Verb Technology Company, Inc.

I'd like to remind everyone that statements made during this conference call will include forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, except as required by law as the underlying facts and circumstances may change. Ferb Technology Company disclaims any obligations to update these forward-looking statements, as well as those contained in the company's current and subsequent filings with the SEC. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Rory J. Kutai, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and thank everyone for joining us today for our first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. As you know, our last earnings call for Q4 and the full year 2020 was just six weeks ago on March 31. And in that call, a fairly lengthy call, the transcript for which is available in a filed form 8K, you can find it on our website. I provided a very detailed report on the business, our products, and our plans for 2021. And since we were at the end of the Q1 2021 reporting period, I also provided forward-looking guidance on our expected results for Q1 2021. So, on this call, I'm not going to take time reiterating much of what I shared last time, and instead, I'll update you as to how the business actually performed as compared to the guidance we provided on the March 31 call, and the progress we've made on the hyper-growth initiatives, or at least those that I've shared so far and referenced in prior reports. So, Let me start by saying that I'm really pleased to announce that our actual Q1 results beat our projected Q1 results, which, look, were widely seen as somewhat bullish, as they represented earlier. a fairly meaningful increase over Q4 2020. And look, as good as these results are, they do not yet include the results of any of the hyper growth initiatives that we've been working on, but I am extremely pleased to report. In fact, I'm very proud of my team because as promised, On time, we've completed development and testing of our attribution feature for VerbLive, and it's being released today to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. We believe this is a real game changer. It takes the burgeoning live stream e-commerce industry to an entirely new level. And as amazing as our VerbLive technology is, attribution increases the total addressable market for this product exponentially. So let me explain. So yes, the number of people adopting video for their sales and marketing efforts has indeed grown dramatically since we first began talking about it several years ago. And as you've heard me say many times, if you're not using video in your sales and marketing initiatives, You're lucky you're not even in the game, right? So it started as a, as a cool technology. When we launched our business has, as we predicted become sales and marketing table stakes. And now we're making a new prediction. We believe live streaming commerce will dominate online sales in the U S just as it has in China in 2020 in China, more than $136 billion in sales were done through live streaming commerce. Last year, more than 500 million people made purchases through live streams in China. When we predicted the growth of video and interactive video, we were right then and we're right now. For those of you who don't know what live streaming commerce is, it's the ability of consumers to click in a video during a live broadcast to purchase products, not just click on the text and static images on popular websites, but right in the live broadcast videos. And we're bringing that technology to everyone, allowing anyone to host their own live QVC or home shopping network style sales channel with clickable in video purchase capabilities, eliminating friction from the sales process. That's right. Your viewers, They don't have to call a phone number or go to a website to purchase the products that they're watching live. Okay, now look, not everyone wants to be in front of the camera. Not everyone feels comfortable hosting a live event. Not everyone feels confident pitching a product or service or pitching themselves on live video. But we all know someone who does, right? We all know that person, right? So this is where our new attribution feature becomes the killer app. With Verb Live Attribution, you can send your prospects and customers to watch that person's live stream. And when any of your prospects or customers make a purchase while watching that live stream, you get paid. The Verb platform tracks it all and is able to attribute each sale to the correct person that invited the purchaser. That's how we all win, and that's how we expand the already massive total addressable market for live stream e-commerce exponentially. Attribution is our proprietary technology. We conceived it, we developed it, and now we're launching it. I mentioned six weeks ago on our last earnings call that we signed the first of what we expect will be a million-dollar-a-year client. Well, this is why they signed up. They are a billion-dollar global business, and this is what has them excited. And as I mentioned last time, our sales department has a robust pipeline of other large clients that have been waiting to get their hands on VerbLive with attribution for their teams. It's this type of market-leading innovation that will drive our business in 2021 and beyond. And with the changes that we've now made to our product and development teams and agile processes, we can now deliver this innovation far more rapidly, reliably, and at a lower cost than ever before. We're doing away with the false starts. No more missed deadlines. Look, back then, we were creating something entirely new. We didn't know what we didn't know. We've evolved, and so has our tech, and so has our teams and our capabilities. Going forward, our lower development cost structure brings added benefits. Our finance teams have been developing a plan that will reduce our burn quarter over quarter, reducing our reliance on outside capital and driving us towards cash flow positive profitability. We believe live streaming commerce is going to be the single biggest disruptive force to happen to online selling. And we believe our attribution feature is the rocket fuel that's going to drive it. This is one of the hyper growth initiatives we've been working on for the past year that I promised we would deliver. But there's more. Among the other ones that I can talk about today is our Microsoft Outlook integration. As I reported on our March 31 earnings call, we've begun the public beta release of an integration of our interactive video technology into Microsoft Outlook. As I indicated then, we were contemplating the 90-day beta test period, which we're about halfway through. We've got some high-quality companies in the beta test, and as I've recently learned, many of our investors have signed up for the new beta program and are actively using it, which I think is actually pretty cool. As those of you who are currently playing with it now and as you know, Outlook users who subscribe will have a new button in their toolbar that says Verve Mail. Clickiness allows users to create a quick video mail right in Outlook and then add interactive icons such as Buy It Now, among other interactive features, and then send it out to Outlook. Look, video has become the preferred means of communication, and now you no longer have to leave Outlook to create and send your video, and even better, a verb-style interactive video right in and through Outlook. And as you've heard me say, there's over 1 billion Outlook users worldwide, many of whom will likely be drawn to this feature set. At least that's what we believe, and that's what the market is telling us. We anticipate that enterprise users will be able to edit their Office 365 subscription, making it available to their entire organization. When we get into the Q&A section today, maybe it would be great if any of our investor beta testers would be interested in commenting on their experience so far with the app. This is, of course, the initial feature set release, which does indeed represent a very compelling value proposition all by itself. But let me give you all a glimpse of what's to come with our Microsoft Outlook app, as we intend to offer a series of follow-on releases, updates, and upgrades. I think the last time I shared that through one of the upcoming follow-on releases, you'll be able to post your videos directly to social media from within Outlook. But check this one out. Picture this. And this is specifically for professional salespeople. You will be able to send your verb mail interactive video out through Outlook. And then the moment when your customer or prospect watches the video, you'll get a pop-up message on your computer or mobile device notifying you about that. All right, so let me just stop there for a second because we actually already have that feature built into our verb CRM product. but here's where we go next level. So that pop-up message in Outlook not only tells you that your video is being watched by your prospect, but it also gives you the option to click on that pop-up message and decide if you want your prospect to know while he or she is watching that video that you're online right then and available to talk if they want to. Now check this out. If you select that option, A message then pops up on the screen of your prospect while they're watching your video, letting them know that you're available in that moment. And if they want to chat with you, they can click on that message. And now get this. It will launch a two-way interactive verb live Zoom-like session, except with the interactive e-commerce capability. right there and then while their interest level is peaked and eliminating so much friction from the sales process where it almost eliminates gravity itself. Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little bit. You're not actually going to float away, but you may feel like you're floating a bit above the competition, right? All right, corny, but seriously, look, this is the new verb. The next level of interactive video-based sales tools and it's all coming this year. So I've been asked, how does this fit into the Microsoft ecosystem? Why are they interested? And let me tell you what I've been told by Microsoft. They are keenly focused on their Azure cloud services platform where they anticipate the greatest growth. Add-on applications native to their existing products that trigger a greater demand for Azure cloud services, especially among their large enterprise, are the much sought after partnerships. And few Microsoft application add-ons have a greater need for Azure cloud services than video-based apps such as ours. Did I mention that there's over a billion Outlook users worldwide? All right, so look, next. Last time I talked about a forthcoming new platform that we've tentatively named Marketplace. And I know many of you are as excited as I am about it. Well, look, I'm going to save... all the exciting details around that for a future press release. But I will share this. We've made extraordinary progress just over the past six weeks since I last talked about this. We're actually running live shows on it every day from many retailers that have signed up for the platform. So don't go looking for it. You won't find it under the name Marketplace anywhere. And yes, It's a special and very unique application of our VIRB Live technology. But please, please be patient. When we're ready for the big reveal, we'll do an appropriate announcement. It's worthy of that. Let us finish our work. This is something that every one of our shareholders will be incredibly proud of, make you feel glad that you found this little company. Yeah, it's that good. Maybe the biggest value creator for ourselves. and our shareholders among what is shaping up to be an amazing suite of sales technology products built around Build Live. We've actually got a number of new things to announce, and we think the best way to do that, I think the best way to do that is we're going to host an Apple-like product release event where all of you, including all of our customers, prospects, investors, analysts, and techno geeks, can get a detailed look at what the new VIRB has created. It will be a highly produced event that will be followed by a live COVID safe in-office meet and greet at our Newport Beach office. So the planning for that is underway, slated for a date this summer. We will keep you posted. Okay, so now let me give you some high level numbers for our Q1 2021 results. That's the three months. ending March 31, 2021. And Jeff Claiborne will then provide much more detailed information. So SAS, total SAS recurring revenue, component of our total digital revenue, was $1.5 million, an increase of 38% year over year, and up 12% from Q4 2020. Total digital revenue was $1.8 million, an increase of 24% year-over-year and up 18% from Q4 2020. Total combined revenue was $2.5 million, an increase of almost 21% over Q4 2020. SaaS recurring revenue as a percentage of total digital was 81%, compared with 73% for the same period last year. We added 16 new client contracts, with a guaranteed base value of $900,000 and $424,000 in annual recurring. Cash total $12.9 million as of March 31, 2021, compared with the $1.8 million on December 31, 2020. Total user downloads is now just over 2 million. Yes, we broke 2 million up more than 47% over the 1.4 million we reported in the same period last year. And up approximately over the 1.9 we reported just six weeks ago in our last earnings call on March 26. So finally, as part of our continuing and growing commitment to ESG initiatives, that's environmental, social, and governance initiatives, Throughout 2020 and into 2021, we launched several programs through our Verb for Humanity division to help small businesses recover from the impact of the pandemic, among many other contributions, including a program to help aspiring Olympic athletes generate the income they need to pursue their dreams, all of which you'll find featured on our website at verb.tech. So now I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff Claiborne, our Chief Financial Officer, for a more detailed review of our financial results.

Thank you, Rory, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to review our financial performance as reported in our Form 10-Q filed today, Thursday, May 13th, for the quarterly period ending March 31st, 2021. The following period-over-period comparisons present the company's results of operations for Q1 2021 versus Q1 2020. Our total revenue for Q1 2021 was $2.5 million, a 7.3% increase from the $2.4 million reported in Q1 2020. Now, simply looking at our top line revenue doesn't tell the whole story because it hides the actual growth we're enjoying in our digital business. As we reported each quarter, we began exiting the low margin printing and fulfillment aspects of the legacy business long ago. So that revenue is going down as planned. In fact, it's down 19% from the same period last year. But this maps the growth we are seeing in our digital business, which is up nicely in Q1 2021 to $1.8 million for total digital, which is an increase of 24% from the $1.5 million reported in Q1 2020. And our total digital revenue growth was primarily driven by a 38% increase in our core SAS recurring revenue, which totaled $1.5 million in Q1 2021 versus the $1.1 million in Q1 2020. In fact, for Q1 2021, our SAS recurring revenue represents 81% of our total digital revenue compared with 73% for Q1 2020. Our total gross margin for the quarter ended March 31st, 2021 remained essentially consistent compared to the quarter ended March 31st, 2020. Research and development for Q1, 2021 totaled 2.9 million, an increase of 126% from 1.3 million reported in Q1, 2020 attributed to development of verb-live, Our attribution feature Rory talked about, as well as Microsoft Outlook integration and our new marketplace platform you'll be hearing a lot more about. General administration expenses for Q1 2021 totaled $7.3 million, an increase of 109% from the $3.5 million reported in Q1 2020 attributed primarily to non-cash increases in stock compensation expense, labor, marketing and promotion, and professional services expenses related to support of our existing growth and anticipated product launches in Q2. In addition, we're incurring costs to support our implementation of NetSuite, ongoing compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, plus an additional quarter of solo fire operations. As Rory mentioned earlier, we are working aggressively on a plan to decrease our burn. Now, moving on to the balance sheet, as of March 31st, 2021, cash totaled $12.9 million, total assets were $43.6 million, total liabilities were $20.5 million, and stockholders' equity was $23.1 million. On March 15th, 2021, we completed a registered direct offering with a small group of institutional investors for the purchase and sale of 9,375,000 shares of common stock at a purchase price of $1.60 per share, which resulted in gross proceeds of $15 million. It was a straight common deal and an overnight transaction that did not include any warrants. As of May 10, 2021, there were 62,767,092 shares of our common stock issued in outstanding, which includes the shares issued in the $15 million offering. Of the total number of common shares issued in outstanding, approximately 5.4 million shares, or approximately 9%, are owned or controlled by management and the board members. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A. Operator?