Inseego Corp.

Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call

11/3/2021

spk04: As we evaluated various CFO candidates, it became obvious to us that Bob is the ideal CFO to help us successfully execute on our strategic priorities. With that, let me turn the call over to Ashish, who will share more details regarding deals that have progressed beyond the pilot phase to actual deployments and are rapidly moving forward towards revenue generation 4 in Siegel.
spk08: Thank you, Dan. Let me also join Dan in recognizing the Insego team for delivering another solid quarter and achieving a major milestone in Q3. We had outstanding performance in the third quarter, driven by strength across our 5G and software portfolio. As Dan mentioned, it now represents 62% of our overall business. Our product order growth was the highest we've seen in recent history, and we are continuing to see strong customer reception of our 5G product innovations. Notably, our 5G revenue surpassed $25 million during this quarter, representing triple-digit growth year over year. Increased demand and accelerating digital transformation have increased the need for our 5G solutions. This great momentum is reaffirming our position as the worldwide leader in 5G technology that is enabling access to a new generation of broadband not possible with legacy technologies. As Dan mentioned, let me spend a moment on the most important announcement so far in our 5G FWA efforts. I am thrilled that T-Mobile for Business is launching our compact indoor 5G solution for their enterprise customers. This achievement is a testament to the diligent efforts by the Insego team that has been working side-by-side with T-Mobile and its customers for many months. We have a number of additional 5G FWA products certified by T-Mobile, and we are incredibly excited about the pipeline of opportunities we are building with them. In addition to T-Mobile, we also signed up new service provider customers in Australia and the Middle East. We recently shipped 5G FWA products to these customers to support launches in the fourth quarter. As I think about the transformation of Inseego over the past several quarters, three things give me confidence in our ability to achieve our financial goals. First is the validation of our significant FWA product investment over the past 24 months with important wins with multiple Tier 1 carriers and Fortune 500 enterprise accounts. Given these recent wins, both announced and unannounced, we expect to see material revenue contribution in 2022 with FWA driving a majority of our growth next year and beyond. I can see a time in the near future where FWA revenue exceeds our current hotspot revenue given the significantly larger market these products address. Second is the diversification of our revenue streams. There was a time in the not so distant past where majority of our revenue came from a single product, the hotspot, sold to a single carrier. Everything we have done over the last three years has been to change that dynamic. As of today, we have two technology lines in 4G LTE and 5G, which also includes our cloud technology for a complete solution. Today, we sell to virtually every carrier in North America, including the two largest 5G providers in the U.S. We also sell directly to a growing list of large enterprises who are integrating 5G into their business. We are doing this not only in North America, but also in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. This is no longer the in-sigo of old. Third is the important revenue mix shift underway. You've heard us talk in prior earnings calls about the higher margins we are seeing with our 5G solutions. As the same engine that powers our mobile hotspots is at the heart of all of our 5G solutions, including the 5G FWA solutions. The ability to use a common engine across all solutions allows for significant operating leverage. In addition, we are seeing a significant uptake of our cloud software alongside our FWA products. This adds both attractive gross margins and an important recurring revenue component to our business. On prior quarterly calls, I illustrated examples of customer pilots we've been conducting and in order to give everyone a sense of the amazing opportunities ahead of us. This quarter, I'm pleased to announce that we are beginning to see some of these trials go live and the momentum is accelerating across numerous verticals. To start, we are seeing some interesting industry 4.0 use cases. One large systems integrated in Europe that is a recognized global leader in the manufacturing vertical is testing our 5G FWA product line to enable high capacity, low latency data capabilities for the automotive manufacturing market. We're also working with a factory that manufactures telecom equipment. In this use case, they're testing our industrial 5G CPE, the S2000E, to power automation and robotics with the goal to find new innovative ways to improve workplace safety and to create more agility on the production side. In the education market, KIPP SoCal Public Schools is using our 5G indoor routers for in-classroom Wi-Fi, bringing high-speed Internet to charter public schools in underserved areas and connecting students to new AR VR learning experiences. And in Utah, two school districts are using our outdoor FWA solution in a CBIS private network to provide long-distance connectivity for students who live in remote areas. As mentioned on prior earning calls, CBRS and private networks are key focus areas for us. In addition to the use case in Utah I just described, a couple of other customers are using cloud-managed 5G connectivity, including one of the top 25 business schools in the US. That university is testing our 5G solutions to provide on-campus connectivity for their dorms. And a collection of hotels in the large US cities is testing our solution with the goal to improve the quality of internet services for their guests. In Kentucky, our new industrial gateway is being deployed on downtown light poles and city parks to connect public Wi-Fi access points. Similarly, in Australia, a manufacturer of solar-powered streetlights is using our 5G CPE to provide public Wi-Fi and connect surveillance cameras in areas where wired connections are impractical or impossible. The utility sector is another interesting vertical for Insego, with needs to connect critical infrastructure in remote areas. In Europe, for example, we are working with a large global systems integrator to enable real-time monitoring of wind turbines. Public safety is another market where we are seeing 5G use cases. A major city in Arizona is using our outdoor 5G millimeter wave solution to provide high-speed broadband for remote monitoring in high-traffic areas. In the healthcare industry, Fisk University in Tennessee is using our 5G solutions for low-latency connections to enable virtual reality applications to help train medical professionals in operating procedures. And we are engaged in a trial with an integrated healthcare network to power their facilities across the US. These are just a few examples of the diverse and exciting use cases being powered by our 5G solutions. Lastly, we continue to make good progress with our cloud software business that is now 20% of our revenue. During this quarter, we signed large 5G FWA service provider customers who are attaching our cloud software solutions to their 5G offerings for multi-year terms. While these are still early days, it validates our strategy of investments in software to improve our value proposition as well as improve our margins over the long term. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Bob.
spk02: Thank you, Ashish. Let me now review the results of our third quarter fiscal 2021. Before I start, let me tell everyone how proud I am to have been named Chief Financial Officer. I started this assignment as I would with any other client to enhance the financial function at Inseco. Additionally, I was very happy connecting with the financial and executive leadership team to improve and strengthen the processes that we have in running the business. I see this as critically important. As I spent the last several months with the team, I became impressed with the potential this organization holds. And I'm excited to stay on as the Chief Financial Officer of INSEAD. With that, let me get to the financials. As a reminder to everyone, please note that year-over-year comparisons will include the pandemic-driven surge in sales of 4G hotspots, which began in the June quarter of last year and continued through the remainder of fiscal 2020. In addition, remember we closed the sale of our SeaTrek South Africa unit on July 30th of this year. I will be providing comparisons that reflect Insego's financial performance on a pro forma basis that excludes SeaTrack South Africa. Q3 revenue was $66.2 million, up 1% from last quarter, but down from the prior year period because of the COVID-related surge in demand for 4G products last year. Adjusted for the sale of SeaTrack South Africa, revenue was up a robust 9% from the last quarter. The strong sequential result was driven by accelerating demand for 5G and cloud software solutions, whose revenue was up 124% from the prior year. Third quarter IoT and mobile solutions revenue was approximately $57 million, up almost 10% quarter over quarter from what was a strong Q2. This quarter over quarter growth was a result of accelerating sell through of 5G hotspots at both Verizon and T-Mobile, our international service provider expansion, and the initial sell-in of our 5G FWA devices into T-Mobile as a result of our expanded relationship. Enterprise SaaS solutions revenue of $9.2 million, which included one month of C-Track South Africa revenue. After adjusting for the impact of the sale of C-Track South Africa, Enterprise SaaS solutions revenue was up 9.9% year-over-year, driven by the growth in recurring subscription revenue in C-Track across the world over the past 12 months and down 1% quarter-over-quarter due to unfavorable foreign exchange movements and a seasonal decrease in hardware sales. Cash at the end of Q3 was $61.6 million and includes $36.6 million of cash we received in payment for the sale of C-Track South Africa, which closed on July 3. There will also be a favorable working capital adjustment of $2.6 million we expect to receive in Q4. From this point forward, I will focus on non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP is detailed in our earnings release and is available on our IR webpage. Gross margin for the IoT and mobile business was 24.4%, a slight improvement over the 24% last quarter and 30 basis points better than the 24.1% in Q3 of 2020. As Dan discussed earlier, gross margin in Q3 was impacted by approximately $1 million in higher freight costs, but we were still able to improve the margin sequentially in year-over-year due to a favorable mix of higher ASP devices as well as our rapidly growing software business. Assuming similar trends in our product mix and absent any unforeseen factors, we see potential for further improvement in gross margin going forward. Our Q3 operating expense was $25.8 million, down $2.2 million from Q2, but up $1.2 million from prior year quarter. The increase in operating expense year-over-year reflects the investments made to take advantage of the 5G opportunities we are pursuing. Q3 net loss was $8.2 million, or $0.08 a share, in line with the prior quarter, but down from the positive $1.4 million, or $0.01 per share in the prior year. Again, last year's performance benefited significantly from what was the high watermark of the COVID surge in demand for our 4G products. Our EBITDA loss of $773,000 was higher than the $51,000 loss in Q2 and was down from the positive $7.4 million last year. The sequential decline was largely due to the sale of SeaTrek South Africa and the $1 million of higher freight costs I discussed earlier. For additional details on non-GAAP and adjusted EBITDA results, please refer to the reconciliation tables in our press release. Finally, some thoughts on the rest of 2021 and 2022. We continue to execute on our 5G and cloud solutions, and we're encouraged by strong current demand and our increasing opportunity pipeline. As Ashish and Dan mentioned, we see the company entering a new phase of growth in 2022 as we benefit from FWA accelerating both in the U.S. and internationally, the growth in higher margin enterprise sales, and uptake in cloud software alongside device sales. Given this, we are confident in our ability to achieve approximately 25% revenue growth in 2022 pro forma after taking into the account C-Track South Africa business. We also plan on moderating operating expenses on a gross basis. On an as-reported basis, however, please note that fluctuations in our capitalized R&D costs may result in higher net operating expenses in any given quarter. From my analysis of the operating model, I believe there is significant capacity, and as we return to growth in 2022, we should begin to see improved operating leverage. This, in turn, should support adjusted EBITDA growth and excessive R revenue growth rate. In terms of our view of next year, the management team is comfortable with the current street consensus of $310 million of revenue. We will begin providing more detailed guidance as we enter 2022. Lastly, given our revenue growth and margin improvement expectations, we're currently targeting the second half of 2022 to turn free cash flow positive. Again, I want to thank Dan and the board for giving me the opportunity to become NSEGO's new Chief Financial Officer. I look forward to meeting all of our existing and prospective shareholders in the coming months. With that, let me turn it back to Dan for his closing comments.
spk04: Thank you, Bob, and welcome again to the Insego team. I have some final comments before we turn it over to Q&A. When we made the decision to accelerate our investments in next-gen 5G and cloud, our primary goals were to check three boxes. First, to ensure we would be first to market with highly differentiated 5G products. Second, to create a common RF engine that could be used across all of our products sold to both carriers and enterprise markets that not only improves our time to market, but creates significant operating leverage. And third, to build a scalable cloud software platform that in combination with our 5G products creates a complete solution for our customers. As we near the end of the year, I couldn't be more proud of all that we have accomplished. And our performance in the third quarter is clear evidence of that. As we look ahead, I'm also optimistic that we will see significant growth driven by an acceleration in both carrier and enterprise deployments of our cloud-managed 5G portfolios.
spk07: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question will come from Lance Vitanza with Cowan & Company. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, thanks guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on the quarter. Let me start actually, maybe, Ashish, could you talk a little bit more, or Dan, could you talk a little bit more about how the sales funnel for cloud software has developed over the past few months? I don't know if that's best discussed in terms of the number of channel partners or the number of active engagements, but if there's any details that you could provide there, that would be helpful. And then I have a follow-up with respect to revenue as well, but I'll stop there for now.
spk08: So, Les, hope you're doing well. So the funnel is developing really well. We just also said in our script today that we've signed now multiple large carriers who are now attaching our cloud software to the 5G products we are shipping to them. So that's through the carrier channel. And then through the VAR and DISTY channel, pretty much most all the products we are pushing now with 5G has a cloud component to it. So it's looking really solid. It is still early days. As you know, the motion of selling through the distribution is new in multiple regions, but our pipeline is extremely solid. And we now have first projects pretty much in all of these focused years where we are shipping product to the channel.
spk06: Okay, and then actually with respect to FWA, obviously that's sort of central to the story, and we've seen a lot of carriers locally making a lot of news about the pace at which they expect to be rolling out their fixed wireless, and obviously that's beneficial for its ego. Is it safe to say that the carrier actions are a reflection of a supply chain that is, you know, more than ample to support that growth? I mean, I'm just trying to sort of get a sense for what risk we could see from this point forward with respect to part shortages and so forth.
spk04: Hey, Lance, it's Dan. So good to speak with you again. Thanks for the question. Well, you know, we talked about our supply chain dynamics, and a lot of credit goes to our team and what we're able to do. You know, it cuts across both fixed wireless and mobile hotspots. No real fundamental difference, given the commonality of the parts, as we mentioned, in our platform. But, you know, we're not – we can only speak for Insego. We're not constrained in our supply. We had significant orders for fixed wireless towards the end of this quarter as part of the T-Mobile getting ready for their launch. So we're very bullish on how that looks going forward in Q4 and extremely bullish of how we see fixed wireless accelerating in 2022.
spk06: Okay, if I could squeeze one more question in about the margin improvement. is the way to think about that, you had roughly, and this is just in IoT mobility services, you had about a 220 basis point improvement in gross margin year over year. If we adjust for the one million of higher freight costs, I don't know if that was all in IoT, but then we'd be looking at more like a 420 basis point year over year improvement, and that's despite 20 million of lower revenues from comping off of the sort of the COVID surge, if you will. whether we're talking 220 or 400, is that all just the benefit that you talked about earlier with respect to the mixed shift to enterprise and software, or were there other factors that were influencing gross margin, especially to the extent that some of those might be reversing in fourth quarter of 2022?
spk01: Yeah, go ahead, Bob. Yeah, sure. Okay, Lance, hi. Yes, you're correct.
spk02: The approximately million dollars of cost associated with some of the freight charges, that was about 160 basis points. Looking forward, which is your question, we don't see anything kind of unusual happening, so I think you should think about that in terms of kind of a steady type of outlook as we go forward, if that's helpful to you. And again, the other thing to think about margin is as more of our mix moves to 5G, 5G brings with it software. Now, the software is ratable over 36 months, so you don't get an immediate impact in period. But when you are, it's building up increasing layers of gross margin over time, which will bode well for the future.
spk06: That's really helpful. Thanks, guys. I'll pass the baton.
spk03: Thank you, Lance.
spk07: Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. Our next question will come from Scott Ciro with Ross Capital. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I apologize. I got on the call a little bit late, so I apologize again if this is redundant. But I'm wondering what sort of call you provided in terms of the 5G mix in the quarter in terms of more consumer fixed wireless access versus enterprise or hotspot applications. And then also, just to clarify, I think the 60% figure in the release talking about 5G and cloud, I want to make sure I understand what's going into cloud. Is that just the C-Track business that's remaining, or are there some other components to that as well, just to calibrate me? Then I had a couple of follow-ups.
spk04: Yeah, hey, Scott. I think, yeah, we can run through those pretty quickly out of the remarks we made earlier. So, Ashish, why don't you just recap? Yeah. Hey, Scott. Good talking to you. Hey, Ashish.
spk08: Yeah. So, a couple of the questions you asked on the 5G side, pretty much most of the product is going into enterprise, both the mobile broadband product and the enterprise product, through the carriers and through our other different Disney and large channels. So, There are some segments of consumers who might buy here and there, but the majority of it is all towards the enterprise. FWA in particular, it is all enterprise, and we're seeing, as I described in my script, we're seeing some really good and cool use cases across the board from multiple different verticals within the enterprises. So that's on the 5G. And then your second question about cloud software, we've got multiple – different cloud softwares we're now attaching to these devices. So, you know, we've got, you know, the Seatrack software you talked about. That's one piece to it. Second one is our cloud management software. And the third one is an Inseego Subscribe, which is a subscription management software that we attach to, you know, to certain customers. So it's a mix of multiple layers, and we're building – more and more layers as we move forward to create better value prop and better margins in our structure.
spk00: Gotcha. And Ashish, maybe just to follow up on the 5G enterprise front, coming out of Mobile World Congress in America last week, a lot of interest in terms of what's going on from a private network standpoint, et cetera. And you guys certainly play into that. I'm wondering how aggressively you're seeing the adoption cycles there, because it seems like there's an interest, but the implementations in the trial periods, I'm wondering if you could provide some Color on that in terms of, you know, the magnitude of the size of the deals that are starting to fill up in that pipeline, the timing in the pilot phase, if you will, and how big the magnitude of those deployments actually look like.
spk08: Yeah, good question, Scott. First off, just tremendous progress there. Like, you know, quarter over quarter, we see a lot more activity, and it's not just talk anymore. We're seeing real projects. We are seeing certain... verticals like, you know, school districts trying to adopt a private network for their use cases. And so deployments are happening right now. They're starting small, but some of these school districts and private enterprises, you know, they tend to have multi-site deployments in different places, which, you know, we're starting to see that eventually, you know, over the next few quarters, there's got to be some scale to this. And this is a real nice new TAM and SAM developing for not just us, but for the 5G market.
spk00: Okay. And last if I could, maybe two more. The 25% growth as you look out to next year, I'm kind of wondering what you see as the biggest driver in terms of pushing that forward over the next several quarters. And then also on the C-Track front, now that you've sold off the South African portion, it's a much smaller business, doesn't have as much scale there, but I think it's an overall attractive offering. Strategically, how does that fit into the portfolio? Is that an asset that you look to keep and build upon, or is that possible that you look to monetize that going forward? Thanks, guys.
spk04: Yeah, hey, Scott, thanks. Let me just start off, and I'll just ask Ashish to chime in. In terms of 2022, we certainly see fixed wireless, 5G fixed wireless as a major driver of that. There's obviously layers on the cake. We're adding more carrier and enterprise customers Our enterprise business is relatively small, but it's on a high growth curve. We built a very impressive and growing pipeline, and it's kind of indicative with the various use cases that Ashish ran through. Those are real-life instances out of that enterprise pipeline. Continuing the tax rates of cloud, that's continuing to grow, and that's a layer. There's a combination of our international business, our growth in carriers, extra slots with carriers. Now T-Mobile's taken our mobile hotspot as well as fixed wireless. Cloud is a whole combination of things that really are strong tailwinds, Scott, as we go into 2022. And that gives us confidence in providing guidance. And I realize we've not done that for a long time, so we wanted to start now provide guidance and talk about full year 2022. So that's what we've done on this call.
spk00: Hey, Dan, if I could just follow up on that front, have you disclosed the number of carriers that you're commercially shipping to now for FWA solutions and what you would expect that to look like, you know, towards the middle of 22? Thanks.
spk04: Yeah, thanks, Scott. No, we have not. You know, we'll continue to make announcements. We obviously did a major one yesterday with T-Mobile, fixed wireless for their enterprise business. But more to come, and just, you know, the market can add them up from the announcements, but we're not really breaking them out and reporting them per se. Thank you.
spk03: Thanks.
spk07: Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Mike Lattimore with Northland Capital. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, this is Aditya on behalf of Mike Lattimore. Could you tell me how much did international revenue contribute as a percentage of overall revenue?
spk01: Hey, yeah, let me, we do not break that out externally.
spk02: Sorry about that, but as we go forward, certainly we'll consider more and more color around some other breaks in our revenue stack, but right now we do not break that out.
spk05: All right, all right. Could you tell me at least how many 10% customers did you have in this quarter?
spk03: It would be reported in the queue.
spk02: The two? Yeah. The answer is two.
spk05: Two. All right. All right. Fine. And could you give some color on when could we start expecting the 5G sales to exceed the 4G sales? Could we start seeing that from the 4Q?
spk04: Well, I'll start off as Ashish to comment. I mean, we're seeing rapid growth in 5G as we talked about. It was 42% of our revenue of you know, this quarter, as we reported a year ago, 9%. So clearly it's growing. Now, having said that, a 4G business is a steady business, you know, and so what we're seeing is an additive effect. We eventually would see, naturally through technology transition, 5G overtake 4G. So I would say, you know, it's going to happen in the relatively near future just as a function of 4G staying steady and 5G growing rapidly, of course. Ashish, if you wanted to. Exactly what Dad said.
spk08: I think sometime next year, you know, that will happen. So not in the not-too-distant future.
spk05: All right. All right. Fine. Thank you. Thanks.
spk07: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dan Mondor for closing remarks.
spk04: Okay, well, thank you, Operator. So thanks again, everyone, for joining and for the great questions. You know, as you heard, we're executing against our strategic plan and expanding our customer base and certainly rapidly expanding our product line. And also, I think it's important to note we're creating complete solutions by bundling our cloud software with our devices. So what does that mean? That means improved margins and greater stickiness The other comment I think you've heard, fixed wireless for enterprise is taking off. And we absolutely believe we are seeing the point of inflection in fixed wireless, and that will continue to ramp up and be a major part of 2022. So that's why we see 2022 to be a real breakout year for Insego. I'll just close by giving a huge shout out to our great, great employees. You folks absolutely rock. So I'll close by saying I look forward to speaking with you again on the fourth quarter call. Thanks again, everyone.
spk07: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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