LogicMark Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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April 18, 2024

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to LogicMark's 4th Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. Today's speakers from LogicMark are Shailene Simmons, Chief Executive Officer and Mark Archer, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward looking statements, including statements that address LogixMark's expectations for future performance or operational results and anticipated product launches. Forward looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in LogixMark's most recently filed annual report on Form 10 ks and subsequent reports filed with the SEC, as well as LogixMark's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it.

Operator

The content of this call contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, April 18, 2024. Except as required by law, LogicMark disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occurs after this call. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Shilyn Simmons. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Towanda, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm very pleased to report that during the Q4 of 2023, we achieved revenue growth of 13% and a 21% increase in gross profit compared to the same period last year. Our gross our annual gross margin for 2023 was the highest compared to the previous 2 years and we have successfully achieved key operational objectives, such as strengthening distribution channels, launching new products, entering new verticals and establishing new intellectual property. The period between 2020 2022 was a time of transition for our company, characterized by the impact of COVID-nineteen, the arrival of new management and the rebuilding of our corporate infrastructure. In 2023, we took a significant step forward with our progress, finishing the year with strong momentum.

Speaker 1

So I would like to congratulate the entire LogicMark team for their efforts. In 2023, we were laser focused on advancing our Caring Platform as a Service or CPaaS cloud ecosystem. This includes the use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence or AI, machine learning or ML, GPS tracking, fall detection sensors, two way communications, 20 fourseven U. S. Based monitoring and integration with smartphones and smart home devices.

Speaker 1

All of these technologies combined to create a truly interconnected network of devices, an Internet of Things or IoT collective network. At LogicMark, we understand that our lives are being extended through the help of technology. We are addressing the quality of our lived experience through a combination of AI enhanced care, wellness and safety systems through our products, as well as the development of our intellectual property or IP as it's commonly called. The investment in research and development that we have been making in our technology is yielding great results, both with our pipeline of new products and our library of patents. You see that from our AI enabled proprietary fraud detection oriented devices geared towards the aging population as well as our software products and services aimed towards providing safety for people of all ages.

Speaker 1

Since I arrived at LogicMark in mid-twenty 21, we have filed 12 patents and moved 7 to final patent status, 6 have been published. This includes 2 provisional patents filed last month focused on AI. In our recent AI focused IP filings, we disclosed our Sensor Enabled Environment C, which employs our AI and ML systems at the edge in combination with our cloud based care processing systems, integrating AI, ML and game theory for active and passive behavior based monitoring. These patents, interwoven with our other patents, allow us to provide much needed products in industry that actively and passively monitors behavior and provides early accurate information that could be used to remediate adverse health, wellness and safety situations. Our patent and product framework supports a recurring revenue model for existing and new products, allowing us to introduce new features seamlessly and provides the opportunity to license our technology to other third parties.

Speaker 1

We've made great strides with our product offerings. In 2023, we introduced the Freedom Alert Plus. It's Wi Fi enabled and the 1st hardware product to be launched into the marketplace by the company since 2015 or 8 years ago. It is also our first product to be released using a newly developed cloud based AI enabled services with our CareM platform as a service model. Freedom Alert Plus is an advanced device with proprietary software offering the following features: patent to fall detection technology that automatically notifies caregivers or emergency services a free Care Village mobile app for iOS or Android, which can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store caregiver calling via two way voice communication to further enhance the level of connection and support a 1 inches screen made for those with reduced dexterity device monitoring with battery life and over the air software and fraud detection algorithm updates and we provide a 20 fourseven U.

Speaker 1

S.-basedemergency monitoring service, giving caretakers the peace of mind that someone is always available to help. In 2023, we also released the new Freedom Alert Mini. Features include patented fall detection technology, two way communications during emergency, GPS monitoring. This smaller form factor mini pairs with our caregiver companion software app available on iOS or Android devices. With a push of a button, users can request assistance from our 20 fourseven U.

Speaker 1

S.-based emergency monitoring service using the device's 4 gs LTE cellular service. Additionally, it has the functionality to create a virtual boundary around a specific location known as geofencing. If a loved one moves beyond this designated area, caregivers receive an alert promptly, providing them with an extra layer of security and a peace of mind. I'm also excited to share that recently, we expanded the company's aperture and market reach by providing safety and security to everyone. We've done so with the launch of our new subscription based software application Aster.

Speaker 1

It's our 1st standalone software product that operates independently of any hardware. This new app contains many features to provide peace of mind to users of all ages, allowing them to remain connected to their loved ones. It's available both on the Apple App Store and Google Play Stores. ASTRO is a product designed to provide a layer of safety for many use cases. This includes college students walking on campus at night, lone workers such as a real estate agent hosting an open house, contractors going to a home they've never been to, active seniors taking a stroll by themselves or even parents on the go.

Speaker 1

A unique feature called Follow Me allows you to connect to your mobile phone calendar and share specific events with family and friends. This allows them to be notified at the end of an event if you don't check back in at say after a date or run-in the park. A Bluetooth button accessory can also be purchased from LogicMark and placed in a pocket or attach your backpack or purse or key ring as a quick access emergency device paired with Aster. We understand how people use products during emergencies and are creating solutions to meet those needs. Pair with a Bluetooth button, you do not need to have the app running in active mode or remember to launch the app before you walk to your car, scenarios which can drain the battery of your phone when you need it the most.

Speaker 1

So as long as your phone is within range of the button, you can just push that button even if your phone is in your backpack or pocket. Your notification will be sent to your loved ones who are following you and also to our U. S.-based 20 fourseven monitoring service. At that time, your last GPS location will be delivered to your friends, family as well as emergency services. Our recent technology releases are excellent examples of how our CPaaS model is evolving and our traction thus far affirms our ability to expand our capabilities as a device, IoT solution and service provider.

Speaker 1

We've mentioned previously that our business plan includes expanding distribution channels. As we continue to build out our product and services offerings, we know that having multiple channels will help us grow our brand awareness and revenue streams. Approximately 70 percent of Purse customers are estimated to fall into the direct to consumer category. To capitalize on this trend, we continue to expand the product line into our LogicBox store on Amazon and on our e commerce store on our website, where we can now accept customer orders for our PRRS devices and related accessories. We expect these stores to help boost sales, reduce our customer acquisition costs and increase margins.

Speaker 1

Another channel we're focused on is the health B2B opportunity. We are exploring partnerships with organizations such as independent living facilities, hospitals, insurance companies, managed care organizations, affiliates and dealers. Partners can provide leads for new and replacement customers having significant buying power and can provide collaboration on product research and development. We envision a continued focus on growing the health channel during 2024. On the government side, we're proud to continue our relationship with the Veterans Administration.

Speaker 1

This past Veterans Day, we celebrated 17 years of our long standing working relationship, providing products that safeguard our valued veterans with life saving devices. We have a contract with the U. S. General Services Administration or GSA, where we have an opportunity to expand our business into other federal, state and local government agencies. We believe there is ample room to increase our market share based on the reported care economy trends.

Speaker 1

The United Nations, World Health Organization and National Institute of Health, just to name a few, provide insights regarding the quality of life of an aging population. These leading advocates remind us about continued challenges such as the ability to remain active and independent, the lack of caregivers and the increasing cost of meeting the needs of the elderly. Personal safety is now another area of care economy in which we are participating. A Gallup poll sites that 40% of all Americans are afraid to walk alone at night within only a mile of their home. 66% of adults avoid social or outdoor activities due to fear of personal crime.

Speaker 1

This figure is the highest in 3 decades. We've seen the growing need for solutions to help people feel more secure and our innovative ASTRA solution is a step in that direction. The marketplace is demanding a diverse set of technology solutions and we have an excellent opportunity to meet the needs of customers across this broad spectrum, including students and adults on the go, which is our additional safety seniors who wish to age in the comfort of their own homes people with chronic health conditions or disabilities, healthcare providers such as hospitals and nursing homes, government agencies and their constituents and our value military veterans. We are also excited about the potential to grow our business by offering more recurring, monitored and connected services. We intend to expand our product line of cell based safety solutions to include additional products, services and support using CPaaS.

Speaker 1

This will enable us to integrate with a variety of third party devices and services, allowing us to serve our customers no matter where they are, whether at home or on the go. While we are excited to expand and capture new business through recurring monthly services and products, our plans also include the continued growth of our unmonitored PRRS business, which is potentially a life saving product for those on low or fixed incomes and or require long charge devices. We believe that everyone regardless of economic circumstance deserves the ability to age with grace and live with safety and security. As you can see, our vision includes casting a broader net relative to where this company has historically operated. We meet customers' needs directly and also expand our capabilities and enterprise offerings as an IoT solutions provider.

Speaker 1

At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark to summarize the financial results.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Shai Lynn. Our 2023 results reflect the team's continued work to build a durable business model with a product portfolio of technology that meets a broader segment of the care economy. As to the financial results, I'm also happy to report our Q4 2023 revenues were $2,400,000 a 13% increase from $2,100,000 in the same period last year. The 13% increase was due to 8% higher unit sales and a 5% increase in average sale price. Gross profit for the Q4 of 2023 was 1,600,000 dollars up 21% from the same period last year.

Speaker 2

Higher gross profit was driven by both the increase in year over year sales and margin improvement. Gross margin improved to 66% in the Q4 of 2023 and that's a 4 50 bps increase over the same quarter last year. We continue to make improvements in both our inbound and outbound shipping costs. Total operating expenses were $11,000,000 which included a non cash goodwill impairment charge of $7,800,000 in the 4th quarter. Excluding the impairment, expenses were $3,200,000 compared to $3,700,000 in the same period last year, a 14% decrease.

Speaker 2

Now if we look into those operating expenses and look just at G and A, the G and A was lower by $650,000 from $3,200,000 to $2,500,000 during this most current quarter, an improvement of 21%. Cost reductions were realized in salary and wages, professional fees, recruiting expenses and the elimination of franchise tax payments that came with our redomestication from Delaware to Nevada. In the Q4 of 2023, a non cash deemed dividend of $900,000 was recorded due to the warrant inducement transaction completed in November of 2023. Net loss for the quarter was $1.73 per share on 1,700,000 weighted shares outstanding, excluding the impact of the impairment charge and the deemed dividend. And that compares with a net loss of dollars per share on 500,000 weighted shares outstanding in the prior quarter.

Speaker 2

Adding back the 2 non cash charges, the net loss for this recent Q4 was $5.74 Now if I could turn to the full year 2023, annual revenues were 9,900,000 dollars a 17% decrease compared to the prior year's 11,900,000 percent lower unit sales, partially offset by a 5% increase in average sale price. As we've discussed on previous calls, we have been comping against 2022 revenues that included one time replacement sales from our customers with 3 gs PRRS units that were made obsolete by the sunsetting of 3 gs support by the national mobile carriers. Those replacement sales stopped in October of 2022. Gross profit for the year was $6,700,000 down from $7,200,000 in the prior year. Margin improvement measures helped offset the impact of lower year over year revenues.

Speaker 2

Gross margin improved to 67.1% for the year 2023, a 640 bps increase from the full year 2022. As was the case in the 4th quarter, much of the improvement resulted from lower inbound and outbound shipping costs. Total operating expenses for the year were relatively unchanged at $14,200,000 compared to $14,100,000 in the year ended 2022 and that's with excluding the recent quarter's goodwill impairment charge. Total G and A expenses for the year were also relatively unchanged at 11,800,000 dollars up just 1% from full year 2022. The net loss for 2023 was $4.03 compared with the prior year's net loss of $15.15 per share, excluding the impact of the impairment charge in the deemed dividend.

Speaker 2

Adding those 2 non cash charges back, the net loss for 2023 was $11.66 As of December 31, 2023, the company had cash and cash equivalents of $6,400,000 compared with $7,000,000 at the end of 2022. During the year ended 2023, the company received gross proceeds of $6,400,000 from issuing common stock warrants and the exercise of common stock purchase warrants. At this time, I'd like to open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank Our first question comes from the line of Mala with Zacks. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Thank you. So, I have a few questions. First, starting with Aster. I mean, it sounds like Aster could expand your target market significantly, given the very versatile nature of the device and the service it offers. Is it too early for you to provide any color on the kind of feedback you're hearing since its launch?

Speaker 1

Opportunity may draw here. As you've mentioned, Marla, and thank you for joining, is that it is absolutely a huge sort of expansion of our business. This product came out of our passion for actually helping people with a more active lifestyle, especially some of the early aging population, who are still hiking and perhaps still carrying their smartphones everywhere they go. And we realized that there is a significant sort of opportunity to utilize the same technology to cover, again, anybody from a college student all the way to loan workers. The reality is that it's always shocking to me when I look at the Gallup poll about how many people are fearful for their personal safety.

Speaker 1

So the product that we provide here is really absolutely a great opportunity. The initial sort of feedback is that the product is paired with, for example, a Bluetooth button is absolutely a fantastic product and very unique in a sense that, again, we're very thoughtful when we talk about providing and building new products. As a woman and a sandwich generation person myself, we spend a lot of time thinking about what does that mean to basically provide a new product into the market. And for example, crossing a dark parking lot and what does that mean in terms of having something that is easy to assess so that you don't have to break out your phone, put in your password on your very large smartphone and then try to do that while somebody is perhaps attacking you or you're in some type of emergency sort of situation. What you really want to do is to be able to access that emergency service immediately.

Speaker 1

And so, Aster appear with our Bluetooth button allows you to do that and you don't even have to remember to activate the app before you leave wherever you're leaving to go to your car. I mean, who does that, right? And this is the type of thinking that, we think that some companies just never think to. And we certainly know that some of our competitors don't even have that feature and functionality. And so we thought of that and was much harder for us to basically do the engineering work to ensure that that happens and you don't have to have the app launched before you need to use it for emergency.

Speaker 1

So we think that that will be received well as we launch this product into a wider marketplace.

Speaker 3

Thank you. So that sort of segues into my next question, which is you've talked before and I think you mentioned in the press release about integrating with 3rd party connected and wearable devices and services. Again, without asking for any kind of detail that you obviously can provide, are there any early stage conversations that are ongoing at this time or is it too early?

Speaker 1

We are sorry, I'm looking at the system. For somebody in the system was muting me for a quick minute there. I will not sort of speak to who we're speaking with, but there's definitely discussions to integrate different products and devices into the cloud based service. One of the things that we think about as we are developing products, for example, is that we really, for example, with Freedom Alert Plus, have access and have the opportunity to sort of help people before a fall occurs. And so you can imagine that some of the products and services that we're integrating with would help with that.

Speaker 1

We have spoken in the past and it will be launched sometime this year. We won't tell you exactly when. I'm always a bit more cautious about things like this, but medicine reminder. And so for example, integration with potentially other service providers that could help with that, you can imagine that is one area. Blood pressure, pulse ox, right?

Speaker 1

Those things make a difference in terms of helping you understand whether or not you're more of risk for a fall, for example. And so you'll see us continue to look at those types of integration potentials or even potential service integration be part of the offering that make things a little bit easier. Because of the way that we've designed this TPaaS system, for example, for things like Freedom Alert Plus and other products that might be launching in the near future, it gives us opportunity to push out those services but that you actually potentially even have to buy a new hardware device in some cases. And so that's the power of what we're trying to sort of build out. Nobody should be static on any of the products that we have, especially our new like our newer products like the Freedom Alert Plus that has screens, right?

Speaker 1

Because the reality is that when we had cars in the past, if you had a map in your car, the way that you used to have to sort of update those maps and it's probably the way you still do with the integrated GPS maps in your car. So you have to take it to the service center and get that updated. That's not the case of what you need to do for Tesla. So that map gets over the year updated. And so our devices do the same with things like fault addiction algorithms, for example.

Speaker 1

And so we don't I'm a believer that we are really good at what we do really well. So we will probably do things like continue to make some of them more state of the art looking hardware products for PRRS devices. But you'll also see us looking at partnering with people who are really great at what they do in terms of the hard work because that's not our expertise. And but to bring some of that partnership and data into the folds that we can make a better offering to our customers and be smarter about how we are able to offer those services to our customers. So that's all to say that we are on that path.

Speaker 1

We are absolutely talking to people and So Okay. That makes sense.

Speaker 3

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. And then last question is on the goodwill impairment. It looks like that goodwill was associated with the 2016 LogicMark transaction.

Speaker 3

So I just want to confirm the transaction that led to the impairment charge predates the current management team. Is that correct?

Speaker 2

Yes. You're correct, Marla, that it does relate to the acquisition of the LogicMark business. The challenge for us is right now is our market cap and it really doesn't support the amount of goodwill that was on the books. But kind of to your question, we also looked at the intangibles, the other elements that were acquired with the acquisition of LogicMark some 8 years ago and there was no impairment there. So it was just a goodwill.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Shailene for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you. As we conclude, I would like to thank everyone for their ongoing support of our journey to become a leading provider of solutions that enhance the quality of life for all. At LogicMark, our passion is to continue developing innovative products and implement the latest technologies, including AI and machine learning to provide personal safety so that people of all ages can live their life to the fullest with another agent at home or taking a jog in a park. We aim to offer a range of products with variety of features and price points so that even those with low or fixed incomes can access solutions that enhance their personal safety and well-being. This includes landline, cellular and Wi Fi based hardware and software solutions.

Speaker 1

Our team is making great strides, and we look forward to updating you on our next call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now

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Key Takeaways

  • In Q4 2023, LogicMark achieved 13% revenue growth to $2.4 million, a 21% increase in gross profit and improved gross margin to 66%, representing its highest quarterly margin in two years.
  • Management advanced its CPaaS cloud ecosystem with AI/ML-enabled IoT devices, filing 12 patents (7 issued) including recent AI/ML edge-to-cloud behavior monitoring innovations.
  • In 2023 the company launched three new offerings: the Wi-Fi enabled Freedom Alert Plus, the GPS-enabled Freedom Alert Mini, and Aster, its first standalone safety app with Bluetooth-paired emergency alert functionality.
  • LogicMark is expanding distribution via D2C channels on Amazon and its e-commerce site, while pursuing B2B partnerships with healthcare providers and leveraging a 17-year GSA contract to access federal and state agencies.
  • Full-year 2023 revenues were $9.9 million, down 17% as one-time 3G replacement sales ceased, but gross margin rose to 67.1%, operating expenses were flat and the company raised $6.4 million in equity proceeds.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
LogicMark Q4 2023
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