MIX Telematics Ltd (MIXT) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the MiX Telematics Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Mr. John Granara, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin your presentation.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to review MiX Telematics' earnings results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, which ended on December 31, 2021. Today, we will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued a few hours ago. I'm John Granara, MiX's Chief Financial Officer, and I'm joined by Stefan Joselowitz, or as many of you know him, Joss. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of MiX Telematics.

During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements related to our business, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our results, please refer to those contained in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings, all of which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website.

We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. There is a reconciliation schedule detailing these results currently available in our press release, which is located on our website and filed with the SEC. And with that, I will turn the call over to Joss.

Thanks, John. And thanks to all of you for joining the call today. I would like to start by thanking many of you who have reached out offering condolences on the recent passing of my mother back in South Africa.

Turning to our third quarter results. Our performance reflected strong execution by the entire MiX team as we continue to meet our objectives to return to sustainable revenue growth. Underlying sales momentum in our business continues to improve, and we're encouraged by the increase in deal activity in most of our key regions and end markets. We have done so despite the continued presence of COVID and the emergence of Omicron during the quarter, which did have some impact on performance.

We added 20,300 subscribers to end the quarter with a base of over 790,000. This is our best performance since before the pandemic, and all three of our solution categories contributed to the strong growth, including solid new premium fleet customer additions. We have successfully executed on our objectives to return to sustainable revenue growth, and we are increasingly optimistic on our ability to deliver over the longer term, our financial targets of 15% to 20% constant currency subscription revenue growth and 30-plus adjusted EBITDA margins. Of course, we will continue to manage the business with a balanced approach. However, our performance so far in fiscal 2022 and the demand indicators we see across the business are giving us confidence to lean into our key investment priorities that will support our long-term growth targets.

I would now like to quickly summarize our financial and operational results for the third quarter. Annual recurring revenue ended the quarter at $119 million, up 1.3% sequentially and 6.3% year-to-date. I would note that our ARR result was impacted by two items. Firstly, a sizable energy customer in the U.S. liquidated as part of its bankruptcy process, removing approximately $500,000 from ARR. Secondly, we had a strong bookings quarter, but with much of it coming at the end of the period. As a result, we have more committed backlog waiting to be implemented than is typical.

Subscription revenue was $30.3 million, a 3.5% increase year-over-year in constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA was $7.1 million at a 19.6% margin, which was modestly below our expectations for the quarter due to a very large unbundled win, where the customer is paying for the hardware upfront. As we roll out this fleet, this low-margin hardware sale will steadily convert into high-margin subscribers.

Our premium fleet performance was particularly encouraging and reflected a couple of important trends. Firstly, as we noted in recent quarters, demand for enterprise opportunities has been strong and led to meaningful pipeline growth, renewals and subscriber expansion in both Q1 and Q2. In this latest quarter, we saw an increase in large deal activity as evidenced by the following premium fleet wins across multiple verticals. We signed a significant transaction with an emerging mobility fintech company that provides revenue-based vehicle financing to entrepreneurs across parts of Africa, Europe and Asia. Under this multiyear contract, they will deploy our premium fleet solution, including MiX Vision AI to more than 12,500 vehicles, and will be purchasing the associated hardware upfront. This is an example of the opportunity MiX has to be the technology partner of choice to cutting-edge companies who are introducing new and disruptive ways of doing business in multiple geographies.

In South Africa, we were awarded a significant contract expansion by an existing MiX customer and the country's largest utility provider, who is adding our MiX Vision AI solution to their fleet of more than 11,000 vehicles. A key differentiator in this win was the value our video telematics solution delivers for driver and passenger safety.

In the United Kingdom, Monks Contractors, a waste management company chose MiX as their new telematics partner. Operating for over 25 years, the company wanted a telematics solution that can provide real-time driver coaching that will enable more efficient fleet management and improved road safety.

And finally, in Brazil, we signed a leading public transport company for over 350 vehicles with an opportunity to add an additional 1,000. The reliability of our solution to lower fuel consumption and increase efficiency, together with our best-in-class customer support made MiX the chosen partner.

We also continue to make good progress in our product road map. In Q3, we have further extended the integrated dashboard solution launched last quarter. The solution now includes embedded analytics, specifically relating to driver performance, leveraging our standard scoring algorithms as well as unique client configurable scorecards. We will continue to ramp up our investment in data engineering, analytics and AI over the years ahead to provide ongoing value and insights to our subscriber base and MiX's internal operations.

As we approach the end of fiscal 2022, we feel good about how the business has performed and the steps we have taken to position the company for even better financial performance going forward. In particular, bookings are tracking ahead of our expectations for the year, which we believe is the best indication of the underlying health and momentum in our business. In terms of the specific goals we laid out at the beginning of the year, we are now tracking towards subscription revenue growth in the low to mid-single digits and ARR growth of 9% to 10%. John will discuss in more detail some of the near-term dynamics that are causing a lag between bookings and the time it takes to contribute to ARR expansion and subscription revenue. I want to be clear that this is solely a function of timing. In fact, we have booked enough contracted revenue year-to-date to comfortably generate double-digit ARR growth if the bulk of it can be implemented by year-end.

At the same time, we are on pace to meet our profitability target of low to mid-20% adjusted EBITDA margins even as we invest more in our product development and go-to-market efforts. Our consistent cost discipline and targeted investment philosophy has served us well through multiple cycles over the past 25 years, and we are confident it will lead to improved growth and profitability in the future. I'd like to end by reiterating that we are tracking well to the objectives we laid out for fiscal 2022, and we're encouraged by the improvements in customer demand in recent months. We believe we are entering a cycle of increased focus on telematics investments and that MiX is well-positioned to benefit from this trend. We are confident in our ability to achieve our long-term financial targets and believe we can generate significant value for our shareholders.

I want to thank all of MiX's employees around the world for their efforts that contribute to ongoing success. I would now like to turn the call over to John to review our financial results in more detail. John?

Thanks, Joss. I'd now like to turn to our financial results for Q3. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong results. Please keep in mind that all figures refer to the third fiscal quarter of 2022 and all comparisons are for the year-over-year changes, unless I say otherwise. As a reminder, the majority of our revenues are derived from currencies other than the U.S. dollar. The South African rand strengthened by 1% against the U.S. dollar compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2021, contributing to a 1.2% increase in our reported revenues.

Starting with the P&L. Total revenue came in at $36.2 million and subscription revenues were $30.3 million, an increase of 5% and 3.5% on a constant currency basis, respectively. We ended the quarter with 790,500 subscribers, a sequential increase of 20,300. The growth in subscribers this quarter was driven by strength in all 3 solution areas, including solid new premium fleet customer additions. We are encouraged by the broad-based strength of our subscriber additions, which speaks to improved demand trends and customer appetite to invest in telematics solutions.

ARR, which we believe will be a more meaningful indicator of our growth this fiscal year, was $119 million at the end of the third quarter, growing 1.3% sequentially on a constant currency basis. As Joss noted, there were a few puts and takes during the quarter that impacted ARR. To be clear, our bookings performance was well above our expectations for the quarter. However, two developments weighed on reported ARR in Q3. Basic Energy, a longtime MiX customer declared bankruptcy and liquidated its business. While a portion of its fleet was taken over by other operators as part of the liquidation process, approximately 1,500 subscribers churned off our platform, reducing ARR by approximately $500,000.

Second, the two large wins that Joss mentioned were signed relatively late in the quarter and only a small portion of those fleets have been implemented. As a reminder, a subscriber does not enter our ARR calculation until it is installed, active and billed on our network. While we always have a contracted backlog of pending installations, this has grown significantly in our most recent quarter. This is solely a matter of timing, and these wins will layer into ARR in the coming quarters.

Hardware and other revenue of $5.9 million were up 17% year-over-year, representing 16.3% of total revenue, the highest quarterly performance for hardware in the previous 4 years. Key driver of our recent hardware strength has been the new MiX Vision AI solution, which is seeing strong adoption. We've also signed a couple of larger wins in recent quarters that did not bundle hardware into the subscription. We expect to see strong hardware performance over the next couple of quarters as we ship the remaining units for these large wins.

Moving on to gross margin and operating expenses. Gross margin was 62% compared to 62.5% in the year-ago period. The reduction in gross margin was driven entirely by lower hardware and other margin and the higher hardware revenue mix. Hardware and other gross margin was 16.9% for the third quarter, down from 22.2% mainly due to product mix and somewhat due to increased supply chain costs.

Recurring subscription margin remained strong at 70.8% and is up 140 basis points compared to prior year. Subscription revenue represents the vast majority of our revenue and is the primary value driver in our business. We expect hardware revenue and our blended gross margin to remain at the current level for the next few quarters as we work through the backlog of some of the larger wins we mentioned, which include our new Vision AI devices. Assuming no further challenges with the global supply chain, we would expect the blended gross margin to return to the 64% to 66% range when hardware revenue mix normalizes.

Operating expenses were $19.9 million and were up 22% compared to prior year. The year-over-year increase primarily reflects the investments in product development and go-to-market efforts and the return of expenses that were reduced as part of our response to COVID-19 in fiscal 2021. Sales and marketing expenses in the third quarter were $4 million or 11.1% of revenue compared to 8.5% in the year-ago period, representing the continuing investments in our sales and marketing growth initiatives. Research and development costs that are included within administrative and other expenses were $1.6 million and represent an increase of 60% compared to the previous year, as we continue to drive investment in our solutions.

Through the first 9 months of the year, we have increased our investments in sales and marketing and research and development by over 40% compared to the prior year.

Administrative and other expenses include nonrecurring legal costs of $530,000, which has been excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA was $7.1 million or 19.6% of revenue compared to $9.5 million or 28% of revenue last year. Through the first 9 months of the year, adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.8%, in line with our full year outlook. The sequential decrease in the adjusted EBITDA margin during the quarter was due to the high percentage of hardware and other revenue. Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $1.6 million, down from $3.4 million in the year-ago period. The company's effective tax rate was negative 76%, compared to negative 18.7% in the third quarter of fiscal 2021. Ignoring the impact of foreign exchange gains and losses, the tax rate was 35.5%, compared to 34.3% in the prior year.

Turning to the balance sheet, which remains strong and provides us with significant flexibility going forward. We ended the quarter with $35.9 million of cash and cash equivalents.

In the third quarter, we generated $4 million in net cash from operating activities and invested $5.5 million in capital expenditures, leading to a negative free cash flow of $1.5 million. The use of cash includes investments in in-vehicle devices of $3.7 million. On a year-to-date basis, the use of cash includes approximately $5 million for our new Vision AI cameras. The growth in IVD expenditures reflects our improving subscriber trends, particularly with enterprise customers and is a positive leading indicator for our business.

Our strong balance sheet enabled us to once again declare a quarterly dividend of ZAR 0.04 per ordinary share. We announced in December that we increased our stock repurchase program, which allows us to repurchase up to ZAR 160 million or approximately $10 million of the company's outstanding shares. During the quarter, we repurchased 1.6 million ordinary shares for $0.8 million.

Before I wrap up, I'd like to provide some additional perspective on our expectations for the fourth quarter. We have performed well during the first 9 months of the year. We have signed several large and important wins that has resulted in a significant contracted backlog of enterprise orders. As Joss mentioned, due to the timing, size and nature of these deals, we are expecting to deploy the devices in the field for implementation over the next 2 to 3 quarters. As a result, we are now expecting constant currency subscription revenue growth in the low to mid-single digits.

As you think about the fourth year comparison, please recall that we had a onetime nonrecurring fee of approximately $1.1 million related to a contract renewal that was included in subscription revenue. As for ARR, we are tracking towards 9% to 10% growth for the full year. If we adjust for some of the items mentioned earlier, we would be comfortably delivering double-digit ARR growth. The bottom line is that from a new sales perspective, we are tracking above our expectations for the year. From a profitability perspective, we remain on track to deliver adjusted EBITDA margins in the low to mid-20s for the full year.

To wrap up, we delivered strong third quarter results and are seeing clear improvement in customer demand. The large wins in the quarter and our growing backlog of pending installations provides good visibility to future growth.

Now we'd like to open up the line for questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions)

Our first question comes from the line of Matt Pfau with William Blair.

Joss, sorry to hear about your mother. In the quarter, for the subscriber additions, which were quite strong, maybe just it would be helpful if you could just break it down a little bit in terms of the drivers there between attrition improving and then gross new subscribers coming on to the platform?

Sure. So the indicators that we're seeing is that we are seeing strong new wins coming into our business. And as John, I think, alluded to, the two big ones that I referred to are not in our subscriber numbers at all, certainly, the majority of them are not in the subscriber numbers. So what we're pretty pleased about is that we saw a balanced contribution from really all three of our product portfolios. So we're definitely seeing an increase in new contracts coming in. At the same time, we've seen normalization, I guess, of the churn process. So we're not seeing as much of the headwind as we faced in our kind of prior financial year with the one big exception, of course, being the bankruptcy that John referred to, which had both a subscriber -- a negative subscriber and ARR impact in the quarter.

Got you. That's helpful. And then in the Energy segment, obviously, there's the one bankruptcy that you called out. But in that segment overall, excluding that customer, has the attrition stopped there? And with demand for energy holding up and prices staying high, has that helped out in terms of any customers, bringing some of their fleets back online?

Yes. Yes, Matt, this is John. So yes, we have seen -- so absent Basic Energy, which I've made reference to, we've actually seen growth in oil and gas and including the current quarter. So we're now starting to see some return to growth within the existing customer base. Still not at historic levels, so I should mention, still well below the pre-pandemic level. So there's still some headroom there for additional growth as we move forward. But we are starting to see positive growth within the existing oil and gas customer base.

Okay. Great. And then just last one for me on the AI Vision product. You seem to call that out a decent amount this quarter. Maybe you could just give us an idea of what sort of percent of deals are taking this functionality? And then if a customer is adopting that with the premium fleet offering, what is the impact to the average revenue per subscriber?

Thanks. Its certain impact is starting to become increasingly significant. So clearly, it only impacts our one portfolio, our premium fleet portfolio. And just thinking back on the quarter, certainly the majority of the big deals that we did increased -- included the requirement for Vision on top of our traditional telematics offering. And we also mentioned another deal where we're upgrading a large customer to include Vision. So we're seeing more and more of that as well.

The impact on ARPU, depending on the size of the deal, you could kind of run an average around mid-teens U.S. dollars is the kind of ARPU uplift that we would expect out of a Vision product.

Very helpful . Appreciate it. .

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity.

Great. Joss, condolences to you and your family.

Thank you, Mike.

Just given some of these large deals, and it sounds like momentum exiting the quarter and maybe Omicron and other things easing a little bit, should we expect sub growth coming off the strong results to trend higher over the next several quarters as some of these large deals get activated?

Well, that's certainly what we're hoping to see, and I've been pleased with the performance, the steady performance this year. So we're confident that we've returned back to a traditional growth phase. Remember, really, I think in our previous financial year, it was our first year in our long history that we've seen negative top line contraction. So it certainly was out of our comfort zone. And when we look back at the year that we're currently reporting, we've seen steady improvement quarter-on-quarter as we -- as the year has progressed in terms of absolute subscriber growth numbers. So we did make -- mention earlier in this call that our bookings are higher than would be typical.

So these are contracted bookings that haven't been installed yet. And bear in mind, that doesn't make -- as John made clear, it doesn't hit our ARR line. At the same time, it doesn't even hit our subscriber line. So we don't count it until it's fully implemented. And in fact, we're billing these subscribers. So that's giving us certainly a nice platform for increased momentum. And we, of course, hope to build on it as the quarter progresses and as we head into the next fiscal year.

And then I guess given that backlog and the global supply challenges, John, can you just talk about how you're able to meet the demand? Are there any supply shortages causing issues? And then as we model out, it sounds like on some of these large deals taking hardware upfront, we should have similar levels of hardware-only sales for the next 2 to 3 quarters?

Yes. Thanks, Mike. So I think we said before that we had taken steps earlier in the year to purchase long lead time items and components, which protected us from a supply standpoint through the rest of the year. And where we stand today, we believe we've done that. So we're not anticipating any significant issues in the next few quarters. Beyond that, it's still a very -- it's evolving and I think as Joss has mentioned before, we're monitoring it not only on a daily basis but on an hourly basis. So I will preface that by saying things can change in a moment. But right now, we believe we've secured and have enough inventory to hit -- or to meet our backlog -- of our contracted backlog.

So as we move forward, you made reference to how that's going to impact the hardware is -- so typically, what will happen is with these large wins. And some are bundled and some are unbundled. But in particular, what we saw this quarter was we had some shipments related to the unbundled deals where the customers are paying for the hardware. We are expecting that trend to continue for the next 2 to 3 quarters. And typically, you'll see the hardware revenue show up in 1 month and then the following month after the installation happens, you'll start -- you'll see that show up as an ARR on subscriber.

So there is -- so there is including in the current quarter, a significant amount of hardware revenue that has not yet been installed and deployed. So there is going to be that timing difference. And so I expect that to continue for the next 2 to 3 quarters. But right now, the level of hardware revenue is expected to be higher than normal. I would not expect it to get back to normal levels until probably our second fiscal quarter. And that is absent any new orders, obviously, which we're hoping to continue to keep booking large wins. So we'll be able to provide you with updates as we move forward.

Okay. I guess the last one for me. Just on the gross margin then, if it goes back to more kind of the bundled deals longer term, can you just remind us of what you said in the script about where gross margins on a blended basis would turn back to?

Yes. So I expect -- we expect the gross margin -- blended gross margin to be at the existing levels for the next 2 to 3 quarters as we ship and implement the backlog, which includes a significant portion of hardware revenue. And so after these large wins have been installed and deployed, we would expect it to get back to the 64% to 66% range, which is typically what we see. And so that's why we always point to the subscription margin, which has been the same. In fact, it was up 140 basis points year-over-year. That really is the focus from a gross margin perspective. And we're happy with the levels that we're -- that, that has been.

Our last question comes from the line of Alex Sklar with Raymond James.

Joss, I'll add my condolences as well. Following up on Matt's -- following up on Matt's subscriber question. The commentary around balanced growth across solutions that you made a number of times. Can you just talk about how that mix compares to recent quarters? And then with that, just an update on the overall pricing environment for your different solutions?

So in terms of the balanced growth, it's certainly been a hallmark of our business really since inception. I did make the point in the earlier remarks that we are leaning into some investments. So we have seen an increase in our strategic investments, both sales and marketing and investments in R&D. And we expect that to continue. And bear in mind, we are seeing that the strategic investment convert into benefit in terms of -- we're starting to pick some fruit off that. So we expect to continue to make those investments certainly for the balance of this fiscal year. And I guess as we update you when we're reporting Q4 on what our views are for the next fiscal year, I think we'll give a clearer idea of the picture we are kind of seeing there.

But I'll reiterate that our focus this year was returning to sustainable growth. We recognize we needed to ramp up our investments. We've cut back a little bit in the previous fiscal year. And we have done that ramp-up. And I think I'm happy that we've achieved, by and large, the objectives that we set out at the beginning of this fiscal year. And of course, we're hoping to continue to pluck that fruit as the quarters progress.

The one other point I would make on these unbundled deals. I would also remind everybody that not all of our deals are unbundled. We are doing big deals and continue to do big deals where the customer opts for a bundled basis. But of course, we have got this one very significant deal that John has been referring to that will have the hardware impact certainly for the next couple of quarters as he's referred to.

Okay. Great. And then so on the spread between the booked and then installed subscribers, it does seem like it's a short-term phenomenon. But does that kind of increasing number increase your urgency around more OEM partnerships? I'm just curious how your conversations with that channel -- those channels are progressing.

Absolutely. We -- in terms of OEM channels, it's certainly an important component of how we see the future of our business, and we fully expect to be able to make more positive announcements in coming quarters. We're having really meaningful conversations with a number of certain significant OEMs. And there's no doubt in my mind that at least some of those are going to translate into deals that we can offer additional services to our mutual customers enhanced services. And it's certainly an additional channel that we're putting a lot of focus into.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of today's question-and-answer session. I would like to turn this call back over to Joss for closing remarks.

Thanks so much, Laura, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in MiX Telematics. I do want to reiterate how pleased we are in the progress we have made during the quarter and throughout this year, and we look forward to speaking with many of you in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I hope you and your family continue to be safe and healthy. And thanks again for your time, and have a great day.

Thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.