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.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Today's conference will begin in approximately five minutes to allow as many participants as possible to join. Until that time, your lines will again be placed on music hold. We thank you for your patience. Hello, and welcome to the HiVision 3Q 2023 earnings 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, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the conference over to Mirko Wicca. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you, Sarah, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter results in the first nine months of our fiscal year 2023. As demonstrated by the results we announced earlier today, demand for our products not only remains strong, but our business fundamentals have never been better. We achieved a record Q3 revenue of $35 million, which represents an 18.2% growth over Q3 of last year, as we continue to deliver top-line is inclusive of the revenue reduction we took because of exiting the House of Worship vertical. Now, we also achieved a record first nine-month revenue of $104.2 million, which represents an 18.6% growth over last year, first nine months. Again, this is inclusive of the revenue reduction of the House of Worship vertical that we have now completely exited from. And our gross profit for Q3 grew 30% from last year's Q3, which is pretty impressive. And we delivered an adjusted EBITDA of 4.3 million for Q3, which represents a 12.4% operating margin. Now, this is compared to last year's Q3 adjusted EBITDA loss of 1.5 million. This represents an increase of 387%. For the first nine months of the year, our adjusted EBITDA was $9.1 million, representing an increase of 193% from last year's nine-month performance. As a reminder, we have always said that it's typical for our OPEX to be front-loaded, and we expect a much stronger EBITDA and operating margin performance in the second half of the year, which the Q3 results have clearly demonstrated. We expect Q4 to follow this trend. Now, in addition, our gross margins in Q3 have increased to 71.9% from last year's Q3 of 66.1. Now, as we mentioned several times on our previous earnings calls, this was always our 2023 plan, and I'm very happy to say that we delivered what we said we would. And I believe that this is only the beginning of what's to come in the future quarters. Our focus has been and continues to be profitability and EBITDA performance. We clearly made the right decision last October to exit the House of Worship managed services market, which has been successfully completed end of April, and is now starting to show in our P&L as promised. I should, however, mention the strong Q3 we just announced did include a significant $2.5 million investment U.S. government programmatic order that was originally scheduled to come into our Q4 as part of our government year-end planning. Obviously, it's always good news when orders come earlier than expected. With this movement, we do expect our Q4 to be adjusted by this amount than previously planned, meaning we won't be seeing a typical hockey stick effect to our Q4. And we remain confident with our year-end projections that Dan will be discussing. Now, Q4 has always been the highest quarter by far in all of our fiscal years. In fact, last year's Q4 was very, very high. In fact, if I recall, it was almost 39 million due to an unusually strong U.S. government quarter. Now, interestingly enough, this year we have seen a more balanced and consistent quarterly performance. In fact, in Q1 of this year, if you remember, we did 34 million. In Q2, we did 35 million. And now in Q3, we delivered, again, $35 million. I expect this to continue into 2024, as we are finding that our three main verticals, our defense, our broadcast, and enterprise, balance each other out globally and give us better business predictability. Now, in addition, it's interesting to note, the U.S. government has been slowly moving to a multi-quarter purchasing cycle, and not only depending on the year-end, September-October timeframe, which always falls in our Q4. And we are also seeing strong demand for our global security operational centers within the global financial banking industry, cybersecurity, police centers, federal installations, public safety, and all defense sectors. The need to have real-time mission critical and secure access all your video sources and assets for real-time analysis or situational awareness is becoming more paramount. And we are now the leading vendor delivering the entire contribution, distribution, and visualization ecosystem in this critical area. We believe that our company has a bright future ahead, and we are committed to maximizing long-term value for all our shareholders. We are confident in our ability to execute on our strategic plan and deliver continued growth and success. Now, in closing, despite the economic headwinds and continued supply chain challenges we keep hearing about from other companies, I believe that Hivision has weathered the storm better than most. And we expect our Q4 to be strong and consistent with our strategic plan and feel very comfortable with our year-end projections. Dan will discuss our guidance for the remainder of the year shortly. And we're also very confident in our strategic plan. and expect to demonstrate revenue growth and significant profitability growth in 2024. Finally, as we previously mentioned, we are moving quickly towards achieving our longer-term goal of delivering 20% EBITDA performance. So to this, Dan, please continue with the financial details. Thank you, Mirko.
spk04: So let's talk numbers. Revenue for this third quarter of fiscal 2023 was 35 million. That's an increase of 5.4 million or 18.2% from the prior year comparative period. The revenue increase is notable for a number of reasons. First of all, the revenue comparison is an apples to apples comparison as revenue from AviWest is included in both periods. Revenue from just the products increased by 28.8% in the quarter. This impact also is reflective of the $1.9 million decrease in cloud solution revenue when compared to last year. We saw fantastic revenue growth despite our decision to exit the managed services space that focused on the House of Worship market. Even our maintenance and support revenue saw double-digit growth, growing 15% year over year. This recent quarter did represent a record performance in terms of third quarter revenue, which historically tended to be a slower period for the company. Hope to see more of these types of records in fiscal year 2024 and beyond. Revenue for the nine months ended July 31st with $104.2 million. That's an increase of $16.3 million or 18.6% from the prior year comparative period. Note that year-to-date results included Abby West performance for the entire nine months, whereas in the prior year comparative period, year-to-date results included Abby West for only four months. On the other hand, this year-to-year performance reflects our exit from the managed services market in April. For the nine-month period, we saw cloud solution revenue decline by $2.8 million when compared to the prior year period. So with that said, we are seeing huge growth. And we see huge growth in maintenance and support revenue, which also grew by 23% year over year. Recurring revenue, which we defined as our cloud solutions and our maintenance and support was 5.6 million, or about 16% of total revenue in this recent third quarter. And it was about 20.3 million, or 19% of total revenue on a year-to-date basis. We anticipated that our recurring revenue would decrease as a percentage of our total revenue once we exited the managed services business. With that said, we do expect maintenance and support revenues to continue to grow robustly going forward. For this quarter, our gross margins were 71.9%, and that compares to 66.1% in the prior year comparable period. Further, this quarter's gross margin were an improvement from the 68.9% realized last quarter, that's our second quarter this fiscal year, and an increase from the 66% in the quarter before that, our first quarter this fiscal year. As discussed in our last earnings call, we anticipated margins to improve in this third quarter and even suggested that the impact could be as much as 200 basis points. Well, we certainly exceeded that expectation. The managed services business had about $600,006 costs related to platform license fees, third-party add-ons, and minimum bandwidth commitments. Said another way, the managed service business tended to be a below-the-average performer in terms of gross margin. Further, supply chains appear to be reverting to more normal delivery schedules. We did incur just over $300,000 in additional costs related to hard to procure componentry that was consumed in the quarter. On a year-to-date basis, the additional cost for this componentry was approximately $950,000, or about 100 basis points. These extra costs were approximately half of the costs that we incurred last year, which impacted margins by over 200 basis points. We expect this extra expense to continue to dissipate going forward with a next year expectation for these costs to be half of the costs that we incurred this year. And just to complete the thought, there really wasn't much variation in overall mix throughout the year. Thus, these gross margin improvements are real improvements. Total expenses for this quarter were $25.6 million. an increase of $1.2 million when compared to the same period in the prior year. However, in this quarter, total expenses included a non-recurring restructuring cost of $1.5 million. We essentially completed the restructuring exercise that was initiated in the fourth quarter last year. The result is that we ended the quarter with 374 employees compared to 418 employees a year ago. and that compares to the 389 employees at the end of second quarter. Generally speaking, approximately 75 percent of our cost structure is related to compensation expenses and related social charges, unless you can put the math together. I should mention that since the most recent restructuring was largely completed in the second half of this quarter, there may be additional opportunities for OpEx savings in this fourth quarter. However, next week is our second largest trade show, the International Broadcasting Convention, or IBC, and it may result in incremental marketing spend in this fourth quarter. On a year-to-date basis, total expenses were $74.4 million, an increase of $9.1 million when compared to the year-earlier period. As a reminder, the Abby West transaction was consummated in April of 2022, which implies it was only part of our cost structure for four months in the comparable period last year. Thus, it is impacting year-over-year comparisons. Abby West added approximately 80 people last year. If we were to isolate the reason for the increase Compensation-related expenses added approximately $4 million in total expenses, most of which would be attributable to the timing of the Abby West acquisition. Increases in depreciation and amortization expenses related to acquired assets and intangibles added an incremental $2.3 million in total expenses. Increased travel expenses added an incremental $1.5 million. And the Canadian dollar's exchange rate impact on U.S. dollar denominated assets and liabilities added an incremental $1 million to total expenses. When we normalized total expenses for share-based payments, depreciation of fixed assets, the amortization of intangibles, and restructuring costs, total expenses were $20.8 million, a decrease of $400,000 from the prior year. The result of the higher revenues, better gross margins, and a decrease in OPX is that adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was 4.3 million. That's an increase of 5.9 million when compared to the adjusted EBITDA loss of 1.5 million for the same period in the prior year. The adjusted EBITDA margin for this quarter was 12.4 percent. That margin compares quite positively to the 7.5% in the prior quarter and the 6.2% in the quarter prior to that. In prior calls, we had certainly been signaling our belief that the third quarter would be somewhat of a watershed event. I believe now you are beginning to see the full benefit of our restructuring plan, and as there's still some additional opportunities to increase EBITDA margins going forward, we should see this continuing. We should see gross margins continue as we absorb the remaining higher cost componentry and as we continue to migrate the two acquisitions to a common ERP platform. And as I explained earlier, we should see additional OPEX savings in the fourth quarter based on the timing of our restructuring exercise completed in June, albeit with this cautionary note that we do have our second largest trade show in this fourth quarter as well. Adjusted EBITDA for the nine-month period was 9.1 million. That's an increase of 5.9 million when compared to adjusted EBITDA of 3.1 million for the prior comparable period. The adjusted EBITDA margin for this nine-month period was 8.7 percent, but that compares quite favorably to 3.6 percent for the prior year comparable period. We also saw a significant improvement in the net loss for the quarter. The net loss for this quarter was only 900,000 compared to a net loss of 4.2 million for the same period in the prior year. That 3.4 million improvement is largely related to the 5.4 million increase in revenue and the improvement in gross margin contributing 5.6 million in incremental gross profit. Now, these increases were offset by the 1.2 million in incremental expenses, and we did get some benefit from income tax recoveries of 900,000. Net loss on a year-to-date basis was 3.8 million, but that too compares quite favorably to the net loss of 5.1 million for the prior year comparative period. With respect to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of 7.5 million, a modest increase of 200,000 from the prior quarter end. However, we also ended the quarter with only 5.5 million outstanding on the credit facility. That's a reduction of $4.5 million from prior quarter end. And we reduced our term loans by an additional $1 million. Total assets of July 31st were $133.9 million. That is a decrease of $14.7 million from the end of fiscal year 2022. And the decrease in assets in the nine-month period largely relate to a $7.6 million reduction in trade and other receivables. a $5.8 million reduction in intangible assets, and a $2.4 million reduction in inventory. These decreases were offset by the $1.7 million increase in our cash balance this fiscal year. Total liabilities at quarter end were $46.1 million. That's a decrease of $12.2 million from the end of fiscal 2022. The decrease in total liabilities for the nine-month period included a $5.5 million decrease in the line of credit, a $4.8 million decrease in trade and other payables, $1.2 million decrease in our lease liabilities, and again, a million-dollar reduction in the amount of term loans outstanding. With respect to the remaining integration plans, For AviWest, we have completed the move of AviWest to a common accounting system, and we just completed AviWest's move to a common ERP system. With this enhanced visibility to AviWest inventory, we hope to increase the flexibility of AviWest's supply chain and reduce direct product costs to increase gross margins. Our focus in the near term will be to sell more of AviWest's products in North America. At HiVision MCS, progress is also accelerating. Our current focus is to fully integrate development teams, and we expect this to be completed this month. Our next major focus is integrating production capabilities and migrating MCS's ERP system to a common platform. The pace of integration is increasing over the remainder of the year. Just on an aside, this week we also had our 12th ISO 9001 audit, and we're pleased to say that once again, the auditors found our quality management system to be fully effective. In fact, with outstanding ratings on most benchmarked activities. In terms of expectation for the remainder of the year, we have completely transitioned out of the household worship market, and even after losing that revenue, our overall revenues continue to show growth. Thus, our revenue guidance for the full year, which factors in the reduction in our managed services revenue, is now expected to be a bit higher. We had suggested that revenue for the year would be between $130 and $135 million, with the high end of that range being increasingly in sight. We are now forecasting revenue for the full fiscal year to be somewhere between $135 and $140 million this year. We also expect to see continued expansion of our adjusted EBITDA margin as we continue to exploit synergistic opportunities and achieving double-digit adjusted EBITDA margins. That concludes my prepared remarks, so I'm passing the microphone back to you, Mirko, and then we'll open the floor to questions.
spk05: Thank you, Dan. I guess we can look at some questions at the moment.
spk01: Yes, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your 1st question comes from the line of Nick with Acumen Capital Partners. Your line is open.
spk07: Yeah, this is Nick Corker from Acumen Capital Partners. Appreciate the time and congrats on A great quarter, just a couple of questions for me. 1st, with with Abby West, you've talked about sales in North America. Can you maybe talk about the traction you've been getting and whether or not the writer's strike in Hollywood has increased the demand for. For either the products from Abby West or or your. Kind of legacy products.
spk08: uh sure yeah i'll take that i mean it's right now the attraction we're getting is is actually been pretty pretty solid uh again remember that uh abby west was very very low or weak i would say in the north american coverage uh and obviously high vision is very very strong in north america so our whole our whole push has been uh for the last year is to is to get only get up to speed but get all of our clients you know testing equipment getting uh getting their hands on the equipment and just seeing how it works with the legacy systems. So I think we've not only made great progress, I think there's a lot more opportunity yet to come. And so I'm pretty optimistic from a lot of our key, key broadcast clients, which have basically Makitos everywhere to really get on the bandwagon of the Pro Series. So we do have already some wins, and I think we're looking for huge growth there in fiscal 2024. I don't think the – I'm not hearing at all anything about the writer's strike that's affecting our business. The majority of our business, honestly, is live sports, and that's pretty healthy. That's doing very, very well for us globally.
spk07: Great. And then maybe thinking about the – the adjusted EBITDA margins, how should we think about the progression to 20% and how should we think about the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter?
spk05: Well, Nick, thank you for the question.
spk04: We see opportunity to lower our OPEX in the fourth quarter. We also see opportunity to improve our gross margin in the fourth quarter. And hopefully that's going to translate to a higher EBITDA margin. I think we've been forecasting that we should be in the double digits for the full year based on current performance. And so we do see some expansion in the fourth quarter compared to where we were in the third quarter.
spk07: And thinking longer, kind of longer term, what do you think the timelines get to our performance?
spk04: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the last part of that question.
spk07: Yeah, I'm thinking of the timeline for you to get from the adjusted EBITDA margins you had in the third quarter to 20%.
spk04: So I think what we sort of forecasted is that in 2024, we will see a 20% EBITDA margin in one of our quarters. I'm not ready to commit. I don't think we will get to 20% for the full year. I'm not suggesting that it's out of question, but our goal right now is to demonstrate 20% growth in at least one of our quarters. 20% EBITDA margins in one of our quarters.
spk07: That's helpful. And how should we think about the conversion of free cash flow from adjusted EBITDA?
spk04: Well, I tried to sort of give you a way to look at the equation here. Our adjusted EBITDA was about $4.3 million. And as I kind of pointed out, between the cash balance and a line of credit, We were able to reduce our line of credit by $4.5 million. We were able to reduce our debt by $1 million. That should give you a sense that adjusted EBITDA is a fairly good indicator of what our cash generating ability might be.
spk07: Great. And then the last question for me, just as you start generating more free cash flow, what are your capital allocation priorities between pinning down debt, share buybacks, M&A, and any other uses?
spk04: I'm not sure I heard what your first sub-point was. I think we're right now focused on integration, fully integrating these two properties, demonstrating our EBITDA margin. We have been quite successful in M&A. All of our acquisitions thus far have been very successful, and it's something that we would probably be looking to at the future, but we're not looking for anything that's distracting us from this goal of demonstrating the earning capability of the business.
spk07: And have shared buybacks from something you've caught?
spk04: Not really. No, not at this juncture. It's not something we think about. I think we're, you know, with $7 million in the bank right now, I don't think it's an opportunity for us to be buying back shares at this juncture.
spk05: Great. That's all for me. Thanks for taking my questions.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Rosenberg with Paradigm Capital. Your line is open.
spk02: Thanks and congrats on a very strong quarter. My first question goes to the levers that you were speaking to on lowering OpEx and so I was just curious to hear specifics around what areas are you able to achieve this and then is it the scale that you guys are you know, the operating leverage and economies of scale that's helping drive the confidence in your statements around getting to 20% next year?
spk04: Good question. So the way that I look at the equation, we started this restructuring effort in the fourth quarter of last year. Now, mind you, we had purchased Abbey West in April of 2022, and so that fourth quarter was the first quarter that we were able to see what the expense burden would be of that entity and how the teams were working together. We recognized really quickly that we had to right-size our R&D efforts, because we've done a number of acquisitions in the last few years, and many of those acquisitions included a significant number of engineers to help build products for us. So, as we were going through the exercise, we were focusing on having everyone working on common platforms, using common technologies, common methodologies, and that's what resulted in the headcount decrease in last year. Now, in this current period, our focus was a little bit different. We wanted to see what products have legs, what products had opportunity going forward. And we realigned our development teams to be more focused on those products that generate the most revenue for the business. And that resulted in an additional headcount reduction of about 15 people. So we've now reprioritized the business, focusing on those new products, focusing on the opportunities going forward. we're able to make some pretty decisive decisions that I think are going to generate additional EBITDA going forward.
spk05: Okay, appreciate that.
spk02: And in terms of the debt pay down, I'm just curious to hear if there's anything specific around, you know, the timing or structure of that debt that sparked you wanting to pay down in this quarter or any targets in terms of leverage ratios? that you think are the right ones to have for this company?
spk04: If you're talking about just regular debt, term loans, we assume those term loans as part of the Abby West transaction, and those term loans were very favorably priced. Some of them were as low as 1% interest rates and what have you. We're not looking to accelerate our payments against those debt instruments. Rather, this just happens to be the timing of repayment for the debt instruments. Nothing is leading us to accelerate that at all. With respect to the line of credit, it's just happenstance. You know, we have no obligation to pay it down. We're not looking to pay it down. But what are we going to do with excess cash rather than paying interest rates on and we decide to pay it down? Now, mind you, we still have this line of credit, a $35 million line of credit with the accordion expansion feature for $25 additional million. So we could pay it down and then we use it if we wanted to.
spk02: Okay. Thanks for that. And last one for me. So a number of product launches and industry recognition around products and awards are Just curious what excites or what are the new product areas that are exciting and growth potential for you, the ones that get you most excited, let's say?
spk05: Yeah, great question. I mean, there's several.
spk08: In fact, right now we're in the middle of, I think, three separate shows going on this week and next week. IBC is the second largest broadcast show, and we're actually showing some pretty cool technology there. We're also showcasing, you know, in another actually defense show is a Command 360. I just found out a couple hours ago we just won, you know, an award, a show award for that as one of the best products, which is our, you know, Command 360 visual collaboration systems. I think that's one of the ones that we're the most excited about. You know, we just start rolling that out. There's a tremendous potential. We're seeing a huge potential in all of these global secure operation centers. Interestingly enough, from all sectors, believe it or not, the banking sector, which we're extremely strong in, we are the leader in that sector, and they just can't get enough of our stuff. So that's cool. Cybersecurity is going bananas with our systems. So, you know, we're seeing it in state and local, police, you know, fire, emergency response, and not to mention all the defense groups that we deal with. So the Command360 is the one that really, really is getting us excited, and it's by far the big growth engine going forward. So that's cool. There are some new changes. We're actually launching a couple new Makitos, which is, you know, our core product. And that's exciting. We'll be launching a couple more in the next two quarters, different variations. We did a single channel Makito, which was the first time ever we launched that in a different form factor. And then we're also doing a soft launch, so showcasing kind of an early adoption beta program for our Hub 360, which is our cloud system to connect all of our devices, edge devices for our broadcast workflow. So, we did a sneak preview at NAB. We're doing a little more than a sneak preview at IBC this week, or starting this weekend, I should say. And that is scheduled to be G8 or generally available at the end of the calendar year, kind of first quarter of 2024 calendar, where we expect that to bring on more speed from a total solution itself. You've got the cloud platform, Hub 360, Command 360, and some of the Keto stuff. And we're really re-energizing the Pro Series transmitters in the North America market, where I see a huge opportunity.
spk02: Thanks. Congrats again, and thanks for taking my questions. I'll pass the line.
spk01: Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, it is star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Young with Canaccord. Your line is open.
spk03: Hi, good evening. I was hoping to dig a little bit into gross margins and outlook. You said that the gross margins were maybe a little better than expected given the house worship impact no longer a drag supply chain improvement, maybe a little bit of integration. I think you suggested that gross margins can continue to get better as you move or integrate the recent acquisitions and put them on a common ERP and then further supply chain benefits. Should we be thinking of 71%, 72% being a base? Will it improve from here or are there any negative
spk04: things that we should be considering well uh robert nice to hear from you again uh i'm not sure i'd be as uh optimistic as you are uh but maybe i'm just a very conservative uh tend to be fairly conservative the one area that's fairly defined is the cost of this componentry that we spent some incremental monies to be able to obtain to be able to serve our customers last year those incremental costs were about 210 basis points. And we've seen that number be cut in half this year. It's about 110 basis points that's impacted our financial statements. And we anticipate that to actually be reduced in half next year as well. So that's a real tangible benefit you can look at. Now, when it comes to the ERP and the migration of the two entities, that speaks to an opportunity, but we've got some work to do to make sure that we can exploit it. I've got a lot of confidence in our supply chain people. As Mirka kind of alluded to, we weathered this global shortage better than many of our competitors out there. There was not a single customer that we could not deliver products to because of the way that we were able to handle our supply chains. So I am confident that being on a common platform with the common tools that we use to be able to manage our costs of goods sold will be able to impact MCS's business and Abby West's business going forward. So if you were, if conservatively speaking, I would maybe look at a half point improvement next year and another half point improvement the year after that, and another half percent, uh, improvement thereafter, but we are certainly going to strive to better that as well.
spk03: Okay, great. And then, I mean, looking at OpEx, um, the restructuring exercise, uh, you said completed in June. So there's some residual impact there. Um, to get to the EBITDA margin expansion, would it be, are there some, is it mostly driven by top line growth or would there be some additional OPEX benefit in addition to the growth?
spk04: I'm anticipating a little bit more OPEX benefit as a result of the timing of the last restructuring. If you think about it, we did the restructuring at the second half of June. So our second quarter financial, third quarter financials had fully loaded costs for those individuals for both the month of May and June. Those expenses aren't going to be part of our fourth quarter equation. Again, I'm cautioning that we do have one of our big trade shows in the fourth quarter that's going to go the opposite direction. But overall, I do believe we're going to be seeing some incremental benefit. Now, in terms of revenue, Mirko kind of mentioned that we're seeing more of a flattening of our revenue curve. It used to be that our fourth quarter was a very large quarter. It was in concert with the U.S. year end. But we're seeing that even that business seems to come in more ratably throughout the year. And we did have a surprise opportunity where a programmatic deal came into the third quarter that we firmly expected to see in the fourth quarter. So we're probably seeing
spk05: black revenue in the fourth quarter, give or take.
spk03: Okay. And so actually that was my next question. The government program, I think it was two and a half million. Is that full two and a half million? Is that the pull forward or was that the size of the program and it was pulled forward?
spk04: That was the amount of revenue recognition in the third quarter that we thought was going to be a fourth quarter event. Okay. All right.
spk03: Okay. Thanks. That's great. Thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the quarter.
spk01: My apologies. Your next question comes from the line of Daniel H. Baldini with Aberron Asset Management. Your line is open.
spk06: Great. Thanks very much for taking my call. I have a question that relates really to the U.S. portion of your broadcast business. And that is, you know, in recent weeks we observed a standoff between Charter and Disney. And the settlement, if appears to basically have accelerated the demise of the cable bundle here in the U.S. And I'm just curious, how could you grow your U.S. broadcast business in a world where there's just fewer cable channels out there and fewer local affiliates producing local news as time goes on?
spk05: Thank you. Okay, well, I mean, thank you for the question.
spk08: Well, let me just explain what we actually do in broadcast and where our systems are sold. And we're predominantly in live sports, right? And which means we work with the affiliates and, you know, with the main broadcasting companies, but also that that deal with people like the NFL, people like the Fox News, sorry, sports, not Fox Sports, ESPN. And then they work with people like the NCAAs, and then they go down and down in the different sporting leagues for instant replays, for live monitoring of games, practice fields, et cetera, golf events. So we're not really competing or, I should say competing, we're not looking for cable network type of news, you know, business, if you follow me. We're seeing that live sports is actually growing globally, not just the U.S., right? Now, for us, what we, as a company, we've never been involved in wireless or cellular bonded type of solutions, right, encoding solutions. We've all been fixed, you know, in Iraq at events, but AviWest technology brings us the capability to do 5G wireless cellular bonded technology where, you know, if you think, as an example, think of PGA and golf and, you know, the guys with the backpacks following the golfers, right? I mean, that's That's stuff we've never played with before. Now we are involved in that heavily. So for us, we're seeing our business potentially increasing because we're doing both wired and wireless, and that's a pickup for us, right? A pickup market share that we were never involved in. So from a North American broadcast perspective, it's been pretty strong. I mean, we also benefited from the big COVID bubble, which was tremendous. Everybody doing remote production, everybody doing everything remote. but we haven't seen a slowdown of live sports, which is really what we do very well. Does that help?
spk05: All right. Yeah, that's helpful. Thanks very much.
spk01: And there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call over to Mirka Wicca.
spk05: Okay. Well, thank you, Sarah.
spk08: So I just want to basically thank everybody and all our shareholders. and analysts on the line today for the continued support of Hivision. And we look forward to speaking with all of you in January when we plan to be discussing our full year 2023 results. So that's going to be sometime late January, as always, and really look forward to be able to talk about the whole year results. So thanks again, and we'll see everybody in January. Bye.
spk01: This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
spk08: Your results. Thanks again, and we'll see everybody in January. Bye.
Disclaimer