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spk02: Good morning and welcome to the Farmers Edge live audio webcast for its second quarter 2022 financial results and business highlights. Please be advised that reproduction of this audio webcast in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization from the company. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise and 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 and the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Individuals will be limited to two questions per person before being put back in the queue. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Cindy Yuan, Chief Financial Officer of Farmer's Edge. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Before we start, I would like to remind you that all amounts disclosed on this call are denominated in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Please note that prepared remarks contain forward-looking information, and additional forward-looking statements may be made in response to your questions during the QAA portion of the call. These statements reflect the company's current expectations regarding future events. Forward-looking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. many of which are beyond the company's control or could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking information. Listeners are urged to consider assumptions, risks, and uncertainties associated with such forward-looking information, including by referring to the assumptions, risks, and uncertainties discussed in the pharmaceutical findings with the Canadian Securities Administrators. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore undue reliance should not be placed upon them. The company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking information provided during this audio webcast, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Finally, we would like to remind listeners that the company may refer to certain non-GAAP measures and key performance indicators or KPIs during the audio webcast for further details on non-GAAP measures and KPIs, including relevant definitions and certain recommendations. See pharmaceuticals with Canadian securities administrators. We have also posted on our website a short presentation that may help you follow along with our remarks. I now turn the call over to our chairman, Bill McFarland, for opening remarks.
spk06: Bill McFarland Thanks, Cindy, and welcome, everyone. Q2 has been a busy and challenging quarter as we made important leadership changes in the company and also fell short on performance targets and expectations around acre retention and revenue growth. As you know, Vibor Aurora became our new CEO in early June, was formerly with Amazon, and has a strong track record in driving growth. The board is very pleased to have them on board. He hit the ground running and has gained, over the past two months, a good understanding of our business and operations, both the positives and the warts. Goodmore and the leadership team are developing both a turnaround plan to execute in the near term and a revised strategic plan covering the longer term. The management team's immediate focus is to finalize the actions and execute the turnaround plan, which deals with improving execution to drive profitable revenue growth in the short term and to implement significant cost-saving measures to right-size our business in line with our current business reality and reduce the cash burn rate. As you will appreciate, these plans are fluid, and VIVOR will discuss them at a high level on this call and also provide a general business update. There is a lot to do, and the Board is actively supporting VIVOR. Management is also reducing the number of initiatives undertaken with the goal of executing with speed and agility on identified priorities that will move the needle. We also closed the Fairfax Loan Agreement recently, and it provides us with financial support, but we are also keenly aware that the cash burn rate must be reduced, and business as usual is not an option. I'll now pass it over to Vibhar for his update.
spk00: Thank you, Bill. Welcome everyone. I joined Farmers Edge on June 6. Over the last two months, I've spent time learning about our business, meeting with our employees, and connecting with various stakeholders. I believe Farmers Edge, with its strong technology, has the potential to make a significant impact in the ag tech space. I was actually very pleased to see the capabilities of our platform during the initial demo. Conducting a strategic review of our business and delivering a turnaround plan was my first order of business. Our team has also commenced an end-to-end analysis for our operating model. Both these actions are presently underway, and we will report on the developments in the next quarter. At the same time, I recognize that our financial performance is not where it needs to be, and we need to take more immediate steps to demonstrate improvement in building a long-term sustainable business model. In our recent employee town hall meeting with my executive leadership team and our employees, I issued a very clear message that we will take steps to reduce the cash flow and improve EBITDA to embark on a path to profitability. This will also require us to be more focused and reduce the number of initiatives and improve our execution. To provide some directional insights, we are reviewing various aspects of our business, including customers, market segments, regional presence, product capabilities, and our current suite of product offerings. We are taking a measured approach of carefully evaluating our business model without compromising on speed. As Bill outlined, it was a challenging quarter for us I'll now provide an update on acres, smart carbon, insurance and our crop input business. Acres. 1.3 million new acres were added in Q2 and 2.9 million new acres year to date. PGP 21 conversion is expected to be at 30% for October 2022 with lower acre growth in the second half of the year. This is because we took a conscious decision the Progressive Growth Program in North America effective July 8. This decision was taken as our current or future cost structure does not support the free PGP model, and the current inflationary environment makes this disconnect even larger. Long term, our approach will be to further improve our product offerings and help customers better utilize the rich data from our platform to create value in their businesses. This will also give us better pricing power in the marketplace. This decision of causing PGP acres will further allow us to focus on adding high value paid acres, improving our return on investment, and delivering an improved customer experience. Smart carbon. We made significant progress to improve our serialization process in Q2. There is a high level of interest in the marketplace to buy these offsets, and we are having progressive discussions with our potential buyers. Delay in securing a firm commitment from these buyers is driven by the pricing uncertainty in the marketplace. Additionally, some of our potential customers are in the process of finalizing their ESG strategy. Having said that, we expect to see greater traction over the next two quarters in this space and efforts are currently underway to sell these offsets. Insurance. Our product launches on yield product and heat plus had limited traction. This was driven by the timing of these launches and challenging market conditions. We are reviewing our learnings and our long-term strategy for our smart claim and smart reporting solutions, which will be crucial inputs in our product enhancement in the future. Over time, we expect to use data as a service to support underwriting and lending solutions in the marketplace. This will further tie into our broader data monetization strategy. CommoditEgg. Our e-commerce platform is growing at a steady pace. Although we experienced supply chain challenges, our e-commerce revenue was 2.4 million in Q2, consistent with our Q1 revenue of 2.5 million. Commodite Egg was acquired to drive Acre growth. As we are reviewing our overall strategy and operating model, we will continue to evaluate this platform and its place in our suite of technology solutions. For now, we have made the appropriate leadership investments to fuel the organic growth while controlling costs. As outlined earlier, reducing cash burn is our priority, and we will be taking additional steps to realize higher cost savings, details of which will be shared in our Q3 earnings call. These initiatives include an end-to-end review of operations and our cost structure, including supplier relationships. We expect the savings from these initiatives to be significant and will reduce the cash fund rate in the future to work within the Fairfax loan commitments. I'd also like to provide a brief update about the leadership team and our organization structure. In the last two months, there were changes in our leadership team, including departures of the chief technology officer and the president. Going forward, our strategy would be to embrace a flat organization structure. With this new, leaner organization structure, we will be able to prioritize initiatives, make decisions more effectively and efficiently, and improve our overall execution. Simultaneously, we are evaluating our structure in our international regions to achieve the right balance between centralized and decentralized decision making. We will make the necessary changes to help our international regions operate with greater efficiency and agility. We also conducted a people skill gap analysis recently. As a result of that analysis, we are in the process of hiring for roles in business strategy, process optimization, customer experience, and data strategy and monetization. We expect to fill all these roles in the next quarter. To ensure that our business has the correct skill set, we will hire only specialists and not generalists in these roles. We have received great interest externally as people really believe in our mission and in the broader opportunity in the ag tech space. I'd also like to thank our employees who extended a warm welcome to me and have helped me in my transition. Lots of suggestions, strong engagement, but more importantly, wanting to make Farmer's Edge more successful. In conclusion, our team's objectives are to lower the cash burn, increase EBITDA, and embark on a path to profitability. Of course, This will be a journey, and we are taking the necessary steps in this direction to be on a progressive path. I will now turn it over to Cindy for a brief review of our Q2 results.
spk01: Thank you, Weibo. My comments will primarily focus on the second quarter's business key metrics. In quarter two of 2022, annual recurring revenue, ARR, was $49 million. a $11 million decline from year-end. The decline was primarily due to lower digital agronomy acres of 2.3 million compared to year-end, as the new acre added in 2022 of the 2.9 million were offset by 5.2 million discontinued. The 5.2 million discontinued acre can be further broken down into three categories. One, 2.3 million discontinued low-value acres primarily in Brazil, Ukraine, and Russia in Q1. Two, PTP acres not converted to paid acres. Three, paid acre trends. Additionally, we reduced the carbon recurring revenue in EAR by $4 million due to the pricing uncertainty. Looking forward, we might have some reduction in EAR in the back half of the year with a lower PTP conversion rate and a suspension of the PTP program. Moving on to the next slide. Revenue in the second quarter was $7.7 million, was up 28% from prior year after excluding non-recurring China partner subsidy for $154,000. This was primarily the result of a crop input sales of $2.4 million, which has no 2021 comparative amount as commodity acquisition occurred in Q3 of last year. Further expand on revenue components, Regional agronomy and fertility solution revenue was $5 million. Excluding China partner subsidies, revenue grew slightly from the prior year. New paid acre revenue was offset by the lower value acre loss as described above. Business analytical solution revenue in Q2 was $200,000 and consistent with Q1. Decrease of $630,000 from year-ago quarter was due to no carbon offset sale in Q2 2022. and lower smart claim revenues in Brazil, as our partner reduced its corporate insurance premium. Moving on to operating expenses. Operating expenses increased $12 million in the quarter on a year-to-year basis. After excluding an $8.2 million one-time settlement gain on the PlanLab imaging contract in Q2 2021, which reduced the data and technology infrastructure expenses, the net increase was approximately $4 million. It related to 2.2 million in cost good sold for e-commerce sales with no comparable amount last year. The balance was largely due to the increase in the setting of marketing expenses, primarily reflecting the changes made in Q4 2021 to the sales team and the structure to improve customer retention and conversion. These high expenses were the primary reason for the just EBITDA loss being higher in Q2 2022 on a year-on-year basis. The adjusted free cash flow remained consistent on a quarter-over-quarter basis after adjusting for non-recurring items. Management will be carrying out additional cost-cutting measures in the near term, as discussed by Weber, to reduce the cash burn and develop a sustainable business model. I will now pass it over to Weber for some final comments.
spk00: Thank you, Cindy. We provided a fair bit of information throughout the call. So I think it's important for us to synthesize the message for greater clarity. I will now talk about our top four priorities for Q3 and the remainder of the year. Number one, reduce the cash burn. Reducing the cash burn is a priority for us. Me and my team will be working on a number of cost savings initiatives this quarter. Our goal is to execute these initiatives with speed and agility. This will put us on an accelerated path to cash flow breakeven. As mentioned earlier, we will share more details in our Q3 earnings call. Number two, reinvigorate growth in subscribed acres. We believe we have a strong product which creates significant value for both the grower and the enterprise segment. Our plan is to address the needs of both these segments and command the price premium in the marketplace. In Q3, we will be focusing on building key partnerships with large enterprise customers in North America and Brazil. Although we have passed the PGP program, our plan is to continue to drive growth in our paid acres with the individual growers. In summary, our focus would be on both these segments to reinvigorate growth in our subscribed acres. Number three, sell carbon offsets. Our carbon offering continues to be a priority for us. In Q2, we made significant progress to improve our serialization process. Our focus in the next 90 days will be to sell these carbon offsets so farmers also get paid for their carbon credits. My team is working hard to secure buyers for these offsets, and our discussions so far have been progressive with these potential customers. Our long-term strategy for carbon includes partnering with key decision makers in the ESG space to build crucial partnerships. We believe that this is the right long-term approach for our sustainability offering and smart carbon solution. Number four, delivering a turnaround plan. Finally, our main focus is to first build a turnaround plan to drive some immediate operational improvement, thereby reducing our cash flow. Key elements of our plan will be effective management of liquidity, driving operational improvements, and right sizing of our business. The turnaround plan is in the process of being developed and will be finalized in the next few weeks. Long term strategic plan is a subsequent action and will be developed once we have the turnaround plan in motion. Based on my initial observations and diagnosis of the business, I feel confident that we will quickly get on a progressive path and deliver some immediate improvements. We expect to execute on these priorities with speed and agility while having open and transparent communication with our stakeholders. I have always believed that any type of change is a process and not an event, and I'd like to close by saying that we have started the process and the outcomes and the events will follow. Thank you, and with that, I will pass it back to the operator, who will open up the lines for Q&A. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you. 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. Individuals will be limited to two questions per person before being put back in the queue. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Steve Hansen of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk03: Oh yes, good morning everyone. Thank you for the time. A question to start with that might be hard to answer but I think might get to the root of your broader business review here. Do you have a good sense for why the churn rate on acres has been so high or why the conversion has been so low? It strikes me as that's got to be one of the core questions here at the core of the review here.
spk00: Yes, Steve, thank you for the question. You know, I think based on my initial review, you know, I think the primary reason for, you know, the churn is that we were not getting a significant traction from the PGP offering And we decided to take a call to pause the program. And I think the other piece is attributed to some of the operational opportunities that we have in terms of how we engage the customers. And not that the engagement was lower. I think we have to focus on kind of improving the experience in terms of delivering a seamless experience for the customer. in terms of the number of touch points that we have in terms of how we're kind of securing the feedback, so on and so forth. But that's kind of the general sense that I got as part of my initial diagnosis of the business.
spk03: Okay, that's helpful. And just as a follow-up on the insurance program, if I may, it sounds like it's fallen a little bit flat versus original expectations. Again, do you have a sense for what you would attribute that underperformance to? I know you mentioned timing of sales, but You know, we did miss the sales season last year, and my understanding is we were actually on track for timing this year. So it sounds like it's more of a distribution or a selling point issue, but I'm just trying to get your sense for that.
spk00: Yeah, I think it's a combination of both. You know, I think there were two attributes, you know, this time with the insurance program. One was clearly the timing, which you mentioned. But I think the other piece that we have learned as part of our insurance offering is that Our data sets need to be more intuitive. Like, we have rich data sets for our insurance partners, but, you know, we have to make them more intuitive and useful so that they kind of help with the overall underwriting process. So, you know, me and my team have taken a, you know, hard look at what we currently offer, where the opportunities are, and then subsequently make those improvements. And that ties to our kind of overall broader data strategy piece.
spk03: Okay, very good. Thank you all. Thank you. Appreciate it.
spk02: Our next question comes from Nick Boychuk of Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Good morning. On the PGP21 program, can we get a little bit of color on the number of acres that are in the total program? And I understand that it's 30%, so just what you expect to be added in the back half of 2022? Morning, Nick.
spk01: Cindy here. So in our currently the PGP program in 2021, we have about 1.8 million acres that's going to be on the renewal process on October 21, which is coming this quarter, in this quarter. And our estimate currently is about a 30% conversion, but certainly we have to see how everything play out. There's a lot of effort in the that the sales team work on to improve the customer experience, to improve the customer offering. So we certainly expect to have better conversion.
spk04: Understood. Thanks, Cindy. And then next, I was going to switch to the carbon program. I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit more color, please, on what you're hearing from the growers. Is the value proposition from Pledge still intact and driving adoption as expected?
spk00: Yeah, Nick, so I think, you know, what we're learning from the market is obviously there is a high level of interest, you know, but that ties in, you know, to also, you know, the ability of the growers to kind of use our platform effectively. So, you know, while the interest is there, you know, we need to do a better job to kind of remove some of the complexities, you know, within the program. You know, from the other side, on the buy side, you know, there is a high level of interest, and as I outlined in my remarks, You know, a lot of these corporate buyers are really finalizing their ESC strategy. So, you know, while there is significant interest, that has not translated into a firm commitment, but we expect to, you know, see some greater traction in the, you know, upcoming quarter because efforts are underway from our side and we are hearing, like, positives about the program and how they would like to partner with us.
spk04: Great. Thank you very much.
spk02: Our next question comes from Richard C. of National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yes, thank you. This is actually James sitting in for Richard. I was just wondering, I noticed in the MD&A that you guys didn't reaffirm the $8 million in annual cost savings for F-22 here. And then I was just wondering, is that still on track at all?
spk00: is the um slow down on the cash burn by pausing pgp kind of incremental to that or could you just give us a sense of the size uh that we could expect um in reduction there yeah so uh the eight million uh you know still on track uh you know the the pause of the pgp program you know was a recent change which we made effective july 8th uh i think how that that is going to be additive although we can't, like I'm not in a position to give you an estimate, but how that will be additive is it is going to slow our cash fund down because just our cost structure with the PGP program was not sustainable in the current state and future state. So, you know, we will see some kind of organic improvements, you know, with the pause of that PGP program while we are still making efforts to, you know, sell our, you know, you know, acquire acres and sell at list price, you know, with our individual broads.
spk05: Okay, great, thanks.
spk06: And Vibor, the only thing I'd add to that is, although it's not been finalized right now, when we think of cash savings under the initiatives under the turnaround plan, we're not looking at an $8 billion number. We don't have a number that we want to give you today, but I think it's fair to say it's substantially higher than that. Yeah, thank you. Okay, great.
spk02: Our next question is a follow-up from Steve Hansen of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk03: Oh, yeah, thank you. Just to follow up on your comments regarding the enterprise focus, that struck me as interesting. Could you give us maybe a sense for how much enterprise business you're doing today? and why that's a new focus or a new segment that you'd like to be going after more aggressively?
spk00: Yeah, I think, you know, when I diagnosed the business team, you know, clearly it came out that, you know, we need to be focusing on the enterprise segment because, you know, that will help us kind of drive more market penetration, you know, with kind of a lower cost structure. But I think the broader play here with the enterprise segment is, based on my initial kind of discussions with some of the enterprise customers that, you know, we are in discussions with, they are really looking at, you know, digitizing their, you know, solution and their offerings, you know, for example, retailers. And they want a digital solution. Where we are right now in those discussions is we are still trying to scope what is the, you know, optimal value proposition for the end customer, which is the growers. And, you know, so there's been kind of significant positive interest in terms of partnering and discussing and scoping out what that solution is going to look like. So while, you know, that'll have kind of a long lead time in terms of when we scope it out, but our, you know, offering to these enterprise customers has been around, you know, doing a pilot, scoping that out, firming it up, defining the value proposition, and really creating that proof of value so that, you know, the whole agriculture, you know, ecosystem can kind of benefit through our platform. Because our platform is very strong. We have rich data sets. We just have to make sure that we convert that value proposition so that it's kind of much more beneficial for the, you know, for all the players in the agriculture value chain.
spk03: Yeah, no, that's helpful. Thanks. And just to follow up to that, I think it comes back to a question around distribution, which I think you elaborated to in your remarks, but just how do you best get distribution and access to the customer? I think that's probably still an open question, but I know you referenced Commodit as part of that original thesis. It sounds like that might be more in question at this point.
spk00: Yeah, I think for Commodit, you know, it's an interesting play with the e-commerce platform. We're still evaluating, you know, its kind of place in our whole suite of technology solutions. And while that review is underway, I think we'll still continue to focus on growing this platform organically and then see what the long-term synergies could be. Because it could be a great play for the retailers who could use the platform, so on and so forth. So that's where at least I stand on commodity.
spk03: Okay, very helpful. Thank you.
spk02: Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. Our next question comes from Nick Boychuk of Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Just a quick follow-up on the customer acquisition strategy now without PGP. I appreciate there are more details to come on the next quarterly call, but I'm wondering if you can please kind of expand on how you think you're going to be acquiring customers if there won't be any free trials anymore? and what the impact might be on the next shift between basic digital granularity package adoption and higher fertility packages.
spk00: Yeah, Nick, sorry you cut out towards the end, so I can respond to the first part of your question and you can probably come back. I think the customer acquisition strategy, at least in the near term, is not going to significantly change What is changing is our focus on, you know, selling the product and the offering at the list price. And while, you know, we want to do that in the near term, I think the long-term view is also we want to take a, you know, deeper look into our overall pricing model and, you know, really, you know, consolidate or look at what is the right number of pricing, price offerings that we have in the market. So in the short run, organically, there's not going to be a significant change. I don't think that is going to negatively impact our acre acquisition goals in the upcoming quarters. It's just that we're not going to be selling three acres like we've done in the past.
spk04: Okay. That's very good, Kala. Thank you. And my follow-up was just in regards to your expectations on next shift. focusing now on selling at the list price, do you think that that's going to materially change the number of acres that buy initially on a basic digital agronomy package? Or do you expect more higher value fertility packages from this new strategy?
spk00: Yeah, great question. So I think the feedback that we're hearing from the market is, you know, there is a real value in our platform and our solution. It's just that we need to do a better job in commanding the right price premium That also goes with, you know, our ability to convey the value proposition much more clearly, which, you know, I'm working with my sales team in terms of how we want to kind of do that. So it's a combination of some of the sales training that, you know, we want to kind of look at. But, you know, but overall, I think I don't see a significant negative impact because we are not going to be giving away our acres for, you know, free anymore. Okay.
spk04: Thank you very much.
spk01: Just, Nick, they also, we add in the first half, we add almost three million new acres. 1.2 is a paid acre other than the PGP program. This is another data point for your reference.
spk04: Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you, Cindy.
spk02: This concludes the question and answer session and today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
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