Blackboxstocks Inc (BLBX) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the Blackboxstocks fourth-quarter and year-end 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.

早上好，歡迎參加 Blackboxstocks 第四季度和 2021 年年底收益電話會議。所有參與者都將處於僅聽模式。 （操作員說明）請注意，正在記錄此事件。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephanie Prince with PCG Advisory. Please go ahead.

我現在想將會議轉交給 PCG Advisory 的斯蒂芬妮·普林斯 (Stephanie Prince)。請繼續。

Thank you, Gary, and welcome to everyone joining us today. On the call our Blackboxstocks CEO, Gust Kepler; and Bob Winspear, CFO. The company would like to remind everyone that various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects made on today's call constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

謝謝你，加里，歡迎大家今天加入我們。在電話會議上，我們的 Blackboxstocks 首席執行官 Gust Kepler 表示：和首席財務官鮑勃溫斯皮爾。該公司謹提醒大家，今天電話會議上有關未來預期、計劃和前景的各種言論均構成前瞻性陳述，符合 1995 年《私人證券訴訟改革法案》中的安全港條款。

Blackboxstocks cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause their actual results to differ materially from those indicated, including risks described in the company's filings with the SEC.

Blackboxstocks 警告稱，這些前瞻性陳述存在風險和不確定性，可能導致其實際結果與所示結果存在重大差異，包括該公司向 SEC 提交的文件中描述的風險。

Any forward-looking statements made on this conference call speak only as of today's date, Friday, April 1, 2022. Blackboxstocks does not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today. A replay of today's conference call will be available through the Investor Relations section of Blackbox website at blackboxstocks.com.

本次電話會議中所做的任何前瞻性陳述僅代表今天（2022 年 4 月 1 日星期五）的情況。Blackboxstocks 不打算更新任何這些前瞻性陳述以反映今天之後發生的事件或情況。今天電話會議的重播將通過 Blackbox 網站 blackboxstocks.com 的投資者關係部分提供。

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to CEO, Gust Kepler. Gust?

說到這裡，我想將電話轉給首席執行官古斯特·開普勒 (Gust Kepler)。陣風？

Thank you, Stephanie. And good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first-ever earnings call. We're very excited to announce that we beat our earnings estimates and guidance. This year has been a great year. It's been a banner year for Blackbox.

謝謝你，斯蒂芬妮。大家早上好，歡迎參加我們的第一次財報電話會議。我們非常高興地宣布，我們超出了我們的盈利預期和指導。今年是偉大的一年。對於 Blackbox 來說，今年是輝煌的一年。

We followed our fourth-quarter uplist to NASDAQ with a great performance in the fourth quarter and ended our year with revenue of $6.1 million. That is almost doubled the $3.4 million we did the previous year. We also announced in fourth quarter that our subscriber base had reached the 6,000 mark or milestone, and that was a very exciting event for us. We have over 6,000 users that we call members in over 42 countries.

我們跟隨第四季度在納斯達克上市的步伐，在第四季度取得了出色的表現，並以 610 萬美元的收入結束了我們的年度。這幾乎是我們前一年 340 萬美元的兩倍。我們還在第四季度宣布我們的訂閱者數量已達到 6,000 人大關或里程碑，這對我們來說是一個非常令人興奮的事件。我們在超過 42 個國家/地區擁有 6,000 多名用戶（我們稱之為會員）。

In addition to our record sales and growth, which Bob will expand on later, we'd like to start by thanking some of the people that have made this extremely -- an extremely good year for us and made this growth possible. The first people I'd like to recognize are our team traders. They are often referred to, in our community, as moderators. But they're really traders, educators, and mentors that are online every day within our community, monitoring the various chat rooms, talking to members live in our broadcast-enabled audio rooms and channels, and using our system to communicate to our subscriber base that spans this 42-country group.

除了我們創紀錄的銷售和增長（鮑勃稍後將詳細介紹）之外，我們首先要感謝一些人，他們使今年對我們來說是非常好的一年，並使這種增長成為可能。我想認識的第一個人是我們團隊的交易員。在我們的社區中，他們經常被稱為版主。但他們實際上是交易者、教育者和導師，每天在我們的社區中在線，監控各個聊天室，在我們支持廣播的音頻室和頻道中與成員實時交談，並使用我們的系統與我們的訂閱者群進行交流涵蓋 42 個國家組。

So it's been a very unique situation because we are lucky to have a company where all of our members can communicate with each other every day, use the analytics that we provide for trading, and speak amongst themselves in a team-like environment. That's what makes our system so valuable. That's the differentiator between what we do and a lot of other platforms that are out there that just provide analytics or only a chat room.

所以這是一個非常獨特的情況，因為我們很幸運擁有一家公司，我們的所有成員每天都可以相互溝通，使用我們為交易提供的分析，並在類似團隊的環境中互相交談。這就是我們的系統如此有價值的原因。這就是我們所做的事情與許多其他僅提供分析或僅提供聊天室的平台之間的區別。

We've had some technology developments that are very important for me to note. We are updating our broadcast-enabled system. We grew so fast in 2021 and 2020. We outgrew our audio-enabled chat room capabilities. So we had to augment with third-party solutions. We're in the final phases of completing what we will refer to as a third-party solution replacement, which will greatly streamline what we do.

我們取得了一些對我來說非常重要的技術發展。我們正在更新我們的廣播系統。我們在 2021 年和 2020 年增長如此之快。我們的增長超出了我們的音頻聊天室功能。因此，我們必須通過第三方解決方案進行增強。我們正處於完成第三方解決方案替代的最後階段，這將大大簡化我們的工作。

We are also in the final stages -- we're currently in a beta stage with our mobile app. We've experienced amazing growth, but we have not yet completed our fully functional mobile app. By fully functional, I mean an app that encompasses all the analytics that we provide on our desktop system. We have an interim app that provides some push alerts and shows very limited amount of data. But taking on the project of incorporating the massive amount of data and analytics that we provide in our desktop model and putting all of that into the confines of an iOS or Android mobile device has been a major undertaking.

我們也處於最後階段——我們的移動應用程序目前正處於測試階段。我們經歷了驚人的增長，但我們尚未完成功能齊全的移動應用程序。我所說的功能齊全是指一個包含我們在桌面系統上提供的所有分析的應用程序。我們有一個臨時應用程序，它提供一些推送警報並顯示非常有限的數據量。但是，承擔將我們在桌面模型中提供的大量數據和分析合併起來並將所有這些都放入 iOS 或 Android 移動設備的範圍內的項目是一項重大任務。

But I'm happy to say it looks great. We're in the final phases of beta. And probably the important thing to note for everybody that's an investor is we have not launched this platform officially. It's very close; we expect to do it in April.

但我很高興地說它看起來很棒。我們正處於測試版的最後階段。對於每個投資者來說，可能需要注意的重要一點是我們還沒有正式推出這個平台。非常接近；我們預計在四月完成。

And when I say platform, I mean the iOS and Android devices app. This whole cover a major part of the market that we currently cannot service by just the desktop. So our marketing efforts will be even more substantial once this product is ready to be released in April. And that's a very important thing to note.

當我說平台時，我指的是 iOS 和 Android 設備應用程序。這整個覆蓋了我們目前僅通過桌面無法提供服務的市場的主要部分。因此，一旦該產品準備在四月份發布，我們的營銷力度將會更大。這是需要注意的非常重要的事情。

We're armed with the war chest of a lot of cash, which Bob will also expand on. Thanks to our successful uplist in November 2021.

我們擁有大量現金的戰爭基金，鮑勃也將擴大這些資金。感謝我們於 2021 年 11 月成功上榜。

We are also making continuous improvements on our platform. We will make some platforms so incredibly powerful is -- that it's user driven. It's -- a lot of the features we implement are from our user suggestions, because we have a live community daily that interacts with each other. And so we get a lot of amazing feedback and a lot of amazing suggestions from our users. So since we started this company in early 2015, we've been lucky enough to build it on the advice and the suggestions of our users. And that's what makes it so powerful -- such a powerful platform.

我們還在不斷改進我們的平台。我們將使一些平台變得非常強大——它是用戶驅動的。我們實現的許多功能都來自用戶的建議，因為我們每天都有一個實時社區，彼此互動。因此，我們從用戶那裡得到了很多令人驚嘆的反饋和很多令人驚嘆的建議。因此，自從我們在 2015 年初創辦這家公司以來，我們很幸運能夠根據用戶的意見和建議來建立它。這就是它如此強大的原因——如此強大的平台。

I often referred to our platform as the best of man and machine. We provide analytics and real-time data and news for traders. But what makes that information so much more powerful is how it is parsed through our communities and how our communities and the top tier of our traders opine on those analytics in real time. It serves as a mentoring and educational endeavor or exercise for the new members. And many of those new members soon become top-tier members on our platform as well. We make trading a team sport here at Blackbox, we'd like to say.

我經常將我們的平台稱為人與機器的最佳平台。我們為交易者提供分析以及實時數據和新聞。但這些信息之所以如此強大，是因為我們的社區如何解析這些信息，以及我們的社區和高層交易者如何實時對這些分析發表意見。它是對新成員的指導和教育活動或練習。許多新會員很快也成為我們平台上的頂級會員。我們想說，在 Blackbox，我們讓交易成為一項團隊運動。

When we built this platform -- and actually when we -- when our -- my other two founding partners, David Kyle and Eric Pharis, and I began this company, we couldn't have envisioned that financial literacy, democratized trading, and the rise of the retail investor would come to the level it did in 2021. But we're happy to be here. We're in the right place at the right time with a strong balance sheet, an amazing group of technical people and developers that are enabling us to constantly improve our product and release new products. And that's where I want to get to next.

當我們建立這個平台時 - 實際上當我們 - 當我們的 - 我的另外兩位創始合夥人 David Kyle 和 Eric Pharis 以及我創辦這家公司時，我們無法想像金融知識、民主化交易以及散戶投資者的崛起將達到 2021 年的水平。但我們很高興來到這裡。我們在正確的時間處於正確的地點，擁有強大的資產負債表、令人驚嘆的技術人員和開發人員團隊，使我們能夠不斷改進我們的產品並發布新產品。這就是我接下來要講的。

The day trading market -- it's hard to quantify. It's hard to quantify what a day trader is. But a day trader can be classified as someone that trades multiple times intraday, sometimes trades intraday once a week, or swings trades overnight. But there's, at best, two million to three million of those. We're barely scratching the surface of that market of our core product. And we expect that we will continue to expand our trajectory. From 2020 to 2021, we almost doubled our gross revenue.

日間交易市場——很難量化。很難量化什麼是日內交易者。但日內交易者可以被歸類為在日內進行多次交易的人，有時每週進行一次日內交易，或隔夜進行波動交易的人。但最多也只有兩百萬到三百萬。我們僅僅觸及了我們核心產品市場的皮毛。我們預計我們將繼續擴大我們的發展軌跡。從 2020 年到 2021 年，我們的總收入幾乎翻了一番。

I'm setting a goal for us to do that again this year. If not, better with our core product, the Blackbox platform. And we have some other exciting products to talk about.

我為我們設定了今年再次做到這一點的目標。如果沒有，最好使用我們的核心產品 Blackbox 平台。我們還有一些其他令人興奮的產品可以討論。

One of which is referred to as Stock Nanny. It's an alert system -- a portfolio alert system. And it does not just serve day traders. It's really not even for day traders. It's for self-directed investors. And that market is over 100 million users. We are working with some of our current integration partners at the major online brokerages to develop this product. It's very unique in that it serves the user by providing real-time analytics that might tip them off to a major downtrend in the stock using our predictive technology.

其中之一被稱為“股票保姆”。這是一個警報系統——一個投資組合警報系統。它不僅僅服務於日間交易者。即使對於日內交易者來說，這確實不適合。它適用於自我導向的投資者。該市場擁有超過 1 億用戶。我們正在與主要在線經紀公司的一些當前集成合作夥伴合作開發該產品。它的獨特之處在於，它通過提供實時分析來為用戶提供服務，這些分析可能會使用我們的預測技術向用戶提示股票的主要下跌趨勢。

All the technology for this product is already available on our tech stack. We just deploy it differently in a new application. We're really excited because the size of the market for this product is enormous. And this will be a new revenue stream. It's not a feature that you add on to Blackbox. It's a stand-alone app that we're going to sell.

該產品的所有技術都已在我們的技術堆棧中提供。我們只是在新應用程序中以不同的方式部署它。我們真的很興奮，因為該產品的市場規模巨大。這將是一個新的收入來源。這不是您添加到 Blackbox 的功能。這是我們要銷售的獨立應用程序。

We're also working on a cryptocurrency platform. And we'll be expanding on that later in the month or sometime in this second quarter.

我們還在開發加密貨幣平台。我們將在本月晚些時候或第二季度的某個時候對此進行擴展。

We also are designing a Blackbox Pro System. We currently don't have a tier -- a pricing tier for pros since the exchanges charge a premium for pro traders. And this is a market that we haven't been able to serve yet, even though our analytics are something that many pros like and wants to use. So we're going to expand and build a platform and a pricing tier called Blackbox Pro.

我們還正在設計 Blackbox Pro 系統。我們目前沒有針對專業人士的定價級別，因為交易所對專業交易者收取溢價。這是一個我們尚未能夠服務的市場，儘管我們的分析是許多專業人士喜歡並想要使用的東西。因此，我們將擴展並構建一個名為 Blackbox Pro 的平台和定價層。

We're excited about our trajectory. We're excited about our products. We are excited about our community and the amazing team traders that have made this amount of growth possible. One of the things that's been frustrating for us is the performance of our stock after our uplist. It's been a challenge, and we do not feel our current stock price in any way reflects the value of our company. And because of this, we implemented a buyback -- stock repurchase plan or buyback plan last year.

我們對我們的軌跡感到興奮。我們對我們的產品感到興奮。我們對我們的社區和令人驚嘆的團隊交易者感到興奮，他們使如此多的增長成為可能。讓我們感到沮喪的事情之一是我們的股票在上市後的表現。這是一個挑戰，我們不認為我們當前的股價以任何方式反映了我們公司的價值。正因為如此，我們去年實施了回購——股票回購計劃或者回購計劃。

We've been buying shares back; I'll let Bob expand on the numbers. And we're doing this because we don't think there's a better place to invest some of the cash that's on our balance sheet than into our own company. Because we believe in what we're doing. We believe in our community. We believe in our developers and the technology that we brought to this new boom in retail investing.

我們一直在回購股票；我會讓鮑勃詳細闡述這些數字。我們這樣做是因為我們認為沒有比將資產負債表上的部分現金投資到我們自己的公司更好的地方了。因為我們相信我們正在做的事情。我們相信我們的社區。我們相信我們的開發商和我們為零售投資新熱潮帶來的技術。

So like I said, we couldn't have envisioned the retail investing boom that took place last year when we first designed this product. But we're very happy that we had some foresight that this will be a product that would be needed and used. And we think we're at the very, very beginning of an exciting history for this company.

所以就像我說的，當我們第一次設計這個產品時，我們無法預見去年出現的零售投資熱潮。但我們很高興我們有一些先見之明，這將是一個需要和使用的產品。我們認為我們正處於這家公司令人興奮的歷史的非常非常的開端。

We're still a very early-stage company. And I feel we have a massive amount of room for growth. So we're looking forward to amazing 2022 to follow up on our 2021 success. And I want to thank all of you for being shareholders, stakeholders, and believing in our company. And I'm going to turn it over to Bob so he can go over the details of our amazing financial performance that we had embarked on in this last year.

我們仍然是一家非常早期的公司。我覺得我們有巨大的增長空間。因此，我們期待著 2022 年的輝煌，以延續我們 2021 年的成功。我要感謝各位股東、利益相關者以及對我們公司的信任。我將把它交給鮑勃，這樣他就可以詳細了解我們去年所取得的令人驚嘆的財務業績。

Go ahead, Bob.

繼續吧，鮑勃。

Thanks, Gust. And then, good morning, everybody. It's my pleasure to run you through some of the numbers for what was obviously an outstanding quarter and year end for us.

謝謝，古斯特。然後，大家早上好。我很高興向您介紹一些對於我們來說顯然是出色的季度和年末的數據。

Revenues, obviously, that's a key aspect for our business as a metric. And we had revenues grow by 62% for the fourth quarter up to $1.69 million and by 82% for the full year up to $6.1 million. Both of which were records for the company, as you see it going over $3.4 million in 2020.

顯然，收入是我們業務衡量標準的一個關鍵方面。我們第四季度的收入增長了 62%，達到 169 萬美元，全年收入增長了 82%，達到 610 萬美元。這兩項都創下了該公司的記錄，正如你所看到的，2020 年該公司的銷售額將超過 340 萬美元。

And along with that revenue growth, we also had stronger gross margins at approximately 70% for the year. And we expect that to stay at the current levels, given the product we have right now. The fourth quarter was a little bit lower at 66% with some one-time items in there. But we do feel that 70% is continual as compared to the 2020 gross margins that were 52% for the year. And the increase is really just due to operating leverage on fixed costs of the data for us.

隨著收入的增長，我們今年的毛利率也更高，約為 70%。鑑於我們目前擁有的產品，我們預計這一數字將保持在當前水平。第四季度略低一些，為 66%，其中有一些一次性產品。但我們確實認為，與 2020 年毛利率 52% 相比，70% 是持續的。這種增長實際上只是由於我們對數據固定成本的運營槓桿作用。

From an operating income -- so if you look at our operating expenses, the operating expenses increased significantly for the year up to $6.5 million, as compared to $2.6 million for the previous year. The biggest components of that increase is really stock-based compensation of about $1.35 million for the year, as compared to just $100,000 in 2020.

從營業收入來看，如果你看看我們的營業費用，今年的營業費用大幅增加，達到 650 萬美元，而上一年為 260 萬美元。這一增長的最大組成部分實際上是今年約 135 萬美元的股票薪酬，而 2020 年僅為 10 萬美元。

And that was made up about 50% of one-time items, which were not likely to occur at that scale in the fourth quarter, and stock option expense, which is -- had a new -- obviously, a new stock option plan we initiated in the fourth quarter or the last half of the year, and that's about half of that $1.3 million. That expense will continue in the future but will be at a lower rate because we had a big chunk of those options vest at the grant date.

這約佔一次性項目的 50%，這些項目在第四季度不太可能以如此規模發生，還有股票期權費用，這是——顯然，我們有一個新的股票期權計劃。是在第四季度或下半年啟動的，大約是 130 萬美元的一半。這項費用未來仍將繼續，但費用會較低，因為我們在授予日擁有大部分期權。

Other significant SG&A cost increases, obviously, were salaries and wages and investor relations, which is just gearing us up for a little bit of scale. We expect those to stay at or above their current levels, but not grow as fast in the future.

顯然，其他顯著的 SG&A 成本增加是工資和投資者關係，這只是讓我們為擴大規模做好準備。我們預計這些將保持在或高於當前水平，但未來增長速度不會那麼快。

Other items you see, advertising and marketing grew by about $500,000 but was fairly consistent as a percentage of sales. And as we've stated in the past, we expect that to continue to grow. And we think we can drive sales with aggressive marketing. And as we release new products, particularly the Stock Nanny products that Gust mentioned, we should continue to invest more in marketing.

您看到的其他項目，廣告和營銷增長了約 500,000 美元，但佔銷售額的百分比相當穩定。正如我們過去所說，我們預計這一數字將繼續增長。我們認為我們可以通過積極的營銷來推動銷售。隨著我們發布新產品，特別是古斯特提到的股票保姆產品，我們應該繼續在營銷方面投入更多資金。

Research and development, obviously, it's key to our business and grew by about $500,000 as well. We are trying to grow that capability as fast as we possibly can, but it's in a very tight market. So obviously, as we continue to develop new products and upgrade our existing products, that number will also grow significantly. And that's really the aspect of -- the ability to spend money on research and development and people and so forth is really one of the benefits we've had from doing the initial public offering that we've completed in November -- just gave us the wherewithal to work on this.

顯然，研發是我們業務的關鍵，並且也增長了約 500,000 美元。我們正在努力盡快提高這種能力，但市場非常緊張。顯然，隨著我們不斷開發新產品併升級現有產品，這個數字也會大幅增長。這確實是——在研發和人員等方面花錢的能力確實是我們從 11 月份完成的首次公開募股中獲得的好處之一——剛剛給我們帶來的好處為此開展工作所需的資金。

If you look at the EBITDA, it generates -- is that for the fourth quarter and full year, we're just about around just under $900,000 of negative EBITDA for both of those periods. And we expect, obviously, that the EBITDA probably will remain negative for the coming year. And that's, as I said, are as a result of our desire to invest in research and development and infrastructure and advertising and marketing, as we have been profitable earlier in 2021 and in parts of 2020.

如果你看一下 EBITDA，它會產生——第四季度和全年，這兩個時期的 EBITDA 為負，大約略低於 90 萬美元。顯然，我們預計來年 EBITDA 可能仍為負數。正如我所說，這是我們渴望投資研發、基礎設施以及廣告和營銷的結果，因為我們已在 2021 年初和 2020 年部分時間實現盈利。

We could do that, but it'd be at the risk of slowing our growth. And for a company like ours, accelerating our growth is absolutely critical for us and more important. And that's even from a guy with 30-something years of financial experience that tells me to do exactly the opposite. But in this business, it really is critical for us.

我們可以做到這一點，但這可能會導致我們的增長放緩。對於像我們這樣的公司來說，加速增長對我們來說絕對至關重要，而且更為重要。甚至是一位擁有 30 多年財務經驗的人也告訴我要做完全相反的事情。但在這個行業，這對我們來說確實至關重要。

Looking at the balance sheet, which is one of the first times I get to talk about the balance sheet, I'd spend some time as opposed to running away. Cash and securities at the end of the year were $10.4 million, as compared to just under $1 million of last year. Obviously, due to the results of our November IPO and puts us on very strong financial footing, we have the ability to make those investments we talked about and move forward significantly.

看看資產負債表，這是我第一次談論資產負債表，我會花一些時間而不是逃跑。年底現金和證券為 1,040 萬美元，而去年則略低於 100 萬美元。顯然，由於我們 11 月份 IPO 的結果，使我們擁有非常強大的財務基礎，我們有能力進行我們談到的那些投資並取得重大進展。

Our debt level is approximately $1 million and is mostly due in November of this year. We could pay it off earlier. But right now, we like having a lot of significant cash on the balance sheet. And for small companies that are being a little riskier, having a good balance sheet insulates us from some of that risks and makes us a little bit more comfortable to go with.

我們的債務水平約為 100 萬美元，大部分將於今年 11 月到期。我們可以早點還清。但現在，我們希望資產負債表上有大量現金。對於風險較高的小公司來說，擁有良好的資產負債表可以使我們免受一些風險的影響，並使我們更容易相處。

Unearned subscriptions is the other really significant aspect to our balance sheet. They were approximately $1.3 million as compared to just $1 million last year. And note relates to the deferred revenue, which is the accounting for when we have particularly our unearned revenue from annual subscriptions is that we amortize that revenue over the course of the year. So if we get somebody signs up in November of this year, they'll amortize the course of that payment that we received in November, say $959, over the course of the full year.

非應得的訂閱是我們資產負債表的另一個真正重要的方面。其銷售額約為 130 萬美元，而去年僅為 100 萬美元。注意與遞延收入有關，當我們特別是從年度訂閱中獲得非賺取收入時，我們會在一年中攤銷該收入。因此，如果我們讓某人在今年 11 月註冊，他們將在全年中分期償還我們 11 月收到的付款（例如 959 美元）。

The growth in 2020 and early 2021 was driven really by pretty minor capital infusions. And we got to see the $3.4 million of revenue we had to 2020 on a shoestring budget, with the exception of the million-dollar debt we got in the end of 2020. So right now with the war chest that we have for a company our size, we're very, very excited about our capabilities to execute on the roles and the technology developments -- the product developments that Gust described earlier.

2020 年和 2021 年初的增長實際上是由相當少量的資本注入推動的。我們看到，除了 2020 年底獲得的 100 萬美元債務外，到 2020 年，我們在預算有限的情況下獲得了 340 萬美元的收入。因此，現在我們為一家公司提供了充足的資金規模，我們對我們執行角色和技術開發的能力感到非常非常興奮——古斯特之前描述的產品開發。

And I join him in being really excited about looking forward what we're doing in 2022. The other group I'd really like to thank, along with all the people internally, is obviously our members and subscribers in that they're the folks that really help us drive this business. Because without them, we wouldn't have a business.

我和他一樣對展望 2022 年我們要做的事情感到非常興奮。我真正要感謝的另一個群體，以及所有內部人員，顯然是我們的會員和訂閱者，因為他們是這些人這確實有助於我們推動這項業務。因為沒有他們，我們就沒有生意。

That concludes our prepared remarks for the earnings call. And at this point, we'd like to turn it over to questions with Stephanie.

我們為財報電話會議準備的發言到此結束。現在，我們想把問題轉交給斯蒂芬妮。

(Operator Instructions) Joe Gomes, NOBLE Capital.

（操作員指令）Joe Gomes，NOBLE Capital。

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Congratulations on the quarter and the year.

謝謝。早上好傢伙。祝賀本季度和本年度。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Thank you.

謝謝。

So I want to start off here, maybe you could talk a little bit on the subscriber base. You mentioned back in, I think, it was December that it had gone past the 6,000 level? Can you provide any update as to where you are today and how you seeing that trend go forward?

所以我想從這裡開始，也許你可以談談訂閱者基礎。你提到過，我記得是在 12 月份，它已經突破了 6,000 點的水平？您能否提供有關您目前的情況以及您如何看待這一趨勢未來的最新信息？

We are going to release a new subscriber number soon. But we're not releasing it. But I can tell you the trajectory is on track, and we are very pleased with where we're at at the moment. Bob, do you want to expand on that at all?

我們即將發布新的訂閱者號碼。但我們不會發布它。但我可以告訴你，發展軌跡正在步入正軌，我們對目前的處境感到非常滿意。鮑勃，你想擴展一下嗎？

Yeah. The only -- is if you've obviously have seen our website is that we just concluded a driver marketing campaign where we offered a $5 monthly subscription for one month only for -- to new subscribers. So that helped -- will help lure investors. And we'll see how that continues going forward and how long they stay and so forth. So I think we have some good legs behind that. But as we get a little bit further down the line into the year, we'll be better off, able to define that better.

是的。唯一的一點是，如果您顯然已經看過我們的網站，我們剛剛結束了一項驅動程序營銷活動，其中我們僅向新訂閱者提供每月 5 美元的訂閱服務，為期一個月。因此，這將有助於吸引投資者。我們將看到這種情況如何繼續下去以及它們會停留多久等等。所以我認為我們有一些很好的支持。但隨著今年的進展進一步推進，我們的情況會更好，能夠更好地定義這一點。

Yeah. And Bob said, investors, he meant our member base.

是的。鮑勃說，投資者，他指的是我們的會員基礎。

Member base, right.

會員基礎，對吧。

But, yeah, this is the first time we've ever done a promotion like this. So we want to be very careful as to how we report our member numbers and metrics. Because we've never done free trials or greatly reduced offers. We did this for a variety of reasons.

但是，是的，這是我們第一次進行這樣的促銷活動。因此，我們要非常小心地報告我們的會員數量和指標。因為我們從來沒有做過免費試用或者大幅度降價的優惠。我們這樣做有多種原因。

The main one, Joe, is that we feel our system is so good that if we give people a chance to try it for next to nothing, they'll never leave. And if they were with a competitor, they'll try ours out and find that we have superior analytics and data to anything else that's out there. With the boom and the democratized trading movement or the rise of the retail investor, whatever you want to -- whatever name you want to give this phenomenon, a whole new host of small chat rooms and analytic providers have cropped up and some of them are very subpar. And there's a few good ones out there. We still feel we're the leader in the industry for what we provide. So we went ahead and did this $5 offer.

喬，最主要的一點是，我們覺得我們的系統非常好，如果我們給人們一個幾乎免費嘗試的機會，他們就永遠不會離開。如果他們與競爭對手合作，他們會嘗試我們的產品，並發現我們擁有優於其他任何產品的分析和數據。隨著繁榮和民主化交易運動或散戶投資者的崛起，無論你想要什麼——無論你想給這種現象起什麼名字，一系列全新的小型聊天室和分析提供商已經出現，其中一些是非常低於標準。那裡有一些好的。我們仍然認為我們所提供的產品是行業中的領導者。所以我們繼續提供了 5 美元的優惠。

So the long-winded answer that you're getting is we want to quantify the retention after this offer is concluded, which was last night at midnight, so that we don't give out what we would consider skewed numbers for a user base that isn't a full-paying user base. So that's why we're delaying to report these numbers. And I'm telling you this, and Bob's telling you this, in the interest of full transparency.

因此，您得到的冗長答案是，我們希望量化此優惠結束後（昨晚午夜）的留存率，這樣我們就不會給出我們認為的用戶群的傾斜數字，因為不是全額付費的用戶群。這就是我們推遲報告這些數字的原因。為了完全透明，我告訴你這一點，鮑勃也告訴你這一點。

Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Understand. Thank you for that. And on the SG&A expenses in the quarter, they kind of doubled sequentially. Bob, maybe you could just drill down a little bit more there. Is that -- I know you mentioned some of the stock comp expenses that really what was behind that doubling of SG&A for the quarter. And it sounded like we'd expect that to come back down somewhat, given that some of those were one-time expenses.

好的。是的，很公平。理解。謝謝你。本季度的銷售、一般行政費用 (SG&A) 費用環比增長了一倍。鮑勃，也許你可以再深入一點。我知道您提到了一些股票補償費用，這才是本季度 SG&A 翻倍的真正原因。考慮到其中一些是一次性費用，聽起來我們預計會有所下降。

Yeah. That's correct, Joe. If you look at the stock comp expenses, roughly half of that, around $660,000 or so, was what I would consider one-time expenses, which are related to stock-based compensation that was directly tried to the offering. So that is not going to return specifically, and we may pay somebody in stock for services in the future. But it's unlikely to be at that level as well as the stock option expense, which is at the same amount. Together, they're about $1.3 million, total.

是的。沒錯，喬。如果你看一下股票補償費用，我認為其中大約一半（大約 660,000 美元左右）是一次性費用，這些費用與直接嘗試發行的基於股票的補償有關。因此，這不會具體返回，我們將來可能會向某人支付庫存服務費用。但它不太可能達到這個水平以及股票期權費用，兩者的金額相同。總計約為 130 萬美元。

So we'll have those expenses moving forward. But because we had a big chunk [of best and occur at] one slot, that will not occur. And we also encourage some investor relations and PR expenses surrounding the initial public offering, which will continue in the future, obviously. But it will probably will not be at that level.

因此，我們將繼續推進這些費用。但因為我們在一個槽位上有一大塊[最好的並且出現的]，所以這種情況不會發生。我們還鼓勵一些圍繞首次公開募股的投資者關係和公關費用，這顯然將在未來繼續下去。但它可能不會達到那個水平。

Okay, thanks for that. And you guys talked some more about -- on the marketing side and you expect those expenses will grow. Can you just give us a little more color as to what kind of avenues or what kind of marketing you're doing there to help drive the subscriber base?

好的，謝謝。你們更多地談論了營銷方面的問題，並且預計這些費用將會增長。您能否給我們更多的信息，告訴我們您正在採取什麼樣的途徑或進行什麼樣的營銷來幫助推動訂閱者基礎？

The primary marketing that our company does is digital -- all social media platforms, especially the ones that cater primarily to traders like -- Twitter is a major platform for us. But we're expanding into television shortly to kind of get our brand out there to the masses and augment our digital spend.

我們公司所做的主要營銷是數字化的——所有社交媒體平台，尤其是那些主要迎合交易者的平台——Twitter 是我們的一個主要平台。但我們很快就會擴展到電視領域，以便將我們的品牌推向大眾並增加我們的數字支出。

But it's very important for me to stress that we did not put the full force of the new [cash] on balance sheet behind our marketing efforts yet. Because we don't want to do it before we have our mobile app released or fully functioning, all-encompassing mobile app. It's been a big, big endeavor because putting in as much data as we have in our system onto a mobile device is no small feat. But we've done a great job.

但對我來說非常重要的是要強調，我們還沒有將資產負債表上的新[現金]的全部力量用於我們的營銷工作。因為我們不想在我們的移動應用程序發布或功能齊全、包羅萬象的移動應用程序之前這樣做。這是一項巨大的努力，因為將我們系統中盡可能多的數據放入移動設備上並不是一件小事。但我們做得很好。

But to get back to your question, we want to make sure that we have that mobile app ready to go in the app stores. Because many people that became traders -- back in the GameStop, AMC, meme stock boom -- have unfortunately had to go back to work. And they can't always use their work computer for what we call their side hustle.

但回到你的問題，我們希望確保該移動應用程序已準備好進入應用程序商店。因為許多成為交易員的人——回到 GameStop、AMC、meme 股票繁榮時期——不幸地不得不回去工作。而且他們不能總是使用工作計算機來從事我們所說的副業。

So in this particular instance, we want to make sure that if we acquire a new user, we can retain them by giving them a mobile device to use when they're either on the go or back at work, which many of them are. So we expect to expand our marketing both on our digital platform and into television sometime in the second quarter -- earlier than later in the second quarter, I might add.

因此，在這個特定的例子中，我們希望確保，如果我們獲得了新用戶，我們可以通過為他們提供移動設備來留住他們，以便他們在旅途中或返回工作時使用，而他們中的許多人都是這樣。因此，我們預計將在第二季度的某個時候在數字平台和電視上擴大我們的營銷——我可能會補充說，早於第二季度晚些時候。

Okay. Great. I will look forward to that. And you mentioned, some of the trading integration on some of the other brokerage platforms to E*TRADE. Maybe you can tell us how that's going. I mean are you seeing any type of increase of interest from some of those platforms' current clients in becoming Blackboxstocks subscribers?

好的。偉大的。我會期待這一點。您提到了一些其他經紀平台上的一些交易集成到 E*TRADE。也許你可以告訴我們事情進展如何。我的意思是，您是否發現這些平台的一些現有客戶對成為 Blackboxstocks 訂閱者的興趣有所增加？

Yes, there's always cross promotion with the major brokerages. We expect to add more and expect to do some extremely extensive marketing behind those integrations. We announced [so our] TradeStation, and we have reciprocal agreements. We also get paid; it's a minor part of our revenue. But when a Blackbox user opens an account with TradeStation, TD Ameritrade, E*TRADE, or Tastyworks, we get a commission from them when a user of ours [opts] to new account with them.

是的，與主要經紀公司總是有交叉促銷。我們期望添加更多內容，並期望在這些集成背後進行一些極其廣泛的營銷。我們宣布了 TradeStation，並且我們簽訂了互惠協議。我們也得到報酬；這只是我們收入的一小部分。但是，當 Blackbox 用戶在 TradeStation、TD Ameritrade、E*TRADE 或 Tastyworks 開設賬戶時，當我們的用戶[選擇]使用他們的新賬戶時，我們會從他們那裡獲得佣金。

At the same time, when we make these integrations more well known to the public, the users of these platforms will -- we expect to acquire a large percentage of the day trading users from these platforms. It's also important for me to add that that's why we're adding this new portfolio management system. So we can leverage the existing relationships we have with these platforms who have exponentially more self-directed investors than they do day traders that will use our new product. And we expect them to use our new product. I'm very optimistic about what we've created.

與此同時，當我們讓這些集成更加為公眾所知時，這些平台的用戶將——我們預計將從這些平台獲得很大一部分日間交易用戶。對我來說，補充一點也很重要，這就是我們添加這個新的投資組合管理系統的原因。因此，我們可以利用我們與這些平台的現有關係，這些平台的自主投資者比使用我們新產品的日間交易者要多得多。我們希望他們使用我們的新產品。我對我們所創造的東西非常樂觀。

So the television campaign that I spoke of will also address this. It will let users of these online brokerages know that we're out there, what we offer. And if they are a user of one of these online brokerages, they should take a look at Blackbox, so they can utilize our amazing tools and analytics and community and educational programs to augment their trading or investing.

所以我提到的電視活動也將解決這個問題。它將讓這些在線經紀公司的用戶知道我們的存在以及我們提供的服務。如果他們是這些在線經紀公司之一的用戶，他們應該看看 Blackbox，這樣他們就可以利用我們出色的工具和分析以及社區和教育計劃來增強他們的交易或投資。

Great. Awesome. I'll get back in queue. Let someone else ask some questions. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

偉大的。驚人的。我會回到隊列中。讓別人問一些問題。多謝你們。欣賞它。

Thanks, Joe.

謝謝，喬。

(Operator Instructions) Brian Swift, Security Research Associates.

（操作員說明）Brian Swift，安全研究助理。

Yeah. Thank you. Most of my questions have already been asked and answered. But I did -- I missed how many shares you bought back. I know you've talked about it, but I missed that. So what's your share count now?

是的。謝謝。我的大部分問題已經被提出並得到解答。但我做到了——我忘記了你回購了多少股票。我知道你已經談論過它，但我錯過了。那麼你現在的股份數是多少？

Sure. We have bought back approximately 430,000 shares at an average cost of less than $2 per share.

當然。我們以每股不到 2 美元的平均成本回購了大約 430,000 股股票。

Okay. All right. Thank you.

好的。好的。謝謝。

That's out of a total -- the total program was $2.5 million allocated towards that. So you have some scale.

這還不包括總計劃中為此分配的 250 萬美元。所以你有一定的規模。

Great. All right. No, keep it up. On the advertising, I presume that you're -- when you're talking about TV advertising, you're talking about going to things -- it's like CNBC and Bloomberg where stock tech people watch as opposed to regular (multiples speakers)?

偉大的。好的。不，堅持下去。在廣告方面，我認為您——當您談論電視廣告時，您談論的是去做事——就像 CNBC 和彭博社一樣，股票科技人士觀看的不是普通的（多個演講者）？

Yes, we're going to focus on CNBC, Fox Business, and possibly Bloomberg channel. So those are our primary markets, and they encompass a lot of what I would call non-financial people. I guess -- I don't know if that's the correct definition, but maybe not the person that watches Squawk Box every morning, but they might watch Shark Tank. So it covers a broad demographic, even though they are financial networks. So I think it'll be a very good way to augment our digital campaigns that have been very successful thus far.

是的，我們將重點關注 CNBC、福克斯商業頻道，可能還有彭博頻道。這些是我們的主要市場，其中包括很多我所說的非金融人士。我想——我不知道這是否是正確的定義，但也許不是那些每天早上看《Squawk Box》的人，但他們可能會看《Shark Tank》。因此它涵蓋了廣泛的人口，儘管他們是金融網絡。因此，我認為這將是增強我們迄今為止非常成功的數字營銷活動的一個非常好的方法。

Great. Thank you.

偉大的。謝謝。

(Operator Instructions) This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Gust Kepler for any closing remarks.

（操作員說明）我們的問答環節到此結束。我想將會議轉回古斯特·開普勒發表閉幕詞。

I want to thank everybody that participated in the call this morning. Again, we're very excited that we had a great year and followed 2020 with almost a double on revenue in 2021. And again, I want to thank, as Bob did, the members of our community, meaning, our users. Because they are what makes Blackbox the platform that it is. Without the community elements, the analytics, although very powerful, do not always translate into winning trades for our members. But with the guidance and the education and the community consensus that goes on every day in our chat rooms, our live audio broadcasts, and our live channel broadcasts, we've been -- we've created a team across the world of people that love to trade.

我要感謝今天早上參加電話會議的所有人。再次，我們非常高興我們度過了美好的一年，並且在 2020 年之後，2021 年的收入幾乎翻了一番。再次，我要像鮑勃一樣感謝我們社區的成員，即我們的用戶。因為正是它們使 Blackbox 成為了這樣的平台。如果沒有社區元素，分析雖然非常強大，但並不總是能為我們的會員轉化為獲勝的交易。但是，通過每天在我們的聊天室、現場音頻廣播和現場頻道廣播中進行的指導、教育和社區共識，我們已經——我們已經在世界各地創建了一支由人們組成的團隊，熱愛交易。

And I often say we're not just an analytics provider, we're a lifestyle, a culture, and a community. So I want to thank them, our developers, our team of traders, moderators, and educators for doing such a great job in managing the community and helping it grow and helping people become successful traders. And I want to thank all our investors for believing in us. And I can promise you that we are very committed to making Blackbox a very well-known name in the new social trading era of stocks, options, and soon to be cryptocurrency.

我經常說我們不僅僅是一個分析提供商，我們還是一種生活方式、一種文化和一個社區。因此，我要感謝他們、我們的開發人員、我們的交易者團隊、版主和教育工作者，感謝他們在管理社區、幫助社區發展以及幫助人們成為成功的交易者方面所做的出色工作。我要感謝所有投資者對我們的信任。我可以向您保證，我們非常致力於使 Blackbox 在股票、期權以及即將成為加密貨幣的新社交交易時代成為一個非常知名的名字。

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

會議現已結束。感謝您參加今天的演講。您現在可以斷開連接。