Algorhythm Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 14, 2023

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Singing Machines' fiscal 2023 Financial Results Earnings Call. My name is Travis, and I will be your operator. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. We will have a brief Safe Harbor and then we'll get started. This call contains forward looking statements under the U.

Operator

S. Federal Security Laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or present expectations. A description of some of the risks and uncertainties can be found in the reports that we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the cautionary statement included in our current and periodic filings. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary Atkinson, company's CEO.

Operator

Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Travis. Hi, good afternoon everybody. This is Gary Atkinson, Singing Machine's CEO. Joining me on today's call is also Lionel Marquis, the Company CFO and Bernard Romello, the Company Chief Revenue Officer. I'd like to start off today's call by thanking everybody Thank you for taking the time to listen in and participate in our fiscal year 2023 earnings call.

Speaker 1

The 12 months ended March 31, 2023 was a challenging year for simulation, not unlike what many other consumer electronics companies experienced last year. Coming out of the multi year pandemic and subsequent global supply chain breakdown in calendar 2021, our retail partners, Suppliers and logistics partners all faced uncertainty as to the supply of semiconductors, manufacturing and transportation. As we moved into calendar 2022, these supply chain issues created a backlog of inventory that finally entered the retail pipeline in the early As the year went on, consumers coped with the negative economic impact Of the strong inflationary pressures, raising rising interest rates and the conflict in Ukraine, Retailers were faced with higher inventory levels and lowering consumer demand, which consequently caused them to cut new orders. All of these factors unfortunately combined together to negatively impact our 2022 holiday retail season, Which again unfortunately dominated what was otherwise a very successful and encouraging year for our company and our team. Before our CFO, Lionel Marquis, provides a deeper insight into our fiscal year financial performance, I would like to take a few minutes to highlight some of our key milestones That we achieved during the year.

Speaker 1

First, we successfully uplisted to the NASDAQ in May of 2022. This was a major accomplishment for our team as this represented many months of hard work, persistence and diligence. As I'm sure all of you listening today are aware, this is a very rigorous process and we view our uplifting as a very positive indication of the level of transparency and accountability our company embraces on a daily basis. As part of the uplifting process, we elected to expand our Board of Directors significantly. We did this in part as a requirement for the uplifting, but more importantly to solicit the advice, knowledge and experience of several Very successful business leaders with expertise within the consumer electronics, legal, finance and accounting fields.

Speaker 1

Their ongoing input and counsel will be greatly appreciated as we look to execute on the next phase of our growth plan. To uplift to a national exchange has immediately benefited the company during this fiscal year as we successfully Capital raises on better terms than what we have executed in the past. We successfully raised $4,000,000 in a concurrent capital raise during our uplifting Back last May, we also announced the $1,700,000 at the market ATM transaction in October and closed it out in May of this year. Neither transaction involved any warrants or any other long term derivative preferential rights for investors, keeping our capital structure as simple and clean as possible Moving on, operationally for fiscal 2023, we capitalized on the largest We need to expand our distribution, which came from Walmart, already our largest single retail partner today. Walmart has done internal research and determined that karaoke belongs in electronics.

Speaker 1

It was not just a toy item. It was also an entertainment product for adults and families. They revamped their locations to make the consumer electronics department a central feature with a more prominent centralized location within their stores. As part of this development, Walmart asked our team to expand our shelf space commitment, Showcasing our higher end karaoke products in the newly expanded electronics department. At the same time, We were able to maintain our shelf space in the toy department, showcasing some of our newer toyetic offerings.

Speaker 1

The net impact for the singing machine was that we sold several million in incremental orders to Walmart throughout the fiscal year, Offsetting some of what otherwise was a challenging holiday retail environment. For this coming year between toys and electronics departments at Walmart, Walmart stores will carry a total of 14 singing machine products on its shelves. While Walmart presented one of our best domestic growth opportunities last year, the Canadian market represents our clearest path to growth In fiscal 2024 and beyond. As a result, we've doubled down our commitment and focused on this market, retaining one of the best in class sales reps In Canada, our team has deep relationships with a number of key big box retailers and we have seen in the period after closing the fiscal year The steps that we took late in fiscal 2023 are now starting to have a positive impact on our international sales moving forward. Finally, we've examined our global karaoke growth opportunities.

Speaker 1

We've ultimately concluded that the karaoke market can be divided into 4 different subsets. Number 1 is the in home karaoke consumer product Number 2 is the high end karaoke commercial market number 3, the emerging automotive market And finally number 4, the hospitality market. For our company, we have been highly successful within the in home market And we enjoy the leading market share in North America for in home karaoke product sales. However, as this year has proven, This segment presents certain challenges and volatility, namely low single digit industry sales growth, Challenging supply chain and a strong reliance on holiday retail consumer demand. As part of our strategic plan, our team We're seeking to accelerate our revenue growth, improve overall profitability and diversify our revenue sources.

Speaker 1

In order to accomplish this, we have identified the automotive and hospitality space as areas where we intend to devote resources Leading up to our coming annual shareholder meeting in September, Our team has been hard at work on new initiatives that we believe will be encouraging relative to the overall outlook for the company. Our growth opportunities are compelling and we believe we have the brand, the experience and the track record of innovation That should serve us well as we look to execute on these opportunities. With this in mind, I would like to now turn the call over to Lionel Marquis, company CFO, to give greater details on the results of the operations for fiscal 2023. Go ahead, Lionel.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. Without any further delay, I'd like to walk through the results of Operations of our fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. Let's start with revenues. For the revenues for the fiscal year 2023 were approximately $39,300,000 This represents a decrease of approximately $8,200,000 or 17.3 percent As compared to approximately $47,500,000 for fiscal year 2022.

Speaker 2

We experienced a broad based decrease in sales including Product is 4 out of our 5 box retail partners. The decrease in sales was largely due to 2 main factors. First, our customers began the holiday season with excess inventory due to late deliveries in calendar 2021. And due to the logjam supply chains during the later stages of the global pandemic, this generated an overstock situation or position in the 1st few months of 20 Which made the retail buying representative slightly more conservative during the summer of 2022. Secondly, the news of economic recession, Inflation, interest rate hikes dampened our retail partners' expectations for the holiday season, which all resulted in these customers taking more risk averse approach to buying Leading up to the 2022 holiday season.

Speaker 2

Several of our major customers required significant co op promotion incentives on goods sold to assist in holiday inventory sell through. Co op promotion incentives for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023 Increase of $2,300,000 or 6 percent of net sales as compared to approximately $1,700,000 or 3.6 percent of net sales for the Year ended March 31, 2022. Talk about gross profit. Gross profit for the fiscal 2023 was approximately $9,200,000 yielding a 23.4 percentage of total revenues Compared to approximately $10,800,000 or 22.8 percent of sales for fiscal 2022. The The net effect resulted in a decrease of approximately $1,600,000 as compared to the same period in 2022.

Speaker 2

If margin had held constant at 2022 levels, the decline in gross profits would have been slightly higher at 1,900,000 Gross profit margin for fiscal 2023 was 23.4% compared to 22.8% for fiscal 2022, an increase of 0.6 margin points. Contributing to this change was the fact that the company was able to successfully lower It's overall logistics expense during the fiscal year saving approximately $1,700,000 in costs compared to the prior year. However, higher co op costs to incentivize retailers to fulfill existing orders increased by approximately $600,000 In addition, the company incurred $800,000 in non cash expenses relating to inventory reserves and inventory write offs. Excluding these non cash expenses, cash gross margins actually improved 280 basis points and not the 60 basis points for Fiscal 2023. Operating expenses.

Speaker 2

During the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, operating expenses increased to 12,900,000 Compared to $10,700,000 during the prior year, this represented an increase of $2,200,000 or 20.6%. Excluding Liarly, formulaic selling expenses driven heavily off of direct sales performance, general and operating expenses Increased approximately 9 point up to approximately $9,200,000 during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023 compared to approximately 6,900,000 During fiscal year March 31, 2022 an increase of $2,300,000 There was an increase in legal, professional, investor relations and stock transfer costs of Approximately $900,000 in part related to public the public offering, NASDAQ uplifting, change in control issues, regulatory filings, Delaware franchise fees, preparation costs related to The credit agreement with 5th Third Bank and arbitration settlement of the alleged employment practice violation lawsuit against the former temporary employee. Excluding the Delaware fees of just over almost $200,000 almost all of the remaining 900,000 Increase was largely one time in nature. There was an increase in compensation expense of $500,000 primarily due to one time compensation expense of 400 $1,000 related to our change in control and employment continuation agreement with the Chief Financial Officer. The remaining 100,000,000 The increased cost is primarily related to the expansion of the Board of Directors, which also included Substantial part of it was non cash equity compensation.

Speaker 2

Okay. Liquidity as of March 31, 2023 At cash on hand $2,900,000 as compared to cash on hand of $2,300,000 on March 31, 2022. The The company reduced its overall working capital investments by approximately $5,200,000 during the year as the management team focused heavily on inventory management And building more liquid short term capital position. The company also heavily reduced its short term liabilities. Current liabilities As of March 31, decreased 49 percent from $12,000,000 to $6,100,000 during fiscal 2023.

Speaker 2

As a result, the company had No short term debt meaning no on the revolving debt and 67% less trade payables at fiscal year end. As a result of all these developments on March 31, 2023, our working capital was approximately $9,100,000 During the next 12 month periods, we plan on financing our working capital needs primarily from a combination of vendor financing, revolving line of credit, proceeds collected after the fiscal year ended from the completion of our ATM or at the market offering. The company believes that its cash on hand working capital net of cash, cash to be generated from its operating forecast along with availability of cash from its credit facilities will be adequate to meet the company's liquidity requirements At least the next 12 months of the filing as of the filing of this report. I would like to now turn the call over to Bernardo Mello, our Chief Revenue Officer, who will share some insight into our key accounts and current outlook as we build towards the 2023 holiday retail season. Bernardo?

Speaker 3

Yes. Thank you, Lino and hello everyone. Thanks for listening to our presentation today. I'm pleased To have the responsibility of providing you some everyone with some color on how our key relationships have weathered the recent economic Headwinds as well as our best estimate for how we see coming holiday for the coming holiday sales seasons. First, I'd like to provide a brief summary of the overall health and stability of our key account relationships.

Speaker 3

For year to date, our overall commitments from customers are in line with demand from last year. Our largest accounts are being very precise about ordering, making commitments a little later In the year than normal, but we believe this should benefit our profitability in several ways. First, our manufacturing partners are just Really eager to win our businesses here. As obviously in China things are tough there. They have been making some pricing concessions for our domestic business.

Speaker 3

We've seen the container Costs decreased from at peak $18,000 to $20,000 a container. We're seeing containers now ship as low as $2,000 in some cases. We also expect sell through rates decline dramatically due to the conservative buying patterns That they're making. Similarly, we have our co op costs being generally flat as buyers truly need our inventory just to meet Black Friday sales urge. Lastly, we see chargeback expenses and inventory reserves decreasing for the same reason.

Speaker 3

While these costs are all expected to decrease, our sales prices to our retail partners remain unchanged. There's virtually no overstock remaining from the lingering effects of COVID-nineteen, we successfully worked all of the excess off without an inventory write downs Or bad debt from our retail partners. We have been in a very clean net position with our clients and we expect significant reduction or remain flat in our co op or other post sales adjustments that normally negatively impact our gross margin. As a result, we anticipate gross margin to greatly improve and helping to impact net earnings even as net sales remain largely on sale Looking beyond the holiday season, we're also executing a number of new and exciting fronts to help drive revenues into 2024 and Beyond, we're expanding our relationship with Walmart. We see Amazon becoming a strong source of growth In our online sales effort, as we have recently signed a new agency that's Top tier in this industry.

Speaker 3

So we're seeing some new strategies for Amazon and we think we can make a strong push there. We're also very bullish On the prospects of landing 1 or more pilot accounts in the auto space and our marketing efforts are expected to ramp up as we build market awareness for our integrated karaoke solutions and customization capabilities as we look to become embedded into the Yaddo Entertainment console. I look forward to providing further updates soon. With that, I'll turn the call over back to our CEO, Gary, to wrap up some our presentation.

Speaker 1

Perfect. Thank you, Bernardo. I want to make sure we save some time here for some Q and A. But Finally, I just I would like to emphasize how proud I am of our team's accomplishments during this past year. Obviously, we're as a management team, we're disappointed in the overall results from a financial perspective.

Speaker 1

But given how fiscal 2023 began with a great deal of uncertainty and retailers adjusting To the lingering effects of COVID and its impacts on logistics, inventory and obviously retail consumers, I felt like we adapted rapidly. We positioned our brand and products in a way to capture as much market share as possible, Especially with the overall challenges that we've all been seeing in the market. And finally, it's equally important to say that we've made A lot of great progress on a lot of exciting new fronts. So transitioning to NASDAQ, taking key steps to enter the automotive and Students of the hospitality spaces within karaoke are all part of our long term focus on sustained profitable growth, Maintaining our best in class brand and world class partnerships in all we do. So that being said, I believe 2023 reflected our vision well and the milestones that we accomplished are just only the beginning of where we intend to go.

Speaker 1

So with that being said, I'd like to turn the call back over to our moderator and open it up now for any Q and A.

Operator

We will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. We do have a question from Dodd Richards, Private Investor.

Speaker 4

Okay. I would like to ask, was there anything about the holiday season that you were unprepared for or otherwise Could have been executed better. And I'll follow-up that. How does the holiday season, this holiday season buying the large retailers compared to last year?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean I can

Speaker 1

Yes. You want to jump on that, Bernard? Go for it.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, I'll just I'll give some insight and then you could do it. But I think the biggest thing that we were unprepared for is Our retailers in the past have been really good about committing to their forecast and their order plan. And it had never changed for all the years. We've been dealing with those retailers And they delayed the orders longer and longer into the season.

Speaker 3

And so finally, We had to increase our co ops to sort of entice them and assure them that we were going to get sell through. But Yes, just the lateness of them, of how they reacted and how that affected our business. This season, we've gone everybody's gone a little bit conservative. I mean, we still got out of the woodwork grid with How the economy is, but we have a good plan and orders are starting to ship Now in late July August and we should see a good August and September going for the holiday season.

Speaker 1

And then I'll also just add to that too by saying that I think the biggest difference we're seeing this year is our retailers are Their distribution pipeline is much cleaner this year than it was last year. So last year, we entered the holiday season. There was a lot of inventory That had piled up after the supply chain struggles. And so the retailers have to clean through that inventory first before they started placing new purchase orders. Whereas this year, they've had a they've already had a long chance to wipe through that inventory and we're starting off on a much cleaner slate.

Speaker 1

So We're feeling more confident this year that it's we should be seeing more repeat Replenishment orders coming in just given how clean the channels are. So I hope that answers the question.

Speaker 3

Yes. And I think one thing also that just know Gary, then one thing we want to really emphasize to everybody, we have not lost or decreased any shelf space. As a matter of fact, There's some increases in shelf space. The numbers might be a little bit more conservative, but our presence on the shelf space is still remaining very strong And in some cases, it's increased in size. So I did want to point that out.

Speaker 4

I do have a follow-up question, if you don't mind. How do you see the supply chain evolving? I know you mentioned the container prices coming down or cost coming down. Is there a lot of noise around global logistics, Especially with regards to China right now and do you anticipate this having any impact on your ability to ship product for the foreseeable future?

Speaker 1

Yes. We're seeing I mean yes, sure. I mean we're seeing and obviously The global logistics and supply chain market has really settled down considerably since 2021, 2022. We're seeing almost like record lows for container prices to ship a container from China to Los Angeles. They're now down to $2,000 a container or less.

Speaker 1

And previously, they've been as high as $20,000 a container. So We're seeing significant cost savings just bringing goods into the states. And in general, trucking is getting easier. Ports seem to be flowing better. So it's really a return kind of back to normal, if I can say that.

Speaker 1

And so everything right now seems to be moving smoothly.

Operator

Perfect. Thank you for taking my questions.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Scott Davids, Private Investor.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

Well, thank you for letting me take your question here. I really have 2 basic questions and it's kind of what you left us with at the very end of Your wrap up Mr. Atkinson is, can you kind of give us a sense why you see I'm excited about this automotive opportunity. I mean, is this from your carpool karaoke experience? And my other one, So karaoke has been in bars for years and there's a very strong link between bars and hospitality and Why would you see this as a growth market?

Speaker 1

That's a great question. So I'll start off by answering the automotive part of your question first. So Yes. I mean, we're really excited about the automotive category in general. You're right, Carpool Karaoke has given us At least 5 years of experience in the market developing microphones for cars.

Speaker 1

And that's not a trivial thing. And when we went to the Consumer Electronics Show Last January, when we announced our entrance into the automotive space, we saw overwhelming and honestly overwhelming response To the product, we've built a microphone that integrates with most major automotive brands. And we saw a lot of interest in the product. We've got the support of one of our strategic investors In the Singray Group that has the content that works in the infotainment system Of most cars, so we've seen the success. I mean Tesla was probably the first to launch Microphones in their cars, it's only in the China market.

Speaker 1

But from what we understand that's been successful. And so we've had a lot of conversations with a lot of major automotive brands to bring karaoke microphones into the car. Now, it hasn't gone as quickly as we had hoped. A lot of these automotive guys, they Just I think in the broader sort of economic environment, they've been a little bit more conservative. I think the other thing that we've been dealing with is that They're looking forward they're building cars they're developing cars now that will be on the road in 2024, 2025.

Speaker 1

So It's been a little slower than we would have liked to sort of start signing our first partnerships, but the interest is there, the market is huge. When you think about the millions and millions of new cars, particularly EV cars that are coming on the road every day, it's a big market and There's a lot of interest from these automotive brands. So it's something where I'm really excited about. I know the team is excited about. And we're just going to Keep pushing on it and hopefully start attending some of these automotive shows like the LA Auto Show or the New York Auto Show Just to stay in front of these brands and again, I feel confident that we'll be able to be a big player in that space.

Speaker 1

And I guess there was a part 2 to your question as well. So I think you were asking about something I said earlier about the hospitality market and that's another area that we've been really Thinking hard about and looking at carefully, I would say right now the karaoke market, the venue market is very Sort of fragmented space, there's a lot of individual players. So basically mom and pop operators In almost every single major market, but there really hasn't been a single brand or company that has Really sort of led the forefront in terms of innovation in the space. And so we just see we see a huge opportunity to disrupt what a traditional karaoke venue looks like. And really the goal for us is to be the Sort of the top golf of karaoke, if that analogy makes sense, in the sense that we envision a Concept that is like upscale, it's gamified, there's a technology component to it.

Speaker 1

And obviously, it's sort of wrapped up in a high end upscale physical environment with Higher quality food and beverage. And again, no one's really stepped up to consolidate that market and really lead the category There. So we just see a tremendous, tremendous opportunity to do that. And so it's something we've been really looking at and thinking hard about.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you.

Operator

We have no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to today's speakers.

Speaker 1

Excellent. All right. Well, I appreciate everybody's time today to listen to our presentation. So we look forward to talking to you all again at our Q1 earnings report, which is just right around the corner. So with that, Happy Friday everybody.

Speaker 1

Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you all soon. Thank you.

Operator

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Algorhythm Q4 2023
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads