Iteris Inc (ITI) 2014 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Iteris' Financial Results for its Fiscal First Quarter ended June 30th, 2013. Joining us today are Iteris' President and CEO, Mr. Abbas Mohaddes; and the President and CFO, Mr. Jim Miele.

Following their remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before we continue, we would like to remind all participants that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the Company, which are based on current information, are subject to change and are not guarantees of future performance. Iteris is not undertaking an obligation to provide updates to these forward-looking statements in the future.

Actual results may differ substantially from what is discussed today, and no one should assume that at a later date the Company's comments from today will still be valid. Iteris refers you to the documents that the Company files from time-to-time with the SEC, specifically, the Company's most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K, which contain and identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are contained in any of the forward-looking statements.

I would like to remind everyone that a webcast replay of today's call will be available via the Investors section of the Company's website at www.iteris.com.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Iteris' President and CEO, Mr. Abbas Mohaddes. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Lilly, and good afternoon, everyone. As you saw at the close of the market today, we issued a press release announcing the financial results of our fiscal third quarter ended June 30, 2013.

Revenue growth in our first quarter on both a sequential and year-ago comparative basis demonstrate a strengthening demand for our core Roadway Sensors products, and Transportation Systems services. These results, which helped drive a profitable bottom line despite our accelerated investment in iPerform, are the result of an expanding traffic management market and the strategy we laid out in fiscal year 2013.

During the quarter, the investment in our iPerform performance management suite, particularly our flagship traffic analytics product, iPeMS, produced a technological breakthrough. This breakthrough is a newly released upgrade that now allows users to seamlessly ingest and analyze traffic data from multiple data providers on a plug-and-play basis, alleviating the need for costly and time-consuming custom integration. This unique capability is representative of several innovations we have under development that will help drive iPerform's position in the market and accelerate the growth of this segment.

This milestone, along with other future milestone that I will discuss later in my remarks, will be a way to measure our progress in this segment, as we work towards supplementing our core consulting and product segments, while enhancing the overall profitability of our business.

But before going into further details about the quarter and our outlook, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Miele, who will take us through the details of our financial results. Afterwards, I'll return to discuss more of the highlights for the quarter and how we plan to build shareholder value as we move through our fiscal year 2014 and beyond.

Finally, we will open the call for your questions. Jim?

Thanks, Abbas, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you again for joining us today. For the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2013, total revenues increased 4% to $17 million, compared to $16.3 million in the year ago quarter. The increase in revenues was primarily attributed to a 5% increase in both Roadway Sensors and Transportation Systems revenues.

As part of an internal reorganization during the first quarter, our weather-related Management Decision Support Services, historically included in the Transportation Systems segment, were reassigned to the iPerform segment to better align our predictive weather and traffic capabilities, resources, and initiatives.

Therefore, prior-year segment information, which was provided in today's press release, is restated to reflect the reassignment of approximately $481,000 in revenues from Transportation Systems to iPerform. As there are different characteristics affecting each of our revenue streams and various attributes affecting our financial results, Abbas will provide more detail regarding our total revenues later in his comments.

Gross margin in the first quarter was 39.5%, compared to 38.4% in the year ago quarter. The 110 basis point increase was primarily the result of higher margins in Transportation System from improved labor utilization on projects. We recognize a portion of our Transportation Systems revenues and related gross profit using the percentage of completion contract accounting method and the underlying mix of contract activity affects the related gross profit recognized in any given period.

Roadway Sensors margins were approximately 51% and were consistent with the margins in the year ago quarter. Roadway Sensors gross margin can fluctuate in any specific quarter or year based on, among other factors, customer and product mix, competitive pricing requirement, product warranty cost and provisions for excess and obsolete inventories, as well as shifts of engineering resources from development activities to sustaining activity, which we record as a cost of goods sold.

Although healthy at roughly 35%, the iPerform gross margin was down slightly from the year ago period. The iPerform gross margin is impacted by factors similar to those in Transportation Systems. Operating expenses increased 13% during the first quarter to $6.1 million, compared to $5.4 million in the same year ago quarter. The increase was primarily due to a rise in the fair value of contingent acquisition consideration of $334,000, higher sales and marketing activities in Roadway Sensors and iPerform and an increase in research and development expenses associated with iPerform. In fact, we invested approximately $484,000 on iPerform research development and sales and marketing, compared to $235,000 in the same year ago quarter.

Income from continuing operations was $430,000 or $0.01 per share in the first quarter of 2014, compared to income from continuing operations of $589,000 or $0.02 per share in the year ago quarter. Net income in the first quarter was $460,000 or $0.01 per share, compared to $676,000 or $0.02 per share in the year ago quarter.

Net income in the first quarter included the continuation of our accelerated investment phased in iPerform, which we announced at the end of our fiscal 2013. In addition, both income from continuing operations and net income in the year ago quarter benefited from the aforementioned $334,000 positive adjustment related to the change in fair value of contingent acquisition consideration.

Net of this adjustment, income from continuing operations increased 69% year-over-year, despite a significant increased investment to fund iPerform R&D. Cash at June 30, 2013 was $19.1 million compared to the same $19.1 million at March 31, 2013, and we continue to carry no debt.

Also during the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 175,000 shares of our common stock for $303,000, bringing the total to approximately 2.3 million shares, since we initiated a series of share repurchase programs in August 2011. As of June 2013, we have repurchased approximately 6.5 million worth of shares under this program and have approximately $783,000 in funds remaining under the current plan.

Total backlog at the end of the first quarter was $34.2 million, compared to $38.6 million in the prior quarter and $36.5 million in the same year ago quarter. Backlog was comprised of $26.1 million from Transportation Systems, $4.9 million from iPerform and $3.2 million from Roadway Sensors.

Subsequent to the end of our first quarter, we signed a six-year contract with Serco to operate Virginia Transportation Operation Centers. Specifically, Iteris will provide general engineering and traffic operation services at two of VDOT's regional traffic centers.

The operational component is valued at $6.6 million, with the general engineering services component to potentially provide an additional $6 million to $8 million. With this contract and over $4 million of other contracts signed subsequent to June 30, we've returned to an environment where backlog has exceeded our current revenue burn rate.

This concludes my prepared remarks on the financials. Now I'd like to turn the call back to Abbas, who will discuss the quarter, as well as our strategy for the rest of fiscal 2014 in greater detail. Abbas?

Jim, thank you very much. As I indicated in my opening remarks, revenues were up both year-over-year and sequentially. Our core Transportation Systems and Roadway Sensors segment remain on track with our internal growth plan and generated the operating income and cash flow necessary to fuel our continued investment in iPerform.

Although operating income was down year-over-year due to our investment in iPerform, it increased sequentially despite an ever greater investment in iPerform during our first quarter. We continue to be confident in our market and believe the overall application of technology in transportation is gaining traction, particularly in the area of traffic management information.

Before I speak more about our outlook, I would like to discuss our operating segments in more detail. Within Roadway Sensors, sales were up 5% over the same quarter last year and 16% sequentially due to traction in some of our key products, such as our Vector, which is a video and radar hybrid product, as well as a healthier market condition, primarily in California and Florida. We are the leader in this strong, growing market and continue to take share.

We continue to invest in our international markets and made several new distribution agreements during the quarter in South America and Middle East. Our Transportation Systems' 511 sales were up 5% during the quarter, primarily due to expanded contracts in our Eastern region.

We continue to believe our Transportation Systems 511 business is well positioned to capitalize on the Federal Highway Bill. The request for proposals from various agencies due to the bill continued to expand and, as we have indicated before, we believe we will be a direct beneficiary of the bill.

In fact, the VDOT announcement we made last week is a prime example; our VDOT award expands our strong support for Virginia's Transportation Network, as we currently operate and maintain the Commonwealth's award-winning 511 Traveler Information Systems. There are several other opportunities that we are either in the process of submitting our bids or tracking the RFPs to be published, which we expect in the upcoming quarters.

Moving on to our performance management segment or iPerform. We continued to make solid progress in the quarter, achieving one major milestone and bolstering our team of professionals. At the end of Q1, our iPerform Group consisted of 57 employees. This compares to only 12 employees when we purchased BTS nearly 18 months ago. As Jim mentioned earlier, the Group also now includes our weather forecasting team, which added 30 employees.

As we have discussed, iPerform was established in 2011 and provides a new generation of intelligent traffic and weather related information solutions. These solutions bring the power of Big Data to predicting traffic conditions and delivering actionable information to both the public and commercial marketplace.

The segment's initial product, IterisPeMS or iPeMS, is a state-of-the-art information management software suite that utilizes a wide range of data resources and analytical techniques to determine current and future traffic patterns, permitting the effective performance analysis and management of traffic infrastructure resources.

Late in fiscal year 2013, we announced the beginning of an 18-month period of increased investment in iPerform. We made this commitment due to our belief that the market for traffic analytics is expanding dramatically. Our deep knowledge of traffic engineering and weather forecasting, our experienced managing traffic measurements on a massive scale, and our state-of-the-art analytical capabilities should position us to put complex Big Data to work, enabling our customers to predict and solve real-time traffic management problems.

The expansion of iPerform reflects our broadening focus beyond the public sector to a wider market that should benefit from our information-based products and services. iPerform's recurring revenue model is expected to supplement our consulting and product businesses and augment the overall profitability of our organization.

We currently offer iPeMS as both a license and software as a service offering. By increasing investment in both technical and market development, we are focused on expanding the scope of iPerform's public sector solutions into the commercial marketplace. We continue to experience significant customer demand and have identified a number of commercial opportunities in the media, automotive and mobile application markets.

Our team has already secured a commercial partner and we are in discussion with several others. We plan to fund these investments through internally-generated cash flow from our Roadway Sensors and Transportation Systems operating segments, as well as revenues from iPerform. It is also important to note that we have been and expect to remain profitable during this 18-month period of investment.

During our first fiscal year quarter, we achieved a significant product milestone in iPerform. We released an upgrade to iPeMS, which allows users to seamlessly ingest and analyze traffic data from multiple third-party data providers on a plug-and-play basis, alleviating the need for costly and time-consuming custom integrations. This upgrade also provides the ability to display third-party data, real-time sensor information and historical traffic data archives on maps through patented data visualization tool.

These are just a few of the reasons we believe this product has a unique competitive advantage. For example, while software such as Google Map can provide travel information and routing in real-time, our iPeMS solution allows agencies and customers to analyze both historic and real-time information via dynamic visualization tools and report using data from multiple sources. This includes fixed-road sensors, third-party data, historic datasets and real-time traffic information.

Today's transportation markets require innovative, technological solutions like iPeMS, which go beyond monitoring travel time and the traditional red-yellow-green light paradigm to provide operators with the information they need to make actionable decisions for the traffic network. To this end, we have several additional innovations under development that will help drive iPerform's market-leading position and accelerate the growth of this segment.

The key feature releases that investors should track in the next few quarters include a robust graphical user interface, the integration of (inaudible) and historical road and weather conditions, Arterial Performance measurement capabilities and a statistical predictive analytics for traffic, roads and weather condition.

As the market demand for better informational and analytics tools continues to expand, we believe the investments we are making today will highlight Iteris as the go-to market leader. We expect iPerform's recurring revenue model to supplement our core consulting and product segment, while enhancing the overall profitability of our business.

Now, before I provide my closing remarks, we will be delighted to respond to your questions and comments. Lilly?

Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen with B. Riley & Company. Please go ahead, sir.

Yes, hi. Abbas, maybe you can update us on the progress you're making toward partnerships and alliances for iPerform. I think you mentioned one commercial partner there. And then maybe you can just talk about anything new in terms of how you're approaching, investing in iPerform.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Van Sinderen. We have now secured a contract that we have not announced as yet because of competitive reasons and the client's requests, that we are providing iPeMS solution derivatives to them.

And what we have done this first quarter, aligned with our announcement back in fiscal 2013 of increased investments, is that there are several R&D tracks that we are pursuing, some of which I indicated, like the Arterials information, as well as the graphical user interface, the one that we just completed with the third-party data ingestion, and then, of course, our predictive weather and traffic information.

These are separate tracks that we are pursuing. We have added several software engineers over the last couple of quarters and tracking the milestones, while we are developing the business, meeting with prospective partners and customers that we could work with.

I'm happy to report that it is progressing quite nicely. I would envision that we continue that increase during the quarter that we are in and looking forward to the opportunity to inform the investors as we forge these partnerships that we could announce, and also of course on our milestone reaching the technical breakthroughs as we go forward.

Okay. So it sounds to me like it would be fair to say that the iPerform segment of your business and everything you're working toward there is pretty much on track, is that right?

That's correct. We are on track according to the business plan that we have provided. It's an 18-month expanded investment in R&D and further marketing that we just completed the first quarter of that. And we basically have five quarters to continue this intense investment and I'm pleased with our progress so far.

Okay, great. And then I think you mentioned, you broke out a little bit in terms of the Virginia contract and some of that being derived from the Federal Highway Bill. Maybe you can just expand on that a little bit, so we can understand a little better.

Yes. There are several RFPs that we have seen ever since, perhaps, beginning to mid quarter that are either partially or fully funded via Federal Highway Bill, and VDOT is an example of that. We are actually at the moment pursuing several others that either fully or partially funded by Federal Highway Bill.

So we are now seeing more expanded funding floating into the marketplace from the Highway Bill. I should point out at this juncture that the bill is funded through another slightly over a year or so. I believe it goes through September 2014 calendar. So there are incentives to extend that fund and now it is being accelerated. So we are quite pleased to see that.

Okay, good. And then I think you mentioned as well that you thought there would be other similar types of contracts. I'm not sure order of magnitude. But it sounds to me like the spigot, if you will, for the Federal Highway Bill is really starting to open and you're starting to see that blow into your backlog. Is that fair?

That's a fair assessment. And that's part of the reason that we are quite optimistic for that particular segment. And also, if history is a good testimony, in the previous bills, we would see that perhaps the consulting components become the initial beneficiary and then as these plans get into design, then our Roadway Sensors also becomes the beneficiary. So we envision these core markets of ours really benefiting from that market [section].

Okay, good. And then just wanted to ask you a little bit about gross margin, because I know you had an improved labor utilization rate in the quarter. Is there something more in terms of follow on to that? How should we think about gross margin?

And then, obviously, you've got a few more quarters of investment in iPerform. But just trying to get a sense maybe if we look out further and think about the business, how should we think about gross margin as you start to leverage into 2015, 2016, and beyond?

Sure, sure; excellent question. So our overarching strategy on margin is, of course, to improve upon, and, specifically, we have a twofold approach to this. One -- and this is -- I'm specifically discussing the Transportation Systems -- one to increase the utilization of the labor and expandability on each individual. And the second part of this is to increase the overall labor as it relates to the magnitude of sub-consultant agreements.

So, for example, couple of years ago, the average sub consultant as a percentage of our overall revenue in systems was about 15% to 20%. That expanded due to some of these larger contracts in 511 and others that we have received. So a year ago, we were experiencing up to 35%, 40% sub consultant content.

So now, we envision going forward to expanding the labor and somewhat reducing that content to maybe 30% or perhaps below. Now, of course, this all fluctuates from one quarter to the other, but our longer-term objective remains the same, to that way improve the margins.

Of course there are a whole set of other secondary strategies to go after the more profitable contracts and cut costs in variety of areas such as G&A and really leverage as we grow. We are not spending or expanding the G&A at the same rate that we are growing the revenues.

So all of this, and then of course a significant expected shot in the arm from the iPerform expanded margin when that really gets into the steady-state position after we begin introducing some of these revisions to market. Altogether, I would envision to your point in the upcoming years, two, three years, our margin expands significantly beyond what we enjoy today. So that is our strategy going forward overall.

Okay, that's great. That's really helpful. Thanks very much.

I appreciate the questions. Thank you.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from the line of William Myers with Miller Asset Management. Please go ahead, sir.

Hi, thanks. I'm hoping you can give us a little insight on how you see iPerform revenues going forward. Do you have revenue targets? Do you have some sort of model you can share with us on what we might expect, at least in general? Thanks.

Yes, Mr. Myers, thank you for the question. Yes, we do have a detailed revenue model and we have an initial three-year plan. And the magnitude that I could share with you is as follows, that we envision that this year and part of next year enjoying some level of growth.

But we would envision a significant growth in revenue would be coming in sometime about 12 to 18 months from now, when we are concluding some of the major milestones that generate the kind and type of products that the commercial space is really expecting, and specifically naming the predictive weather and traffic information on a national scale.

And so that is all included in our business plan, and we would envision that executing those according to plan and really sharing specific milestones on quarterly basis with investors, so that you could track our progress, and perhaps even some of the major partnerships that we will be forging.

And the other thing I should mention is that starting a couple of quarters ago, we are reporting -- segment reporting in our releases; in other words, you could track for iPerform specific expenditures and revenues. So that is another way for us to stay (inaudible) touch with our investors. I hope this help, Mr. Myers.

Yes, that was helpful and I appreciate your taking our question. Thanks.

Thank you, sir.

At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Mohaddes for his closing remarks. Please go ahead.

For the remainder of the fiscal year 2014, we plan to stay focused on developing and delivering solutions to the areas of the intelligent traffic management market that are growing faster than the overall market. This will require further expansion of our sales, marketing and research and development teams, especially within iPerform.

The market is clearly in need of the intelligent traffic management products and solutions we provide. So we remain confident the investments we are making in these areas will continue to drive revenue growth and build shareholder value. We appreciate everyone's support and thoughtful questions, and we look forward to updating you again on our continued progress.

This concludes today's call. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today for our presentation. You may now disconnect.