Q4 2022 Phunware Inc Earnings Call
Speaker 1: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Fundware's fourth quarter and full year 2022 investor conference call.
Speaker 1: Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Speaker 1: Joining me today are Russell Bythe, Chief Executive Officer.
Speaker 1: Randall Crowder, Chief Operating Officer and Matt Aune, Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker 1: The format today will include prepared remarks by Ross, Matt and Randall, followed by a question and answer session.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, today's discussion will include forward looking statements.
Speaker 1: These forward-looking statements reflect current views as of today and are based on various assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties disclosed in the risk factors section of our SEC filings.
Speaker 1: Actual results may differ materially and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Additionally, the matters being discussed today may include non-GAAP financial measures.
Speaker 1: Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial information is set forth in the earnings press release which is available on the investor relations section of Fundware's website at investors.fundware.com.
Speaker 1: I encourage you to visit investors.fundware.com to access not only the earnings press release, but also the current investor presentation, SEC filings, and additional collateral on Fund?ware.
Speaker 1: At this time I would like to turn things over to Fumware CEO Russell Byce. Sir, please proceed.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much and welcome to our fourth quarter in full year 2022 investor call. My first S1, we're CEO .
Speaker 2: Fundware has been on my radar for quite some time as I admired the company going back a decade when I was COO at Mutual Mobile. This organization has always been known for its great talent, top customer brands, and its great work. As the company recently transitioned its business model from custom app development to a SaaS product model, it's at the stage where I can be the most effective in elevating our corporate trajectory to the next level.
Speaker 2: wrestle with digital transformation strategies.
Speaker 2: Fundware sits at the cross-section of three important markets to help them.
Speaker 2: First, the $187 billion mobile application market that is fairly mature, but still growing at a 13.4% CAGR.
Speaker 2: Second, the $28 billion location-based services, LBS market, is growing at a 23.5% gagger as technology improvements have helped customers finally realize its true promise. This is a nascent industry that remains in the early innings due to two tough years of the pandemic.
Speaker 2: the gradual unlocking afterward, and then the economic uncertainty that arose during the past year.
Speaker 2: The third market is often referred to as integration platform as a service, IPaaS, but at $3.7 billion and a 30% CAGR, it's becoming increasingly important as companies demand interoperability from disparate third party systems.
Speaker 2: Although the pandemic delayed our market penetration, we have a robust product with immense upside potential, which is one of the key reasons I was drawn to leading Fundware as its new CEO . Our SaaS products enhance the user experience by providing consumer grade, state-of-the-art mapping and wayfinding, and mobile engagement to help brands reach customers where they are when they are most in need.
Speaker 2: brands to improve the total experience.
Speaker 2: In particular, these provide a strong ROI to customers in the hospitality and healthcare verticals with Lighthouse brands guiding the way.
Speaker 2: And beyond those verticals, we have convention centers, smart workplaces, multi-dwelling units, MDUs, sporting events, retail, entertainment, and more that all struggle to manage complex user journeys while still delivering best-in-class consumer engagement. For our go-to-market strategy, we're strengthening our marketing efforts to make our customers more comfortable and more accessible.
Speaker 2: implementation into one SAS price.
Speaker 2: This makes it easier for them to say yes while retaining healthy margins over three to five year agreements. Our deployment with Gaylord Hotels by Marriott has just finished. The Opryland, Texan, and Rockies properties have been fully operational and the Gaylord Palms and National are now live more than a week ahead of schedule.
Speaker 2: On the blockchain side, the idea behind FunCoin and FunToken is really astounding. A marketplace between brands and consumers, where brands can reward consumers for the right to engage them. Brands benefit by being able to identify and engage more effectively, whereas consumers benefit through the tokenomics of the marketplace.
Speaker 2: This is a far superior model compared to the Web 2 economy where user's data is someone else's product and it doesn't belong to them.
Speaker 2: Our objective with the blockchain initiative is to disintermediate that outdated Web 2 surveillance model.
Speaker 2: That said, we're kicking a slow and steady approach on this given the current crypto winter and regulatory headwinds. Our offerings will be privacy preserving and fully compliant. The first steps we've made are with the Fun Wallet app and we've recently added the Funbox game in version 1.5.
Speaker 2: where users can earn and spend FUN token. This proof of concept has consumers earning and spending crypto with a wallet.
Speaker 2: Funwall.com introduces videos and an offer wall, allowing brands to reach and reward consumers for their participation.
Speaker 2: Eventually, we see this as part of our SaaS offering for brands to engage with their customers. We'll be able to include ads and offers as a module in our industry solutions that will let brands reach the audiences they want.
Speaker 2: On the hardware side, our light business unit equips consumers with the gear they need providing cost-effective high-end PCs to gamers. Now that the team has relocated its facility in Round Rock, Texas and implemented a new ERP system, we expect profitable operations and growth going forward.
Speaker 2: Light has several key priorities for 2023. We're introducing workstations to the product mix, extending our reach to power business users.
Speaker 2: We're also optimizing lights unit economics with firm targets for cost per acquisition, CPA, and cost per build, CPP, that will ensure profitable growth.
Speaker 2: And now our CFO , Matt Aune, will cover our financial performance.
Speaker 3: Thanks for us, and good afternoon, everyone.
Speaker 3: I'd like to thank you all for joining us today for a review of our full year 2022 financial performance and our progress against key strategic initiatives. For clarity, I'll be discussing DAP financial measures unless otherwise specifically noted.
Speaker 3: Our press release 8K website provides a reconciliation of all gaps to non- GAAP financial revoke.
Speaker 3: Net revenues for the full year 2022 total 21.89.
Speaker 3: which represents 105% growth year over year.
Speaker 3: A platform revenue represented 30% of net revenues or 6.5 million.
Speaker 3: Our hardware revenue, or light by firmware, represented 70% of net revenues totaling $15.3 million.
Speaker 3: Gross margin was 23.3% compared to 33.9% last year.
Speaker 3: On a non-GAAP adjusted basis gross margin was 24.3% compared to 43.9% last year. Platform gross margin was 53.8% compared to 46.8% last year.
Speaker 3: We encourage to see platform gross margins increase year-over-year as we continue on our long-term goal to achieve 75% plus gross margins for platform revenue.
Speaker 3: Secondly, our new business line, Life by Funware, has a different gross margin profile than we have had in the past.
Speaker 3: We have done a lot to fully integrate light into funware over the past year, and we are pleased to see gross margin dollars increase nearly 7x from Q4 2021 to Q4 2022.
Speaker 3: As expected, with a full year of Lite-by-Phoneware operational expenses in 2022, versus just Q4 in 2021, we did see a significant increase in operational expenses.
Speaker 3: Total operating expense was $34.6 million, up from $20.5 million last year. Other non-cash operating expense items were stock-based compensation, amortization of intangibles, and impairment of goodwill in 2022, making up a combined $5.6 million this year compared to $4.1 million in the prior year.
Speaker 3: By excluding these one-time and non-cash charges, adjusted operating expense was $29 million compared to $16.3 million last year.
Speaker 3: non-GAAP .
Speaker 3: adjusted EBITDA loss was 23.5 million compared to 11.7 million master.
Speaker 3: Net loss was $50.9 million, or 51 cents per share, compared to $53.5 million net loss, or 71 cents per share last year.
Speaker 3: Shares used to calculate earnings per share were 99 million in share versus 75.4 million last year.
Speaker 3: Our backlog and deferred revenue at the end of the quarter totaled 8 million.
Speaker 3: Moving to the balance sheet, we close the quarter with $2 million in cash and $9.7 million in debt.
Speaker 3: We currently hold approximately 6 million of cash and digital assets based on today's prices. We are actively working on several options to expand our operational runway and have recently agreed to terms with street reveal capital to defer our final four debt repayment the second half of 2023.
Speaker 3: This will enable us to further evaluate various debt and equity options to fund operations as we continue to push towards cash neutrality.
Speaker 3: We will remain active with both financial conferences and investor meetings in our efforts to tell our story and further strengthen our corporate profile in the capital market. The next major financial conference we'll be attending is the 18th Annual Meet-Em Technology and Media Conference May 16th through the 18th. We look forward to many one-on-one conversations and meetings with high-class institutional investors at the event.
Speaker 4: war on Ukraine to inflation and possible recession, we've weathered the storm. Of course, Roosevelt did warn, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. I assure you, we are skilled, resolved, and charting the right course. As I mentioned last November , I intend to focus my comments around five core objectives.
Speaker 4: First, improving the features and scalability of funware to not only drive adoption and shorten our sales cycle, but also enhance our margin profile.
Speaker 4: What excites me most is we now have notable reference customers in three of the largest markets where our solution can solve the biggest pain points.
Speaker 4: healthcare, hospitality, and the workplace.
Speaker 4: Digital transformation in healthcare alone is a half a trillion dollar market, with the largest driver being eHealth due to its ability to increase patient satisfaction and reduce operational costs. While our feature-rich digital front door is an industry leader, scalability will rely on our ability to measure and justify a more diverse and more diverse patient experience.
Speaker 4: market for smart hospitality is projected to reach 60 billion by 2028, it's growing at nearly double the rate of healthcare, and we're seeing analogous interest across our pipeline. As Russ highlighted earlier, our smart hospitality solution at Atlantis, Bahamas generated over 1.2 million in 2022.
Speaker 4: but over half of that was prior to guests' arrival. Guests were downloading the app, exploring all 140 acres of Paradise Island, planning their experiences and spending money all from the comfort of home. This kind of success is how we sold Gaylord Hotels by Marriott.
Speaker 4: In six months, we've deployed our smart hospitality solution across the entire Gaylord Hotel's portfolio, which at over 12 million square feet represents five of the top 10 largest non-gaming convention center hotels in the United States. However, what I'm most proud of with this deployment is that it required no new code.
Speaker 4: LBS solution to specifically target convention centers. This dynamic mapping and wayfinding capability will help event attendees route to the right exhibits while organizers can message attendees based on proximity or persona. Organizers and venues can seamlessly reconfigure convention centers space.
Speaker 4: and our routes will adjust to account for any new layouts without additional hardware or fingerprinting.
Speaker 4: Lastly, on the product front, we recently announced the availability of our Experience Optimizer. This feature enables a single mobile application to autonomously deliver any number of experiences by seamlessly configuring and launching a unique JavaScript object notation that contains specific information on layout,
Speaker 4: features, themes, content, integrations, and maps. Although each experience is launched from a single mobile application, every experience can load and function like its own native mobile application based on building, persona, or even subbrand. Of course, no amount of features will matter if we don't solve for our second core objective of scaling revenue.
Speaker 4: For example, Ingram Micro is already committed to upwards of five qualified leads per quarter, while Diversified hosted company-wide training on fundware for all of its representatives this month. We believe this kind of channel-partner buy-in and engagement will be critical to scaling revenue this year. For more information, visit www.diversified.com
Speaker 4: However, given the nature of the healthcare and hospitality industry in particular, some of our customers may ultimately represent our most important channels. To that end, we are in the process of deploying another Marriott property while at Lea Beach Resort in Maui, but that new customer has led to strategic discussions with Marriott about how to more effectively partner going forward.
Speaker 4: To support these sales efforts and with the help of a third party expert, we are in the process of auditing our entire sales process along with associated collateral. Expect to see tighter language around our fundamental value propositions with objective ROI justification to help us not only prospect but also shorten our sales cycle.
Speaker 4: Another important change we've made to shorten our sale cycle is streamlining our contracts and pricing.
Speaker 4: Our new approach to selling is an all-in methodology that accounts for software licenses, hardware, professional services, and support at one easy-to-understand price per year.
Speaker 4: Despite this purposeful focus on our SaaS solutions, we remain committed to our third core objective of launching a compliant blockchain ecosystem that better incentivizes and authenticates consumer engagement.
Speaker 4: We don't believe blockchain is a pivot or a distraction, but rather a natural extension of our SaaS offerings that seeks to reimagine how brands engage with consumers. Imagine a resort rewarding you for following a treasure hunt to exciting new amenities just as easily as a hospital rewarding you for showing up on time. As Russ has already highlighted, we have made significant advances to fund wallet that will help us better.
Speaker 4: trading to follow shortly thereafter.
Speaker 4: We also remain committed to our fourth core objective of ramping sales and improving margins of light by streamlining operations and being more disciplined with our marketing efforts. By targeting a cost per acquisition of $120 and a cost per build of $20, we are confident in our ability to not only drive light to break even, but also position the business to scale profitably.
Speaker 4: In Q2, we also plan to launch new lines such as workstations to increase the size of our serviceable market and take advantage of our growing brand awareness.
Speaker 4: Last but certainly not least, the ongoing transition to RUSSID leadership has furthered our fifth core objective to engage more investors with a focus on institutions to drive awareness, volume, and stronger price appreciation. We will continue to work closely with Gateway, Roth Capital, and HC Wainwright.
Speaker 4: to attend conferences and participate in non-deal road shows to share the funware story more broadly. We have also been given great opportunities to engage new shareholders through partnerships with industry luminaries like John Nigerian and Mark Lapresti at Maneta Advisors.
Speaker 4: In closing, I want to personally thank all 106 of Fundwares employees and reiterate our 10 operational goals this year.
Speaker 4: Foster teamwork and minimize distractions. Be more disciplined in the allocation of resources. Align resources with core competencies. Focus on ideal customers and partners.
Speaker 4: Update positioning and marketing to better sell our core value proposition, productize internal tools,
Speaker 4: Identify inorganic targets to accelerate commercialization of key capabilities, launch funcoin, reduce cash burn, and minimize dilution.
Speaker 4: With closing remarks, I'd like to turn things back over to Russ.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Randall. I've been aboard about three months now, and I can confidently say I'm excited for the progress we've made in my short tenure and the trajectory we're positioning ourselves for. We started the year with a renewed focus on marketing and sales execution and this unpredictable economy.
Speaker 2: We are working to aggressively grow our platform bookings to improve overall gross and net margins. As we transition the majority of our energy to platform sales, we expect overall net revenues to be relatively flat year over year, while expecting quarter over quarter growth and improvements to both our backlog and adjusted EBITDA.
Speaker 2: That said, we also expect to cut year-over-year losses as we continue to push toward cash neutrality. Finally, we are encouraged that the M&A market has become more attractive for buyers. We are excited to announce that our Board of Directors has created a strategic transactions committee led by Stephen Chinn to enhance our efforts to creatively grow the business through inorganic transactions.
Speaker 2: I want to thank all of the Fundware employees, customers, and shareholders for the opportunity and the honor to lead the next chapter of this emerging success story.
Speaker 2: We may not always get everything right, but we will be bold and put the full weight of our effort into maximizing shareholder value as we reimagine how brands engage consumers in a mobile-first world.
Speaker 2: I would like to open up the call now for questions to the operator. Operator, please go ahead.
Speaker 1: Thank you. At this time we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Speaker 1: A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
Speaker 1: You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.
Speaker 1: For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.
Speaker 1: One moment while we poll for questions.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Our first question comes from Darren Aftahi with Roth MKM. Please go ahead
Speaker 6: Hey guys, thanks for checking my questions and hi Russ, good to see you. So you guys detailed a lot of different things, a lot of moving parts. It seems like you've had a tremendous amount of success.
Speaker 6: with your mask platform in hospitality and healthcare. And I just think with like,
Speaker 6: the back-to-work debate continuing. I'm curious, like, when you think about strategic objectives, Russ, for the MAS platform, maybe top three going forward, I guess, what really are those? And then maybe one for you and Randall. It's good to see the gross margin on the MAS.
Speaker 6: segment grow, how sort of on a calculus basis do you kind of funnel down improvements and operations down to that 75% target. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the question. Top three priorities for the MAS platform I would say is
Speaker 2: Bookings growth, that's number one. We have a good young working solution, very solid product and very happy customers with it. The second would be product roadmap progress, which is further enhancements, development on the platform itself to make it more compelling and provide higher value ads.
Speaker 2: functionality to our customers to give them greater revenue up list and a better ROI. The third area in complexity is the oil and suppliers price.
Speaker 2: Third priority for that line of business, I would say, would be to strengthen our marketing and sales execution. So to increase our footprint there, there's a little bit of customer education and market education here and we want to be the thought leader in the space.
Speaker 2: Oh, and by the way, Randall is not available for Q&A. It's baby time for him, so let's wish Daddy some good luck and the new mommy here too. Hey, Darren, I'll help out with that gross margin question as well. I think for us it's...
Speaker 3: to improve the margins above the line, we need to have more kind of no code deployments. And that's really like what we did with Marriott, where we were able to quickly deploy all the locations without a lot of additional code, which means essentially we're not doing services above the line. And so.
Speaker 3: That's kind of first and foremost what does it. The other thing is kind of back to Russ's first point is we've got to get more bookings, we've got to get more deals. We've got a great support organization that, you know, mostly is charged above the line and they can scale up a lot more. And so I think as we get more deals, they're going to be able to scale up more without adding a ton of resources. So I think those are kind of the two ways that we.
Speaker 6: improve those margins. And maybe if I could squeeze one more in. So on the no-code side...
Speaker 6: Like, is that applicable for any vertical at this point? And do you think, you know, signing of agreement to deployment cycle has shortened as a result of that? Or is Gaylord a little bit of a one-off?
Speaker 2: We actually expect more engagements in the future look like Gaylord where it's out of the box, it's an industry template solution, and there's no custom code. It's just the configuration of the solution in their environment. And because we've also previously built integrations to
Speaker 2: say electronic health record systems in healthcare, and corollaries on hospitality. We don't think there's as much work to do there. There may be some, you know, some customers may have specific systems they want custom integrations for, but we expect that to represent the minority of the work supporting those improved margins. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Scott Buck with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Speaker 6: Good afternoon guys, thanks for taking my questions. First one, you had some nice big customer wins here over the last few months between Gaylord and the expansion of VHD.
Speaker 6: But I'm curious what the current selling environment looks like for some of these larger deals just given you know it seems like an ever-increasing level of macro uncertainty.
Speaker 2: Well, we've seen continued evolution in our pipeline opportunities. They have not changed their pace as a result of the bank takeovers and other recent uncertainties. So we've not seen any impact there as far as our process in sales.
Speaker 2: And further, you know, just on a macro basis, we expect hospitality as an industry to grow 6, 7% this year. So there's really no good reason for them to slow down either.
Speaker 6: All right, that's helpful. And then could you remind us the seasonality of the light business? I guess I'm a bit surprised to see relatively flat revenue versus the third quarter despite the holiday season. Yeah, I can jump in. Yeah, I mean typically we're going to see more.
we did have a little more focus on profitability in 2-4 this year, I'm sorry last year versus some of the prior quarters. So you know of course we're driving as much top line but we were also trying to get the CPA costs down and so that might have had some impact there but at the end of the day we were able to
drive better margins by doing that.
Great, Matt, that's helpful. And then last one for me, we've had a bit of recovery with some of the digital currency valuations. I'm curious kind of what the plan is with the remaining digital assets you have on the balance sheet.
Yeah, sure. So we still do have some Bitcoin Ethereum on the balance sheet. I think our approach right now, like I said on the call, we've got some runway here to kind of figure out what we're going to do with kind of next steps in terms of debt or equity. But, you know, essentially from our point of view and in talking to investors and the board...
it goes up that benefits us and you know kind of just evaluate that on a day-to-day weekly basis in terms of how we liquidate that or how long we keep it but certainly that's part of our strategy going forward and we'll see you know in the next couple months what our our longer term strategy will kind of just let everybody know.
I appreciate the additional call, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Ed Wu with Ascendant Capital. Please go ahead.
Welcome Russ. My question is on M&A. You mentioned that you guys are going to be evaluating it. Have you seen significant improvement in or depressed pricing for M&A target and what are any particular focus targets that you guys are interested in? Well what we've, I can't speak as price.
either companies with a complementary offering or in a complementary market to us or a piece of technology that would help us accelerate the product roadmap. And of course, Matt can describe what we might be looking for from the financial criteria to whatever extent he wishes.
Yeah, I think, you know, like Russ said, we're not down the road far enough where we're seeing, you know, pricing in terms of more depressed pricing. I mean, we all expect that. Yeah, and I think, you know, first and foremost, obviously, you know, the company, the type of companies we're looking at, Russ explained, but, you know, certainly we're not looking to have a peak in the Ek affirmed high
in the middle of 2022 or 2021.
Great. Well, thanks for answering my questions and I wish you guys good luck. Thank you.
questions and I wish you guys good luck. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Howard Halpern with Taglik Brothers. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, guys. Welcome, Russ. Welcome, Russ.
In terms of potential bookings growth, are you seeing maybe some flow from
your newer integrators or newer partners rather than some of them that have been around a longer period of time.
your newer integrators or newer partners rather than some of them that have been around a longer period of time? We are definitely seeing active.
interest and movement from our newer partners. I'm, I wish Randall were here to field your question about some of our longstanding partners as well, since I'm a little bit less acquainted with their activity. But we are definitely seeing excitement and interest from our new partners that of course supplements our current partners and our direct sales effort.
And you're seeing potentially this, you know, maybe smaller deals that can get done quicker and that build into larger deals. Is that maybe part of the game plan to basically get in and then move within an organization?
Definitely. So one of the things that we've done, like Randall talked about, simplified packaging and pricing. We also want to be competitive in the pricing area. And one of the ways that we're also trying to do that because our product works so solidly is do a proof of concept where that's appropriate. Or, you know, we're trying to do a proof of concept where that's appropriate.
if it's a customer who has multiple locations to do a pilot at one of those locations to show them how well it works. Because we're quite confident in any kind of a trial that we're going to come out as the winner. Okay. Okay, guys. Everything else was asked and answered, so thanks and keep up.
Well, I'd just like to thank you all for coming to this session today. This is my first, and so I also appreciate the grace here as I get used to this cycle. I am very optimistic about this coming year. I am really looking to be very aggressive with bookings on the enterprise SaaS side and profitable unit economics.
and growth with the light unit. So we've got a lot of work to do, but I also feel very good about the mission, the team we've got to do it, and the markets that we're going to serve.
Thank you.
This does conclude today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.