Earnings Labs

Bridgeline Digital, Inc. (BLIN)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 11, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Bridgeline Digital First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this call will be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Mr. Michael Prinn, CFO. Please go ahead.

Michael Prinn

Analyst

Thank you, Catherine, and good afternoon, everyone. I’m pleased to welcome you to our first quarter conference call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding Bridgeline Digital that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future events or results. These statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time, and we undertake no obligation to inform you if they do. Results that we report today should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, regulatory and other factors could cause Bridgeline’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward-looking statements made today. For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may impact our business, please review the reports and documents filed from time-to-time by Bridgeline Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also please note that on the call today, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about the company’s financial performance. We report our GAAP results, as well as provide a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial measures in our earnings release. You could obtain a copy of our earnings release by visiting our website. I’ll now turn the call over to Ari Kahn, Bridgeline Digital’s Chief Operating Officer.

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. I’m happy to report that we delivered our second consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Recurring revenue and gross margin have both grown and we did this while reducing our operating expenses. All of these improvements are on both a year-over-year basis as well as in sequential quarters. Non-recurring low margin services revenue decreased as we focused on new customer acquisition and high margin recurring license revenue. This focused drove an overall increase in gross profit. Growing revenue primarily through sales of subscription and perpetual licenses will continue to be our focus. The speed at which our financials have improved is exciting and we have both innovated and invested in increasing our market share while managing the bottom line. Our strategic goals with Express solutions are ahead of schedule. We have both commerce and franchise customer Express solution wins in the first quarter. Its early success demonstrates the strength of inbound demand for quick-to-market enterprise class web solutions. Express solutions are high-margin SaaS-licensed sales with shorter sales cycles thanks to the unique capabilities that provide a clear return on investment for our customers. In addition to our success with Express solutions, this quarter’s new enterprise customers include a residential mortgage company that services more than 1.5 million loans, totaling $350 billion. We also signed a multibillion dollar manufacturing company. Acquiring large companies like these proves the strength of our platform and can lead to new technical innovations. In the first quarter, we launched the website for Camp Bow Wow, a franchise customer with more than 180 websites now running on our iAPPS ds platform. We also released iAPPS 5.4 which includes expanded marketing automation capabilities for franchises. Sports Clips, a franchise with over 1,400 websites, can now use iAPPS to engage with 6…

Michael Prinn

Analyst

Thanks, Ari. So I’ll review the results of operations for our first quarter, ended December 31, 2015. First quarter revenue was $4.2 million compared to $5 million in the first quarter of last year. Although this revenue number is lower than last year, as we mentioned in our previous calls, we’ve been focused on higher margin revenue and on aligning our cost structure to our revenue forecast. You will see significant improvement to our bottom line, which I’ll talk about in more detail. Let me give some additional color first around the various components of revenue. Our subscription and perpetual license revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2016 increased 10% to $1.5 million compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Our licensing and our hosting revenue combined for the first quarter now make up more than 44% of our total revenue compared to about 36% of the total revenue in the first quarter of last year. This continued increase in our license and hosting revenue aligned with our improved cost structure has enabled us to significantly improve our bottom line. And the Express solutions that Ari spent some time talking about will help to drive a higher proportion of license revenue to service revenue. Both of the engagements that we closed in the first quarter for Express solutions had a make-up of about 65% license revenue and 35% services revenue. So really, two-thirds license and one-third services. This compares to probably a 75%-25% split in some of our larger historical enterprise engagements with the 75% being services. As we’ve mentioned, our focus on quicker-to-market Express solutions to complement our existing enterprise business is what we believe will help transform Bridgeline to a true fast business model in the future. Our recurring revenue, which consists of SaaS licenses, annual…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Howard Halpren with Taglich Brothers. Your line is open.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

You had results that you promised that it’s a good sign for going forward.

Michael Prinn

Analyst

Thanks, Howard.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

First question is regarding the two enterprise customers. Would they impact any of the revenue in the first quarter?

Ari Kahn

Analyst

They’ll derive some of the revenue in - or like in the first quarter, no, very little but it closes at the end of the quarter.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

Okay. And will that yield basically or help boost a little bit of the services revenue going forward?

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Yes, it will add services revenue and license revenue as well. The enterprise customers generally have a large services implementation. They have very specific custom needs. So they’ll have a fair amount of services upfront and then the ongoing licenses through the rest of the life of the customer.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

Okay. And is it a little bit more adjustment to be made on some of the margin services revenue that is there or have you sort of come to the end and now we’re really focusing on driving growth in that area?

Michael Prinn

Analyst

Yes, Howard, I think we’ve come to the end. We’ve got very select amount of customers that have sort of non-iAPPS or lower service margins. And I think going forward, we’re focused on increasing that top line. And the customers that still remain that aren’t on the iAPPS platform, there’s either a strategic reason or maybe a very attractive bill rate that goes along with them still being with us.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

Okay. And the two new customers for the Express solutions, are both of them part of a recurring monthly revenue model?

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Yes. They are part of recurring months of revenue model. And as Express solutions, they have very small services compared to the license. And the sale cycle for both of those was less than a quarter compared to an enterprise customer which is often a several months sales.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

Okay. I guess could you describe maybe a little bit about I guess the sale cycle plus, are you adding some sales people, what kind of pipeline do you hope to build by, I don’t know, say Q4 in terms of the Express solutions?

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Yes. Well, for the Express solutions, by the fourth quarter, we really started off with last quarter with not really having any plus line at all. We didn’t expect to sell Express services until this quarter or second quarter but we’ve still sold two during last quarter. So we would expect to see a couple of million dollars in the pipeline in the fourth quarter, a couple of million dollars from the sales of the Express solutions achieved in the pipeline. It’s very doable and we’re filling that pipeline right now. One thing that’s really encouraging with the express solutions is that last quarter, one of our customers which is a franchise of dental and orthodontics offices is a franchise customer and we closed that whole deal in one quarter. And traditional franchise customers are often nine months sale cycles. So that shows how much quicker with Express solution, it really is packaging up best practices and key features for our customers to be able to launch a site very quickly or to extend their own site or quickly those sales can happen.

Michael Prinn

Analyst

So Howard, I guess just to add a little bit financially to that, we’ve said this before but it’s probably worth repeating. On the enterprise level, we could have a six to nine months maybe sales cycle for an enterprise engagement. And then probably a six months delivery cycle and then that’s the path to get to maybe $4,000 a month in SaaS description revenue. Our Express solution as Ari mentioned, we had one that sort of popped up and we closed down within a quarter. And then that’s really a delivery cycle of less than three months. And then that’s the path to $2,000 to $3,000 per month in subscription license revenue. So shorter sale cycle, shorter delivery time and still probably 75% of the monthly SaaS revenue that we would see for a larger enterprise customer. So it’s just the first two, but eventually, we’re going to work on volume and I think that’s really going help the mix of what we look like when you look at services and license revenue and the percentages and sort of drive that higher percentage of license revenue and obviously higher margin revenue.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

And will the implementation especially with the demo franchise, how important is that going to be? Is this [indiscernible] first reference customers for your sales team to go out and say this is what we have and this is what we can do.

Ari Kahn

Analyst

It is going to be important to be able to show that to new prospective customers. And one of the great things with Express solutions is I use the term configuration versus programming. So with an enterprise, the traditional enterprise or franchise customer, we have to program a bunch of custom business license. And instead with the Express solutions, we’re configuring their site to have their logo, their layouts, their color scheme, their product, but we’re not doing a bunch of custom coding. So when we show them as a reference customer going forward, we’ll be able to also be able to explain the explain that exactly what you see right here, you can rearrange, reconfigure it to create your own look and feel. But that functionality is yours out of the box.

Howard Halpren

Analyst

Okay. Well, congratulations and I look forward to this coming year.

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Great.

Michael Prinn

Analyst

Thanks for your support, Howard. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And I am showing no further questions in the queue at this time.

Ari Kahn

Analyst

Okay, great. Well, everybody, we really appreciate the support and patience of all of you, our shareholders. And it’s our goal to continue to build the scale of the business model which in turn is going to bring shareholder value. So thank you for joining us today. And have a good afternoon.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude today’s program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.