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FiEE, Inc. (FIEE)

Q4 2020 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 9, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Stephanie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Minim's fourth quarter and year-end conference call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the floor over to your host for today's call, Mr. Sean Doherty, Chief Financial Officer of Minim. Mr. Doherty, you may proceed.

Sean Doherty

Analyst

Thank you, Stephanie, and welcome to everyone joining Minim's Fourth Quarter and Year-end 2020 Financial Results Call this morning. I'm Sean Doherty, CFO of Minim. And today, I'm joined by Jeremy Hitchcock, our Executive Chairman; and Gray Chynoweth, our CEO. For our agenda today, we'll start with Gray, who will review our operational progress in the quarter, and then I will provide more insight into our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year. After that, Jeremy will share some high-level strategic perspective, following which Gray will share some comments on our outlook for 2021. At the end of the call, we will open the floor to questions. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the future including expected revenue, operating margins, expenses and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the Investor Relations page for additional risk factors discussed in Minim's filings with the SEC. Please note, too, that today's call may include the use of non-GAAP numbers which our management utilizes to analyze our performance. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP numbers to the most comparable GAAP measures is available in our most recent press release as well as in our periodic filings with the SEC. These materials are available on our Investor Relations website, ir.minim.com. I'd now like to turn the call over to Gray Chynoweth, Chief Executive Officer.

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst

Good morning, and welcome to Minim's Q4 and Year-end 2020 Conference Call. I'm pleased that our senior team is here with me to discuss the progress we've made in the past few months as well as our exciting plans for 2021. I was first introduced as CEO on our last conference call in November. There I shared with you my enthusiasm for combining the strength of Minim's proprietary AI-enabled software platform with Zoom Telephonics' market-leading Motorola-branded hardware to meet the demand for products that make connected homes safe and easy to use for life and work. The intervening months have provided more proof points that support our plan to drive sustainable growth. Let's begin by highlighting some of our financial metrics. Once again, this quarter, we delivered record net revenue of $13.7 million and $48 million for Q4 and 2020, respectively. We generated improved gross margins in Q4, 33% in Q4 and 833 basis point improvement over Q4 of 2019. For the full year of 2020, gross margins were 28%, a slight reduction from 2019. We grew the top line by launching new products and increasing production, which allowed us to meet the growing demand for advanced home networking products and services. We saw this demand in higher sales in November and December, especially through Amazon and other retailers. And we drove margin improvement through the addition of software revenue and cost management. Minim delivered exceptionally well for our customers during the past year, earning their confidence as a trusted supplier at a time when home connectivity has never been so essential. One of the critical accomplishments in the fourth quarter was completing the merger of Minim into Zoom Telephonics and rebranding the company as Minim. We have smoothly integrated the 2 companies across departments. In other words, we're well…

Sean Doherty

Analyst

Thank you, Gray. I will be reviewing our financials for both the fourth quarter and full year 2020. As Gray noted, we had record revenues for the quarter and the full year, in both cases, a significant improvement from the prior year period. Growth in our top line continues to be driven by higher retail demand associated with more working and studying from home due to the pandemic, with particular strength in sales to Amazon, Best Buy and Target during the fourth quarter. Gross margin improved in Q4, but was slightly down for full year 2020, reaching 32.8% and 28.4%, respectively, up 833 basis points and down 64 basis points, respectively, from the same periods in 2019. Q4 marked the third successive quarter of gross margin improvement and reflected the addition of software revenues as well as our success in managing product-related expenses. I'll note, however, that we incurred onetime expenses associated with the merger, primarily during the fourth quarter, and those reduced net income by approximately $1.3 million in Q4 and by $1.6 million for full year 2020. Accordingly, the net loss for Q4 was $1.2 million or a loss of $0.04 on a per share basis, compared with a net loss of $1.1 million or a loss of $0.06 per share in the fourth quarter of 2019. For the full year, net loss was $3.9 million or a loss of $0.15 per share in 2020 compared to the prior year's net loss of $3.3 million or a loss of $0.18 per share. The full year 2020 net loss includes $2.8 million in tariffs. Excluding these tariffs, non-GAAP net loss in 2020 would have been $1.1 million. We also incurred $1.5 million in temporary supplemental airfreight expense this year, $1.6 million of merger-related expenses and $1.06 million of other…

Jeremy Hitchcock

Analyst

Thank you, Sean. Since I collaborated with Gray to scale Dyn, I've been motivated to consumerize and democratize home network security. After Dyn's platform was overtaken by the Mirai botnet of 2016 through the hundreds of thousands of baby camera exploits and others, I founded Minim in 2017 to advance the smart home. Minim founders wanted to give consumers the same protections on their data that was afforded by big enterprises. Soon after Minim delivered an AI-driven WiFi management platform to service providers, in May of 2019, I joined the Zoom Board. Zoom had selected Minim software to fortify their connectivity hardware because they, too, saw the consumer struggle with network security and WiFi management. Now as Executive Chairman, I'm excited that the combined company has powerful hardware and powerful software offerings to secure and manage home networks everywhere. There's no better time than now. The global wireless technology market has exploded, driven by the work-from-home movement, network upgrades, smart home adoption, over-the-top streaming, gaming, remote education, telehealth and more. There are 1.1 billion home broadband subscribers in need of software-optimized connectivity, and we know that Minim meets those needs. Gray talked about sustainable growth, and that's our north star as we drive our plans. Minim will continue to drive customer-led innovation while generating higher gross margins through the distribution of our Software-as-a-Service. This strategy will build both exceptional enterprise value, enable us to deploy capital for the best possible return. I'm confident that today we have brought together an industry-leading team with an innovative product road map, smart operational planning and a modern market approach. I'm really proud of this team, and I look forward to the continued success. With that, let me turn the floor back over to Gray to provide some thoughts about our outlook for the coming year.

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst

Thanks, Jeremy. As you can tell, we're really excited about the opportunities we're facing, pleased with the products and technology we are providing and confident of our strategy to capture more than our fair share of the total available market. While we are not planning to share specific financial guidance today, I did want to provide some commentary on our expectations for 2021. This includes growing net sales again in 2021, increasing the proportion of subscription revenue and net sales, expanding our retail channels with key important distribution partners, increasing the number of homes passed through our ISP channels, driving meaningful improvement in gross margins, expanding our product portfolio with at least 3 significant new product rollouts, continuing our ranking as 1 of the top 3 modems sold at retail. As we move forward, we'll update you on our progress against these goals. Once we achieve a few quarters of solid track record as a combined company, we'll then once again aim to provide our investors with more specific financial guidance. With that, operator, we are ready for questions. As I mentioned earlier, Nicole Zheng, our Chief Marketing Officer, is also on the line with us today for any questions about specific marketing initiatives.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Joe Wytanis, a shareholder.

Joe Wytanis

Analyst

I have 2 questions. The first to Gray. In the 2019 annual report, Zoom announced a license agreement signed in March 2020 with Motorola Mobility to sell consumer-grade security monitoring products with related services. The announcement mentioned that Minim licensing payments start beginning of 2021. Can you please comment on availability of these consumer-grade security and monitoring products and related services? It's been a year. It seems like the licensing starts, and I haven't seen or heard anything.

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst

Thanks, Joe, for the question. I think the way I'd respond is to talk about the product road map that we have in place today and to let you know that it's focused mainly on connectivity. When we came into the -- when I came into the business, we took review of every initiative and decided where we were going to achieve the most short-term growth from those. And you'll see the products come out this year that are associated with those. We're, of course, mindful of that opportunity that you mentioned and see it as one that's very interesting for us, especially because of the ability to cross-sell once we have the Minim app on all of our platforms. So I think it continues to be a very interesting opportunity for us, and you'll see our products roll out this year that are connected with our strategy around connectivity and are opportunistic when we see the ability to really drive growth in those areas. I will say that we are mindful of both being very good at what we do at our core and expanding. And those are things that we're always balancing.

Joe Wytanis

Analyst

Okay. So does that mean you will or will not provide security and monitoring products in 2021?

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst

I don't believe that we've released a 2021 product road map. So I would decline to make that announcement about our release of a road map -- product road map on the call. But as I said, we are looking at our products and see it as an opportunity and remain excited about it, especially given the context of cross-selling with our software.

Joe Wytanis

Analyst

Okay. Second question I have goes to you, Sean. I heard you lightly touched on the balance sheet. When I looked at the balance sheet, certainly, you can see that the inventory has ballooned from $7.4 million at the end of the year 2019 to $15.3 million at the end of fiscal 2020. And of course, accounts payable, as you had mentioned, also ballooning from $5 million at the end of 2019 to 11.7%. Can you share a little bit more visibility and insight on what the plan is on this inventory and accounts payable situation?

Sean Doherty

Analyst

Certainly, Joe. Again, thanks for the question. You're absolutely right, we did ramp our inventory levels as we approached the end of 2020. We did that based on current and projected demand that we see in the market. That $15.4 million of inventory you see there is representative of us building a good cushion in Amazon so that we can cover all the demand that we're seeing. We fully expect to continue to turn that inventory as we have in the past. As you're well aware, as we bring things in, we generally tend to sell them pretty quickly. So we're excited about the increased level of inventory that we have, and then also a hedge against the chipset shortages that basically everybody is seeing right now. So I'm sure you've heard that in the news right now. So this is also a strategy to mitigate that risk as we continue through 2021 and continue to experience the growth that we've seen in the business.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your question comes from the line of Scott Weiss with Semco Capital.

Scott Weiss

Analyst

Can you comment on your expectations for costs in '21? And are we going to continue to see a ramp-up in costs from tariffs, airfreight, et cetera, that you cited for last year?

Sean Doherty

Analyst

Thanks, Scott. No, we don't expect to see material tariff costs since we were able to shift our production from China to Vietnam. The airfreight as well, the expense that we saw, the supplemental airfreight expense that we saw in 2020 was really a response to having to ramp back up inventory levels after supply chain issues that everybody experienced in a post-COVID world. So we'll continue to use airfreight on a strategic perspective as needed, but we don't expect to see a material impact to our P&L in 2021.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Aaron Sharabaika with Tolerance Capital.

Aaron Sharabaika

Analyst · Tolerance Capital.

Congratulations on a nice quarter. I have 2 questions. First, can you comment on the amount of cost savings that you're estimating for 2021? And the second part of my question is, do you have any updates on timing for potential NASDAQ listing?

Sean Doherty

Analyst · Tolerance Capital.

Yes. Thanks for those questions. We're not anticipating cost savings post merger in 2021. So I would say that we don't have anything built into the plan around that. And with regards to a NASDAQ uplisting, I would turn that over to our CEO, Gray Chynoweth.

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst · Tolerance Capital.

Yes. Thanks for that. Obviously, it's something we're considering. We always consider all alternatives. Uplisting when private remain where we are. I think the Board has given me direction to continue to seek sustained growth and ensure that we're in a position to provide shareholders liquidity that they need to be able to capitalize on the returns that they see in their investment in the company.

Operator

Operator

There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back over to management.

Graham Chynoweth

Analyst

All right. Well, thanks very much to everyone for joining this morning. Before we sign off, please note that we'll be presenting at the OTC Technology Virtual Conference on April 15 and at the Sidoti MicroCap Virtual Conference on May 20. And I hope that you'll be able to participate in those events. In the meantime, if you have questions, please reach out to Sean, our CFO, or to our IR team. We really welcome the engagement from investors and look forward to collaborating with you in sharing the vision for where we can take connectivity. Thanks, and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please hold the line.