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spk02: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the mixed telematics first quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul Dell, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to review Mixed Telematics' earnings results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, which ended on June 30, 2022. Today, we will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued a few hours ago. I'm Paul Dell, MEX's Chief Financial Officer, and I'm joined by Stefan Josolovic, or as many of you know him, Jos. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of MEX Data Maddox. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements related to our business, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. For discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our results, please refer to those contained in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings, all of which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. There is a reconciliation schedule detailing these results currently available in our press release, which is located on our website and filed with the SEC. With that, I will turn the call over to Jos.
spk01: Thanks, Paul. And thanks to all of you for joining the call today. MIX began fiscal 2023 with solid financial and operational results as we navigate the business through an increasingly uncertain economic environment. We had another strong quarter of net subscriber growth, adding 23,200 subscribers to end with a base of over 838,000. This is an increase of 11% year-over-year and an all-time high for the company. It is also our third consecutive quarter, adding more than 20,000 net subscribers, and we are now above pre-pandemic levels, an important driver in our continued revenue growth. All three of our solution categories contributed to the expansion, with a notably strong performance in our live feed business. I would now like to quickly summarize our financial results for the quarter. Subscription revenue of $31 million was up 6% in constant currency. Annual recurring revenue ended at $123.2 million, up 1% sequentially and 7% year over year on a constant currency basis. As we have discussed in previous quarters, the ongoing supply chain challenges continue to impact vehicle deliveries to some of our customers. Our committed contract backlog is still at elevated levels. and represents future growth as vehicles get delivered and implemented. In addition, the dollar strengthened notably during the quarter, which was a meaningful headwind to our reported results. Q1 adjusted EBITDA was $6 million at a 17% margin. Paul will discuss this in more detail later, but the cost increases in parts of our business put some pressure on our profitability during the quarter. We are taking proactive steps to manage our cost structure to ensure we remain on track to deliver our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance. Overall, our business continues to perform reasonably well given current circumstances. The sizable expansion of our subscriber base in recent quarters, in addition to the continued strong growth in our sales pipeline across regions and product categories, reflects meaningful customer interest in deploying advanced telematic solutions. Our solutions can help customers manage some of the most pressing challenges in their operations. This includes worker productivity to mitigate tight labor markets, as well as promoting greater fuel efficiency, enhancing vehicle utilization, and promoting safer and more sustainable fleet operations. We have proven repeatedly that our solutions represent high ROI investments for our customers. I would like to highlight a few key wins from the first quarter. We signed agreements with various customers in Latin America to expand existing contracts for almost 3,000 additional subscribers with implementation ongoing. In the UK, the leading bus operator, Go Ahead Group, renewed their 4,000 plus subscriber contract with us and are actively expanding their investment by adding our mixed vision AI solution in their metro fleets to further improve their safety standards. Go Ahead has been a mixed customer since 2008 This is their fourth renewal with us and further testimony to our ability to deliver ongoing value and build long-term relationships with large enterprise fleets. In South Africa, Isuzu, a Japanese commercial vehicle manufacturer serving customers in more than 150 countries worldwide, awarded us the Connected Truck Contract. The agreement will see Mixus fleet and asset tracking technologies installed on their production line, on all vehicles in three commercial ranges produced in South Africa. Branded locally as Isuzu Insights, the solution will be used by Isuzu to provide value-added services to their clients and also presents a significant upsell opportunity for MEX. A leading utilities operator in Australia selected MEX Telematics for its nearly 200 assets due to our comprehensive product portfolio. Several of our solutions have been adopted simultaneously including our core premium fleet telemetry service, AI video, driver app, journey management, and in-cab coaching. A global electric vehicle fleet and battery specialist has confirmed their partnership with MEX. Originating in Europe, this deal will soon be expanding into the Middle East, Australasia, as well as South America to provide an integrated solution for their electric vehicle bus and coach customers. Nearly 200 subscribers came on board in Q1, with further expansion scheduled imminently. We continue to believe that we are in a position to generate mid to high single digit constant currency subscription revenue growth and high single to low double digit ARR growth for the fiscal year, in addition to adjusted EBITDA margins in the low to mid 20s. As always, we will focus on those things that we can control, particularly on exceptional customer service cost discipline, and targeted investments in our strategic growth initiatives. Despite the near-term uncertainty in the market, nothing has changed about our long-term expectations for our business. The telematics market is in the early stages of broad-based adoption of cloud-based solutions across fleets of all sizes. We feel very good about our ability to deliver on our long-term financial targets of 15% to 20% constant currency subscription revenue growth and 30% plus adjusted EBITDA margins. This is an exciting time for the company, and I want to thank all of our employees for their hard work and commitment to our customers' success. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul to review our financial results in more detail.
spk00: Paul? Thanks, Josh. I'm excited to be back in the role of Chief Financial Officer, and I'm confident we can continue on the path for sustained success going forward. I'd now like to turn to our financial results for Q1. Please keep in mind that all figures refer to the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2023, and all comparisons are for the year-over-year changes, unless I say otherwise. Starting with the profit and loss, total revenue came in at $35.1 million and subscription revenues were $31 million, representing constant currency increases of 7.3% and 6.3%, respectively. Please note that as discussed on the last call, the large South African customer we anticipated moving to a channel relationship did not make that transition during the first quarter. It is now expected to occur in the second quarter, and as a result, Q1 subscription revenue was somewhat better than we expected. It is also worth noting that the majority of our revenues are derived from currencies other than the U.S. dollar. the South African rand weakened by 10% against the US dollar compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, contributing to a 6.7% decrease in our reported subscription revenues. We ended the quarter with over 838,000 subscribers, an increase of 11% year over year. Subscribers grew approximately 23,200 sequentially, bringing the base over the pre-pandemic level The strong net ads in the first quarter were driven by net growth in our live fleet and premium fleet solution categories, primarily in our South African business. ALR at the end of the quarter was $123.2 million, up 0.9% sequentially and 7.2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. ALR continues to be impacted by the longer implementation cycles for some of the larger wins during the previous fiscal year. which have contributed to the growth in our backlog of pending installations. We have large customers who have experienced delays receiving vehicles as part of their planned fleet expansion. Finally, we did have approximately $200,000 related to a customer in Russia come out of ARR on the quarter due to the impact of sanctions in this region. Hardware and other revenues of $4.1 million were up 7.6% year over year. Moving on to gross margin and operating expenses, gross margin was 62% compared to 65.5% in the year-ago period. Subscription margin remained strong at 67.5%. As a reminder, we do expect some volatility as we work through some of the supply chain challenges that impact costs. We are confident our overall gross margin can sustain 64% to 66% annually as hardware mix and supply chain stabilizes. Operating expenses were $19.3 million and were up 4.3% compared to prior year. The increase includes higher sales and marketing investments. Adjusted EBITDA was $6 million or 17.1% of revenue compared to $8.3 million or 23.8% of revenue last year. As a reminder, Q1 is typically our lowest adjusted EBITDA margin quarter given the timing of merit pay increases. We are taking steps across the board to address the cost dynamics caused by the current inflationary environment and are focused on driving margin into our target range for the 2023 fiscal year. Just the net income for the quarter was $1.9 million, down from $2.9 million in the year-ago period. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $24.6 million of cash and cash equivalents, compared to $33.7 million as of March 31, 2022. In the first quarter, we used $0.7 million in net cash from operating activities and invested $6.7 million in capital expenditures, leading to a negative free cash flow of $7.4 million. The use of cash includes investment in in-vehicle devices of $4.9 million, as well as year-end bonus payments in the region of $2 million. The elevated amount of negative free cash flow reflects in part our proactive efforts to pre-purchase inventory to manage our supply chain. The market for certain components of our hardware are under significant stress and seeing cost inflation. We believe building an additional buffer into our supplies is prudent against this backdrop. We expect to again have elevated levels of capital expenditures next quarter before seeing improvement in our cash flows in the second half of the year. We currently expect that we will generate significant free cash flow for the full 2024 fiscal year as capital expenditures normalize. Before I wrap up, I would like to reiterate our expectations for the remainder of fiscal 2023. As Josh mentioned, we are targeting another year of solid growth with mid- to half-single-digit constant currency subscription revenue growth and half-single- to low-double-digit ALR growth. The rapidly evolving challenges facing the global economy present some potential challenges that we monitor closely, but we continue to see encouraging demand activity across our major end markets and solutions. From a linearity perspective, we would expect the second quarter ARR growth to be muted given the transition to a channel relationship for this large African customer before picking up in the second half. As mentioned previously, we're still targeting low to mid 20s adjusted EBITDA margins for the full year. We've consistently managed the cost structure in a disciplined way for many years at MIX, and we will take the steps necessary to manage through the current environment. Importantly, we will not be sacrificing investments in our strategic growth priorities, which are crucial to delivering on our long-term objectives. To wrap up, we delivered solid first quarter results and encouraging trends in subscriber additions. We're confident in our ability to manage this business through a variety of business cycles and believe our attractive combination of growth and profitability can generate substantial value for shareholders. Operator, let's begin the Q&A, please.
spk02: Certainly. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue.
spk03: The first question comes from Matt Pfau with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, great. Thanks. Thanks, guys, for taking my questions. I wanted to start off first in the light fleet segment and the strength that you're seeing there that you called out. Maybe if you could just provide any more detail in terms of what's driving that.
spk01: Thanks, Matt. We certainly saw strong performance in that sector, particularly in our African business, our South African business, where we have been working on various channel relationships that are starting to get traction.
spk08: Got it. Okay.
spk04: And then, you know, in terms of the OEM relationship with Isuzu, maybe you could just, you've been signing, I think you have a few of these now, and they've been, you know, coming every few quarters. How are you going about pursuing these relationships? Is there a team specifically out there? Do you have a pipeline of these sort of prospects or deals that you're working on? Maybe just some more detail on how you envision that the OEM business overall evolving over time?
spk01: Yeah, absolutely. And yes, we do have a full-time team, subject matter experts in that field that are driving our OM relationships. It is, you know, the key word is relationships. So it is a fairly lengthy sales process, so to speak, building the relationship, finding the right people to engage with, and then developing a level of comfort to the to be able to conclude a transaction with a significant third party, as you can appreciate. So we're very pleased with the progress we're making in that regard. And we expect to make ongoing announcements as these coming quarters evolve. It's worth mentioning on the Isuzu one that this is Quite unusual in terms of compared to some of the others that we've done in that they are installing our hardware on the production line. And so they're using our hardware to harvest the data that they require to manage their warranty and customer lifecycle programs going forward. And so they're paying us a subscription fee, and it also gives us a significant upsell opportunity with the end user of that vehicle. So we're pretty excited about it.
spk07: Got it. And last one for me.
spk04: I know that a couple months ago there was some serious flooding in South Africa. Wondering if that had any impact on your operations at all?
spk01: The short answer is yes, it did. One example is that a customer had several hundred motor vehicles that we were fitting at the factory. In other words, the OEM that was supplying these vehicles. The deal that we had with both the OEM and the customer is that we would pre-fit the units for the customer before the vehicles left the factory. So this is not assembly line fitment. This was kind of post-production fitment. Nearly 400 of those vehicles that had already been installed without the vases ended up pretty much underwater. And that customer is still waiting for vehicles to be delivered to them. So those vehicles ended up being scrapped. And, of course, that delays our – our revenue recognition. So we're waiting for those vehicles to be replaced so we can install our hardware for the customer, get the vehicles delivered so we can start billing the customer subscription revenue that adds to our ARR, et cetera. So that is one example. It did have an impact. I think we've navigated through that process reasonably well. But we will see some ARR and subscription revenue recovery
spk08: stocks are coming, coming quarters from that.
spk07: Got it. Thanks a lot for taking my questions, guys.
spk01: Appreciate it, Matt. Thank you for attending.
spk02: The next question comes from Alex Scar with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thanks, Joss. I want to ask about inflation and then back to that topic on the business, both from a demand side. but also if you're looking to pass through any of your rising costs, whether that's on the equipment or on the wage side.
spk01: Sure. So let's start with our ability to pass it through. Bear in mind that most of our contract, you know, we've got long-term contracts with customers. you know, whilst we're mid-term in a contract, there's not much we can do on a crossing discussion. Obviously, when that contract comes to an end, we endeavor to renew on more favorable terms. So there'll be an opportunity to at least have that discussion with the customer at the end of the contract. Of course, at that stage, the customer's looking for a reduction, so it does end up in a bit of an arm-wrestling match. We do have some of our... territories. South Africa is a good example where inflation has been an issue for many years. And typically in those contracts, we have an annual inflationary increase built in, either based on a consumer price index or some predetermined number into our contracts. So in some of our contracts in certain regions, we certainly get and annual escalation, which does, at least to a degree, compensate for input pressures. To get to, I guess, the first part of your question, there's no doubt that we've seen over the last year to 18 months increasing pressure from all of our suppliers, I guess, both component and software suppliers, endeavoring to push those prices up. We have seen an element of what I would consider price gouging in recent quarters, and we're taking proactive steps. We have and we will continue to take proactive steps to deal with those in that we're changing suppliers for certain services where we believe that the increases are unreasonable. But there's no doubt that inflation is an issue in our business, as it is for, I guess, most businesses. taking proactive steps to deal with it.
spk06: Okay, great. The other day I wanted to ask about, Josh, that we saw the sales and marketing expense line increase. I know there's a lot of planned hiring there, but can you just talk about your overall hiring efforts and kind of what the goal is for the year in terms of growth in that team, that sales team? Thanks.
spk01: So, yes, we're As I think we've indicated over the last year or so that we are back in a phase where we're focused on growth, so we're making and continue to make strategic investments, but at the same time we're taking a very close look at containing and managing our non-strategic costs. So it is a bit of a balancing act. We expect those investments to continue, and particularly on the sales and marketing side, and it's certainly in our plan that we would finish the year at certainly a more elevated level than we had in the prior year.
spk08: Okay. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate your time. Thank you.
spk02: The next question comes from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
spk05: Great. Thanks. Congrats on another quarter of 20,000 plus subscribers. I just want to get a little more view on the regions. It sounds like you called out South Africa as a stronger region for net ads. What are you seeing in the Europe region? I know you highlighted that one large customer you renewed with. But what kind of demand trends are you seeing in Europe and maybe other pockets of the world?
spk01: So, certainly in terms of performance of this quarter, I think the standout was our African business followed by Brazil. And bear in mind, both of those businesses performed well. extremely well in very tough environments, so very proud of our teams there. In terms of the other geographies, more or less according to plan, maybe one of them marginally behind plan, and we have had a few headwinds from areas outside of our control or factors outside our control. Paul did mention we've We terminated services to one of our Russian-based customers due to sanctions issues. Their bankers are on the sanctions list. They were unable to continue to make payments. And we took a view that it wasn't worth continuing service. But that did have a muting effect on a region and on our AOR growth for the quarter because it's a high ARPU customer and we use that clearly as one example. But we're in an uncertain world and as always, we have built a diversified business where we don't always see all of our regions performing at the same pace simultaneously. Certainly, there are times when we see consolidated performance at an elevated level. And, yeah, we're still quietly confident that all of our regions will, as the food year evolves, will perform certainly as planned and maybe a little bit better.
spk05: Okay, thanks. Just for my follow-up question, as you look at supply, it looks like it's starting to finally ease in certain pockets and in areas, especially on some trailing node technology, which should help your auto market, et cetera. As you're looking at your own ability to get supply, you're seeing any signs of things improving? And then as you talk to your customers who are waiting on vehicles, any improved color maybe on those ramping, especially in the second half of this calendar year, to kind of consistent with your guidance for a stronger second half?
spk01: Yeah. As you're aware, we are sitting on elevated levels of contracted backlog, in other words. And most of those... that elevated level is premium fleet. So we do have a number of customers that are waiting for their fleet expansion orders. In other words, the metal, the vehicles themselves to be delivered and that's holding back our ability to roll out these contracted subscribers. So we're hoping that we'll see some easing of that. And certainly we're planning that backlog, our current expectation will be back to normal levels over the next couple of quarters. So our current expectation is we will see an easing there. In terms of component supply, we have, you know, we've taken a view to build an elevated inventory level and that has sucked cash over recent quarters and we've We feel we're kind of reaching a plateau as far as that's concerned, that we've got sufficient stock to navigate our plans for the year. Thus far, we've completely avoided any stock out, so we're pleased with that. Obvious signs of easing, not yet. I think there are a lot of suppliers that are still taking advantage of the situation, kind of trying to force their customers to place orders a year, 18 months in advance. My personal view is that that's a game we cannot continue to play. We have to reach a more normalized cycle. And hence, once we've reached the kind of levels that we think is good enough for us to manage our Our future plans, we're going to ease back a little bit and with a big focus to returning to meaningful cash generation.
spk05: Great, thank you. Last question for me, Josh. As you look at that premium tier backlog for vehicles, how sticky is that? Can these customers maybe back off if they start to worry about the macro or you feel like they really want those vehicles and it's a pretty strong backlog?
spk01: Yeah, I think that backlog is pretty secure. So, you know, these are customers that have placed orders for vehicles. I would imagine have put down big deposits for them, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think the – and, you know, the nature of the customers are such that they are in really high-growth spaces. So we're feeling confident about that situation. that uninstalled backlog. I think it will happen, and I think it will happen in, you know, in coming quarters in this fiscal year.
spk05: Great. Best wishes for success, and thanks for taking my questions.
spk01: Appreciate your time. Thank you.
spk02: As there are no more questions from the phone lines, this concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jos for any closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, Operator, and thanks so much for everybody's time today. We continue to appreciate your interest in mixed telematics. We've gotten off to a solid start in fiscal 2023 and are focused on executing on our strategy to deliver on our financial and operational targets for the year. Sadly, we are no longer able to attend next month's Canaccord Growth Conference, as I've been called up for federal jury duty over this time. But we do look forward to speaking with many of you in the coming weeks, and thanks again for joining us, and have a great day.
spk03: This concludes today's conference call.
spk02: You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.
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