IDT Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
June 5, 2023

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good evening, and welcome to the IDT Corporation's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call. In today's presentation, IDT's management will discuss IDT's financial and operational results for the 3 month period ended April 30, 2023. During remarks by IDT's Chief Executive Officer, Shmuel Jahnas, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After Mr. Jonas' remarks, Marcelo Fischer, IDT's Chief Financial Officer, we'll join Mr.

Operator

Jonas for Q and A. Any forward looking statements made during this conference call, either in the prepared remarks or in the Q and A session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that IDT files periodically with the SEC. IDT assumes no obligation either to update any forward looking statements that they have made or may make or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast. In their presentation or in the Q and A session, IDT's management may make reference to non GAAP measures including adjusted EBITDA, non GAAP net income and non GAAP earnings or loss per share.

Operator

A schedule provided in the IDT earnings release reconciles adjusted EBITDA, non GAAP, net income and non GAAP earnings or loss per share to the nearest corresponding GAAP measures. Please note that the IDT earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of the IDT Corporation website. The earnings release has also been filed on the Form 8 ks with the SEC. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Jonas.

Speaker 1

Hi, thank you very much, operator. Welcome to IDT's earnings conference call. After my remarks, Marcella ICT's Chief Financial Officer will join me and will be available to answer questions. My brief remarks today focus on the 3rd quarter of our fiscal year 2023, the 3 months ended April 30. For a more detailed discussion of our financial and operational results, please read our earnings release filed earlier today and our Form 10 Q that we expect to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Speaker 1

For the Q3 of our 2023 fiscal year, IDT generated year over year increases in gross profit, adjusted EBITDA and EPS, highlighted by the continued expansion of our 3 high growth, high margin businesses and by the relatively resilient cash flows from our traditional communications segment even as revenue from this segment continued to decline. NRS added new POS terminals and payment accounts at a record pace this quarter and achieved solid year over year increases in all three of its recurring revenue verticals, as well as in recurring revenue per terminal. Advertising revenue decreased sequentially due to seasonal reductions in demand and the advertising Behind the scenes, we're enhancing our advertising platform and diversifying our network partnerships will lead to new opportunities both within and outside of the digital out of home market. This foundational work should pay off when advertising demand rebounds. Given our success in accelerating the pace of new payment processing account sign ups, increasing merchant services ARPU bringing new premium features to our platform, we expect that NRS will continue to perform extremely well.

Speaker 1

At Netafone, we increased subscription revenue by 20% year over year while approaching cash flow breakeven. In the coming weeks, we expect to launch exciting new offerings and features that will help to build our momentum, including Nettoone AI, which includes powerful analytical tools powered by artificial intelligence technology. At BOSS Money Remittance, volume increased by 38% year over year, driving a 29% revenue increase. I'm especially pleased by the robust growth of BOS Money's retail channel over the past few quarters. Throughout the rest of the BOSS ecosystem, the synergies between retail and direct to consumer drive better economics than we could achieve with a single approach.

Speaker 1

We believe that the same will be true for the money we've made in June. For that reason, we continue to focus on retail channel expansion as we invest to achieve scale and long term profitability. With our diverse mix of businesses backed by a solid balance sheet and with no debt, IDT is positioned to I want to thank our employees for their great work and thank our stockholders for putting their faith and their capital with us. Now, Marcelo and I will be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session.

Speaker 1

The

Operator

Okay. Our first question comes from Alex Roehr. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question.

Speaker 2

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Speaker 1

Yes, we can.

Speaker 2

Hi, guys. So just quickly, this morning, the NRS Insights report showed 25,000 terminals Currently, which implies a really strong month of May, so like 1,000 net adds at the month of May. Just wondering, was there anything particular going on in the month of May that would lead to unusual strength.

Speaker 3

Yes. Hi, Alex. It's Marcelo. So you're right, you're reading things carefully. Is mostly because of rounding, may have been our best month ever For adding POS into the network.

Speaker 3

But it's mostly rounding. We added more like 630 NUPLS is on a net basis, but because of rounding, it makes a look at with a 1,000, but it was our largest increase ever for the month.

Speaker 2

Understood. Thanks. And just shifting gears to mobile top up, what's driving I mean Cuba, I think at this point is sort of we've been dealing with this for a long time, but what's driving the continued declines in the business? And is there some point at which you would expect the business to resume growing year on year?

Speaker 1

There's a bunch of factors that have driven it. I mean, one is, We really focus on profitable growth, and we're not just in it to have volume. And Some players have really come into the market and disrupted, really not looking for profitability, maybe even they're losing money. And we've decided to sort of take a, I'll call it a wait and see approach And to see if they can afford to continue to subsidize the market. At the same time, our direct to consumer channel and our retail channel have is relatively stable.

Speaker 1

So it's much more of a situation in the wholesale side of the business than it is in those 2. But we have A bunch of new enhancements coming out both in retail and in direct to consumer that we That to help increase growth as well as some new marketing campaigns. And our new Zendesk platform, we hope will Help with the deterioration that we've seen in wholesale.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Okay. The next question is from David Polanski. Please announce your affiliation then pose your question.

Speaker 4

Hey, I'm from David Polanski from Immersion Investments. Thanks for taking my question guys. I want to Start big picture talking about NRS and poking kind of around how big this thing can get. I mean, we've been sitting on sort of a unit TAM figure for NRS at about 200,000 Retail Locations. And just looking at market share data for a lot of your states.

Speaker 4

So I think New York and California, I think you have roughly a 25% market share. And I think New Jersey, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's Somewhere in the 30% to 40% range. So is there a reason to think that We can't get to like a 25% share figure nationwide, which would put you somewhere in sort of the 50,000 unit range.

Speaker 1

Well, I mean, I'd say 2 things just from walking around. I don't feel like we have 25% or 30% Market share yet, but I hope to be there one day. That's in the New York, New Jersey area where I walk around more frequently.

Speaker 3

But

Speaker 1

again, the $200,000 number is really a very hard number Put our finger on it. I mean, again, we more and more we sell Stores that I wouldn't have thought would have been typical for NRS locations, whether or not it's Beauty stores or dollar stores or general stores, I mean, Auto Parts, Stores, etcetera. And so I think like the TAM is a little bit of a moving Target. So I don't know if that's really our gating factors, what percentage Of that number we'll get. I think we have to continue to provide great Service and great new products and we'll continue to grow and continue to expand our sales channels.

Speaker 1

And again, We are doing that aggressively. You can see a little bit of that in the SG and A. And we expect that to See the number of units increasing quite substantially over the next couple of months and hopefully long past it, but I think you'll start to see that May number ramp up.

Speaker 4

Great. And does that you mentioned, I mean, you're seeing increasing success in areas outside of your core C store bodega channel, is that I mean how material is that at this point? Are you willing to discuss like is that like 10% of the 1500 to 1600 that you're doing, I mean, is it really material

Speaker 1

at this point? I don't know the exact number. I would say that it's greater than 10%, but I don't know the exact I didn't come here prepared today to know from the sales recently how many of them are outside of our traditional stores. So I don't want to give you an answer would definitively.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then on I apologize for the mundane question, but could you I'm Marcelo or Schmuel. Could you help us understand sort of the seasonality in the NRS Business like will Q3 EBITDA margin always be lower than Q2? Is Q4 going to be like Q1 and I mean, can you just sort of, I guess, directionally help us out? Or do you think that this quarter was sort of an aberration in terms of the last couple of quarters?

Speaker 1

I mean, I think 2 things happened. I mean, one is, we had a relatively weak advertising quarter, and advertising is Our highest margin contributor at NRS. So that definitely hurt this quarter in particular. Yes, I do think that there is some seasonality to the numbers. It's Not dramatic, but there is some.

Speaker 1

And again, sometimes we sell more accounts then come online. So I think this particular quarter, we had a very strong quarter in terms of merchant processing sales, but a lot of that actual volume probably doesn't come on until this quarter. So I think you'll see a much better number next quarter and again, our sales are increasing, so that will continue to be better and better.

Speaker 4

Great. And I have to ask on the Capital Markets It seems like things have calmed down a little bit at least year to date. Is there anything we can be Expecting in the near term on sort of net to phone or NRS monetization or is that sort of a wait and see?

Speaker 1

For the time being, it's a wait and see. I mean, again, we're continuing to make those businesses significantly more mature than they were and hopefully at the right time, great value will be achieved. All right, great.

Speaker 4

Thanks guys.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Brian Warner. Please announce your affiliation then pose your question.

Speaker 5

Hi, guys. Private investor, actually you David pretty much asked one of my questions and that was really around the Total available market. I'm wondering just as an aside on that question, Have you do you view the restaurant area as a potentially large area? And I'm wondering what progress and What you might call out as any areas that are particularly enticing in terms of what sort of the size of the market and where you think you can get Good economics. And then just final question, in our S, you seem to be reporting monthly sales that are Certainly low to mid single digits better than the industry, which seems to will be recurring with a lot of frequency.

Speaker 5

I'm wondering if what you think that is from and if that's sort of become a selling point

Speaker 1

I'll say 2 or 3 First on the restaurant industry, POS world, I'll call it. I mean, we Do not have any intentions of trying to become a toast for or something like it. Like that is not our goal at NRS. We do have a goal of serving small restaurants that wouldn't be maybe the best fit for a solution like Toast, as well as to serve Convenience stores that sort of have restaurants in the back of their locations. Again, it's not something you see if you're in the New York, New Jersey area Very often, but if you start getting, I'll call it, Virginia and beyond, you'll start to see a lot of stores that have a restaurant component to it.

Speaker 1

And we definitely do intend to continue to serve that market better and better. We're in the process of making a small acquisition that As far as your question regarding sort of sales at our stores being better Than in the market generally, listen, I don't know enough about same store sales everywhere else To know exactly how they compare, but it does seem to me like what you said is correct, just based on what I hear on the radio, and what I would say is that, I mean, listen, I think our stores are very resilient. Some of that is from help they get from us. And but other factors of it is the fact that like we've always felt that when people stop going to a grocery store in getting their orders delivered to their house, that's the customer that that grocery store really loses most of the time, maybe they come in there, one out of every 3 times they would have gone, but they end up needing Small stores like the ones that we serve even more often because now they're depending on them for items that they didn't beforehand. So I think that that has something to do with it.

Speaker 1

Marcelo also has some thoughts on it.

Speaker 3

Yes, I mean, obviously, we also look at the national data and compare to the NASDAQ, and we also kind of scratch our heads somehow a little bit. And I think we also speculate that also our customers, they are going into this independent retail stock to buy a lot more of what The needs are, okay, basic needs type of goods and therefore, those are more recurring transactions for the nephrases, so maybe that's also what's triggering why the growth is higher.

Speaker 5

Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

No problem. Have a good day.

Operator

The next question is from Adam Wilk. Please announce your affiliation then pose your question.

Speaker 6

Hi, guys. This is Adam Wilk with Greystone Capital. Can you hear me?

Speaker 1

We can hear you well. How are you, Adam?

Speaker 6

Doing well, thanks. How about yourself?

Speaker 1

Good.

Speaker 6

I just had a few or maybe one question wrapped a couple of questions wrapped up into one for Nettofone, really strong results are there once again. And I'm just wondering, I know there was a good amount of focus on this at the annual meeting, and I'm sure not much has changed. So but I just wanted to touch on maybe the sources of operating leverage that you're seeing if anything has changed over the last or year to date, I'll say. And then maybe you can talk a little bit about Bridgepoint. They're a channel partner, correct?

Speaker 6

And then maybe kind of what you're seeing in line with additional opportunities there in terms of channel partners and

Speaker 3

maybe the ability to drive more margin or

Speaker 6

leverage moving forward? And then will be more margin or leverage moving forward. And then maybe one quick follow-up, but we can start with those.

Speaker 1

Okay. I mean, I don't think that much has changed since the annual meeting in terms of our focus that we Again, I think that the team at NetSolon has really executed very well And they've really made the cash flow generation A very big part of what they focus on. At the same time, They've really taken the bull by the horn and focusing on areas that we see massive growth coming down the line whether or not that's AI that everyone is talking about Or CCaaS products, even for CCaaS for small Customers have those kinds of needs as well and we have a product coming out specifically for them. So I think that you're going to see we try to take some of the learnings that we've seen sort of also in other parts of So at NRS, like we've been very good at selling into stores with a very Low price, easy offering to take into the store and then upselling them into higher plans and Other services and funding, etcetera, etcetera that we provide. And we're really trying to now do that same Type of a sale at Netafone as well where we come in there being, let's say, a relatively low cost provider For their UCaaS services, but then adding on all of these much higher tier, I'll call, products, again, whether or not it's CCaaS or call intelligence or etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 1

So that's kind of been, I would say, the only thing that's changed is maybe more of a focus on growing the base with more revenue rather than on just growing the number of customers. Now in terms of answering your question about our channel partner, Listen, we are a channel based business in Nettofone as opposed to NRS where we have Really a very diverse strategy of direct channel, as well as through IDT salespeople. At NetSpone, it really is, with the exception of Canada, it's really a channel of business. And that's not changing, but when it comes to adding on revenue onto the customers, Some of that does become a direct sale from Netafone depending on whether or not the channel partner feels I'll say sufficiently trained to be able to sell it. So some of our newer products really require a different type of A sale than some of our channel partners traditionally have done.

Speaker 1

I mean, UCaaS and CCaaS are not necessarily sold by the same people, if that would be A way to explain it easily.

Speaker 3

Yes. Adam, I think on total operational leverage, when we decided to postpone the net of home spin off about 1 year ago and we mentioned at the time that the focus was going to be to turn around and demonstrate That Nettofone can be a growing and profitable company. So this past year, there was tremendous focus by the Nettofone team on making the yield efficiencies, on trying to show that we're going to be able to bring the company the cash flow positive and that we will start the New Year Being cash flow positive, you know, even covering all the CapEx expenses we've incurred. And now that we have The focus that Shmuel mentioned is going to be more towards bringing to market new products, Seats are to play a bigger role as time goes by. It will help to drive ARPU slightly higher.

Speaker 3

It's become a bigger part of the mix. So I think that's going to be the focus for this coming year. The team is right now working on the budget For this coming year, and I think NetSol will continue to be now a growing company, but also a cash flow generator No, even next year.

Speaker 6

Okay. Yes, that's really helpful. And I appreciate the comments on cash flow, which is interesting just given the growth runway and reinvestment potential, I think that sits in front of you. One quick question just from your combined answers, is the U. S.

Speaker 6

For you guys who are kind of less on the enterprise side, is that more of a channel market for you or is that more direct as you kind of increase your efforts there?

Speaker 3

Yes, I mean, the U. S. Have been almost until recently a channel business. We have very little direct sales. Most recently, we started a new Group to sell directly to larger enterprises.

Speaker 3

We just talked about And a few months ago, we're probably going to be adding more resources into that group as we go into this coming year. And that group had already brought in about 1 client It's about 4,000 seats. So going forward, we're going to have a direct group for They will look for trying to onboard larger enterprises.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. And then, just in terms of Mexico, there's this may be jumping the gun, but there's a lot of talk about near shoring opportunities are reshoring opportunities. And I think just I think there's a lot of bullish commentary just regarding the growth of that country in general in terms of the economy. And I'm curious as that takes place, does that sort of increase the opportunity set for you guys there? Or has anything changed on that front for that specific geography?

Speaker 6

Or is there anything to sort of share at this

Speaker 3

point?

Speaker 1

It's interesting. I mean, you can Marcelo is sort of smiling as you're asking that question because we were talking about it this morning. And again, I do think that that's going to be a big area of growth that has been already, I think we'll continue to be even bigger. The near shoring definitely helps Nettofone. There's no question about it, Particularly when it's done in Mexico, although we are looking to extend other, I'll call them nearshore markets.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. I appreciate that. That's it for me. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Have a nice night.

Operator

We have a follow-up coming from Brian Warner. Brian, your line is live.

Speaker 5

Okay. Hi. Just a quick question. Again, the revenue headwinds, the EBITDA has held up remarkably well for what is generally viewed as a rapidly shrinking ice cube. And I'm just wondering if there's any reason to think that you can't continue to milk that business for quite a few years Or if you think maybe there's over the next couple of years, there's anything to sort of watch out for that could sort of be a cliff in your cash flow there.

Speaker 5

And a follow-up question if you want to be generous with the thought. I'm wondering where you think Net to Phone or for that matter, well run UCaaS company, at maturity and you can define it or not, What sort of EBITDA margin do you think that business is? Is it 20% or is it something significantly different than that in your mind? Just curious about the thought you might share.

Speaker 1

Again, we have a model on the Nettophone business That shows something a little better than that over time, I mean, we're not getting there next year, that's for sure. But again, it will be better than that. As far as our traditional business, listen, We have to continue to make painful cuts to sustain the cash flow from that business and that's never fun. And at the same Todd, we need to continue to develop features that keep our customers willing to pay for Our services when oftentimes they can get it free somewhere else. And that's a struggle that we deal with every day.

Speaker 1

You've seen the reality in the numbers. So we will We do our best to continue it going as long as we can.

Speaker 3

Right. But we do expect now as we look ahead for our Long distance voice revenues to continue to decline most likely at the current pace. No, we don't see any turnaround in that trend. At Shmoenash, we're trying as hard as we can To manage the cost structure, to try to alleviate the impact to the bottom line, but that becomes harder and harder And as time goes by, so I do expect, right, the gross profit EBITDA for non business voice continue to decline at the same rate and maybe an accelerated rate As time goes by, and we hope to be able to offset some of that decline with the stronger performance By IDT Digital Payments, now with our mobile top up offerings and other digital offerings.

Speaker 5

Got you. Thanks very much. Congratulations. You guys have done a great job.

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks. Have a nice night.

Operator

As there are no more questions, this concludes our question and answer session and conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
IDT Q3 2023
00:00 / 00:00