product priorities, both to address customer feedback and to drive revenue growth. This is how we've been able to achieve the substantial growth that you've been seeing in recent quarters. Leveling up from the testing and refining what we've been doing, we plan to launch a new brand strategy in 2025, along with reinvigorated marketing and lead generation, which have been historic challenge points for us trying to carve out a unique and valuable part in the market that is vibrant and where our self-service solution can be of tremendous value. Simultaneously, we have continued to implement strategic shifts in our business transitioning from a transaction oriented revenue model with no contractual commitment to a more sustainable recurring self service model that favors longer term customer contracts. We continue to believe that in the long run, this strategy will give us the ability to deliver a consistent, sustainable revenue growth and profitability. In addition to self-service growth and after a few years of decline, the fourth quarter also represents our second consecutive quarter of resumed managed services revenue growth, which increased 28% as more companies recognize the complimentary purposes of both our managed service and our self-service products. As I've stated in our prior calls, customers are telling us that they have always valued us for managed services capabilities. And while self-service may indeed outpace managed services in the future, For now, our customers are telling us that managed services remains an important option for them. In line with this thinking, in the second half of 2024, we told customers that we will continue to offer managed services so long as there is meaningful demand and that we can genuinely add value. As our customer performance in both Q3 and Q4 clearly indicates, that was indeed the case. This also aligns with the more customer-centric approach we've been taking the past several months, which includes building complementary, interlocking, cross-gradable customer-facing options consisting of self-service, managed services, as well as a hybrid approach if that makes the most sense for the customer. All of these options are supported by the improvements to our platform that I mentioned earlier, combining to deliver better customer insights and added value to our customers. As our most recent quarterly results show, this approach has been working, helping more customers see the value in utilizing both self-service and more recently managed service products. We also found that this complementary set of solutions has opened a wider range of customer segments for us, including both agencies and brands, encompassing different sizes and spend profiles. We believe this wider applicability and early response indicates that both Illumine self-service and managed service options have greater potential growth opportunities than we've seen so far, giving us motivation to continue on this path. Complementing our self-service and managed service business, we continue to see substantial growth in exchange services, where revenue increased 39% in the fourth quarter compared to the prior year period. In the third quarter of 2024, we saw increased demand for our proven exchange services capabilities. Recognizing this opportunity, we successfully capitalized on that demand, and in Q4, we delivered 39% growth for the third revenue segment compared to the same quarter in the prior year, further diversifying our revenue sources and extending the value of our Lumen platform into publisher services. It is important to note that the publisher side is a very tight market, and so we are dedicating a focused effort to offer meaningful value and capture opportunities. but not derailing our focus from delivering on the promise of self-service. Our proprietary tech platform supports this type of test and prove expansion as we continue to leverage our existing platform and existing operations and abilities to offer new value to new customers. Moving down the income statement closer to the bottom line, adjusted EBITDA increased significantly during the quarter, growing 42% year-over-year compared to the same period in 2023 and 113% quarter-over-quarter. This improvement was due to our sales growth as well as enhanced sales productivity and improved operating efficiencies. Going forward, we will continue to focus on improving operational efficiencies throughout the business. As I mentioned earlier, we are still in the very early stages of refining our sales and marketing activities. But based on our Q4 results, these initial actions seem to be paying off. This is due in no small part to some of the key hires we made in 2024, including the additions of Liz Ritzkoven, our chief revenue officer, and Bridget Westerholtz, our SVP for marketing. Liz brings over 20 years of print, digital media, and software sales experience with industry-leading organizations to Illumine. Bridget is a global marketing leader with over 20 years of experience inside advertising agencies and inside brands. A lot of changes we've made to our sales and marketing activities to improve their effectiveness have been due to their efforts. I'm extremely happy with the results we've seen, and I want to thank them both and their entire teams for the success we've achieved so far. I believe the success is still only in the very beginning stages of what we can accomplish. To summarize, our fourth quarter results show the accumulated benefits of all the actions we've been taking since the second half of 2024 to drive revenue, improve our overall performance, and build a solid foundation for long-term growth. As these results show, we are seeing what I have been looking for, patterns of growth, most pleasantly growth in more than one area, as well as we are still delivering on EBITDA. Looking ahead, we are still in the very early stages of our strategic transformation. While we currently are facing demonstrable economic uncertainties with respect to tariffs and inflation, we intend to continue to utilize and capitalize on the customer-centric approach that has served us quite well so far. Our strengthened team will continue to focus on marketing and selling more effectively and efficiently to customers as we advance a Lumen self-service roadmap. For 2025, we have a specific track that is dedicated to increasing qualified opportunities, engaging in a more solution centric approach and removing friction from our selling process. Again, we are happy with what we've already achieved and our results show that. However, we believe we were still in the very early stages of growth. There's still ample marketing improvements, a new brand strategy, further improvements to our product line, better focus in selling and engagement, and ample friction to be removed within 2025. So in our minds, the best is still yet to come. And as such, we look forward to updating you on our continued progress. With that, let me turn the call over to Elliot to give a detailed review of our financial results.

Thank you, Simon. and good morning everyone and thank you for joining our earnings call today we reported our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results during the fourth quarter we delivered increases across all of our revenue lines and an adjusted EBITDA improvement of 42 percent compared to the prior year for the full year revenue increased 11 percent and adjusted EBITDA increased by 104 percent These financial results signify the strongest quarter in the company's history, and I'm pleased to provide additional details on our quarterly and full-year results. Fourth quarter 2024 revenue was $49.9 million, up 35% compared to $37 million in Q4 2023. As I mentioned earlier, this year over year growth reflects increases across all revenue segments, including self-service, managed service, and exchange services. Specifically, our self-service business showed strong growth during the quarter, rising 45% to reach $13 million compared to $8.9 million in Q4 2023. Simon noted, we are especially pleased with the factors that drove this terrific performance, including 23 new customer relationships and increased average revenue per client. And we have continually refined our focus on targeting customers with higher spend potential and a greater likelihood of benefiting from the unique attributes of our platform. And with our increased focus and enhanced sales efforts, as well as our investment in brand product management, we expect this momentum to continue as we see further adoption and utilization of our self-service platform. In addition to self-service, the fourth quarter of 2024 represents our third consecutive quarter of growth in our managed service revenue line, which reached 23.7 million, up 28% year over year and 33% sequentially from Q3 of this year. As discussed earlier, our clients appreciate and value the performance we delivered through our managed service business line, and we see continued opportunity to deliver meaningful results for our clients and the company in this segment. And finally, our exchange services business delivered strong results with revenue of $13.2 million, increasing 39% year-over-year with strong demand during a particularly active period, which included the presidential election cycle in the U.S. Gross profit or net revenue for the fourth quarter 2024 was $22.7 million compared to $18 million in Q4 2023. reflecting higher sales year over year. Gross margin for the quarter was 45% compared to 49% for the same period in 2023, driven by change in product mix and increased client activity in lower margin verticals. And going forward, our overall margins are expected to be more aligned with our full year gross margin of approximately 47%, but some anticipated further downward pressure due to increased self-service revenue growth. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2024 were 21.8 million compared to 19 million during the same period in 2023. The year-over-year increase reflects higher technology expenses related to higher variable data costs, higher sales and marketing expenses, and increased G&A expenses for higher recruiting and bonuses. Q4 2024 operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were 43.7% compared to 51.4% in Q4 2023. And again, as noted earlier, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA rose 42% year-over-year to 3.9 million compared to 2.8 million in the prior year period. And this improvement was primarily attributable to higher revenue, strengthened U.S. dollar that were partially offset by higher operating expenses. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $4.1 million compared to a net loss of $2.6 million in the same period last year. This year-over-year increase was primarily a result of higher revenue and net foreign exchange gain versus a loss in the prior year period, which is partially offset by higher costs. Turning to our full year results, total 2024 revenue grew 11% to $140.4 million versus $126.3 million in 2023. The annual increase was driven by strong revenue growth in our self-service business, which increased by 78% from prior year to $38.4 million. Exchange services revenue increased by 8% from 2023 to $34.3 million. Managed services revenue declined 7% year over year to $67.7 million with our growth during the second half of 2024, mostly offsetting the declines earlier in the year. 2024 gross profit or net revenue was $65.5 million versus $60.3 million in 2023, an 8.6% increase due to higher revenues. and gross margins slightly declined to 47% compared to 48% last year, reflecting the higher portion of self-service revenue in the overall mix. Operating expenses for 2024 were $70.5 million, a $1.7 million increase versus the $71.7 million of the prior year, despite the growth we experienced in our top line. This outcome is consistent with the commitment management made at the beginning of 2024 to grow revenue while not sacrificing our focus on operational efficiency and cost management. The operating expenses in 2024 were 50% of revenue versus 57% in 2023. As a result of this focus on operational efficiency, our 2024 full-year EBITDA increased by 104% to $6.3 million compared to $3.1 million in the prior year. Net income for 2024 was 0.9 million, considerable improvement compared to the net loss of 11 million in 2023. And this increase was driven by better performance as described during my earlier comments and the reversal of a 2.8 million FX loss in the prior year to a 5.1 million gain in 2024. Turning briefly to our balance sheet. In Q4, we continued to strengthen our balance sheet by growing cash from $51.4 million at the end of Q3 to $56 million as of December 31, 2024, and an increase of half a million from the end of 2023. This year-over-year increase was primarily attributable to strong cash flow from operating activities, a favorable foreign exchange impact on cash and cash equivalents, which was partially offset by the repurchase of the company shares and further investments to enhance our platform as well as for property and equipment payments on leases. Our balance sheet continues to be a source of strength for Lumen. In addition to providing us necessary liquidity to support our growth initiatives, it also provides Lumen financial flexibility to consider strategic acquisition opportunities in a marketplace with increasingly more attractive and accretive expansion opportunities both in North America and beyond in areas where we already operate or see potential strategic fits. Also in the year, the company concluded the November 2023 Normal Course Issuer Bid, or NCIB, on November 12, 2024. Under this 2023 NCIB, during the year, the company repurchased 3.31 million shares at an average price of $1.61 per share, a total consideration of $5.3 million. On December 23, 2024, the company commenced a new NCIB to purchase for cancellation up to 3.9 million of its outstanding common shares. No repurchases were made under this facility between its commencement and the end of the fiscal year. This 2024 NCIB remains open and can continue until December 22, 2025 or until we reach our targeted repurchase limit. As of December 31st, 2024, the total number of our outstanding common shares stood at 51,238,056 shares. Following a series of strategic adjustments to our share structure compared to 51,350,973 as of December 31st, 2023. This figure includes the impact of our share repurchases during the year under the 2023 NCIB. It was offset by shares issued through the exercise of stock options and other vested equity instruments. On a fully diluted basis, our shares outstanding are 56.4 million and our insider share ownership percentage remains at just over 23%. In conclusion, during the fourth quarter, we delivered a significant year-over-year increase in total revenue, reflecting growth in all revenue lines including self-service, managed service, and exchange services, which was driven by our successful and enhanced sales initiatives. As we move ahead in 2025, we anticipate some short-term headwinds related to tariffs and persistent economic uncertainty. We expect 2025 to be a year of progressive growth, especially in our most active quarters during the second half of the year. Further, we expect to record higher expenses in the first half of the year, mainly from our continued investments to enhance our product platform, strengthen brand identity, and as well as for initiatives to increase our sales capacity and efficiency for the more profitable third and fourth quarters once these investments have been completed. Having said that, we continue to believe in our long-term growth prospects and intend to remain focused on generating strong, sustainable revenue growth across all our revenue lines for 2025. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back to Simon for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Elliot. In closing, we are very pleased with our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. These results demonstrate we are now starting to see the benefits of the actions we've been taking to drive growth in our self-service, managed service, and exchange revenue lines. Our growth continues to be driven by a variety of input sources, including the advent of our hybrid service, better average spending per customer, and improvements we've been making on our platform to drive stickiness, as per my earlier notes. Having said this, we intend to keep focusing on managing costs and improving operational efficiencies as well throughout our organization. Despite headwinds such as tariffs and inflation, both of which we can create pauses in marketing budgets, our outlook is bright and we appreciate the continued support of all of our stakeholders as we work through to build a stronger base for future growth. In closing, as CEO, I am looking not just for better performance, but for patterns of performance that we can replicate to build upon. And to this day, I like the new patterns that I'm seeing. Thank you all for your time today. This concludes our formal remarks.

Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you to everyone for joining us as a Lumen Holdings presents our fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial and operating results. Before we begin, I remind the audience that in order to present your question, you must first unmute yourself. See if any questions from the audience. Daniel. Rosenberg from Paradigm. Daniel, please proceed with your question when you are ready.

Good morning, Simon and Elliot. Congrats on a strong quarter. My first question comes around the self-serve strength. I was curious outside of the election spending and obviously the seasonal impacts, how you're thinking about the growth prospects of self-serve over 25?

Good morning, Daniel. It's good to hear from you. I hope you're well. We are bullish about the growth prospects related to self-service. And if I break that back into the inputs, I think that's where the story lies. So through Q3 and Q4, we saw an increase overall in marketing qualified leads. It came in specifically related to our ever-improving self-service product. Furthermore, we saw a better time to market and engagement amongst our sales team as we started to remove friction in Q3 and through Q4, we will continue that in 2025. And so that, you know, shorten the sales cycle. And at the same time, we saw, again, another improvement in the average revenue per customer within self service. Which means that they're, they're finding good value. We saw a strengthening of the number of channels that they're using within self service and at the aggregate self services overall stickiness with the customers. In other words, the number of months that they can use the product in a row. continues to improve. So we're sort of thinking about self-service, not due necessarily to any seasonality inordinately or elect or anything else. It's really focused on building a quality product. And the customers seem to be responding to that.

Thanks for that.

Thank you very much for your question, Daniel. Do you have a follow?

If I could ask just one more.

Sure.

So my question is around the sales and branding investment that you spoke to in your prepared remarks. So I was just wondering if you could unpack a little bit what you're thinking about in terms of branding strategy. Is it product specific? Is it company wide? Is it new segment targeted? Just curious about the investment and resources and branding strategy for next year. And I'll pass the line. Thank you.

A couple of maybe different pieces to unpack for you. So in Q3 and then again in Q4, we evolved our tactical marketing that we deployed, for example, on LinkedIn and other social media channels to generate customer interest in Illumine Self Service. And we moved away from some of the aspirational messages that the company had transmitted over the last several quarters, such as we are a journey advertising platform. And we move more towards more tactical, like you can be successful with CTV, with Illumine. And we launch new and additional features. It becomes much more about success oriented. Internally, I use the mantra that we are in the hero making business. We want to set our customers up to appear to be heroes with their bosses and their customers. So we give them examples of channels. We give them examples of success stories. And instead of us sort of preaching the destination, we let our customers and examples and data sort of do the talking for us. And that seems to be driving more and more or I should say better and ever improving leads coming into the business and leads translate to sales. How do we also get more leads? Well, we have to layer in front of that brand because if leads lead to sales, then brand leads to leads. And so brand is essential. When we interviewed both existing customers and recent and also lost customers and never been customers in Q4 and Q3, we have a fairly decent brand reputation and a brand rank. We're sort of in the middle in terms of a brand rank, which is good news because if we were high and really well known, then I would be concerned because how do we grow and extract more market share? But given that people kind of know us, they know a bit, but they don't necessarily know enough detail that mandates that we have a brand strategy. People need to know what we stand for in the marketplace and be able to carve out not only a product entity, but call it an emotional entity, but what it is that we value and what value we're going to deliver for our customers. So this brand piece is essential this year, and it is evolving, largely driven by data, largely driven by customer response. And we like what we see so far. We have a parallel that I can't disclose right now, but we sort of have a parallel that we're sort of shadowing and heading towards. So you will see us continue to evolve the tactics of our marketing, but you will see us start to layer in in Q2 and Q3 much more brand positioning because we believe that brands will lead to leads and leads will lead to the sales. We continue to grow the leads as well, but that's the link to brand and it is a conservative effort on our behalf. We like the fact that Illumine is known, but we want to position ourselves as being better known and more accurately, more specifically known about the value we can bring customers.

Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate the question. I believe my next question comes from Rob Goff of Ventum Financial. Rob, please proceed with your question when you're ready.

Good morning, and let me echo the congratulations on a strong beat for the quarter. Well done there. It's good to see you.

Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Rob.

You're most welcome. Could you talk perhaps to your success with selling direct to customers and selling through agencies? Are you seeing more momentum with one versus the other? Are you changing your tactics there?

We are actively changing our tactics and what I find again, like I'm not necessarily looking for results, I'm looking for patterns and I do see patterns within the customers that are responding to our revised marketing and our ever improving product and our engaging sales team. There's a few patterns I see. I see both agencies and brands sort of looking for, the word we use is transformative results. They're looking for better conversion and better results. So they're sort of converting some of their spend and their deployment they've done with, say, competitive lesser DSPs, and they're leveling up to the better quality that Illumine, and in particular Illumine Journey as part of self-service, is offering them, supported by our managed services. And so those groups of challenger brands that are sort of coming up from the everyday DSPs, they're looking for transformative results, and we seem to be delivering on that so far. At the same time, we are seeing some very top-tier, upper-middle-level challenger brands, very well-known brands, looking for a second option. They're looking for another way to reach new customers and new audiences beyond the big titans. I won't say their names, but you know who they are. And so they are looking for a second partner. They like to take control. Illumina Self Service allows them to take more control. They like the fact that Illumina Self Service is predicated off of proven track record of managed services. So they feel like they're getting good results and good sports. They can always level up to manage services at any point during their self service journey as well. So we seem to be attracting both agencies and brands of equal vigor. But if they're using ordinary DSPs, they're coming up to our quality. If they're using the big titans, they're looking for a second partner, a second way to take a little bit more control over their spend and their experience and also get a little bit more insight into how their existing but also their potential customers are responding to their messages and their positions.

Thank you. If I may, as a follow-up. If you have a follow-up, please proceed.

Sure. Thank you. Could I ask about your social platforms or your social media access, how that is working as either part of a bundled strategy or as a standalone access service?

It's still in the early stages. I mean, we see good performance in particular on the social media channels, the wall gardens, I'll say specifically that we have integrated into self-service. And so it's but I would still characterize it as very early on. And it's because it's unique. It's an individual in the marketplace. It's a you know, it's a I think it's a feature that attracts a lot of people. 1 thing I have been looking for in terms of patterns is do people adopt aluminum self service and really use it for 1 channel or run reason? Or are they genuinely migrating across channels? And we just recently pulled the data and and I will say sort of qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively. We have seen a transition. starting really through the midpoint of 2024, through and definitely into Q4, where we see more and more customers moving from using a Lumen self-service or say one or two channels to now more aggressively one, two, three, and four. And so we are starting to pick up some velocity and some spend and some performance through the integrated walled gardens. And so in 2025, we will continue to focus on growing that in terms of tactical marketing and awareness, first and foremost. But secondarily, that it gives us a great, so let's call it upsell or stickiness sell to existing customers who maybe know and rely on Illumina self-service for one or two primary reasons. It gives our revised account management team something additional to take to them. and an opportunity to drive further stickiness and, most importantly, add more value to the customer. So this will remain a concerted effort for us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question. I believe we have a question from Vince Valentini of TD Securities as well. Vince, please proceed with your question when you are ready.

Yeah, thanks very much. Two questions. Let me throw them out both at once so Steve doesn't cut me off in between. The first is on revenue in the fourth quarter. Apologies if I missed it, but it seems like you You called out foreign exchange as a benefit to profit, but I'm not sure I saw it quantified in terms of the impact to revenue. Do you know what the 35% would have been on a same currency basis or any way you can adjust out the strength in the US dollar? The second question, is you seem to be warning a little bit about weaker seasonality and the trade war disruption in the first quarter. I mean, the first quarter is almost over, so you must have some decent visibility. Does weaker seasonality mean instead of 35% growth, you do 20% year-over-year growth? Or are you trying to signal that it could be as bad as negative growth temporarily?

Thank you Vince. I'll take that first question. You're absolutely right that the fluctuation in the exchange rate was a benefit to us, particularly in Q4. In general, we'd say overall the year, if I could quantify on a consistent currency, would be probably about $2.5 million. That was beneficial to our bottom line with the majority of that in the fourth quarter. So at the same time, though, the over 90% of our expenses, particularly media related, are in the U.S. decurrency as well. So it doesn't necessarily just affect our top line. But it is a benefit to us on the overall number. As to your second question, I'm going to have Simon give his perspective on it. Uh, thanks.

Good morning. Uh, thanks for the question in terms of Q1. I will say that the Q1 did start slower than we wanted. Um, that was primarily due to the market coming back just on the calendar adjustment, you know, week plus later. And then some of the macro uncertainty related specifically to the macroeconomic condition right now that everybody is well aware of. So that can put some pause pressure on marketing budgets. So we did see marketing budgets in January get approved later than normal. I have seen deal velocity pick up in the second half of Q1 2025. I have seen improved ARPU, average revenue per customer related to the self-service product in particular. I have seen improved overall channel adoption and stickiness. And so we are currently tracking ahead of Q1 fiscal year 24. But the overall sort of, I think, for the entire industry and including ourselves, I think there is some uncertainty just in general for the next several months as long as the the global situation remains highly fluid in terms of stability. But we are tracking ahead of Q1 2024. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question, Vince. Just wondering if you have a follow-up question?

No, that's good.

That sounds good. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. We do have a couple of questions coming in from the chat. I'll just go ahead and read them out. First question is, you have an enviable cash balance sheet. What are your plans to deploy your cash?

In terms of deploy the cash, so again, as CEO, I'm always looking not necessarily for results. I'm looking for patterns. Can we consistently sort of add value to our customers and therefore to ourselves and our investors? And in that sense, I am seeing an attractive pattern related to growth itself, but I would say even more in the macro, we have demonstrated a pattern where we can grow not just one product line, but three, as we saw in Q4 and to a degree in Q3. And so in terms of using cash, I'm very conscious of one thing, which is not papering over a genuine good-go story with acquisitions. I want to continue to demonstrate that core growth, which for us makes key investments in 2025 related to our product, our marketing, and our selling. But nonetheless, we remain sort of – We remain focused. If we can acquire additional customer pools, for example, that would make a very good marketplace for our self-service product, then that is something that we are willing to execute on. But first and foremost, it will always come back to making sure that we are continuing to add value in our self-service, our managed service, and our exchange services, with investments being made in product marketing and sales as our key focus. And we always want to keep that pattern going.

Thank you very much, Simon. Another question coming in. Are you looking at M&A as a means of growth?

Our primary pattern for growth, again, would be to, you know, if I said more granularly, we can sell well, but we know we can sell better. So we want to remove a lot of, we have a dedicated track this year to remove friction in our selling process. We know that we can market now. We've got more confidence. We've got, you know, our leads are up. So, you know, we want to really sort of springboard to that and get the leads really up. So that'll be a big piece for us. And we are generating more stickiness in the products. We are seeing better performance in terms of channel adoption and definitely better performance in terms of average revenue per customer. So that's going to be our core sort of growth focus. And again, as it comes back to M&A, if there's an opportunity for us to buy customer segments or customer pools or maybe a territory that we are not necessarily known for, that we can leverage an existing business that would be accretive, And then build a path to then opportunize that existing segment with, say, our self-service product. That is something that we may pounce on. But again, our core focus is to grow the business at its core.

Thank you very much, Simon. I'll just take a pause to see if there are any other questions coming in. If there are no more questions, that will conclude our time for this quarter. My thanks to Simon and Elliot and our participants. Please join us the next time as we present our Q1 2025 financial and operating results on May the 9th. Goodbye for now.