Digi International Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Digi International EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.52
• Consensus EPS: $0.42
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.10
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.44

Digi International Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $105.05 million
• Expected Revenue: $104.16 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$890.00 thousand
• YoY Revenue Growth: -6.30%

Digi International Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 11/13/2024
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Digi International (NASDAQ:DGII) is a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity products and services designed to link devices to networks and applications securely. The company develops a broad range of networking hardware, including cellular and Ethernet routers, gateways, embedded modules and adaptors, as well as accessories and antennas. Digi’s solutions enable businesses to deploy remote monitoring, control and automation systems across diverse industries such as transportation, utilities, healthcare, retail and industrial manufacturing.

In addition to its physical devices, Digi offers cloud-based management software and professional services that simplify device configuration, monitoring and over-the-air updates. Its Digi Remote Manager platform provides a unified interface for provisioning, managing and troubleshooting distributed equipment from a central dashboard. The company also delivers custom engineering services and support to help customers design and integrate connectivity solutions that meet specific regulatory or environmental requirements.

Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Digi International serves customers around the world through regional offices, channel partners and system integrators in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. The company’s leadership team is committed to advancing IoT innovation under CEO Ron Konezny, who brought extensive experience in technology and enterprise software to the role in early 2021. With a focus on security, reliability and ease of deployment, Digi aims to accelerate digital transformation initiatives for organizations of all sizes.

Digi International Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew 9% year-over-year to a record $116 million, now representing over 27% of total revenue and improving visibility.
• Achieved a company-first 60% gross margin, driven by the shift to solution-based offerings alongside flat operating expenses and a record adjusted EBITDA margin.
• For fiscal 2025, the company expects continued ARR growth but flat revenue and flat adjusted EBITDA due to moving from one-time sales to multi-year solutions and retiring legacy products.
• Reduced inventory, restructured its debt facility to lower interest payments, and plans to be net debt free by the end of calendar 2025.
• Cites headwinds including elongated sales cycles, smaller order patterns, industrial economy contraction, and potential tariff risks despite a normalized and diversified supply chain.

Presentation

[Operator]

Fourth quarter 2024 Digi International, Inc earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jamie Loch, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

[Jamie Loch, CFO at Digi International]

Thank you. Good day, everyone. It's great to talk to you again, and thanks for joining us today to discuss the earnings results of Digi International. Joining me on today's call is Ron Konezny, our President and CEO. We issued our earnings release after the market closed today. You may obtain a copy of the press release through the financial releases section of our investor relations website at digi.com. This afternoon, Ron will provide a comment on our performance, and then we'll take your questions. Some of the statements that we make during this call are considered forward-looking and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our expectations about future operating and financial performance and speak only as of today's date. We undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise these forward-looking statements.

[Jamie Loch, CFO at Digi International]

While we believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we give no assurance such expectations will be met or that any of our forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. For additional information, please refer to the forward-looking statements section in our earnings release today and the risk factor section of our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent reports on file with the SEC. Finally, certain of the financial information disclosed on this call includes non-GAAP measures. The information required to be disclosed about these measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, are included in the earnings release. The earnings release is also furnished as an exhibit to Form 8-K that can be accessed through the SEC filing sections of our investor relations website. Now I'll turn the call over to Ron.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Thank you, Jamie. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we take questions, a few comments on last fiscal year while looking forward to fiscal 2025. Digi is committed to be a leader in the Industrial Internet of Things market. We believe a significant share of the market wants a solution provider rather than building a solution to various vendors. Our solution provider approach reduces risk, improves outcomes, allows customers to focus on their core competencies, and accelerates time to value. The single metric demonstrating our relative success is annual recurring revenue, or ARR. ARR, consolidated across our product lines, represents our transition from one-time sales to solutions. Increasingly, Digi will forego one-time transactional sales in favor of multi-year solutions agreements. Over time, this dynamic will dampen overall revenue but increase ARR. As ARR grows, our results will become more consistent, provide greater visibility, and improve our model.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

You can see this in our fiscal 2024 results. ARR grew 9% year-over-year to reach a record $116 million, which now represents more than 27% of our total revenue. ARR grew in both our product and services business segment, where we complement our award-winning products with solution packages. ARR also grew in our solutions business segment, where we offer turnkey solutions combining product, connectivity, service, and software. ARR increased as we both onboarded new customers and solutions while retaining and extending existing customers with increased value added to our offering, such as our recently launched Digi 360 offering and achieving SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. Our strengthening model achieved 60% gross margins for the first time in the company's history, driven by this solution strategy. A disciplined and scalable organization demonstrated flat operating expenses year-over-year, which resulted in a record adjusted EBITDA margin.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

We were able to reduce our inventory throughout the year as supply chain normalized. We restructured our debt facility, which reduced our interest payments. Cash generated from these combined efforts resulted in a net debt to Adjusted EBITDA level of less than one. Turning the page to fiscal 2025, we are experiencing both uncertainty as well as reasons to be optimistic. Supply chain and inventory levels have normalized, but COVID-induced scars create caution, resulting in elongated sales cycles and smaller or frequent order patterns. The industrial economy's health, measured in part by PMI, has been in contraction for quarters, but there is strength in AI, data centers, utilities, and renewables. Nationalism persists with talks of increased tariffs, but Digi has diversified its supply chain to help buffer potential changes. With that macroeconomic backdrop, we take a consistent but pragmatic approach to setting expectations for fiscal 2025.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

We expect continued growth in ARR with contributions from both business segments. As we move to more solution packages, one-time revenue is expected to temper. In addition, we are improving our offering portfolio by retiring legacy product lines that have been in decline, such as Rabbit. Combined, this results in an expectation of flat revenue. Select operating expense investments required to sustain long-term growth result in flat Adjusted EBITDA, and we expect to generate cash and to be net debt-free by the end of calendar 2025. We continue to explore potential acquisitions that benefit our customers and are consistent with our focus on ARR and profitable growth. Macroeconomic improvement throughout the fiscal year could improve our outlook. Lastly, Digi remains confident in reaching its five-year targets of $200 million in ARR and $200 million in Adjusted EBITDA established last year.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

In October, we celebrated the 35th anniversary of our listing on NASDAQ. Next year, we celebrate our 40th birthday. Digi's story is highlighted by customer focus, resilience, relentless innovation, and continuous improvement. Very few companies that went public in 1989 exist, let alone remain independent. Imation, 3Com, WorldCom, Symantec, and Cambridge Technology Partners were some of the companies that went public in 1989 and are no longer independent. Over the decades, Digi has adapted to change, and that core competence is vital to success in an ever-changing world. Operator, that concludes my remarks, and we'd like to open the call to questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Tommy Moll from Stephens, Inc.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Hey, good afternoon, Tommy.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

Ron, you mentioned the dynamic where there's a relationship between reported revenue and recurring revenue. I guess I could call it a trade-off even, and so, as you constructed your outlook for fiscal 2025, how much is that in play, just looking at the spread and double-digit ARR, flat rev, or are there other factors you want to make sure to highlight? You mentioned discontinuing some old product lines could be one. Just help us with that bridge.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah, it's really a combination of those factors, Tommy, and I thought you were very keen to pick up on that. There's certainly going to be some product that we're going to end of life. The supply chain is honestly not holding up for some of these components. They're getting much more difficult to source and that we can provide quality products. So that certainly is going to be a hit. And then there's another piece of it, which is also the trade-off of moving towards recurring revenue. So it's really a combination of the two.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

And then I think I heard you say the expectation on the balance sheet would be net debt-free by the end of the year.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah, by the end of the calendar year. Yep.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

Oh, by the end of calendar year 2025.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Correct.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

Okay. All right. That might change the math a bit. Does that imply a relatively unchanged pace of that quarterly cash flow generation for you going in?

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah. I think we're going to see another inventory dividend, if you will, that kicks in in FY 2025, which you saw that in 2024. Interest payments are now a fraction of what they were a year ago. Those will continue to go down as we pay down debt. And so, yeah, cash inches even closer to EBITDA with those two factors.

[Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens]

Okay. Those were the only two I had prepared, so I'll step back in line. Thank you.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

All right. Thank you, Tommy.

[Operator]

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jim Fish from Piper Sandler.

[Jim Fish, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Hey, guys. This is Quinton. I'm for Jim Fish. Thanks for taking our questions. Maybe first of all, it was really good to see both the reiteration of 2028 targets and kind of the implied reacceleration, if you'd call it that, of ARR for next year. As we think about specifically for that ARR growth next year, what segments or solutions are going to drive that reacceleration? And then as we think about your visibility relative to that year, is there anything underneath that makes you more confident that you're seeing all of demand drivers for the full year?

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah. Listen, we grew ARR 9% year-over-year in fiscal 2024. So to call out double-digit growth or 10% growth isn't really much of a stretch in my humble opinion. So there is the potential for things to go even better. We do think we'll see contributions as we did in 2024 from both business segments. And that's really good to see and hear, right, that you're not only dependent on one product line, one vertical, one customer. And we think that'll play out as well in fiscal 2025.

[Jim Fish, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

No, that makes a ton of sense. And maybe touching on the M&A landscape, you mentioned you're still active in the market. Is there anything to call out in terms of the number or type of companies that you're seeing coming up for sale? Is the landscape improving as we kind of seem to have a little bit more confidence in an improving macro and rates coming down?

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think things improved maybe modestly throughout 2024 to date. Interest rates really didn't start coming down until recently, and that's a factor, I think, in people's decisions to market their companies or to hold on to them for maybe better conditions. I think some banks have come out with optimistic points of view that M&A will accelerate going into 2025, maybe a combination of macro interest rates and maybe a different approach from at least the federal government, and so I think there's reason to be optimistic that M&A will increase in 2025 compared to 2024.

[Jim Fish, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Got it, and then just last one from us is, as we look at the ARR underneath, we were kind of surprised and pleasantly surprised with kind of outperformance, at least relative to our numbers coming from your actual kind of product and services line. Is there anything one-time or specific in driving that upside, or was this kind of widespread across that segment? Thank you.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

No, again, the good news, it was a broad-based contribution. Each of our product lines has a bit of their own journey that they're going about to become the solution provider. But again, really good news that it was broad-based.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Nichols from B. Riley.

[Josh Nichols, Senior Research Analyst at B. Riley]

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Good to see the record gross margins. And thinking out a little bit more, I know you're getting to flat revenue, but with ARR up double digits, I would expect that there may be some more room for expansion for that gross margin line as we think about 2025. How are you thinking about the gross margins and the ability to move higher from the 60% level given the outlook for the fiscal year and the ARR growth?

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah, it's a good question. ARR is definitely accretive to gross margin. Within products and services, we do have mix that we do pay attention to. And there's some products that have better margins than others. But we do think that 60%-plus gross margin mark is one we can sustain. And it'll be driven in the long run much more by ARR becoming a bigger and bigger component of our overall mix that will outweigh really product mix over time.

[Josh Nichols, Senior Research Analyst at B. Riley]

Yep. And then just looking at the fiscal 1Q, I know normally that's a little bit seasonally slower. There's a slight dip in revenues, but not really anything material. Is that just because you're coming off a relatively lower base or you're seeing a change in ordering trends? I'm just curious if you have any insight so far into the fiscal first quarter of what you're seeing because it usually is a little bit slower.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah. It's interesting. We've been not only, of course, looking at our metrics, but then looking at benchmarks. And I think the themes are a little bit consistent that I don't know if air quotes, the market has bottomed necessarily, but the recovery is unclear. And so we're taking, I think, a pragmatic approach, not needing any help, if you will, to reach our objectives. Continued focus on ARR, of course. But you're right. The last quarter, we're heavily channel-centric on the product and service side. Channel doesn't like to have much inventory as they enter typically the end of their fiscal year. So it can be, it's not unusual for the last quarter of the year to be a little bit softer.

[Josh Nichols, Senior Research Analyst at B. Riley]

Yep. Thank you, and then just looking, you touched on it really briefly. I know the company is diversified away from manufacturing and operations, but given the change we have at the executive branch, I'm just curious, your thoughts on potential tariffs or how that may impact the business. I know you've gone through this, right, sometime before, but I'm just curious what you've done since then and how you think it may impact the industry overall.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Yeah. I'll caveat by I don't know, and I'm not sure who does, but we've been probably the most concerned about China. That has felt like the highest probability that those tariffs would increase. Since the last tariff action, which was then sustained under the current administration, we have diversified out of China. We're not completely out, but we're single digits in terms of our exposure there as a total of our manufacturing. And we've got plans to finalize that. I'm probably of the group that's a little skeptical of Mexican tariffs. I think there's a lot at play there. That doesn't mean there might not be some saber-rattling, but I think that it feels the least likely. And Mexico is a place where we've found safe harbor.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

We also have moved a lot of manufacturing to different Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia as a way to diversify as well. I think lastly, which is sort of, if you will, maybe the most dramatic potential action is this wall of tariffs that's been talked about. And we now have manufacturers with U.S.-based facilities that we can transition a good portion of our manufacturing to the U.S. if the conditions require it. So I think that's an important piece to consider as well is that you're adding the most value in the geography that has the most optimal tariff structure. So I think we're in a good position. I don't know if anybody's perfect necessarily, but I think we've really strengthened the diversity of our manufacturing footprint to be able to adapt to different potential tariff scenarios.

[Josh Nichols, Senior Research Analyst at B. Riley]

Thanks for that. I'll hop back in the queue.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. At this time, I would not like to turn the conference back over to Ron Konezny for closing remarks.

[Ron Konezny, President and CEO at Digi International]

Digi offers compelling solutions for complex mission-critical connectivity challenges. We are uniquely qualified as a leader in the industrial IoT market given our long history of offering secure, reliable, and innovative solutions. We plan to attend the Stephens Annual Investment Conference in Nashville next week and would love to connect with investors interested in learning more about Digi. We appreciate you joining Digi's earnings call and for your continued support. Thank you to our customers, distributors, suppliers, and to our exceptional Digi team. Have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Jamie Loch, CFO
• Ron Konezny, President and CEO

Analysts

• Jim Fish, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler
• Tommy Moll, Equity Research Analyst at Stephens
• Josh Nichols, Senior Research Analyst at B. Riley