Veritone, Inc.
Q3 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 13 Nov 2017

[Operator:]

Good afternoon. Welcome to Veritone’s Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today’s call are Veritone’s Chairman and CEO, Chad Steelberg; and the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Pete Collins. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that certain information discussed on the call today will include forward-looking statements about future events and Veritone’s business strategy and future financial and operating performance, including its expected operating performance for the full year of 2017. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict and may cause the actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by those statements. Certain of these risks and assumptions are discussed in Veritone’s SEC filings, including its registration statement on Form S-1 and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. These forward-looking statements reflect management’s beliefs, estimates and predictions as of the date of this live broadcast, November 6, 2017, and Veritone undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at www.veritone.com. Now I would like to turn the call over to Veritone’s Chairman and CEO, Chad Steelberg. Sir, please proceed.

[Chad Steelberg:]

Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today. After the market closed, we issued a press release announcing our results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017, a copy of which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. The third quarter represented a continuation of the same strong growth and operational momentum we’ve achieved over the last several quarters. We experienced year-to-year growth across all of our key performance indicators; continued to strengthen and expand our AI platform, including releasing our much-anticipated aiWARE Edge, which is a part of our aiWARE operating system and the Veritone Developer Application. We also secured several new major wins for our AI platform, including iHeartMedia and FOX Sports Brasil. I will discuss these highlights in more detail in a bit later on today’s call. But first, I’d like to invite our CFO, Pete Collins, to walk us through our financial results and key performance indicators for the third quarter and first nine months of 2017. Pete?

[Pete Collins:]

Thank you Chad and good afternoon everyone. Turning to our financial results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2017. Our net revenues increased 60% to $3.7 million from $2.3 million in Q3 last year. The increase in net revenues for the quarter was due to an increase in Media Agency revenues of $1.1 million or 48%, and an increase of $0.3 million or 340% in SaaS licensing revenues from our AI platform. For the first nine months of the year, our net revenues increased 70% to $10.9 million from $6.4 million in the same period last year. The increase in net revenues was due to an increase in Media Agency revenues of $3.7 million or 60% and an increase of $0.8 million or 368% in SaaS licensing revenues from our AI platform. Looking at our AI platform business, the total contract value of new bookings received during the quarter increased to $2.6 million from $394,000 in Q3 of last year, an increase of 571%. In addition, our monthly recurring revenue, under agreements in effect at the end of Q3 increased 88%, year-over-year, to $135,000 from $72,000 in the third quarter last year. Our gross profit in the third quarter of 2017 increased 83% to $3.4 million or 92% of net revenues from $1.9 million or 81% of net revenues in Q3 of last year. For the nine month period, our gross profit increased 89% to $10.1 million or 93% of net revenues from $5.3 million or 83% of net revenues in the same period of 2016. The increases in gross profit and gross margin for both the quarter and nine months period were primarily due to the operating leverage provided by our higher net revenue level. Now turning to our expenses. Total operating expenses in the third quarter of 2017 increased 192% to $22.9 million from $7.8 million in Q3 of last year. For the nine month period, our total operating expenses increased 102% to $44.0 million from $21.8 million in the same period last year. The increase in operating expenses for both periods was due primarily to higher stock-based compensation and increased investments in software development, data science and sales and marketing, as we continue to enhance our AI platform, including developing new products and functionality. Loss from operations in the third quarter of 2017 was $19.5 million. This compares to the loss from operations in the third quarter of 2016 of $6.0 million. The increase was due primarily to the higher level of operating expenses, which included stock-based compensation of $11.7 million compared with $70,000 in the third quarter of 2016. Loss from operations in the first nine months of 2017 was $33.9 million, compared with a loss from operations of $16.4 million during the same period of 2016. Stock-based compensation expense was $13.6 million in the first nine months of 2017, compared with $1.6 million in the first nine months of 2016. It’s important to note that in September, our market capitalization exceeded $400 million over five consecutive business days, which satisfied vesting conditions under the performance-based stock options for a total of 1.04 million shares that had been previously issued to Chad and Ryan Steelberg, under our 2014 plan. We recorded a total of $9.3 million of stock-based compensation expense, relating to those options, of which $343,000 was recorded in the second quarter and $8.9 million was recorded in the third quarter upon such vesting. Net loss attributable to common stockholders in the third quarter of 2017 totaled $19.4 million or $1.31 per share, compared with $8.2 million or $3.49 per share in Q3 last year. These EPS figures are based on 14.8 million weighted average shares outstanding for the third quarter of this year, compared with 2.4 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q3 of last year. For the first nine months of 2017, net loss attributable to common stockholders totaled $51.3 million or $5.94 per share, compared with $20.3 million or $10.37 per share in the first nine months of 2016. These EPS figures are based on 8.6 million weighted average shares outstanding for the first nine months of 2017, compared with 2.0 million weighted average shares outstanding in the same period last year. Now turning to our balance sheet; at the end of the quarter, we had cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities of $60.4 million and no long term debt. Next, I’d like to shift gears to our Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, for both our Media Agency business and our AI platform business. We made great progress again this quarter in our KPIs for both of these businesses. As I mentioned on our last call, in order to track the progress of our Media Agency business, we evaluate three key performance metrics

[Chad Steelberg:]

Thanks, Pete. I’d now like to provide some operational updates related to what we discussed on our last call, as well as highlights on new developments that happened in Q3. I’ll also provide an update on our AI product development and new customer wins, as well as our business outlook. Let’s begin with our operational highlights for the third quarter; starting with our aiWARE Edge operating system that we launched in August. As some of you know, aiWARE is our AI operating system, which supports both onpremise and cloud-based deployment models. It currently manages 122 cognitive engines, spanning 14 cognitive classes. At its core, aiWARE is powered by Conductor version 3.1, which is Veritone’s proprietary ensemble learning technology. Using the onpremise version of aiWARE, users can ingest unstructured contents and structured data, and perform onpremise orchestrated cognition using certain engines located behind their firewall, versus having to always route all of their content to the cloud for AI processing. Currently a subset of our engine is containerized and able to run onprem, and we’re working to on board additional engines with our partners. AiWARE creates a secured network, spanning LANs, WANs, and the cloud for cognitive engines and their output to move freely throughout our digital universe. The cognitive engine output can be transmitted to the customer’s account in our cloud application or kept onpremise for immediate integration with onpremise enterprise applications. This enables customers to leverage our platform’s capabilities across heterogeneous content repositories, regardless of where that data is stored. This new onpremise version of aiWARE, allows customers to analyze their unstructured content within their network, which is required by some companies’ data security policies. Other companies prefer the onpremise approach to provide a cost-effective method for analyzing large quantities of onpremise content. Bringing these containerized cognitive engines to the content minimizes data movement and provides high scale parallel processing of large media volumes. For this onpremise content, our operating system recommends, which cognitive engine to select, and provides chaining and blending capabilities. Some of the used cases for aiWARE onpremise customers include

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Now our first question will come from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital. Please proceed.

[Mike Latimore:]

Just on the Media (inaudible) business, can you talk a little bit about the seasonality in that business? I think last year you had more positive seasonality on the third quarter, and given the composition of the customers there, how do you think about the holiday seasonal once there? [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions].

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Sameet Sinha with B. Riley FBR.

[Lee Krowl:]

This is actually Lee Krowl filling in for Sameet. Real quick, just on the FedRAMP progress, I know you guys had a few milestone certifications that were on slate for Q1 approval. With this pilot program you mentioned, does that you mean you have the necessary certifications to kind of ramp that whole opportunity?

[Pete Collins:]

There’s some work we can do prior to getting that certification. So that’s the type of work we are doing at this point. We think that we’re going to be complete with our development and self-assessment by the end of Q1 of ’18, and then the third party assessment and certification will be coming in the summer of ‘18. So in the remarks we made, we said that we see it being a second half ‘18 revenue opportunity for us.

[Lee Krowl:]

Can you just talk about the AWS relationship, is that pre-revenue, and then can you just talk about the ramp opportunity with that as third party integration?

[Pete Collins:]

Sure. AWS and our integration with one of their partner is a new development. We don’t want to go into too much speculation as to what that will actually afford us. However; given Amazon’s dominant position as the leading cloud provider, growing at double-digit rates, we’re extremely excited about what it means, both domestically and abroad for us, in 2018.

[Lee Krowl:]

And then just one last question, on the FOX opportunity you guys announced, you kind of suggested that there are incremental opportunities to be had in the Latin American market. Will that require any incremental investment or can you tackle those opportunities with the existing sales force you have today?

[Pete Collins:]

No incremental investment, right now we’re activating all of those sales through new channel partners that were brought to us through the Quantum relationship. Part of our expansion plan is really enabling that channel distribution on a global basis which we’re now solving for in Q4, and anticipate that being a major contributor to our growth in 2018.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Market.

[Mike Latimore:]

Just in terms of the account, I think you said, you expect 425 accounts by year end versus (inaudible) in the third quarter or so can you talk a little bit about the drivers to get there?

[Pete Collins:]

So the main driver for that Mike is going to be the on boarding of the iHeart station. So we mentioned that there are over 200 stations that will be coming onto the platform here in Q4. So that’s the majority of it. And then we do have other, mostly radio broadcasters that are in the sales pipeline that we’re expecting to bring on board which will allow us to go from 170 up to that 425.

[Mike Latimore:]

And then how is CBS Radio, is that fully deployed now? And then I think there is a chance they get acquired or (inaudible) here? Is that an opportunity for you guys or how do you think about that?

[Pete Collins:]

CBS Radio is fully deployed, and as far as their upcoming merger with Entercom, yes there is an opportunity for us to pick up some additional business as they merge their two businesses together. That’s one of the items that’s in our pipeline.

[Mike Latimore:]

And then you mentioned, I think, in the legal vertical, you’re in production on a six figure deal, I believe. Can you talk just a little bit more about that, is that (inaudible) like a specific case or what’s driving that opportunity?

[Pete Collins:]

Yes, it’s through a reseller that our team has been working with, and there’s one particular litigation matter that, that project will be based on, that we’ll be bringing on. We’re expecting it to be a project that will span more than one quarter. It’s kind of a large project. But the six figure sales opportunity in the fourth quarter is in not that we’ll be performing this quarter here, and we think it will continue on into our next year.

[Mike Latimore:]

What should we model for stock comp in the fourth quarter?

[Pete Collins:]

So we don’t really give guidance, but if you think about what we’ve talked about on the call, we had $11.6 million as a stock based comp in the third quarter, with $8.9 million of that related to the performance based stock options that were vested in the quarter. So that leaves you with a run rate of about $2.7 million, which is probably the right run rate to think about for this quarter. There will be I’m expecting some options to get awarded at the board meeting, coming up later in the quarter. So it might be 2.8 or so. But in that vicinity is what I’m thinking of.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. If your question was not taken you may contact Veritone’s Investor Relations team at [e-mail]. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Steelberg, for his closing remarks.

[Chad Steelberg:]

Thank you for joining us on today’s call. We want to thank our employees, partners and investors for supporting us, as we pursue our mission for building the AI operating system of the future. We look forward to updating you on our progress on our next call. Operator?

[Operator:]

Thank you for joining us today for Veritone’s Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Call. You may now disconnect.