Think Research Corporation

XTSX:THNK

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Think Research Corporation Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also note that this call is being recorded on August 29, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sachin Aggarwal. Please go ahead, sir.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone who's joining us this morning. Also joining me today on our call is our CFO, John Hayes, who's going to review the financial results in more detail after I discuss some operational achievements during the second quarter of 2023. I'm very proud to say that Q2 was another record for us in terms of revenue, and we also reported our third quarter in a row of more than $1 million in adjusted EBITDA. With the strength in our Software and Data division, we saw really solid organic growth in SaaS revenue coming out of our major platforms. Now before I go into our operational results, I just wanted to briefly touch on what we're becoming and where we think that we have some major long-term opportunities.

With our ongoing product development, we have found ourselves very well positioned to help constrain health care systems everywhere to improve patient access to high-quality health care services when and where they need it. As an industry leader in delivering knowledge-based digital health software and data solutions our evidence-based health care solutions support clinical decision-making, improve access to services, enable practitioners to gain better capabilities and knowledge and help to standardize care in order to facilitate better health care outcomes.

The company has gathered a significant amount of data by building its repository of knowledge through its digital solutions platform and group of companies. With this data, we strive to become more essential to our clients and their clinicians every day. This is reflected in our recent performance. In our pipeline, and I think more importantly, the speed at which our pipeline is converting. Our focused mission is to become for clinicians an essential platform for health care providers, patients and health networks to access the best care and information. Our customer base typically includes enterprise clients. These are hospitals, pharmacy networks, health regions, health care professionals right up to and including provincial or state governments. Think's Data and Software division licenses its solutions to ramp 16,000 facilities for more than 326,000 primary care, acute care and long-term care doctors, nurses and pharmacists that rely on the software content and data that we provide to support their practices.

About 60% of our Software and Data revenue is recurring and of our total, 70% is either recurring or reoccurring, driven by an increasing level of SaaS licensing, especially over the past few quarters. We expect recurring revenue to grow at a faster rate than the total revenue for the foreseeable future. For example, in Q2, our SaaS revenue grew organically by 67% compared to last year. The bottom line, at least from Think's perspective, is that over 3 million patients and residents annually receive better care due to the essential data that Think produces, manages and delivers. Think also operates a clinical services division, which is a network of digital-first primary care clinics and medical clinics, providing private pay elective surgeries. In addition, the company collects and manages pharmaceutical and clinical trials data in its clinical research division.

In the first quarter of 2023, the key drivers of revenue growth were the clinical software and data SaaS agreement with a subnational government along with continued performance in the company's clinical research division. Growth in these 2 lines of business was offset partially by year-over-year decline in revenue in clinical services. The staffing changes that we made recently in that division are beginning to work their way through the operations, and we're confident that revenue growth will recover soon. Combined with our objective to become more essential, we leveraged our talent and technology to deliver a SaaS-based Digital Front Door or DFD solution to the market as well as a new SaaS-based Learning Management System, or LMS.

We're also gaining significant market traction with our Pharmapod solution, which provides medication safety to thousands of pharmacies and patients in North America and beyond. In addition, we're beginning to make progress towards bringing third-party software providers and third-party health care practitioners on to our key platforms. We see these initiatives as a way to extend the software and add more value to our relationships. Our platform partners are eager to gain reach to our more than 326,000 clinicians. Now I'd like to invite John Hayes, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financial results in detail for the quarter and year-to-date. After he reviews the financials, I'm going to conclude with a bit of an outlook, which offer some thoughts on how we plan to evolve as an essential solutions and data service for clinicians. Over to you, John.

[John Hayes, executive]

Thanks, Sachin, and good morning, everyone. Today's results, along with all of our risk disclosures can be found in our MD&A and financial statements, which we posted to SEDAR earlier this morning. Now before I outline our results, I'd like to address the EBITDA covenant breach that occurred subsequent to quarter end that we noted in our MD&A, financial statements and press release. We are actively addressing this breach with our lenders and they have been supportive. They see that Think has shown strong earnings momentum over the past several quarters and that we're making good progress towards our goal of consistent positive cash flows. Overall, we expect that our revenues will continue to grow, although not in a straight line, so we don't forecast it every quarter will be better than the one before.

But as our revenue grows, we do expect that our cost base will grow but at a lower rate than revenues, leading to increasing financial returns over time. And we also believe that the predictability of our revenue is likely to improve as we grow because a larger portion of our Data and Software revenue will be recurring SaaS revenue and reoccurring revenue from existing customers, and those revenue streams are easier to forecast.

Now let's turn to our revenue and business line contributions. For Q2 2023, we reported record revenue of $22.5 million. That's an increase of 22% or $4.1 million compared to Q2 2022, driven primarily by organic growth in our Software and Data business and our clinical research division. Growth in these business lines was partially offset by revenue declines in our Clinical Services business. Compared to the first quarter of this year, sequential revenue growth was solid, growing by $0.7 million or approximately 3%. Year-to-date revenue of $44.3 million was up $5.7 million or 15% from $38.6 million in the first half of last year. This year-over-year growth reflects the impact of organic growth in Software and Data solutions and clinical research that was offset by a decline in Clinical Services revenue.

Q2 2023 revenues from each of Think's 3 business lines were as follows: our Software and Data Solutions revenue grew by 50% to a record $10.4 million compared to Q2 of last year. With new SaaS contracts expected and a growing pipeline of large opportunities, we anticipate solid organic and mostly recurring revenue growth to continue in this line of business over the next several quarters. Our annual recurring revenue or ARR, was $25 million at the end of Q2, an increase of 67% compared to $14.7 million on June 30, 2022, and an increase of 12% compared to the $22 million at the end of March 2023.

ARR is -- we have ARR exclusively from our Software and Data solutions line of business and the strong growth in the quarter reflects the large SaaS deal that we announced in March, but also several other smaller customers. Think's net retention rate for ARR, the amount of ARR represented by customers who are also customers a year ago was 106% at the end of the second quarter. We see this metric as a strong indicator of the success of our solutions that are deployed within customer sites because this metric, which is net of churn shows that our customers buy more over time.

Our Clinical Research revenue also grew by 27% or $1.9 million to $9.2 million in Q2 2023 compared to Q2 of the previous year. Sequentially, revenue in Q2 of this year was relatively flat compared to $9.4 million in Q1. Clinical Services revenue declined by 32% to $2.9 million compared to Q2 last year and was flat compared to the $3 million reported in the immediately preceding quarter. The revenue streams for Clinical Services have been stable at around $3 million for 3 consecutive quarters. Now let's switch to gross profit. During the second quarter and first half of 2023, the company generated gross profit of $11.7 million and $23.1 million compared to $9.4 million and $18.5 million for the same periods in the prior year. This represents an increase of 25% for both the second quarter and for the year-to-date. The increase in gross profit was primarily related to the increase in revenue of 22% for Q2 and 15% for the year-to-date.

Gross profit in the year grew faster than revenues due to some elements of cost of sales being fixed in nature, and due to an increasing proportion of total revenue coming from higher margin software and data SaaS sales. Now although it's a non-IFRS measure, we monitor adjusted EBITDA closely. I'm happy to report that Think reported adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 million in Q2 2023, which works out to a 6% adjusted EBITDA margin on total revenue. Think showed positive adjusted EBITDA for the first time in Q4 of last year, and we've reported positive adjusted EBITDA in each quarter since. Year-to-date adjusted EBITDA was $2.4 million compared to a loss of $1.9 million for the first half of 2022, showing a $4.3 million improvement. The improvement in adjusted EBITDA was driven by 2 primary factors: first, revenue growth and in particular, higher-margin SaaS revenue in the data and software business that I mentioned earlier; and second, Think cost optimization program for expenses on which we remain focused.

So now let's review expenses. Total operating expenses of $14.2 million in Q2 2023, represent a decrease of $2.1 million from $16.4 million recorded in Q2 of last year. Compared to $14 million of total operating expenses in Q1 of this year, total operating expenses have generally been flat which suggests that we're at a stable baseline for the future revenue streams that we expect to produce. Nevertheless, in light of the covenant breach that I mentioned earlier, management is committed to finding efficiencies in operations going forward even as our revenue grows. The year-to-date operating expenses of $28.2 million were down by -- sorry, $2.2 million compared to the same period last year, reflecting the ongoing impact of Think's cost reduction program. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation, which are primarily noncash were $10.4 million and 46% of revenue this past quarter compared to $11 million and 60% of revenue in Q2 of last year. For the first 6 months of the year, these operating expenses were $20.7 million and 47% of total revenue compared to $20.4 million and 53% of total revenue in the first half of 2022.

We are confident that we can continue to reduce expenses further as a percentage of total revenue. General and administration expenses of $5.8 million in Q2 and $12.2 million in the year-to-date 2023 were down by $2.1 million and $1.9 million compared to $7.9 million in Q2 and $14.2 million in the first half of 2022, driven by Think's cost reduction program. Research and development expenses were relatively flat at $2.4 million in Q2 and $4.5 million in the first 6 months of 2023 compared to Q2 and the first half of 2022. Although we gained efficiencies, we also increased R&D efforts related to key solutions in the Data and Software business. Sales and marketing expenses increased to $2.8 million in Q2 and $5.1 million in the year-to-date of this year compared to $2.4 million in Q2 and $4.7 million in the first half of last year.

This growth reflects increased customer activity related to Think SaaS solutions, along with ongoing lead generation and branding activities. Think's cash on hand, decreased to $2.6 million on June 30 of this year compared to $4 million at the end of Q1 of this year. In June, Think raised $1.8 million in nonconvertible debt from Beedie Capital to pay down contingent and deferred consideration associated with past acquisitions. Now Beedie also holds $30 million of convertible debt and a substantial number of common shares. So they were motivated to see the company make these payments in cash rather than in shares, which would have been dilutive. Subsequent to quarter end on August 17, we bolstered our liquidity by a $1.5 million term loan, again, provided by Beedie Capital, which was structured again as a nonconvertible loan, to minimize the impact of dilution on shareholders.

And with that, I will turn the call back to Sachin.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Thank you, John. So increasingly, Think's Software and Data solutions are being seen as essential for constrained health care systems to improve patient access to high-quality health services where they are needed and when they're needed. Our pipeline is bursting with these types of opportunities. Our sales pipeline and backlog have never been stronger. We're very excited about the visibility we have for the rest of fiscal 2023 and beyond. With a major minimum 5-year SaaS contracts signed in the first half of the year in our Data and Software line of business, we continue to gain momentum in our highest margin revenue streams. We're very encouraged that our strategies are paying off. And I'd just like to remind investors of what we're focusing on and why we expect to gain more leverage in our model.

First, we're adding more users to current licenses by promoting adoption and usage. And there's a lot of room for us to increase users in usage of already deployed solutions. And of course, as we add more users, our solutions become more essential to those licensees, which gives us pricing power and creates switching barriers and that, of course, is reflected by our net retention rate that John mentioned. Now here are some of the things that are happening right now. Our new Digital Front Door solutions are solving urgent challenges for patient access to adequate health services, including primary care and emergency care for health networks and governments.

Our learning management systems are being used to fill urgent knowledge and learning gaps through all lines of health care delivery from hospitals to pharmacies and to help standardize care across delivery geographies for our clients. Our connectivity solutions are helping patients get better referrals and practitioners to help better manage their practices. And lastly, Pharmapod is adding hundreds of pharmacies quarterly to keep patients safe from medication errors. Finally, with the user base now exceeding 326,000 clinicians, we believe that direct user licensing could generate entirely new revenue streams.

For example, we're now cross promoting and cross-selling pharmacist education solutions directly to pharmacists that are on our Pharmapod incident management network. We continue to have significant success with really significant success with our Pharmapod solution. We're actively engaged with third-party software and service providers to leverage our platform to reach the 326,000 plus clinicians. And we will have some really interesting examples of that coming. Third parties are going live on our platform now and our pipeline of potential services and software partners is growing. You should expect to see some forthcoming announcements that will bring this to life.

As we transform into a solutions-based organization focused on essential clinician data, we are excited with our annual growth rates and our path to profitability. Due to the nature of some of our lines of business, of course, we expect quarterly variances in performance due to project work that will show up in our results as either delays or accelerations in programs. But we are really excited about the prospects for Think over the coming quarters as a persistently adjusted EBITDA positive, high growth company.

With that, I will conclude our prepared remarks, and I will ask the operator to open the line for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will be from Doug Taylor at Canaccord Genuity.

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

I'd like to ask about the, I guess, the linearity of your results now as we go into the back half of the year. You alluded in your prepared remarks a couple of times to potentially not being a straight line or some project-based work, potentially not being repeated at the same level each quarter. Am I understanding that correctly? And maybe you could walk through each of the business lines and talk about at least directionally what we should anticipate into the second half of the year.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Yes. Thanks Doug. That is generally correct. So again summer months are always challenging when you are relying on clients for particular project work. And so we shouldn't be surprised, and this is the case in Q3 of last year as well where some project work, particularly in divisions like Clinical Research are impacted or scheduling of study participants or study starts is impacted by summer months. So that's overall generally expected in this kind of a business, particularly over those months. I would say that this becomes, of course, less and less of a factor with time because we continue to really significantly increase the portion of our business that is Software as a Service and recurring revenue.

So this tends to get muted as we grow but we'll expect it to still be a factor with, of course, the material everyone races in Q4 to get their projects done. So you see a little bit of seasonality in respect to the back half of the year. John, do you have anything to add there?

[John Hayes, executive]

No, I was just going to confirm that a lot of that project-based work does have year-end deadlines for our clients. And so there does tend to be a push for milestones and the associated revenue in the fourth quarter, late Q3 and into Q4. We definitely saw that last year and it looks like it's going to recur this year.

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

Okay. So everything you just said there, is that all localized in the clinical research unit, just to be clear on that related to the project-based work?

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Generally, yes, there is a little bit of it in Software and Data Solutions, but it's much more minor than we were talking...

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

Yes. Let's drill down on that a little bit because I mean if I take an ARR, for example, of $25 million and that unit delivering over $10 million in revenue this quarter. Is the -- it would seem that there's $3 million or $4 million of probably professional services-related work. And is that -- is any of that should we be considering that onetime in nature or am I reading too much into the delta between the ARR and the performance this quarter?

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Yes. I think you're reaching -- you're going a bit too far there. Remembering Software and Data Solutions also contains a meaningful portion of reoccurring revenue. And that is generally quite stable, right? So the actual project work or onetime work is a much, much smaller portion of that delta.

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

Okay. That's helpful. Do you want to speak to the range of remedies that you might be contemplating here with respect to the debt covenants that you alluded to on the call. Should we be expecting a restructuring of the debt? Or are you just talking about just some covenant easing out some of the covenants on a temporary basis. Any help there, I think, would be useful.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

John, why don't you go ahead with that one?

[John Hayes, executive]

Yes. I don't want to speak on behalf of our lenders. I mean, we're early in the conversations at this point. And so we're talking about having sharing more details of our plans with them, and we're having conversations about covenants. We're not having conversations about restructuring at this time. But it's -- we're early in the conversation. So I can't really accurately forecast exactly where the conversation is going to go. All I can tell you is that both of our secured lenders have been extremely supportive so far.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Maybe I'd just add to that, just as a reminder, they have supported 2 tranches of additional -- both small tranches, they've supported additional branches of debt in the spring and here in the summer. So we, of course, are in very, very regular communications with these folks, and they continue to be very, very supportive.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your next question will be from Rob Goff at Echelon.

[Robert Goff, analyst]

Perhaps moving to connect some of the dotted lines that you're putting forward there. With respect to the covenants being on-site in July and then off-site in the -- sorry, on-site end of June, off-site end of July. Is that consistent with the Q3 being a bit of a more seasonal quarter? And as you look at yourself coming out of that, seasonally tougher quarter, how is your Q4 shaping up, specifically with biopharma? I know last year, it was a big Q4 at $11.3 million for context.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Yes, great questions. The several factors that come into play here. I think we've mentioned in the financial statements and MD&A. The covenants actually get tighter at the start of each quarter, right? So that perhaps has a greater impact than the actual financial performance in any given month, right? And as we know, businesses don't grow linearly, but the covenants were structured to get tighter a bit more linearly than perhaps should have been done. So that's one factor. Of course, some seasonality comes into play there. And John, I don't know if you'd like to add anything about the trending between Q3 and Q4.

[John Hayes, executive]

Yes. I don't think we're -- I mean, if I were to go much further into detail, we'll be straying into the realm of guidance, which I don't think we want to do. So Rob, I think that's probably about as much detail as we can give you.

[Robert Goff, analyst]

Totally understand. We all look for monthly guidance. I understand. A different question then. Your growth in the ARR from $22 million to $25 million Q-on-Q, you described it as in part from your 5-year landmark contract, but also from multiple smaller client engagements. We don't really hear about these. Could you perhaps give us some color on these smaller conversions, both within the quarter and in looking at the complexion of your backlog?

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Yes. Thanks for that question. That's and perhaps this is an area where we can do a bit better job explaining the diverse nature of our SaaS business, right? So our pipeline consists of many, many hundreds of opportunities, right? And we are closing on a regular basis, we are closing. And so that means we are closing opportunities weekly and many opportunities monthly and many, many opportunities quarterly. And so these smaller opportunities can be $10,000. They can be $50,000. They can be $100,000 a year and we don't announce them. And so our overall business is a combination of very large opportunities, which you'll hear us talk about again and again, but also these midsized and small-size opportunities, which collectively give us a lot of confidence because even when we don't have big opportunities closed, we have medium and small-sized ones closing all the time.

And one thing about our pipeline, which we'll say is that we are -- it is the largest pipeline in the history of the company. But very importantly, we have more significant opportunities that are further down the pipeline than we've ever had in the history of the company. And so that's really quite important because, as you know, some large contracts, particularly government and state contracts, can take a long time to close, right. Even after they've been awarded or even after we know that we've won procurements or tendering processes, they can take time to close. And so the maturity of our pipeline is also what gives us a really significant amount of confidence about the overall ARR growth in the company. So medium, small and very large opportunities, and you should expect to hear much more about those in the coming weeks and months.

[Robert Goff, analyst]

Sorry, I just have to ask it. It sounds like there might have been contract or contracts that you might have seen announced with the quarter that are now still out there for a Q3 reporting season?

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

That's probably exactly correct. There's lots to talk about in the coming weeks.

[Robert Goff, analyst]

And one last one, if I may. On the clinics, I know it's a relatively small piece of the overall business now. But how are you looking at the rebuild on the clinics and you're keeping the asset?

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

Yes. Let's put it this way. I think it's pretty clear to everyone on the call, where our best next dollar is spent in the company. We are -- our SaaS growth is remarkable at 67%. So far organic growth, and we still have a lot of time to go between now and the end of the year. So we expect really quite remarkable ARR growth and we expect that to continue into next year. And so of course, that colors where the management team are able to spend their time and effort for the best possible return for shareholders, of course. The Clinical Services business also is because a significant portion of it is private pay surgeries. That sector is facing a few headwinds and notwithstanding the significant backlog in the public health care system, interest rates are up, and a lot of these surgeries are paid on the back of consumer debt and structured payment plans.

Also, our business has a significant number of gastric sleeve or bariatric procedures. And we're seeing a huge amount of advertising from Ozempic and similar class of drugs, which is, of course, affecting some part of that pipeline. And lastly, and we've talked -- we've spoken about this previously, we had some headcount changes, which were affecting the conversion of our pipeline. And so we have fixed those headcount changes, and we have really put some focusing on the broadest part of the pipeline as well as the conversion of that pipeline. So we do expect some serious recovery there. But overall, we don't expect it to grow as a portion of -- in fact, you should expect it to shrink as an overall portion of the business itself.

[Operator]

And at this time, Mr. Aggarwal, it appears we have no further questions registered. Please proceed with any closing remarks.

[Sachin Aggarwal, executive]

All right, folks. I just want to take this opportunity to thank you again for taking part in these calls and engaging with Think Research over the months and years. We are -- we've never been more excited about our prospects and I think that's starting to show really meaningfully in our results. And hopefully, you're hearing it in our voices and you're seeing it in the really meaningful and remarkable contracts that we do announce when we're able to talk about them. So look forward to more. And again, thank you for taking part in our call this morning.

[Operator]

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.