Karooooo Ltd.

Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call

7/20/2021

spk01: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the KORU first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference has been recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to speaker today, Mr. Zach Callister, CEO, founder. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, AJ. I want to thank everybody that's made time for our presentation, the Q1 FY22 results. I will go through the presentation and clearly at the end I will answer as many questions as I possibly can. I founded the company in 2001. We launched in South Africa in 2004. And during April this year, we moved our headquarters to Singapore. And the holding company is Karoo, and it now owns 100% of CardTrack as from April in this first quarter. Since we set out in the business in 2004, we were always of the view that all vehicles will be connected and data will drive all aspects of mobility in the future. This has taken much longer than I anticipated, but our mission is certainly to build the leading mobility SaaS platform that maximizes the value of data. With over 76,000 commercial customers and approximately sole proprietors and consumers of 500,000 customers, we've got a data set and collect over 58 billion data points on a monthly basis, a comprehensive data from customers in different industries and different geographies using different types of vehicles, different fleet sizes, and all of this data allows us to contextualize a lot of different businesses, a lot of different business processes, and that allows us to give comprehensive business intelligence report and predictive analytics to our customers, whether they're just fleet management in the insurance industry, and that's fundamentally what we do. We collect data from proprietary in-vehicle smart devices. We also collect data from third-party AM devices in vehicles, We store the data and fundamentally we then process the data to create the value. We have APIs into third party systems where we push and receive data from. We've got a relatively consistent history where we've year on year consistently or quarter even or quarter on quarter consistently have increased our customer base, our subscribers, We've grown our revenue on a consistently and our operating profit is also growing consistently. However, from time to time, it does go, you know, a little bit up or down, but over time, the correlation, the linear, the line is certainly a trend upwards. Um, one of the things we tell ourselves is the way we allocate capital. We've got a strong financial discipline and, um, we're continuously monitoring our process on a daily basis. We're quite fortunate that our business is annuity-based business. We've got a very healthy subscription revenue growth. 97% of our revenue comes from annuity, and that obviously gives us quite a bit of quite a bit of confidence into the months to come of what our revenue line would look like. Our subscriber growth, if we compare it this quarter compared to the previous last year's quarter, we grew by 21%. Revenue growth grew by 17%. On a constant currency, we grew by 22%. I think it's important to note that on a constant currency, Our subscription revenue grew by 20%. We now, ARR, as of May, is $2.5 billion, which is up 18%. We did have quite a bit of play in terms of currencies over this last year. We saw the RAND depreciate substantially against the basket of currencies that we operate in. And if you then look at our in U.S. dollars, you will see a 51% increase to $181 million. A lot of that is led by appreciating South African grains. We've had a relatively good Q1. We grew compared to Q1 last year in terms of net subscription additions, 760%. That could be a little bit out of context given that in Q1 last year, it was really the beginning of COVID. It was a very difficult time. The times are still difficult for us at this point in time, but we've got a bit more used to trading in this current environment. But irrespective of that, if you look back to Q1 of FY20, our net quarterly subscriber additions is still more than 100%. And I would say that the last three quarters have been very good quarters in adding net subscribers. And typically our Q1 is not normally our strongest quarter given quite a lot of the Jewish and Christian holidays and also the Asian holidays. So we're quite content with the results and our achievement in Q1. We continue to see growth of our customer base. What we are experiencing with COVID is more than normally what we're seeing is the different sizing of customers where you'll have a customer that has 30 vehicles now with 20 vehicles. Or, you know, there is a bit of more movement in the downsizing or increasing of vehicles throughout our customers. Our commercial customer retention has remained strong at 95%. And we have very low industry and customer concentration risk. The car industry, which is considered to be quite risky given COVID, it's less than 1.1% of our base, and our largest customer is less than 1.7% of our revenue. And also, I must add that the largest customer, the 1.7% in terms of bottom line, due to the discounts, it's substantially less than 1%. In terms of cash flow, our operating activities, we're actually up 19% compared to Q1 of FY21. Clearly, with the growth, we've invested more into PPE, so we've seen a 77% growth in PPE, and our free cash flow is down 12%, primarily on the back of our growth and investing in our growth of our businesses. We believe one of our advantages over and above our internal systems and our platform is over years we're improving substantially in our ability to acquire customers, to acquire subscribers, subscriber being the vehicle that belongs to customers. I always tell, you know, we have a certain element of control on retaining customers. But the vehicles or the subscribers, that's really by default. We can prescribe to our customers how long they retain their vehicle on our platform. So we do see customers selling their vehicles after they've been in the platform for 12 months, others after 18 months. But all of these unit economics we take into consideration to build out our models. So what we saw in Q1 this year compared to Q1 of last year, we saw an ARPU drop from 155 South African grand to 151 grand. Predominantly, that drop has actually got to do with currency, where the strong rent had a negative impact on our ARPU. And it's also got to do with quite a lot of customers In some Asian countries and in Africa, outside South Africa, where they're getting holidays where they're not actually using their vehicles. So that's had a negative impact. But I think overall on the constant currency, our actual ARPU is actually increased compared to last year. But it's still trading in the range that we find the helping range, which is between 150 and 160 rand. Our subscriber contract life cycle remains very consistent just over 60 months. we depreciate any capitalization of customer acquisition or subscriber acquisition over 60 months. It's more subscriber acquisition. What you do see is a huge decline in our cost of acquiring a subscriber from R2,636 to R2,005. There's a little bit of noise in that in the sense that in Q1 last year, we had substantially less overheads in terms of sales people but there was substantially much less uh the productivity is substantially less because of of covert at this point in time our productivity is still not where we want it because we on board as a substantial amount of sales and marketing stuff but nevertheless we've seen that improvement of from 2636 south african grand to 2005. In terms of what we capitalise, that's dropped from $1,624 to $1,489 and that's got predominantly to do with our new generation telematics hardware. Subscription revenue gross profit margin, that dropped to 72% as opposed to 74%. But once again, that is also driven by the ARPU, the revenue in ARPU, which is lowered because of the currency, predominantly the exchange rate against the rent. It's important to note on the slide that the portion that we expense up front is normally related strongly to customers that we've onboarded And these customers, when they have the second cycle of vehicles coming, when they de-fleet the vehicles and bring in more vehicles, that would normally, we wouldn't be incurring the sales salaries again, nor the marketing costs. So over time, it would stand to reason that your cost of acquiring a subscriber will decline. However, we see that that could change with 5G units that will have in the air probably within the next year or two and that could also have an impact on the unit economics we operate in a large under penetrated market South Africa is just a it's our estimates and sometimes it's very difficult to get numbers with a huge amount of accuracy and it's just over 10 million vehicles it's you know some people talk about 12 million vehicles we've got you know, just under 1.1 million Jekyll. So we add at this point in time, we believe about 8% of the market. Uh, we believe that allows us to grow at very good rates, specifically still for another five years, uh, before we have slowed down growth. Um, in Africa, we believe we've got 63,000, so we can really grow, uh, Africa. It hasn't been one of our priorities. We will focus on that priority probably in four years' time once we believe South Africa has reached a certain level where we've moved that one million customers to a few million, and then we can use our stronghold in South Africa and the human capital we've got in South Africa to move into Africa. In Southeast Asia, it's a huge opportunity with well over 100 million vehicles. It's substantially more than 100 million vehicles. We've only got 124,000 vehicles, and We, approximately two years ago, were feeling very positive about growing Asia, and we are at our best. Then COVID came, which is basically now 15 months ago, 16 months ago, and that's really made it very difficult for us to be able to move around Asia, to be able to onboard people. We were hoping, you know, if you asked me five months ago, six months ago, how would Asia look like, I would have thought by middle of this year, the markets would have opened up much more. The reality is they're actually closing up more. So Southeast Asia is we see Singapore is going to relatively, you know, they're closing. Most people working from home, they're closing all the restaurants from tomorrow. So the trading conditions don't seem to be very favorable, but we're very well positioned to grow in Asia once the market opens up. We have employed about 150 people in this last quarter in Asia in the hope of the market opening up, and we are moving some of our staff that are sitting in Europe, in America, and in South Africa that were meant to go into Asian countries. We are bringing them to Singapore, and hopefully with the Singapore team, we will start gathering momentum hopefully in the near future in Asia, because we certainly believe that's our biggest opportunity. Europe, also a massive opportunity for us. Europe is what we're waiting for. We certainly want to start really investing for growth in Europe. What we do see in Europe is, you know, they go from lockdown to open up the market and it's quite, it fluctuates. The policies seem to change quite frequently. And we would like to see Europe through this next winter and then after that start investing substantially in Europe, just the same way as we've invested in South Africa in the last six months or seven months where we've actually employed in the region of about 700 people, 650 people. And we look forward to the opportunity. We believe it's huge. We will focus on customer acquisitions. And as the markets become more penetrated, then at that point in time, we can focus on increasing our ARPU by charging for the value-added services that we continuously add onto our platform that at this point in time, we're giving to our loyal customers just for customer retention and to create customer stickiness and to make our proposition very attractive. If we look at our subscribers in this quarter, quarter and quarter, South Africa grew by 23%, Africa by 5%, Europe by 14%, and Asia by 17%. During this quarter, in actual fact, I would say actually for the last six to seven months, we've been investing quite heavily for growth. And if you look at the amount of capital that we've allocated to sales and marketing, that's gone up by 71%, R&D by 44%, and G&A approximately 21%. We did experience growth in the G&A, but there's also expansion costs for Asia and even for South Africa there. So we believe we will reap the rewards of this investment in months to come. We've onboarded a lot of people. They'll probably take a few months to become totally productive. And given COVID, which obviously slows down the process of the transfer of knowledge, We believe that by Q4 of this year, we'll get the results that we desired out of all the staff that we've onboarded, and we're very excited about the future that holds for us. Our operating metrics, our subscription revenue grew from $526 million to $606 million. dropped from 155 to 151. Our gross profit margin dropped from 73 to 71%. Most of this is really due to the carbon exchange on the output. It brings those margins down. Then research and development, that we increased from 4% as a percentage of subscription that we need to 5%. Sales and marketing, that's been increased from 10% to 15%, all in line with our plans. And G&A, that's increased from 20% to 21%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin last year was 50%. This year it's 44%. It's very much in keeping with our expectations. And we believe that the adjusted EBITDA margin will increase about 45% by the financial year end. Our outlook that we gave at the end of FY21, we maintained the same outlook, and that is to get subscribers to be between 1.5 and 1.6 million, our subscription revenue between 2.5 and 2.7 billion, and our adjusted avatar margin between 45 and 50%. It's just important to note that our ARR is actually at 2.5 billion as of May. On that note, I'd like to thank everybody for taking the time to listen to us, and I will open up for questions. Question number one from Rebo Malotsi. Good day, Zach. What do you honestly think of our prospects so far about expanding into mature markets like Europe and the U.S.? ? Don't you think it's too risky, or do you think the competitive advantage we have is strong enough to compete in such markets? And if yes, what makes you think so? So it's quite a long question. So we've got a very small office in the U.S. I think the U.S. market is a very exciting market, full of opportunity. But we just haven't got the human – we haven't got enough – we're spread too thin to go tackle the U.S. We in Europe, we compete very favorably with our competitors there. In actual fact, we win a lot of the business over them. And we believe that that's definitely an area where we want to certainly invest in Europe. And I think the U.S., over time to come, we've got enough on our plate that probably the best solution for us would be an acquisition or a merger in the U.S. at a later time to come. I don't think right now. Right now, I think we've got enough on our plate and a lot to do. The next question from . What was the impact of COVID restrictions during the pairs? How do you think your net ads would compare if we had zero COVID restrictions in your operating regions? Really, obviously, I haven't got a crystal ball, but my gut feel is, and the way we've prepared, is to obviously be growing much faster than what we're growing at. I think under the circumstances, we had to focus on the market that we believe was the easiest to trade under COVID. South Africa had a very open market, just like the U.S. Europe was half open. Asia was a very closed market. So we focused where we could do best. And this is the results we achieved. Obviously, under COVID, we believe and our targets for our management would certainly be to be doing better than we're currently doing. Anthony Geert, Isaac, great subscriber growth. Can you provide more color on the geographic split of sales and marketing spend, please? Where are you spending the extra money and when do you think the fruit of this investment will be evident? Also, the travel restrictions, I'm sure most are out of the way now. Is your team able to travel in the region? Yes. The travel restrictions, if anything, they've intensified. It's still very difficult to travel in the region. And I think, Anthony, quite frankly, I thought by now things would look very different. But I would say it's even tougher now than it was three months ago. Where did we spend most of our allocation of sales and marketing? It was predominantly South Africa and a bit of Asia. we want to then spend the growth in europe just i would say in about two quarters time we just want to see after the summer holidays of europe what that would look like and um but the minute we see asia will open up that's where we really want to allocate a lot of capital to we see asia as a big opportunity but at the moment very tough to do business there especially if you haven't got the strong presence on the ground and you're busy growing the business It's quite difficult. Daniel Bartis. Okay, okay. Daniel says he'll ask the question while I have it that way. Okay, I'll do it after this. Roy Campbell, could you talk through the seasonality embedded in your four quarters in a normalized environment? So our business is not very seasonal, although our two weakest quarters is Q4 and Q1. And those quarters are normally quite, uh, quite three quarters be given all the holidays, um, specifically in South Africa in December. And then obviously with the Easter and the Jewish holidays, uh, and some Asian holidays around the first quarter, those makes, makes traditionally awkward because for us, it's all about trading days. You know, the less trading days we have, that's how it impacts us. It's not really the weather. It's more the trading days if one had to take it directly. I'm not sure if I've answered Troy's question, but I think I have. AJ, can you ask the questions from Mike from Canaccord? Perfect. Mike, your line is open now.
spk02: You can ask your question. Great. Thank you. Zach, congratulations on the strong start to fiscal 22, despite probably some of these markets more locked down than you anticipated when you gave the initial guidance. Can you just talk longer term? Should some of these regions, such as Southeast Asia, start to reopen? How do you think the business might re-accelerate in terms of longer-term growth, particularly with the sales and marketing headcount additions you've made over the past year?
spk01: Most of the sales, it sounds like the increase was actually in South Africa, although we did have about 157 people in total in the last few months in Asia in anticipation of the market opening. We believe we will do really well in Asia. We feel very confident in it. Our management feels very confident. And we will have to build our expansion in terms of distribution. Our distribution is quite limited given the of Asia. So we certainly can allocate capital and we believe we'll do well. So where we have got traction, we believe we're winning on the ground. I certainly believe that our platform is superior for superior and our solution is very comprehensive. So I believe we'll do really well in it.
spk02: Great, thanks. And just a follow-up question for me and I'll pass the line. Zach, are you seeing any change in competitive dynamics in South Africa? NSEGO sold their C-Track business. Mixed Telematics made some headcount reductions last year. And then there's companies such as Samsara moving in there. So could you talk about competitive dynamics as it looks like you guys continue to do very well in the South Africa market?
spk01: The South Africa market is very competitive. It's also one of the most highly penetrated markets in the world. It's very competitive. I don't really always have the color on what our peers are doing. But we're winning on the ground and we're growing our business. And I think that's maybe the thing we're really focused on. And at the end of the day, we've only got 8% of the full market. So we believe we'll continue growing.
spk02: Great. And maybe just one quick follow-up, too, just on South Africa. There's been some social unrest in the news there. Any impact to your business in the current quarter, or do you feel like trends remain pretty strong in that region? Thank you.
spk01: So it will certainly have an impact in this quarter. So what the social unrest was, it lasted, if my memory serves me correctly, about two weeks. It appears that it's all calmed down. It's all back to normal. But like we all know, with these under-situations, it's not going to make any sense. So June is a great month, and July will probably be the end of the business that we would have normally done. However, in August, you know, we'll have another great month in August. So June, July, this crisis is probably still due. more than half of sales. So under the circumstances, I think it will impact water, but it will not be good. Obviously, some of our customers are small, medium businesses. That's not how they can survive this. So it should have an impact on us in terms of some loss of customers with COVID at the But nevertheless, I think given that we already have so many of our customers that we work with them in difficult times, I don't believe it's going to impact us.
spk02: Thanks for taking my questions and your best wishes for ongoing success.
spk01: And next, from William Blay. Sure, sure. We have our next question. The line is open. You can ask your question now.
spk00: Thanks for taking my questions, Zach. Just wanted to follow up on your supply chain and how you feel about your inventory levels and ability to source new inventory, and is there any sort of concern about that being a constraint from a growth perspective?
spk01: At this point in time, Matt, I don't believe so. You know, we've got certainly enough inventory at this point in time to conduct business as normal. And if we did ever get into a situation where we haven't got inventory, I would see it's probably in the next financial year should something that we cannot think about go wrong in terms of the supply chain. But we believe this financial year we certainly feel very comfortable we can have no issues.
spk00: Great. And then just one more question for me. Just wondering if you could provide some detail on some of your newer growth initiatives such as Karzuka or the insurance initiative that you have.
spk01: With Karzuka, we are hoping to launch in Q4 of this year. With COVID, we've always put out that we are launching the latter part of this financial year. We're doing tests at this point in time, and we feel very confident we're going to do well, and we're going to build this business over the next two to three years, and I believe we are growing into a good business. I don't want to promise the market or promise anybody expectations, create expectations. but myself and management feel that we're doing the right thing and that we believe that's going to create a tremendous amount of value, not only for us, but for our customers as well.
spk00: Great. Thanks a lot for taking my questions, Zach.
spk01: Thank you. The next question is Daniel Barton.
spk03: Hey, Zach. Thanks for taking the question. First, I noticed the large fleets continue to grow as well. Can you just talk a little bit about what you're thinking in terms of second half or next year? How much of the growth should be coming from larger fleets versus the smaller fleets? And are you changing strategy at all to go after that opportunity more?
spk01: So, you know, my view, Daniel, is that large fleets are actually a very small percentage of the vehicle park in the world. So we've taken the view that, you know, we go for the small medium enterprises and then after time we're going to the large fleets. We've started going to the large fleets. The penetration rate in large fleets is larger than in the small and medium enterprises, and we certainly are going to target the large fleets, and we're already starting to see quite a few of the large fleets switching from the current providers to us. But I think there's a long runway for growth in my view, and given all of that, I think we must go and focus on large fleets as a core business I believe the way we've done the business, we must stick to our formula.
spk03: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing in Africa, outside of South Africa, you know, that's, that's kind of the one area where you've seen a little bit of weaker growth. Are there things that you see that you can leverage you can pull to improve growth outside of South Africa in the African region?
spk01: I think it's on our core focus to grow at this point in time to grow Africa. It hasn't been our focus for the last four years. We have put in a bit more focus, but with COVID and the traveling restrictions, it's become a bit more difficult. I think we need to focus on Asia, Europe, and South Africa. Obviously, we will focus on Africa, and it's not that we're not focusing on it. And we are growing the Africa business, but it's not our major focus. Although we are investing, we've now done quite a comprehensive deal with Toyota for the whole of Africa. So we are investing that relationship. But I think fundamentally the real growth right now in the next two to three years is not going to come from Africa. It's going to come from other segments. Africa at this point in time is also being hit quite hard with COVID, you know, specifically Q4 last year. And we see Q1 this year, COVID even taking a more deadly toll in Africa where, you know, medical assistance is not the greatest. And so Africa, COVID is definitely having a very strong impact on it. on Africa, specifically on South Africa. Gotcha.
spk03: Gotcha. And just quickly, lastly, you know, the travel restrictions have been hurting you guys in certain regions. And, you know, we've talked a lot about it. It's holding back your growth to some degree in certain pockets of the world. But are there ways that you can adjust the business to operate more efficiently remotely and not needing to travel on the ground. I'm wondering if you could just give us some color on is it sales and marketing that's being hurt by the travel restrictions? Is it more GNA and getting management on the ground? Or is it mostly related to the implementation of the devices?
spk01: Thanks. I think it's a combination of everything. But I think fundamentally if you get to the bottom line is if you look at Asians, We've got a very strong team in Singapore. We've got a relatively strong team in Thailand. But our teams aren't strong enough in a lot of countries. And approximately two years ago, we had a lot of managers. And I think we went wrong. We had Americans, South Africans, Singaporeans, Europeans to go run in these countries and work side by side and localize the business. The reality is that we've got a lot of the people on the ladder getting to the countries. It's very difficult to get them in. And even if they do get in to get out and visit their families, it's very difficult. So we need to, it's very difficult also to onboard people, train them through Zoom, get the culture online, get the distributions quite difficult. Had we known that Asia was still going to be a little bit difficult like it is today, we would have probably put that focus in Europe, which is much less There's much less restriction in Europe. And what we will see now is you'll probably find that if Asia continues this way, we're just going to take our focus into Europe and to grow Europe and South Africa. But the real opportunity is really Asia. Asia is a massive opportunity, but so is Europe. And we just don't want to allocate capital at this point in time until after the summer holidays. Because just judging by what happened last year, all of Europe went into total lockdowns because things started getting cold. So, you know, I'm not a specialist on this, but I don't think that anyone is really. So we just want to be quite frequent in the way we allocate our capital. Okay, great. That's really helpful. Thanks, Zach. Thank you. Then we've got Alex from Raymond James. Certainly. Alex, your line is open now.
spk05: Great. Thanks, Zach. I have two questions on the pricing environment. You mentioned some pricing uplift, constant currency. I'm just wondering if you can talk about what drove that increase absent the FX impact. And then you also talked about providing some support still to certain customers that were impacted in the quarter. Could you just help us quantify that impact? Is it 5% of the base and how that level of support has kind of trended over the past 16 months? Thanks.
spk01: So in terms of the ARPU, you know, it's very difficult to keep your ARPU absolutely consistent. So we believe ARPU between 150 to 160 is really consistent. You know, otherwise you start nitpicking about your ARPU, if that makes any sense. And I think it's just, it's really, you know, it's gone up by approximately a few ranks. I think in constant currency, it's gone up by about three rand, if I'm not mistaken. It's not that material, but that gets offset against the currency and against the customers that we're giving them either discounts or we're allowing them two months or three months. How we do that, we have visibility of the fleet of our vehicles, of our customers' vehicles, and if we see the customers not using their vehicles or the vehicles are parked and they call us, and they have issues with the vehicles, then obviously we cooperate with them. It's in our interest to get the goodwill. And I believe in the long term we create great relationships and we are successful. Approximately, I would say at this point in time, about 4% to 5% of our base have got some level of discounts. I would say it's approximately 4% to 5% of our full base. Most of that would be some in South Africa, some in Africa, and quite a lot in Asia.
spk05: Okay, that's great. That's great color. One thing I don't think we've talked about as much, and you kind of teased this when talking about customer acquisition costs, but can you just talk about the 5G refresh cycle, what it's going to mean for the business down the road in terms of costs, and what are some of the incremental revenue opportunities that you're working on?
spk01: I think the best way to look at, you know, sometimes it's quite difficult to differentiate between customer acquisition and subscriber acquisition. So a customer acquisition, once you have the customer, you have to service the customer. So if we decide that tomorrow we're not going to acquire any more customers, then it's really about customer service and retaining and looking after those relationships, which is a very different thing to necessarily marketing sales salaries You know, I don't want to say there will be no sales salaries or marketing, but it will be substantially different in terms of the amount of money that you spend on sales and marketing. And obviously, the subscriber cost is really when someone, one of our customers, deflates NPP. And that's really what we capitalize. It's the vehicle, the technology that goes into the vehicle, the customer acquisition as such that gets expensed up front. So when you're acquiring customers, you have the negative effect on your P&L today that you could have that customer for the next 20, 30, 40 years where you've got very little to sell the marketing to retain that customer. Does that make sense?
spk05: Yeah, that makes sense. But I guess a little bit – More specifically, I'm just curious what 5G is going to mean in terms of the refresh cycle and some of the incremental revenue opportunities that you're already working on now for when 5G comes into your base.
spk01: So, you know, it's all really about data and it's all about us evolving our platform to be able to deal with much more data and much quicker. I do believe before we have that sort of environment, we're probably two years before we're there, if that makes any sense. You know, we're busy getting our AI to be much stronger. So we're busy improving our business. We're busy building our data capabilities. And I believe with that, we'll be able to drive more value to our customers. But fundamentally, at the end of the day, it's just going to be a faster and more comprehensive service. You touch the button and you've got the answers. That's the way we see it. But that's still going to take time. a little bit of time to get to that level where we've got a total 5G base. At this point in time, we have no 5G. And that obviously will impact your cost of acquiring a customer or a subscriber. However, having said that, what we also expect is the 5G prices to also substantially drop. Just the same way as 2G and 3G and 4G. We don't believe that's going to be the case. Okay, very helpful. Thanks, Al. Thank you very much, Alex. We've got one call from Parker from Seifel. Certainly. Parker, your line is open now.
spk04: Great. Thanks for taking my question. Zach, just one for me today. If I look at the consumer and sole proprietor aspect of your business, can you remind us how you go to market there? Is that primarily a self-service approach where consumers are buying your platform online? And do you see any heightened levels of churn and contraction right now in that area of the business relative to, you know, small enterprise, medium enterprise, and those large fleets?
spk01: We find that, you know, Our retention rate is over 60 months. We see the business not very different to what it was five years ago. We've also improved our systems, internal systems, to deal with the reality of the economic events that we are seeing that part of the business would have faced had we not developed. We've really invested a lot in our internal systems in the last three years. And I think that's also allowing us to retain the customers, service the customers, and continue to win in the market. Have I answered your question, Parker? I might have missed a point.
spk04: Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out, you know, When we think about the opportunity for you to sell to a large fleet, that seems like a very involved sales process. But if it's just a person that is buying your technology for one car or their family's vehicles, the sales process seems quite different in those situations. I'm just wondering if there's been any change in a more distributed world where, you know, salespeople can't be on the ground in the way you're actually selling to those smaller customers.
spk01: So what we find is happens, for instance, in South Africa. In America, as you know, a lot of the business can be done over telephone and live demos. South Africa was not that way inclined, but things have changed substantially in the last few years, and today we can do quite a lot of business with demos on the phone. And we're becoming quite successful, and we're certainly improving month on month, and we're getting better at it. So I would say most of our sales today It's done very much in the way they get conducted in America, which is live demos and over the phone.
spk04: Got it. Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking my questions.
spk01: Thank you very much. We've got one question from Chris Logan. There was a big decrease in the unit cost of acquiring Suscava from 2016 to 2020. Is this sustainable? Is it more decon cost? Chris... I think I answered that. I'm not sure. What I'll do, Chris, if you don't mind, I'll give you a call after this just to take you through more detail in case I didn't articulate myself enough. I'll answer that. So it's Anthony. Me again. Can you provide a bit more color on the selection subscriber growth, please? Are you doing particularly well in gaining corporate clients or seeing corporate clients add new vehicles? It does seem like a really strong result, so well done. Thanks. So, Anthony, what we're seeing in South Africa is we're winning both on the business front and on the consumer front, and we're winning equally on both fronts. What we're actually seeing is the amount of customers that we're onboarding that are business customers that in terms of percentages is starting to increase substantially quicker than consumers. Rudy, with Carzuca, do you foresee expanding the business rather than similarly buying cars, or do you take ownership of vehicles and make a margin selling those vehicles, or do you only foresee it being a more sophisticated online marketplace? Rudy, the way we see our business in terms of Carzuca, very much a room model, the American model, where we take and we buy the vehicles from our own customers. We actually keep the inventory and we sell them on. I think today it's all about convenience. Just the platform, the way it used to be in the olden days, I think that's an old model. I don't believe it's got legs anymore. Today, everybody wants convenience and they want a certain level of warranties. We're in a very strong position that we know who's owned the vehicle, where they've driven the vehicle, the type of vehicle, the way the vehicle is being driven. So that puts us in quite a strong position. So for us, it's all about bringing value to the seller and to the buyer and to give them a level of comfort. And that's where the industry is actually going. I think that's all the questions for today. I want to thank everybody that stayed on the call. Thank you very much and look forward to talking to you again in approximately three months' time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the bus concludes to country.
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