Earnings Labs

Karooooo Ltd. (KARO)

Q2 2022 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 15, 2021

$49.85

+0.02%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day. Welcome to Karooooo Limited Results Presentation for the Second Quarter of 2022. Hosting you today is Mr. Zak Calisto, CEO and Founder of Karooooo Limited.

Zak Calisto

Management

Thank you very much, operator. Firstly, I would like to thank everybody for joining us on today's call, and good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you find yourself. Okay. We have the disclaimer that shareholders can read through their own leisure. Karooooo is the owner of 100% of Cartrack. Cartrack was founded in South Africa. Karooooo is a Singaporean entity, and we had quoted in Singapore. In our view, all vehicles will be connected, and data will drive all aspects of mobility in the future. Our mission, to build the leading mobility SaaS platformthat maximizes the value of data. What we do?We contextualize billions of data points and drive connectivity for our customers. We collect data through our proprietary in-vehicle smart devices. We also collect data through third-party and OEM in-vehicle smart devices. We have APIs into third-party systems, pushing and collecting data. And we have our artificial intelligence,video telematics devices that we also collect and stream data through and from. Our telematics devices that we use, as I've said, it's via traditional telematics fleet management devices and our video telematics devices. And we also connect data and stream datathrough the third parties through our MiFleet platform, which is an administrative portion of our platform that connects data that's not necessarily in-vehicle data.We contextualize the data by doing the data analytics. We also use AI. And that's all driven through our SaaS platform. And with that, we allow our customers to monetize and get the value of the data that we have processed by operation. As they get operational improvements, predictive analytics, delivering, they are able to do their deliveries, they manage their deliveries, are able to manage their field service, the people out in the field, working in the field and the workflows thereof,we create business intelligence…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions].

Zak Calisto

Management

Hi, Matt, I'm happy to take your question.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

Hey, Zak, can you hear me?

Zak Calisto

Management

Yes, I can, Matt.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

Okay. Great.Thanks for taking the questions and nice results, guys. I wanted to dig into the impact that you're seeing from COVID on your business. Is it primarily isolated to the Asia region at this time? Or are you continuing to see impacts in South Africa and Europe as well?

Zak Calisto

Management

So I think COVID is clearly impacting us in all our segments. And it impacts us from, one, our ability to manage our business; and two, from the actual marketplace itself. Clearly, Asia is the most impacted. Europe is not as impacted as Asia. And South Africa is the least impacted at this stage.We, up to now, have really struggled in Asia. But the good news is that this week, we received permits to take in some of our senior staff into the Philippines, into Indonesia and Thailand. So they all came through all in the same week, which is quite encouraging. And despite us growing at 20% in Asia, we believe that in the short term or near term, we can start accelerating that growth. So we're quite excited about the markets starting to open up. And we believe that the markets within 6 to 9 months, hopefully, the countries will learn to live with COVID. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, Matt.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

You did. That's helpful. And then in terms of the impact of the social unrest in South Africa in July, maybe you can just sort of help frame that magnitude? Because even with that impact, that region still grew really well.

Zak Calisto

Management

So what it did for us, it basically really impacted our sales in July. And in our business, every buck counts. It's how many sales can you do in a day. We don't even measure it in a month. And clearly, in July it was for -- the biggest province in South Africa is Gauteng,the second biggest province is KwaZulu-Natal. We closed down all our operations in KwaZulu-Nataland we closed some operations in Gauteng and some in Mpumalanga. I think all of that impacted our sales substantially. But it also impacted us negatively was customers that were already struggling with COVID and then that were looted and that left them in total financial ruin. So we did see that's basically how we got impacted in July. But despite that, like you rightly said, we still grew at 20%, and our financial metrics in South Africa remained intact.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

That's great. And just one more for me. In terms of the supply chain and your ability to source components for your in-vehicle devices, how are you feeling about that? Are you able to get enough product to meet demand?

Zak Calisto

Management

So clearly, there's delays in components. We, at this point in time, feel comfortable that we're not going to have problems for the next 12 months. And we believe in our suppliers, believe that they will be able to supply. So what we are doing is we're purchasing more than what we normally would be, and that is obviously affecting our free cash flow and our operational -- the cash we generate from operations because of the working capital that we're requiring at the moment is a bit higher to be able to carry the inventories necessary for growth. Thank you, Matt. The next question is from Mike from Canaccord.

Mike Walkley

Analyst

Great. Zak, can you hear me?

Zak Calisto

Management

Yes, I can, Mike.

Mike Walkley

Analyst

Ay, great. Yes. Congrats on the strong first half results despite all the challenges in your targeted regions. First question for you, just on the sales hiring,should we expect sales and marketing to continue to ramp in the second half of the year? Or is it more of a steady growththat’s more about getting the current sales force more efficient?

Zak Calisto

Management

So in South Africa, we will dovery little hiring, more for sales staff. We've got enough headcount. We need to focus in the next 6 to 9 months on getting the headcount efficient. In Asia, we're certainly going to start hiring now. So in Asia, I believe our sales force is relatively efficient, but we need to really ramp that up. So in South Africa, no increase. And then we intend in the beginning of the next financial year where we start getting a lot of focus to Europe and to ramp up our sales efforts in Europe. So overall, South Africa, we just -- at this point in time, it's -- we're going to go through a little bit of consolidation to get the efficiencies right. But on the -- having said that, in Asia, we're going to go on a very strong hiring -- going to start hiring now that we've got people, getting senior managers into these countries. The managers are only moving in at the end of November, and we'll start hiring -- we've actually started hiring already this month and we’re aligned before the senior manager is getting placed.

Mike Walkley

Analyst

And then just my follow-up question. Just great to see you rerate the full year guidance. South Africa, after the unrest, are things more efficient on a daily sales basis? And anything embedded in there and how efficient the sales needs to be by the end of the year in terms of continuing to grow that region?

Zak Calisto

Management

So our best month-to-date in the history of South Africa was actually last month, September. We had a record month in September. We believe that we'll just grow from strength to sustain. But as we said, that we need to focus now on efficiency and on our strategy, and we have a lot to improve in order to execute on our plans.

Mike Walkley

Analyst

Thanks for taking my questions and great to hear South Africa had a great month of September.

Zak Calisto

Management

Thank you. The next question is from Alex from Raymond James.

Alexander Sklar

Analyst

Hi, Zak.The prepared remarks alluded to the significant monetization opportunity from data. I know you've launched Carzuka.You've got the insurance product. I'm just curious how do you stack rank some of those big buckets on Slide 5 in terms of the biggest opportunity you're hoping to unlock in terms of addressable market on that data?

Zak Calisto

Management

Just can you maybe get me Slide 5? One moment, please. Okay. This is Slide 5, okay. So I think we've invested a lot in our technology platform. The Carzuka platform is not ready yet. We early envisage the platform to be ready in Q4. However, we have started in better pace and that's very encouraging. We can already see that in the month of October, we can do more revenue than we did in Q2 in a better pace. So we believe we can exponentially grow that business. The insurance, we're basically redoing the way it works. I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding of the legislation around insurance and what we did in the take we delivered in [OAP]. We are adjusting that to be able to fit a more optimal way of executing on our plan. But nevertheless, we're doing over 1,000 policies a month. So it really is just a question of us having the right people in place, which I believe we have got right now, and slowly building this business and these businesses that fit right well with what we do. We’re also being aware that these things aren't done overnight. It will take us a bit of time. But I'm feeling very confident that we're going to do well out of these verticals in our business.

Alexander Sklar

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then I want to ask about ESG,and from kind of more from a customer acquisition standpoint, particularly in Europe, where there's kind of a reporting directive coming into place you added a new Board member with ESG experience. I'm just curious, is that coming up in your conversations at all in terms of customers needing to better track their data, and that's actually being somewhere you can lead with from a sales standpoint?

Zak Calisto

Management

So we've got old department getting with compliance. And we've done a lot of work with GDPR compliant in Europe. Also, our Lead Independent Director,Siew Koon is very familiar with the ESG and what is required. We feel comfortable that we're able to deliver all those requirements.

Alexander Sklar

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Zak Calisto

Management

Thank you. So the next question from [Brian] from [indiscernible]

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I noticed this quarter in the presentation that you didn't break down sort of customers added by types, so like small, medium or large enterprises. Just curious where the net adds in this quarter came from mostly?

Zak Calisto

Management

It was pretty much a mix in the past. So it’s I would say that overall about 65% of our business came from commercial and about 35% came from consumer.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Got it.And just looking at the next quarter coming up, because it looks like it will be maybe a tougher comparable year-on-year. You said you had a good month in October. How do you think that's tracking so far? And what do you think will be the greatest drivers of subscriber growth in the second half of this year?

Zak Calisto

Management

I think the second half is just we've invested a lot into sales. It's getting the people efficient. But like I said, September was already our best month. And we're just hoping that every month, we can improve on the previous month, and we've got all the reasons to believe that we can do that. But having said that, we've got to execute. We've got to do it before -- I'm not very good at saying, I prefer to talk about the past and what we've done. And we've given an outlook, and we believe we will deliver on that outlook.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Okay. Last question, sorry. If you could talk a little bit about the acquisition made, I think it was Picup, I think it was the name, maybe the rationale behind that and the amount spent and all that.

Zak Calisto

Management

So we have a lot of our large corporates. And what we see is a huge pickup in e-commerce. And what that means is we've got a delivery platform on -- so a lot of our small, medium enterprise customers, now what they can do is they can do deliveries and they can monitor their deliveries and proof of delivery and give tasks to their drivers and assign different parcels. However, what Picup does is they go a step further. They're able to do that as well, but they're integrating to the customers' warehouses and into the payment systems. And then the companies are able to use their own vehicles, use outsourced drivers and also use third-party carrier companies or delivery companies and all big trucks depending on what they want to do. So it's bringing the old logistics where a customer doesn't necessarily have to rely on his own fleet and can get the elasticity with other vehicles. And we believe that's a very important part to have on our platform, one, and it's a very important service, especially if we look at in 10 years’time where we believe the way mobility will work. So it's really about us doing things today for 5 to 10 years' time. And we feel very comfortable with that acquisition. We've seen the monthly revenue since we bought them grow onmonth-on-month. So they continuously have grown, and we believe that business has got legs for growth.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And is that -- I imagine you keep the kind of financials separate? Or is this maybe like a module you can charge additional for your existing Cartrack customers? Right now, my understanding is that all the modules are in one. There's no like price differentialor [15b].

Zak Calisto

Management

So at this point in time, we've got everything in onewith the Cartrack platform. Clearly, with this coming on, we will report the financials separately. It's a small business at this point in time. The reason why we will keep this financial different is, otherwise, it will be a bit of spaghetti and difficult to understand our numbers. Also, once Carzuka gets a bit of momentum, which we believe by next year it will be, then we also intend to split out the numbers of Carzuka, of the Picup and certainly of Cartrack. We are strategically thinking how we incorporate Picup into Cartrack’s platform. And the two R&D teams are talking, and we will make that decision in the near term, how exactly we're going to deal with that. It's something we haven't quite crystallized yet. There's different routes and we're going to see which is the best route. And in different markets, it might have a different route.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Got it. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Zak Calisto

Management

There is a question from [Sam Healy]. An increase in the expense associated with growth, strengthening result, the increase in net subscriber growth rests on the success and the effectiveness of the investment strategy. Will you be pleased at year-end if adjusted EBITDA margin contracts below the lower bound of guidance 45% to 50% for FY '22? Are you looking to keep the same rate of expenses growth for Q3 and Q4 this financial year? Well, that's quite a long question. So the first thing is, we believe that our adjusted EBITDA margin will be between 45% and 50%. And we certainly will be pleased with that because that's what we budgeted for.Will be the same growth in expenses? There will be growth in expenses, I have said earlier on. On sales, it will be more in Asia at this point in time. And we will also be building up some operational capabilities for our expansion into Asia. So there will be a continued increase in the continued investment, but we certainly believe that we will still be in that EBITDA margin that we've given guidance on. Next question.Next question.Hello,Zak.How is the chip shortage affecting telematics devices? Do you expect this to have an impact on the planned growth going forward? I've spoken a little bit about it. We don't believe that's going to have an impact on our growth in terms of subscriber growth. From [Zelman].How has the competitive environment evolved over the past 12 to 18 months across the various regions? Are the OEMs and sales becoming more serious competitors to the service? So the competitive environment in the last 12, 18 months has been under COVID. I believe there hasn't been much of a change in the competitive environment. In terms of the OEMs, I do not…

Zak Calisto

Management

And that's all the questions. I thank everybody for tuning in, and I look forward to talking to you in 3 months' time. Thank you very much. Bye, bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.