Marin Software Inc (MRIN) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greeting and welcome to the Marin Software Fourth Quarter 2023 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Bob Bertz. Thank you. You may begin.

歡迎參加 Marin Software 2023 年第四季財務業績電話會議。此時，所有參與者都處於只聽模式。如果有人在會議期間需要接線員協助，請按下電話鍵盤上的星號零。提醒一下，本次會議正在錄製中。現在我很高興向大家介紹你們的主持人鮑伯·貝爾茨。謝謝。你可以開始了。

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Marin Software's Fourth Quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Bob Bertz. I'm Marin CFO. And joining me today is Chris Lien or NCE. By now, you should have received a copy of our earnings release, which crossed the wire a short time ago. The release can also be obtained on our website at investors dot Marin Software.com. All participants are advised that the audio of this conference call is being recorded for playback purposes and that the recording will be made available on the Investor Relations section of our website within a few hours.

謝謝。大家下午好，歡迎參加 Marin Software 2023 年第四季財報電話會議。我叫鮑伯‧伯茨。我是馬林首席財務長。今天加入我的是 Chris Lien 或 NCE。到目前為止，您應該已經收到了我們不久前發布的財報副本。該新聞稿也可以在我們的投資者網站 Marin Software.com 上取得。所有參與者請注意，本次電話會議的音訊正在錄製以供回放，並且錄音將在幾個小時內在我們網站的投資者關係部分提供。

Before we begin, I'd like to note that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements include statements about our business outlook and strategy, our expectations for customer adoption and use of our services historical results that may suggest trends for our business, our expectations about our ability to improve customer retention and new business bookings and to grow or sustain our business, our expectations about our expenses and cash resources, the impact of investments in product and technology, progress on product development efforts, product capabilities and benefits. Our relationships with publishers and other parties in the digital advertising market, expectations for future economic activity in digital advertising spending, expected restructuring costs and cost savings from our restructuring efforts and our expected Q1 2024, your financial results. We make these statements as of February 22, 2024, and disclaim any duty to update them for more information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements as well as risks relating to our business.

在開始之前，我想指出，我們今天的討論將包括 1933 年證券法和 1934 年證券交易法含義內的前瞻性陳述。這些前瞻性陳述包括有關我們的業務前景和策略的陳述、我們對客戶採用和使用我們的服務的期望、可能表明我們業務趨勢的歷史結果、我們對我們提高客戶保留率和新業務預訂以及成長能力的期望或維持我們的業務、我們對開支和現金資源的期望、產品和技術投資的影響、產品開發工作的進展、產品功能和效益。我們與數位廣告市場中的出版商和其他各方的關係、對數位廣告支出中未來經濟活動的預期、預期的重組成本和我們重組工作所節省的成本以及我們預期的2024 年第一季的財務業績。我們截至2024 年2 月22 日做出這些聲明，並且不承擔更新這些聲明以獲取有關這些風險和不確定性的更多信息的義務，這些風險和不確定性可能導致實際結果與這些前瞻性聲明中明示或暗示的結果存在重大差異。與我們業務相關的風險。

In general, we refer you to the section entitled Risk Factors in our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q as well as our other SEC filings.

一般來說，我們建議您參閱我們最新的 10-K 表格和 10-Q 表格報告以及我們向 SEC 提交的其他文件中標題為「風險因素」的部分。

This presentation contains financial performance measures that are different. The financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP and may also be different from similar calculations or measures used by other companies. A quantitative reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is available in our fourth quarter 2023 earnings release.

本簡報包含不同的財務績效衡量標準。根據公認會計準則計算的財務指標也可能與其他公司使用的類似計算或指標不同。我們的 2023 年第四季財報中提供了這些非 GAAP 財務指標與最直接可比較的 GAAP 財務指標的定量調整表。

With that, let me turn the call over to Chris.

現在，讓我把電話轉給克里斯。

Thank you, Bob. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. I'll share my observations on the quarter and full year and provide an update on our initiatives to grow our business. Bob will then provide additional detail on our fourth quarter and full year results for 2023 and our outlook for the first quarter of 2024. As I discuss on each call, we remain committed to returning Marin to growth and maximizing shareholder value. Our plan to achieve this is focused on delivering a leading cross-channel advertising management platform to enable brands and their agencies to maximize the returns from their online advertising investments. Our efforts are focused on growing our business, and we continue to believe that our strategy is sound as we report ongoing moderation in our revenue decline on a year-over-year basis. And as I did on our last call, I'm pleased to share that we continue to receive encouraging customer feedback on our new offerings from brands and agencies. As announced in today's earnings release, Q4 revenues came in at $4.4 million, which was in line with the high end of our previously published guidance for Q4, but still down from Q4 in the prior year. On a sequential basis, rental revenues were down just slightly from Q3. Our Q4 non-GAAP operating loss was also above the high end of our guidance despite our lower revenue for the quarter and continued investment in Marin one and our team, our total cash balance at the end of Q4 was $11.4 million, providing Marin with resources to pursue our strategy and to support our customers. At year end, our global headcount was approximately 108. About half of our team is in technology roles, reflecting our significant investment in delivering products to drive results for leading brands and their agencies. As has been our practice, we will continue to balance investments with cost management. We have been investing significantly over the past quarters to give brands and agencies a user-friendly cross-channel advertising management platform, enabling them to sell more with the platform that unifies the fragmented world of performance marketing in talking to our customers and prospects. We also have discovered that digital marketing needs varied and we need to better tailor our product offering and associated marketing messaging to better meet the needs of leading digital marketers as part of these learnings and to better meet the varying needs of digital marketers. You will now see on our website at www. Marin Software.com, three offerings from Marin Connect, Ascend and Marin one Connect as a reporting focused solution for advertisers.

謝謝你，鮑伯。大家下午好，感謝您今天加入我們的電話會議。我將分享我對本季和全年的觀察，並提供我們發展業務舉措的最新資訊。然後，鮑伯將提供有關 2023 年第四季度和全年業績以及 2024 年第一季展望的更多詳細資訊。正如我在每次電話會議中討論的那樣，我們仍然致力於使 Marin 恢復成長並實現股東價值最大化。我們實現這一目標的計劃重點是提供領先的跨通路廣告管理平台，使品牌及其代理商能夠最大限度地提高線上廣告投資的回報。我們的努力集中在業務成長上，我們仍然相信我們的策略是合理的，因為我們報告收入同比下降持續放緩。正如我在上次電話會議中所做的那樣，我很高興與大家分享，我們繼續收到品牌和代理商對我們的新產品的令人鼓舞的客戶回饋。正如今天的財報中所宣布的，第四季營收為 440 萬美元，與我們先前發布的第四季指引的上限一致，但仍低於去年第四季。與第三季相比，租金收入較上季略有下降。儘管我們本季收入較低，並且繼續對Marin One 和我們的團隊進行投資，但我們第四季度的非GAAP 營運虧損也高於我們指導的上限，第四季末我們的總現金餘額為1,140 萬美元，為Marin 提供了資源追求我們的策略並支持我們的客戶。截至年底，我們的全球員工人數約為 108 人。我們團隊中約有一半的人擔任技術職務，這反映出我們在交付產品以推動領先品牌及其代理商取得成果方面投入了大量資金。按照我們的慣例，我們將繼續平衡投資與成本管理。在過去的幾個季度中，我們一直在大力投資，為品牌和代理商提供一個用戶友好的跨渠道廣告管理平台，使他們能夠通過該平台統一零散的績效營銷世界，與我們的客戶和潛在客戶進行對話，從而提高銷售量。我們還發現，數位行銷需求多種多樣，我們需要更好地客製化我們的產品和相關行銷訊息，以更好地滿足領先數位行銷人員的需求，作為這些學習的一部分，並更好地滿足數位行銷人員的不同需求。您現在將在我們的網站 www. Marin Software.com，Marin Connect、Ascend 和 Marin one Connect 的三款產品，作為廣告商的以報告為重點的解決方案。

Looking to collect or performance marketing data from a variety of sources and send to data warehouses, BI tools and spreadsheets. Step one of understanding your digital advertising spending is to have reliable comprehensive reporting in a format that addresses your particular business, needs a set and built on the data foundation provided by Connect, helping advertisers maximize the return on their marketing investment.

希望從各種來源收集或績效行銷資料並將其發送到資料倉儲、BI 工具和電子表格。了解您的數位廣告支出的第一步是獲得可靠的綜合報告，其格式可以滿足您的特定業務需求，並建立在 Connect 提供的數據基礎上，幫助廣告商最大限度地提高行銷投資回報。

I sense, AI. based optimization methodologies, support budget compliance at scale for agencies. It also allows brands to estimate the impact of increased or decreased advertising spend and to understand optimal spend allocation across campaigns, publishers and channels. Historically, these budgeting decisions have been done with spreadsheets and a highly manual and potentially error-prone approach. Marin provides marketers with a powerful way to automate these budgeting decisions while providing flexible budgeting controls. These tools are compatible with various bidding approaches, including support for Google smart bidding, Ascend supports a range of publishers and channels and just this quarter, we enhanced our support for Linktone TikTok, Apple search ads and to Buhler to include Marin's proprietary forecast and budget models and simulations. This functionality uses machine learning, combined with customizable rules to help advertisers maximize the return on the marketing investment. Marin will continue to advance and expand our budget optimization functionality as we see this as an enduring area for an independent ad management platform to add value. It is impractical and not feasible for a publisher to provide forecasting and pacing for other publishers, creating what we believe is a compelling opportunity for Marin's optimization offering. I'm pleased to report that initial customer results with Marin Ascend are encouraging for both financial lift and time savings using our Ascend functionality. Marin's platform save time and increased revenue for an agency customer by 20% with intelligent budget pacing with dynamic allocation. And in Q4, Marin doubled lead volume for alumni ventures and reduced cost per lead by 33% with our budgeting optimization functionality. We are looking forward to sharing more customer-specific case studies and testimonials in the coming months as we continue to add to ascend functionality. Ascend already has played a role in various customer renewals as well as new business wins. We also seek to complement the publisher tools by enabling management at scale for large paid media programs driving time savings and financial risk customer examples in the past quarter include increased revenue for Yodel by 323% using Marin's Google, the Microsoft sync and Internet brands increased revenue 30% by uniting customer lifecycle data with Marin's revenue hub in the past quarter, Marin continued to expand our support for Amazon ads. Our team enhanced in-app e-commerce data to include Amazon shop shopping, product level cost and revenue across both paid and organic sales for greater transparency and more comprehensive revenue reporting. We also enabled support for Amazon stores, spotlight and sponsored brand video, critical ad types to breadth to drive brand awareness to deliver more comprehensive campaign management on Amazon's platform with many companies facing uncertain business outlooks and reducing their staffing levels. Marin stands ready to provide managed services capabilities flexibly to supplement a self-service SaaS platform as new publishers become more important and full-time staffing levels come under increased pressure, rentability supplement in-house teams at brands and agencies with Marin's experience. Digital marketers is resonating in the marketplace. Our activities to support brands and their agencies continue to take place against an active backdrop of governmental antitrust investigations at the federal and state levels and in the have of the businesses of leading publishers in the digital advertising market. There is also the potential of federal legislation to regulate certain conduct and the leading publishers, which could benefit Marin's role as an independent ad management platform. Marin enjoys competition relationships with the leading publishers, and we do not expect significant changes in these relationships in the near term. Although we are not a party to any lawsuits or target in these investigations, Marin spent less than $100,000 in Q4 on legal fees, in conjunction with responding to official requests that Marin has received related to these various investigations, we expect to spend at similar levels in the coming quarter based on the legal activity that we are seeing, which is primarily providing information in response to various subpoenas.

我感覺到了，人工智慧。基於最佳化方法，支援機構大規模的預算合規性。它還允許品牌評估廣告支出增加或減少的影響，並了解廣告活動、發布商和管道之間的最佳支出分配。從歷史上看，這些預算決策都是透過電子表格和高度手動且可能容易出錯的方法完成的。Marin 為行銷人員提供了一種強大的方法來自動化這些預算決策，同時提供靈活的預算控制。這些工具與各種出價方式相容，包括支援Google 智慧出價，Ascend 支援一系列出版商和管道，就在本季度，我們增強了對掌上靈通TikTok、Apple 搜尋廣告的支持，並對布勒納入了Marin專有的預測和預算模型和模擬。該功能使用機器學習，結合可自訂的規則，幫助廣告商最大限度地提高行銷投資回報。Marin 將繼續推進並擴展我們的預算優化功能，因為我們認為這是獨立廣告管理平台增加價值的持久領域。對於發布商來說，為其他發布商提供預測和進度是不切實際且不可行的，這為 Marin 的最佳化產品創造了一個令人信服的機會。我很高興地向大家報告，Marin Ascend 的初步客戶結果令人鼓舞，使用我們的 Ascend 功能不僅可以節省財務成本，還可以節省時間。Marin 的平台透過動態分配的智慧預算節奏，為代理商客戶節省了時間並將收入增加了 20%。在第四季度，Marin 透過我們的預算優化功能將校友企業的潛在客戶數量增加了一倍，並將每個潛在客戶的成本降低了 33%。隨著我們繼續添加提升功能，我們期待在未來幾個月分享更多針對特定客戶的案例研究和感言。奧升德已經在各種客戶續約和新業務贏得中發揮了作用。我們也尋求透過對大型付費媒體節目進行大規模管理來補充發布商工具，從而節省時間並降低財務風險。上一季的客戶範例包括使用Marin 的Google、Microsoft 同步和網路品牌增加收入，使Yodel 的營收增加了323%透過在上個季度將客戶生命週期數據與 Marin 的收入中心結合起來，Marin 繼續擴大了對亞馬遜廣告的支持，成長了 30%。我們的團隊增強了應用程式內電子商務數據，包括亞馬遜商店購物、付費和有機銷售的產品級成本和收入，以提高透明度和更全面的收入報告。我們還啟用了對亞馬遜商店、聚焦和贊助品牌影片、關鍵廣告類型的支持，以提高品牌知名度，從而在亞馬遜平台上提供更全面的活動管理，許多公司面臨著不確定的業務前景並減少了人員配置。隨著新發行商變得越來越重要，全職人員配備水平面臨越來越大的壓力，Marin 隨時準備靈活地提供託管服務功能，以補充自助服務SaaS 平台，可出租性補充了具有Marin 經驗的品牌和代理商的內部團隊。數位行銷人員正在市場中引起共鳴。在聯邦和州各級政府以及數位廣告市場領先出版商的業務開展反壟斷調查的積極背景下，我們繼續開展支持品牌及其代理商的活動。聯邦立法也有可能對某些行為和主要出版商進行監管，這可能有利於 Marin 作為獨立廣告管理平台的角色。馬林與領先的出版商保持競爭關係，我們預計這些關係在短期內不會發生重大變化。儘管我們不是這些調查中任何訴訟或目標的一方，但 Marin 在第四季度的法律費用不到 100,000 美元，結合回應 Marin 收到的與這些各種調查相關的官方要求，我們預計支出水平相似根據我們所看到的法律活動，在接下來的季度中，這些活動主要是針對各種傳票提供資訊。

As I've shared in prior calls, I believe Marin has a tremendous opportunity. Our Marin one development efforts have taken longer and required more investment than originally projected. Rent can benefit as consumers spend increasing time online and ad dollars, follow them, creating more need for brands to measure, manage and optimize these investments to acquire customers and drive revenue outcomes in an increasingly fragmented online advertising landscape, we are seeing growing interest in brands, taking a cross-channel approach to their digital advertising investments, including early interest in Marin's budget optimization functionality, which we call Marin this end, Marin with our Marin one platform and our team of digital advertising experts is well positioned to support leading brands and their agencies in these efforts. And now Bob will review our fourth quarter and full year financial results and our outlook for the first quarter of 2024.

正如我在之前的電話中分享的那樣，我相信馬林擁有巨大的機會。我們的馬林一號開發工作比最初預計的時間更長，需要更多的投資。隨著消費者花費更多的線上時間和廣告費用，追隨他們，租金可以受益，使品牌更需要衡量、管理和優化這些投資，以在日益分散的線上廣告環境中獲取客戶並推動收入成果，我們看到人們對品牌，採用跨渠道方法進行數位廣告投資，包括對Marin 預算優化功能的早期興趣，我們為此稱之為Marin，Marin 憑藉我們的Marin one 平台和我們的數位廣告專家團隊處於有利地位，可以為領先品牌提供支持以及他們在這些努力中的機構。現在鮑伯將回顧我們第四季和全年的財務表現以及我們對 2024 年第一季的展望。

Thank you, Chris. I'll provide an overview of our fourth quarter and full year results and then share our forecast for the first quarter of 2024.

謝謝你，克里斯。我將概述我們第四季和全年的業績，然後分享我們對 2024 年第一季的預測。

I'll begin with a review of our income statement. For the fourth quarter of 2023. Marin generated $4.4 million in revenue, which was at the high end of our guidance. Revenue is down approximately 16% when compared to total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year 2023, revenue totaled $17.7 million, which is a year-over-year decrease of 11% as compared to $20 million in 2022. Our geographic split for revenue was approximately 80% US and 20% international for both Q4 and the full year of 2023.

我將首先回顧我們的損益表。2023 年第四季。Marin 創造了 440 萬美元的收入，處於我們指導的最高水平。與 2022 年第四季的總收入相比，收入下降了約 16%。2023 年全年營收總計 1,770 萬美元，較 2022 年的 2,000 萬美元年減 11%。在第四季和 2023 年全年，我們的營收地理分佈約為 80% 來自美國，20% 來自國際。

Moving on to our operating results. As a reminder, our financial statements and a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release issued earlier today.

繼續我們的經營業績。提醒一下，我們的財務報表以及 GAAP 與非 GAAP 財務指標的調整表可以在我們今天早些時候發布的收益報告中找到。

As I've discussed on previous calls, we commenced the implementation of a restructuring plan in July of 2023. Our restructuring plan is expected to reduce our pretax cost structure by approximately $10 million to $13 million on an annualized basis, close to $10 million of the estimated annualized cost savings is expected to come from the reduction in force, which reduced our workforce globally by 65 positions as well as approximately 15 full-time equivalent contractor roles. The reduction in force was complete. As of the end of the year, we incurred approximately $1.8 million in restructuring costs, substantially all of which relates to severance and other one-time termination benefits. We began to realize the associated savings during the third quarter of 2023, and we expect to fully realize the estimated savings in 2020 for this restructuring helps to bring our expense base more in line with our current revenues.

正如我在之前的電話會議中所討論的那樣，我們於 2023 年 7 月開始實施重組計劃。我們的重組計劃預計將按年計算將稅前成本結構減少約1000 萬至1300 萬美元，其中預計年化成本節省中近1000 萬美元預計來自於裁員，這使我們在全球範圍內減少了65 名員工職位以及大約 15 個全職等效承包商職位。兵力削減已經完成。截至年底，我們產生了約 180 萬美元的重組成本，其中大部分與遣散費和其他一次性解僱福利有關。我們在 2023 年第三季開始實現相關節省，我們預計在 2020 年完全實現預計節省，因為此次重組有助於使我們的費用基礎與我們目前的收入更加一致。

Our non-GAAP operating loss was $1.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 as compared to a $4.2 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2022. The $1.9 million non-GAAP operating loss in Q4 beat the high end of our guidance by approximately $100,000. The decrease in operating loss as compared to Q. for 2022 is attributable to the implementation of our restructuring plan, which was partially offset by lower revenue.

2023 年第四季的非 GAAP 營運虧損為 190 萬美元，而 2022 年第四季的營運虧損為 420 萬美元。第四季的非 GAAP 營運虧損為 190 萬美元，比我們指導的上限高出約 10 萬美元。與 2022 年第一季相比，營業虧損減少是由於我們重組計劃的實施，但收入下降部分抵消了這一損失。

Our full year 2023 non-GAAP operating loss was $14.6 million as compared to a $17.7 million loss in 2022. The decrease in loss year over year is attributable to expense savings in the second half of the year as a result of the restructuring, which was also partially offset by lower revenue.

我們在 2023 年全年非 GAAP 營運虧損為 1,460 萬美元，而 2022 年為 1,770 萬美元。虧損年減的原因是下半年重組帶來的費用節省，但收入下降也部分抵銷了這一損失。

Our Q4 non-GAAP operating expenses were $4.6 million, which represents a 33% decrease when compared to the fourth quarter of 2022 The decrease is attributable to the restructuring plan we commenced in the third quarter of 2023. For the full year, our non-GAAP operating expenses were $23.4 million which represents a decrease of approximately 14% as compared to 2022, again, primarily due to the implementation of our restructuring plan in the third quarter. We ended the year with 108 total headcount versus 177 a year ago.

我們第四季的非 GAAP 營運費用為 460 萬美元，與 2022 年第四季相比下降了 33%。這一下降歸因於我們於 2023 年第三季開始的重組計劃。全年，我們的非 GAAP 營運費用為 2,340 萬美元，與 2022 年相比下降約 14%，這主要是由於我們在第三季度實施了重組計劃。截至年底，我們的員工總數為 108 人，而一年前為 177 人。

In terms of our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a total cash balance of $11.4 million as compared to a $13.6 million balance at the end of the previous quarter. We will continue to carefully monitor our cash levels.

就我們的資產負債表而言，本季末我們的現金餘額總額為 1,140 萬美元，而上一季末的現金餘額為 1,360 萬美元。我們將繼續仔細監控我們的現金水準。

Moving on to our outlook for the first quarter of 2024. For Q1 2024, we expect revenue to be in the range of $4 million to $4.3 million and our non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $2.2 million to $1.9 million. Our revenue guidance reflects our estimate of the continued impact of the uncertain economic environment on advertising spend by both existing and prospective customers.

接下來是我們對 2024 年第一季的展望。對於 2024 年第一季度，我們預計營收將在 400 萬美元至 430 萬美元之間，非 GAAP 營運虧損預計將在 220 萬美元至 190 萬美元之間。我們的收入指引反映了我們對不確定的經濟環境對現有和潛在客戶廣告支出的持續影響的估計。

This concludes our call for today. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to updating you again during our Q1 2024 earnings call.

我們今天的呼籲到此結束。感謝您抽出寶貴時間，我們期待在 2024 年第一季財報電話會議上再次向您通報最新情況。

You may, you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for your participation.

您可以，現在可以斷開線路。感謝您的參與。