Saratoga Investment Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 9, 2023

There are 15 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hi, we're all here. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our Q1 2023 earnings call. We hope you have had a chance to read our shareholder letter, which you can find at investor. Axon.com.

Operator

Our prepared remarks today are meant to build upon the already robust information found in that letter. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward looking statements. Any forward looking statements made today are pursuant to and within the meaning of the Safe harbor provision

Speaker 1

of

Operator

the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. All forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and we discuss these risks in our SEC filings. And before we turn the call over to Rick, we will play our quarterly update video. It's about a 5 minute video today.

Operator

Hey, everyone. Welcome back. 2023 is clearly off to a very strong start. After unveiling the all new TASER 10 in January, we began shipping it in March and then executed a seller court. Then just a Few weeks ago in April, we hosted our annual user conference.

Operator

Axon Accelerate began in 2016 and has become the premier technology conference for Public Safety.

Speaker 2

Our customers come to be inspired with keynotes this year from CEO Rick Smith and several other incredible leaders. They also come to hear from us and our partners, access the network with each other and eat ice cream,

Operator

which is my personal favorite. Innovation for customers is Our latest generation camera, quick body cameras and video to access the world's main cloud hosted Our hardware and software goes together hand in hand. The Axon Pro marked our official entry into the market. Axon Body kicked off our current line Popular cameras, Axon Body 2 made us the market leader. Axon Body 3 added live streaming and GPS functionality, seeding our entry into an entirely new software category of real time operations.

Speaker 2

Axon Body 4 is a powerful tool intended to unlock new levels of transparent. Axon Body 4 offers streamlined operation with full shift battery, high resolution evidence capture and the ability to live stream from the point of view module. This point of view module attaches to an officer's head or shoulder or is attached to the brim of a hat or sunglasses. The perspective more closely mirrors the officer's own point of view. What else can a body camera do?

Speaker 2

Let's check out Axon Body 4 in action. As you watch, no software suite integrates with hardware to empower first responders.

Speaker 3

What does

Operator

It's Axon Body 4.

Speaker 2

Age, I spot the new camera allowing two way voice. That's right.

Operator

Axon by 4 unlocks what the industry calls bidirectional communication. As Rick Smith says, it is more than just a camera. It communications beacon. For example, empowers officers to signal for additional support. Axon respond real time support for officers and the public and it keeps getting better and better.

Operator

We do a lot to ensure that agencies never miss a critical moment. Axon Technology gives Central Command the ability

Speaker 2

Also, similar to Axon Body 3, Axon Body 4 location can be shown on the act map in real time. And the cameras can be geared to start recording automatically when an officer is assigned to or approaches an incident location.

Operator

There's so much more, but You get the picture. We take our responsibility to customers very seriously. This is why we have some of the brightest minds in technology focused on solving real world problems. Our investments In research and development help us to stay at the cutting edge. Axon excels at turning futuristic vision into reality.

Operator

And the way our hardware works together with our software drives our compelling business model, our cash flow and our strong net revenue retention rates. That's all for this quarter. Dig into our

Speaker 2

financials by by reading our shareholder letter at investor. Axon.com and stick around for our earnings call to hear more. We'll see you next quarter.

Speaker 4

All right. Thank you. Great job, Andrea and Angel. Hello and welcome to our shareholders. We look great that 2020 came off a fantastic start.

Speaker 4

After announcing our moonshot goal last year to reduce gun related deaths between police and the public by 50% over the next 10 years, We bought to market 2 major product releases that can serve as the workhorses to help get us there. When we talked about our moonshot goal to get Our 5th on Body IV is Mission Control. Customer reception to TASER X has been great. We began shipping in March and many customers Have called the product a true game changer. For those of you who are new to our business, new TASER devices take a few quarters to ramp in terms Sales as our customers need to trial and get trained before they can go into full deployment.

Speaker 4

Next, as you saw in the video, at Axon Accelerate last month, we announced Axon Body 4. 4 years ago on our earnings call, I told you about our vision for the future of body cameras and public safety. And once our cameras can talk over wireless networks, They've become something more like an Alexa on your chest as opposed to just a camera you wear to record. And that would open up a whole host of really interesting services. Well, now for the first time ever, officers and remote support teams can communicate with one another in real time with a two way device.

Speaker 4

We think this is going to provide an entirely new level of awareness and situational support, especially when officers are dealing with mental health crises Or battling language barriers. Our customers are already thinking of new ways to apply this technology and we can't wait to see what they'll do with it. Our vision for the future of public safety technology is coming together. When our new TASER and body cameras are paired with Axon The full power of our real time operational capabilities is unlocked. We can solve so many of the decision making challenges public safety professionals face today.

Speaker 4

And I'm fortunate to be leading a company that has attracted the best talent across the globe to achieve what we set out to do. We believe people are inspired to do their best work when they are truly inspired to solve the problems that they care about. So we hire people who are passionate about our mission. When we solve big problems, we create value and everything else falls into place. Finally, I'd also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge Axon's inclusion in the S and P 500 as of May 4, a testament to Axon's stable business model, Our growth, mission and our global impact.

Speaker 4

Thank you to our customers, partners and employees for making this possible. We founded Axon 30 years ago in the Tucson garage and it has been a remarkable journey and our best days are yet to come. And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to our Chief Operating Officer, Josh Hisley.

Speaker 5

Thanks a lot, Rick. Enthusiasm from our customers has been infectious. What really moves me is when our customers see our passion and they become a part of it. Our annual Accelerate Conference this year was the biggest and best we have ever hosted. When customers tell me that we are motivating them and changing the way they approach their jobs for the better, I know we are doing our job.

Speaker 5

We see a strong and growing demand pipeline for 2023 and beyond, and we remain focused on doing our best work. In February, I spoke about 4 areas of focus for 2023, and I'm pleased to report we are executing well on each of these objectives. Our number one operational focus is revenue. Top line growth remains a priority. Grow our business so that we can invest and deliver more value to the market.

Speaker 5

Our investments are paying off. We grew the top line 34% year over year in Q1, achieving a record quarterly revenue for the company. Our cloud business grew 51% year over year, and it's remarkable to reflect that just a few years ago, cloud applications were nearly unheard of in public safety. We've been proud to evangelize public safety cloud adoption in the U. S.

Speaker 5

And we will continue to do so globally. Our TASER weapons business grew 17% year over year and most of that was tied to continuing strong demand of our TASER 7 platform. We are only in the early stages of shipping our newest product TASER 10, which is seeing the strongest initial demand of any TASER weapon in the history of the company. I have seen several TASER product launches at Axon and customer enthusiasm for TASER 10 trumps any previous model. Our second operational focus is profitability, which we measure by adjusted EBITDA margin.

Speaker 5

Brittany will take you through the details in a minute, but at a high level, I'm pleased with our performance in Q1. Number 3, new market expansion. In the Q1, our international bookings grew double digits, driven by nearly 100% year over year bookings growth in Europe. And we also saw triple digit bookings growth in our Justice segment, an emerging market for us. We've invested heavily in our sales force and continue to support new capabilities in these new markets and we're seeing leverage from these investments.

Speaker 5

Finally, number 4, new product adoption. We are tirelessly investing to ensure that the products we build continue to be adopted by our customers. We saw double digit bookings growth in a number of our emerging product categories, including ALPR, air and virtual reality. The foundation underpinning all of these priorities is our ability to attract and then retain world class talent. We could not accomplish Any of this without the help of a team who brings financial discipline, a next play mindset and the skill sets to launch us through the stratosphere of our moonshot journey.

Speaker 5

We enjoy high employee retention rates, which outperform tech averages, and this is a testament to our mission and our ability to focus on solving real problems. In sum, we executed strongly in Q1, have launched into 2 new products, our pipeline is solid and we have line of sight to a very strong back half. I'm proud of our team for driving such a strong start to the year, but I'm even more proud that they have quickly turned the page and our focus on sustainable momentum in Q2 and beyond. With that, I'll turn it over to Britney to take us through our financials in more detail. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Josh. We are pleased to report another strong quarter reflecting broad based strength across our business. Our top line growth of almost 34% year over year, supported by 51% growth in our cloud business, Continues to demonstrate the value of our offering. Given Q1 performance, we are confident in our outlook and raising our revenue growth rate from 20% to 22% for the year. On gross margin, we had some sequential headwinds in Q1 coming from revenue mix as we grew Axon Fleet sales and the professional services associated with those and didn't repeat the gross margin benefit of cash of software revenue that we saw in Q4 of 'twenty two.

Speaker 3

Gross margin also reflects an impact of onetime items related to inventory and other cost adjustments. Over the remaining quarters of 'twenty three, we expect fleet demand to remain strong. And as a result, we would expect gross margins to remain approximately flat or improve only modestly from Q1 levels. To double click on the impact of fleet, Demand for Fleet 3 has consistently exceeded our expectations since we began shipping in 2021. Our fleet business carries a lower margin upfront and transitions to high margin recurring software revenue over time.

Speaker 3

In the Q1, for example, fleet revenue grew 139% year over year. Fulfilling this demand solidifies our market leadership and sets us up for long term success. When our customers buy more of our hardware, they are also and our broader ecosystem of high margin software offerings. We also continue to invest in automation and improving our manufacturing efficiency, and we're pleased to see the supply chain stabilizing in 2023 as expected. O'Haim, these efforts, along with ongoing growth in our high margin software business, should continue to benefit gross margin.

Speaker 3

Regarding operating expenses, R and D investment remains a priority to support our long term revenue growth. We continue to digest SG G and A investments we made over the past year and are balancing OpEx discipline with the investment needed to scale our business to $2,000,000,000 in revenue and beyond. As we had anticipated, travel expenses have also increased as everyone returns to in person meetings and events. I am pleased to upwardly revise our outlook. We are increasing our full year revenue range of $1,440,000,000 to dollars 1,460,000,000 representing 22% year over year revenue growth at the midpoint.

Speaker 3

We continue to target full year adjusted EBITDA margins of 20% applying a range of $288,000,000 to $292,000,000 We remain focused on delivering on both our near term and long term financial commitments. In addition to the above, these include free cash flow, moving towards long term sustainable equity dilution, responsible management of our balance sheet and continuing to support our partner ecosystem. All of these are in great shape exiting Q1. Longer term, we continue to focus on delivering on our top line growth while expanding our gross margins, leveraging our OpEx and increasing our adjusted EBITDA as we work towards our 2025 target of 25 percent adjusted EBITDA margin. Great new products, including TASER TEN, Axon Body 4 and our software will all continue to support this outlook.

Speaker 3

I look forward to updating you further on our continued progress next quarter. And with that, I would like to open it up to questions.

Operator

Great. Thank you. Put everyone into gallery view. Okay, awesome. And no need to raise your hand.

Operator

If you're on this call, we assume you have a question. Thank you so much, analysts. We will take our first question from Tim Long at Barclays. Tim, you're up.

Speaker 6

Thank you. I was hoping I could sneak 2 in here. First, on the full year outlook, if you could just talk a little bit, obviously, Growth in Q1 was pretty strong, so implying a little bit of a decel in the second half of the year. I guess, towards the end, the compares get tougher. But Can you just talk a little bit about the rest of the outlook and why what's built into a little bit more conservative growth than we saw in Q1?

Speaker 6

And then second, if you could just touch on kind of the new products coming out, obviously, it sounds like a lot of demand. How does that fit into Those that have subscriptions, if someone's not on a subscription, they want to upgrade or accelerate an upgrade. Can you just talk about how You can see a benefit from these new products even if people are tied to a medium or longer term subscription deal. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Maybe I'll take guidance and then Turn customers over to Josh. Okay. So as we look at our guidance for the full year, obviously, we're really pleased with our strong Q1 performance. Part of what goes along with introducing new products though like TASER 10 and near term for Axon Body 4 is there is a transition period as our Customers transition to those new products and are buying less of our existing older products. So as we look at our guidance, we're baking that transition into our guidance.

Speaker 3

We're also baking in the fact that we had a really strong back half of last year, and so the comps get more difficult as we look at the second half.

Speaker 5

Yes, absolutely. And just to add to that, we never want to get out over our skis on guidance. I think Certainly, there are paths to outperforming guidance and like we're working toward those. But until we see that actually materialize in the pipeline and where we can feel a lot of confidence It's important to be measured as to how we look at the data we have today. And so certainly the focus is Delivering as good of a year revenue wise as we can and we feel confident that we have the team to do that.

Speaker 5

And on top of that, in terms of How we build in new products into our bundles and offerings, I think those are actually the opportune times to rewrite a lot of contracts. And so whenever there's a new product that comes out either a flagship product like a TASER, a new TASER CW or A new body camera or something like a new software offering that gives us the opportunity to go back to those customers and demo those products. And As customers kind of value them, they start asking questions about, hey, how do we build this into our contract and that leads to conversations upgrading the bundle Or out of the bottle. So, those are great opportunities for our sales team to rewrite these contracts for the longer term. So, that's how we look at kind of new product introduction into

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. Very helpful. Thanks.

Operator

Okay. We'll go next to Keith Housum at Northcoast. Keith is in a public space during our earnings call. So maybe we'll come back to Keith. Okay.

Operator

We'll go to Sami Adri from Credit Suisse. Go ahead, Sami.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you. I had first a trick question and then maybe some last tricky questions. So first one maybe to Rick. One thing that has been really clear is, as a company, you've released many products at various price points, many software capabilities, and you're introducing Virtual reality training and software.

Speaker 1

The kind of the big question is, how are police departments making space for all these budget line items that they are now having to pay for. And maybe the justification could be very straightforward, but perhaps you could explain to us maybe how Your customers are building this in into their budgets. Is it taking away from other categories? Is it placing some things? What have been the conversations in the field and the way that they're actually And then I have a follow-up.

Speaker 4

Yes, great. So all these new services, as we look at developing them up We first ask ourselves, is this solving a valuable problem that our customers will see great value in? And then we also look at, Okay. Where will the funding for these come from? So you mentioned VR.

Speaker 4

So that's a great example. Especially with Our international customers, we've been looking at this very closely, where the training costs associated with the TASER rollout Can actually be several times greater than the cost of all the hardware. It's just the statistics of bringing officers in, battling when they're off the street, All the time and have to get into it. And with EDR, we're going to be able to dramatically streamline the training of officers By creating virtual training spaces where a lot of it can happen without direct human oversight from an instructor as they're learning the basic skills. We need a lot of repetition in.

Speaker 4

So for example, right now, agencies may fire somewhere between 6 and a maximum of maybe 18 cartridges per year. We compare that to the thousands of bullets that they fire. Well, with our VR, they can fire unlimited numbers of rounds. So our anticipation is by next year, Every officer going through TASER certification training will fire over 100 cartridges in VR, really building all the muscle memory and skill. And we'll be able to do it in a much more time efficient way and we can distribute that training.

Speaker 4

So for example, a lot of this training, including better recurrent training Can happen out of the precinct level or the station level rather than having officers into centralized training locations. If I look at some of the things we're doing around, for example, some of our AI services around transcription, for example, many of our customers, people in Canada, transcript of every piece of evidence that is submitted for certain cases and I believe in other high level felony type cases. So our ability to provide a machine transcript that's linked in with the video greatly reduces the amount of time. And we think over time, We'll be able to get a point where there'll be no need for human intervention. So everything that we're doing is designed to create value that will find a Somewhere that we're displacing inefficiency in the current budget or in some cases competing products like what we did with our ALPR service.

Speaker 4

That historically agencies might pay $18,000 to $20,000 per vehicle to put a bespoke ALBR Dedicated hardware camera system. We've turned that into a virtualized service offering, which just sits as a layer on top of our existing car camera. So our in car camera is cost competitive all on its own and provides really great value. And now they can choose to turn on a LPR as a software service layer running on top. So I hope that's helpful.

Speaker 4

Just in general, as we're looking at all these, we both make sure we're solving problems that are Valuable to solve and that there's a path for the budget to either come from increased efficiency, reduced costs or displacing some

Speaker 7

Got it. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1

And then for a follow-up, Josh, you talked about International Kings really ramping up. And I was hoping you kind of give us a bit more color and context in terms of what your international customers are buying, fleet, TASERs, body cameras and How are they consuming everything? Are they consuming it within a bundle, all kind of a la carte 1 by 1 product?

Speaker 5

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Sam. I think our strategy is really unchanged. Some customers that start body cam side and they say, hey, this is the problem we're looking to solve right now. Our job is to make that real successful and then our other products and so those with body camera and in a lot of cases probably more only in international, We start on Hazor side and build a lot of trust and drive great results and then have kind of earned the right to sell our products and our product portfolio in.

Speaker 5

And so I think it's a healthy mix of those things. It usually starts with one of those 2 core products. And I think what you're seeing is some early signs that customers are getting a little more Open to cloud internationally with the process to move kind of major international customer cloud and We're seeing more openness to deploy our generation TASER devices. Teams are executing, sort of playing the long game internationally and we see some It's really exciting quarters. We have double digit bookings growth and other leaders are kind of more par for the course along the way.

Speaker 5

But When we add them all up at the end of the year, we're really excited about the year over year growth that we'll see internationally. Thank you.

Operator

Next up, Mike Ng from Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 8

Hey, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the question. It was encouraging to see the strong fleet sales in the quarter. And I have Two questions there. First, is there a better way to understand the sharp inflection in those fleet sales, Despite the fact that Fleet 3 was launched 2 years ago, it would be helpful to understand not only fleet, but also to potentially just better understand how Dynamics may impact how to think about Bodycam 4 and TASER 10.

Speaker 8

Thanks. And I have a follow-up.

Speaker 5

Yes, absolutely, Mike. Thank you very much for the question. We're excited about Fleet and we See, we talked about this from time to time, but 5 or 6 years ago when we launched Fleet 1, might have even been a little longer back than that. It's really a body camera attached to a windshield and we learned a lot. We built fleet 2, which got us to kind of parity in the market.

Speaker 5

And then Fleet 3 was a product that accelerated us into a market leadership position. And so, there's a couple of different dynamics They're on the ramp of fleet 3, one of which is just growing demand for next generation in car video, accompanied by ALDR and we Continue to see that and feel great about that. Part of it is where customers were in existing upgrade cycles with Fleet 2 that led to a slower ramp and then a steeper adoption later. Then another one is just the supply chain environment we've been in the last few years. Fleet 3 is reliant on 3rd party hardware and the supply chain team at Axon has done a fantastic job navigating the COVID supply chain challenges.

Speaker 5

But now we're seeing The supply chain is opening up and we're able to deploy more at a faster clip to customers. So I think it's a healthy mix of those. Maybe a distant fourth would be When customers have to upgrade systems across hundreds of police cars that they use every day, just their requirements for how they do that over Certain timeframes can be one that's a little back end loaded as well for each of those deployments. So we manage all of those things, but We certainly think fleet will continue to scale throughout the next couple of years and we're really proud of the team for delivering such an awesome product to our customers.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you for the very comprehensive answer. And then the follow-up would be, could you just talk about How to think about the translation between fleet sales into Axon Cloud Growth? Are there any Lagged effects of the benefit to cloud or ways to think about how much of the Fleet 3 d sales are upgrades versus growth in the installed base. Does that even matter as we try to think about how that translates into AxonCloud?

Speaker 5

Yes, it's a great question. It's really just our hardware Strategy paying off, right. Like we really believe that what we're building at Axon is a network of connected hardware devices, whether they're on the There's body in the police car, on the officer's belt, in the skies in the case of Axon Air and so forth. And so whenever we launch our very competitive hardware The biggest value proposition of any one of those products is it connects to the rest of your evidence and ecosystem that you use day to day as a police officer Or a police administrator. And so that's really the magic of Fleet 3 is it just it's one more thing that plugs into this network that you already use day to day and it It leads to a fantastic customer experience.

Speaker 5

I think this was very much an existing market that we entered into and had to compete against a lot of established incumbents And that took some time, but as I mentioned, we're really thrilled to be the market leader in this category and now it's about distancing ourselves even more.

Speaker 7

Thank you for the thoughts.

Speaker 3

Mike, the only thing I'd add, Josh's answer was very comprehensive. I think tactically a little bit what you're seeing this year is that we now have the A little bit what you're seeing this year is that we now have the supply of fleet that we need and so we're going to start fulfilling some of that demand. The only thing that's really limiting us at this point is how fast we can actually get those cameras installed, which is why we called out the professional services component. So just How fast can we get them out and installed at our customer? And then that's really what will trigger being able to turn on the higher margin cloud revenue is getting that cameras installed and up and running at the customer.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Katy. Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 9

One last tiny thing to add there and ties back to what Rick was saying before. In addition to the price inversion that ALPR made for making this broadly available versus the traditional super expensive on a handful of cars thing, What this does when a department adopts fleet 3 with ALPR and respond, that turns every car all day every day Into a cloud software use case, where all day, every day, every car across their Our fleet and across their entire city, those vehicles and this camera being used as active sensors connected to cloud software to help power the results they're getting. So that further Reinforces their connection to the value they're getting out of our overall ecosystem.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jeff. Thanks,

Operator

guys. Josh Reilly at Needham. Go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, there. Thanks for taking my questions. How should we think about the backlog for TASER X post Accelerate, I was able to speak with some customers there at the event who were thinking about buying the 7, but they were then evaluating whether to switch to the 10. Is that something that you are seeing coming out of the conference? And is there any implication for the model here for the balance of the year from that.

Speaker 5

Yes. Josh, as Rick said in his remarks, It does take a little time until we announce the TASER for trials and evaluations to take place. And so you see a little bit of a lag between The interest and the demand and in the purchasing. But the good news for us is this is the 7th or 8th time we've been through this. We've worked through this.

Speaker 5

We And what the puts and takes are. We understand how to communicate with customers on this project plan and on how they evaluate and what the timing is. But I think in the back half of the year, you'll see a really striking kind of demand or I'm sorry, sales growth in TASER 10 and That will continue for the next several years. We feel fantastic about the product market fit. We feel fantastic about the customer reaction to the product.

Speaker 5

And now it's on us to just manage the upgrade cycle from TASER 7 to TASER 10, and we have a lot of confidence that we'll be able to do that very effectively.

Speaker 10

Awesome. Great to hear. And then could we get an update on the Axon Records pipeline and maybe highlight some what are some of the key Product development priorities for records here near term. And then is there any profile in terms of customer size or any other characteristic that's adopting the platform kind of fully from their legacy system and moving on.

Speaker 5

Sure. Maybe I'll start with a pipeline and then I'll pass it over to Jeff to talk about the feature set, Some of the differentiators and investments just in the pipeline, we've got 2 to 3 year old customers that are willing to deploy Axon Records. And part of that is Our motion of selling it as part of the officer safety plan bundle. And I want to give Brian Wheeler and the entire Axon Records team a huge shout out for We talk about responding to adversity and building really mentally tough teams. I don't know that there's a better example of this at Axon and the records team hearing a lot of Early feedback, at times, complaints early on in the product's lifecycle.

Speaker 5

And now we just we see this as the thing that allows us to Become the operating system of public safety for the long term. And so we're very confident in the demand and our ability to deploy customers over the next several years Get closer to a market leadership position there.

Speaker 9

Totally. So just on the numbers, right now actually deployed, we've got Nearly 60 agencies that represent nearly 20,000 sworn officers who are live on at least one module of Axon Records And that includes 17 agencies out of today that are already fully transitioned to use to replace their entire legacy RMS. And that already includes some brave major cities such as Tucson, Baltimore, Virginia Beach and Fresno with more coming soon. So, we feel fantastic about the pace of adoption that we've got, as Josh said, both in Pipeline as well as what's already deployed and this overall strategy of getting agencies to get going with at least one module of records, which then Very, very frequently transitioned into them wanting to adopt the full product for their to replace their entire legacy RMS. And you heard me talk when I first joined the company nearly 4 years ago that this was going to be a long journey, but we were that over time, exactly as Josh said, we'd be positioned to become the clear leader in this space and both on the strength of the product Itself, but again on its connections and inherent coherence with the rest of the Axon ecosystem and that's one of the things that our customers value the most as we sell him.

Speaker 10

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Fun to see the success on that product line there.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 9

Thank you very much.

Operator

Will Power at Baird.

Speaker 11

Okay, great. Yes, I'll try to submit a couple of questions.

Speaker 6

I guess, first, it'd be

Speaker 11

great to get Any kind of early feedback you're receiving on AB-four, what are some of the features officers are most excited about? And what's kind of feedback you're getting on the bidirectional voice capability? Is that something they're really going to utilize? They think they'll utilize? They won't utilize?

Speaker 11

I'd just be curious kind of the Yes, what's your answer so far?

Speaker 9

Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question. So as you saw in the video and a bit in the Shareholder letter, it's early days, but we're incredibly excited about the initial response, both from customers' prospective customers hearing about it at Accelerate as well as the customers that are actively trialing it. So far, there's both the meat and potatoes things of our best ever battery life and sensor And all of those things, there's the return of the POV accessory and having it unify with the core camera in a way that we have never had before. There's a ton of excitement for both of those things.

Speaker 9

And on the comm side, you've heard us talking about Respond for multiple years now and the growing really healthy both sales and adoption Of that in the field, even when there's only

Speaker 4

been the

Speaker 9

one way they have consuming strings up until now. And as agents are trialing And talking about the bidirectional, we're getting a lot of enthusiasm for what that makes possible and in particular, a lot of excitement For this idea of the dedicated watch me button on the camera. And the reason why we think we're getting a lot of excitement for that As you heard in the video and from Rick, it inverts the control or the perceived control and puts it right in the hands of the individual officer. It makes the conversation for an officer being, hey, if I need help, if I want someone to watch my back, I can request that And that creates a proactive signal to command staff, support staff, whoever it is, encouraging To jump in on that right now as opposed to today's live streaming, which requires someone to be deciding to be passively watching and deciding to go in or with signal alerts like that might come in from time to time. So a lot of excitement about all of that.

Speaker 9

And overall, we expect it to keep ramping just as Respawn has over the past couple of years.

Speaker 4

Yes, I would jump in One of my favorite quotes from science fiction author William Gibson says, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Live streaming when we introduced it a few years ago was a totally new concept. And much like when we first launched Body cameras. This is an industry where new concepts take a little while to really take hold. But there's one agency in Texas called the Texas Medical Center.

Speaker 4

We had the Chief up during my keynote. He's now live streaming every call for service to dispatch. And his results have been just phenomenal. Imagine just from that you are at least this fashion in today's world, you're probably supporting 5 different calls happening with 10 to 15 different officers. You've got to keep track of what's happening largely through these cryptic radio messages on a shared channel with the officers you're managing as well as who other people are managing.

Speaker 4

And you have very little idea what's actually happening at these calls. And then flip to a different world where as you're doing this, you can have a screen where you can see visually what's happening for those officers. And it turns out that Our visual system is highly tuned to notice things that are abnormal or out of the ordinary. For example, you're sitting next to somebody on an airplane, none of us want to be the creepy Reading the phone in person next to us, and you don't notice it when there's text going on, but they get some photo or something, it'll just grab your attention. And even though it's far on your periphery, You immediately go, oh, I didn't even mean to have made this person practice, but your visual system is really good at that.

Speaker 4

Well, not for your stature, what we're hearing from TMC is that These officers or the dispatchers are rapidly able to wait a minute, something doesn't look right with what's happening here. And they'll then tune in and focus. They may call for supervisor to tune in live. They'll dispatch additional resources. In some cases, they're helping officers.

Speaker 4

One of them noticed somebody had been in a different call who then gave that officer a fake ID. This way, voice, voice you can see a video. The next thing frequently you want to do is communicate with that and not have to do it over a radio that That air traffic is very tightly controlled. It's not 1 on 1. You can't have a rich conversation.

Speaker 4

You have to use cryptic codes Because you're also transmitting that to 50 or 20 other people that aren't involved in that conversation. So we're still early in AB4 rolling out, But we think the feature set hits both the transformative view capability and then some simple things like some people love the head mounted camera, some like the mounted on the shoulder, Many options prefer the body camera. Those have always been 2 separate SKUs where you couldn't reconfigure them. We now have one SKU where we can reconfigure If you go from SWAT to Patrol or whatever, you can now have many mounting options and the ability to recharge while you are In the car with a magnetic disconnect amount gives us effectively infinite battery life. So we think this is a great combination of both transformative And just continuing to deliver on the basics.

Speaker 11

That's great to hear. Thanks, Rick. Maybe if I get a question in for Britney on Free cash flow has some impacts in the quarter, I think more so than we've seen in past years. So any other color there? Just maybe any thoughts just on the Free cash flow outlook for the year?

Speaker 3

More than what we shared. I wouldn't say it changes any of my In terms of our ability to generate free cash flow over the course of the year, we just had some strong seasonality In Q1 in terms of uses of cash, including bonus, commissions, some timing around permitting stock taxes for stock options, a little bit of inventory, but mostly some of those are one time items.

Speaker 11

Okay. So cadence of the years, we'll see that price snap back beginning in Q2, I suppose.

Speaker 3

Yes. I think you'll still see good healthy free cash flow for the year.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Of course.

Operator

Thanks. Great. Thanks. So I'm going to read Keith Housum's question aloud. He's in a public place with background noise.

Operator

So Keith Housum at Northcoast asking, can we provide an update on VR in terms of modules growth, geographic availability, number of users over the past year and our goals for 2023.

Speaker 5

Sure. I can start there and maybe Rick can So any blanks in? I don't think we're ready quite yet to talk about user growth in VR or any kind of detailed financials on the product line and we're really focused on building a platform here for training police officers at a much higher quality well into the future. And so for us, it's really about, hey, how do we have the foundation built with the skills needed in terms of Training between the TASER, firearm and verbal communication in our community engagement modules. And over time, what you'll see is you'll see more specific Scenario based modules being released to market in the U.

Speaker 5

S. We are more rapidly integrating Scenarios from some of our growing markets such as international and federal and corrections otherwise. But again, the foundation of the product Has to be very solid between the sensors the officers use and the software that accompanies the experience for the trainers themselves. And so Just like with our other products, whether it's TASER, Body Camera, Fleet, it's about getting the basics right first And then moving quickly once we have that platform very solidly built. And so we continue to be excited about the bookings we're seeing in VR.

Speaker 5

It's one of Fastest growing products ever, and we expect that trend to continue for the long term, but we want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves and really do things right from the ground up.

Operator

Okay. And we have 4 more analysts in the queue, and we're going to try to get to everybody today. Jonathan Ho at William Blair. Go ahead, Jonathan.

Speaker 12

I'll just stick to one question just to keep things moving. Can you help us maybe understand some of, I guess the gross margin dynamics around some of your newer products and maybe how you expect that to trend over

Speaker 7

the course of the year? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. No, appreciate that. So we've really called out gross margins as probably being very similar to Q1. And if they Prove it will be only slightly. So we're really expecting that to be the dynamic for the rest of the year.

Speaker 3

A couple of things that really go into that are this Continued revenue mix that we're seeing from fleet and the growth we're seeing in fleet. Fleet inherently has A lower margin upfront, plus we have professional services to get it installed. So that's an impact to us, which will be a benefit over time. This continued growth in our software revenue over time will be a tailwind, but this year, it is a mix impact for us. And then I would say we would expect as we continue to ramp in T10 to see that improve towards the back half of the year like we were talking about, but that will be offset with some of these fleet dynamics.

Operator

Okay. Jeremy Hamblin from Craig Hallum.

Speaker 13

Thanks. And my congratulations to Rick and the team on this milestone of Being at the S and P 500, it's pretty amazing journey over the last where you guys were 15 years ago. I wanted to ask just about your ARR, which is up nearly 50%. I think probably like the fastest growth on a year over year basis, maybe in the company's history, but certainly in the last 5 years. And you provided a little bit of color in the release on that, but just wanted to see if you could add a little bit more in terms of the dynamics between Book seats versus ARPU, you talked about premium packages That you're getting clients to sign up for, but wanted to see if you could share a little bit more color around that and how we should be thinking about With the product launches around TASER 10, 84, I imagine you'll be getting some higher bundled packages On a

Speaker 7

go forward

Speaker 13

basis, but any color you could share on that?

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, I'll jump in and then maybe Josh we'll see if Josh wants to add to it. But I would say, It really is the sort of flywheel taking effect. And so you're starting to see the benefits of that. Certainly, Moving some of our customers into our more premium offerings is continuing to benefit us in terms of ARR growth.

Speaker 3

And then I think you're seeing many, many years of work to get people added into this software and The ramp we're seeing from some of our hardware products and the move up the curve start to come to fruition. Yes.

Speaker 5

The only thing I'd add there, and Jeremy, I appreciate all the kind words. Thank you very much. And it's been fun to have you guys on a lot of these calls for a long time now. But In terms of the ARR growth, it's really doing 2 things very well. And I give Jeff a lot of credit for kind of simplifying this upon his entry to Axon a few years ago.

Speaker 5

So we got to sell new products to our existing customers and we got to sell our existing products to new customers. And when we do those things in parallel very well, you see the types of results that we're seeing now. And so as Brittany said, in our existing markets, Getting the flywheel going across OSP, but then supplementing that with results in federal and enterprise and corrections and international, Doing those two things in parallel that's leading to great and exciting growth.

Speaker 12

Got it.

Speaker 13

And just one other follow-up here with the launch of 84 and TASER 10, any color you can share in terms of the adoption, kind of cycle times versus What you've seen in the prior ramps, whether you want to compare it to TASER 7 or 83, faster, slower, More depth on that, that would be

Speaker 5

Sure. I'd say in the TASER business in general, it's generally a 5 year up So whenever you launch a new TASER device, you see the customers that bought 5 ish years ago As your customers that have the most early interest. And we're seeing that with T10, but the thing we're most excited about that's very different from previous generations of the TASER is that customers that are early on or midway through their cycle with TASER 7 are expressing a lot of interest And upgrading early to TASER X. So I think that speaks to the kind of the huge improvements in terms of effectiveness range And so forth that our customers really see and value and that's driving them to maybe not only upgrade early, but line up the resources on their On their end in terms of training to also allow that upgrade to happen on a faster cycle. So very excited and encouraged.

Speaker 5

Of course, We've got to execute and we've got to drive that into fruition, but we've got a lot of confidence that our team is capable of doing that.

Speaker 4

One anecdote I'll share, forgive my enthusiasm, but we had one customer at Azercon, a midsize as in several 100 Officer agency that was sitting in a keynote and called back to their Chief. And they actually changed an order that was in process. And they got the order through, I believe, the Chief Signature and the purchasing department of the Citi by the end of that day. We've not seen something like that. Again, I don't want Get too excited from a projection standpoint, but that reaction to me was just extremely meaningful that they Saw this as something that was worth really disrupting the whole process to stop an existing order, pivot on a dime And get the new thing approved.

Speaker 4

And then the other thing I would tell you is where I think TASER 10 can make a really huge difference is in the international markets. TASER X for the first time, I think we have a weapon that could become the officers' primary defensive tool, probably not in the U. S. Because We live in a country that's a watching guns and officers need to have their lethal weapons. But pick your average European country where police are all wearing pistols In nations that really don't have a gun crime problem and previous versions of the TASER weapon probably didn't have enough Capability range, enough shots that you would rely on it as the primary tool to defend yourself.

Speaker 4

And I think we're now crossing that Rubicon. And I think that could really open up the international markets where we have the opportunity to become the primary defensive tool.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Operator

Eric Stuebiger at JMP.

Speaker 5

Hey, Eric, it looks like you're on mute.

Speaker 14

There we go. Can you hear me? It is kind of a follow on from what Rick was just saying. You've talked about the international opportunity for TASER as being multiples of the domestic opportunity. Of the domestic opportunity.

Speaker 14

Ed, you said you've seen some strength in Europe. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamics of how they're adopting new products? Is it more of a shift towards the TASER? Is that getting Is that something that can be a bigger opportunity than the body camera? Or What are some of the dynamics in terms of the adoption in Europe?

Speaker 5

Yes. To start, Eric, I'd say It's really some of the actions we took 3 or 4 years ago are just starting to pay off. And in TASER programs, regardless of geography or market, It generally starts with a lower number of users that are aimed at a particular use case, whether SWAT or A certain number of users in a police force, but as they start seeing early success, that's really when we see the willingness to adopt in much higher Quantities and really that's happening in a number of European markets at this point and that's driving some of the exciting growth there. And As we start to reap the benefits of that, we also are planting seeds in other for the first time, I think, either dozens or low 100s number of TASER devices and then in a couple of years, we'll see more proliferation there as well. In terms of the relative opportunity, generally, I'd still say body cameras The higher TAM only because you've got a higher ARPUs associated with Our video business versus the TASER at scale.

Speaker 5

But there are very, very compelling opportunities in international. And my guess is TASERs will move a little faster as we still especially in Europe as we still start to evangelize the cloud more and more there. But Over the long term, certainly the body camera and cloud business is very attractive and one that we're really exciting about or Excited to continue to grow in some of our international markets.

Operator

Did you have any follow-up?

Speaker 14

That's it. Thank you.

Operator

Okay, awesome. Paul Chung at JPMorgan. Go ahead, Paul.

Speaker 12

Hi, can you hear me?

Speaker 7

Okay, great. So thanks for squeezing me in. Just on most of the questions have been asked, but Father, talk about magnitude would be helpful as well. And is this more of a gradual ramp in the second half?

Speaker 13

Thank you.

Speaker 5

I could probably start with just what The bundle looks like and then I might hand it over to Britney to talk more about the cartridge gross margins and the ramp. In the bundle on this Product, it's really important since you have 10 shots in the device to be able to train and thus that drops training cartridge demand up. And because each shot is an individual shot, I think over time, we'll see duty volumes go up as well. We've priced all that into the bundle and you can go on the website to look at the relative pricing versus T7, but that contemplates some of the growing cartridge demand. And Of course, as we get up to speed with selling high volumes of these, that has implications for us on automation and how fast we're able to ramp Our manufacturing, maybe Brittany has anything to add there on the margin side.

Speaker 3

I think you pretty much nailed it, Just because it's starting to get bundled in, we're not really thinking about cartridges versus handles separately from a gross margin standpoint We're rethinking about the whole TASER package together and talk about TASER margins improving as we go through the year and get back half of the year. We've sort of because it's bundled together, I would view it as bundled together in our margin outlook

Speaker 1

as well.

Speaker 7

That's helpful. And that's the same dynamic for the Axon, The body cam, the new one as well. That's it for me.

Speaker 5

Yes. Paul, I think on the body cam, the only thing I'd add there is, Because respond is the thing that drives some of the features in terms of the streaming and communication features in AB4, There is a real opportunity more outside of the core body camera hardware and system. While we're excited about the growth in RESPOND, we see some opportunity For the volume of RESPOND lessons is sold to grow over time as a result of some of the new capabilities of the AB4 hardware.

Operator

Okay, great. I think that's everyone. Do we have any follow ups? I'll give it a second. Looks like no.

Operator

Thank you for joining us. Let's have Rick close us out.

Speaker 4

Awesome. Hey, obviously excited to be off to a good start, 2 major new product launches. I think VR, which you guys As some questions, value is really going to start hitting its stride the back half of this year. We've integrated new sensors, so that TASER X will be first. We'll have a really fine tuned, very smooth integrated product experience.

Speaker 4

Taste of the shuffle will follow and then we'll start rolling out Various firearms and other platforms that we think we're really setting the right stage. These 2 new products and these progress towards our moonshot to continue to sell value added in Premium services and to really go wide with DVR by next year. We think that will be Common for pretty much every officer and instructor who's getting trained on TASER that we believe VR can become the standard. And That's going to create an opportunity for us to then launch a whole lot more content and services through our VR platform. Jeff has just been doing a great job with the team hiring and bringing in great talent to build all of this and then putting together a strategy for how we layer All the hardware and the software pieces.

Speaker 4

So we're just really excited to have you shareholders and analysts who've been part of our journey And we're just getting started. We got an exciting 10 year march ahead of us to cut gun related doubts in half and I'm confident we're going to do it. So with that, we'll see you all, I think, next at our shareholder meeting and then at our next quarterly results after we wrap up Q2. So thanks everybody and have a great night.

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Earnings Conference Call
Saratoga Investment Q1 2023
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