Research Solutions Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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February 13, 2025

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Please note this call may be recorded and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Steven Hoosier, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jess, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Research Solutions second quarter fiscal year twenty twenty five earnings call. On the call with me today are Rory W. Olivier, President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Nurdan, Chief Financial Officer and Josh Nicholson, Chief Strategy Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1

The release is available on the company's website at researchsolutions.com. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward looking and made under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to the Research Solutions' recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could impact the company's future operating results and financial condition. Also, on today's call, management will reference certain non GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors.

Speaker 1

A reconciliation of those measures to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release as well. Finally, I would like to again remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link on the company's website. I would now like to turn the call over to President and Chief Executive Officer, Roy W. Olivier. Roy?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Steven. Overall, I'm pleased with the second quarter results. Net new ARR and deployments were strong and helped produce nice overall results on the top and bottom line. We delivered a record in terms of organic net new deployments, some of which was due to the reorganization of the sales team into a corporate focused team and an academic focused team. We saw strong results in academic and corporate sales teams during the quarter.

Speaker 2

We are not where we want to be in terms of churn and upsells and we'll continue to focus on improving that area of the business. That said, our customer acquisition costs or CAC and our CAC to LTV or CAC to Lifetime Value remains strong. The overall net ARR growth number is $1,500,000 which is where we need to be in terms of a quarterly run rate. However, it will take a few more quarters before we can consistently deliver that result every quarter. B2C had a strong quarter and we continue to dial on the formula to maximize new ARR derived from digital spend to buy market.

Speaker 2

B2C slowed at the end of the quarter as the holiday break impacted new sign ups and we expect that slowdown to impact January and then ramp up as we get into the second two months of the quarter. I'll review some of the steps we're taking to improve our sales performance, but first I'd like to pass the call over to Bill to walk through our fiscal second quarter financial results in detail. After Bill's portion, I'll be back to address where we are in more detail and I ask Josh Nicholson, the Founder of Cyte and our Chief Strategy Officer to join today to comment on some of the recent news regarding new entries into the AI space and how Research Solutions expects to win in the long term. Bill?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Roy, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I start, I would like to remind everyone that we closed the Resolute AI transaction on 07/28/2023, and the site transaction on 12/01/2023. For Q2 comparisons, the Resolute AI transaction is now fully anniversaried in the business. However, last year, we only had one month of activity related to site. Total revenue for the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five was $11,900,000 a 15.5% increase from the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3

Our platform subscription revenue increased 47% to $4,600,000 The growth was primarily driven by a net increase of platform deployments and the contributions from site, which in addition to having a full three months of activity in the quarter experienced over 75% pro form a revenue growth over the prior year quarter. Platform revenue accounted for about 39% of our total revenue for the quarter compared to approximately 30% in the prior year quarter. We ended the quarter with $19,100,000 in annual recurring revenue or ARR, up 23% year over year, reflecting strong growth in both B2B and B2C platform deployments and our continued sales and upselling efforts. The ARR growth rate is now a purely organic measure as for calculation purposes, both Resolute and Site have been fully anniversaried as of the December. The ARR is broken down as $12,700,000 in B2B ARR and approximately $6,400,000 dollars in normalized ARR associated with sites B2C subscribers.

Speaker 3

Net incremental ARR growth in the quarter was approximately $1,500,000 and we had 61 net B2B platform deployments. As Roy mentioned, the net 61 platform deployments in the quarter were the highest organic performance the company has ever posted. We are pleased with the ARR growth in the quarter as it was not only strong, but also distributed across B2B and B2C as well as multiple products. In addition, it was nice to see the seasonality we discussed on our prior call play out as we expected as both site B2B and B2C academic growth rebounded significantly from Q1. Please see today's press release for how we define and use annual recurring revenue in other non GAAP terms.

Speaker 3

Transaction revenue for the second quarter was $7,300,000 a 1.7 increase from the prior year quarter. It should be noted that Q2 is seasonally our weakest time for transaction revenue. Our total active customer count for the quarter was thirteen eighty four compared to thirteen ninety eight in the same period a year ago. Transaction growth continues to be modest as expected with more growth coming from the academic side of the business. Gross margin for the second quarter was 48.9%, a five forty basis point improvement over the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3

The increase is due to the ongoing revenue mix shift towards the higher margin Platforms business, which is helping us edge closer to producing 50% plus blended gross margins. Platforms business recorded gross margin of 86.5%, a two ten basis point increase compared to the prior year quarter. The result is primarily related to the labor component associated with our platforms business as it continues to remain constant and in some cases decline as the revenue scales. Gross margin in our transaction business decreased 50 basis points to 25.2%. The decrease was primarily related to lower service fees as we've been holding our service fees flat and this quarter had slightly lower paid transactions versus the same quarter last year.

Speaker 3

Total operating expenses in the quarter were $5,700,000 compared to $4,900,000 in the prior year quarter. The increases were related to additional costs in sales and marketing and technology and product development, which includes having a full quarter of site expenses in the period compared to one month in the prior year quarter. There were also increases in non cash depreciation and amortization expense associated with the acquisitions completed in fiscal year twenty twenty four and in stock compensation related to new grants and some vesting on our market based restricted stock. Turning to profitability, the company recorded income from operations of $100,000 compared to a loss from operations of $400,000 in the prior year quarter. Net loss for the quarter was $2,000,000 or $0.07 per share compared to a net loss of $54,000 or $0 in the prior year quarter.

Speaker 3

This quarter's results include a 2,400,000 provision related to increasing the projected contingent earn out liability for Syte. While we experienced little growth in Syte in Q1, the growth results in Q2 were quite dramatic, which caused us to revisit our earn out assumptions. These assumptions do remain subject to further adjustment until the earn out is officially calculated, which will happen at the May this year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $963,000 compared to $318,000 in the year ago quarter. This result is inclusive of $112,000 in commission related expenses associated with working with our former Chairman to assist him in exiting substantially all of his stock position in the quarter.

Speaker 3

Typically, as I have noted on prior calls, there is some seasonality in our adjusted EBITDA results with the lowest quarter being Q2 and our best quarters typically being Q3 and Q4. That said, we view Q2 as a strong performance and on a trailing twelve month basis, our adjusted EBITDA is now $4,600,000 which represents a near 10% margin. When you combine this with the organic growth we are experiencing in the Platforms business, we feel very good about the momentum in the business and where the company is heading. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow, we experienced another strong quarter of cash generation. Cash and cash equivalents as of 12/31/2024 were $7,700,000 versus $6,100,000 on 06/30/2024.

Speaker 3

Cash flow from operations in the quarter was $1,000,000 compared to $300,000 in the prior year quarter and $1,900,000 year to date compared to a burn of $400,000 last year. We are now heading into our strongest seasonal period for cash flow Q3 and Q4. So we continue to expect our cash flow results to improve as we move through the fiscal year. On a trailing 12 basis, we have now generated over $5,800,000 in cash flow from operations. As of quarter end, there were no outstanding borrowings under our revolving line of credit.

Speaker 3

As we look ahead, we are very encouraged by the organic growth we are seeing across the Platforms business. You will note that we did experience a sequential uptick in SG and A expenses for the quarter. Some of this was related to more permanent expenses and some was related to a few unique non recurring type items that I previously discussed. We are cautiously investing in growth, primarily in sales and marketing where we have hired a new CRO and to some extent in technology and product development where we have added some heads. We do however continue to hold the line on G and A expenses.

Speaker 3

All that said, I do not expect SG and A expenses to shift materially upwards or downwards from where we saw them in Q2 And recall that on prior calls, I've indicated that a more normalized run rate for these expenses prior to additional growth investment was more like Q3 of last year, which was $5,400,000 That said, we are growing. So even at these levels, we continue to believe that Q3 and Q4 can be our strongest quarters for profitability. And as a result, we are looking forward to a strong finish over the next six months. I'll now turn the call back to Roy. Roy?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Phil. Regarding the quarter, we did see a nice net new ARR deployment growth as a result of a few things. First, activity and bookings picked up noticeably after the election concluded. Second, our marketing team has been doing a nice job with B2B top of the funnel work driving more pipeline. Third, we split our single sales team into a corporate and academic team, which has resulted in more deal flow in both teams.

Speaker 2

The academic team had a strong quarter in only its second quarter as a team. Finally, we brought in Sefton Cohen, our new Chief Revenue Officer in early November and I think he had an immediate positive impact. We have several priorities for the second half of the year that I think are notable. Some of those include to reiterate marketing has done a great job in driving B2C sign ups and has made huge progress in delivering B2B leads and positioning us as a we will continue that focus during Q3 and Q4. We'll continue to focus as well heavily on building out a professional and disciplined sales team.

Speaker 2

In early January, we flew 45 people, almost one third of our workforce into Atlanta for extensive sales training and to help better standardize our sales process. The team will use the standard approach moving forward with the intent of building predictable and repeatable results. We have already oriented the rest of the organization around those principles and are executing that plan daily. Part of that process may impact our results in the short term, but successful execution will be a huge positive in the long term. As Bill mentioned, you will see additional expenses primarily in terms of sales and marketing investment in the next couple of quarters and that will negatively impact CAC and CAC to LTV.

Speaker 2

That said, we expect to start seeing acceleration in bookings in Q4 and FY26's Q1, which will cause CAC and CAC to LTV to return to normal levels. I remain optimistic and excited about what we're doing and that it is key to our long term growth plans, both organic and non organic. Product also continues to be a priority and while we're working on numerous updates across our portfolio of products, our focus for Q4 and Q3 will be to improve UX and CX across the site and article galaxy platforms, continuing integration of AI into the workflow of both products and improve our instrumentation and analytics. Instrumentation is primarily for us to know and measure what changes we make to the software and whether those changes are working or not. Analytics is both internal and external.

Speaker 2

Externally, it will continue to improve the reporting available to our customers and will provide a clear view of the ROI of the platform and customers' other investments in research. From a business development standpoint, we continue to look at many options, but have nothing to report today and nothing we think is actionable in the short term. We continue to look for things that will enhance our product roadmap, add customers or content and will be accretive to our revenue and EBITDA targets. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Josh Nicholson to provide some context around all the recent AI news. Josh?

Speaker 4

Thanks, Roy. And first, thanks for having me. I'm excited to join this call and appreciate all the investors dialing in, many of which I have met, but in person over the last year. I joined Research Solutions fourteen months ago with the acquisition of Syte. Since then, we've been heads down and hard at work transforming the business and I'm happy with our progress we have made and the continued momentum both from Syte and Research Solutions as a whole.

Speaker 4

Today, I want to talk about how we think about AI and how that relates to recent advances from OpenAI, DeepSeek and others. As we can all appreciate, there's an AI arms race happening amongst the biggest companies and even economies in the world. How do we fit in and how do we win? In 2022, I published a paper entitled How to Build a GPT-three for Science. These are the early days of chat GPT and most use cases seem to be absurd or exploratory.

Speaker 4

You could create an image of Velociraptors working on a skyscraper in the style Lunch atop a skyscraper of 1932, you could use DALL E. If you wanted to create an image, imaginary stand up comedy show with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Larry Page, you could use Chatt EBT. If you wanted to deeply understand Alzheimer's research or any science topic in second based on facts and figures from the world's leading research, you better learn how to do a Boolean search, read scientific papers, and maybe get a PhD. There was and still is a gap for using ChattCPT or any LLM for real research. We started Syte to build an AI native tool to help researchers do better research.

Speaker 4

We joined Research Solutions to accelerate that mission and to build AI solution for research. We believe that AI applied to the workloads of specific verticals is how companies like Research Solutions will win. At Research Solutions, we are leveraging our unique content access and AI rights to the world's research. Combined with a deep focus on research workflows, we can solve problems for researchers that even the biggest AI companies cannot. As AI advances, these benefits will compound and it is what allowed us to create Cyte in the first half.

Speaker 4

We recently put out a press release highlighting this showing that despite Cyte Assistant usage growing orders of magnitude, our costs were declining. The key, and I will repeat this some more, is the vertical focus of Cyte and application of AI to proprietary research data. We can plug in any LLM, whether it is customer's homegrown model, one we develop, or one that will come out tomorrow. Plugging LLMs into research is, however, something only we can do. To summarize, we think the researcher will see more value in a tool that has the flexibility to use one or more LLM as the tool built into their workflow at the right pain point is focused only on quality research and comes with the access rights to provide better results through searching free content as well as content behind the paywall.

Speaker 4

That is and will remain our focus going forward. With that, I'll say thanks again for having me join. And I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator for Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. We'll go first to Jacob Stephen, Lake Street Capital Markets.

Speaker 5

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the results and platform deployments here. Just kind of wanted to help maybe you could help us understand a little bit better on kind of new logo wins versus kind of cross sells in that $1,500,000 of incremental ARR in the quarter?

Speaker 3

Yes, I can start on that and then Roy can add if you'd like. A lot of the quarter was driven by net new sales and so a lot of new logos. I would say it was an outperformance from a new logo perspective and we are still producing well, but underperforming to our expectations on upselling customers. I would say the one exception to that is we are we continue to be very successful at cross selling site into some of our existing article galaxy customers. But again, the real outperformance in the quarter was new logo generation.

Speaker 2

Yes, sorry about that. I was on mute. But Bill is 100% accurate. It was primarily new logos. There is some site upsells into our base in there.

Speaker 2

And our upsells into our upsells of Article Galaxy features into the Article Galaxy products continues to do okay, but is not performing at the level it was a couple of years ago.

Speaker 5

Okay, got it. That's helpful. And then you kind of alluded to this earlier in your comments, Roy, but in December, you do kind of see that seasonal impact of students as they end classes in the for the semester, maybe January starts out a little bit slower, but could you kind of help us think about the impact to kind of overall B2C as we look at our models?

Speaker 2

Yes. Josh may have some commentary on this as well. B2C business is usually fairly strong in our fiscal Q2 and Q3. You have that little pause in mid December to mid late January in there, but we typically would expect to see good performance in this quarter. And then it slows down obviously at the end of our Q4 as people get out of school for the summer.

Speaker 2

But Josh, you want to add anything to that?

Speaker 4

Yes. I don't have too much more to add to that. The seasonality of universities, whether you're an undergraduate student or a professor impacts the business.

Speaker 5

Okay. Got it. Maybe just one last one, kind of honing in on the cost of AI and how that's trended over time. Josh, maybe if you had any color on kind of what how things started, how they're how costs are looking now for AI and where do you think they could go maybe over the next twelve months, so to say?

Speaker 4

Yes. So for costs, as new models are deployed, we're able to assess a variety of different models from the cost of it to the performance of it. And I think we take a measured approach evaluating is there a good ROI on switching this model to a new model. And so the cost since joining Research Solutions largely halved. And as we explore different models, they could go up.

Speaker 4

But again, with the progress in AI, the efficiencies, the performance, all this really kind of is not long, right. And so even the most expensive model this week might be a lot cheaper in a month or two. Bill, maybe you want to say a bit more on that?

Speaker 3

Not too much. I mean, I think you've covered it pretty well. The main point being is, we've been I think Josh has talked about the advantages that we have and that was what the press release we put out as well with our AI solutions. But yes, the costs have been coming down as we're scaling up the searches there. But I don't see that sort of materially impacting our numbers at least in the short term.

Speaker 5

Okay. Got it. Understood. I appreciate the color guys. Good luck.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

We'll go next to Alan Klee with Maxim Group.

Speaker 6

Yes. Hi. When I heard you talking about AI, did I understand that the way you think of your competitive advantage is that you have kind of some exclusive access to the content or was there something else you would also say?

Speaker 2

Yes, I'll add commentary and then Josh. Go ahead, Josh.

Speaker 4

Yes. I would say that the exclusive access really underpins this advantage. But I think looking at AI across different industries and really why I said vertical AI is going into the workflows of researchers and applying AI in a specialized way that a more generalized tool like ChatGPT is not going to do, I think is also the focus and also a differentiator. And so we're really kind of focused from a data advantage and then also going deep on the workflow of researchers.

Speaker 6

Thank you. My other question was, you mentioned that the you're going to calculate the earn out and what it will be in May. When does that gets paid over eight quarters, is that right? And it's cash and stock and when does it start getting paid? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes, sure. That's correct. Once it's calculated in May, the payout is half cash, half stock over eight quarters. It just depends on some timing of the accepted sub expect the payments to start sometime in the July timeframe this year. July, yes, probably July timeframe.

Speaker 6

Okay. Maybe one last question. Is your QA out yet?

Speaker 3

No, that will be filed tomorrow.

Speaker 6

Could there, can you just tell us then what the on the front page you usually say what the share count is as of kind of yesterday or something, what that number is?

Speaker 3

Yes, it's roughly $32,600,000

Speaker 6

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Operator

We'll go next to Peter Ratlover with Arco Capital.

Speaker 7

Hey guys, Josh, congratulations on the earn out. And I guess on that, like can you guys just hone in on the 75% growth that I think you guys talked about for at least one of the segments or at least the or the whole site thing? And I know and how much of that 75% was the cross selling that you mentioned versus what's organic? And how did you get there? Like I said, I mean, it's a great number.

Speaker 7

I'm just kind of curious what drove that point.

Speaker 2

Bill, you want to touch the first part of that?

Speaker 3

Yes. I'll start with a few comments. Yes. So yes, we basically took kind of where we had one month and we took the two months pre acquisition together and then compared it to this year and that's what's producing a 75% pro form a result. I would say it is definitely a mix of cross sell and new sale, but most again emphasis on the new sale.

Speaker 3

I think we still have a lot of upside for cross sell within the Particle Galaxy base, which is a positive thing for kind of future growth. But when you think back through site had a great product, but it was not a large team and really didn't have a lot of sales capacity as a standalone. So once we're able to get site under our umbrella, get our sales teams trained, get some marketing behind it and also then say, hey, we've got some warm customers we could take you to, that has really led to a lot of growth. I think the other thing which where I alluded to is the site sort of focus us to say, hey, we have to have some specialization around corporate and academic and really focus in on academic. And that's why we split those sales teams and that academic sales team has had a lot of success.

Speaker 3

And it's a very cohesive group that really produced a bunch of sales towards the end of the quarter in December. And so there's just a nice ramp there. And that's really a lot of where we're getting this nice growth out of site. So Roy, Josh, I don't know if you want to add to that.

Speaker 2

No. Well said, Josh.

Speaker 4

No, I don't have anything to add to that.

Speaker 7

No, I mean, look, that's great. Like just to know that there's a piece of a big piece of the business that's growing organically at such a high rate. I mean, I think that's like a very important highlight and I appreciate you calling that. And yes, I mean, Josh, at what point do you think people will start to get the moment where like Chad GVT is not enough and they think they need more and then they search for more and realize that site is the one with most of the information. How do we get there where the moment where our competitive advantage lies happens?

Speaker 4

Yes. I mean, I think people are starting to see that on the long tail where you have researchers and research intensive organizations taking a look and site winning out on contracts versus some of these others. Obviously, we're a lot smaller, have a lot smaller marketing spend than these groups you mentioned. And so I think keeping our heads down and focused on really building specialized workflows and leveraging the AI to that is kind of how we'll win. And so I expect we might need to be the flashiest, but really leveraging that data and going deep on the workflow is again kind of the advantage that we need to take.

Speaker 7

Okay. Well, thanks for the call guys.

Operator

It appears that we have no further questions at this time. I'll turn the program back over to Mr. Olivier for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks everyone for joining. As a reminder, we will be participating in the Roth Conference in Dana Point, California, March 16 through the eighteenth. Qualified investors that would like to attend or schedule a meeting should contact either their Roth sales rep or three part advisors. We look forward to speaking with you in May to discuss our third quarter fiscal twenty twenty five results.

Speaker 2

Have a great evening.

Operator

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

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