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spk04: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the MDF Commerce Q3 Fiscal 2023 Financial Results Investor Conference Call. Today's call will provide information and commentary on the company with a focus on the financial results released this morning before the market opened. We will hear from Lucas Filiotro, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Debra Damole, Chief Financial Officer. If you have any questions following the call, you can reach MDF Commerce at the address at their website, www.mdfcommerce.com. First, here are a couple of housekeeping notices. This call is being recorded and we expect that the recording will be available on the MDF Commerce website later today. The information in today's remarks, including any forward-looking statements, has been prepared as of December 31, 2022. Unless otherwise indicated, MDF Commerce assumes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements to reflect any new events or circumstances, except as may be required pursuant to securities law. We remind you that today's remarks will include forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measurements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please see the Reader Advisory at the bottom of the MDF Commerce's news release, which is on their website and has been filed on www.cedar.com. The company's actual performance could differ materially from these statements. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Filiotro. Please go ahead, sir.
spk06: Mr. Filiotro, your line is opened. Mr. Filiotro, you may be muted.
spk07: Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by while we reconnect the speaker. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk04: Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen. This is the operator. We have reconnected the speakers and we'll continue. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Filiotro. Please go ahead, sir.
spk05: Good afternoon, everyone. Excuse us for these technical issues. Thank you for joining us for our Q3 fiscal 23 financial result call. Before turning to the financial results that we filed this morning, I would like to provide an operational update. MDF Commerce is a developer and operator of digital commerce platforms that facilitates billions of dollars per year of digital commerce transactions for well over 550,000 end-user companies, mostly in North America. Our mission is to enable the flow of commerce. We reported Q3 fiscal 2023 revenues of $31.7 million with recurring revenue representing 78% of total revenue. Also, we're pleased to report positive adjusted EBITDA again this quarter of $0.9 million. We completed the sale of InterTrade Systems on October 4th, 2022. InterTrade was a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporation that we sold for a total cash consideration of $65.8 million. It was $48.5 US, representing a valuation of approximately five times annual revenues. The net cash proceeds received on closing were used to pay down our long-term debt, which was mainly related to the strategic of acquisitions of Periscope Corporation in August 2021. At the end of Q3, the net cash position net of debt from the revolving facility represented $2.1 million, which compares to a net debt position of $57 million at the end of Q2 fiscal 23. The sale of InterTrade strengthened our overall balance sheet position and added focus to our operations. Debra will present the financial results in more detail in a few moments. During the quarter, we continued to add focus and simplify operations across the corporation with our near-term priorities being the reduction of operational costs and improving margins and cash flow. In response to macroeconomic conditions and shifting client priorities, workforce reduction has been implemented across the corporation including practically eliminating the use of contractual consultants. Adjustments were made to right size and align with software demand from our products and services. From the beginning of October 2022, we have reduced our global workforce by approximately 10%. When added to the 9% workforce reduction from the sale of InterTrade, this represents a total workforce reduction of approximately 19%. Another step to significantly reduce costs is optimizing our office footprint. As our hybrid work model has evolved, so has our need for our office space. In December 2022, we closed our offices in Laval, and we planned significant reductions in office space across all of our offices, including our headquarters in Longueuil. The adjustments made should start generating annual cash savings of $0.5 million starting in Q4 fiscal 2023, and with additional cash savings expected to increase over the next few quarters as lease end dates negotiations continue. These decisions were made as part of an effort to ensure the long-term sustainability and competitiveness of our businesses and improve company profitability. The composition of the board and executive team has also evolved, and we are now operating with a simplified structure with five board members and an executive team of eight, including myself. These adjustments lower costs while adding a higher degree of focus and operational efficiency. In the next quarters, our operational focus remains on our e-procurement platform, which targets government agencies across North America. We intend to continue our efforts to leverage our unique market position and ability to serve the needs of the public sector. To date, this sector is focused on digitizing their procurement processes, and the interest level in our technology remains high, including for our transactional model, which is branded the TRX. As such, we are pleased with the progress on pipeline conversion and e-procurement during the quarter. Since the November midterm elections in the U.S., the corporation has signed new contracts in U.S. counties and cities for ePRO and for our contract lifecycle management technology solution. We have now implementations activities beginning over the next few quarters. We are also pleased that as public announcements recently made by various U.S. state governments about committing to replace their paper-based procurement systems by state-of-the-art technology platforms, which is exactly what we provide. Another key development for eProcurements announced in October 2022 was our collaboration with Walmart in delivering an integrated shopping solution to the state of Arkansas, an existing client of ours. With the integration of Walmart.com to AR Buy, the transactional e-procurement system developed by MDF Commerce, buyers can now add items from Walmart to their cart and check out all within the AR Buy system. This innovative collaboration makes it even more efficient for Arkansas buyers to shop while generating savings for the state and ensuring greater transparency and visibility. This collaboration is a great example of the type of private-public opportunities available to our e-procurement platform. Parallel to our efforts of onboarding new buying organizations, we continue to add suppliers to our supplier portals via paid subscription and are constantly looking at additional value-add services which can generate higher revenue per customer and increase loyalty. For the eProcurement platform, we continue to simplify our operations on our various supplier portals, and I'm happy to report that by the end of calendar 2023, we expect to complete the full migration of seven of our small supplier portals into our main BidMed Direct platform, thus continuing our simplification efforts. In the integration of our three major supplier portals, which are BidNet Direct, Merck, and S2G, to a unified supplier hub is next on the product roadmap horizon. As for our e-commerce platform, in particular, Orchestra, after hiring rapidly over the past few years to keep up with customer demand for large deployment and solution integrations, we've seen large e-commerce customers cutting back on their spending or delaying projects. The impact of this market shift is sell primarily in professional services revenue with some impact on volume-based revenue. To offset these impacts, we have recalibrated and rationalized the workforce and professional services, significantly reducing contractual consultants and curbing expenses. The commercial focus for Orkestra remains our order management system, which helps retailers ensure an optimal consumer experience with a hybrid shopping environment. This product does not require a client to re-platform, is out of the box already, and can easily be layered onto existing tech stacks in a relatively short timeframe. This approach increases our addressable market by allowing us to pivot from being a competitor to becoming complimentary value-added partner to any e-commerce technology. For Arcade e-commerce, which offers e-commerce solutions to SMBs in the B2B space, a new integrated payment solution named KIP was launched in October 22. This omni-channel payment processing software offers invoice payment and transaction processing connects seamlessly with the client's ERP and is offered at very competitive pricing. Another key achievement for our K-commerce is the new partnership with Acumatica announced in January 2023. An ERP integrated e-commerce platform developed specifically for Acumatica Cloud ERP users and an all-in-one e-commerce, including a CMS, cloud hosting, as well as a complete post-implementation service and training. The general availability of K-Commerce for Acumatica on the Acumatica Marketplace is scheduled in February 2023, just days away. And now, I'd like to ask Deborah to provide some details on the corporation's financial results.
spk01: Thanks, Luc, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to remind you that you can find our Q3 financial results, including the press release, the management discussion and analysis, and financial statements on www.cdar.com and on the company's website. As Nick mentioned, the sale of InterTrade, which we closed on October 4th, represented another significant step in our efforts to add strategic focus to the corporation and also allowed us to significantly deleverage our balance sheet. The cash consideration transferred at closing, which was almost $64 million, and included closing cash, working capital, and customary post-closing adjustments. The all-cash total purchase price, which includes a transition services amount of $2 million U.S. or $2.6 million Canadian, that we expect to collect in cash over the next few months. The amount is currently held in escrow pending the completion of these transition services. As a result of the disposal of InterTrade, the corporation recorded an accounting gain of $22.9 million, and we are pleased to report that on a tax planning strategy basis, we expect to have no taxes payable on this capital gain. At closing, the corporation repaid the term facility, which had a balance of $21.7 million. and made a payment on our revolving facility in Canadian dollars of $6.8 million, sorry, debt with U.S. dollar facility, and repaid the revolving facility in Canadian dollars of $32 million. At the end of Q3, the cash position, net of debt drawn on the revolving facility, represented a net cash of $2.1 million compared to a net debt position of $57 million at the end of Q2. Restructuring costs paid in the quarter related to reducing the workforce, our transaction-related costs paid on the sale of intertrade had an unfavorable impact on our closing cash position. But as mentioned, the company expects to collect the full amount of the transition services escrow of $2.6 million related to the sale of intertrade, which will be used to pay down the debt when received. Q3 revenue was $31.7 million compared to $30.7 million in Q3 of last year. This represents an increase of 3.3% year-over-year. I would like to highlight that Q3 revenue from InterTrade was only $400,000, and this is the revenue from four days of operation before the sale in Q3. And this represents a decrease of $3 million in revenue compared to both Q2 this year as well as to Q3 last year. Despite total Q3 over Q3 revenue growth of 3.3%, I would like to highlight that right of use revenues, so what we refer to as SAS subscription revenue, increased by 9.9%, or 2.2 million from 21.7 to 23.9, which we believe represents solid growth from this revenue source, which is considered recurring in nature as subscriptions are renewed. We also benefited from another revenue of $0.9 million, recorded in the quarter, for post-closing transition services, which were provided to the acquirer of InterTrade. Yet, despite positive growth in right-of-use revenue, we did see a decline in transaction fee revenues of $1.7 million, of which $1.3 relates to the sold business of InterTrade. and professional services revenue, which decreased by 0.6 million as compared to Q3 of the prior year. Overall recurring revenue was 77.8% of revenue for the quarter, compared to 75.1% of revenue in Q3 of 2022. Recurring revenue as a percentage of total revenue has continued an upward trend from Q3 prior year. I'd also like to highlight that the inter-trade recurring revenue was approximately 90% of revenue for that particular platform, therefore explaining the reduction in total dollars of recurring revenue for the third quarter compared to the same quarter in prior year. We are seeing the impact of macroeconomic environment. In Q3, we had low net single digit organic growth revenue as compared to the same quarter prior year. But to address profitability, we have made cost adjustments across the company to right-size our cost structure and align with softer client demand. As Luke mentioned, during the quarter, we significantly reduced contractual consultants, adjusted our workforce by 10%, and have taken steps to reduce operating costs, including a reduction in our global real estate footprint, which has begun in Q3, as Luke mentioned, and we do continue to perform lease negotiations, and we expect further annual cash savings starting in a few quarters. I'd like to highlight a few items on a platform-by-platform perspective. Our e-procurement platform revenue was $19.8 million, an increase of $17.3 million compared to $16.9 in the last year. Our U.S.-based procurement activities contributed positively to revenue growth, with an increase in revenue representing 23.2% over the same period last year. Recurring revenue as a percentage of total revenue for e-procurement continued to increase from 83% last year to 88.6% for Q3 this year. Our main e-procurement products, namely Merck, BidNet, and S2G, have continued to perform well with combined revenue growth for Q3 this year over Q3 last year of approximately 7%. As we continue to consolidate our platform technologies, and simplify our product offering in eProcurement, as mentioned by Luc earlier, we may experience some revenue growth compression over the coming quarters. However, it is a priority to ensure that this product offering simplification and product improvements will improve the commercial benefits. We had revenue growth in the eProcurement platform even as we migrated clients onto these new eProcurement products. The Periscope revenues for the quarter were 10.3 million, and this compares to 7.7 million in the previous year. However, for those who've been following along in the last year since the acquisition, we did have an accounting fair value adjustment related to the Periscope acquisition that caused a reduction in revenue for the current quarter Q3 of 0.1 million, but that compares to 2.6 million for Q3 of last year. So with the Periscope revenue of 7.7 and the additional deferred revenue, which we actually got to take this year, we do see growth in the Periscope technology. For the e-commerce platform, which we used to call unified commerce before the sale of InterTrade, it generated revenue of $6.8 million, representing a decrease of $3 million compared to Q3 last year. But there are two main reasons. One, of course, being the sale of intertrade, which I already mentioned, reduced revenue by $3 million compared to the previous Q3. And this was partly offset by an additional other revenue in the current quarter that relates to the post-closing transition services that I mentioned earlier provided for the sale of intertrade. From an e-commerce perspective, we did see lower professional services revenue in the orchestra platform as large deployments and solution integrations were completed. And we've seen a shift where large e-commerce customers have been cutting back on their spending and delaying some projects that generate professional services revenue. The impact of this market shift is felt primarily in professional services with some impact on volume-based revenue. From a recurring revenue perspective for e-commerce, it represented 43.5% of platform revenue compared to 59.3% for unified commerce for the same quarter last year. The lower percentage of recurring revenue is due to the sale of InterTrade, which, as we mentioned earlier, had a recurring revenue rate that was trending around 90% of total revenue. We saw a decrease in the professional services that we do not consider recurring revenue, which decreased in orchestra and was consistent with the completion of large client deployments and revenue generating integration projects. And again, this was partly offset by that 0.9 million relating to the transition services on the sale of InterTrade. Our e-marketplaces platform revenues accounted for $5 million of revenue, which is an increase of $1.1 million or 27.5% when compared to Q3 last year. The increase relates mainly to the broker forum, which is our electronics parts marketplace, which continues to benefit from the global supply chain shortage in electronic components, and this marketplace continues to generate higher transaction volumes. From a recurring revenue perspective, the e-marketplace also saw an increase in recurring revenue percentage from 75.4% last year to 81% in the current year. For Q3, operating expenses were $23.6 million, an increase of 4.2% compared to $22.7 million in Q3 2022. While total operating expenses decreased relating to the sale of intertrades, and decreased from workforce reduction since the beginning of Q3. Total operating expenses in total increased compared to Q3, mainly due to higher web hosting costs, transaction-related costs, and restructuring costs. And the total operating expenses were also unfavorably impacted by lower internally developed software costs in Q3 of the current year. The corporation recorded an operating loss of $5.8 million during Q3 2023. compared to $5.5 million in Q3 of 2022. Net earnings were a positive $15.1 million, or $0.34 net earnings per share on a basic and diluted basis, compared to a net loss of $4.1 million, or $0.11 net loss per share basic and diluted in Q3 of prior year. The increase in net earnings for Q3 includes the gain in the disposal of the subsidiary Intratrade, the $22.9 million, which was recognized in Q3 2023. Adjusted net loss was $7.8 million compared to $4.7 million for Q3 of the prior year. The increase of adjusted net loss in Q3 compared to the prior year is mainly due to higher operating expenses and from the transactional related and restructuring costs as explained previously. We are pleased to report positive adjusted EBITDA again this quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was 0.9 million for Q3 this year, compared to 0.7 million for Q3 2022. I invite you to refer to Appendix A of the slide deck for the reconciliation of net earnings to adjusted EBITDA and to adjusted net earnings. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Luke.
spk05: Thanks, Deborah. The sale of InterTrade was an important strategic step for the corporation. It allowed us to significantly improve our balance sheet, simplify our operations, and add focus on procurement and e-commerce. Q3 marked our second quarter in a row with a positive adjusted EBITDA. As I previously mentioned, our goal moving forward is to maintain positive adjusted EBITDA with near-term priorities being the reduction of operating costs and improvements of margin and cash flow. We are confident that we can achieve this through continued cost containment efforts, operational efficiency, and organic growth. Considering the current macroeconomic environment, as well as the opportunities related to government spending initiatives in the U.S., our operational focus and growth efforts will be mainly on our e-procurement platform. Pipeline conversion has picked up, as expected, and we are focused on further exploiting opportunities for this market segment. Due to its unique leadership position in the public sector and firmly established footprint across North America, we expect our eProgrammer platform to play a growing role in our ability to scale, and we are structuring operations accordingly. Looking forward over the next few quarters, our strategic focus will continue to be cost containment, operational efficiency, and focus as well as organic growth. The balance sheet deleveraging following the sale of Intertrade, ongoing cost containment, right-sizing efforts, and higher operational focus on e-procurement are all significant steps towards our vision of a sharper, crisper structure which will allow us to fully capitalize on market opportunities. With that, we would like to open the line up for questions. Dave, pass the call over to you to facilitate.
spk04: Okay, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Amar Azat with Echelon Partners. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is on the timing of the workforce reduction. You guys mentioned 10% since early October. I wonder how much of that is reflected in your numbers. Was it a beginning of quarter event?
spk05: Maybe, Deborah, you have some further comments. We kind of gradually started this at the beginning of the quarter, so the numbers are certainly not fully reflected in the Q3 numbers. you'll have a better view in Q4 as we completed some of that right-sizing actually today, this morning.
spk03: Okay, then maybe like is that, are you done in terms of right-sizing when it comes to the workforce? I know you're working on real estate as well, but in terms of workforce reductions, is that the end of it?
spk05: Yes, it would be.
spk03: Okay. Then if we move to your real estate footprint, you spoke to Laval and Longueuil, which is $500,000 in savings. Then you guys also alluded to the U.S. side. What should we expect there? Like what sort of magnitude, I guess?
spk07: Go ahead, Debra.
spk01: I was going to say that $500,000 is actually what we've done in the Laval offices. And the Longueuil offices, we haven't yet provided some information on that. The lease does end in October. However, we'll probably wait until Q4 to provide the annual savings relating to that particular lease. And then I'll let Luke comment on the U.S. portfolio.
spk05: In the U.S., Amber, we have reduced our office space in Albany already. We are working on the Texas offices also, which will be again reducing given that the company has really adopted a hybrid work method and we only partially use the square footage that we had before. We should generally expect a reduction of something between let's say 50% and 70% of the square footage in pretty much every one of our offices.
spk03: Okay, and without giving timing because I appreciate leases don't all end in the same time when you guys are negotiating, but what sort of dollar magnitude can we eventually have from your efforts in the U.S.? ?
spk05: As Deborah said earlier, we'll probably be in a better position to give you some answers to that when we report our Q4 numbers.
spk03: Okay, that's great. It's been a couple of quarters of, I'd say, a decent uptick in Periscope revenues after all the adjustments. In your prepared remarks, you spoke to an accelerated pipeline conversion I just wonder what is driving that. Is it just like the midterm elections or is there anything else that we should be thinking about?
spk05: Well, certainly we saw significant slowness in customers attributing contracts during, let's say, all of the calendar 2022. And, you know, shortly after those elections, a lot of projects that had been in our pipelines In some cases, for a very long time, we're rapidly approved and we are starting those various implementations. As I mentioned, we have signed multiple counties, cities. We haven't added any large states yet. However, there are some quite large states that have publicly announced that they're in the process of replacing their paper-based systems for procurement. So in many cases, we're in direct discussions with these states and, you know, expect that that momentum should continue. As Debra mentioned, our call them classic e-procurement products are also seeing a seven-ish percent continued growth. And that's very high quality recurring revenue because these are subscription based. So I think the, The efforts that we were doing, especially in the classic products and streamlining, simplifying the offering are giving fruits. And on the other side, I think the market was just waiting to see before making some understandably some significant commitments when you go into digitizing a full procurement function at a complete state level. So we're happy to see that things are finally moving, but I remain prudent as generally government business is slow to obtain, but once started, it's extremely resilient. It's a lot less impacted by recessions And when we look at our transactional model, we have a natural protection against inflation there. So we're very confident in the future.
spk03: Fantastic. Then maybe one last one. Deborah, in your prepared remarks, you spoke to, and maybe I missed it, to compression of growth as you migrate your clients into a common platform and e-procurements. Then correct me if I'm wrong, but do you still feel e-procurements overall would showcase positive growth through that period?
spk01: For sure. We expect there to be positive growth. And the compression we're talking about is these smaller platforms. Luke, I think, mentioned there were seven of them. So as we take subscription revenue off of the seven platforms and transition them to a common platform, we expect that there will be some clients that may not follow or there could be some lag there. But we're seeing so far that there has been growth, even as we've been notifying clients and switching platforms. So we don't expect there to be any kind of complete slowdown of growth. And I'd like further comment on that.
spk05: Yeah, maybe I could give examples. These really small portals had much more of a local reach, I would say, and prices paid by these customers were lower. as we're migrating them to the full Binet Direct platform, which has complete national access, obviously the subscription fees increase. Some customers just don't have the ability to benefit from these higher services, and some do leave. So I think that's what Debra was referring to. Once we're on the full one hub for our suppliers, then I would say we'd get back to normalized growth. As we transition this, some of the customers may not follow.
spk03: Is there a timeline or a set goal as to when you'll complete that transition?
spk05: As I said, for the seven small ones, it'll be completed during calendar 2023. We've already started and converted some of them. But it's like a sunsetting approach because we have some customers that have bought a, let's call it a one-year subscription, and we keep the platform on until all customers finish. And then they're transferred over to the bigger platforms, which are, as mentioned, BidNet, Berks, and FDG. And we'll be doing the same thing with those three platforms, but that's next-year projects.
spk03: Okay, and these are the very old platforms that were acquired like 20 years ago, right, like government bids, IPT, and so on?
spk05: Exactly. Those small, you know, most of them were quite small in nature and offering similar products and services, which is access to bids from various state and local agencies. Now we're bringing all these state and local agencies to the major platforms so that it's all a one-stop shop with the vision of ultimately having one centralized hub for suppliers, which will offer much more functionality and have access to all of our network of currently shy of 7,000 buying agencies.
spk03: Great. Thanks. Congrats on the quarter. I'll catch the line.
spk05: Thank you. Thank you, Amr.
spk04: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. Our next question comes from Kevin Krishnarante with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hey there. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just one on the services that you are providing to SPS, I guess, related to InterTrade. I think there were 900,000 of related services in the quarter. Deborah, maybe can you tell us, can you assume that that all drops down to the bottom line?
spk01: Yes. In fact, from an accounting perspective, it's a carve-out of the total gain. So the gain that we reported for accounting purposes of 22.9 would have been higher if there wasn't this accounting. So essentially, it gets showed as deferred revenue, and then we record it over time as we continue the services. So we will see this again in Q4, probably to the extent of about $600,000. and then it will drop off as we've completed the work.
spk00: Okay, so in this quarter, there was a $900,000, I guess, benefit to EBITDA from that, and in the next quarter, there'll be a, call it a $600,000, and a little bit after that, the Q1? Correct. Okay. Okay, thanks for that. And then the second question I have is just on the e-commerce business. $5.5 million between Orchestra and KE Commerce. It's probably in the MD&A. Can you remind us how much of that is recurring and I guess maybe not related to volumes? I'm just trying to understand how to think about the base of really good recurring revenue that you can use for Q4. Right. So
spk01: Essentially, we've not usually provided all this breakdown, but I guess what is available as information is the total e-commerce revenue, and then the recurring revenue is about 46% of that number. Remember, though, that the other revenue of $900,000 is sitting in that information, so if we didn't have higher revenue from that other revenue, we would actually have more positive recurring revenue. So it trends around the 55% of recurring revenue for e-comm.
spk00: Okay. Okay. I understand. Okay. Thanks for that. And then maybe to Luke and to you both, Deborah, the higher level question just on e-procurement. Over the past year, there's been a few transactions in this space. Some competitors to Periscope have been acquired. They're going through various ownership changes. Can you maybe just talk about the competitive landscape, what you're seeing, and maybe how Periscope is positioned relative to some of these other entities that are out there in the U.S.? ?
spk05: Thanks, Kevin. I assume you're mostly referring to some of the acquisitions that Insight Partners made with GTY, where we saw Bonfire acquired DemandStar and iGov, I forget the exact name. In those specific cases, these really compete in what I call our classic e-procurement products, where they compete with Merck, Binet, and S2G, and we really have a dominating position in that area. With the almost 7,000 agencies and 550,000 suppliers, we trump them very, very significantly. The other areas where we provide services are with our ePro technology and our contract lifecycle management, which we have integrated together and offer as a full source-to-pay procurement solution to large states, counties, and cities. We're not talking here about small customers. We're talking about, in most cases, multimillion-dollar engagements. In those, we would compete with guys like iValua, which is a private company. We sometimes will see some modules from the large ERP providers, which might have a procurement function, but is not specifically adapted for government purchasing. And with our vision to ultimately have a completely integrated portal for making all of the government purchases which will contain all of the contract attribution rules and regulations adapted to a specific government we again think that we have an ability to trump the market here so very confident in our ability to to really master this area and as i mentioned multiple times in the past really take a leadership position in public procurement.
spk00: Thanks very much, Luke. I really appreciate the commentary and context there. I'll pass the line.
spk05: Thank you, Gavin. Nice to speak.
spk04: Our next question comes from Deepak Kashul from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple of follow-ups. First, Deborah, just on the cost cut, so just to make sure I'm clearly understanding this, the 500K in savings is just from the leases. There will be additional savings from the 10% employee reductions, and then there will be an additional set of savings from other leases that are expected to be canceled through Q4. Is that correct?
spk01: Right. So the 500,000 is just our Laval office and existing leases that occurred in Q3. That's the 500,000 annual cost savings. The Longue office lease, which we are planning to reduce by about 75%, it doesn't come for renewal or won't be reduced until October unless we can sublet it earlier. So that will come later. That's what we haven't communicated. The Longue lease is much bigger than the Laval lease. And then the headcount reduction or workforce reduction, because it does include contractual consultants, not just employees. that occurred, as Luke mentioned, starting at the beginning of October and then all the way up to today.
spk02: Okay, and so if you can offer maybe a bit of help in understanding how you guys are budgeting your costs going forward. Are you guys targeting to manage to a specific margin? Are you targeting to manage to a specific dollar? How should we think of that over the next, let's say, 12-18 months?
spk01: Well, we're certainly focused on increasing margins, but we are managing towards remaining positive and increasing our positive EBITDA and making sure that it translates into cash flow positive as soon as possible. So we think about it as managing the profitability of As long as the top line isn't growing as fast as we want, we'll be managing the bottom line through EBITDA, EBITDA margin, and cash flow.
spk02: Okay. Any targets you guys are willing to share at this stage?
spk01: We've not generally given any forward-looking information, so I think we'll be able to see a little bit better in our Q4 where the cost savings on the workforce reduction will become more apparent.
spk02: Got it. And just briefly, So shifting now to the top line, I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the e-procurement business is growing organically. I think you mentioned positive organic growth. When I look at that business and I add back the deferred revenue adjustments, it looks like Periscope is $10.4 million versus $10.3 million last year. And then the total business is up 2% year over year. But on a headline basis, it's up like 17% year over year. which seems to be the return of the deferred revenue recognition. How much growth is coming from that versus pure organic growth in the end market demand? Any sense or color you can give us on that?
spk01: Well, one of the things to remember is that in our Q4 results, we had to do an opening balance sheet adjustment to the transaction model revenue. So we recorded an adjustment in Q4 of $2.2 million. But that $2.2 million of revenue call it revenue reduction, went all the way back to the acquisition. So that represents about $900,000 had we put the adjustment in last year's Q3. So the 10.3 that you referred to as being Periscope plus the deferred revenue adjustment also would have had an implied impact of $900,000 negative revenue. So you're actually comparing 9.3 to 10.3% for Periscope. So there's almost 10% growth there year over year. And then the U.S. business, which now includes Periscope, has been growing at over 25%. So that's, again, positive. And then when we break out the traditional platforms that are the non-transaction model, we talked about 7% organic growth.
spk02: Got it. That's great. Extremely helpful. I appreciate that. I'm always challenged with math. So that's helpful. And then just the last question on the e-procurement business, maybe to Luke. I remember years ago you guys had a great contract opportunity with NHS in the UK. I'm just wondering if you have an update on that contract. How is that progressing? Is it stalled? Is it ended? Are they looking at the transaction model? Any kind of call you can give on that? would be helpful. Thank you.
spk05: Well, thanks for that, Deepak. Unfortunately, after we had this deal, which was, geez, I think it was pre-pandemic, it unfortunately never generated it. This was a sort of a blanket agreement to go and present our offers and solutions to all of the buying organizations within NXS and At the beginning of the pandemic, it all kind of backfired, and ever since it's never been resumed, they got into Brexit issues, supply chain issues. Not much happened there.
spk02: Okay. Okay, well, look, I've had a few questions in there, so maybe I'll pass the line and follow up with you guys with additional questions later.
spk07: Again, if you have a question, please press star and then 1.
spk04: At this time, we are showing no more questions. This concludes our question and answer session. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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