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Operator
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Autobytel's financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year, ended December 31, 2016. Joining us today are Autobytel's President and CEO, Jeff Coats; the Company's CFO, Kimberly Boren; and the Company's Outside Investor Relations Advisor, Sean Mansouri, with Liolios group. Following their remarks, we will open the call for your questions. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Mansouri for some introductory comments.
- Outside IR Advisor
Thank you Karen. Before I introduce Jeff, I remind you that during today's call, including the question and answer session, any projections and forward-looking statements made regarding future events or Autobytel's future financial performance are covered by the safe harbor statements contained in today's press release, the slides accompanying this presentation and the Company's public filings with the SEC. Actual events may differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
Specifically, please refer to the company's form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, which was filed prior to this call as well as other filings made with Autobytel with the SEC from time to time. These filings identify factors that could cause results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
There are slides included with today's presentation to help illustrate some of the points being made and discussed during the call. The slides can be accessed by visiting Autobytel's website at www.autobytel.com. When there, go to investor relations and then click on events and presentations.
Please also note that during this call and/or in the accompanying slides, management will be disclosing non-GAAP income and non-GAAP EPS. And for purposes of 2017 guidance, we'll be adjusting 2016 revenues, non-GAAP income and non-GAAP EPS to reflect the exclusion of the Company's specialty finance leads product that was divested on December 31, 2016.
These are non-GAAP financial measures as defined the SEC Regulation G. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and/or in the slides, which are posted on the company's website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.
- President and CEO
Thank you, Sean. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our record fourth-quarter and full-year 2016 results. As a reminder to those of you who are new to Autobytel, we are a pioneer and leading provider of online digital automotive services, connecting end market buyers with our dealer and manufacturer customers.
We are pleased to announce we generated record revenues in both Q4 2016 and in full-year 2016, while maintaining our commitment to high quality products for our dealer and OEM customers as you can see on slide 3 and 4.
2016 represented a year of integration, execution and investment. We completed the integration of the Dealix and AutoWeb acquisitions from 2015, each of which brought us extremely important strategic assets. Additionally we rolled out the new beta version of our usedcars.com site and we invested in increasing our internal lead generation capabilities and in developing and optimizing new traffic sources to further accelerate the growth of both our high-quality clicks and leads products.
The AutoWeb acquisition brought us both our exciting advertising related click products, which has dramatically strengthened our technology leadership in the automotive digital landscape and additional talented cost-effective technology resources in our Guatemala operations. Our click product continues to exceed our expectations, with revenues growing more than 300% in 2016 and is already accelerating our overall company growth.
This high-growth product has also propelled Autobytel from just the lead generation market into the much larger search and pay-per-click automotive market, as you can see on slides 5 and 6. Although we have been methodical in our rollout of this product, having thus far only introduced it to a small number of our customers, during 2017 we are making it available to many more of our thousands of dealer and OEM customers. We also experienced approximately 98% customer retention with the product in 2016, further validating its exceptional quality of high intent consumer traffic.
The usedcars.com site, which came to us with Dealix, is the core around which we are building our used car leads and used car clicks business. This represents a particularly attractive growth opportunity for us because used car represents less than 10% of our revenues today. Even though the volume of annual used car sales in the United States is generally to 2 to 3 times that of new cars.
In Q3 of 2016, we began increasing our investment in traffic acquisition to bolster our leads business with high-quality in-market consumers and to increase the volume of consumers to our click products. We continued that investment in Q4 2016 and as a result, increased our click volume by over 160% and at the same time increased our effective CPMs by over 80%.
At the end of the fourth quarter we divested our specialty finance leads product, which now enables us to further dedicate time and resources to our core vehicle leads and fast-growing clicks products for both new and used. Before commenting further, I would like to turn the call over to Kim and have her take us through the important details of our financial results. Kim?
- CFO
Thanks, Jeff and good afternoon everyone. For those of you following along with our earnings presentation, on slide 7, you can see our fourth-quarter revenues increased 11% to $40.4 million, compared to $36.4 million in the year ago quarter. The increase was primarily driven by growth in advertising click revenues and wholesale lead revenues.
Lead revenues from automotive manufacturers and wholesale customers, our wholesale channel, increased 9% to $18.6 million from $17.1 million in the prior year period. While lead revenue from automotive dealers, our retail channel, decreased 12% to $12.3 million, compared to $14 million last year.
Both the wholesale and retail channels were impacted by the systematic reduction of lower quality lead supply, which effectively began in Q4 of 2015 and continued through Q2 of 2016. Further, the expected impact to retail revenues was driven by the transition of 190 retail dealers into one comprehensive OEM program in the second quarter of 2016. This has proven to be a success, as overall revenues for this OEM have expanded 21% since initiating the transition.
Moving on to advertising, our advertising revenues increased 119% to $8.1 million, compared to $3.7 million in the year ago quarter. The growth was due to a significant increase in click revenue driven by the continued investment in our AutoWeb products.
Additionally on slide 8, you will see click revenues in the fourth quarter increasing 219% to $6.4 million compared to $2 million in the same period last year. The triple digit year-over-year increase in click revenue was driven by continued strong growth in AutoWeb as we continue to grow impressions and effective CPMs. The momentum in our click product is further evidenced by the 16% sequential increase from Q3, even with seasonal headwinds in Q4.
Moving now to slide 9, you'll see that we delivered approximately $2.3 million automotive leads during the fourth quarter, compared to $2.4 million last year, as we worked to replace a meaningful amount of the eliminated low-quality volume with higher quality leads from our internal lead generation. Consistent with lead revenue, retail new leads were down 12% compared to the prior-year quarter, while used leads were down slightly by 2%.
76% of leads were delivered to the wholesale channel, with the remaining 24% to the retail channel. Retail new leads invoiced per dealer was up 3% compared to the year ago quarter and retail used leads invoiced per dealer was up 8%. This is consistent with our strategy of focusing on larger dealerships.
On slide 10 you will see that dealer count stood at 4,115 at December 31, a 4% decline from Q3. The decrease was driven by dealer churn as we continue to focus on building stronger relationships with larger, more profitable dealers. I remind listeners that this figure would be closer to 22,000 dealer franchises in total, if dealers in our OEM network were included.
At the end of the fourth quarter we sold our specialty finance leads product to internet brands. Total consideration included $3.2 million of cash, as well as additional transition licensing income, totaling $1.6 million over a five-year period.
In accordance with recent accounting literature released in 2014, the divestiture of the finance leads product does not meet this discontinued operation tests and therefore is included in our 2016 results. For future comparative purposes, we calculated the 2016 revenue impact to be approximately $6.3 million, the non-GAAP income to be just under $0.5 million and the non-GAAP EPS to be $0.03 on a full-year basis. As Jeff mentioned earlier, with the divestiture of the finance leads product we can now dedicate greater time, energy, and resources to our core vehicle lead and fast growing click products.
Now moving to slide 11, gross profit during the fourth quarter increased 1% to $14.6 million and gross margin was 36.2%, compared to 39.7% in the year ago quarter, in line with our expectation. In Q3 we made the decision to further invest in our traffic acquisition in order to accelerate the growth of our lead and click products.
The decline in gross margin was due to the corresponding increase in our traffic acquisition and technology related costs as we focus more on accelerated growth and incremental gross profit dollars as opposed to gross margin percentage. We expect gross margin to continue in the mid 30% range over the next several quarters as we invest in our core products to grow revenues and ultimately, gross profit dollars.
Total operating expenses in the fourth quarter were $12.8 million, roughly flat compared to the year ago quarter. As a percentage of revenues total operating expenses were 31.7% compared to 35.5% in the fourth-quarter of 2015, with the improvement largely attributable to operating leverage experienced with top line growth. While we have realized considerable leverage over the course of the year, we plan to reinvest more going forward and further accelerate the growth opportunities we see in our business.
On a GAAP basis, net income in the fourth quarter was $1.4 million or $0.10 per diluted share on 13.3 million diluted shares, compared to $1.4 million or $0.10 per diluted share on 13.4 million diluted shares in the year ago quarter. We expect our quarterly diluted share count in 2017 to remain around 13.5 million, contingent upon our share price and assuming current outstanding shares, warrants, options, and convertible debt remain constant.
For the fourth quarter, non-GAAP income, which adds back amortization on acquired intangibles, non-cash stockbased compensation, acquisition costs, severance costs, gain or loss on investment or sale, litigation settlement, and income taxes increased 7% to $4.7 million or $0.35 per diluted share compared to $4.4 million or $0.33 in the year ago quarter. Cash provided by operations for the 2016 fourth quarter improved to $6.2 million, compared to $4.6 million in the prior-year quarter.
On slide 12 you'll see that our cash balance remains strong, with cash and cash equivalents of $38.5 million at December 31, 2016, which represents a 61% increase from December 31, 2015. Total debt at December 31, 2016, was reduced to $23.1 million compared to $27 million at the end of 2015. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Jeff.
- President and CEO
Thank you, Kim. As I mentioned earlier, 2016 represented a year of integration, execution, and investment. We completed the integrations of AutoWeb and Dealix, each of which had meaningful impacts to our business in its own right. With AutoWeb we acquired the technology and development operation that powers our growing clicks business. With Dealix we added an extensive network of dealers and bolstered our used car practice with the acquired usedcars.com consumer facing website.
At the end of the third quarter we launched a new version of usedcars.com with fully responsive technology and mobile friendly application. We remain very excited about the strength of the usedcars.com domain and will continue to invest in it in an effort to make it the premier used vehicle destination for consumers. As a reminder, retail used car leads still only represent about 7% of our total leads business today and approximately 9% of revenue, even though used car sales in the United States are 2 to 3 times that of new car sales by volume. This provides us with a strong growth path in the months and years ahead.
During the fourth quarter, our click volumes from AutoWeb continued to exceed our expectation. As Kim mentioned, volumes were up even sequentially, despite seasonal slowdown we typically experience in Q4. Customer feedback has been very positive.
We are continuing to increase click volumes with existing clients and plan to add OEMs, large dealer groups, dealer agencies, and tier 2 dealer associations throughout 2017. As I mentioned earlier, our strong growth in clicks up to this point has only come from a small number of dealer and OEM customers, and it is also important to note the minimal churn we continue to experience with the product.
As previously announced in Q3, we began heavily investing in traffic acquisition to accelerate the continued growth of both our high-quality clicks product and our high quality lead supply. As we have mentioned in previous quarters, OEMs tend to be very selective in the digital marketing spend and they continue to demonstrate increasing demand for our high-quality leads and clicks.
Before getting into more detail about 2017, I would like to quickly walk through some of our strong industry metrics from the quarter. On slide 13 you can see that we estimate sales from consumers submitting leads through Autobytel's network accounted for approximately 5% of all new light vehicle retail sales in the United States in 2016, and approximately 2% of all used car sales. On slide 14 you'll see that our estimated average buy rate for internally generated leads in the fourth quarter was 17%, which remains in our targeted range of 16% to 24%.
Because of our ongoing commitment to lead quality, we are continuing to focus on enhanced methodologies to meaningfully increase the mix of internally generated leads from the current 80% level, while only utilizing volume from the small number of trusted suppliers who share our commitment to quality. On slide 15 you'll note that these estimated buy rates have remained consistently strong since Q1 2011, with Autobytel.com generating an average buy rate of 25% and all Autobytel internally generated leads at about 18%.
Now moving on to 2017. 2017 will be a year of growth and continued investment for Autobytel. Specifically we will focus on investments in technology including investments in our consumer acquisition technology, the AutoWeb ad platform and our consumer facing websites, which includes car.com, AutoWeb.com, autobytel.com and usedcars.com. We expect these investments to ultimately enhance and simplify the consumers path to purchase of new or used cars and trucks.
As mentioned before, we've migrated our previously outsourced development resources to our in-house Guatemala operations. And during the fourth quarter we further repositioned our resources by removing redundant positions at the corporate level and strengthened our US and Guatemala development teams. We plan to continue investing in these development teams throughout 2017 as we believe this will further accelerate the growth of both our click and core leads products, and especially our used cars.com website.
As we continue to optimize our products and service offerings, we will also continue to bolster our sales and marketing efforts. Our used car business remains a focal point for growth and we continue to increase the level of resources dedicated to ramping our used car platforms for internal lead generation.
Moving onto the industry outlook, as you can see on slide 16, automotive news has the seasonally adjusted run rate, or SAAR, for total sales at 17.7 million units for February 2017, up from 17.6 million units one year ago and 17.5 million units in January. And on slide 17 you'll see that in February, J.D. Power, LMC Automotive maintained their full year 2017 total light vehicle sales forecast at 17.6 million, an increase of 0.2% from 2016. The forecast for retail light vehicle sales also remains at 14.1 million units, essentially flat from 2016.
Now moving on to our 2017 business outlook highlighted on slide 18. We currently expect revenue to range between $156 million and $160 million, an increase of approximately 4% to 7% in 2016. We also expect non-GAAP income to range from $16.8 million and $17.3 million, representing an increase of up to approximately 3%, with non-GAAP diluted EPS ranging between $1.24 and $1.28 on 13.5 million shares.
Note that for comparative purposes, the foregoing percentage growth calculations and the 2016 non-GAAP diluted EPS exclude 2016 revenues, non-GAAP income and non-GAAP EPS related to our specialty finance leads products that was divested on December 31, 2016. As we stated last year, our outlook reflects our continued expectation to grow both revenues and profit dollars in 2017.
As we look ahead to the remainder of 2017, we will continue to reinvest in our business to drive sustainable, long-term organic growth and further solidify Autobytel's position as a leader in the digital automotive landscape. We will also maintain our keen focus on providing our dealer and OEM customers with high quality, high intent car buyers. Be it through new or used car leads, clicks or one of our many value-added product offerings, we remain committed to helping our customers sell more cars and trucks. Karen, at this time we would like to open the call for questions.
Operator
Thank you, sir.
(Operator Instructions)
Sameet Sinha, B Riley.
- Analyst
Yes, thank you very much. Couple of questions here. Let's talk about the clicks business. This was pretty strong, much more than we had expected. What sort of growth should we be expecting as you open up the program to more dealers and partners and OEMs? And this opening up, should we expect more of a second half weighted results or do you think the benefits will start to accrue from the Q1 itself?
Secondly, can you talk about experience with this increased traffic investment -- gross margins came in a little higher than we had expected. But can you talk about the different sources that you started using and where you have been able to optimize and in case, the mid 30s guidance that you had given from gross margin, is that more a function that you will keep? Do you keep those margins and try to grow revenues? Or that you would try to optimize for gross margins?
- President and CEO
Sameet, I would say that -- let me answer your second question first. We have been working through a lot of the new traffic sources. I would say we are still in the middle of it. We will be doing it throughout this year. We have identified a few that are working nicely for us thus far where we are getting pretty interesting volume and margins that are probably a little better than we initially anticipated.
I wouldn't necessarily take that as something that we are going to see on everything that we do or on a continued basis. Is just too early to make that call in terms of what we are doing. But it is looking pretty good so far from that standpoint in terms of qualifying these new traffic sources.
- CFO
And then Sameet, I can answer your first question around growth. We are expecting right now to continue to see somewhat of linear growth into 2017, so I would have the growth roughly at a linear level. There will be some seasonal impact in Q3 because that is clearly our strongest quarter and the traffic drives it.
But that is how I would go ahead and model it. We haven't necessarily provided guidance in terms of the growth in the click revenues, but I would anticipate seeing the same growth dollars next year that we saw in 2015 to 2016.
- Analyst
Okay. One follow-up question. You spoke about investments in some of the consumer sites, seems like there's going to be a major overhaul that you intend to do on all your sites. And on that usedcars.com, Jeff, I was under the impression that you're probably going to push that investment out into 2018 considering there is so much traction that you're getting on the clicks business. It seems like you are now saying you have been investing in it right now. Is that a fair assessment?
- President and CEO
It is. We are investing in it now. We launched the new beta version of the used car site in September. I would say there is a fairly large amount of additional capabilities and bells and whistles that we are in the process of adding to it. One of the really extremely positive benefits of promoting internally, Billy Ferriolo, from running our Tampa operation to being Chief Operating Officer, is he has been working with the development teams in both the United States and in Guatemala to reorganize how we do some of our development work in order to accelerate making product improvements to both our clicks business, our lead engine and the way we are doing our lead generation, as well as to the consumer facing websites.
I would say that the biggest beneficiary of the current investment in the consumer facing sites will continue to be the usedcars.com site as well as the car.com site. We have already largely overhauled the car.com site previously and again, we are adding bells and whistles to that. We will be making investments in the other sites along the way, but I would say those two currently are receiving the primary investment dollars.
- Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
- President and CEO
And those investments will be made within the context of the financial outlook that we just provided.
- Analyst
Understood. Thank you.
- President and CEO
Thank you.
Operator
Eric Martinuzzi, Lake Street Capital.
- Analyst
Thanks. I wanted to go a layer deeper on the guidance here. First of all, I just want to make sure I have the apples to apples correct on the specialty finance leads impact. If I take the midpoint of the 2017 guidance for revenue, that is $158 million. So on apples to apples, I would add $6.3 million to that assuming no growth in the specialty finance lead, if you haven't sold it. We'd be talking about $164.3 million number for a pro forma 2017, is that the right way to think about it?
- CFO
Correct.
- Analyst
Okay and then the same thing on the EPS? About 26 midpoint plus $0.03, it would be about 29, had you not sold it for pro forma 2017.
- CFO
Correct, on heavier share count.
- Analyst
Okay. And then going into the seasonality. I know you guys are trying not to be in a quarterly earnings guidance business, but given what happened last year where there so much of the year was backend loaded I'm just curious to know -- let's talk about revenue first.
If I look back in 2016, obviously a lot of moving parts. You've got the pay-per-click growth in one hand, you've got the Dealix cleansing on the other hand, but it was kind of 45%, 46% of revenue on the front half with 54% in the back half. For a year, last year where you did $157 million and then we are talking about midpoint $158 million this year -- does that topline front half/back half hold true this year?
- CFO
There will still be further growth on the back half of the year, Eric, it probably won't be as skewed because of what we were able to do after we cut out the low-quality lead supply in the first quarter in 2016. So it will be a little heavier from the 45%, I don't have accounts in front of me, but I am using your numbers, but not materially.
- Analyst
Okay. Well, maybe I could go a little more granular. The consensus estimates for Q1 -- you probably don't happen in front of you, but I do. We've got a revenue consensus of around $36 million and EPS of $21 million. Is there a comfort level or discomfort level? Can you comment at all on that?
- CFO
I'm sorry, Eric. I can't give quarterly guidance at this point in time.
- Analyst
Okay. And then as far as the layout and earnings throughout the year, you have talked about -- we won't have as maybe as much seasonality on the revenue side on the top line, but the EPS -- I did the same quick math on your backend loaded 2016 and it was pretty breathtaking that you did $0.46 in the front half and $0.84 in the back half to get to your $1.30.
Given the midpoint guide now, again, we are talking about $1.26, so down $0.04, and I understand all the reasoning behind that. But that the laying out of the EPS, given your commentary on the revenue, does that same logic flow for their expense items that would skew different from the revenue waiting that you've already commented on?
- CFO
Yes. The non-GAAP income and EPS should flow similarly to last year in the same fashion that we have significantly higher employee related and trade cost in the first half of the year. Those will continue. So again, it won't be as skewed, similarly to the revenue, but it will still be skewed in the same direction.
- Analyst
Okay. That is helpful. As I look to the pay-per-click investments here, obviously we're getting terrific growth, but we're also spending a good bit of money on pay-per-click. We're trying a lot of different things here. You are working with a select group of partners, but it feels like there is an element of -- I don't want to profitless prosperity, but when do we get a return on this investment? Is it shifting this from the point players to the more broader adoption, we start to see some leverage, is that what turns it into the profit engine that we hope it will be?
- President and CEO
I think the way for you to look at that is, as we have stated before and as we stated today, we have really been slow walking the rollout of that product. Particularly since we completed the acquisition and brought it internally. And that was done in part because we really needed to integrate it into our existing financial system and we've been doing development work on top of that integration in order to have better visibility and to grow margin and other things like that within the clicks product.
We are now ready to start rolling it out. We have already begun to start rolling it out on a more accelerated basis. And so, it will be somewhat straight-line during the year as Kim mentioned, but that is also going to be a function of growth with the existing customers, as well as signing on new customers throughout the course of the year. (multiple speakers)
- Analyst
I follow the topline part of that. I was just more about the adjusted EBITDA or the adjusted operating flow through contribution margin below the revenue line.
- President and CEO
Well, there is always leverage in a situation. We pay our sales organization a salary which is a fixed component and then their commissions based on sales are variable. So we do have a certain amount of a fixed component to our expenses related to that, that we need to cover. Candidly, it is one of the reasons why in the third quarter every year, you always see a generally much more robust bottom line, because that is where you can really see the leverage in our business as revenue increases based on the seasonal uptick based on our existing cost structure, but a lot more of those dollars fall through to the bottom line. The metrics that we saw in the fourth quarter after taking out some costs, some incremental cost in the business -- we did shift some cost out of the business during the fourth quarter and got our percentage of OpEx down to 31% from 35%; a very nice move from a leverage standpoint.
- Analyst
And then last question for me. You attended the and NADA conference. I know when people hear the name Autobytel, they immediately think leads. As far as your conversations with key partners at NADA, is there any feedback, any anecdotal feedback that you could share with us as far as, either on the lead side or on the pay per click side where there were any aha moments, some lightbulb moments for prospects or existing customers?
- President and CEO
I don't really know how to think about it from an aha moment. I can tell you that NADA this year was over all, extremely positive. It was in New Orleans this year, it was one of the largest attendances in years. So despite the fact that there is some level of concern, certainly in the stock market and to some extent in the automotive market about automobile sales starting to touch a ceiling, there was a great deal of excitement in the industry.
Now some of that is also coming because we have a new, more conservative anti-regulation regime in Washington. There is an expectation that some of the cafe rules and other things may be softened somewhat, which will help the manufacturers, which will help the dealers. So I would say overall there was a real positive sentiment. We saw a lot of traffic in our booth at NADA. We always have a booth there. In fact for this past NADA, we actually sold more new relationships than we have in several of the recent ones.
So I would say overall -- people do know Autobytel as a recognized player in the industry. We are getting credit for our many years of focus on improving the quality of the leads product that we sell and helping bring up the overall lead quality in the industry. I would say a lot of people are very excited about our new clicks product. So we are definitely moving in the right direction from that standpoint.
- Analyst
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
- President and CEO
Thank you Eric.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Ed Woo, Ascendiant.
- Analyst
Yes, congratulations on the quarter, guys. I had at question in terms of, now that you guys are transitioning more or growing your pay-per-click business much more, how do you see the competitive environment? Do you still see your biggest competitors the same as before? Or are you having a new focus on different competition?
- President and CEO
Ed, I think the way to think about that is, it is not so much product to product that we are competing with. It is marketing dollar, budget allocation. So a dealer is only going to spend so many dollars on their digital marketing. We vie for a piece of that budget, so do the other players who have been our traditional competitors historically.
We are -- I would say in the clicks side of the business, to some extent dealing with a larger number of relatively small players at the dealer level, who don't necessarily have the scale nor scope that we do to drive high volume of really high quality traffic. And of course we get that because of our 14 years of long tail search traffic from our lead generation operation in Tampa. The two are absolutely interconnected. Our legacy of the being the largest, oldest lead company has been a huge plus for us in developing the new pay-per-click business, because it's that high quality traffic that we are now also converting instead of just in the leads, also in the clicks for our dealer and manufacturer customers.
- Analyst
There are some discussions last year about a lot of these retailers or dealers wanted to establish their own direct relationships with the consumers and trying to develop their own digital strategy. Have you seen any change in dealers focusing on allocating their digital marketing budgets to internal sources versus using people like you guys?
- President and CEO
I would say it is similar to what -- it's not really different than what we have seen for the last couple, three years. Dealers are interested in developing relations as much as they can directly with consumers. I would say however, they all recognize and value strongly the leads they get, especially from us, but also from a few other players.
Having said that, our click product is absolutely allowing them to establish that direct relationship with the consumer. So we kind of have a very nice bag of products that we can lay out for a dealer to help them the traditional lead way and a new updated, more direct relationship with the consumer by dropping that consumer onto a dealer's website on a vehicle description page or a specials page or something like that. So I don't know that it's changed dramatically over the last two or three years, but we now certainly are participating more on the pay-per-click side and are becoming one of the larger players as that piece of the market continues to grow.
- Analyst
Great. Well, thank you and good luck.
- President and CEO
Thanks Ed.
Operator
Thank you. And that does conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Coats for closing remarks.
- President and CEO
Thank you, Karen. Thanks everybody for joining us on the call today. I would like to thank our team of hard-working and dedicated employees. We look forward to speaking with our investors during our Q1 call in May. In addition, I am doing several non-deal roadshow investor meetings with two of our analysts in San Francisco, Denver, and Salt Lake City later this month, and in New York in April. We look forward to speaking with you. Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.