This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk00: Good morning and welcome to the Farmers Edge live audio webcast for its third 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, then two. Individuals will be limited to two questions per person before being put back into 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.
spk06: 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 QA portion of the call. These statements reflect company 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 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 security laws. Finally, we would like to remind listeners that companies 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 reconciliations. See pharmaceutical findings with Canadian Securities Administrators. We also post on our website a short presentation that you may want to follow along with our remarks. I now turn the call over to our Chairman, Bill McFarland, for opening remarks.
spk03: Bill McFarland Thanks, Cindy, and good morning, and welcome to everyone on the call today. The third quarter of 2022 was an important time for Farmers Edge in repositioning the company for the future. In Q3, the board and the management team reviewed the business end-to-end and developed a new business strategy which was discussed with the board. Key pillars of the new strategy include accelerating acre growth, building a cost reduction plan which reduces the cash burn rate, improving our execution in the field while putting growers and our B2B partners at the center of everything we do, and identifying the right talent mix and capabilities to drive our business forward in the future. Q3 was also a time to step back and obtain customer feedback on our Farm Command platform and relationships. This feedback, along with the new strategy and underlying actions, will be critical elements in driving future success. Our commitment as a board and management team is to move forward with speed and agility and make the changes required to create a stronger and long-term sustainable business. There has been a lot accomplished by Vibor and team over the past couple of months. We also recognize there is a lot more to do, and Vibor will provide further details in his remarks today. I will now pass it over to Cindy for some brief comments on the Q3 results.
spk06: Thank you, Bill. At the end of quarter three of 2022, annual recurring revenue ARR was $43 million, a $6 million decline from quarter two. The decline was primarily due to a lower digital grounding acre of $2.4 million compared to the prior quarter. as 400,000 new acres were added this quarter were offset by 2.8 million discontinued. Among the 2.8 million, 1.6 million PGP acres with October 1st conversion date were released, plus 1.2 million paid acre churn. The lost revenue impact is not significant, as most of them are low-value paid acres. Revenue in the third quarter was $5.9 million, down 7.5% from the prior year, after excluding non-recurring China partner subsidy for $400,000. This was primarily the result of lower subscribed acres and the timing for carbon oxide sales. Digital agronomy and fertility solution revenue was $4.6 million. Excluding China partner subsidies, revenue was down 6.6% from the prior year. On a year-to-date basis, revenue was $22.2 million, up 8.5% on a year-over-year basis, after excluding non-recurring China partner subsidy of $2.4 million. The year-to-date increase was primarily due to the addition of e-commerce sales, partially offset by lower digital agronomy revenue impacted by lower subscriber acres. Moving on to the next slide. Our picking expenses increased $1.2 million in the quarter on a year-on-year basis. After including one-time item legal fees and severance costs, our pitting expenses declined approximately $1 million, which was primarily due to lower operation and product R&D costs as a result of our efficiency efforts. If we look at our core expenses, which include cost of goods sold, carbon, and e-commerce sales, as well as one-time items such as legal fees and severance costs, Core expenses went down 6.5 percent on a year-on-year basis in a high inflation environment. On a sequential basis, core expense was reduced by 12.2 percent from quarter two to quarter three, for a total amount of $2.9 million, compared to a 1.2 percent increase during the same period last year. As a result, adjusted EBITDA loss was improved at $2.4 million sequentially. remained consistent on a year-to-year basis. The adjusted free cash flow was improved $11.3 million sequentially, including $7 million lower working capital needed. On a year-to-year basis, it was improved $3.2 million. With that, I will now pass it over to Weibar for a business update.
spk01: Weibar Zhang Thank you, Cindy. Welcome, everyone. Q3 was my first full quarter as the CEO of Farmer's Edge. It's been a busy five months since I joined. During this time, I've had much more opportunity to connect with our employees, partners, growers, and other stakeholders. I believe in our technology and its potential to create a positive impact within the ag tech space in the near and the long term. At the same time, our financial performance continues to be of utmost importance and a critical area of focus. We recognize achieving profitability is necessary for a long-term sustainable business model, and we've taken some critical steps to embark on that journey. Our aim was to improve the inputs, which will eventually enable positive outcomes in the long run. I'll now provide an update on the key actions taken in the third quarter. Number one, strategic review of the business and operating model. We completed a strategic review of the business and operating model. This review has enabled us to better understand what short-term actions we can take to reduce the cash burn while we continue to pursue top-line growth over the long term. This review outlined clear optimization opportunities within our operations and our internal processes. We are taking the necessary steps to improve our operating model. Further, as we continue to refine our strategy in our business model, we are also reviewing our pricing strategy. With inflation and costs, while providing the right value proposition to growers and enterprise partners, there will be an opportunity over time to improve our pricing. Number two, turnaround plan developed, 20 million annual cost savings. Following the end-to-end operating model analysis, we developed a turnaround plan. The analysis included reviewing our contracts, our headcount, footprint of our hubs, and the size of our fleet. Our plan includes annualized savings of 20 million, which is roughly 20% of our current annual expenses. These savings will come from a number of initiatives, such as hub consolidation, fleet optimization, marketing spend review, and supplier renegotiations. We have involved many employees in the development and execution of the turnaround plan, which has led to high engagement in evaluating costs and finding opportunities for savings without sacrificing the quality of our offering or our service to our customers. I'm pleased with our team's commitment to this plan and expect it to continue moving forward. We expect the savings from the cost turnaround plan to be fully realized starting in Q1 2023. Number three, farm command platform review. We are making a strategic shift in how we capture and work on our customers' feedback. We recently completed a review of the Farm Command platform, which included customer feedback. We not only reviewed our internal mechanisms, like our customer service tickets, but we also conducted various focus group discussions and sessions to seek feedback from our customers. We received some invaluable insights as part of the process. Although we believe the current Farm Command platform is a valuable tool for our growers, we will be making improvements to it over the next year to increase functionality, enhance the user experience, and deliver increased value to our growers. These improvements will help us sell new acres and increase retention. A roadmap has been developed to implement these actions. Additionally, We are creating an enterprise solutions design team to drive insights and data transformation for enterprise customers. Number four, senior management team. We continue to operate with a flat organization structure. We've strengthened our senior management team in Q3 by adding a VP of strategy, a VP of global operations, and we also created a new position of VP enterprise technology, which was filled internally. We are in the process of filling two more positions in data strategy monetization and sales and other leadership roles. Additionally, we reorganized the sales team by region to enable greater focus on retentions, conversions, and new acres. Subsequently, acquiring profitable acres and continuing to reduce the EBITDA deficiency and cash fund rate. Number five, key supplier negotiations underway. Next, we've engaged our key suppliers, such as cloud computing, imagery, and other services to update our contracts, resulting in savings moving forward. These key suppliers remain supportive of our business and share our vision of leading through technology. We will continue to review contracts and engage parties where there are opportunities for savings. Number six, new marketing strategy to support the enterprise segment. Individual growers are the center of everything that we do. Having said that, we believe that acceleration in our acre base will be achieved through a combination of individual growers, and enterprise partners. We remain committed to our B2C segment, but have started taking steps to improve our enterprise offerings. We've created a marketing realignment and strategy overhaul with a greater focus on enterprise. This plan, which is already being executed, integrates the voice of our customers, growers, and enterprise and will have measurable deliverables and results, thereby driving profitable acre growth and reducing the cash point rate. Lastly, it will also add our ability to determine the most efficient and effective way to reach our target customers and our end users. I will now take a few minutes to review some of our acres, smart carbon insurance, and crop input business results, And then I'll provide an update on the commitments we made in the last quarter and subsequent actions. Acres. As mentioned on our August call, after careful analysis of the costs associated with the PGP program, we made a strategic decision to pause the PGP program and no longer provide free acres. 400,000 new acres were added in Q3 and 3.3 million new acres have been added year-to-date. This shift, combined with the PGP21 October conversion rate, currently at 20%, accounts for a drop of almost 3.1 million subscribed acres since June 30, 2022, and a decrease in ARR to 43 million. We had estimated a reduction in ARR in the second half of the year due to lower PGP conversions, subsequent to the suspension of the PGP program. So this job is not entirely unexpected. This quarter was also an opportunity to refocus our approach on our acres. We aimed at acquiring the right type of acres at the right price to avoid churning through those acres subsequently. Our conversion for PGP October 21 is currently at 20%. which is 10% below our Q3 estimate of 30% conversions. This further substantiated our decision to end the PGP program and move away from low value acres. Our key objective on PGP conversions is to drive higher revenue per acre. At the same time, we received an important signal from the market PGP-acre conversions during the last quarter converted at 2x the price compared to the previous quarters. This proves our initial hypothesis that our platform can command a higher price premium in the marketplace, especially with our ideal customers who are committed to adopt technology to improve their operations. This shift will also free up resources that can be redirected to acquire higher value acres. Going forward, our approach would be to engage with customers who recognize the value proposition of our offering. Moving forward, we are focused on building a stronger foundation around customer interactions and services. Therefore, while our acre growth was muted, We think this approach will allow us to improve the grower experience and add more profitable acres to our installed base, furthering our goal to reduce the EBITDA deficiency and get on a path to profitability. Smart carbon. Our serialization process continues to run smoothly as we complete further projects. We have over half a million tons of carbon offsets serialized, ready to be sold. We continue to work with our potential purchasers of the offsets and have a dedicated team that is continuing to reach out to potential buyers. However, continuing pricing uncertainty, variability driven by unclear demand supply outlook have made the process longer than we would have liked. This sentiment of pricing uncertainty and variability was shared by the customers, industry experts, and consultants we engaged with during the last quarter. While we continue to explore opportunities related to carbon, both as part of our comprehensive offering to the growers and as part of the evolution of the industry in conjunction with our unique ability to collect certain data, it is not going to be a significant driver of new paid acres. We believe that our carbon offering will be positioned as an overlay versus a leading feature. Given the pricing uncertainty, we have made a conscious decision to not provide projections on carbon revenue going forward. Our focus will primarily be on serialization and sale of the carbon offsets, as we would like our growers to get paid their share of 70% of the sale. Long-term, our broader ESG play will be with the supply chain inserts, demand pull model versus an offset-based push model. Value proposition of carbon will evolve with time, and we will continue to make the necessary pivots to drive this forward. Insurance. We expect to launch a new smart reporting solution in Q4, which will address customer needs Our product technology team, in conjunction with our business team, added features like predictive crop modeling, crop interview, and imagery data lake and Google data engine integration to our smart reporting offering. We have a pipeline of potential customers that we are speaking with within the insurance industry. We will wait market feedback, post the launch, and provide more update in our next call. Commodit Ags. We are on track to launch our updated e-commerce platform in the US, as well as introduce it to our Canadian customers in Q4. In addition, despite continued supply chain constraints and some generic product margins, e-commerce revenues increased 10% year-to-date compared to revenues during the same period last year. Our long-term goal is to provide a marketplace which will offer pricing transparency and greater convenience to our customers. Strategic partnership. Finally, significant enterprise partnerships will be a key driver, acres and cash flow. As you heard in the previous sections, we are taking a number of initiatives to focus on this particular segment. Hence, We are looking at new enterprise partnerships to close our EBITDA gap and accelerate growth. We recognize these initiatives are the first few steps of many that are needed to achieve profitability. However, I'm pleased with the progress the team has made in Q3 and look forward to the impact the initiatives will have on a go-forward basis starting in Q1 2023. Overall, we feel comfortable based on the actions taken that we have sufficient financing for the next year. I'd like to wrap up this portion of the call by briefly discussing where our efforts are centering in Q4. Number one, we will focus on acquiring new acres primarily through resetting our existing B2B partnerships in all of the geographies in which we operate and signing up new customers. We believe our new marketing strategy and the near-term product enhancements will be of particular assistance with acquiring new acres. Number two, we are continuing to execute the turnaround plan. We've made some significant progress to date, and we'll continue with our pace. Speed and agility are essential. Number three, We will take the necessary steps to finalize the annualized cost savings of $20 million and continue to identify areas of additional cost savings. We've implemented the necessary inspection mechanisms to track our progress. Number four, we'll continue our efforts to sell these carbon offsets, trying to obtain the highest price in the market while working towards firm commitments to ensure our growers are getting 70% of the sales. Number five, we will continue to top grade the talent within the company to drive greater efficiencies, but more importantly, build a culture of innovation, systems thinking, and database decision making. We will continue to support open and transparent communication with our stakeholders I'm pleased with the progress our team has made this quarter. I appreciate the hard work of the team members and other stakeholders, and I'm looking forward to the progress being reflected in our future results. With that, I'll pass it back to the operator who will open up the lines for Q&A.
spk00: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your hands up before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Nick Boychuk of Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Good morning. Just starting with the customers, wondering if you can give a little bit more color on the composition of the 12 million remaining subscribed acres. How many would you classify as high value that you're really thinking are going to be sticky and that you could potentially upsell other to the fertility program if they aren't there yet, or carbon or insurance? Just a little bit more color there would be helpful.
spk01: Yeah, morning, Nick. Thank you for joining. Yeah, I think if you look at our, you know, acre mix within the 12 million looking at about 60-40 kind of a split, fertility versus digital. So I think the focus will be on the digital segment to ensure that we are trying to upsell and getting them on the higher price kind of offerings. And I think the other thing I would say is we've given some clear directive to our sales organization to ensure that You know, we're looking at the right prioritization for our customer base, which is focusing on the base business, you know, then looking at new acres, and then subsequently kind of, you know, looking at conversion, then subsequently new acres.
spk04: Okay, thank you. On the strategy and the updated operating model, can you please walk through a little bit more how you're planning on managing what appear to be three very different go-to-market approaches obviously with B2B, B2C, and then the e-commerce platform. I'm trying to wrap my head around how this new approach will drive higher sales while also keeping the cost structure in check. So any additional color you can share on the difference in product between B2B, B2C, how they integrate, and how you then tie in the e-commerce, any additional color there would be very helpful.
spk01: Sure, Scott. So I think that our B2C segment, we feel pretty good in terms of the changes we've made with our reorganization and the realignment, which happened during the last quarter. So like I mentioned, our focus continues to be on having the right priority within the sales organization. So that effort will continue. With regards to the enterprise segment, we've started... having some really progressive discussions with our enterprise customers who are really looking at, you know, the digitization of, you know, their ecosystem and they're looking at, you know, platforms like ours in terms of opportunities that we can kind of help and influence, you know, the whole either first digitization effort and second, create more value for their customers as well. So that is a separate track that we focused on. We have a separate, you know, team who's looking at these enterprise partnerships. I mentioned about a new position we've created around VP of Enterprise Technology, which was built internally. So we feel pretty good about some of the solutions that we can launch for the enterprise segments. We are still in the process of kind of scoping out some of these opportunities. And so that's kind of on the B2B. With regards to the e-commerce platform, I think a long-term play there is we want to create or use the e-commerce platform with having the right kind of pricing transparency for the customers and have basically a flywheel effect where once you provide the right selection of the product along with convenience, working with your retailers and co-ops and so on and so forth, that's where you create that level of stickiness within the customer base and over a period of time that kind of you know, snowballs into a significant offering. So we are very early on on the e-commerce side of it, but, you know, based on some of the data that we've seen coming in in terms of how many, like how growers' adoption curve on using online platforms or marketplaces to, you know, buy imports and buy seeds, I mean, we've seen some good fractions, so I think that's an area we'd like to continue to, you know, invest and strengthen that offering.
spk00: Our next question comes from Steve Hansen of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk02: Yes, good morning, guys. Just a quick one for me. Could you maybe elaborate a bit more on the enterprise target customer base? Are you speaking specifically to ag retailers, equipment dealers, other crop input providers? Where is the target focus? I'm just trying to get a better lens on where you're targeting. Thanks.
spk01: Yeah. Hey, Steve. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think it's a combination of the two. We are looking at these large enterprise customers, and some of them we actually do business with right now. But we are also looking at the next layer of co-ops and retailers who would like to partner with us. So those are the two segments on the enterprise side that we're looking at.
spk00: Our next question comes from Richard C. of National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah, this is James sitting in for Richard right now. I'm just wondering if you could tell me those $20 million in annualized cost savings, is that based off of F-22 or F-21 numbers? I'm just trying to get a handle on it because it looks like you guys have done a decent job cutting some costs throughout 2022.
spk01: So those $20 million are part of the turnaround plan, Richard, and they've been scoped this year, but the annual savings are going to come in 2023. And this is in addition to the previous target that we put out there of $8 million. We were, I think, halfway, you know, They're on the $8 million. So this is an additive $20 million target that we are kind of focused on.
spk05: Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like it's off the end of fiscal 22. And then also, what are you doing to mitigate the cash burn here in Q4 if this turnaround isn't really starting until the next fiscal year?
spk01: Yeah, so I think just to clarify, the turnaround plan has been scoped out. You know, the teams, the respective teams are actually having their own set of individual actions as part of the turnaround plan. So, you know, we will see some traction on the savings in Q4. But, you know, a formal kind of, you know, full realization will start happening, you know, in the new year. Just given the timing of some of these actions.
spk05: All right, great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.
spk00: Thank you, Richard. Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. Our next question is a follow-up from Nick Boychuk from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Just quickly coming back to the carbon platform, can you give a little bit more color on what drove the decision where it's no longer be a driver of new acres, but something that's going to be an overlay and what that implies for future credit sales?
spk01: Yeah, Nick. So I think as I mentioned earlier, we've really done well when it comes to serialization of these offsets. You know, I think where we've hit a, I would say a One of the roadblocks is just the sale of these offsets. The lack of sale is not due to any execution concerns or lack of issues. We've got a dedicated team who's looking at speaking to multiple purchasers of these offsets, including some enterprise customers. But just given the current environment, this has not taken off. So that was the primary reason that we decided that we are going to focus on the serialization and not really give out any specific revenue projections because this level of uncertainty in the market is quite prevalent. And we also made an effort to kind of reach out to some industry experts, consultants, other customers, to just kind of validate our hypothesis on the carbon story. And I think the sentiment is, you know, the same across the board. And we think that the carbon story will eventually take off, but, you know, it will take time. And in the interim, what we want to do is we really want to focus on positioning the sustainability story that we currently are carrying sustainability kind of position would be to really look at some of these large enterprise customers and see how we can help them with their, you know, ESG initiatives. I'll give you an example like measuring, helping, you know, them to measure their carbon intensity score for multiple use cases. So that's where we currently are at. You know, so we're going to keep the offering on, but it will be more of an overlay than a leading feature for us.
spk04: Is it fair to say then that the carbon inset opportunity is unchanged and that the attractiveness of that for your growers and for your stakeholders is still the same, but that it's the offset that you will no longer be focusing on?
spk01: I would say it a little bit differently. You know, I think we will still continue the effort to try and sell these offsets that we currently have. And the inset opportunity, I think, in my kind of last five months the discussions have really picked up. More and more organizations are interested, you know, to see how an organization like ours can help them on their sustainability kind of journey. And, you know, so that's the good news. You know, the not so good news is some of those solutions are, you know, have a long kind of sales cycle. So we still have to work with them to scope out because I think a common theme is people want to have, you know, take steps to get on that ESG journey. The specific solutions are, you know, have to be scoped out by the specific company and by the industry that they're operating in. So to answer your question, yes, the inset story is picking up. The offset, you know, solution and the offering will continue as, you know, for us to kind of try and sell those offsets. Okay, thank you.
spk00: This concludes the question and answer session as well as today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
Disclaimer