Bridgeline Digital Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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December 27, 2023

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Bridgeline Digital's 4th Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the Speaker Presentation. There will be a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the call over to CFO, Thomas Windhausen.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Tom Windheld, and I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Bridgeline Digital. I'm pleased to welcome you to our fiscal 2023 Q4 conference call. On the call with us this afternoon is Ari Kahn, Bridgeline's President and CEO, who will begin the call with a discussion of our business highlights.

Speaker 1

I will then update you on our financial results for the quarter, We will conclude by taking questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding Bridgeline that are not historical facts are forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future events or results. These statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time and we expressly disclaim and assume no obligation to inform you if they do. The results that we report today should not regulatory and other factors, such as the impact of public health measures, could cause Bridgeline's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward looking statements made today.

Speaker 1

For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may have an impact on our business, conference call. Please review the reports and documents filed from time to time by Bridgeline Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, please note on the call this afternoon, we will discuss some non GAAP financial measures when commenting on the company's financial performance. We provide a reconciliation of our GAAP financials to these non GAAP measures in our earnings release. You can obtain a copy of our earnings release by visiting our website.

Speaker 1

I'd now like to turn the call over to Ari Kahn, Bridgeline's President and CEO. Ari?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Tom. Good afternoon, everyone. In fiscal 'twenty three, Bridgeline signed more than 6,000,000 sales and had a revenue renewal rate of more than 90%. The HawkSearch product line led the company sales with HawkSage growing to nearly 50% of Bridgeline's revenue with a renewal rate of more than 95%. In our 4th quarter, Bridgeline booked an additional 27 sales for $900,000 in contract value that adds $375,000 in annual recurring revenue.

Speaker 2

Bridgeline closed the 4th quarter with a 92% revenue renewal rate for $2,000,000 in renewed contracts totaling $9,000,000 in renewals for the year. Earlier this year, we explained that a large customer on a legacy product was winding down its license over 2023, which impacted the year's revenue. But at the same time, we delivered strong sales with our core products, especially HawkSurg. And our revenue mix is now driven by our core product lines, which have seen over $6,000,000 in new customer contracts with a 95% renewal rate. This positions us for growth in 2024, and we expect HawkSearch to lead the way with our recently released AI capabilities such as our SmartSearch module.

Speaker 2

HawxSearch sales are largely driven through our platform partnerships with BigCommerce, Salesforce and Optimizely. We also have agency partners, including XEngage and American Eagle dotcom to drive new Hawk Search sales. Sales in our Q4 included Digital, a top multifamily apartments marketing agency who uses Woorank to grow online revenue for their customers. The agency will deliver WooRank SEO to accelerate its clients' online presence and help businesses success their digital reach, recognize areas for growth and implement fast and effective strategies for improvement. Filters Fast, a number one filtration retailer in the United States licensed Hawk Search to power their online search and recommendations.

Speaker 2

The Hawk Search rapid UI feature integrated with their custom e commerce platform, which allows FilterFast to quickly launch their site. Another new customer is Trident Enterprises. Trident Enterprises, a leading live stock sensing supplier, selected Hawk Search to grow online revenue on their ecommerce website. Hawk Search will help Trident's customers quickly find products in their massive catalog using artificial intelligence powered search in natural language processing. The prominent franchise listed in the franchise 500 list Selected Bridgeline's TruePresence franchise software to host local pages for their over 1800 locations through TruePresence's high performance local page system.

Speaker 2

And another important win was a top financial institution who selected Bridgeline's accessibility product powered by AccessiVie to ensure its website is accessible to all and compliant with the American Disabilities Act. Our partnerships Optimizely and XEngage is an important part of our future growth. In October, we joined Optimizely their annual user conference where we jointly announced HawkSearch's integration with Optimizely's configured commerce using the XEngage Connector. This announcement was followed with online webinars to further promote sales. Hawk Search is now in a unique position to provide site search for more than 1,000 optimistically configured commerce customers, and several have already purchased a license integration.

Speaker 2

We recently announced a reseller partnership with AccessiBe, the market leader in web accessibility. AccessiBe helps over 100 and 2018,000 companies, including PlayStation, Johnson and Johnson's and NBC, to improve compliance with American Disability Act and similar legislation in Canada and in Europe. Bridgeline's engineering team has focused on artificial intelligence to to improve usability and productivity for both end users and site visitors. Unbound added the AI assistant to help content creation with Gen AI capabilities to create new content for websites and this same capability is now available on the Hawk Search landing page creator. Hawk Search announced an important AI based capability called Smart Search as part of the Keywords to Concepts initiative.

Speaker 2

SmartSearch has 2 core capabilities that improve sales conversions for HawkSearch powered websites, concept search and visual search. Concept search uses large language models to enable online shoppers to describe their goals in natural language rather than describe the product that they're searching for. For example, a shopper on a sporting goods site and concept search will return a wet waterproof tent as well as additional items that they may need to purchase. This is important as many shoppers may know, may not know what specific products they need and instead only know the goal that they have, such as the fact that they're going camping. One great part of Concept Search is that it's largely language independent.

Speaker 2

It supports 50 languages even for sites that have not yet been translated. Visual search allows online shoppers to upload an image or even take a picture with your iPhone to find visually similar products. Industries like fashion retail require this because customers want to find a product that is similar to the one that they've seen before, but not exactly the same. Furthering our focus on the franchise market with true presence, Bridgeline released multi engine management partnership with an enterprise franchise customer. Multi engine management allows franchisors to tune search and merchandising features across thousands of franchisees sites and then allow individual franchisees to further refine individual sites.

Speaker 2

For example, when a change of clothing retailers want to boost certain seasonal products to the top of their search results, They can do so from the multi engine console to automatically boost sales in every single one of their stores who have those items in stock. Going forward, we expect HawkSearch and True Presence to be important parts of our growth with investments in AI across both product lines that will drive new sales and upgrades in our existing customer base. Smart Search has been especially strong with 7 sales in just the last 2 months and a pipeline of more than 700,000 in ARR since its release in September. At this time, call. I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Tom Woodhouse.

Speaker 2

Tom?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ari. Call. I'll provide an update of our financial results for the Q4 of fiscal 2023, which ended September 30, 2023. Total revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2023 was $3,800,000 compared to $4,200,000 in the prior year period. Now going into each component of revenue, our subscription license revenue, which is comprised of SaaS licenses, maintenance and hosting revenue and perpetual license revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2023 was $3,100,000 compared to $3,400,000 in the prior year period.

Speaker 1

As a percentage of total revenue, subscription licenses revenue was 81% of total revenue for the quarter ended 2023. September 23, which is consistent with $1,200,000 in the prior year period. And as a result, our gross profit for the quarter ended September 23 was $2,600,000 compared to $3,000,000 in the prior year period. Overall, our gross profit margin was 68% for the quarter ended September 23 compared to 71% in the prior year period. Our subscription and license gross margins were 73% for the quarter ended September 23, compared to 76% in the prior year period and our services gross margins were 46% for the quarter ended September 23, compared to 47% in the same period in 2022.

Speaker 1

Our operating expenses were 10,800,000 quarter ended September 30, 23, an increase of $3,400,000 in the prior year period. Our operating expenses in Q4 included a $7,500,000 goodwill impairment charge. Moving to below OpEx, the change in fair value of our liability classified warrants resulted in non cash income of $200,000 compared to a slight loss in the prior year period. The change in share price is the primary driver of the change in fair value of the warrants. Moving to the bottom line, our net loss was $8,100,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, compared to a net loss of $500,000 in the prior year period and the a positive $100,000 in the prior year period.

Speaker 1

Moving on to our balance sheet. On September 30, 23, we had cash of €2,400,000 and accounts receivable of €1,000,000 Our total debt outstanding at September 30, 23 was about €660,000 $700,000 The weighted average interest rate on that is about 4.5% and principal payments are due through 2028. We have no other debt or remaining earn outs from any of our previous acquisitions on our balance sheet. And in September 30, 'twenty three, our total assets were 17 point $6,000,000 and our total liabilities were $6,200,000 Finally, I want to give an update on our cap table. As of September 30, 23, our cap table included 10,400,000 of outstanding shares, 39,000 shares from Series C preferred stock on an as converted basis, 1,750,000 warrants and 1,800,000 options.

Speaker 1

In October 23, 54,000 warrants expired. That leaves just over 1,700,000 warrants currently outstanding. 900,000 warrants whose exercise price is $4 will expire in less than 1 year in September 2024. After that, we will have approximately 800,000 warrants, primarily including 180,000 warrants with a $2.85 exercise price expiring in May 26, and $590,000 warrants with a $2.51 exercise price, which expire in November 2026. Bridgeline looks forward to continued growth and Thank you for joining us on the call today.

Speaker 1

At this time, we'd like to open the call up to questions and answers. Moderator?

Operator

1 moment. Our first question comes from the line of Mr. Halpern of Taglich Brothers. Your line is open. Please go ahead, Howard.

Speaker 3

Hi, guys. Congratulations on Navigating an interesting year.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Howard.

Speaker 3

So based on the commentary in beginning. Can we assume that the 4th quarter revenue is sort of Going to be the low point and sequentially from that $3,800,000 we should start to see growth quarter by quarter.

Speaker 2

Yes, you should start to see quarter by quarter growth. So Last year, we had an important customer on a legacy product wind down beginning the Q1, sequentially each quarter. And their final license decrease is actually Q1, this quarter that we're in right now. However, our other product lines have grown. Now we are more than half our core products,

Speaker 3

How important, I guess, was it for you to begin developing the AI capabilities for new customers and to maybe upgrade and expand within your existing customer base.

Speaker 2

So the advancements that have happened in AI as a Science in the last 2 years have been amazing. My background is in AI. I've got a PhD in AI, and I'm very energized and excited Over everything that's happened, especially with area of research called large language models, we've been able to very quickly Incorporates capabilities in large language models, specifically into both Hawk Search and our True Present products. These capabilities are allowing our customers to increase the revenue on their websites by allowing The end users of those websites to more naturally search for products even if they don't know what they need to just say what they're going to do. I'm going to go camping, for instance, and have the site say, well, great, if you're going to go camping, here are the products we have that you might want to buy.

Speaker 2

Our existing customers have tremendous demand for these capabilities. In just a very short period of time, we've signed 7 licenses within our existing customer base, and we've got a huge pipeline over $700,000 annual recurring revenue. And we are already winning new customers with these capabilities as well. They really differentiate HawkSearch from anyone else in the marketplace shows the company, Bridgeline, as a true innovator and leader in artificial intelligence and brings capabilities to true presence that are not there natively within any other page, local pages system, especially a franchise system. So we think that this is going to be a huge part of E Commerce 360 strategy for us, differentiator, And we've got the expertise in house to move faster than anyone else.

Speaker 3

So As AI continues to develop, you'll be able to maintain that cutting edge for your customers.

Speaker 2

Yes, it's a sprint right now to get ahead and we are moving very quickly. We've got lead on all of our competitors. One of them, Algolia, is very strong, and I'll say that they've got some great capabilities. They're the only ones that are in the same area as we are, from a lead perspective. And one of the amazing things that's happening with AI, and this will be disruptive across many, many industries is that the foundational capabilities from companies like OpenAI are mature and easy to develop upon.

Speaker 2

Now if you don't understand the underlying concepts, you can get caught up And 1,000,000 dead ends, but we do understand those concepts. So we don't need the 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars to develop, For instance, a large language model ourselves in the years years of research. Now those are those capabilities are generally available. We know how to use them, and we're going to move quickly. And this is going to change the software in many industries because if you can understand the business problems that your customers have, then you can solve them in new ways without army of engineers.

Speaker 2

And it will level the playing fields for companies that are Bridgeline size with companies that are much larger and allow us to innovate through our customer relationships and our deeper understanding of the core business problems that they have as opposed to just raw math. So this is our time. We're excited for 2024. We're going to make big, big moves in AI.

Speaker 3

And does all this also factor in potential acquisitions that you will look for The company is now leverage everything that you've developed?

Speaker 2

It does. It's Interesting because we have for a long time held as a thesis that the customer base and an acquisition is something that is often undervalued and that we, and this is a big part of our e Commerce 360 capability, Have an understanding of that and can leverage that with new products to cross sell. Now when you take a look at a lot of the businesses that And that might be one of the reasons why they would be a candidate target for us. But over the years, they have accumulated customers. We can approach those customers With new capabilities, bring AI swiftly into the products that they're already using and grow on that customer base.

Speaker 2

So that is certainly an opportunity for us in 2024. And we're continuing to look at pipeline. It's a challenge. Our stock price is not helpful with regards to doing those acquisitions, obviously. But our capabilities are there, And we'll continue to evaluate companies and find the right one at the right time to add to our mix.

Speaker 3

Okay. Well, keep up the great work guys.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Howard. Happy New Year.

Speaker 3

You too.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to management for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Great. Well, everybody, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support of all of our customers, our partners and our shareholders. We're really excited about our business, ongoing growth prospects and the new products that we're releasing. We look forward to speaking with you again in our Q1 fiscal 'twenty four conference call that will be in February.

Operator

Q4. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Bridgeline Digital Q4 2023
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