Skyfii Ltd

ASX:SKF

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Good morning. Thank you all for making the time to join us today. We trust everybody is keeping safe, healthy and optimistic during this time. We found the Zoom conference worked fairly well last quarter, so we've again opted to use the same platform for this quarter's call. And I'd say this time around, we have figured out a better way to do the Q&A session. So I'll explain in a bit more detail how that's going to take place at the end of the presentation. So welcome to the Financial Year '20 Fourth Quarter Results Presentation for Skyfii. I'm joined today by Skyfii's Chairman, Andrew Johnson; Skyfii Chief Operating Officer, John Rankin; and our Investor Relations Consultant, Craig Sainsbury. Q4 was an interesting 3 months in the context of the global economy, and Skyfii did experience a slowing of growth due to the economic impact created by COVID-19. However, what is extremely pleasing and particularly exciting is that the business continued to convert new business. We accelerated our operating margins, and we've exponentially grown our inbound lead generation over the period. In addition and worth noting, that whilst we have had some customers request temporary service suspensions, which impacted our recurring revenues temporarily, we have, to date, had no customer cancellations due to COVID-19. And in addition, have actually seen greater demand for our accounting solutions given the stringent guidelines around social distancing, occupancy monitoring and contact tracing as businesses look to reopen. We're seeing increased demand from grocery chains, municipalities, universities and corporate offices, all of whom have either stayed open to house essential businesses or due to reopen, but require some forward technology solution to assist them in monitoring their occupancy levels in managing social-distancing practices are being adhered to or facilitating contract tracing. We're also seeing a lot of demand for our products in relation to assisting venues in monitoring that spaces are being regularly clean and sanitized. The latter use case is more focused on providing the public with comfort that the venue is safe and adhering to guidelines. The most pleasing part about all of these new use cases is that they are being delivered using the core Skyfii technology, which means that whilst the current use cases may be temporary, or at least, I'm sure we all hope they are, the technology has long-term applications that will long outlive the effects of COVID-19. Moving to Slide #2. Our vision remains to improve visitor experience by understanding behavior. And when we help our customers deliver value to their customers and in their operations through the application and use of data. This practice is called omnidata intelligence. And this category best defines our business offering since it refers to the practice of collecting, analyzing and actioning data from a multitude of data sets, currently inherent within physical and digital spaces today. We believe that for any of our current and prospective customers, the pathway to a successful data strategy requires a combination of 3 key elements: the right data sets, intelligent technology and experienced people.Moving to Slide 3. As our shareholders would well know, the fact that our platform collects and visualizes analytics from a multitude of data sources is a clear differentiator for us within not only our competitor sets, but more importantly, it allows us to progressively add and develop new revenue streams to become more embedded within our existing customer base and reach new verticals with relevant product market fit. We reduced the requirement for venues to license multiple platforms to manage their operations. And by doing so, we become more and more a system of record for these companies. This is our secret sauce. It means we are not singularly reliant on any 1 particular data source, on any 1 vertical or on any 1 service deliverable. This has been evidenced in the acquisition of Beonic and its recent integration into our core business. And also the recent launch of Occupancy Now, which utilizes both Wi-Fi based-data insights and camera-based data insights to deliver real-time people counts, occupancy counts and traffic flow within a venue. This has been further evidenced by the recent influx of new leads from various municipalities and cities seeking to understand vehicle traffic patterns, pedestrian counts and public transport timetables and these are early use cases that are new video analytics solution, which I'll talk about a bit more in a bit more detail later, can deliver. Moving to Slide 4. Our goal is to become the leading omnidata intelligence platform for physical venues globally by the end of financial year '21. That's been our goal for the entirety of the last financial year. And so we are still well on track to achieve this goal despite the current macroeconomic front. As a global technology company, we have invested the last almost 9 years in building software, which transforms the way organizations collect, analyze and extract value from data. We process billions of data points every month from the physical and digital world to help businesses improve the experiences of millions of customers every day. Under the current global conditions, businesses need accurate data more than ever before in order to return to business and to continue to operate their businesses under a new regime of operating guidelines. Moving to Slide 5. It's important to note that Skyfii, alongside our data set diversity, Skyfii as a business is also well diversified. Diversified across continents and countries, across a large portfolio of customers and now across 11 different verticals, some of which are experiencing their highest traffic and sales volumes right now. Our revenue contracts are generally signed for an average of 3 years across the portfolio, and we have had less than 1% churn since the business began. Our revenue mix is also diversified, and in particular, we are now seeing a significant uplift in customer requests for our people counting solutions within certain key and new verticals. Grocery, universities, corporate offices and municipalities or smart cities, all of which are either operating currently or soon to reopen their operations. And this is further evidence that our decision to broaden our data set capability and diversify our revenue offering was the right strategy for long-term growth and sustainability. Moving to Slide 6, where John Rankin will present, first, the quarterly financial highlights and then the full-year financial highlights as we look past the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and into FY '21, which has already kicked off with new contract wins and is building significant momentum once again.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Thanks, Wayne. So first step, we -- before we jump into the numbers, we'll just quickly revise how the company generates revenues. Number one, recurring revenues, which are generated from ongoing subscriptions or fees for access to the IO platform. And recurring revenues are typically charged on fixed price per venue per month and typically contracted on 1-, 3- and 5-year terms, which Wayne explained in the previous slide. All the recurring revenues range from $50 per venue per month up to $10,000 per venue per month, depending on the size of the venue and the products nominated for subscription services, which are generated from the payment of projects undertaken by both our data consulting services team and Marketing Services division. And finally, nonrecurring revenues, which are made up of all our fees generated from the deployment of hardware and infrastructure, which underpins our recurring revenue growth and subscriptions to the IO platform. These can include the installation of Wi-Fi restructure, 2D and 3D cameras for people counting and more recently, AI-driven vehicle, pedestrian and people counting technology, which Wayne is going to take us through on the product development page today.So firstly, if we look at our Q4 results, I think we quickly browse and reflect on the Q4 results. There were probably 3 noticeable changes that we observed with the onset of COVID. I think, firstly, the majority of our advanced sales pipeline that was expected to contribute to the Q4 topline revenue result was put on hold. Secondly, a number of our customers and venue operators were partially or fully shut for operations or assumed to be shut. And thirdly, there was a change in working pattern for our enterprise customers, which really made it increasingly challenging through those early stages to engage with them on the various deal activity that we're working on. I think as we traded through Q4, we then observed a positive shift in customer buying sentiment, and that was really experienced in sort of 4 key ways. Our advanced-stage pipeline pre-COVID negotiations started to recommence. Customer venue started to reopen or in the majority of cases, were not actually required to close at all through the period. Thirdly, the work patterns of our enterprise customer base started to normalize, and sales and marketing engagement levels improved. And I think finally, incremental to these, the 3 observed improvements in sentiment, the company introduced a number of highly relevant product releases in the likes of Occupancy Now. It is opening up new verticals and lead generation. So both prior and during the quarter, the company introduced a number of initiatives to address the change in market conditions. During the June quarter, our operating costs were reduced by $1.5 million on an annualized basis, representing a 14% reduction. This included the company introducing a 20% pay sale reduction across all regions, and all employees, including management and the Board of Directors for the period of April through July. And during the quarter, the company enrolled in a number of government stimulus programs, mainly -- both in Australia and the United States. The company was successful in securing JobKeeper and a U.S. government-backed payable loan as well. And finally, we extended our support to customers most impacted by COVID-19 by offering temporary suspensions of services, which resulted in a $200,000 impact in billings during the quarter to our recurring revenue line, resulting in a 9% decline quarter-on-quarter. Important to note, the decline in recurring revenues will recover in Q1. So at the topline, the $2.8 million result did represent a 27% dip with observed declines in capital work projects, CapEx service projects and temporary suspensions of subscriptions. That said, if we compare it to the same quarter last year, the company delivered 16% growth, which is a good result. And recurring revenues experienced a decline of 9% quarter-on-quarter, which, when compared to the same for last year represents a 38% improvement. So certainly, year-on-year, a great result during the quarter. And we'll see those numbers normalize in Q1.I think pleasingly, on a normalized basis, as we maintained an annual recurring run rate of $10 million, which we expect to return to growth in Q1. And finally, perhaps the most important result in Q4, the company maintained a strong balance sheet with cash at bank at $2.1 million at the end of the quarter. And the company has available $1.9 million of a $2 million debt facility available to us, which finds us well-placed from a balance sheet perspective. Moving to the full-year results for FY '20. And I think we should -- certainly should have led Q4 cloud, the outstanding performance the company has delivered for the full-year FY '20. From an unaudited perspective, the company once again delivered a strong full year result, with total operating revenues up 44% at $13.5 million. Perhaps the best result from our final financial metrics perspective was our recurring revenue growth, which was up an impressive 72% at $8.8 million. And the company's performance carried through to the bottom line with the company delivering $2 million operating EBITDA with a significant improvement in the EBITDA for the second half of the financial year. So on the balance of the full-year results, another outstanding result for the business. We remain well capitalized with sales activity returning to pre-COVID levels, all which finds us well placed to move into the new financial year. Thanks, Wayne.

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Thanks, John. We'll move to Slide 11. Thank you. So once again, congratulations on a strong financial performance for the full year, which, as you've noted, sets us up for a strong -- with a strong foundation for a return to that expected growth rate in financial year '21 and importantly, Q1 and the first half. From a product development perspective, just switching to some of the operating highlights delivered during the quarter, we successfully launched 2 brand-new offerings during the quarter. The first was Occupancy Now, which is an automated occupancy and social-distancing management solution. Now that's a fancy way of saying these are the things this technology has always been able to deliver, but just has never been more relevant, and we've created a specific product bundle and future set around the current situation. This product has been extremely well-received through our marketing outreach, and in particular, within grocery, municipalities, universities and corporate offices, each of whom have slightly different use cases. For grocery and other such retailers, there is a need to understand and manage occupancy levels within the stores and queue wait times outside of the stores. And you can see some of the visuals there at the bottom of that slide, in terms of how this is being visualized on external screens outside some of the retailers that we're working with today.For municipalities, they want a solution to better understand vehicle patents, categorized as the public transport, bicycles, pedestrians, commercial vehicles, regular cars to assess traffic, patterns, commuter delays, better-managed public safety, and in the current climate, measure the impact on public spaces as more people return to life under the current climate. And again, you can see a visualization of how we're classifying and categorizing those different categories of vehicle. For universities, it's all about facilitating contact tracing on student campuses. As students saw in the U.S., mainly we're turning back to campus in the coming months. These campuses are getting themselves prepared for that influx of students. For corporate offices, it's about managing meeting room occupancy, contact tracing and ensuring that regular cleaning and sanitization is being practiced. All of these use cases can be delivered using Skyfii's Occupancy Now solution. Secondly, we launched a new video analytics capability focused specifically on delivering people and vehicle-counting analytics in outdoor spaces. This is a new revenue stream for the business, which has allowed us the opportunity to be more actively targeting cities, parks, beach fronts and other auto public spaces with a relevant -- both hardware and software solution. There are only a small number of camera providers globally capable of delivering these kinds of use cases for counting analytics, and Skyfii is one of the small group of companies able to take this to market globally. Moving to Slide 12. Despite what has been a global economic downturn these past few months, we successfully signed 2 new contracts and welcomed 2 new customers to our growing list of enterprise customers. First, we were thrilled to convert new people counting managed services contract, with a large currently unnamed Australian property REIT, where we are progressively rolling out our people counting managed service solution across 21 shopping centers on a 3-year initial contract term. Secondly, we were extremely pleased to announce our first large enterprise customer contract for our Occupancy Now solution. Just 3 months after its release, we signed an initial 18-month contract with a large U.S.-based multinational grocery outlet operator with stores across the United States and Europe. So in summary, a stronger-than-expected operating performance for the company in Q4, which saw us securing new contracts locally in Australia and internationally in the U.S. It saw the launch of new product offerings and a continued retention of customers despite the current climate. We also continued to manage and maintain a strong cash at bank position and importantly, delivered a very strong EBITDA finish for the full year.Moving to Slide 14, the outlook. So in closing, we are pleased with the way the business has operated through the last quarter of FY '20, and most importantly, very pleased with the overall growth of the business across the full year. As John mentioned, we delivered a 44% year-on-year revenue growth, a 72% year-on-year recurring revenue growth and 129% uplift in operating EBITDA in FY '20, which are all signs of a solid growth company despite the short-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We're confident that the impacts of the current climate to our business are temporary. And whilst our recurring revenue and revenue growth trajectory were both affected during Q4, we were anticipating this. More importantly, however, we have already seen the majority of the suspended customer revenues begin to return to our revenue line in the first half of FY '21. This coupled with the continued large influx of new business leads and recent new business wins in the ANZ market and the U.S. market, we are forecasting a strong start to the new financial year and particularly for the first half of FY '21. Our key areas of focus given this new momentum are to continue to invest into our marketing effort, which is clearly driving strong lead generation and almost an average of 100 new leads each month. We're putting a significant focus on key verticals, some of which are new verticals for the business: grocery, corporate offices, universities, schools and municipalities. We will continue to develop ongoing product releases, such as how we did that for Occupancy Now in the last quarter to drive new revenue streams for the business. We will also continue to focus, as we always do, on stringent cash management and maintaining a strong balance sheet position. We're going to be more intentional about growing our business of people counting across not only the ANZ market, but also into the U.K. and the U.S. markets over the coming year. And given the strong baseline for the company and strong balance sheet position, we will also continue to pursue highly complementary, accretive acquisitions to drive further growth and broaden our offering to current and new customers.As always, thank you for your time today and for your continued support as shareholders. We are excited about the growth of Skyfii in FY '21. And we hope everyone remains safe and healthy during this time. I'd like to open the call now for any questions. [Operator Instructions] So thank you, and we look forward to your questions.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

We, I've got a few questions. I'm just going to fire them off for you, so you can respond. Question number one, what pricing model do you use for Occupancy Now?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

So it's exactly the same pricing model as the 3 revenue lines that John explained. It's another software SaaS license model which is priced on a per venue basis like our other software modules, and with a sort of similar price point to our IO Insight, Platform license fees. So sold again on January 3 on 5-year contract terms, SaaS revenue model. In some cases, where we are -- and now that we have the Beonic business integrated into the company, we're actually capable of delivering a full end-to-end managed service around people counting, particularly. So in some cases, with Occupancy Now, we've been asked to actually procure, install, manage, monitor, support the camera system as well. And obviously, that will be mostly nonrecurring revenues at a high margin.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Thanks, Wayne. Second one, how much of the $200,000 in recurring revenues that's suspended will come back online? And how long would it stay suspended before it could be totally account cut?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

So look, we haven't given specific guidance around hard revenue numbers. However, we expect all of the suspended revenues to return. And we expect them to return in the first half. Some -- the vast majority have already -- basically are no longer suspended as of the first quarter of FY '21 and we expect the rest to come back into the P&L in the second half -- sorry, the second quarter of the first half. So 100% renewal, if you like. We don't expect any of them to not return. The vast majority of them have already returned.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Third question, you mentioned looking at acquisitions, what sort of complementary technology would you be seeking?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Well, if we just go back to the data source slide that I presented earlier in the presentation, it's really more ways that we can consolidate data in a physical environment -- physical or digital environment or where we would like to focus our efforts around potential acquisitions. We're not generally looking to buy technology, but we are looking to approach companies that have an offering that delivers a data source in one of these groupings. So Beonic fits quite squarely in the camera space, as everybody will note. So there are other companies that sit in some of these other verticals or data source verticals that we are looking at and we'll continue to look at. That allows us then to go deeper in our existing customer base, but it also means that we become more and more dependable because we're not singularly reliant on any one of these particular data sets to deliver our business model. So this is where we kind of focus our acquisition efforts.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Excellent. Next question. Which country region is expected to deliver the strongest ARR in FY '21 and why?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

I'm going to avoid that question directly. However, what I'm going to state, though, is that we're absolutely seeing the U.S. market and the U.K. market beginning to really convert. And myself being placed in the U.S. region, it's particularly pleasing to see this market starting to pick up momentum. So we do expect our international markets to be stronger contributors in FY '21.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Next question. Q4 revenue was $2.8 million. So do you expect Q1 FY '21 cash receipts to be below the Q1 FY '21 cash receipts of $3 million.

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Sorry, can you repeat that, John?

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Yes. So I think in summary, are we expecting a return to growth in the first quarter when compared to Q4 at a top line cash receipt perspective?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Yes. We are expecting to return to growth in Q1 and Q2, absolutely. The -- as John mentioned, the large majority of that particularly the nonrecurring capital works projects that were forecasted to be delivered in Q4 started to come back online. So really, it just comes down to the timing of when those are going to convert. But looking at our pipeline, it's definitely almost back to pre-COVID levels. So timing will obviously come down to the -- to when the deals convert, but absolutely, from a full year perspective, certainly forecasting growth.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

The next question was, there have been less ASX announcements of our contracts wins this year than last. Is that because the wins are less material? Do you want me to jump on that one?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Sure.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Yes. Look, I think the business has grown substantially over the last sort of 12 months. So the more revenue that we're generating in the top line, the harder it is for us to target material contracts. I think in response to that, though, what we provided in our quarter release is a reference to notable contract wins. What sits below that are other smaller contract wins. We just don't name them all for the purposes of keeping customers' information confidential. But certainly, from that perspective, the more we grow, the more challenging it is to demonstrate that it's a material contract. So that's typically our position on the announcements, but our quarterlies are very much the funnel for us to talk that through. Next question, can we please chat about the previous sales model disclosed and how this has changed in the past 3 months?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Well, I mean, I think it's clear that the conversion rate has slowed down in the past 3 months given the state of the world. But we've not seen or are aware of any of the significant deals that were in that pipeline, not moving forward at all. So we're seeing the vast majority of those deals return to the pipeline, as I mentioned, in Q1 or Q2, certainly back on and looking like converting in this new financial year. But certainly, in the last 3 months, lots of those deals just got frozen for obvious reasons.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

I think as I added at financial highlights section, what we have seen is a recovery and the negotiations returning on a number of those key deals, and that should -- that will flow into Q1 and Q2. So I think we're very deliberate in our communication on that. Next question is, can you talk about the size of your pipeline? How large it is? And has it been growing in recent months?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Look, we haven't given any specific guidance this quarter or for the full year yet on the size of the pipeline, but we certainly will aim to be deliberate about presenting that story potentially in Q1 or the end or Q1. But as mentioned in the previous question, certainly, the pipeline, yes, I wouldn't say that things have dropped off the pipeline, things have just slowed and budgets were frozen for a period of time. But we started to see a lot of those bigger deals now relax and come back onto -- into active discussions with us. So as I said, it will just come down to timing. And that's been the story for this company for many years. There were deals that we have -- have come into the pipeline that have -- that are just sort of stagnated for a period of time. And then all of a sudden, 12 months later, they've come back on and we've converted them. So we generally do experience long sales cycles. They're generally 9- to 12-months sales cycles for some of our larger deals. Thankfully, and this is why the launch of Occupancy Now has been such a success for us, never before have we seen such an immediate influx of leads generated by any one particular product in the business and that's been significant. And importantly, managing to convert a very large multinational grocery chain in the U.S. and Europe within just 3 months of launching that new product is a really strong sign that with the right positioning, we could shorten that sales cycle.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Excellent. Wayne, I think that's it for the questions for today.

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Excellent. Well, thank you, everybody, again, for your time. Stay safe, and we look forward to speaking again at the end of the next quarter. But as always, thank you for your support.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Wayne, sorry, mate. Just one final question. Sorry, mate. A question to talk about the grocery vertical size, what sort of global size is the vertical, the grocery vertical?

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Well, yes, I think if you think about a supermarket, and again, we're going to break it down by are we delivering hardware and software? Or are we just delivering software? If I just focus on the software side of it, for an average size supermarket, 1 single venue, it's anywhere from $100 to $200 a month that we would be earning from the base software alone, and then we can layer that and upscale on that. But there's hundreds of thousands of grocery chains out there for us. And our pipeline at the moment is generally filled with grocery chains that are in excess of 1,000 venues. So at scale, it is a significant vertical for us to convert on. And interestingly, not a vertical that we were very strong in before. We just -- we didn't have a whole relevance previously. But now that we are able to provide a lot more fidelity and accuracy around counts and occupancy numbers, we're much more relevant. So it's basically a new vertical opportunity for Skyfii.

[John Rankin, COO & MD of ANZ]

Excellent, that's it for the question. Sorry for the last -- the final run. But that's it.

[Wayne Arthur, Co]

Great. Well, thank you, everybody. Take here, and we'll talk again in 3 months.