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Professional Diversity Network, Inc. (IPDN)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 31, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to Professional Diversity Network's 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd like to remind listeners that during the call, certain information presented contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's business and financial results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are described in the company's periodic reports filed with the SEC from time to time. All information discussed on this call is as of today, March 31, and Professional Diversity Network does not intend and undertakes no duty to update future events or circumstances. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jim Kirsch, CEO. Thank you, Mr. Kirsch. You may begin.

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and thank you the Professional Diversity Network 2014 investor call. Joining me today are as follows; Ms. Star Jones, our President, Mr. Matt Proman, our Chief Operating Officer; Mr. David Mecklenburger, our Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Chris Wesser, our General Counsel. This afternoon we will provide you with the following information; our financial results and update on the integration of the National Association of Professional Women Acquisition which was purchased in September of 2014 and information about the purchase and early integration of the assets of Global Outreach Ventures which we refer to as Noble Voice. Also because we are in the last day of the first quarter of 2015, we will also be including information relating to our progress in this quarter to date. This year we have successfully diversified our revenue, we have increased our revenue and we have demonstrated revenue growth. In the fourth quarter of 2014, we increased our revenues from $1.5 million to $8.3 million. Our unaudited revenue booked as of March 30, 2015 that's yesterday, increased from $1.6 million last year to an excess of $11 million this year - $11.2 million. Additionally, our registered users increased from March of 2014 of a registered user joined of 37,000 to March 2015 to 218,000 new registered users. I’d like to take a moment and discuss with you all today the sequence of the four acquisitions that we have done to-date. And how those acquisitions are being integrated and overall affecting our company’s performance. As some of you may recall our first acquisition after our IPO was that of a technology company that was incubated out of Carnegie Mellon University named [Career Up] [ph]. That technology became the foundational technology for the Professional Diversity Network, enabled us to grow and…

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

Thank you, Jim. I would just like to touch on a couple of the highlights of the financial end of the business that you've experienced in the last quarter and the beginning of 2015. As Jim mentioned, the fourth quarter of 2014 we were very proud that we completed our acquisition of Noble Voice and began integrating that with Professional Diversity Network. And we also continued our integration work of the acquisition we did at the end of the third quarter the National Association of Professional Women. One of the improvements that we made very shortly after the acquisition of NAPW was we were able to sublet one of their facilities, which will result in savings for the company of over $300,000 a year. Sales continue to grow and be very strong and I compared a basis the company had bookings in the third quarter of 2014 of $1.2 million and in the fourth quarter we were able to achieve bookings of $8.3 million. First quarter of 2015 we realized $11.2 million in book sales that $11.2 is an unaudited number. Our fourth quarter was a changing quarter for us as we integrated these two businesses there were a number of non-cash items that flow through our income statement that I would like to point out, we had $565,000 of non-cash stock compensation and over $700,000 of amortized intangibles. We continue to identify cost and implement cost reductions and we're also starting to see the realization of those cost reductions in the first quarter and as we move into the second quarter.

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

Thank you, David. And David will be available for questions after Star's comments. I'd like to turn it over now to our President Ms. Star Jones. Star?

Star Jones

Analyst

Thank you, Jim and David. This has been an amazing few months of growth in all aspects of our business. Our recent trip to Silicon Valley to conduct the week of diversity and inclusion activity really highlighted why after six months with PDN, I’m sure diversity recruitment is an important front burner issue and there is revenue for us to realize. My goal has been to utilize my previous relationship with corporate America companies like Google, Intel, Hyatt, McDonald's, Footloose, Viacom, Morgan Stanley, and the Federal Reserves, have all expressed specific interest in financially partnering in either our diversity marketing efforts and or utilizing our recruitment products and services for their own diversity and inclusion initiatives. Additionally, my goal has been to introduce and reintroduce PDN NAPW and our products and services to the corporate marketplace. These relationships are being fostered so that they translate not only into marketing and promotional relationships but products and services, sales to a variety of avenues. One new product area of service that is the perfect blend of our PDN corporate clients and our NAPW products and services is the NAPW corporate membership program. NAPW corporate members will be selected from local businesses, large corporations, specific groups, women’s organizations, society and local community groups. This program is designed to provide corporate members the opportunity to align with NAPW, one of the largest professional women’s networking organizations in the country while conveying a commitment to gender diversity and inclusion. The corporate membership program enhances and strengthens the NAPW overall membership strategy by increasing the number of professional women connected to Corporate America on our membership roles. And then also offered the opportunity for our company to increase visibility and the diversity and inclusion phase to a valuable demographic like our individual membership offering different benefit…

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

Thanks Star and I appreciate your comments. It is clear that we have a very large and approachable market and diversity recruitment is becoming more and more important financially in the United States of America. Additionally, the marketplace is firming up for the recruitment sector across the Board due to the lower unemployment rate and scarcity in human capital. By all estimates this will continue as the baby boomers leave the workforce and our population is not our existing population of citizens in United States is not large enough to support the growth that we anticipate the country will have. If that is the case if market continues, if the market conditions continue to be stable and as they are today. We anticipate all recruitment businesses will do better including the Professional Diversity Network. But we have carved out a very important market position for ourselves as the leader and the go-to-resource in diversity recruitment. In the past two years we’ve made significant progress in establishing the company as the very centric market leader in diversity recruitment. The assets of our acquired companies have all been carefully selected to provide enhanced values, which transcends their unique capabilities. In essence 2+2 does not equal 4 when we talk about the combination of these assets. The NAPW members are a valuable talent pool for our diversity recruitment clients. Simply said, we can monetize and are monetizing those members in a significant and important way, while at the same time driving enhanced value to the NAPW membership. Our higher advantage product we’ve added membership benefits to the NAPW members, who are seeking a new or a better career. But it also drives additional revenue to the company from the marketplace of connecting those individuals with an employer. Noble Voice benefits from being in the PDN family, because they’re now able to realize revenue from recruiters, who find value in the career consultations that Noble Voice is having. Noble Voice is currently processing approximately 4,000 inbound calls on a daily basis for individuals who are seeking a job. When we acquired Noble Voice there was no revenue associated with recruitment and those conversations and we’re changing that in an accretive manner. Furthermore our online recruitment business has experienced enhanced value due to an increased in traffic engagement and in new registered users as demonstrated by our year-over-year monthly growth up from 37,000 registered members to 218,000 registered members in March alone. Our plan is to continue to increase our membership add more value to our members and our business partners and realize the benefits of the cost controls and expense cuts enacted in the first quarter of 2015. Our revenue has increased from a run rate of $6 million to over $40 million in just 12 months. And what’s important is we’re still in the early stages of our growth trajectory. With that said, operator we will turn it over to the callers for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andrew D'silva with Merriman Capital. Please proceed.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Good afternoon, thanks for taking my call. A couple of quick questions, real fast, what were fourth quarter revenues for the last - fourth quarter and can you also breakout what sales were for NAPW as well?

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

I’ll take that. Fourth quarter revenues were $8.3 million was bookings.

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

Which closely matched revenues.

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

Do you want to take it David.

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

Sure. And Andrew what was the second part of your question? Andrew D’silva: What were revenues for NAPW for the quarter?

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

The bookings - sorry Andrew, the sales for NAPW for the fourth quarter were just over $6 million. Andrew D’silva: Okay good. Did you initially have to ratchet up spending, recruitment spending for NAPW after you made the acquisition and should we expect that the level during the fourth quarter is the level we should model for going forward or spending starts to go down after this initial uptick?

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

That’s a good question, Andrew and what we found with the acquisition of NAPW, we purchased it right of the third quarter, the company had been in a state where they had not been able to purchase the leads and spend money the way they had wanted to. So upon our acquisition, we primed the pump and took care of some older accounts payable that they had and help the company get back on its feet from marketing perspective and the accounting treatment of that required us to expense those purchases in the fourth quarter even though a lot of them are driving sales into the first quarter. So to answer your question, you will not be seeing that level of spending going forward and the expenses we do expect them to flatten while the sales grow. Andrew D’silva: Okay. And then with – are we calling it a Global Outreach Ventures or Noble Voice now – it's Noble Voice right.

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

Noble Voice. Andrew D’silva: Okay. What was the gross margins for that division such can you give a sense of that going forward and then was the primary reason for the increased user interaction across all sites due to the acquisition of Noble Voice, you had announcement in February in one day acquiring 10,000 users.

David Mecklenburger

Analyst

Yes Andrew to answer your question on the margins, the Noble Voice margins were seeing north of 60% gross profit margins and I’ll let Jim address the question about the traffic.

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

So Andrew the acquisition of Noble Voice provided us with very complementary traffic and we’re able to leverage their existing traffic but we've also been able to implement the technology and the marketing strategy that Noble Voice was using for their company as a standalone business into the greater professional diversity network which gave us dramatically enhanced results. Yes we did announce that we hit 10,000 members in a day and I think you can see that from a 218,000 new registered user mark - in March that that's not an anomaly. Andrew D’silva: Okay. Got it. Thanks for taking my call and good luck this year. Andrew D’silva: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. There are no further questions in queue at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing remarks.

Jim Kirsch

Analyst

Thank you, operator. On behalf of our senior management team, who is on the call today and also for our newest additional members from Global Outreach, Noble Voice and Mr. Jorge Perez, I want to thank you for joining the call today. We are very excited about 2015. We’re laser focused as I said and making sure that we are managing this company to profitability. We think it’s very important that we are physically disciplined and that we continue to demonstrate the revenue growth that we've had and dial that into a long term profitable business in a very large addressable market. Thank you for joining our call today. And as always we look forward to your follow-up calls and questions. Thank you very much and have a pleasant afternoon. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.