Destiny Media Technologies Q1 2026 Destiny Media Technologies Inc Earnings Call | AllMind AI Earnings | AllMind AI
Q1 2026 Destiny Media Technologies Inc Earnings Call
Release, which was sent to the newswires earlier this afternoon.
I'd also like to remind everyone that this conference call could contain forward-looking statements about Destiny media Technologies within the meaning of the private Securities. Litigation Reform, Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based upon current beliefs and expectations of management and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
Such risks are fully discussed in the company's files with SEC and Cedar, and the company does not assume any obligation to update information. Contained in this call.
During the webinar we will discuss certain non-gaap Financial measures. The non-gaap financial measures are presented in the supplemental disclosures and should not be considered in isolation of or as a substitute of or superior to the financial information prepared in accordance with gaap and should be read in conjunction with the company's financial statements filed with the SEC and Cedar.
The non-gaap financial measures used in the company's presentation May differ from the, similarly titled measures presented by other companies.
A Reconciliation of the non-gaap financial measures to the most comparable. Gaap Financial measures can be found in the earnings press release.
Also, I would like to mention that the following presentation. There will be a questions and answers session during which you can submit questions by selecting. The raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen, your questions will be pulled in the order that they are received and at which point you'll be prompted to unmute your microphone before speaking with that. I'd like to turn the call over to your host Fred Vandenberg chief executive officer.
Thanks, Michelle. And thanks to everyone for joining the call. Um, I wanted to talk about, uh, a few main things before I hand it over to a cell and Jen for a little bit more detail on on the finances, in our marketing and sales strategies,
Um, the first is the universal agreement. Um,
That.
Shortly. Uh, after we had the call last quarter, or the year end, we came to terms with universal on a longer term agreement.
That has been, um, in the works for, uh, reasonably long time. Um, the core challenge was really aligning, the priorities of multiple stakeholders, uh, Finance which is under pressure to reduce costs. And the operation promotion teams who are
Really focused on maintaining the effectiveness and the reach of the platform as well as senior decision makers above them.
Um, navigating these competing mandates really required, a lot of stick handling, um but the result is an agreement that we think works across all interests. Um,
Q1 2026 Destiny Media Technologies Inc Earnings Call
It provides Plan, B, a long-term anchor client that, uh, underpins um, the the platform itself, uh, provides Revenue stability.
And opportunities for growth within Universal and future growth initiatives. That's really strengthens the company's platform and growth trajectory
Um this really this agreement really supports both of us for a longer term and expanding um and working through as a partnership going forward and we're really excited about it.
Um, I'll go through some of the terms, uh, first the fees.
Ultimately, the structure of the agreement has changed such that the fees Now cover, uh, use of the existing platform, but excludes any development that they require. Um, and then what we will do is really, uh, provide a justification an Roi internally for them. If there is any, uh, new development that they
Desire. Um, and then fees for that will be separately. Negotiated?
The base fee is uh 1.6 million annually for the first year with inflation. Indexes for years, 2 and 3.
uh That Base fee is 5% lower than the 2023 fees that we had and this really is a recognition of um
a longer term agreement re eliminating, um,
uh, the short terms premiums that we had and, um,
The, the cost savings from a reduction in the uh, development requirements for them.
We expect that the 2026 Revenue will be adversely impacted by about 6 and a half percent. Um,
this is really, this is this includes a
A development fee that we've already negotiated on top of the 1.6 million. Um,
So it's currently unknown, if we will be able to add any new development fees for them. Um, to make up this difference, we would need to increase independent label Revenue by about 14%, um, and I'll talk about that in shortly. Uh, what we're doing on the independent front,
um,
the I think it's worth going through a few more of the terms. Um,
as I alluded to above its a 3 year agreement,
Um, we've never had a 3 year agreement before. Uh, We've
we've been in business for, with universal for
About 20 years now. Um so you know we it's a long-standing relationship but this
3 year year agreement is the longest agreement we've had and it really provides a Runway to um,
To work as a as a partner with them.
Um,
The the index we have for inflation is there's a 2%, increase in 2027 and 2028 on top of that. Um, again we've never had an inflation index. We've always
When we've come to terms, um, we've always been looking back.
Uh, at a fee that has never indexed for inflation during the the years. And um so this represents a fairly
Significant shift in the mentality, you know, recognizing that our costs do rise over time.
um,
It also excludes any labels for which, uh, umg does not have a distribution agreement or is currently not owned by umg. So,
In the event that they expand their distribution services or expand by acquiring new labels, we can negotiate new fees for that.
um,
and,
It's not articulated in the agreement, but, um, we've had some really productive conversations. Um, the, the main contact that we that I've been negotiating with, uh,
Has returned to distribution uh, digital distribution. And um,
And you know, she's a really tough negotiator obviously. Um,
but she's very pragmatic and um,
we she recognizes that where we save them money, where we, whether it's you know, efficiencies that we can work on um or we displace competing platforms that that that will help us uh negotiate in the future. So it's a it's an agreement that we're uh really excited about
um,
moving on to Independent labels, uh, we've been working on.
A number of things that have started to come together uh in timing. Um we mentioned last quarter about the modernization of the platform uh that that has really 2 main things that we
Uh, move to Universal over to the uh online. The the web uh platform and um retired the old PC applications.
um, but we also
introduced Castor and Castor plus now Caster plus is what we used to brand is castor so it can be a little bit confusing there but Castor is now a
Uh, fully self-serve. Um,
platform for, um,
For labels to sign up uh, and send out content themselves. Um,
we have noticed a a significant increase in the conversion of leads, um, and I can talk about Marketing in a second, but um, with that, we've noticed uh, We've transitioned uh people during the quarter to allow them to have the choice between caster and Castor plus, um, we have noticed that
there are, um, it's a high degree of um,
What I would say, a a poor quality of distribution. So we we have some work ahead of us in terms of uh training our customers on.
Uh, on the platform and or making it a little bit easier to use so that we can fully scale so we can fully leverage that. But essentially, we're we're um, allowing our customers to uh, we're making significant Headway and allowing our customers to scale.
A client-led distributions.
um,
Efforts.
Um,
That was really focused in on a few different things uh SEO improvements. So website improvements. Um so that we were uh we hit more leads, we generate more leads.
um,
We've.
tracked, those leads to identify which customers we really want to focus in on which has really
helped over the course of the last 12 months.
Allocate resources internally on things that we think are going to uh help us more.
Um, we've recently began investing a little bit more in social media. We've had a 10% increase in followers. We've uh, improved, our digital advertising,
And we've expanded our, um, automated Outreach to certain clients. Um,
And in general, expand a little bit more on that. Um, and then also we
uh, the last thing we did here is, um,
It is increased.
Pricing in a certain in certain areas 1 area. Where we it's not really an increase in pricing. It's just that we eliminated.
Uh, volume discounts that we enacted last year. That
Were designed to, um, expand the volume of distributions, uh, or grow. The average size of a distribution that really didn't have an effect. We've noticed that
um,
customers in that are trying to do Global distributions through plan p, aren't that price sensitive? It doesn't help to provide discounts. So we remove those.
and we also uh, increase our catalog pricing the the the upshot of all these things is that um,
that we had a almost a 24% increase in lead generation and that those leads are really
uh, better qualified leads. Um,
The.
We've had a 7.3% increase in Castor customers.
Um, which is
pushed by a 27% increase in new Caster customers.
And during the quarter that represented a, almost a 3% increase in independent label Revenue, um, some of those changes really took effect later in the quarter. So you you'll see a a bump in
uh, November revenue of about 15.5% that really is starting to
Flow into uh Q2 as well. We've seen a very strong December results so far.
um,
And um lastly we saw MTR Revenue go up by uh 30.5% now. MTR is still
um,
you know, quite low and we're working on some things that we think um,
uh, will expand
Uh MTR is present. We are going to be the um reporting MTR is tracking. Just So for anybody who doesn't know MTR is,
Tracking the actual AirPlay of a song that goes through plan p. Um, we are incorporating the reporting of that into, uh, caster
Which I think I just makes, uh, MTR more visible.
and then shortly after that, we're going to make it so you can buy
MTR directly within Caster. It's really changing our focus on, um, product development, uh, into
To a narrow focus on things that are really going to directly impact. Um,
Uh, Plan B Revenue.
And with that um oh sorry, cost reductions. Um,
Because of the things we've done over the last uh year, um we've really been able to um, reduce our our costs. Um,
During the quarter, we realized the total cost reduction of of 1.3%. That includes all costs,
Uh, cash non-cash and capitalized costs.
Um, so it doesn't translate neatly into the financial statements, but it it essentially is um all of our costs.
Salary and wages. Uh, these are um, costs that
We've realized during the quarter, so 8.2% reduction.
Had we done undertaken? All of these cost reductions at the beginning of the quarter.
um,
in total spending, um, with uh, 14.8% on
um,
uh,
salaries and wages.
um, with those
uh,
efficiencies that we've gained and um, the modernization of the platform.
We can further reduce our, um, spending. Uh, we think it's about 16% that we can come comfortably reduce if we want to maintain our Revenue, uh, growth but just reduce our invest in investing, in product development and taking advantage of some of these efficiencies
Um, and with that, I will turn it over to uh acyl.
Thank you, Fred. Um, I will now walk you through our financial performance for the quarter and I'll start from revenue revenue for the quarter increased by 1.3%. And if foreign currency adjusted it's actually 1.6% uh the major labels are very materially decreased um by 1.5 thousand dollars and independent labels increased by 2.5%. And that was the combination of several factors, as Fred mentioned, um, increasing the independent customers,
It's 7.3% in the quarter. And again, most of the increase came in November as Fred mentioned. Um, total releases total purchases increased by 3.7% uh, average spend declined by 2.4% per customer. However, this is mostly from our new customer acquired, uh, where we see new customers spending less. And while we see older customers spending more. So we believe that, um, as these customers new customers return, once they see the success, uh, using our platform Effectiveness, uh, and leveraging our, you know, automated marketing campaigns and sales Outreach that will have a chance to move those customers into a greater sense.
And the last 1 was pricing changes. As Fred mentioned, uh, we reduced volume discounts that we had enacted in the prior year to induce larger distributions. Uh, we found that this were not working as large in international, uh, distributions. I'm not really that price sensitive.
And uh we also increased our price uh for the annual year end catalog distribution.
Um so that was for independent labels. And the meter um is still less than 1% very close to 1, the total revenue but it keeps growing. So um the increase was around 30%.
And the revenue continues to be mostly US dollar denominated 94.5% this quarter and uh fed next 1 the let's move to the overall results. Thank you.
um, as you can see from the table, uh, the adjusted, the beta,
for the quarter was 252.5 thousand which is a slight decrease from paper of
Less than 35,000. However, um,
Uh this decline is mostly just the capitalizable activity during the quarter. So this quarter, we only capitalized pretty small amount of less than 30,000.
And, uh, turning into liquidity, uh, the cash balance increased significantly as you can see by uh, 244.500 22%. And it's mostly uh, as Fred mentioned driven by the several cost reduction initiatives, we had during the quarter, which is translated into higher, operating cash flow.
And the last Point uh the company continues to operate with no debt and no material capital expenditure commitments.
So, with that, I'll pass to Jennifer to cut our sales and marketing portion of the today's call.
Thank you as well.
I'm going to start off with our sales highlight for q1. Um, we've had a focus on major account engagement and reporting for q1. Our goal was to really engage with our major accounts. Um, aiming for regular strategic review, meetings for long-term growth.
Uh, we were able to conduct in-person platform presentations with RCA epic and virgin to re-engage accounts and reinforce system value. We also felt like we had a lot to share with these accounts with so many enhancements that had been seen in fiscal 2025
uh the results from these meetings were 180% increase in RCA usage and Epic reactivating on the platform for the first time in 2 years.
Um, we also presented an updated uh enhanced reporting. Overview to umg to both their hubs, their gyro Hub and La teams. Providing all labels with a deeper and more actionable promotional data.
Staff training and enablement, we developed and implemented a standardized training. Syllabus for a new major account on boarding and we delivered this training both virtually and in office on site with Warner promotional teams and other major independent labels.
On the side of independent label growth. Our Indie business Revenue significantly increased in q1. Um particularly a sharp 15.5% rise in November and growth was driven by an improved pricing strategy that we had. Uh, previously mentioned also uh targeted marketing campaign, encouraging holiday, releases plus our sales team upselling, compatible lists this led to a strong uh Q2 interests, better lead generation, and improved conversion rates overall in q1.
For sales tools and list add-ons. We've been continuing to develop sales tools to boost our platform usage. Uh, we launched a new list brochure detailing expanded, contact, database, offering.
And we've had strong adoption of list add-ons. So we've been focused, um, on
Supporting the list team and offering to upgrade from domestic to International holiday packages during our holiday campaign, as well as adding multi supervisor lists and all of these add-ons will significantly increase average order value per campaign. We're going to be continuing to do this going forward.
Uh, some of our marketing highlights.
So, our holiday campaign, Focus was um, really what we focused on in q1 marketing, really centered on the annual holiday format campaign. Um we saw a significant increase in Holiday releases and we were provided with the healthy year-over-year Revenue increase.
Um, I think a key success factor in this was an earlier marketing, push internally, our emails launched on August uh 27th. And then we followed up with October 6th October 20th and a November 17th push. These were a month ahead of our marketing last year for our holiday initiative.
Um, the promotion ran in q1 and also into Q2 and, um, our content also doubled during the holiday campaign with active, users and visitor rates, compared to last year and just in general, our social media growth has been uh, strategically focused on authentic content and Partnerships resulting in a 35% increase. In organic face book views and a 10% year-over-year increase in followers.
And then finally I'll touch on our operations and list management highlights for q1.
Overall we've seen an improved communication and strategic planning between less management and marketing. Um, we really saw the impact of this with the boosted campaign results in q1, and moving into, Q2 with our holiday campaign.
Also the list team uh have been busy working on introducing a new sdio uh satellite radio list in q1. This is going to be offering Channel and show specific content across various genres. The satellite radio offers significantly higher royalties. So basically 10 times more per spin than a terrestrial broadcast creating a strong value proposition
We feel like these trackable lists offer a direct, spend tied to measurable Roi, making them an ideal, uh, selling tool for Independent Artists and labels and our new satellite radio lists are soft launching in Q2. Um, we're expecting a cly High interest. Uh, sorry, a high client's interest in these new lists.
And that ends my highlights for q1. I will turn it back over to you Michelle.
Thank you. Jennifer
Uh, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please, press the raised hand option at the bottom of your screen and your question will be pulled in the order that they're received. If you raise your hand, please ensure you have access to a microphone, your camera will remain off. But once prompted, please unmute your mic before asking your question. If you wish to retract your question, please click on the raised hand icon again to lower your hand.
Our first question to today is from Olivia.
After years of saying revenues would snowball and repeated software iterations? Growth still hasn't materialized. No buyback to support the share price and roic is now negative, any updates from the consultant engaged to unlock shareholder value.
Uh, the consultant engaged. I didn't provide anything Arielle relator but um
The.
I mean, we do see, um, very
In, uh, independent Revenue in in, in November and that's continued into December. So
uh, uh, I think with uh,
Growth in uh, independent revenue and cost reductions. We'll see profitable uh, results going forward.
um, as far as a buyback,
Um, or returning Capital to investors. We'll we'll have to decide on what we do with that Surplus uh going forward.
Our next question is from Jerry asking for a breakdown of Revenue percent by product segments in q1.
Um we we break down our segments into um customer type and what we
What we, um, talked about publicly is is really independent versus a major labels and then we break that into geography, uh, in the United States. We
Or United States are internationally, we break that down further into music format.
And now, with meter, we have an additional product that we break it down to into, um, meter again is is a little bit less than 1% of Revenue. So it's still pretty small, uh, but it grew by, um, 30% and we are, uh, working on things.
Going forward that we think will, uh, improve that Revenue growth. Um, 1 is making it a little bit easier to purchase by putting it really in front of our play and PE customers in Castor
And uh, making it easy to buy as you buy a, a Caster promotion. But we're also, um,
Doing an ad tracking uh test uh, I believe it's this month or at least this quarter. Um, we are looking at
Uh more Global uh tracking and also um more volume tracking for meter.
uh, for other groups, with talking about where there's been significant change, um,
there was reasonable growth with the us independence in in
Q, q1, where it was a little over 4%. Um,
Canadian independent growth was in excess of 50% that was offset by some reductions in major label use.
Um, what you seeing what we've seen is that periodically labels major labels go through?
um,
Cost cutting um initiatives where they cut senior staff and we think it's going on right now or it has gone on recently and that's why you see. Jen was talking about certain things about onboarding
New people at major labels training them, getting them engaged in the platform, uh, that really is a function of of the turnover we're seeing at the major labels. So we think that that uh, reduction is is temporary
So those are major changes in segments.
I see here that Jerry has raised his hand. Um Jerry you can go ahead and unmute your mic
Mic, can you hear me? Yep. Hi Jerry. Hey, how's it going? Uh, I've seen a couple questions here. Uh, you talked about Opex Savings of 7.7%? Those will those be fully reflected in your fiscal Q2.
They should be a yes that's right. I mean barring any other changes but yes that's the that's effectively what we're talking about and you also mentioned that you believe there are additional cost savings to be had um taking the total cost savings up to 16%.
Uh the 16th percent was on top of the 7 was on top of the South now. But that that that those changes have not been made but those are that's what's available. And what's where what we're looking at, we're considering right now. And when you anticipate the uh if you decide those changes to take uh when would they be reflected?
Um it it's really um what we're looking at internally. Um, and I would expect that we will go 1 way or the other and um it if they
That those that the decision will be made very shortly, I believe. So, okay. Uh, can you talk about your Capital, allocation priorities, uh, for fiscal 2026. Um,
uh, Does it include any, uh,
um,
acquisition plan.
Um,
Okay. Um,
that's a good question Jerry. Um,
We are.
I think significant cash. Um,
We have about, uh, 14 cents.
Per share on uh in cash right now.
um,
there are acquisition opportunities available to us and we are looking at them and I think they are becoming
more and more attractive. Um, as time moves on, uh, 1 in particular, where you know, we're we're showing
A significant Headway in Canada and I think, you know, we can move forward. Uh, there potentially
um, as far as other Capital expenditures, it's really only always been software development. That's what we capitalized cost for and with the modernization of the platform we've significantly reduced those. That's what we've been talking about with the the cost reductions.
Um in your press release. You talked about momentum heading out of q1. Yeah. How should investors quantify that momentum to revenue growth? What should we be looking for or what should we be seeing or what? Maybe clarify, what that momentum? How should we quantify the moment? Uh, I mean that's a good question. The, I mean, we talked about um,
Momentum in November where we saw independent Revenue growth by 15 and a half percent.
Um,
That.
uh, growth has, um,
You know, we've we've seen pretty pretty strong growth into December. In fact, it's it's it's wildly outstripped, the 16, the 15%, um, some of that is seasonal
uh so you know, we don't expect this kind of growth, um, you know,
uh,
but it was really we, we had a really strong uh, uh
Continuation, after the quarter.
Um,
We?
generate, um,
I would say about a third of our customers are uh, in any particular time, our new customers
but they generated about 7% of our Revenue, the, the new customers are really, um,
um,
ones that are um, smaller. You know, our customer purchasing demand is, you know, highly variable. It's not, you know, you know, you're not buying a software package or something that that people use every month and use at the same level. You're, we're looking at customers that are, uh, small independent labels, to, you know, Universal, which is the largest uh, collection of record labels in the world.
so, our marketing approach really has, um,
Moved customers into customer B buckets. Uh, personas we call them and our approach.
is really to align our marketing efforts, where we attract customers that we
believe are going to be larger in spend and then secondarily. Um, so we're tracking, you know, bigger customers.
And we're encouraging the customers that we do attract to to spend more. So there's
Things that we're working on, where we leverage, um, expanded analytics that we've worked on to Market to these people. Um, what we've seen, for example, for example, we see that typically
if you, if an artist sends out a song,
They tend to get greater results, the more they send out.
so, we leverage analytics like that to programmatically email out um,
Or Market to rather uh, are those kinds of customers to grow use.
um, as far as
um,
You know.
Projecting it. I mean, we've really had a really strong December. Um,
And I, I mean, I think our marketing approach is, is the right way to go. So, um, we're we're just
you know, combined with uh,
Uh the cost savings. I think you know in terms of our value, we're really looking at profitable runways uh for where we can maintain our ability to
Grow sales.
uh, well, at the same time, generating a positive, net margin
Annual basis is that correct?
Uh, that's how how it would impact. Um,
This this year. Yeah. Um, we
It's really a restructuring of the agreement so that we they're going to pay separately for development. If we can negotiate new development fees that that will eat into the, to the impact. Um, plus, as we move forward, uh, inflation will grow by 2% per year, do you still anticipate for fiscal 2026? That is a result of the new agreement that you will be in a net revenue growth position.
That's a good question. If we continue on the results of November. Um,
And December. Um,
uh, we will
Easily uh uh, grow Revenue, but we have to we have to um continue that that strong performance over the last couple of months. Yes. Um,
but um, you know the cost reductions
uh, that we have or and can consider will ensure that we um uh, will be, do will have a positive net margin as far as where we end up Revenue I would really probably like to see a few more months where I I can
um,
see how our revenue is growing there. The revenue.
um,
the revenue thing that we
The reason sorry fumbling with this question, but the, the revenue growth that we've seen in Independence is coming from. Um,
The number of different sources. So we've got increased the lead generation increased lead conversion. That, uh, conversion rate is, uh, is sorry. The conversion rate is increasing, but it's also the speed with which it's converting is improving.
Um,
The re re-engaging older customers.
Uh, the price.
Changes that we had are not inconsequential. Um,
and so,
It's not just 1 thing, that's impacting our independent Revenue growth. It's a few different things.
Uh, so
I'm pretty optimistic about how it's going to play out.
Whether that, um,
Overshoots the uh, cost reduction of of umg. It's hard to predict at this stage.
I would like a little bit more run room to before I predict it. Okay? So the last question, um, you talked about, uh,
Re-engaging with some acquisition targets or Target, um, how should investors look at the size of Acquisitions? You're capable or willing to make uh from an annual revenue contribution that these Acquisitions could bring is it 1 million 2 million 4 million? Just
Try to quantify, what, what type of acquisition, um, would you be willing to digest?
Scale.
Willing to digest um the our ability to uh service the customers that that would result from an acquisition is very is is strong. It's it's easy to
um,
A easy to incorporate that, uh, growth. So it's very high margin, uh, purchase of customers, essentially, what it would be.
um, it's rather or not we can
Purchase it at a price that is appropriate. Uh, we have
I believe we are the largest you know, we're obviously a small company but I believe the where the largest in the world that what we do.
I believe we're the best in the world, that what we do. And I think that Universal
Contract renewal is a clear indication of that.
whether we can, um,
acquire customers at a price is really a negotiation by negotiation. Um,
uh, Endeavor, we see some
uh, competitors with um,
International presence.
but generally, they are
Uh, within a particular geography, and there's a a, a number of them. Um, and I think we can, we can look at Acquisitions so
The size of the.
Acquisition varies tremendously, I believe. Um, you know, we're, we're the largest in the world. So you, you know, if you look at that then you know, anything that we had required would be smaller.
But there's there's a few of them and then out there that we could acquire and it's just a matter of um whether the price is is right.
Make some cash offers on those.
So,
Thank you, Jerry.
Our next question was submitted by Andy.
What is the company doing with the cash on hand? It has is it invested. Will the company be issuing dividends?
Uh, yeah. Cash on hand is invested. It's a reasonably well at the very safe Investments of the returns are
small.
Um,
as far as, uh,
I mean we we have a a decision facing us right now, whether we um, you know focus in on
Maximizing cash.
Uh, to grow, uh, to cash growing cash, or we continue to invest in the platform to uh, accelerate Revenue growth.
um,
The.
If we decide to maximize cash flow, I mean I think we can be profitable as it is. Uh,
Um, then we have a choice of what to do with that cash.
Uh, whether we use it to, you know, make acquisitions
or or not is 1 question but then
Uh, as far as growing investor value. Um,
We have to be.
I mean, we have to consider what's Best in our best interest of our our investors. Um, we can issue dividends or initiate a buyback.
The issue in the issuing a dividend is not a costly Endeavor. I mean it's something that's fairly simple process.
um, but there's
a few things that we need to be careful of, um,
uh, just the mechanics of the moving profit around in the company. Getting dividends from a profit, from a Canadian company through a us, a parent. Uh we have to be, you know, careful about how we do that.
Um,
and it also there's a choice between
Um, providing our investors liquidity.
or um,
the choice between how Dividends are taxed in their hands versus gains capital gains and that all of that does, all of those decisions have to be made in the context of, um,
Um um the the stock price, you know, if we're generating positive margins positive, net margins, even though, you know, we're a small company the, you know, the margins can be significant. Um,
you know, considering the stock price, uh, you know, we have
I think roughly about 14 cents. A share in cash and we can generate
um,
You know.
a reasonable, a reasonable amount of like a
issue per share earnings.
that we then will have to decide whether or not, um,
you know, we do BuyBacks or dividends to uh, investors
You have another question from Andy?
Are you able to provide the revenue based on geographical region? How much is North America compared to non North America?
That's that's right in the 10. Uh, 10 Q, I believe ASL. Is that, is that fair? I
the the we we, we, we've used, um,
You.
Universal um is allocated to 1 territory. Um and we've moved that from a euro-based contract to a US dollar contract. Uh
is a little bit less risk I suppose in terms of, um,
Uh, fluctuations. Um,
And are going forward, you know? We're probably focused.
More on the US. Um but uh I'm not sure exactly what the breakdown is off the top. But I think it's right in the quarter as well. I sorry, I probably interrupted the other
Number 8 in the 10q. But again, um, yeah, umg contract is in North America.
Yeah, it's not as simple like I guess. Um to show you mg because umg distributes with us around the world you know.
Africa, Asia Europe, you know?
Everywhere. But I Antarctica, I suppose.
It looks like we have 1 more question here from Thomas who's raised a hand to speak, Thomas, you can go ahead and unmute your mic.
Hey, friends. Hey
Um, I'm not sure if you can give more color on the litigation.
proceeds, I if I can say it like that,
um,
Too long since Q4, but did you guys have any updates or well is there? There's no nothing, um, nothing to really update. We we won the litigation. Um,
So we're getting recovery or we're getting an award of costs.
Uh, that hasn't been established yet. Um,
I suppose that would be established soon. Then there's a question of collectibility. Um, um, you know we would we would think it's fairly significant so we would probably pursue the collection of it. Um,
um,
he has filed a, a notice of appeal, that's an intention to appeal. It's not actually an appeal.
And I don't think he'll actually follow through on it. Um, you know, I don't want to
dare him to it by saying that, but, you know,
I don't think that there will be an appeal, it it's it's good money after bad for that for sure.
Mhm. Thank you. Um uh last call you disclosed like the growth of meter Revenue um was that
On a year-over-year basis or in a quarterly basis, uh, was it like for a Q4 or for the full year when you disclosed it?
Not sure if I remember.
We disclosed sorry, what did we disclose the meter Revenue?
During the Q4 call, like 2 months ago. Um, I don't think we actually disclose the dollar amount. We disposed of percentages. Yeah, the percentage and the absolute growth was that for Q4 or for the whole year. I think it was for the full. That was for the full year, the 30%. This, this quarter is this this quarter versus last year's quarter. Yeah.
Um and then on the universal contract. Um so it's 1.6 plus how much for fees that have been already like agreed upon for this year, 30 3500 for this year. Um that's just with 1 product 1 Project. So
So so I have a hard time figuring out how the, is it 6%. If
So Universal was like, what 2.1 million last 12 months if we add up?
Last 4 quarters. So that's 500,000. Yeah. This it's what will impact this year. So we've had some premiums for the the first uh, 4 months of the year. So it's a after those premiums. So 6 and a half percent for this this year, it will be a reduction.
Um, on an annual basis, I'd have to figure that out but it's, you know, the the premiums were the short-term premiums that we had were reasonably significant. And those have been eliminated. So okay. And why did we not know about this about those premiums? I mean, I asked you in April, I guess about that contract, and you told me it's on,
Like in a rolling basis, you won't we won't fix anything that's broken. And like there was no plans to fix it like to change it.
and like,
I mean, we're kind of blindsided by those buy that new contract, I guess.
well, I mean it's it's
it's
I have to sort of, uh, negotiate what, what is in the best interest of the company and, um, yeah. You know, I I, it's not a
I mean, we were, we disclosed that we were charging them um short-term premiums. We've disclosed that in the past uh the growth was there.
uh, Universal has a, a global mandate to reduce costs and
you know, negotiating those fees was a a long
Uh process and it I think really reflects uh our ability to reduce our, our costs associated with that. So it's a
It's it's a net um, reduction in our revenue for sure. Uh, but we can also reduce our costs uh, that to, to support that contract. Yeah. I mean, it's not really the result, that's more the the way it's being communicated and all of that, like, where was those like
I'm following the company pretty closely. Okay. And like where was it? Disclosed that there is premiums in our contract with umg like at like in an 8K somewhere or I can't remember seeing 1 in the last, it wouldn't be an indicator in these in these calls here.
So it would be during the call that it says that our annual contract currently has premiums.
Well, um, I I would have to go back and see what, but but it is on a month-to-month basis and we've discussed that before for sure. And like, what's the difference between or like, why are we happy about an inflation hike? If there was already an annual price hike, if I refer to what you told me in April last year like what's the difference?
Between.
To have different annual price hikes. Well, the, the the um, the price, I for the months and months that we had a price hike, uh, that kicked in
Uh, just last month. Um,
The.
The long-term I guess.
if you if you look at whenever we've had a longer term deal,
um,
this is the first time that they've Inc in offered in inflation index for it.
Um this was a month-to-month agreement so they you know, they could cancel it any time. So this is a this is the first time that they've actually committed to a um,
A a locked in price increase.
Okay.
Um,
Yeah, I mean again it's not I mean the result is disappointing but I understand why it just I don't know how it's communicated. I guess like
I don't know. I would have told.
That there's somehow negotiations to have a longer term contract, no matter what the price it is. I guess you like, you were not able to disclose it but just like, why not? Kind of tell us in advance that it's in the works. I guess it reduced the risk of being an investor, right? Because it's not like they're going to just disappear the next month's like the next month, like, it could have been.
I don't know it.
Just a bit disappointed with, oh, it's being communicated. Same thing for cost reductions like why was it not communicated last quarter like
For q1. I mean, q1 was basically over. You could have told us that
There would be cost reductions in q1 and I mean this is kind of positive, right? It's just
What can be done to better? Communicate to investors?
Positive things and negative things they could be.
I don't know. I just like thinking about well, I mean, I take the, I'll take the criticism. Uh, I believed we did communicate that we would have cost reductions. Um, we are considering more so it's it's, it's not written in stone yet. Mhm. Um,
The.
The the I mean when we were talking we didn't provide numbers. I know that. But um,
we did communicate during the year end call that. Um, we had
um,
Reduced. We we had the capacity to reduce costs associated with uh product development. Simply because of the um,
the retirement of of
Uh, the old PC application and and some efficiencies that we've got. So
um, now I've got harder numbers on it. Um,
but yeah, I mean, don't always need to provide hard numbers, I guess it's just
I don't know.
A good way of dealing with what's coming up. Yeah I mean it's fair enough. The the um,
I mean, the universal agreement, they've been wanting to
Uh, reduce their fees with us for some time.
it's just a matter of um,
I mean, there was silent on the agreement for
The better part of well, probably more than a year. And um,
And I think things have changed internally for them. So you know, I didn't have
Much indication from them that they were.
Still considering.
Uh, a longer term agreement. And, and I think we, when we started talking with them, a few months ago, again, started talking with them, we're always talking to them. But, um,
When we started talking about this specific renewal the longer term renewal, uh we got into certain things um, that I think.
Ultimately really work for us. Uh, obviously, you know, I
um,
we considered a bunch of different things and we didn't know where it would end up. Uh,
The.
The fees I would like them to be higher uh you know, obviously, um but I think it's something we can work with uh, it provides. It does provide us a long-term
uh, sort of anchor tenant and the costs associated with supporting that are
are lower. Um,
and we just can reflect that in in, um,
you know, in our costs to support them. The
The their need to reduce cost. I think is really a reflection of uh the finance mandate to become profit more profitable. Are they? They went public, um,
That uh uh reduction maximize profits has been going on since then. Yeah, yeah. I get I get that. And and and, and they're they're Universal. Uh, I mean,
I think this is a good result for us. I think it's a great result for us. I would I wish it was higher fees. Um but ultimately
You know, we're a small company that can be provided positive. Net margin in in this context.
Yeah, yeah. And I mean yeah it's disappointing. But like I understand the context.
you can take my suggestion or not of just like communicating, I guess more in advance, just so
It attracts investors of knowing what's to come, so they can better I guess.
Model. What could come up and see that? It's a good opportunity but yeah, understood
um, and last point, I mean, it's kind of
Yeah, I'm not even sure if I want to touch it, but like there's someone that reported selling 1% of the business on the same date that the contract was signed and it doesn't look good. But
I know like that person is considered an Insider even though it is not on the board. It does look weird but that was a, a tax loss selling and I was aware. That the the um, I was a I was a bit surprised at the timing of it, but that was just a, a pure coincidence. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know it just, it does, look bad, it's for someone just looking at it. Like, I as volume day.
In life 5 years and then it's someone that needs to declare this transaction. But anyway,
Yeah, I figured it was. I mean, I can't control that. Obviously, I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know it was a tax loss selling Endeavor. Um, I mean, it wasn't sure if I should say that actually. But uh,
but it wasn't a reflection of of
Of the of the contract or the company. Yeah, thank you. I was just needed to voice it.
All right. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you, Thomas that concludes all the questions for today. Thank you very much everyone.
Yeah. Thanks very, very much everyone. And thanks to Michelle who's uh joining us from Turks and cacos on our vacation. Thanks. I really appreciate you. Uh, helping us out my pleasure.
