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spk00: Thank you all for joining today for Zoom's second quarter 2023 update conference call. With us on the call representing the company today is Amit Bohansky, Zoom's founder and chairman. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, Amit will answer some questions that were sent to us by investors and other questions we think are relevant to investors as well. Before we begin with prepared remarks, just a couple of comments. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements that are based on current assumptions and subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. Information about these risks and uncertainties are included in the company's filings, as well as periodic filings with regulators, which you can find on CDAR and Zoom's website. Today's discussion will include adjusted financial measures, which are non-IFRS measures. These should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for IFRS financial measures. Finally, today's event is being recorded and will be available for replay through the webcast information provided in the press release. With that said, let me now turn the call over to Amit Bohansky, founder and chairman of Zoomed. Amit, please proceed.
spk01: Thank you, Ben, and good morning to all of you. In the second quarter, the overall economic conditions remain difficult. Historically, companies tend to cut their advertising budgets during periods of economic uncertainty as a cost-saving measure. However, when the business environment becomes more stable and secure, companies often increase their advertising investment to regain market share. On a broader scale, looking past the short to medium macroeconomic atmosphere, we are operating in the digital marketing sector, which historically demonstrated rapid growth. Our market share is not huge, which allows for considerable growth potential once the situation improves. Despite the long-term growth prospects in the sector, we are also noting the challenges that might be faced in the near term, likely due to the lingering effects of economic uncertainty or other factors impacting the industry. These challenges include reduced customer spending, shifts in consumer behavior, and changes in marketing strategies. It's important to remain cautious yet optimistic understanding that the advertising technology space, like any other sector, is subject to the broader economic climate. Companies need to be adaptable and flexible in their strategies to navigate through these uncertainties and position themselves for growth when the recovery gains momentum. In the midst of a complex economic environment, our focus is increasingly directed toward improving our cash flow position and optimizing our expense structure while refocusing on our core business. These commitments reflect our dedication to successfully navigating these challenging economic conditions while striving for better financial results. Currently, we are actively involved in implementing the strategic changes outlined in our corporate restructuring and cost-saving plans, which were initially disclosed in our MD&A filing. These initiatives are designed to streamline our operations and enhance our financial performance. As part of this process, we have decided to shut down business lines that have not been generating profits or with low potential. Streamlining was across the board, including the termination of roughly 40% of our workforce. Instead, we will allocate our resources to our activities and solutions that have shown profitability. This strategic shift will enable us to enhance our competitive positioning, given the recent changes in the market dynamics. We anticipate that these initiatives will lead to the annual cost saving of $4 million. This financial impact undercourses the importance of our efforts in restructuring and cost reduction. As we move forward, we are committed to maintaining a vigilant approach by constantly evaluating our decisions and making necessary adjustments. By doing so, we are confident in our ability to navigate the evolving business landscape and ensure a prosperous future. Financial results. Now I will review the second quarter financial results in detail. Revenue and gross profits. Revenue in Q2 of 2023 were $8.8 million, and gross profit margin was 36%. The revenue reflects a decline of 46% relative to Q2 2022 that's been affected by the global slowdown. an increase of roughly 700 BPS in gross profit margins. These are primarily due to the decline in the crypto sector, which carried high revenues volumes with lower than average gross profit. Revenues increased 2% relative to Q1-23, and management believes that revenues have begun to reach stabilization. Operational cost. Research and development expenses for the second quarter were $1 million, a 38% decrease compared to Q2 2022, reflecting lower depreciation and other R&D expenses. Selling general and administrative SG&A expenses for the second quarter were $2.8 million, a 10% increase, a 10% decrease year over year, preliminary reflecting the decrease in revenues. Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is used as a primary performance measure by the company's management to ensure it has the right structure to support future growth. We define adjusted EBITDA as earning before interest, tax, depreciation, one-time payments, and amortization as adjusted EBITDA for share-based payment and non-recurring operation expenses. Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of 2023 was $0.4 million, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 million for the same period in 2022. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was primarily attributed to the decrease in revenue. A full reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA is available in our MD&A filing. Cash. We have $2 million in cash on the balance sheet as of June 30, 2023. Overview. Now for the benefit of those new to the Zoom story, I wanted to provide a general overview of our business. Zoom has developed and acquired a proprietary patented technology and targets the needs of various segments of digital marketing industry. Zoom offers its services globally through its agents and other business partners all over the globe. As such, the company operates in collaboration with hundreds of publishers and global advertisers. The company aims to constantly provide significant added value to its customers. The company services and technology stack development roadmap focuses on creating technology solutions that seamlessly integrate with a range of digital media resources. Through this integration, the company aims to consolidate these sources, allowing its customers to achieve optimal value for their investment. The primary focus of this effort is directed towards enhancing user acquisition, retention strategies, tailoring them to the unique requirement of each media source of any screen or platform. Furthermore, the company maintains ongoing commitment to staying attuned to the market dynamics and changing demands of its customers. The company actively evaluates the inclusion of novel distribution media channels into its platform. Its adaptive approach ensures that the company remains responsive to the evolving needs of its customers, contributing to its reputation as a forward-thinking and customer-centric company. The company is focusing its efforts, which are based on long-term trends within the online advertising industry, in line with its basic strategies of providing customers digital, mobile-focused advertising technologies products and services for improving their media buying effectiveness, cost, and measurement. Also, enabling customers to manage their user acquisition campaign budget on multiple digital channels, screens, and platforms, including social networks, ad networks, exchanges, content discovery platforms, influencers, and connected TV, all using data-driven KPI-based technology. Managing all campaign-related key information parameters based on each advertiser's measurement KPIs, including if requested, the cost of media, cost of acquisition, lifetime value, ROA, and other key metrics, while working towards integrating full automation, AI, and machine learning-based prediction algorithms into the platform. Offering extra tools and features as part of its product offering is an attempt to simplify campaign management tasks. Such extra tools and features include creative studio editing capabilities for quick ad adjustment, extra layers of user data from app stores and unique optimization abilities for saving time resources on campaign management tasks. Our competitive advantage remains our advertising-advertiser solution, which is built as a software layer on the ecosystem. It is integrated into hundreds of media channels, consolidating data and streaming it into a centralized platform, giving the advertisers the ability to analyze and optimize campaigns on hundreds of channels, thereby saving the advertising resources and maximizing their advertising budget. There is no dependency on any specific supplier or traffic channel. This saves time and resources for advertising, giving them better clarity and more consolidated insights. Furthermore, the platform and its products do not require a software development kit, an SDK. to the implemented allowing for ease of use. It is our view that as a layer of the ecosystem, the company is well positioned within the industry. Outside the wall garden, Google, Meta, Apple, and et cetera, the marketing landscape is very fragmented. Zoom enables advertisers to leverage a wide range of various type of media channels, from social to programmatic, OEMs, SDK network, and more. Their KPIs are achieved in all channels together or as a mix. Now, for some concluding remarks. We remain optimistic about Zoom's long-term growth prospects, including expansion of our technology and abled service strategy. Our focus is the short-term, will-be-healthy bottom-line growth and improving cash flow, all while seeking new growth opportunities. We view this strategy as an important way to build shareholder value and weather the macroeconomics environment. Before I move on to questions, I would like to thank all our employees for their hard work and dedication, as well as our investors who support us.
spk00: Thank you, Amit. We have some questions for you. First, you spoke about streamlining some businesses and consolidating some costs. Can you provide some more specifics here?
spk01: Indeed, rapid changes in the digital marketing industry and the macronomic situation meant we had to reconsider future potential and trajectory of some of our offering and plans. During the end of Q2, we executed our biggest change in the company since founding it. We shut down activities that were not profitable, lacking near-term growth potential, like our search solution, and decided to cease investments in market changes impacted offerings, like our skipper product and our publisher monetization activity. By doing so, We were able to cut expenses dramatically and align our efforts of profit and tech expansion. We expect annualized net cost saving of approximately $4 million.
spk00: Okay. Thank you. We're now at least four quarters into the crypto winter. Can you expect revenue decline to decelerate as we move forward?
spk01: Yes. It has been a year, at least since crypto winter. We at Zoom have always worked with crypto companies as they were ideal customers for our performance marketing platform. But we always worked also with other types of customers. Looking at the last year, I would say that crypto has decreased drastically for Zoom. Our blend of customer types became a lot more versatile. We aren't dependent on crypto. In the same period last year, Fintech and mainly crypto held roughly 60% to 70% of our revenues, as currently less than 10% of the business with e-commerce and gaming leading the segment share.
spk00: All right, thank you. So you have spoken about diversifying your customer base away from crypto. Can you speak about some of the sectors that are growing for you and some growth clients as well?
spk01: So as I explained, we have cut our crypto-based clients dramatically. We still have crypto-based activity, but a lot smaller. In the last year, we have grown in different sectors such as e-commerce, product goods, companies, manufacturers, and on-demand and delivery services.
spk00: Okay. Well, that is all the questions we have for today. Many thanks to everyone for participating on today's call, and we look forward to hopefully speaking with you again shortly.
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