Marchex Inc (MCHX) 2010 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon.

My name is David, and l will be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Marchex fourth quart or earnings conference call.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speakers remarks there will be a question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions).

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr.

Ethan Caldwell, General Counsel and Chief Administrator Officer.

Sir, you may begin your conference.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Marchex's business update and fourth quarter 2010 conference call.

Joining us today are Russell Horowitz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; John Keister, Executive Vice Chairman; Peter Christothoulou, Chief Operating Officer; Michael Arends, Chief Financial Officer; Brent Turner, Executive Vice President of Call Advertising; and Matthew Berk, Executive Vice President of Product Engineering.

During the course of this conference call we will make forward-looking statements that involve substantial risks and certainties.

All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included on this call regarding our strategy, future operations, future financial positions, future revenues and other financial guidance, acquisitions, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements.

We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements.

Actual results or events could differ materially from the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements we make.

There are a number of important factors that could cause Marchex's actual results to diff materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as are described in the Risk Factor section of our most recent periodic report and registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All of the information provided on this conference call is as of today's date, and we undertake no duty to update the information provided here in.

During the course of this conference call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP measures of financial performance and liquidity, including OIBA, adjusted OIBA, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted non-GAAP EPS.

A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in today's earnings press release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website, and definitions of these measures as used by us and the reasons why we believe these measures provide useful information are also contained in today's earnings press release.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Russell Horowitz.

Thank you, Ethan, and welcome, everyone.

On today's call, I'll discuss our progress, Mike will review our financial results, and then we will open it up for Q&A.

We are continuing to execute on our belief that performance-based call advertising is the next transformational opportunity in advertising.

Whether we drive it, enable it, optimize it or analyze, everything we do is focused on helping reach advertisers on the phone wherever they may be, in mobile, offline, or online channels.

Our go is to continue to growing our position as the industry leader in driving qualified customer phone calls to advertisers large and small.

We will do this through building the largest call network, aggregating the largest base of call advertisers, and providing those advertisers with analytics to help them better understand and optimize their customer calls.

Today we believe we are at an inflection point where the market dynamics [and prove] point support our opportunity.

First, digital advertising inventory suited to phone calls, or as we refer to it, call supply is exploding, and it is doing so in tandem with the publisher needs to official monetize that inventory.

It is literally never been easy for consumers to connect with businesses over the phone than it is today, given the advancements in mobile and also voice, as well as emerging technologies.

These technological advancements and resulting consumer behavioral shifts have resulted in new publishers who importantly have call-centric inventory.

For example, consider the rise in growth of mobile applications developers and Skype.

These call-centric publishers are seeking opportunities to officially monetize their unique call-based inventory, and while the click has been the predominant monetization event on the desk top, for these call-centric publishers, the click is the call, and calls drive much higher yield.

In fact, we are generating more than five times the yield for certain publishers in our call network as compared to their other monetization alternatives.

Second, significant advertiser demand for phone calls already exists.

There's no need to educate advertisers or our industry on the value of receiving perspective customer phone calls.

According to BIA/Kelsey, advertisers spend tens of billions of dollars each year to drive calls from all forms of media.

We believe a significant portion of those dollars will shift to performance-based call advertising now that the technology is available to drive qualified customer calls that are tracked, reported, and can be optimized as readily and transparently as other forms of digital advertising.

Marchex's examples of advertiser demand for performance-based phone calls include our recently announced agreement with Yellow Pages Group of Canada, or YPG, to drive performance-based calls to their 370,000 business customers in Canada, which begins in April.

We have also seen advertisers increase their initial budgets with Marchex pay-per-call by more than ten times within the first 12 months of launching their call campaigns.

And additionally, many advertisers whose historically purchase sit -- search-based click campaigns to drive calls are moving significant portions of their budgets to Marchex pay-per-call.

Third, calls deliver superior value to advertisers as compared to other media types.

Phone calls are at the end of the advertising funnel.

In other words, at the point of the actual transaction.

As such, the opportunity for strong advertiser performance is high given that customers have self-selected to speak with an advertiser, and a dialog between a potential customer and an advertiser offers a much higher likelihood for positive results versusjust clicking around a website.

At Marchex we are seeing this trend play out.

In many cases we are delivering conversion rates of 20% and higher.

And the fourth key factor is that technology is ready.

Over the past four years Marchex has invested tens of millions of dollars in technology to drive and measure calls to advertisers on a performance-based model across mobile, online, and offline distribution channels.

A recent example of our innovation would be call mining.

As a result, we are able to deliver transparency and intelligence for advertisers that highlight the value of calls as compared to other lead forms.

Over the last several years we have established a clear focused strategy by bringing together the products and people necessary to take advantage of these call advertising market dynamics.

With these elements in place, I will now highlight the progress we made in the fourth quarter with our products and customers, as well as our 2011 plans.

First, in terms of our products.

During the fourth quarter we enhanced our Call Analytics product with launch of Keyword-Level Tracking.

Keyword-Level tracking enables search marketers and agencies to accurately and cost-effectively track calls down to the specific keyword that drove them without needing to use a unique call tracking line for every search term.

Over the course of 2011, we will continue to invest in and launch new products and enhancements to bring even greater transparency, efficiency, and value to our advertisers and publishing partners, while also driving a larger scale of call volume than ever before.

These investments will benefit all of our call advertising products.

Second, looking at progress with our customers.

There's tremendous and growing demand for phone calls across the three customer channels that are Marchex's focus.

The first is large national advertisers.

The second is reseller partners who serve small business advertisers across all categories.

Yellow Pages company are examples.

And the third are reseller partners who specialize in providing marketing services to specific vertical channels.

Primedia and real estate and Cobalt in autos are examples.

Marchex is making progress in each of these customer categories.

We added more than 10,000 new advertisers in the fourth quarter, raising the total number of Marchex advertiser relationships to more than 95,000, and we expect to grow our advertiser base by hundreds of thousands from current levels as we go forward, based on relationships like the recent announcement with YPG to drive calls to all of their business customers in Canada, as well as other international relationships and development.

Concurrent with the momentum on the demand side of the call advertising equation, we are also adding diverse new sources of call supply for mobile, online and offline sources.

We are focused on building the industry's largest and most relevant performance-based call network, and over the course of 2011 will continue to add significantly to the sources of call supply.

With that, I'll hand the call to Mike.

Thanks, Russ.

During the fourth quarter momentum with our call advertising products and customers led to our sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth.

Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $28 million.

Revenue from local advertising services was $21.6 million.

During the quarter, we continued to execute across our key product, operating and business development initiatives.

Excluding the AT&T incentives and the historical contribution of discontinued paid inclusion and related services, our year over year growth rate in local advertising services was 48%.

The growth in local advertising services was predominately driven by the increase in the number of advertisers and by increased advertiser budgets with our call advertising products.

Revenue from publishing was $6.3 million.

Demand from customers for this traffic increased modestly, consistent with expectations.

Excluding stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, total operating costs were $25.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2010.

Sales and marketing, excluding stock-based compensation, was $2.7 million.

During the quarter, sales and marketing expense levels were modestly down, in line with our expectations.

In the near term, we expect our marketing expense to normalize.

Longer term, we expect to increase marketing expense in support of the continued evolution of our products and growth of our customer base.

Adjusted operating income before amortization for the fourth quarter was $2.3 million.

Adjusted EBITDA was $3.4 million.

GAAP net income applicable to common stockholders was $593,000 for the fourth quarter of 2010, or $0.02 per diluted share.

This compares to GAAP net loss applicable to common stockholders up $14,000 for the same period of 2009, or $0.00 per diluted share.

Adjusted non-GAAP income per share, an estimate some Wall Street investor utilize as a supplemental measure of our operating progress, was $0.04 per share.

During the fourth quarter, we generated $5.9 million in operating cash flow, and had approximately $37.3 million cash on hand as of December 31, 2010.

Additionally, we sold a small number of nonstrategic domains that yielded $2.1 million in incremental cash flow.

As highlighted previously, we expect nonstrategic domain sales to be uneven quarter to quarter, but continue to see good demand.

During the quarter, we acquired 233,000 of our common shares for a total price of $1.5 million, bringing our total shares acquired under our repurchase program to 10 million, or 28% of our common shares outstanding.

We will continue to be opportunistic with respect to share repurchases, while also maintaining a meaningful cash position for financial flexibility.

Now, turning to our initial 2000 outlook, which includes our guidance for the first quarter as well as a few one time metrics we are sharing today to give an indication of our momentum.

First, here are some one-time metrics for big -- business progress context.

Call driven revenues, which we define as product revenues based on specifically driving call advertising, represented approximately 55% of our business based on our fourth quarter 2010 annualized run rate.

This compares to approximately 38% from the fourth quarter of 2009.

Based on ongoing progress, we believe call driven revenue will represent more than 70% of revenue on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Second, turning to our revenue guidance for 2011.

For context on how we are approaching the market, our focus is to expand our advertiser base as quickly as possible to maximize our market penetration and presence.

For the year, we expect revenue of between $118 million to $122 million, driven by our call advertising products that target both large national advertisers as well as small businesses.

For the first quarter, we expect revenue of between $28.5 million to $25.9 million driven by continued growth in our call advertising products, whilefactoring in lower sequential publishing revenue in the first quarter as compared, based on anticipated lower budgets in this area.

Next, looking at contribution, adjusted OIBA, and EBITDA margins.

We believe the incremental margins from call driven revenues can range from 20% to 35%.

Hour noncall driven revenues are made up primarily of our publishing and other noncall sources.

We believe published sources can estimated incremental contribution margins that range above 50%, and our other noncall driven revenues can contribute incremental contribution margins that range from 20% to 30%.

This translates to our expectation of more than $13 million in adjusted operating income before amortization for the year, implying more than $17 million in adjusted EBITDA.

For the first quarter we expect adjusted operating income before amortization of more than $2.4 million and EBITDA of more than $3.4 million.

The first quarter takes into account additional investments and costs related to people, product investments, sales and customer support initiatives, and various expansion initiatives.

We expect operating margins to scale up with the growth through the balance of the year.

We are highly focused on continuing to build and extend our leadership position and call advertising over the long term, and we therefore intend to continue investing in our business, products and customer relationships.

In 2011, we intend to expand our footprint internationally to support some of our key relationships, as well as to address what we believe is a significant international opportunity for performance-based call advertising.

This will require investment.

At the same time, we are carefully managing our investments such that as we grow, a portion of the incremental contribution will be allocated to support our growth initiatives, including increased investments in our products, customers, and other aspects of our business, any portion we will flow through to contribute to expanding margins.

Over the long term our goal is for Marchex to support adjusted EBITDA margin of 20% or more.

We are excited about the momentum in our business and believe we are laying a strong foundation for revenue and cash flow growth in 2011 and beyond.

And with that, I would like to hand the call back to Russ.

Thanks, Mike.

In 2011 Marchex will build on our progress as the leader in performance-based call advertising.

At this point, we have the proof points with our customers; we have got the right team, and we continue to add great people; we have got the right game plan, and so it really just comes down to execution.

I want to thank you our employees for their continued dedication and hard work.

And with that, we will hand the call back to the operator for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions).

Your first question comes from the line of Ross Sandler of RBC Capital Markets.

Hey, guys.

A couple of questions.

First, thanks for breaking out the call based revenue in the guidance and then the existing.

That's very helpful.

So if I'm doing the math right, Mike, your calls business right now is growing north of 70%, and if you back into the number for 2011, you are talking north of 35%.

So are those numbers about right?

And then what do you think the long-term growth trajectory in the calls business is, or are we just too early to tell.

And I have a couple follow-ups.

Well, we did give the specific me trick in the last quarter.

We were 48% growth for local advertising services.

That's been the range that we have had for the last number of quarters; anywhere from 40% to 65%.

We do think there's a lot of momentum and a lot of catalyst to continue our growth.

We have put out the guidance as we see for the first quarter and for the year on the call, and I'm snot sure that I caught the last part of your question.

What do you think the long-term growth trajectory for call based advertising or pay-for-call?

Clearly we think that there's a significant opportunity here, and a significant shift in dollars towards performance-based call advertising.

We aren't giving the specific metrics, but the momentum that we are seeing in the business, we do think can continue, not just into the 2011, but we do think beyond that.

Okay.

And then just on the partnership deals.

Russ, you mentioned that the Yellow Pages Canada goes live in April.

How meaningful can that be, and is that primarily on the call side?

I think you are already doing stuff in just the online piece.

And then in your guidance, does that contemplate rolling out calls with AT&T at some point, or is that still a TBD?

Yes --- Well, first off, as it relates to YPG, we expect that program to launch in April, and we think it will be a very meaningful program.

And it will be a -- it will definitely be a growth catalyst this year, financially and strategically, and we think it is a model that could reflect other similar opportunities that we are pursuing andin discussions regarding.

In terms of AT&T and other resellers, clearly they get the value of calls.

We are working with them on that.

And we expect to integrate and scale fairly meaningfully in 2011.

Okay, and then do you see -- you just mentioned other resellers.

Are there any other larger -- I know there's a lot out there, but any other large AT&T-like partnerships that you think make a lot of sense on the call side that we can see in 2011?

When you look at the global market, we think there are, andwe are focused on really positioning ourselves as a leader.

And we think we are in a pretty leveraged position to go out and make some good things happen on that front.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Robert Coolbrith with ThinkEquity.

Good afternoon, and congratulations on the good quarter.

Could you provide some additional detail on the YPG Canada deal?It seems like all the customers will be immediately enabled, or they're all included.

I don't know if there's a schedule for roll out, but it seems like they are going to turn everyone on.

Is that essentially a free trial sponsored by YPG that will have to be renewed by the advertiser at some extended economics to YPG then flowing through to you in the second year, or is there some other upsell path way there that can develop over time?

Also, just quick housekeeping question.

I may have missed it.

Could you provide the number of domains sold in the quarter.

So, it's Russ.

I'll take the YPG one.

From YPG in terms of displaying the value they delivered to their advertisers, and they are very smart strategic forward-thinking organization, recognize that they need to get their advertisers out into the emerging sources of call supply, and show their value as their primary marketing partner.

How they have chosen to take it to market as free to those advertisers does not translate to Marchex.

We will charge per call for those services.

And so it's pretty much that simple.

We will just charge per call, for each phone call generated to all 370,000 of them.

And then to answer your last question about the number of domains, we had one bulk transaction that was about 900 domains, and about 40 others, so a total of just over 940 domains.

Great.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions).

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Bergan of Craig-Hallum Capital.

Thank you.

You stated long-term EBITDA of 20% or more.

Do you have a time frame internally you're looking at for when you're going to achieve that?

Or a revenue run rate?

So we haven't put out a specific time frame, but we do see that over the next number of years.

And we haven't given any specific revenue run rate other than clearly we believe there's a significant amount of momentum that we see this year in our performance-based call advertising, and we do think that momentum can translate over the next number of years.

Additionally, it is important as we grow to look at where we need to continue invest to position Marchex as a global leader in call advertising.

We think we have a real window of opportunity here, and we want to continue to defend that window.

That will require investment.

And so as we grow, and we look at the emergence of the competitive landscape, we will need to make discretionary calls of how much we invest versus how much we see margins expand.

As far as publishing revenue is concerned, do you see normal seasonality in 2011?

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Was it a seasonal question about publishing?

Yes.

That's correct.

Do you see -- expect to see normal seasonal trends with publishing revenue in 2011?

We do see some -- we have given specific guidance about lower advertising budgets that we see in Q1.

There is some volatility in our publishing revenues, but we do expect that the seasonal elements will come to play with our publishing revenues, yes.

Okay, and then can you talk a little bit more this expanding of your international footprint?

What countries do you expect to expand into?

And how soon can we see your -- a significant ramp in the contribution from international revenue?

Today we are not being more specific than talking -- focused on the international opportunity.

Clearly within that we have areas of priority both -- those aren't specifics we are sharing today.

We do view this opportunity as a 2011.

We know investment a lot of times happens before opportunity.

We have messaged that some of that investment is factored into the financial outlook we have given today.

Hopefully the opportunity will come to bear and can help us outperform.

Okay, and then one final question.

Can you give the head count that you had on December 31, the head count today, and the head count that you are projected for the end of the fiscal year?

We had close to 350 people at the end of the year.

We're slightly up above that as we sit today, and if all plans are working well, we do expect to hire quite a few number of people, again, with the investment in the product side of things, with sales and customer support throughout the year.

Having said that, the investments are going to be made with the guise of expanding margins throughout the year, so there is prudence behind the consistency of those investments as we see the year unfolding.

Thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Clay Moran of Benchmark.

Hi, thank you.

This is [James Dobson] on for Clay.

My first question is can you just clarify whether or not you from providing calls for AT&T customers?

We are.

Okay.

And then also another thing, how much contra revenue was in relation to the AT&T deal this quarter?

In the fourth quarter was approximately $800,000.

Okay.

And then is -- in regard to YPG deal, it sounded like that was primarily Skype driven?

Is there any opportunity to drive that beyond the Skype opportunity?

It was driven by Skype, and we are optimistic there is various opportunities with YPG.

And then my final question is, I think, based on your breakout for 4Q call related revenue, that would put roughly, I think, just under $7 million in local ad sales that was not call related revenue.

Is that primarily related to search?

It is primarily, yes.

Okay, thank you.

And your next question is a follow-up question from Ross Sandler of RBC Capital Markets.

Yes, just one more question high-level question.

So Google has rolled out a bunch of new stuff in the call advertising space in the last three months.

Can you just talk about how your pay-for-call exchange and your offering differs from Google, and what potential competitive advantage you may have verses Google or they may have versus you?

Thanks.

I don't think we have another hour scheduled, but I will do the best I can quickly.

Google has come out with a call tracking solution for advertisers for Google campaigns only, a basic solution.

Net-net, we think that is good for Marchex, because we have been out there as evangelists talking about the opportunity with performance-based call advertising, and it's been lonely.

And pushing that adoption curve is something we have been doing, and we've seen progress, but clearly Google coming out and talking about the importance of calls, the importance of marketers on Google driving calls, and providing tools to help them do that is accelerating the adoption curve.

So Google focusing on this space we think is good as it relates to overall adoption.

When Google came out with Google Analytics for websites as a free product, the good news is it brought new visible to the opportunity, and Omniture leveraged that as a provider of analytics more broadly across all in-line solutions and built a real leadership position.

And so we view this very similarly in terms of what Google is doing with their basic approach to call tracking on Google campaigns, where Marchex is looking at a broader call analytic solution for advertisers across all media types.

As it relates to Marchex and pay-per-call, right now, again, we're not really seeing other folks selling performance-based calls in the performance place.

Google talking about how campaigns on Google may in turn drive calls and support greater value in that spending in its own right doesn't compare or kind of isn't contrastable to what we are doing.

When we look at the evolution of emerging call supply sources, we think that there is an increasingly fragmented market, and significantly more fragmented than searches today.

And that really highlights the value of Marchex's technology products and relationships.

And so net-net, Google's focus on understanding this value, communicating that value, mobilizing some products to try to help customers on Google, we think really again accelerates the adoption curve and highlights the value of what we are doing in this complex, fragmented market, where mobile is really driving significant fragmentation and adoption in ways that we can make sense of and simplify for a whole lot of customers.

Okay, and just one last follow-up on that question.

Can you guys tell what the growth rate of pay-for-call that's been I guess triggered by a smartphone versusa typical Skype on a PC environment?Can you tell the growth rate differential between the two, or is it just still too early to tease that out?

To kind of augment the last question also, the other part is for in terms of advertisers specifically buying phone calls, we -- as far as we know, we have more advertisers than anybody, including Google, and we think, again, market presence and penetration is a critical early indicator of who will be a leader here.

And we like our position, we like our momentum, and we think that is a key fundamental factor in terms of a differential part of where Marchex sits in this landscaped.

Look, in terms of being able to fragment out which underlying sources of call supplier leverages smartphones versus other areas, they are, on a relative basis, growing faster than most.

Thanks, guys.

And your next question is a follow up question from Clay Moran of Benchmark.

This is James.

Thank you.

I've got one more question.

I know last year you guys did roughly $7 million in domain sales, and I know on the call you said it would be somewhat lumpy, but is there any reason to think there's an opportunity to do a large bulk sale?

Potentially in the tens of millions of opportunity?

Thank you.

Our approach to domain sales has really been opportunity driven.

We have had multi-million dollars offers on individual names we have chosen not to take because we haven't felt it reflects the value, and obviously there's some where we will do smaller transactions where we feel it's a better use of our capital to sell it.

It is hard to forecast that.

Those opportunities may happen.

We do see significant demand, and we think that continues.

All right, thank you.

And your next question comes from Dan Salmon of BMO Capital Markets.

Good afternoon, guys.

Just a quick question on your offering, and obviously with the call-based offering taking off, is this -- is there anything out there that you are looking to acquire?

Or is most product development focused internally today?

Again, as a company, Marchex hasn't made an acquisition in I believe over three years, and our growth is all organic, and everything we are talking about today is all levered off organic growth and organic opportunities.

It's a new market.

We haven't seen anything specifically that's moved us to a point of acquisition.

As we said today, we think we largely have what we need to execute on this strategy we have been articulating.

Clearly along the way, you may encounter things that, based on the market opportunity, makes sense, but with where we sit today, we largely feel like we have got the right people and assets at our disposal to make this happen.

Okay, then just to follow up on that, then.

Free cash flow generation obviously is improving as well, and share repurchase and dividends are there.

Should we anticipate acceleration for uses of free cash flow in those areas?

So as we stand today there is a shared purchase program in effect.

I don't think from our perspective that there may -- that there would be an acceleration.

It is an existing plan that we have in place, and I think there's a continuation that we plan on in the next -- in the foreseeable future, in any event.

Okay.

Thanks.

And there are no further questions at this time.

Do you have any closing remarks?

We appreciate everyone's participation.

We have a lot of momentum in our business.

We feel good about our leadership position, and again, we think this is a very large market over the long term.

And we are really focused on making sure that we maximize our opportunity and value creation over that long term timeframe, and think 2011 is a good opportunity for us to take a meaningful step forward.

Thanks again, and we'll look forward to keeping you posted on our progress.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call.

Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect.