Earnings Labs

Karooooo Ltd. (KARO)

Q1 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 20, 2023

$49.85

+0.02%

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Transcript

Carmen Calisto

Management

Hello, and welcome to Karooooo's Financial Year 2024 Q1 Earnings Call. On behalf of Karooooo, we would like to thank you for joining us today. I'm Carmen, the group's Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, and together with Hoeshin, our Group Chief Financial Officer, who will be taking you through our strong performance and growth. All investors are advised to read through the disclaimer. We will be reviewing all three of Karooooo's business units in today's webinar, namely Cartrack, Carzuka and Karooooo Logistics. Our mission remains to be the leading operations cloud as we persist in helping to define the future of operations. We continue to see how crucial mobility is to all operations and how our customers derive huge value from having more than just their vehicles and equipment, but entire operational workforce connected. Our innovative solutions are allowing customers to meet strict government compliance, whilst achieving more with less. Our customers are continuously tackling challenges around their operations efficiencies, including fuel, safety, maintenance, resource scheduling and more. However, they were also increasingly facing new obstacles from new government mandates to carbon footprint tracking and worker retention. These all contribute to the growing demand for our platform. Our strong track record of identifying trends and developing solutions that successfully solves customer challenges to add huge value to their daily operations is evident, and this is a strong driver for our continued strong sustainable growth. Through digital transformation and user-friendly tools, we offer invaluable support to customers in achieving compliance and navigating their day-to-day challenges, simplifying their operations and boosting their efficiencies. Karooooo operates within massive interconnected and mostly untapped global markets. Analysts estimate that operations contribute to over 40% of the global GDP, and as businesses recognize the importance of IoT data in enhancing the operations, the opportunities for us…

Goy Hoeshin

Operator

Thank you, Carmen. I will now talk through Karooooo's financial performance for quarter one FY 2024. Please note that all comparisons are against quarter one FY 2023, unless otherwise stated. Our proven and profitable SaaS business model continue and delivered a solid start for the financial year. In Q1, Karooooo's total revenue increased by 24% to ZAR997 million, and ARR increased 20% to ZAR3,409 million. As expected, after substantial investment for future growth in all segments, operating profit increased marginally by 3% to ZAR224 million, and earnings per share increased 3% to ZAR5.09. All segments continue to see strong traction with the benefits of our strategic investment beginning to show. Our consistent results extend our track record of growth at scale, profitability and cash generation ability. Free cash flow in this quarter, up by 39% to ZAR158 million and continue to bolster our balance sheet. Net cash on hand up by 18% to ZAR1,137 million. In this quarter, ZAR32 million are invested in the development of the South African Central office and ZAR19 million are invested in the working capital of Carzuka. That does turnover days continued to show improvement to 28 days alongside with prudent provisioning to weather off strong economic headwinds in some of the markets we are operating. The healthy cash generation drove up net cash and cash equivalents and support future cash outflows required for future growth. We have strong unit economics, robust operating margins, a leveraged balance sheet and a strong cash conversion. We remain confident that our track records of success, especially our ability to generate healthy cash flow is sustainable. Our earnings per share increased by 3% to ZAR5.09 in this quarter. The increase is the result of positive revenue growth and improved profitability despite our prudent and strategic investment [focus] (ph). We…

Jose Calisto

Analyst

Thank you, Hoeshin. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I'm going to start off with a question from Matthew from William Blair. As subscriber addition trended in June and July relative to the first quarter, we certainly had a much stronger June and July compared to the first three months of the financial year. So this quarter, we are hoping to see a substantially better quarter than the previous year in terms of subscriber additions. Another question from Matthew from William Blair. Which expense lines do you anticipate to show the most leverage throughout the year, so that Cartrack's segment can meet its operating profit margin target. In the first quarter, we've spent a substantial amount of money in terms of recruiting people for support, which falls under G&A. We are continuing Q2 to also recruit and add more headcount. And I certainly believe G&A is the one that will then taper off and allow us to meet our targets. I certainly believe we are on track, and we're going in accordance with budgets and to meet our targets. And the next question from Parker Lane. How should we think about the balance of growth and profitability over the medium to long term as Carzuka and Karooooo Logistics continue to scout? Parker, I think one needs to see these three different segments in isolation. They've got very different margins. And as they've got different margins on the consolidated numbers, that's going to affect our margins, but I see Carzuka reaching breakeven in the short term. And I certainly see Karooooo logistics that is already profitable, continue to scale that. But I think for a very long time to come Cartrack will certainly be the driving force of our operating profits. The next question, I'm going to Matthew from…