Q3 2022 Marin Software Inc Earnings Call
Thank you for standing by this is the conference operator.
Welcome to the Marin software third quarter 2022 financial results conference call.
As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded.
Should you need assistance during the conference call you may signal, an operator by pressing star and zero.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Bob Bertz CFO .
Please go ahead.
Thank you good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Marin Software's third quarter 2022 earnings Conference call.
My name is Bob Bertz, I'm, <unk> CFO and <unk>.
Joining me today is Chris lien Marine's CEO .
By now you Should've received a copy of our earnings release, which crossed the wire a short time ago.
The release can also be obtained on our website at investors Dot Marin software Dot com.
Call participants are advised that the audio of this conference call is being recorded for playback purposes.
And that the recording will be made available on the Investor Relations section of our website within a few hours.
Before we begin I'd.
Like to note that our discussion today will include forward looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933.
And the Securities Exchange Act of $19 34.
These forward looking statements include statements about our business outlook and strategy, our expectations for customer adoption and use of our in one platform.
Historical results that may suggest trends for our business.
Our expectations about our ability to improve customer retention and new business bookings and to return to growth our ability to manage our expenses and cash resources the impact of investments in product and technology.
Progress on product development efforts product capabilities, our relationships with publishers and other parties in the digital advertising market.
Expectations for future economic activity and digital advertising spending.
And our expected Q4 and future financial results.
We make these statements as of November three 2022, and disclaim any duty to update them.
For more information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward looking statements as well as risks relating to our business in general we refer you to the section entitled Risk factors in our most recent reports on form 10.
Q and Form 10-K, as well as our other SEC filings.
This presentation contains certain financial performance measures that are different from the financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP and may also be different from similar calculations or measures used by other companies.
A quantitative reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is available in our third quarter 2022 earnings release.
With that let me turn the call over to Chris.
Thank you Bob.
Afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining our call today.
I'll share my observations on the quarter and provide an update on our initiatives to return Marin to growth.
Bob will then provide additional detail on our third quarter results for 2022, and our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2022.
As I highlight each call, we remain committed to return marin to growth and to maximize shareholder value.
Our plan to achieve this is focused on delivering a leading cross channel advertising management platform to enable brands and their agencies to maximize the returns from their online advertising investments.
We call this platform <unk>.
Our efforts are focused on Marines returned to growth and we continue to believe that our strategy is sound as we report a moderation in our revenue decline on a year over year basis.
This past quarter, we saw an improvement in customer retention and promising new business activity and as I did on our last call I am pleased to share that given the encouraging customer feedback. We have received we are increasing our investment in marketing activities across the rest of this year to bring more in one to the attention of more brands and their agencies.
As announced in today's earnings release Q3 revenues came in at $5 million.
Which was at the high end of our previously published guidance for Q3, but still down from Q3 in the prior year.
I should highlight that on a sequential basis <unk> revenues were up from Q2.
Our revenue results for the third quarter continued to reflect a bit of softness in existing customer digital advertising spending, which we believe is due to current economic headwinds.
The softness is less than we saw in Q2, even if most observers of the economy highlight increased economic uncertainty.
As I've mentioned in the past, we don't have a crystal ball at Marin. So we don't know for how long the spending pullback from existing customers will last but our view is that on a relative basis branch will return to digital advertising in the channels that can be managed by our marine water platform given the performance oriented nature of this spending to drive revenue and customer acquisition.
Our guidance for Q4 accounts for this modest AD spend pullback that we are observing across many of our customers.
Our Q3 non-GAAP operating loss was at the high end of our guidance. Despite our lower revenue for the quarter and continued investment in marine one in our team.
Our total cash balance at the end of Q3 was $31 $7 million, providing morin with significant resources to pursue our strategy and to support our customers.
At the end of the third quarter, our global head count was approximately 173.
Our team is in technology roles, reflecting our significant investment in delivering products to drive results for leading brands and their agencies.
Amarin continues to hire and technical field sales and customer support roles.
As has been our practice, we will continue to balance investments with cost management.
As I've shared on past calls Marin seeks to be an ally in digital for the world's leading brands and their agencies customers and prospects traverse a range of channels devices and publishers online on their path to purchase marketers need a cross channel platform to engage at all points of this customer journey and as we have highlighted the walled gardens of Google.
Facebook Amazon and the other publishers do not play well together, leaving brands to connect the dots.
<unk> helps these advertisers to measure manage and optimize their online advertising investments driving performance time savings and better business insights.
Our marine one platform as a performance layer to enable brands to drive great returns from their digital advertising investments across search social and e-commerce channels, including the rapidly growing retail media channel.
High performance layer I'm, referring to marine one as a complement to the robust tools that each of the publishers provides to its customers.
These publisher tools understandably are focused on the AD units of each publisher and encourage brands to spend more with that publisher.
Sure tools generally don't compare advertising performance across publishers don't highlight opportunities to reallocate spend across publishers to improve performance and don't promote a unified view of a customer's journey across channels devices and publishers.
We supplement our marine one platform with support from our experienced team of digital marketing experts, who can help brands to navigate the complex, but rewarding world of digital advertising.
In early September search engine land Dot com, a leading independent digital marketing publication set of marine ones value add they provide a unified platform for search social and E. Commerce advertising and management features include helping digital marketers convert precise audiences win new customers and make better decisions.
A meaningful focus of our product development efforts at this time is <unk> investment in budget optimization capabilities for digital advertisers and agencies.
Marine offers the ability to set and then pacer budget across the group of publishers and associated campaigns, while managing to our business performance targets, such as return on AD spend or ROE as our cost per lead.
These budget management capabilities sit on top of the in channel bidding capabilities in each of the publishers and also offer the ability to forecast results from potential AD investments using what if functionality.
Marine is robust budget optimization capabilities now in Marin won and also is investing to add to these capabilities to better meet the needs of digital advertisers and agencies.
As part of Marines roll to add value to publisher tools and to enhance customer efficiency. We introduced one click support for nearly 20 insights, allowing users to implement changes with the click of a button to quickly improve the performance of their accounts rather than having to work through book sheets.
Marine also expanded our dynamic actions functionality to allow changes to additional objects, including product targets and dynamic targets.
As part of our analytics to action functionality Marine introduced responsive bidding, which allows marine one bidding distinct with publishers more often and with more intelligence yes.
Sponsored bidding detects the change to rules boost our strategy assignments, which will immediately be recalculated.
In marine expanded support for Google Smart bidding settings, giving users more flexibility in selecting the bidding tools that best meet their needs across Google and Marin.
<unk> investments in social publishers during the quarter included enhancements to our support of meta or Facebooks marketing objectives, as well as launching support for managing Snapchat ads in Marin won.
Giving advertisers the ability to connect with over 300 million daily active users with immersive content that inspires action.
Marin also added support for Pinterest bidding, enabling pinterest advertisers the leverage marine one state of the art optimization.
And we continue to invest in our ads partnership with Tic Toc, the fast growing global social publisher.
Analysts estimate that brands will spend some $12 billion on Tictoc adds in 2022 with strong growth forecast for the coming years.
And as I mentioned on our last call our integration with Tic Toc the AD manager gifts gifts brands better insights and enables them to improve the performance of their chip talk campaigns through machine learning and automation.
With 1 billion monthly active users globally tick tack provides brands the opportunity to connect authentically with highly engaged and passionate consumers through the power of shared experience.
As a cross channel platform, we continue to invest to expand our support for Amazon ads in Q3, I am pleased to share that based on Rins breadth and depth of support for Amazon ads, We were awarded Amazon adds advanced partner status.
Also recently participated in Amazon Unbox advertising conference in New York to enable Marin to share with our customers and prospects the latest innovations and strategies from the Amazon ads team.
We also debuted marine one support for Amazon portfolios to provide more management at scale benefits to Marines customers, who are looking to manage multiple amazon campaigns with different budgets and business goals.
As I mentioned in our last call. Brian was recently recognized as a strong performer in the Forrester wave <unk> advertising solutions Q3, 2022 and cited as best in class for BBB search and social advertising based on a thorough evaluation by Forrester of our marine one platform.
Forrester is a highly respected third party technology advisory firm and in this role he is able to access and review the leading providers in a given market space.
First your validation of our cross channel strategy for <unk> marketers is a sign of the importance of coordinating our brand's messaging across channels to reach prospects.
Spec more BTB marketers to consider marine one for their marketing needs as a result of this recognition.
During the quarter Marine was upgraded to a linked in tier one partner their highest designation and is now the only campaign optimization tool in this top tier reflecting marines commitment to this important growing BTB publisher.
In addition to demand for our self service SaaS platform offering we continue to see good interest in Marines managed services capabilities, whereby Marin provides services to customers to support their media buying activities.
Advertisers often have an interim need for staff, especially during this tight labor market, which is now combined with increased economic uncertainty and Rins experienced digital marketers are able to help them to meet their business needs on a flexible basis.
As I've mentioned in past calls.
Our activities to support brands and their agencies take place against an active backdrop of governmental antitrust investigations at the federal and state levels as well as in the EU of the businesses have leading publishers in the digital advertising market there.
<unk> also has the potential of federal legislation to regulate the conduct of the leading publishers that could benefit Marines role as an independent AD management platform.
Marine enjoys co-opetition relationships with the leading publishers and we do not expect significant changes in these relationships in the near term.
Although we are not a party to any lawsuits or targeting these investigations Marin spent approximately $200000 in Q3 on legal fees in conjunction with responding to official requests that marine has received related to these various investigations.
We expect to spend at similar levels in the coming quarter based on the legal activity that we're seeing which is primarily providing information in response to the various the peanuts.
I continue to believe that Marin has a tremendous opportunity ahead.
Erin can benefit as consumers spend increasing time online and add dollars follow them, creating more need for brands to measure manage and optimize these investments to acquire customers and drive revenue outcomes.
We are seeing increasing interest in brands, taking a cross channel approach to their digital advertising investments and marine with our marine one platform and our team of digital advertising experts is well positioned to support leading brands and their agencies in these efforts.
And now Bob will review, our third quarter financial results and our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2022.
Thank you Chris I'll provide an overview of our third quarter results and then share our forecast for the fourth quarter of 2022.
I'll begin with a review of our income statement.
For the third quarter of 2020 to Marin generated $5 million in revenue, which was at the high end of our guidance.
Third quarter revenue was up sequentially from Q2, but was down approximately 19% when compared to total revenue for the third quarter of 2021.
As we have previously discussed we renewed our revenue share agreement with Google for a new three year term commencing on.
On October one of 2021.
The quarterly amount of revenue recognized under the new agreement.
Is it expected to be approximately $1 $8 million.
Versus approximately $2 $3 million per quarter under the previous agreement.
<unk> for the decrease in revenue under the new Google revenue share agreement. Our Q3 2022 revenue was down approximately 11% when compared to Q3 of 2021.
Yes.
We continued to see lower than expected spend from some existing customers during much of the third quarter of 2022, which we attribute to current macroeconomic factors, including fears of a recession.
Our revenue was also negatively affected by foreign exchange rates due to the strengthening of the U S dollar against the Euro and British pound.
We do not know for how long this current economic uncertainty will impact advertisers spending activity.
Our geographic split for revenue was approximately 81% U S. A.
19% International for the third quarter of 2022.
Moving onto our operating results as a reminder, our financial statements and a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release issued earlier today.
Our non-GAAP operating loss was $4 5 million for the third quarter of 2022 as compared to a $2 $9 million loss for the third quarter of 2021.
The $4 $5 million non-GAAP operating loss in Q3 was at the high end of our guidance.
The increase in operating losses compared to Q3 2021 is attributable to a combination of lower revenue and an increase in operating expenses as we make investments in our sales and marketing and product development efforts.
Our non-GAAP .
I'll start over.
Our non-GAAP operating expenses increased approximately 8% as compared to the third quarter of 2021, primarily as a result of strategic investments that we're making in our sales and marketing and product development activities.
Along with higher professional fees.
We ended the quarter with 173 total head count versus 152, a year ago we.
We expect our head count to continue to increase in the near term as we continue to build out our sales and marketing and engineering teams.
In terms of our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a total cash balance of $31 7 million as compared to $37 5 million at the end of the previous quarter.
We will continue to carefully monitor our cash levels as we make investments in our product development and sales and marketing efforts.
Moving onto our outlook for the fourth quarter.
For Q4, 2022, we expect revenue to be in the range of four six to $5 $1 million and our non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $4 nine to $4 5 million.
Our revenue guidance reflects our estimate of the continued impact on advertising spend by our customers due to the uncertain economic environment and our non-GAAP operating loss guidance includes the cost impact of expected investments in our engineering and sales and marketing teams.
This concludes our call for today. Thank you for your time and we look forward to updating you again during our Q4 2022 earnings call.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Hum.
Yes.