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spk04: for 2023, an annual 2023 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Maury Marks, President and CEO. You may begin.
spk01: Thank you, Jamie. Hello, everybody, and thank you for attending Quorum Information Technologies Q4 and Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call and Concurrent Webcast today. Joining me on the call is our Chief Financial Officer, Marilyn Bowne. Quorum is a North American software and services company providing essential enterprise solutions that automotive dealerships and original equipment manufacturers rely on for their operations. Through a combination of purposeful product investments and five strategic acquisitions in the last six years, including our latest acquisition of VIN on June 23, 2023, Quorum now has a uniquely integrated product suite of 13 essential software solutions that are used in whole or in part by 1,427 dealership customers across North America. Dealerships typically use software from 25 different categories, and Quorum now has 13 of the 25 most common categories of software that dealerships utilize. As a result, Quorum is well positioned to develop, partner, or acquire products for the remaining 12 categories. Dealerships typically start with a single product from Quorum's product suite and experience increased synergy and value as additional Quorum solutions are deployed to their dealerships. Many of Quorum's customers only leverage one solution out of our 13 available solutions. The result is that Quorum has a $55 million annual SaaS revenue cross-selling opportunity across our existing customer base. That growth opportunity is approximately two times our 28.1 million SAS annual reoccurring revenue run rate, and that is just within our current customer base. Today, at least one of Quorum's software solutions is installed in 40% of the franchised automotive dealerships in Canada. I'll now move on to our results for Q4 and full year 2023. Throughout 2023, Quorum focused on a more profitable growth strategy, which emphasized cross-selling and better company-wide cost management. This was a pivot from our past focus on growth through product development and new dealership acquisition. This new focus on profitable growth combined with better company-wide cost management provided record adjusted EBITDA margins of 21% in Q4 2023, up from 19% in Q3 2023. and resulting in 17% for the full year 2023. We also delivered a correspondingly healthy but moderate year-over-year top-line growth of 4% in 2023 versus 8% growth we achieved in 2022 versus 2021. In Q4 2023, our SAS revenue growth slowed. However, that was partly due to an insulation backlog, and we expect SAS revenue growth to rebound to $7.2 million in Q1 2024. Turning to our BDC capital loan facility, in October 2023, we made a prepayment of $1.6 million from excess cash on hand, which reduced our outstanding principal amount by $1.5 million from $10.7 million to $9.2 million. This resulted in $0.2 million in annual interest expense savings. In February 2024, CORE made an additional prepayment of $0.9 million on our BDC capital loan facility from excess cash on hand. We continue to have access to $4 million in additional funding through BDC capital facility for potential future acquisitions. As we continue to face uncertain economic environment, we continue to focus our attention on expanding our adjusted EBITDA margins and improving the health of our balance sheet to hold ourselves in a strong position for continued long-term growth and strategic opportunities. Marilyn will now review our Q4 and full-year financial results in more detail, and I will follow with some additional comments. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the floor to your questions. Marilyn, please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you, Maury, and hello, everybody. Thank you for being here with us today. I would like to remind everyone that certain statements in this presentation are forward-looking in nature. These include statements involving known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors outside of management control that cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Quorum is not assuming responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements and does not undertake any obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. For additional information on possible risks, please refer to our annual MTMA, dated December 31, 2023, on the CDARCLUS.ca website. As Maury already mentioned, and as we mentioned on our last call, we executed a disciplined approach to profitability through 2023, focusing on balanced profitable growth. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $7.0 million in 2023 compared to $5.6 million in 2022, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17% compared to 14% in 2022. As Maury mentioned, adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2023 with $2.1 million or 21% of revenue and our highest quarterly adjusted EBITDA record. Highlights of our Q4 2023 results as compared to Q4 2022 are as follows. Total revenue for Q4 2023 increased by $0.1 million or up 1%. SAS revenue remained relatively consistent compared to Q4 2022, coming in at $7 million In Q4 2023, our SAS revenue growth slowed. However, this is partly due to an insulation backlog, and we expect SAS revenue growth to rebound to $7.2 billion in Q1 2024. BDC revenue decreased slightly by 2% in Q4 2023, coming in at $2.6 million. Our services and one-time revenue increased by $0.1 million to $0.3 million. Growth margins? increased to $4.8 million or 49% of revenue in Q4 2023 compared to $4.7 million or 48% of revenue for Q4 2022. Removing one-time restructuring expenses incurred in Q4 2023, growth margin would have been 50%. SAS growth margin decreased slightly to 67% in Q4 2023 as compared to 68% in Q4 2022. BDC growth margin increased to 22% in Q4 2023 as compared to 8% in Q4 2022 as we continued to work on multiple initiatives to reduce the BDC cost structure. Research and development expenses along with capitalized software development costs for Q4 2023 were 16% of revenue compared to 12% of revenue for Q4 2022. Removing one-time restructuring expenses incurred in Q4 2023, research and development expenses along with capitalized software development costs would have been 14% of revenue. Sales and marketing expenses for Q4 2023 were 6% of revenue, consistent with Q4 2022. Removing one-time restructuring fees incurred in Q4 2023, sales and marketing expenses would have been 5% of revenue. General and administrative expenses for Q4 2023 were 16% of revenue compared to 19% of revenue for Q4 2022. Removing one-time restructuring expenses and acquisition expenses incurred in Q4 2023, general and administrative expenses would have been 14% of revenue. Adjusted net income increased by $0.3 million to $0.2 million for Q4 2023 as compared to Q4 2022. The increase in adjusted net income in Q4 2023 is due to an increase in gross margin and a decrease in general and administrative expenses and sales and marketing expenses offset by an increase in research and development expenses. Included in net income for Q4 2023 is an impairment expense of $1 million due to the write-down of the Shred ITC asset and $0.2 million impairment expense due to the write down of the VIN intangible asset. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2023 increased by 31% or 0.5 million to 2.1 million in Q4 2023 compared to 1.6 million in Q4 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin was a record 21% as compared to 16% for Q4 2022. Adjusted cash income, or ACI, for Q4 2023 increased by 48%, or $0.5 million, to $1.6 million, as compared to $1 million in Q4 2022. Q4 2023 also marks the fifth quarter of the last six quarters in which ACI exceeded $1 million. Highlights of our full year 2023 results are as follows. Total revenue for 2023 increased by 1.5 million or 4% as compared to 2022. The increase in revenue is primarily due to an increase of 0.5 million or 2% in past revenue due to a combination of both organic and inorganic growth. An increase of 0.5 million or 4.5% in BDC revenue attributable to the continued growth of the core BDC offering and the strategic partnership with AutoCanada An increase of $0.5 million or 63% in services and one-time revenue primarily due to the Windows 2022 upgrade project. Total growth margin increased to $19.3 million or 48% of revenue in 2023 compared to $18.7 million or 48% for 2022. The increase in growth margin is primarily due to an increase in operational efficiencies in the BDC cost structure as compared to 2022. Net income for 2023 was $0.2 million, an increase of $1.6 million compared to 2022. The increase in net income in 2023 is due to a $1.8 million gain on bargain purchase related to the VIN acquisition, an increase in growth margin, decrease in general and administrative expenses, and a decrease in sales and marketing expenses offset by $1.2 million impairment expense due to the write-down of the SHRED ITC asset in intangible assets and an increase in research and development expenses. As mentioned earlier, adjusted EBITDA for 2023 increased by 26% to $7 million compared to $5.6 million for 2022. Adjusted cash income for 2023 increased by $1.4 million as compared to 2022. And including cash of $3.6 million, total net worth in capital as of December 31, 2022 decreased to $4.2 million from $6.2 million as of December 31, 2022, a decrease of $2.1 million. This decrease is due to $2.6 million in debt or acquisition payments as follows, $1.6 million repayment of our principal and interest, on the BDC capital loan facility in October 2023, 0.3 million in government loans, 0.3 million related to the VIN acquisition, and 0.4 million increase in current portion of long-term debt. With that, I'd like to pass it back to Maury.
spk01: Thank you, Marilyn. I want to provide more background information on some key metrics in 2023. In 2023, we reached $28.2 million in SaaS revenue, an increase of 2% over 2022. In Q4 2023, our SaaS revenue growth slowed. However, this was partly due to an installation backlog, and we expect our Q1 2024 SaaS revenue growth to rebound to $7.2 million for the quarter or $28.8 million in annual SaaS revenue. Our profitable growth strategy emphasizes cross-selling and capturing more of the $55 million annual SaaS cross-selling opportunity that exists. across our existing customer base. In 2024, to help our SaaS selling revenue growth, we will continue to work on transforming our business into a dealer performance company. This requires ensuring all our products produce a positive ROI that our dealership customers both understand and endorse. Under our profitable growth strategy, we continue to pursue new dealership customers. However, we are focused on initially selling smaller and easier to sell products to a new dealership. and then expanding our revenue by selling additional products to that dealership. Keeping in mind that most of Quorum's product suite is DMS and OEM agnostic, meaning that they can be sold to more of the available market. Each year, we continue to get better at focusing our product teams on delivering exciting new product improvements that will drive the dealership's business and help fuel Quorum's revenue growth. Let me provide some examples, starting with vehicle sales. In the past, vehicle inventory shortages have resulted in dealerships having multiple buyers for every vehicle. As dealerships now see an increase in their new vehicle inventory, dealerships are refocused on having to sell vehicles again. Some key quorum products that help dealerships sell more vehicles include our sales CRM solution that received a new mobile app in 2023 that is available in both the iOS and Android app stores. And our desking, menu, and my deal products that have all seen increased demand and our focus is on expanding the capability of these products to handle more of the dealership sales process and increasing the data we manage to include select OEMs warranty programs to increase dealerships' extended warranty sales. Turning to surface and parts, which is the highest margin area of the dealership's business and a critical reoccurring revenue stream to the dealership, We help dealerships drive in more service and parts revenue with our service CRM solution, which received new digital first features that allows dealerships to easily customize their customer marketing approach, which also allows them to reduce their marketing costs. And our service CRM solution is receiving new generative AI capability to help BDC or contact center agents improve their call handling response to customers and ability to upsell additional dealership services to customers. In 2023, PowerLane, our mobile service lane solution that provides customers with a touchless, transparent service experience, was re-architected to significantly improve the usability and the ability to sell additional services to dealership customers. Quorum's Accessible Accessories solution, which is a digital retailing platform for Selling vehicle accessories will soon have a tire offering to help dealerships increase their tire sales. When it comes to our flagship dealership management system or DMS, Quorum's DMS had multiple new OEM integration certifications with existing OEM partners delivered in 2023. We also continue to make significant improvements to our DMS to optimize the application for delivery through the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. In 2023, we posted $10.9 million in BDC revenue, an increase of 4.5% over 2022. We provide BDC services to multiple large North American dealer groups, including Auto Canada, one of the largest dealer groups. We are excited to have recently extended our strategic partnership with Auto Canada, and together we are focused on improving the service and parts revenue our BDC can produce for their dealerships. There is significant market demand for our BDC services. However, our BDC has historically been a 12% gross margin business. As a reminder, of the revenue our BDC provides, roughly $3 of BDC revenue generates $1 of high margin SaaS revenue, which helps contribute to the EBITDA margin our BDC produces. However, with our focus in 2023 on profitable growth, we need to improve our BDC gross margin even if it meant forgoing some revenues. Our BDC team was successful in producing a steady progression of BDC gross margin improvements from 10% in Q1 to 22% in Q4 2023, which is a significant improvement. The last metric that I want to spend some time on is EBITDA margin, which was a record 21% in Q4 2023. The following key ratios as a percentage of overall revenue all contributed to the record EBITDA margin, and these ratios, less one-time restructuring acquisition costs, in Q4 2023 were as follows when compared to Q4 2022. Number one, gross margin in Q4 2023 was 50% versus 48% in Q4 2022. And the primary reason was the increased BDC gross margins as previously discussed. Number two, total R&D and capitalized development costs in Q4 2023 were 14% versus 12% in Q4 2022, which reflects the additional cost of technology staff in the market. Number three, sales and marketing, or S&M, in Q4 2023 was 5% versus 6% in Q4 2022, but 10% in Q1 to Q3 2022. This reflects our new restructured team and reduced marketing spend under a profitable growth strategy that emphasizes cross-selling. Number four, G&A in Q4 2023 was 14% versus 19% in Q4 2022. And the dramatic improvement was the result of standardizing our systems across the company, cost cutting of third party or outside costs and optimizing our staffing levels. 2023 was a year with a lot of change and we exited the year with a strong EBITDA margin to set the company up for a successful 2024. I want to sincerely thank our dedicated employees and customers who are the driving force behind our continued growth and drive to innovate to ensure Quorum continues to have a product suite prepared for the future of automotive. Operator, I'd now like to open this conference call to any questions from our audience.
spk04: Thank you. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, Simply press star 1 again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. And your first question comes from the line of Gavin Fairweather with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk02: Oh, hey, Maury. Good afternoon. Good morning.
spk01: Gavin, good afternoon.
spk02: Maybe we could just start on the buying environment. Obviously, the macro has shifted quite a bit, and you referenced going from an inventory shortage to an inventory surplus. Just kind of curious, are dealers kind of heads down right now and focused on operations, or are they kind of receptive towards software opportunities that are driving ROI? How would you describe that buying environment right now?
spk01: Yeah, so an interesting environment. And maybe I'll just talk through it a little bit from 2023 and then to a current situation. I think we've talked in the past a fair bit about the lack of vehicle inventories you mentioned. And that was a difficult environment for dealerships because they obviously had more demand for the vehicles that they had, but they were also making pretty good gross margins on the vehicles they were selling. There was also another dynamic and that was impacting the parts department in that the parts inventory was difficult to find and technicians were quite frankly difficult to find for dealerships. And so the markets evolved and now we're seeing vehicle inventory show up and we're seeing dealerships having to really invest again in sales tools to help sell vehicles, whether they be new vehicles from the factory or used vehicles as well. on the, on the service and parts side of things, it's, um, yeah, it's the service and parts side of things that the parts inventory I think has worked itself out for the most part. I think there's still some shortages, but, but it has gotten a fair bit better. Um, I, I would say the thing that probably concerns dealers the most right now is just the uncertainty in the economy. Um, and, and I think, you know, most businesses are feeling that. And, um, And so there's concerns there. I think that would be, you know, there's also concerns that they would have around, you know, the high price of vehicles, the difficulty financing vehicle at high interest rates and elements like that. So my reason for giving you all that background is there's just a mixed bag of customer sentiment or dealership sentiment out there. And, you know, we see some dealerships, know stepping up and investing in in particular areas we other see other dealerships really uh looking at at cutting costs and cost management within their organization so um you know it's it's a bit of a difficult environment to sell into um but with with the right leadership customer it can be a good environment to sell into
spk02: Maybe just on SaaS, it's been pretty stable in recent periods. It sounds like sequentially you're expecting a bit of a tick higher on the back of some implementations. I guess I'm just curious, under your new growth strategy with the sales team reorg that you've done, how confident are you that you can kind of reaccelerate SaaS revenue in the current environment?
spk01: Yeah, we would... So, the team that we have, we've we've definitely got the best of our sales team. So, you know, they're a highly, highly productive team. But if the economy unfolds and improves and our dealership sentiment improves, we would have to hire to grow into the marketplace. Keeping in mind that that would be more around new customer acquisitions. When it comes to cross-selling, you know, most of our cross-selling success starts with what we call our customer success team. And they're the ones that work with our dealerships. And they are scaled up. And what they would be able to do is with the team that we have, they would be able to drive more leads in and close more deals for us.
spk02: Got it. And then the MD&A referenced kind of pricing as a potential lever, both in terms of just regular escalators, which are built into the contracts, but then also some other opportunities where maybe some of your products are priced at a fairly wide gap to others in the market. So I guess I'm just curious to what extent you pulled that lever in 2023 and whether you have any kind of different thoughts on that for 2024.
spk01: Yeah, so two pieces to that. First piece was pricing our products at the right price in the marketplace. Given the value that our products provide, we've gone through a fair bit of work to increase our price points on the products that we felt were underpriced, given the value they produce. So that work has been completed and we'll carry that forward into 2024. The other side of that is price increases. And if you go through the 2023 year, you would have seen us probably do price increases across 50% plus of our customer base. But we're now doing a much broader price increase strategy going into 2024. And so you'll see that help our results out as well.
spk02: Okay, good to hear. And then on the BDC, those gross margins hit a record despite a bit of a lower revenue line this quarter. So I'm curious if there are further improvements that you could make or whether you feel like we've pretty much optimized the margins here and whether you're seeing some growth in that top line of that business.
spk01: Yeah, we do think there's some further improvements. We don't think we'll make quite the improvements we did in 2023. That was a um, the team did a spectacular job and, uh, but there, there is some more optimization that we can do. Um, and I mentioned, uh, product wise, uh, with generative AI, there's some opportunities there to just increase the, the efficiency of, of our agents, um, and really, um, supplement the work that they do. Um, so, so yeah, we're, we're excited about, um, we're excited about some more changes that we can make. And we also think that as 2024 unfolds, you know, we will be able to grow the BDC business as well. We just, we definitely see the market demand out there for it.
spk02: Good to hear. And then just last, I mean, EBITDA margins hitting any record this quarter. I mean, it kind of begs the question whether you have any midterm target or, or a dot on the wall in terms of where you'd like to move those margins over time. I'm just kind of curious on the trajectory there and what absolute level you think would strike the right mix between investing for growth and profitability of the company.
spk01: Well, I think my answer is going to be similar to the BDC. We do think there's still some opportunities to improve EBITDA margins, but you know, we went through some pretty significant improvements in 2023. So we've obviously, you know, leveraged the key improvements in 2023 and executed on those and completed them. But, yeah, so stay tuned.
spk02: Okay, thanks so much. Congrats on your progress. I'll pass the line.
spk01: You bet. Thanks.
spk04: Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. Your next question comes from the line of Mitchell McQuiggan with Lee Jones Gable. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hey, Mari. I was just wondering if you could speak to any of the particulars regarding the rooftop growth in the U.S. over the last year.
spk01: Yeah, so product-wise in the U.S., we're really – there's two key products that we sell into the U.S. marketplace. Our dealer mine brand, so that's sales and service CRM, and our dms brand our quorum dms um we do sell some lot of ants um but that's fairly rare and the us marketplaces is quite a bit different than the canadian marketplace when it comes to to things like desking and menuing and and digital retailing um so in the us marketplace the growth would have come uh i think it was pretty well evenly split from from additional dealer mine and dms rooftops
spk00: Okay. Awesome. Thank you. You bet.
spk04: There are no further questions. I now turn the call back to Maury Marks for closing remarks.
spk01: All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for your continued support. And we really appreciate you spending some time with us on the call today. And I believe we'll talk to you in about a month because we'll be putting out our Q1 results then. Thanks again.
spk05: This concludes today's call you may now disconnect. This concludes today's call you may now disconnect.
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