logo

Tiny Ltd.

Q32024

11/15/2024

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Good morning and welcome to the tiny limited third quarter 2024 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise and after the speaker's remarks there'll be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time simply press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question please press star followed by two. Before we start we'd like to remind you that all amounts discussed on this call are denominated in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated. Please note that statements made during this call may include forward-looking statements and information and future-oriented financial information regarding Tiny and its business and disclosure regarding possible events, conditions or results that are based on information currently available to management, which indicate management's expectation of future growth, results of operations, business performance and business prospects and opportunities. Such statements are made as of this date hereof and TANI assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect influence, disclosures or circumstances, except as required by applicable securities laws. Such statements involve significant risks and uncertainties and are not a guarantee of future performance or results. A number of these risks and uncertainties could cause results to differ materially from the results discussed today. Given these risks and uncertainties, one should not place undue reliance on these statements and information. Please refer to the forward-looking statements and information and future-oriented financial information section of the company's public filings, which include, without limitation, Tiny's MD&A and its earnings press release, issued today for additional information. I'd like to now turn the call over to the executive team from Tiny for today's earnings call.

speaker
Jordan
CEO

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to welcome you all to our second earnings call as Tiny, the public company. This is also our first full quarter. Mike and myself, Mike is here with me in the room. Our first full quarter with us at the helm. We've been busy at work. We're excited to tell you about everything we've been up to, and I'll just jump right in here. So some highlights to go through, uh, you know, just to be, but that was up slightly from Q2. Uh, this is really a result of an ongoing cost rationalization initiative that we've been undertaking across the entire company. Um, you know, what we've been trying to do across the portfolio was looking for opportunity, uh, within finance, uh, HR vendor consolidation. Really trying to understand where we can get smart across the portfolio and leverage our shared services. And, you know, just throughout the quarter with rationalization alone, like we believe that we're going to save over $4 million in an annualized basis. So, you know, what you're seeing here in this quarter, the early results of that, and, you know, you'll start to see the impact of that flow through pretty fulsomely or actually more And sorry, Q4 24 and in 2025. You know, we highlighted our strategic priority to repay debt and reduce our leverage ratios. And you'll see we paid down debt to the tune of $4.9 million in this quarter. You'll continue to see that come down next quarter and through 2025. And we'll highlight that a bit more in the presentation. As I mentioned last quarter, I just want to highlight some portfolio companies in each of these presentations, and we picked three here. Creative Market actually established itself as the world's largest font marketplace, and this really speaks to its evolving strategy or its continued focus on enterprise. And as we continue to add more merchants, more digital assets, make, you know, improve site experience, improve search. This is really helping us achieve that strategy. Archetype, one of the premier developers of themes in the Shopify space, launched a product called DevKit. And this really speaks to our focus on improving recurring revenue. So, you know, traditionally, the themes have been one-time purchases. And, you know, Archetype has been hard at work over the past year developing a subscription-based developer toolkit aimed at at more agency enterprise customers. And this is in the service of, you know, making Archetype the theme provider of choice through, you know, a high functioning source code availability, which essentially means you can develop themes faster, you can open stores faster, you have, you know, access to all the tools that Archetype has, and we get a subscription fee from that. And then finally, we wanted to highlight one of our acquisitions in the fund. It's been one year since we made a majority investment in Letterboxd within the tiny fund. And we're excited to note that they've exceeded 15 million members and they've grown active users by more than 62% since the acquisition. And, you know, we'll try to make a habit of highlighting some of the activities in our fund and telling you a bit more about that. just speaking quickly about revenue um you know the revenue change from q3 23 to 24 was mainly driven by uh you know project timing and a big strategic shift um and focus to more retainer work and longer term work in the digital services business one of the big strategic priorities there has been making sure we're doing higher margin work making sure we have visibility and revenue so really a lot of that shift is in the service of getting revenue that looks like that. Another change driven by the creative platform, we've made executive changes at both Dribbble and Creative Market in 2024. We've realigned strategic initiatives there. In Dribbble, we soft launched a designer marketplace, which now allows designers to transact and get project work on the site. We're very excited about that. We're very excited to show you the results of it in the coming quarters. And in creative market, again, I mentioned on the previous slide, but we're really focused on improving site experience, improving search, adding merchants, treating them well, and pursuing that enterprise strategy. The revenue decrease quarter over quarter compared to Q2 was mainly driven by the timing of that major enterprise deal in our creative platform. And as we look forward, we're busy at work on Black Friday, Cyber Monday season in our software and apps portfolio. This is traditionally the busiest time of year for us. We have a bunch of offers underway, and that's all in the service of adding merchants, selling themes, and serving our customers very well. I wanted to speak a bit about recurring revenue, and this is a big strategic focus for us, particularly in the software and app segment. As I mentioned, we're heading into BFCM. We recently merged Stamped and Repeat, and this is all in the service of moving customers into higher contract values and tying our revenue and tying our contracts more to GMV or ROI. So if you think about Stamps, You know, pursuing more of a loyalty retention revenue driving strategy. That's all in the service of getting more enterprise customers and capturing more of that. Um, we wanted to highlight again, you know, some of this growth is due to our acquisition of media net and. You know, our, our focus does remain looking at, uh, opportunities in MNA that enhance this profile for the business. I'll turn it over to Mike here who will talk through adjusted EBITDA.

speaker
Mike
CFO

Okay. Thank you, Jordan. So as you will see here, we are back to reporting adjusted EBITDA as a key metric in our overall performance. This is important to us given feedback we've heard from the market, our focus on deleveraging, and the ongoing cost rationalization program that Jordan alluded to. This is a metric that we will continue to report going forward and have expectations for growth on both on an overall dollar value on a quarter to quarter basis and on a margin basis, quarter to quarter and into 2025. Jordan touched on the cost rationalization program. It did have some impact in the financials in this quarter, but you'll largely see the impact of the program flowing through Q4 and Q1 of 2025. If you focus just for a minute on the right side of the page, you will see that the Q3 was our best quarter for adjusted EBITDA of the year so far, and we will continue to focus on margin improvement and improving this number into 2025. We've again provided detailed on our adjusted free cash flow post debt servicing, also a key metric as we continue to manage the leverage profile of the business. All the work we're doing to improve operations will also have a positive impact on free cash flow as a metric going forward. You can see where we're focused, you can see where we're trying to drive the business, and you can see an improvement and adjusted free cash flow in Q3 of 2024 against Q2 of 2024, and we expect this number to continue to increase going forward. So both what I talked about on the adjusted EBITDA and on the free cash flow is important as we continue to manage the leverage profile. We made significant repayment of debt through the course of 2024 thus far. Gross debt levels have decreased by 14% through the first three quarters, and you can expect an additional approximate $4.5 million Canadian dollars to be repaid in Q4. While on a ratio basis, the net debt to adjusted EBITDA is slightly up for the quarter. We do have some small negative impact on conversion of the gross debt levels that impact this number. Again, the overall debt repayment of $4.9 million in the quarter is ultimately what we should be focusing on here, and we'll continue to see our metrics levels increase or improve, excuse me, as adjusted EBITDA increases once we see the full impact of the cost rationalizations and our continued focus on operations and revenue, which should improve in Q4.

speaker
Jordan
CEO

All right. I'm back. Something that we've been asked from investors and just through our discussions with analysts is trying to get a look at investment performance and understanding what we look at and understanding how we execute on thesis. It has been a year since we acquired Clean Canvas. Clean Canvas was, you know, one of the top theme providers in the Shopify theme store, a space that we knew extremely well given our ownership of Architect and Pixel Union. You'll see that the purchase price we paid and, you know, wanted to just kind of underline the thesis that we had at entry and tell you a bit about the results. When we bought the business, it was performing very well, but we knew that we could implement best practices around license enforcement. Essentially what happens in the Shopify space is a lot of these themes end up being pirated and put online for people to use without paying for a license. And what we developed with an archetype was a really novel way of finding these and acting on them and then recovering actually significant amount of pirated license. So, along with that, and along with price optimization, we were able to grow revenue and clean canvas by over 32% year over year. we're still expecting clean canvas to innovate we're still expecting them to launch an additional theme towards the end of the year early next year and actually you know part of the thesis is really learning about what they did well, so you know they're. their support team and the way they've done support and utilizing AI for that. That's something that we've adopted across our theme portfolio. And it's something that we've taken to our other businesses. And, you know, finally, I mean, the price we paid, you know, we thought was quite fair at acquisition and, you know, given we haven't really added cost to that business and we've grown revenue, we're really driving for the first year, a high ROI fee on that acquisition. So again, I mean, like, This is the type of acquisition that we want to do going forward. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to pay prices like this every time, but we want to understand the space, understand the business, potentially have something in our back pocket around proprietary best practice or know-how where we can use that lever to enhance revenue or reduce cost. And we'll continue to tell you great stories about the acquisitions we make. You know, finally, we outlined four strategic priorities on the last call, and I just wanted to provide an update on each of these and tell you how everything's going. I think it's become apparent throughout the presentation and throughout the quarter that we're really driving towards all of these. And again, you know, really focused on increasing cash flow. This ongoing cost rationalization is definitely going to impact that. You're seeing it start to happen in Q3, and you'll see the results of that beyond. We have not let up on strategic organic growth initiatives. I talked to a number of things we're doing at creative market, archetypes, stamped, you know, new dribble marketplace. We're very excited about the work we're doing there and it's all in the service of growing revenue and really growing recurring revenue. We have not let up on evaluating acquisition opportunities where, you know, we are very busy at work looking at stuff, you know, potentially in software space or that has a great recurring revenue profile. And we're excited about that. It still remains a good market. We're in discussion with a number of other VC companies that are also looking for long-term homes, and we remain very optimistic about that. You can see our commitment to reducing debt levels and increasing our, sorry, improving our leverage profile. And you'll continue to see that going forward. And finally, you know, making sure incentive plans are well in line with our employees and really focused on long-term cash generation. And something we're focused on internally is we've been developing a new LTIP program for our portfolio companies. You know, we've been trying to find ways that align our portfolio companies, shareholders and point us all in the right direction. So we're really excited about that. I will open it up for questions and we'll do our best to get you what you need.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. Please press star followed by the number one if you'd like to ask a question and ensure your device is unmuted locally when it's your turn to speak.

speaker
Max Ingram
Analyst, Canaccord

first question today comes from max ingram with canaccord please go ahead your line is open hey guys thanks for taking my questions uh first thing i'd say it's nice to see you're adding even more disclosure around the adjusted ebitda and free cash flow so that's appreciated the first question for me is on the the cost i know you guys have been stream focused on streamlining costs and you're expecting to realize that four million of cost savings wanted to get a sense of How much more runway you might have on this front?

speaker
Jordan
CEO

I'm pretty optimistic. We're really, really conscious of our focus to date has been on looking at overhead, vendor consolidation, getting really smart about the way we operate these businesses, making sure we can scale them as we add acquisitions. So I would say You know, we've been more largely focused on that and less operational. You know, there has been some operational change. I'll give you an example that, you know, like we're looking at a big vendor consolidation with AWS where we think, you know, we can save upwards of 20 or 30% of that contract. And, you know, we spend around $4 or $5 million a year. So do I think there's opportunity to save more over the coming year? Absolutely.

speaker
Max Ingram
Analyst, Canaccord

still too early to tell whether you know we'll get another four million dollars out of the business okay that's helpful thanks jordan uh my next one is on the debt you continue to pay down debt and when you look at your existing debt there's a couple of different pieces and i wanted to get your thoughts on is there any or how are you thinking about potentially refinancing or is there any idea to maybe consolidate the debt just any color would be helpful

speaker
Mike
CFO

Thanks, Max. Thanks for that question. It's Mike here. I'll take this one. Right now we're looking at a variety of alternatives. Timing-wise, the first maturity is in April of 2026. So we do need to have something thought through by obviously April of 2025 to ensure that, you know, the debt doesn't go current. There's opportunities to extend that first maturity date, okay? So we won't come up against any accounting issues per se. But absolutely, as we think about this, there are a variety of ways that we could look at refinancing the debt. Some of it will depend on maybe what our next strategic move is and what we do to potentially be additive to the business and additive to the cash flow profile of the business. That might create more opportunities for a different type of piece of paper, like you sort of mentioned, on a consolidated basis. That could be something we look at down the road. Probably not today. But the reality is we have time to look at all of our options here on this refinancing. We're well hedged on these pieces of paper. Our rates are very reasonable at current interest rate levels. So we're monitoring that as well. So we don't have specific time pressure because we can always extend that first maturity. But as we think about enhancing the overall cash profile of this business, then we would want to think about a refinancing that gives us an ability to extend out our principal repayments, extend out maturities, obviously take advantage of rates. All those items are going to be important as we think through this and where we take it. So we're very focused on it.

speaker
Max Ingram
Analyst, Canaccord

uh and we should have you know various options that we'll we'll be working through okay thanks for the color uh mike and then maybe if i can squeeze just one last one can i squeeze one last one in yeah um have you have you guys given any thought to the future of the of the fund i understand it's fully invested in clothes but sort of any thoughts on where you go from here and then i'll pass the line

speaker
Jordan
CEO

Patrick Corbett- yeah no totally I think I think we we've really been engaged with the lps. Patrick Corbett- They are you know they they like the tiny story they're they're kind of we're we're we're open to discussing certain options around liquidity and stuff like that, like you know nothing has really progressed on that front, but like I will say. Patrick Corbett- You know we're focused on doing the work, providing more disclosure it's one of our strategic priorities so. at the very least you guys will get more information um you know there is a path to potentially you know consolidating that entity or or getting it into tiny but again something we're working on in the background great thanks guys thank you and as a kind reminder it's staff followed by one to ask the question our next question comes from daniel chan with td carwin please go ahead your line is open

speaker
Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Cowen

Hi, good morning. Shopify is doing really well in international markets. Just wondering if you're seeing the same success in these markets, or is there some sort of R and D that needs to happen to make your products applicable in those markets?

speaker
Jordan
CEO

No, you know what, we're, we're getting some of that, we're getting some of that benefit. And, uh, you know, like I know, I know actually just recently Shopify has had a lot of success in Japan and they've been pushing on that market quite a bit. And I, I actually asked one of our portfolio companies whether they're seeing the same thing and our wholesale club business is seeing a lot of that in Japan. So, I mean, we're getting some of it. I think some of the stuff we need to do is potentially, you know, enhance our languages and get into those markets. But yes, I mean, we're seeing some of it. Are we seeing the same impact in terms of GMB and things like that? Not quite yet, but it's something that's on our It's on our strategic priorities, like, you know, trying to tie our contract to revenue and trying to tie our contract to GMV growth. So we're seeing some of it is the answer.

speaker
Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Cowen

That's helpful. Thank you. And then maybe flipping over to the digital services side, continue to see some weakness there. I think you talked about the timing of certain contracts. But can you talk more broadly about whether you're seeing an improvement in the overall market? We've seen some signs of improving market conditions from some IT vendors, but just wondering if you're seeing the same thing.

speaker
Jordan
CEO

I would say yes. We are definitely seeing signs of improvement, margins coming up, pipeline has improved drastically at this time last year versus right now. You know, I don't want to speak too soon about the quarter, but we're happy with the way things are looking, and we've definitely seen demand come back.

speaker
Mike
CFO

Yeah, maybe, Dan, just from a sort of quarter-to-quarter basis, the Q3 was certainly sort of back-end loaded, and we've seen some of that roll forward into Q4. I think so. Your question about seeing some, you know, some others, see some growth. I think we're starting to see that too. We just want to be mindful that it's sort of two to three months. Let's hope that carries into 2025.

speaker
Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Cowen

And as you see some of this growth, how do you think about that relative to some of the restructuring that you're doing? How are you positioning the business for this potential resurgence in growth while you're trying to save costs?

speaker
Jordan
CEO

Yeah, so in digital services, we are just being extremely cautious on the hiring front. I think our strategy is really, okay, use what we, you know, it's like number one, use what we have. Number two, can we get flexible contractors or can we be flexible in adding while still doing revenue? And then if we have a high degree of confidence in our retainer and long-term contract work, it's time to now start hiring up and actually you know, adding more to the business so that we can support that work. And like I said, because we've shifted more to that retainer long-term contract work, it's something that we can actually do right now. So that's the plan.

speaker
Mike
CFO

Yeah, and I think the other thing too, Dan, just on like where the majority of these cost savings came from, it wasn't necessarily like developers or operational companies. it was certainly more efficiencies around, you know, the broader finance department, the broader HR area, legal, that type of stuff, IT, as Jordan mentioned. So that's really been where the focus has been. So we've still, I think, got the people, right, positioned in the right place to supplement the growth.

speaker
Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Cowen

That makes sense. Thank you. And then you're talking about

speaker
Jordan
CEO

evaluating more investment opportunities can you talk about how much capital you may be able to deploy over 2025 and how would you go about funding that just considering that your leverage is about three yeah i i think listen we you know we're we're evaluating some you know potentially strategic stuff that would be more on the small side and and again stuff that we could find potentially with cash or you know some of our some of our you know facilities that we have available. I'd rather not use the facilities right now. So again, so we've got some cash available or some ways that we can get creative. And again, for the right large acquisition, I think we're open to looking at the equity market and raising and, you know, all of the service of reducing our leverage profile, adding free cash flow, improving a recurring revenue base. So I think we're, you know, we're looking at acquisitions like that and we're open to doing that.

speaker
Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Cowen

Great, thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'll turn the call back over to the management team.

speaker
Jordan
CEO

Well, thank you guys for joining us early on a Friday morning, and yeah, just really look forward to doing this again next quarter, and have a great weekend.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

This concludes our call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.

Disclaimer

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.

-

-