KORE Group Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 11, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Core Group Holdings 4th Quarter 20 23 Earnings Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to David Frund, Manager, M and A. Please go ahead, David.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. On today's call, we will refer to the Q4 2023 earnings presentation, which will be helpful to follow along with as well as the press release filed this morning that details the company's Q4 2023 results.

Speaker 2

Most of these can

Speaker 1

be found on our Investor Relations page at ir.corewireless.com. Finally, a recording of the call will be available in the section of the company's website later today. The company encourages you to review the Safe Harbor statement, risk factors and other disclaimers contained on this slide and today's press release as well as in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which identify specific risk factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in our forward looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements after this webcast. The company also notes that it will be discussing non GAAP financial information on this call.

Speaker 1

The company is providing that information as a supplement to information prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States or GAAP. You can find a reconciliation of these metrics to the company's reported GAAP results in the reconciliation tables provided in today's earnings release and presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Will Mobel, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer.

Speaker 2

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Q4 full year 2023 earnings call. With me is Paul Hults, Core's Chief Financial Officer. As always, I'll start with a brief overview of the key events and announcements for the Q4.

Speaker 2

Paul will then review our financial results and then we will review our sales pipeline, key wins and a summary of how we view the year ahead. We will finish with a Q and A session. Slide 4 presents some key announcements from the Q4. First, we launched a pioneering eSIM powered medical alert device in collaboration with Medical Guardian. This device is designed to facilitate active aging as defined by the World Health Organization.

Speaker 2

This revolutionary technology overcomes the challenges of limited carrier flexibility and coverage, enabling network switching to optimize connectivity across different regions and operational phases and enabling optimal 20 fourseven connectivity. This medical alert device leverages Core's industry leading connectivity services. Core's eSIM optimizes opportunities for health, participation and security for aging adults, enabling end users to age with dignity. This innovation shows how revolutionary IoT is in addressing some of society's most daunting obstacles, in this case, an aging global population and how IoT can enable a better world. IoT for good, as our purpose statement says here at Core.

Speaker 2

2nd, we continue to receive recognition from numerous industry analysts and publications for our best in class connectivity products. For instance, Gartner recognized Core as a managed IoT connectivity services worldwide leader for the 5th consecutive year. Core's CAS offerings, including Supersyn also received the 2023 IoT Excellence Award from TMC and Crossfire Media. This recognition cements our unwavering reputation for understanding our customers' needs and creating cutting edge solutions that simplify the complexities of IoT and empower our customers to achieve their goals. The Gartner Magic Quadrant leadership is especially encouraging since we improved our position in the leaders quadrant even as large well known carriers and competitors dropped out.

Speaker 2

And also on the vision and strategy dimension, Core is now firmly among the top 3 providers globally. As evidence of our industry leading strategy and specifically with respect to our investments in preconfigured solutions, in the Q1 of 2024, we landed our 1st major connected health telemetry solution or CHTS pre configured solution win. This $26,000,000 TCV achievement will have core support in global home respiratory therapy to over 65,000 patients. The solution involves managing the capture, secure transmission and delivery of home ventilator and oxygen concentrator data telemetry to the patient's care team. This customer will utilize Core's CHTS gateway, device management and configuration cloud platform and the CHTS temporary data repository cloud service.

Speaker 2

The customer will map their existing patient engagement and support workflows to Core's OTS Cloud to enable the care delivery teams to configure, install and monitor their home respiratory therapy for thousands of ventilators and oxygen concentrators. This win demonstrates Core's ability to streamline the IoT deployment of a complex medical device with our integrated, secure and regulatory compliant cellular connectivity and data routing infrastructure. These capabilities enable continuous healthcare monitoring from the comfort of patients' homes, significantly improving patient outcomes and comfort. Now let's look at our 4th quarter financial results on Slide 5. Core's 4th quarter revenue of $72,400,000 increased 16% year over year, driven by an acceleration in high margin IoT connectivity, which was up 27% year over year.

Speaker 2

A decline in low margin IoT solutions revenue partially offset this growth in IoT connectivity. While double digit top line growth in Q4 is impressive, we should note that these results were below our expectations due to additional unexpected customer order deferrals in Q4, including those from our largest customer. While these deferrals impacted both IoT Connectivity and IoT Solutions, solutions experienced a greater impact due to customer managing year end inventory levels and further delays in remote patient monitoring and clinical drug trial deployments. Reiterating what we said last quarter, these orders and customers have not been lost. We fully expect to continue to serve these customers in 2024 and beyond.

Speaker 2

That said, during our 2024 business planning process and partially in response to the lumpy characteristics of hardware revenue in our maturing IoT Solutions business line, we have decided as a company to reduce our exposure to low margin hardware revenue. Going forward, we will only accept hardware orders that are essential to winning a customer contract. This decision resulted in a reduction in our TCV pipeline and obviously a lower projection of IoT Solutions revenue in 2024. However, this marginal short term headwind is more than offset by the increased predictability, visibility and profitability improvement that shrinking our reliance on hardware will deliver in 2024 and into the future. Further, we expect growing momentum in Core's IoT Connectivity business to more than offset any one time headwinds resulting from this decision.

Speaker 2

On this point, before handing the call to Paul to cover the financials in more detail, I wanted to touch on our outlook for 2024. At a high level, with 2 gs, 3 gs sunsets and the worst of macro uncertainty behind us, we expect a reacceleration in our high margin IoT connectivity business to be Core's primary growth driver in 2024. This growth will offset a decline in low margin IoT solutions revenue and drive year over year revenue growth and more substantially exciting double digit growth in adjusted EBITDA. Overall, we expect 2024 revenue to be between $300,000,000 3 0 $5,000,000 with adjusted EBITDA between $64,000,000 $66,000,000 I will provide more color on our 2024 outlook later in the call. But with that said, Paul, over to you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Rommel, and good morning, everyone. Turning to our results on Slide 6. As Rommel highlighted, 4th quarter revenue increased 16% year over year to $72,400,000 compared to $62,400,000 in the Q4 of 2022. By segment, IoT Connectivity revenue of $55,300,000 which includes the Twilio IoT acquisition, increased 27% year over year and represented 76% of 4th quarter revenue. Organically, IoT Connectivity grew in the mid single digits year over year.

Speaker 3

This growth is despite continued delays in planned upgrades at some customers in the second half of twenty twenty three that have been pushed to the first half of twenty twenty four. IoT Solutions revenue declined 10% year over year to $17,100,000 or 24 percent of 4th quarter revenue. As Rommel mentioned, the decline in IoT Solutions reflects customer deferrals, including from Core's top customers. To show the magnitude of these deferrals, no orders from our top customer were received in the quarter as they continue to manage their inventory from their large LTE transition project. Total gross margin in Q4 2023 was 52.6%, a decline of 150 basis points compared to the Q4 of 2022.

Speaker 3

By segment, IoT Connectivity's gross margin was down 6 50 basis points year over year to 58.6%, reflecting a full quarter inclusion of the lower margin Twilio IoT revenue. Additional year end revenue provisions were also made in Q4 with some smaller customers struggling to make on time payments. IoT Solutions margin was up 4 50 basis points to 33.2%, reflecting the lower mix of hardware versus services revenue in the quarter. Total connections at the end of the 4th quarter were $18,500,000 a decline of over $400,000 from the Q3 of 2023 and an increase of $3,500,000 year over year. The decline in quarter over quarter SIM count reflects the deactivation of low revenue SIMs from a single SIaaS customer that is transitioning their base to be managed in house.

Speaker 3

Core and the customer have been working together during this transition as we informed them in 2023 that the CIAs business was being deemphasized by the company going forward. With the Q4 also being the year end for many of our customers, some were active in cleaning up their 0 usage SIMs prior to year end to save costs heading into 2024. DC activations will not have a material effect on IoT connectivity in 2024, again due to their very, very low ARPU. Dollar based net expansion rate or DBNER for the 12 months ended December 31, 2023 was 96% compared to 92% in the prior year. As a reminder, DB NER is like same store sales as it measures the growth of existing customers in the trailing 12 months compared to the same customer cohort in the year ago period.

Speaker 3

This means that customers gained from the Twilio IoT acquisition in June were excluded from the calculation. Our 2023 DBAR was impacted by our largest customer's LTE transition project, which occurred from June 2021 to June 2022 and significantly benefited our top line performance. As a reminder, we saw revenue from our top customer double during this period. Excluding our largest customer, DB NER for the year would be 101% compared to 103% in 2022. Turning to Slide 7.

Speaker 3

Operating expenses including depreciation and amortization in the 4th quarter were $47,700,000 a decrease of 50 $400,000 compared to Q4 2022. The decline in our operating expenses reflect the non cash goodwill impairment charge in Q4 2022 of $58,100,000 which did not exist in the current quarter. This decline was offset by increases in depreciation and amortization, incremental operating expenses from the Twilio IT acquisition and one time professional service fees from our debt refinancing completed in November. 4th quarter interest expenses, including amortization of deferred financing fees, increased year over year to approximately 12,000,000 dollars versus $9,700,000 in the Q4 of 2022. This increase is due to the higher borrowing costs on our prior senior secured term loan.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, we refinanced our previous $300,000,000 term loan in the 4th quarter with a new $185,000,000 term loan and a $150,000,000 preferred stock placement. We also incurred a $2,600,000 loss on the extinguishment of our previous debt. Net loss in the 4th quarter was $33,700,000 compared to $69,600,000 in the prior year. The $35,900,000 decline in the net loss year over year was mainly due to the already mentioned non cash goodwill impairment charge in Q4 2022 of $58,100,000 This decline was offset by year over year increases or one time costs relating to the refinancing of our long term debt, increase in interest expense and incremental costs associated with the Twilio IoT acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA in the 4th quarter was $13,800,000 a decline of 1 point $9,000,000 or approximately 12% compared to last year.

Speaker 3

Our adjusted EBITDA margin in the current quarter was 19.1%, down 6 10 basis points compared to the same period in the prior year. The EBITDA margin decrease is mainly due to the majority of incremental revenue year over year coming from the Twilio IoT acquisition, which as we previously disclosed, would be at negative EBITDA margins for most of 2023. It should also be noted that our adjusted EBITDA or net loss in the 4th quarter does not include approximately $4,000,000 in funds received as a CARES Act employee retention credit as the company has taken a conservative approach not yet recognized the benefit from a U. S. GAAP perspective.

Speaker 3

Moving to cash flow, cash used in operations for the 3 months ending December 31, 2023 was approximately $10,000,000 This amount increased year over year mainly due to the additional one time expenses paid related to our debt refinancing. At the end of the Q4, cash and cash equivalents were $27,100,000 compared to $34,700,000 as of December 31, 2022. Turning to our full year 2023 results, total revenue of $27,600,000 increased 3% from 2022. IoT Connectivity revenue increased 15% to 202,300,000,000 more than offsetting the 25% decline in IoT Solutions revenue of $74,300,000 The full year gross margin of 54% was up 2 10 basis points from 2022. This was driven by higher mix of connectivity revenue and a 2 50 basis point improvement in the full year solutions gross margin to 31%.

Speaker 3

These factors were partially offset by 180 basis points decline in IoT Connectivity gross margins to 62.4%. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $55,600,000 resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.1%. This compared to $62,800,000 23.4 percent in 2022. The full year 2023 net loss of 100 and $67,000,000 which includes goodwill impairment charges increased by $60,800,000 relative to 2022. Excluding the goodwill impairment charge of $78,300,000 in 2023 $58,100,000 in 2022, our net loss increased by $40,600,000 to $88,700,000 Our annual net loss increased due to higher interest rate expenses, increased cost due to the Twilio IoT acquisition, a change in the fair value of our warrants and the one time costs associated with our debt refinancing.

Speaker 3

With that, I'll pass it back to you, Rommel.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Paul. Slide 8 presents a snapshot of our global sales pipeline as of December 31, 2023. As I mentioned, we have decided to reduce our reliance on low margin hardware revenue. This decision has obviously reduced our funnel in total size as has the relatively large number of deals that were closed in Q4, both closed won and closed lost and a larger than typical year end cleaning out of the funnel led by our new CRO, Jason Dietrich, who joined Core in the middle of last year. Importantly, the quality of our pipeline has improved due to these actions.

Speaker 2

Our sales pipeline now includes over 1600 opportunities with an estimated potential TCV of approximately $545,000,000 In the Q4, we generated an incremental $28,000,000 of closed won TCV, bringing the year to date total to $115,000,000 as we delivered our 5th consecutive year of TCV growth. For those who may be new to our story, the majority of sold TCV is recognized as revenue over 4 years. And it is important to note that the closed TCV figure is aggregated across all of our services, which have different durations of revenue recognition. Slide 9 shows our customer wins in the 4th quarter. These wins include: number 1, Core is growing wallet share with a leading provider of high performance software and solutions for the real estate industry.

Speaker 2

This customer is adding 15,000 units to its multi and single family home portfolio and reaffirmed its commitment to Core by signing new contracts representing approximately $2,000,000 of incremental TCV. Core's 1API approach and top tier customer support helped give the customer confidence to scale its IoT deployments. 2, we had a cross sell win with 1 of the largest privately held homebuilders in the United States. This customer was overpaying for substandard connectivity services with next to no customer support. Core's connectivity products opened the conversation and the company optimized the customer's entire connectivity system.

Speaker 2

Then after demonstrating that Core's high bandwidth pre configured solutions could enhance operations, quicken time to market and improve the end customer experience, Core grew our wallet share with this customer. 3, a global fast growing specialized management network chose Core for its primary and failover solutions in the U. S. There are significant opportunities for European expansion with this customer as well as further avenues for growth from new product introductions. Finally, a provider of vehicle and asset tracking IoT solutions with operations spanning 3 continents chose core Omnisend as its connectivity solution for its new products.

Speaker 2

This customer's new products will contain buy here, pay here features and target the subprime vehicle loan market. This contract is worth an estimated $1,600,000 in DCB. As you can see, our sales and growth momentum continues to build. Our independent multi, multi, multi offering is resonating with the market and our connectivity position has never been stronger. Core's connectivity products including OmniSIM and SuperSIM are uniquely suited to our customers' needs and simplify the complexities of IoT deployments.

Speaker 2

Our products provide customers with a single flexibility by ensuring cost effective uninterrupted network across borders. These are critical factors for success for individual customer deployments and the IoT ecosystem as a whole. Combine Core's strong foundation with stabilizing ARPUs and 2024 will be a great year for organic connectivity growth. So what does this mean? What is the end result?

Speaker 2

As I said earlier, we expect revenue in the range of $300,000,000 to $305,000,000 with adjusted EBITDA between $64,000,000 $66,000,000 in 2024. To help contextualize our guidance, let me walk you through the chart on Slide 10. The first thing to note is that Core's 2023 adjusted EBITDA adjusts out one time transformation investments needed to establish Core as a leader in IoT and capitalize on the explosive growth of connected devices. 2023 was the last year of these transformational investments and they will not occur in 2024. After taking these one time expenses into account, our 2023 adjusted EBITDA is approximately $49,000,000 meaning that we expect 2024 EBITDA to grow approximately 33% year over year on an apples to apples comparison basis.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, these investments involved doubling down on Core's core IoT connectivity business, launching industry specific business lines and focusing on eSIM leadership. We have been adjusting out these one time transformation expenses to show a clearer picture of Core's financial health and operating performance. Given the volatile market backdrop in 2023, it is worth stepping back and talking about what gives us confidence in this outlook. 1st, 2024 revenue growth will be driven by high visibility, high margin IoT connectivity, which is reaccelerating following the end of the 2 gs, 3 gs sunset and customer deferrals, a rebound in Core's key end markets and stabilizing ARPUs. This high quality revenue growth is offsetting a decline in lumpy and low margin hardware revenue, which gives us better visibility into our top line performance throughout the year and increases our profitability overall due to IoT Connectivity's superior margin profile relative to solutions.

Speaker 2

Secondly, we streamlined our operating costs and improved our economies of scale as evidenced by our start in 2024. We expect this performance to gain momentum throughout the year. But before I continue to talk about this start to 2024, I should specify that we will not be providing ongoing quarterly guidance. That said, given that we are in April and Q1 is over, we feel confident in saying that our adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2024 will be approximately $1,500,000 above Q1 2023. This would mean that Q1 adjusted EBITDA would be higher than every single quarter of 2023, despite Q1 historically being Core's highest expense quarter of the year.

Speaker 2

This strong start to 2024, combined with our refined operating model and connectivity led growth gives us confidence in our 2024 outlook and demonstrates our solid operating leverage. Slide 11 is our last prepared slide and summarizes the key points of our prepared remarks. First, Core's 2023 revenue growth will be driven by IoT connectivity, which will be supported by stable ARPUs and connected device growth from existing customers. We are conservatively planning for IoT solutions to be down year over year, reflecting our decision to deemphasize low quality revenue. Launching our next generation eSIM product will only accelerate our momentum.

Speaker 2

Our next generation products present customers with best in class global IoT connectivity with compliant local access, seamless digital consumption and white glove customer service. Secondly, in addition to these exciting product developments, Core delivered closed won TCV of $115,000,000 in 2023, while identifying several improvements in our direct and indirect sales efforts, which we expect to bear fruit in 2024. On the direct sales side of things, we hired seasoned sales executives with many years of experience who are becoming trusted partners and advisors with their customers. At the same time, we have developed relationships with GCP, that's Google and other major companies that give core distribution to an extensive range of companies across industries, sizes and geographies. This helps Core meet customers where they are, enabling successful IoT deployments and advancing the IoT ecosystem.

Speaker 2

Taking a more holistic view, we are cautiously optimistic that 2023 was the high watermark for macroeconomic uncertainty among our most prominent end markets. While customers remain cost focused, the inventory correction at our customers is largely behind us and we have de risked our exposure to lumpy hardware revenue and customer inventories. Crucially, as core grows, we will remain focused on profitability and operating efficiency and will leverage the economies of scale that result from IoT connectivity growth. As a result, we have a clear line of sight into exciting double digit adjusted EBITDA growth in 2024 driven by increased sales and greater profitability. They are happy to revisit any of these key points during the Q and A.

Speaker 2

But before turning the call over to the operator, I want to thank Core's IOT ers around the world for their tremendous work this past year. I am excited about where we are going this year and in the future. Our connectivity portfolio, financial positioning and sales motion have never been stronger and we are well placed to capture the opportunity that the decade of IoT brings. With that, let's start the Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. Today's first question is coming from Scott Searle of ROTH MKM. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Rommel, maybe just to dive in on the 2024 outlook. It sounds like you're looking for a double digit growth on the connectivity side of the equation. I'm wondering you could give us a little bit of color, as well as connected units and how you're thinking about ARPUs, we were bottoming out, it seems like there are some low end end of life connections that are now gone.

Speaker 4

So should we start to see an upward trajectory? And as an extension of that, looking at that TCV pipeline, I'm wondering if could give us an idea of what the annual recurring revenue component looks like. I think back in the napkin math would say something like 15% or so of that funnel would be ARR. I'm just trying to get my hands around that and the TCV wins that you've got in 2023 in Q4.

Speaker 2

Okay. Thanks, Scott. I'm going to struggle to remember all of those. So let's just come back and remind me as we go. Yes, look, the fundamental thing is what you nailed absolutely correctly at the front end of your questions, which is with 2 gs, 3 gs behind us in a simple P2Q business, price times volume type business, when you had both forced churn of devices coming off 2 gs and 3 gs networks and ARPU declines that were averaging about 20% a year for every one of the first four full years I was here.

Speaker 2

Yes, it's tough to do that kind of business, right? When I joined the business, it was in the neighborhood of 6,000,000 SIMs. We've more than tripled that and we obviously haven't tripled revenue. So, yes, a lot of that was given back to the fundamental price differences of LTE, 4 gs, 5 gs type environment over 2 gs, 3 gs. When that goes away and as the volume growth gets back to, I'll say, pre COVID type levels, anywhere close to the 25%, 26% CAGR we've grown volume at, connectivity becomes a very exciting business.

Speaker 2

And we're certainly starting to show that here in 2024, which will actually be 20% approximately top line growth, but not all of that is organic. And as I said, we're still growing, right, our volume growth is still going back. On the P side of the equation, we have seen stabilization, which we talked about last year after a sort of low point of ARPUs average ARPUs for a quarter, I think it was Q3, if it serves me correctly, that's sort of $0.95 We saw stabilization to slight increase last year up to sort of the $0.98, $0.99 level at the end of the year. And actually, Q1 is coming in at a buck of 4. Dollars Now that may not sound like a lot, but to us, it's like nirvana, right?

Speaker 2

It's like this is what we've been saying, what happened between the higher bandwidth that our cost and just the stopping of this notion of high priced ARPU devices coming off and low priced ARPU devices coming on. So that's really the fundamental driver is IoT connectivity in terms of the outlook and the confidence. And yes, I would say also that our high bandwidth products

Speaker 4

Yes, that was perfect. Nice to hear the increase in the ARPU. But just to translate the TCV then into what an ARR opportunity looks like. So the annual recurring revenue component of

Speaker 2

Yes. So look, so the first thing I'll tell you is that since sort of the middle of last year Q3 when Paul and I spent a bunch of time with our teams analyzing what was going on with the deferrals and you're well Scott, as obviously a very good IoT analyst. And you know all the inventory and modules and all these problems that were out there. People were using up those inventories the way they had stopped up during COVID during the supply chain constraints. So there were deferrals across the board and we were impacted it as well.

Speaker 2

And so we said, what, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to have so much volatility forced, if you will, into our numbers because we're not really volatile business. We are an ARR business. And so as we've increased our focus on connectivity, in Q4, we were near 87% recurring revenue, right? Just connectivity at budget level this year, Scott, in 2024, the dynamic straight will be almost between 78% 80% is how it's budgeted these solutions. So your recovery revenue starts with a base of 78%, 80% and then you add all the profit we get from our solutions customers.

Speaker 2

So if anything that 87% should be stable and maybe even increasing, which is a really cool part of our business model.

Speaker 4

Great, perfect. And last one, if I could. The respiratory telemetry win is very interesting. You guys have historically been very strong I think in cardiac telemetry. How big is the respiratory telemetry market?

Speaker 4

And are there some bigger opportunities behind this as we look into current year and beyond? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. No, we are excited about that win. And by the way, we've had a really good reputation with that customer over a long time. And this was finally where opportunity for several years, not just a 1 or 2 year enterprise type sales cycle. And obviously, when they went through their sort of versus build decision, our decades now worth of experience and engagement and the IoT managed services model were key differentiators, reasons why we won that deal.

Speaker 2

Now to the size of the market specific question, respiratory therapies are in general today smaller still than cardiac rhythm monitoring, right, which is of course dominated by the big three. But it's growing significantly faster, Scott. And so there's actually and in fact, last night, I was meeting with our European Connected Health sales team and they're looking at about 50 opportunities in the Connected Health clinical trial space are very exciting and a good chunk of those about, I'd say about 20% of those TCV dollars are actually focused in and around this respiratory area. There's one opportunity with a nominal 5,000,000 customer number. Now how long does that take us to actually win?

Speaker 2

Do we win and all that? I'm not committing that, right? All I'm saying is it's an exciting little segment of connected health, not total and growing fast.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks so much. I'll get back in the queue.

Speaker 2

Thanks,

Operator

Brett. Thank you. The next question is coming from Michael Latimore of Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, great. Good morning. Thanks very much. Yes, Rommel, on the this decision to focus more on higher end hardware, reduce the lower margin hardware business. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit?

Speaker 5

Historically, I don't know what percent of the pipeline has been this lower margin hardware? Is it in different verticals? Just maybe just elaborate a little bit more on that.

Speaker 2

Yes. No, look, I mean, so let me just start with some basics that you are well familiar with, Mike, and then Paul may want to jump in on the end to sort of clean up my story here if I miss anything. But so the first thing, of course, is we're not a manufacturing shop. We're not a device or hardware manufacturer. And so we've only really resold other parties' devices if it was simplifying the complexities for the customer, right?

Speaker 2

That's our tagline, simplifying the complexities of IoT. So it was just easier for us to get the container of whatever was coming from Taiwan or wherever and then configure those devices and get them out into the field, right, with our pick pack, configuration type services and management services and then the reverse supply chain type services, we were happy to do it, right. Now on the hardware piece standalone, you obviously didn't make particularly good margins. In some cases, it was embarrassingly low single digit margins. And but we did it again in the context of simplifying it for the customer, for winning everything else, we're having connectivity in every device that went out there and all the other good reasons, IoT solutions exist as a strategy for us, right.

Speaker 2

So what we then found was since it was it's relatively easy dollars to add up and it tends to be front ended in these 3, 5 year type contract cycles. So meaning hardware revenue, right? That in some cases, I mean, it was probably between 25% 30% of our funnel actually, right, when we looked at it hard towards the end of Q3 last year and we said, boy, this is starting to be too much. It's introducing volatility and lumpiness into a business that's solid and sort of made to be public, recurring in nature, 85%, 87% recurring in nature, as I said earlier, the Scott's question. And so we and by the way, at the end of all of that, we get 5s and 7s and 10s of percent margin on that business.

Speaker 2

Why are we doing this? So again, we'll do it if the customer insists. We'll do it when a customer says, I don't want to spend all this CapEx or I want to let you guys buy it for us and OpEx that to me over 36 months or 24 months or whatever. In those cases, of course, we'll continue to do it, but we just won't let it be such a drag on our overall margins. By the way, IoT Solutions is already showing a real uptick.

Speaker 2

Remember how IoT solutions was even as low as 27%, 28%, 30% when it was very hardware driven. We're already kind of creeping into the mid-30s. And as I've long said, our goal is to get to 40%. And there were 2 or 3 drivers of that, including preconfigured solutions, which are by definition higher margin and including hardware becoming a smaller portion of our total revenue base. So those are the set of reasons, but let me just give Paul the opportunity to add anything.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 3

The only thing I would add, Mike, was like so during the full fiscal year for IoT Solutions, we were $92,000,000 ish and then we in 2022 dropping down to about 74,000,000. So you have a say roughly 20,000,000 drop this year. Now some of that as we talked about, was from the deferrals and so forth. But as we go into next year and as we indicated that we're forecasting that solutions will decline more, that is because we're taking out this lower margin business. So you're talking about $20,000,000 to 20 $5,000,000 of lower margin hardware that we're going to let right now currently let go or not forecast in.

Speaker 3

Like Gomo said, if we need to take it and the customer is insisting that we'll do it. But from a forecast perspective and guidance perspective, we're assuming it's not there.

Speaker 5

Yes, yes. Okay, got it. That's very helpful. And then I guess just on the macro here, can you talk just I mean you guys have a pretty diverse view and wide and diverse view into the IoT market. I mean what's your thought on the IoT market just kind of broadly this year?

Speaker 5

Is it accelerating? Is it stable, declining a little bit? And any kind of big picture stuff that would be helpful.

Speaker 2

Yes. No, I appreciate the big picture question. We've never been sort of more bullish on this market growing than we are right around now, right? We've long sort of said that the trends were all in our favor, right? The world wants more connected devices, wants more data.

Speaker 2

We can hype AI all we want, but AI without data sort of doesn't do much, right? The first step of all of this AI stuff working out is guys like us connecting devices and getting data back to you so you can apply your algorithms, right? So that was a big trend. All of this edge, edge compute, edge to cloud type movement is a helpful trend. Obviously, higher bandwidth things as 5 gs matures.

Speaker 2

One of my key talking points at the Embedded World Conference in Nuemberg yesterday was about the convergence that's coming including with satellite. And then of course, the closest to our hearts at core is Ethernet, right? And depending on who you believe, somewhere between $3,000,000,000 and five 1,000,000,000 ESMs get shipped between now and the end of the decade, right? And we certainly think we have the leading proposition there, OmniSIM with its downloadable characteristics, SuperSIM from the old Twilio SuperSIM, which is probably one of the most stable, dependable, reliable products out there. And our next generation is going to combine the best of those 2.

Speaker 2

And if we can get sort of more than our share, if I could be greedy and say well more than our share of that eSIM shipping that's going to go on as the world goes into more global deployments, takes regional POCs and says, all right, let's go global. We've never been more bullish about sort of volume growth and our positioning. At the end of the 5 years, our investments are positioning to take advantage of those trends.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. And then just a real quick one. Should we assume the Q1 is sort of the low point of the year and you get some sequential growth from there? Or how should we think about the pattern throughout the year?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, you're absolutely right. That's pretty much always our pattern. So it's a great question. Do fully expect Q1 EBITDA, even though it will be the largest quarter we've had in the last 5 or 6 to be our lowest.

Speaker 2

And by the way, Mike, I mean, just to make sure you noted that, that's with more one time cost being invested. It's a significant step up in our profitability across the board. But we do expect the Q1 to be our lowest. I mean, obviously, all of our payroll expenses, taxes, that sort of thing, start to go down. And of course, we anticipate growth on the top line.

Speaker 2

So if Q1 is going to be in that, call it, dollars 75,000,000 $76,000,000 range and hopefully close to 20% of that's EBITDA and you're getting closer, right, you're increasing that $75,000,000 to seventy 6 top line going forward, and your OpEx is actually going down, right? We expect that to increase. But Paul, would you have anything or did I steal all your thunder?

Speaker 3

Yes. No, you got it.

Speaker 5

All right. Awesome. Thanks very much. Good luck this year.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Meta Marshall of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, this is Mary on for Meta. Thanks for taking our question. I want to ask you about the deferrals. Do you have a sense of when those projects resume? And then what have been some of the hang ups to some of those drug trials?

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Mary, and our best to meet up. Hopefully, we'll talk to you very soon. But look, first of all, this is, as I was saying, I think in my response to Scott or Mike earlier, even this on this call, this has been a phenomenon, right? I mean, if you get a look at that Sierra, I know that's now, I guess, just the line in Semtech's business or really anybody out there, right?

Speaker 2

When there was a bit of panic around supply chain issues in 2021, 2022 for sure, people pile up inventory, our number one customer, our largest customer. But we were doing the math the other day, about 5.5 years worth of stuff in a year, right? So that's stuff that's just sitting out there, whether that's healthcare devices, fleet devices, whatever devices they are, everything else that comes with it, the modules and so forth has to be used from a perspective before customers can keep ordering. And who by the way introduced them a kind of risk off environment in the market, more focused on expenses than ever, people watching their inventory levels at the end of the year, on and on and on. And we actually saw sort of a reverse, right, the pendulum going all the way the other direction of people really fitting out their inventory before their order.

Speaker 2

So the deferrals are most for the most part related to what the rest of this industry has seen and the inventory levels needed to be used up. I mean, it's quite remarkable. I'll give you one example with our largest absolutely largest customer. We had a PO that we thought we were going to fill and deliver in Q3. And we pushed it back into Q4 and then we were actually pushing back into Q1, right?

Speaker 2

I mean, so it was amazing. We didn't ship anything to our largest customers since about June last year. And that's sort of an extreme example. In other cases, people just didn't send us the deal and said, you know what, we're going to get our inventory levels down to the targets that our CFO has set for us or our CPO has set for us, where we're just going to defer ordering. All of that will come back over the next few quarters as those customers get back to the business as usual with the new inventory levels, right, with their new target levels.

Speaker 2

So that's sort of not worrying. The last part of what you asked though Barry is sort of interesting is, certainly in the healthcare space, the birth of resources, the resources being reallocated to the things like pandemics and those kinds of situations. So the availability of those knowledgeable and any type resources to drive the digital transformation, which is IoT enabling clinical trials or technology enabling clinical trials or electronic data capture more generally, But those resources just weren't there, right? Some clinical trials will be delayed because there's not enough resources, nurses and the like to actually run trials, right? So those things again, the industry is addressing will balance out over time and will pick up.

Speaker 2

None of these are worrying trends. I've been known to say that as we ring our hands in America, I've been watching this story for 30 years of, oh my God, 10%, 15% of GDP is, oh my gosh, 20% is, I think we're going to 40% 50%, right? And so all this is going to come back and Connected Health was clearly the single best bet we've made outside of recent.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'd like turn the floor back over to Mr. Ball for closing comments.

Speaker 2

Outstanding. Well, I really want to say thank you to everyone for your interest attending our call here. We look forward to updating you with our Q1 results in about the next 5, 6 weeks. Thank you very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines or log off the webcast at this time and enjoy the rest of your day.

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Earnings Conference Call
KORE Group Q4 2023
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