iPower Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss iPower's financial results for its fiscal first quarter 2025 and in September 30th, 2024. Joining us today are iPower's chairman and CEO, Mr. Lawrence Tan, and the company's CFO, Mr. Kevin Vasily. Mr. Vasily, please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good afternoon, everyone. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal first quarter 2025 earnings press release. which was issued earlier today at approximately 4 or 5 p.m. Eastern Time. The release is available in the investor relations section of our website at meetipower.com. This call will also be available for webcast replay on our website. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before I introduce Lawrence, I'd like to remind listeners that certain comments Made on this conference call and webcast are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they're based on our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions regarding the future of our business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the state of the economy, and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict, and many of which are outside our control. Our actual results and financial condition may differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC today on November 14, 2024. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which are being made only as of this date, except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to forward-looking statements. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to iPower's chairman and CEO, Lawrence Tan. Lawrence?

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. We maintained a solid momentum in the third quarter while continuing to refine our cost structure, leading to year-over-year gross margin expansion and a reduction in operating expenses. Additionally, we made progress expanding our SuperSuite supply chain platform. By onboarding key partners across the supply chain, we are enhancing our service capabilities, positioning SuperSuite as an increasingly valuable solution for our partners. We also broadened our sales reach by launching on AliExpress and further strengthened our presence on newer platforms such as TikTok Shop and Teemo, allowing our offerings with a diverse and expanding customer base. In our SuperSuite business, we continued to work through a robust pipeline of prospective partners, integrating essential components across sales channels, marketing, merchandising, logistics, technology, and data analytics to enhance our comprehensive service offerings. By adding these components, SuperSuite is equipped to address today's complex supply chain needs with a seamless end-to-end solution for e-commerce, supply chain management, and logistics. We are committed to strengthening each segment in the supply chain and sales, enabling our partner to navigate market needs, scale effectively, and better serve their customers. At the end of the quarter, we launched our SuperSweep supplier online platform which is designed to optimize supplier interactions, streamline operational workflow, and better align our partners with involving market demands. This platform enables suppliers to gain valuable data insight, access multiple sales channels, submit product offers, optimize shipment, and collaborate on merchandising plans, among other key features. This SaaS platform represents a transformative step in unlocking SuperSuite's full potential, enabling more seamless and impactful engagement between our suppliers, our team, and our clients. As I mentioned earlier, we continued to expand our sales channel by launching on AliExpress, granting our supply chain partners access to another major U.S. marketplace. AliExpress joins our growing list of U.S. sales channels, which includes platforms such as Amazon Vendor, Amazon 3P, Walmart.com, Team Teak Top Shop, and several others. We are committed to offering a robust multi-channel solution that enables our partners to reach U.S. consumers more effectively and efficiently. Launching sales on AliExpress further underscore our dedication to enhancing market access, and driving value across our entire platform. We continue to benefit from the optimizing initiatives implemented last fiscal year, which led to gross margin expansion and lower operating expenses for the quarter. We are also benefiting from a healthier supply chain environment and no longer need to maintain elevated inventory levels as lead times with our international suppliers have normalized. It's also worth noting that with the growth of SuperSuite, we can operate our business with lower level of inventories, leading to improved cash flow generation. As of September 30, 2024, we reduced our inventory levels by approximately 18% compared to June 30, 2024. As we mentioned before, we are firmly committed to optimizing our operations to maximize efficiency. To further this effort, we diversified our manufacturing base with a new partner in Vietnam, strengthening the resilience of a supply chain for both customers and partners. In September, we completed our first purchase order shipment from this new manufacturer, marking a significant milestone in our ongoing strategy to diversify our supply chain. As products begin to arrive in the US and commence sales, we anticipate benefiting from reduced production and logistics expense. These lowered costs will enable us to offer more competitive pricing while improving margins, an essential factor for long-term sustainable growth. Looking ahead, we will continue to bolster each aspect of SuperSuite platform to provide a market-leading solution that meets the evolving needs of e-commerce, supply chain management, and logistics. By strengthening these areas, we are not only driving efficiencies, but also building a more resilient infrastructure that can adapt to market changes and support scalable growth. This holistic approach positions us to better serve our partners' needs from inventory optimization to faster, more reliable fulfillment, further solidifying our roles as a leader in e-commerce and supply chain innovation. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Kevin Vesely, to take you through our financial results in more detail. Kevin.

Thanks, Lawrence. Unless referenced otherwise, all variance commentary is a comparison to the year-ago quarter. Total revenue in the first fiscal quarter was 19 million compared to 26.5 million. The decrease was driven primarily by higher promotional activity in the year-ago period related to selling down inventory. This was partially offset by growth in our SuperSuite supply chain offerings. Gross profit in the fiscal first quarter of 2025 was 8.5 million compared to 11.8 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2024, As a percentage of revenue, gross margin increased 30 basis points to 44.7 compared to 44.4 in the year-ago period. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by improved pricing through key supplier negotiations and optimizations. Total operating expenses for fiscal Q1 improved 14% to 11.2 million as compared to 13 million for the same period in fiscal 2024. Decrease in operating expenses was driven primarily by lower selling and fulfillment expenses resulting from a combination of lower marketing and promotional activity. This was partially offset by approximately $1.8 million in write-downs of certain inventory and credit loss reserves. That loss attributable to iPower in the first quarter was $2 million, or $0.06 per share, compared to net loss attributable to the high power of $1.3 million, or $0.04 per share in the same period of fiscal 2024. Moving to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents were $2.6 million as of September 30, 2024, compared to $7.4 million at June 30, 2024. Total debt was reduced by 45% to $3.5 million as compared to $6.3 million as of June 30, 2024. Yesterday, we announced the renewal of our secured revolving credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, extending the maturity by three years to November, 2027. The new facility has a revolving commitment of 15 million with an accordion feature would allow us to obtain additional lender commitments of up to 40 million. Under new agreement, the interest on borrowing will be SOFR plus two and a quarter to two and a half. We're pleased with the vote of confidence from a leading institution like JPMorgan Chase and look forward to growing our partnership as we execute on our goals. As Lawrence mentioned earlier, the work we've put in to optimize our cost structure is starting to bear fruit. It's reflected in this quarter's year-over-year gross margin expansion and reduction in operating expenses. We've also made further improvements to our balance sheet as we've reduced our total debt obligations by nearly $3 million in this fiscal first quarter. in addition to our recently extended credit facility with JPMorgan Chase. We believe these actions, combined with the continued growth of our super-sweet business and optimized cost structure, will enable us to deliver on our goals for fiscal 2025. With that included our prepared remarks, we'll now open it for questions.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Our first question comes from Kiri Willoud with Water Tower Research.

Yes, good afternoon. Maybe let me start with a couple of housekeeping items. You had some service income and service expenses. Can you give us some information as to what that's related to?

Sure. So we've got, as part of SuperSuite, kind of two components of the business. One is, you know, kind of our resale or wholesale agreements we have on the sales side with partners. And the other are fee-for-service related business lines. So the service fee is are part of that fee for service business line. Uh, and, uh, because it was, I think materially enough, uh, as a part of the overall revenue, we decided to, uh, uh, disclose that piece.

Okay. That's great. Yeah. Looking forward to seeing that number, uh, progress. Uh, the other hustle item was, um, you had a 1.8 million inventory write-down. Does that go through the income statement, or is it just a balance sheet adjustment?

Yeah, no, that goes through the income statement. So of the roughly 2.7, I think, that was in kind of operating loss, 1.8 of it was related to the write-downs.

Okay, great. If we look at the top line, it feels like you're kind of in the same range as you were in the last quarter. Is that kind of a baseline we should think of going forward? Or you had some quarters where the top line was affected by by different inventory strategies from your main online partner. Can you give us some color on, again, are we at a baseline there of 19 million a quarter, or how should we think of it going forward?

Yeah, so I think it's a good question. I think that's probably close. to being a baseline. I think you kind of rightly pointed out our December quarter last year was extraordinarily kind of seasonal relative to historical patterns. And so we're, at least so far, not seeing that type of activity. We're only about halfway through the quarter at this point. So we don't, at least now, expect to see the same type of kind of seasonal downtrend. I think the other thing to point out here too is, well, a couple things. One, in comparison to last year, last year was an extraordinarily strong quarter, but I think it was impacted by pretty active promotional work that we did to move inventory so that we could get through kind of the last stages of the high-cost inventory from that prior inventory buildup, one. Two, we, as Lawrence was pointing out, have been in the process of negotiating with our supply chain, looking for more efficient manufacturing partners. And as part of that transition, we saw some delays in getting product over the summer. And so that had a bit of a dampening effect on the top line. There was demand. We just didn't have enough product to do that. We're through that transition, and we believe it will no longer be a drag on the top line. but that had a little bit of an impact too. So, uh, I think from a standpoint of, uh, you know, is it a baseline number? I think that's a reasonable number to think about kind of, uh, you know, what the business can do kind of without any of the other levers that we can pull. And then from there, you know, we expect our ability to kind of continue to grow the top line to kind of resume.

Just so I understand, you switched some production to Vietnam and maybe there was a bit of delay there in getting some of that product over during the quarter?

Well, a combination of the Vietnam new supplier coming on and switching to some new suppliers within China as well.

Okay. Over the last 15 months or so, you've announced three new promising channels, TeamU, TikTok, and the Alibaba affiliate. Any of those three we should really pay attention to, or they're still kind of equally at the beginning or equally attractive to you? I'm kind of wondering if there's going to be a a strong kind of a second channel for you beyond your main partner?

Lawrence, you take this one.

Yeah, sure. I think among the three, Tmoo has the best potential. The platform fits more of our product portfolio and the marketing efforts they are putting together behind are probably the best and the strongest among three. of them so far. Aliexpress is pretty new. We're still working with their team. We got some orders in already, but they're small, but still working with their teams to adjust and working with their internal policies and strategies to adjust. Now, TikTok, the fate of TikTok wasn't clear now with the new administration. I think it has a much, much better hope to to continue the business. But again, that the team will still fit out of our product portfolio better than the other two. So if you want to put attention on one of the three, I'll pick Timo too.

Okay, that's helpful. Can you give us an update on SuperSuite? I think you were maybe in the low teens in terms of revenue percentage there in the previous quarter? Is that the right trajectory? What are your expectations for SuperSuite going forward?

Sure. Kevin, can we disclose the percentage of sales? Is that okay?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we talked about that before.

Yeah, so SuperSuite today... accounts about 10% of our overall sales. The platform is a connector or central places to connect every aspect of successfully conducting the sales to the US consumers, including online and in the future offline. Now, by saying that we have logistics partners, we have even though we didn't announce that publicly, we are testing two new logistics partners that joined onboard. And we are having a partnership with Zyla, which is subsidiary with Ant International, which will potentially have supply chain financing products into the SuperSuite platform, which is another benefit for suppliers to work with Nelk. For the supply chain side, our supply chain partners, we have made pretty good progress having them on board. But having the supply chain on board is what's in, having the sales to start to pick up. You start to see the selling growing, snowballing, usually in a three to six month period of time after the supply chain get on board. So, and we have a pipeline of them coming in and we have partners who are helping growing the base of supply chains. And that platform, I'm pretty confident on its growth in the future and that I believe will become the biggest growth driver in the future. And also, having the supply chain partners on board will help us in two things. One is it's going to further reduce our cash need for stocking inventories. Now, secondly, it will help us to prepare for the potential incoming tariff increase. We are not responsible for importing or purchasing or maintaining the inventories in the United States. So that will help. Together with the efforts we're getting manufacturers in other places other than China, we are also researching and getting more potential partners in the United States. So I think it's super sweet. it's not just for supply chains that outside us is also for the, the us brand of manufacturer supply chain as well. So, yeah, I mean, this, this is the, the super sweet, uh, supply, uh, platform is the main focus, um, for, for me, at least for the next foreseeable future.

You mentioned, uh, potentially upcoming, you know, increases in tariffs and, I'm kind of wondering if how you're looking at that whole situation, how much of your, I mean, would you try to move a greater percentage of your production to Vietnam? Or, um, I'm also kind of wondering what kind of lessons you learned from the last time around when Terry introduced and, you know, consumers reaction, competitors reaction. I mean, we just passed along the price increase and, nothing much else happens? Or how are you looking at the situation?

Right, right, right. That's, that's a great question. We have been preparing this for the last few years. Ever since that we had that impact of 25% increase. You know, we started a super series is one of the effort. So my view on this is that now we have the supply chain partners that we like not not not only just the ones that working with us in the partnership also the ones that will manufacture for us and we buy their inventories everyone has some plans to. afford for this particular event. So in the in the worst case I believe our suppliers. and the manufacturers, some of them already have a plan to manufacture alternatively outside China. The ones who evaluated and could not move out of China, everyone will face the same problem. And unfortunately, for those part of the product categories, No other countries could produce as effectively. We have no choices but pass the cost to the consumers. Now, in that case, while raising the price is not a good event to have, but at the end of the day, since everyone has to be forced to do that, It still comes down to who can effectively sourcing, who can be more effectively doing the merchandising, marketing, and the fulfillment for the sales. Now, that part we do pretty well. So what I mean is that for the ones that could avoid a huge tariff, people will act on it. It's not just us. For the ones that no other countries can be substitutions to the China manufacturer, the price will increase, but it's going to be like whole market activity. At the end of the day, it won't be the same. It's just everyone will raise the price. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, I'm sorry. As long as we do our parts efficiently, effectively, and quickly, and maintain a low inventory and be flexible, I think that's the most important thing, to adapt to potential impact and prepare and be able to act quick and have strong partners. Change is not always bad. It suffers when it rains, but that's the worst case. Maybe China will have a good talk with Trump Who knows? But in case that doesn't talk well, I think our partners and ourselves, we are much better prepared than four years ago.

Okay, good. Maybe a last question for Kevin. We talked about kind of the baseline for revenue, and I'm looking at gross margins over the last two or three quarters, and you've been in the mid to high 40s. Is that also kind of a reasonable range going forward? I mean, that's a nice pickup from where you were 12, 18 months ago.

Yeah, I think so. What you're seeing in that uplift is a function of the work we did over the last, let's call it year and a half, with our supply chain. you know, Vietnam move will help that, you know, the, the, the move that, uh, uh, I referenced with, you know, a little bit of this, you know, supply issue, uh, you know, that move was made with the, uh, uh, with the intent on bringing, you know, kind of unit costs down as well. And so, yeah, we feel good about where gross margins are, uh, on that side. I think that should be the target. The one thing that could swing that is container costs, but right now container costs are behaving quite nicely. I would suggest people that are looking at the gross margin line to pay attention there. But the work that we can really control, I think we've set a higher bar now. So I think we feel good about where gross kind of margins are and feel like that's a decent place for people to be kind of targeting for modeling.

Right. And one more thing I want to add on to it. If our super suite start to take off, then the gross margin maybe you will see that lower because for the super suite model, it's different than our traditional in-house product model where we buy and sell. So you'll see a lot of expenses built in in the purchase cost. So, but until then, you know, I'll just give you more information.

Yeah. Great. That's helpful. Thank you very much.

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Kevin Vasily for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call. We look forward to speaking with you again in the upcoming quarter. Have a good day. Bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.