Perion Network Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 8, 2024

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, everybody,

Speaker 1

and welcome to the Perion Network's Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. The press release detailing the financial results is available on the company's website at www.terion.com. Before we begin, I would like to read the following Safe Harbor statement. Today's discussion includes forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

These statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events. These forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including those discussed under the heading Risk Factors and elsewhere in the company's annual report on Form 20F that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different and any future results, performance or achievements anticipated or implied by these forward looking statements. The company does not undertake to update any forward looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. As in prior quarters, the results reported today will be analyzed both on a GAAP and a non GAAP basis. While to their comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release, which is available on our website and has also been filed on form 6 ks.

Speaker 1

Hosting the call today are Tal Jacobsen, Perion's Chief Executive Officer and Myles Siglone, Perion's Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the call over to Tal Jacobsen. Please go ahead.

Operator

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. With me today at our New York office are HiveStack General Manager, Andreas Suppliolis, who leads our out of home advertising technologies and our Chief Product Officer, Kenny Lau, who leads our advertising solutions. Our CFO, Maroz Sighon, is joining us from our Israeli office. Today, we face our challenges heads on, with a determined spirit to navigate forward.

Operator

As we previously announced, the Q1 of 2024 presented specific challenges. Notably, a decline in our search advertising activity that began during the Q1 and will be mostly reflected from our Q2. This is largely due to recent changes in advertising pricing and mechanisms by Microsoft Bing. These changes led to reduction in revenue per 1,000 searches for both Perion and other Microsoft Bing distribution partners. Let's take a deeper look into what this means for us.

Operator

Perron has been working with Microsoft on a revenue share model. This model did not change, yet both Microsoft and Perion earned a revenue based on how much Microsoft charges their advertisers. This is where the changes were made. It is common for major tech companies such as Microsoft to periodically adjust their pricing strategies. Microsoft's advertising pricing and mechanism changes do not affect our contract.

Operator

You'll notice that despite our announcement about the changes that Microsoft made, our search activity actually grew 26% year over year in Q1. Again, we expect the changes to mostly affect us from Q2 forward, and our new guidance reflects that. We believe that our relationship with Microsoft remains strong, with ongoing collaboration between our teams. This event didn't change Perion's execution abilities and future possibilities. Now let's move to talk about the future.

Operator

I'm excited to present the next phase of Perion's evolution, an advertiser centric universe with technologies that power brand presence across the entire consumer journey. The Perion universe is built to connect advertisers with their target audience throughout the entire day, online and in the physical world, such as in store advertising. We harness the power of dynamic creative optimization to generate demand. We use our technologies in web and search supply, in digital out of home, in social, connected TV, and in audio ads. All our technologies are leveraged to create an harmonious blend of consumer engagement.

Operator

This new chapter of Perion is wrapped in a fresh brand identity. Our new brand reflects our evolution as a company. At Perion, we architect AI Power Technology solutions to anticipate consumer behavior and adjust to it. Our AI solutions are designed to help brands and advertisers elevate their strategies and seize every advertising moment. Our new slogan, Elevate with Perion, embodies our commitment to advertisers to stay ahead of the curve.

Operator

Our objective is to ensure that wherever their audiences are in their journey, Perion is there to elevate their brand and outcome. As Perion keeps evolving, we add more technologies and solutions to our universe, either by acquisitions or through our in house talented R and D teams. Later, you will hear from our Chief Product Officer for Advertising Solutions about the new innovations we have lined up. While we at Perion have many growth engines, we are highlighting for you the fastest growing drivers in each quarter. We've seen significant growth across the key areas.

Operator

Retail media solution grew by 134%. Our CTV advertising surged 108 percent. And our programmatic digital out of home advertising increased by 25% on a pro form a basis. A basis. These engines are pivotal in our growth path.

Operator

Within retail, we replicated the the success that we had with large retailers and grocers in the food and beverage industry. In the Q1, for example, our technology significantly enhanced the top U. S. Beer brand with a cross channel campaign. We use advanced AI driven dynamic mapping and high impact advertising units to achieve a 14% sales lift.

Operator

And we generated nearly $500,000 in incremental in store sales. This approach leveraged real time data, such as sporting events, to optimize ad delivery that create more foot traffic to multiple retail locations. It's important to highlight the strength that HiveStack brought to our Retail Media solutions. As you can see, the impressive 100 and 34% year over year growth of our retail media solutions was fueled by both our organic and our new digital out of home advertising solutions. We believe that digital out of home will increasingly support the growth of our retail media solutions going forward.

Operator

Within CTV advertising that enjoyed a remarkable 108% growth, This quarter, the most popular features among our customers were live and dynamic CTV, branded CTV, and pause ads. Here's an example of a live CTV ad that we ran for STLouder that was part of an international cross screen campaign.

Speaker 2

There was just no one around him. He stops to throw and blows his knee. Buckeyes have it back. I grew up on game day. It's been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Speaker 2

Now I'm passing my love of the game to my 4 little girls. There's more than one way to get game day ready, from early morning wake up calls to kickoffs after dark. I need my look to last all day. I need my skin glowing whether I'm in the stands or the studio Because as fans, we love this game. I believe every fan and every shade has a story.

Speaker 2

What's yours?

Speaker 3

Into that

Speaker 2

Notre Dame game for 3 weeks. What is it? 3 weeks?

Operator

This specific campaign shows that the consumers' journey constantly changes, with the current trend of cosmetic companies advertising during football events. Within digital out of home advertising, we achieved a remarkable 25% year over year growth. This success demonstrates the strategic value of our recent acquisition of HiveStack. This acquisition unlocks revenue potential, especially retail media revenue, from retailers that leverage programmatic digital out of home advertising technology to attract consumers to their stores. To elaborate on our digital out of home advertising activity and success, I'll hand it over to Andres, the founder and general manager of HiveStack, who's leading our out of home advertising activities.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Tal. Out of home advertising is the oldest traditional media channel undergoing a massive renaissance that is being helped by advanced technology. As digital screens replace printed signs and programmatic technology eventually complements direct sales, the stage is set for a massive upside for the rise of programmatic digital out of home. A recent e marketer study in the United States suggests that 30% of all digital out of home advertising transactions will be programmatic by 2025, while 70% will be non programmatic. That's an awesome growth story for programmatic digital out of home, when we observe that it represented only 3% in 2019.

Speaker 4

This represents a whopping 969% growth over 6 years, and it's not stopping. Extrapolating this trend line could suggest that programmatic digital out of home is on track to represent about 50% of all digital out of home transactions in 5 years. From a marketer's perspective, this growth is driven by technological advances afforded by programmatic digital out of home on how to reach precise audiences at scale through compelling digital experiences. Purion's HiveStack advanced technology sits at the epicenter of this massive growth story and is used by marketers globally to drive business outcomes at all stages in the consumer sales funnel. Retailers, in particular, are taking advantage of programmatic digital out of home technology to drive consumers into their retail stores, which is now part of Purion's retail media solution universe.

Speaker 4

Let's look at our real life case study of how an awesome Canadian brand, Lululemon, used Purion's HypeStack platform and their agency, Zenith, to drive in store visitation to their retail stores.

Speaker 5

Lululemon was looking to drive brand awareness and increase in store traffic in key cities across Germany. A strategy was developed to promote 2 products, the Lululemon shorts and the performance leggings. The shorts campaign used custom audience and location targeting to drive impactful reach and engagement with core lululemon buyers through outdoor screens in relevant environments. Screens along marathon event routes in Munich and Berlin were used to promote performance leggings to audiences when receptivity would be at an all time high. Thanks to its ability to optimize the campaigns in real time, Lululemon continued to run ads throughout the year via the HiveStack platform.

Speaker 5

The campaign exceeded core objectives resulting in over 4,000 walk ins. A brand LiveStudy also recorded a 640 increase in brand image, a 208% increase in interest, and a 314% increase in football traffic, showing programmatic digital out of home's ability to make all the right moves.

Speaker 4

As you can see, we have become a key part of Lululemon's toolbox to drive in store visitation. And the measurement data proves that digital out of home drives results. I want to thank Tal and Purion for adding HiveStack's advanced technology and our amazing team to the Purion universe. The best is yet to come for programmatic digital out of home, And Perion's HiveStack is a global leader in this space and sits at the epicenter of it all.

Operator

Thank you, Andreas. Exciting time indeed. And now, our Chief Product Officer of our Advertising Solutions, Kenny Lau, will present 2 of our new and exciting innovations.

Speaker 6

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'd like to share some of the exciting things we are developing internally to equip our customers with the most comprehensive set of products and solution in the ever evolving digital advertising space. As we prepare for Cockelet's future, we seek to prioritize user privacy while enhancing accuracy in targeting. And we've been doing so with Sort, our AI based audience segmentation technology for our high impact and video advertising campaigns. Now this award winning technology is getting a major upgrade, Sword 2.0, which has more capabilities for web, but even more exciting, it is now also for CTV, one of the fastest growing areas in digital advertising.

Speaker 6

What does that mean for advertisers and brands? So 2.0 technology offers privacy focused targeting, ensuring that your brand connects with the most receptive audiences for your message, regardless of their browser or device preferences. SOAR analyzes non personal identifiable information signals at the moment someone lands in our network, and then immediately classifies them into the most likely intent group. This allows us to serve the most relevant ad, maximizing engagement and return

Speaker 2

on investment.

Speaker 6

It is not just about reaching more viewers, it's about reaching the right audiences with position while respecting their privacy. Alongside our proprietary solution Sort, we have developed Wave, our AI based dynamic audio technology to bring unparalleled position to audio ads. We are proud of the progress our Wave audio ads technology has made, delivering personalized audio experiences that drive engagement and sales. This quarter, we expanded Wave's reach into new verticals, including CPG, quick service restaurant and travel. Moreover, we are thrilled to announce the launch of Wave's multi language capabilities, signed with Spanish.

Speaker 6

Let's listen to a sample for super shoes. And remember, this is not a real person. It's all generative AI. And you wouldn't know the difference.

Operator

Super Shoes. Thank you, Kenny. It's always a pleasure to see our AI team producing groundbreaking products for our customers. Now, I'm proud to share our recent industry recognition and certifications. Perion has been granted 2 tax certifications for 2020 4, symbolizing our unwavering commitment to integrity and quality in the digital advertising space.

Operator

These awards and industry recognitions reflect our team's hard work and our commitment to excellence. They are proof of what Perion is capable of achieving. Thank you once again for joining us today. We're excited about the future and invite all of you to continue with us on this promising journey. And now, our CFO, Mao Tigron, will present the financial results for Q1.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Tal. Good afternoon and good morning to those of you joining us from the U. S. As Tal mentioned, the Q1 was a challenging one. We experienced a decline in search advertising activity that is attributed to changes in advertising prices and new that Microsoft being implemented in its search distribution marketplace.

Speaker 7

These changes in pricing strategies affected all Microsoft distribution partners. Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong. As a result of Microsoft changes and to a limited extent, a reduction in video activity will reduce the 2024 full year guidance in our announcement on April 8. We at Perion have a history of meeting challenges. We are resilient and agile.

Speaker 7

We continuously focus on enhancing our growth engines, which include retail media, CTV and digital out of home. Thanks to Perion's assets, technology, know how and expertise along with our core growth engines, I am confident that our team will take Perion to the next successful growth chapter. Moving to the Q1 main financial highlights. Revenue increased by 9% year over year to 157,800,000 euros Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 35% year over year to €20,300,000 resulting in a 13% adjusted EBITDA margin and 34% ex TAC margin. GAAP net income decreased by 51% to 11,800,000 Cash flow from operations decreased by 61 percent to €6,900,000 Net cash slightly increased over the previous quarter to €479,700,000 Revenue for the Q1 was €157,800,000 an increase of 9% year over year.

Speaker 7

This growth was achieved despite a 52% decrease in video and is the result of our ability to execute our diversification strategy. While Search advertising grew by 26% year over year, we expect revenue to decline next quarter due to the changes to Microsoft Bank pricing strategies as we discussed earlier. Revenue from advertising solutions decreased by 5% year over year to €75,800,000 and accounted for 48% of total revenue. The year over year decrease in revenue was a result of a continuous decline in video revenue and was partially offset by significant year over year increase of our growth engines. Our CTV business grew by 108% year over year to €8,200,000 representing 11% of advertising solutions revenue compared with 5% last year and was driven by strong customers' adoption of our impact CTV solutions.

Speaker 7

Digital out of form grew by 25 percent year over year on a pro form a basis to 9,700,000. We are also happy with the consistent growth delivered by our Retail Media vertical, which grew by 134% year over year to $14,900,000 accounted for 20% of advertising solutions revenue, compared with 8% in the same period last year. These results were driven by new customers and increased spending of existing customers, aided by the positive progress we are making to introduce new products and new technology. Revenue from Search Advertising increased by 26% year over year in the Q1 to 82,000,000. During the quarter, average daily searches increased by 20% over the same period last year and the number of publishers grew by 8% year over year.

Speaker 7

While having a relatively minor impact on revenue in the Q1, we expect the changes recently instituted by Microsoft Bing to significantly impact search advertising revenue in the Q2 and throughout 2024. Contribution excluding TAC to revenue was 38% compared with 45% in the Q1 last year, mostly due to shifts in product mix and higher revenue share for some of our search publishers in the Q1 of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 35% year over year to €20,300,000 or 13% of revenue from 22% in the Q1 of 2023 80% in the Q1 of 2022. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was mainly a result of the reduction in search advertising activity during the quarter and higher operation expenses following the integration of Ice Tech. Adjusted EBITDA to contribution ex TAC decreased to 34% compared with 84% in the Q1 of 2023 42% in the Q1 of 2022.

Speaker 7

On a GAAP basis, 1st quarter net income decreased by 51% to 11,800,000 or €0.24 diluted share compared with €23,800,000 or 0.48¢ per diluted share in the Q1 of 2023. On a non GAAP basis, net income decreased by 25 percent to $22,600,000 or $0.44 per diluted share for the Q1, compared with €29,900,000 or €0.60 per diluted share last year. Operating cash flow for the Q1 was €6,900,000 compared with 17,800,000 in the same period last year. The decrease in operating cash flow was mainly attributed to the reduction in search advertising activity and one time working capital needs for the Ice Tech operations. We are proud of our consistent ability to generate positive cash flow and to increase our net cash position despite the challenges we are facing.

Speaker 7

As of March 31, 2024, net cash, including cash, cash equivalents, short term deposits and marketable securities was €479,700,000 up from €472,700,000 at the end of the Q4 of 2023. The increase in cash and cash equivalents was the result of the positive operating cash flow generated in the quarter. Consistent with our previous announcement, we are confident that Perion's diversified and holistic solutions will expand our opportunities to better serve our customers. We are reiterating our full year 2024 guidance that we provided on April 8, adding guidance to the Q2 of 2024 as well. This concludes my financial overview And now we'll open the line for questions.

Speaker 8

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question today is coming from Max Michalis from Lake Street Capital. Your line is now live.

Speaker 9

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. First one for me. If we look at video revenue, I think it was down 33% last quarter and then down 52% here in Q1. And where internally, where did you guys expected that to end up? And then I guess going forward, what is your expectations for the year just for video revenue?

Speaker 9

And then I guess you can tie in a macro question with that as well. Have you seen any improvement in the macro here maybe in the second quarter?

Operator

Yes. Mohitman, do you want to take this?

Speaker 10

Yes, of course. Thank you for the question. As we said, the headwinds of the video is expected to end in the Q2 this year. So we're expecting to move to a normal growth on Q3. So we have another quarter of a negative comparison between 2024 to 23, and we're expecting H2 to move to be a positive one.

Speaker 10

We are moving with the market. As we said historically, there is a reason why the video is moving down. The idea here is optimization and we believe that this impact will end at the end of this quarter or the second quarter.

Speaker 9

Okay. Thanks guys. And then my last question here. I know you guys increased the buyback authorization last quarter. Are you guys active at all in Q1 or have you been since the announcement?

Speaker 10

So the buyback is yet in process. As we said, 1st, the 20 F5. So now we don't have any problem and we can move on with the plan. But as we need to file the plan when we are open and we are not in the blackout period, which is going to be this weekend. So next week we are going to file a plan which will execute 2 weeks later.

Speaker 10

So we're expecting this plan to start at the end of May and we are going immediately to start the buyback plan in the quarter already. I believe that when we'll get to the end of the quarter and we will share the result, you will see already the buyback take place in our balance sheet.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Your line is now live.

Speaker 1

Hi.

Speaker 11

This is Steve Roman on for Jason. So just first on Sort 2, was just wondering if you've broadly launched that to all of your CTV advertisers or whatever percentage. And then wondering if you can give any metrics in terms of who how many advertisers are using it, etcetera. And then secondly, on Hive Stack growth, you guys posted 25% pro form a. I'm just wondering if this is in line or exceeding your expectations?

Speaker 11

And what do you think on the full year in terms of digital adiform? Thank you.

Operator

Right. So let's start on the Sword 2.0. We are just launching it now. So this is getting shipped out today. So obviously, we don't have the results yet.

Operator

But the big news here is it got a major upgrade with all the new technologies for the new formats of Qukulase and obviously the audience segmentation for CTP, which is huge. Once it's out and we're going to have more metrics, we'll be happy to share that. What was that one?

Speaker 10

The second question was Dan, I can take it. It was about IFSAC. So yes, this is really exciting quarter. This is the first time we have IFESTech in full and this is definitely aligned with our expectation as we shared with the KPIs. They are in the ending quarter with 25% year over year growth, which is very much aligned with our expectation.

Speaker 10

We're expecting to end the year with more or less our original model. No dramatic change, this is Q1 and we're expecting more to come in the next quarters.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Mark Kelley from Stifel. Your line is now live.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. First question, just on cookie deprecation getting pushed out again to 25 on Chrome, does that provide, I guess, a little bit of cushion in the back half of this year or especially for the non search business or is that not the right way to think about it? And second one, just going back to HiveStack.

Speaker 3

A few weeks ago, we saw that Lamar chose Vistar to power their digital billboards. I'm just curious, how does your tech back up relative to Vistar? Maybe they were looking for something that the high stack suite of products didn't offer. I guess what's the right way to think about that? And were you a part of that RFP process?

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for the question. So, cookieless. Yeah, I think the fact that Google keeps pushing this back for me it's not a surprise but you know we were ready for the calculus era 2 years ago and now as time goes by more and more technologies are coming out to address that. So we want to make sure that we're ready for that whenever my Google finally decide to do that.

Operator

So we're going to be perfectly ready and we are perfectly ready now. Now in terms of Vistar, you know, for everything we've been hearing from our clients, high stack is the most advanced solutions out there. This is what we're hearing, this is what we believe. And obviously, Vistar's, those guys are great. We know them very well.

Operator

They're a competitor. So they're getting some deals. We're getting some deals. This is just the nature of the business, but our technology is from everything we know it's the most advanced technology out there.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Our next question is coming from Laura Martin from Needham and Company. Your line is now live.

Speaker 12

Good morning. Good morning. Just thinking about the overall context of the demand from a vertical point of view, Are you can you talk about what you're seeing in the marketplace right now, please?

Operator

From the vertical point of view?

Speaker 12

Yes, strong verticals.

Operator

Yes. Most do you have that vertical?

Speaker 10

Of course. Yes, I can take that. Thank you, Laura, and good morning. So, you know, hi, Laura. So the same trend, as you say, I can say from the financial from the perspective, the retail is, let's say, very strong.

Speaker 10

Consumer goods as well, Travel is strong, Healthcare and Auto is strong. These are the areas that are more dominant in Q1.

Speaker 12

Okay. That's interesting because that's exactly the opposite of what Doubleverify said yesterday. So that's super interesting. Okay. And when you think about you sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 10

No, I agree. It's interesting that this is different from what other reporting, but this is the nature of this business.

Speaker 12

Yes. And then in terms of your expense growth, G and A was sort of much higher than we thought, but sales and marketing was much lower than what we thought. So could you talk about that sort of reallocation of resources between the cost lines, why money is moving towards G and A and away from sales and marketing, please?

Speaker 10

This is more related to the GAAP numbers and less to the non GAAP. There are some stock based compensation adjustment that we did in the quarter that are part of the GAAP. The non GAAP is very normal and with our trends. This is more accounting changes that we did in the SBC during the quarter and not more than that.

Speaker 12

Okay. Super helpful. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Jeff Martin from Roth

Speaker 2

M. Cam. Your line is now live.

Speaker 13

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Wanted to touch on search a little bit more. What specifically is the mechanism that changed at Bing and how has that affected your publisher count in Q2?

Operator

Right. So Microsoft changed the mechanism of pricing for the distribution channels right And the way the reason it affected our publishers is at the end of the day it all needs to make economic sense for them. I mean, they have other options, right? They can switch between vendors, they can do whatever they want And this is exactly what happened. Does that give you the answer?

Speaker 13

Publisher what yes, sure. What's the publisher count changed so far in Q2?

Operator

So we cannot disclose Q2 numbers yet, but we did disclose that although the average was high, we actually saw growth. We towards the end of the quarter, we actually saw a decline. So again, numbers of Q2 are going to be reported in 3 months from now. But let me just add one more thing. But it's important to say that the guidance that we gave already took that into consideration, right?

Operator

So this is already what you see in front of you in terms of guidance.

Speaker 8

Okay.

Speaker 13

And then in terms of capital allocation, you've got the 75 $1,000,000 authorized for repurchase. Has there been activity in the past month or so since you made the pre release announcement? And then what's the potential to up that materially over time? Do you plan to be aggressive in buying back shares?

Speaker 10

So as we said, buyback plan is not yet started. We're expecting to start in more or less 2 weeks you know, from now. This is part of regulations and other requirements that we have. First is the filing of the 20 F and second is the period that we need to wait after we're filing the plan, but we're expecting to execute the plan this quarter and we are running with a €75,000,000 plan and this is very much in line with what we said a few weeks ago. On the preliminary from M and A.

Speaker 10

You know, we have the same plan, same structure. We know what we are looking for and once we get the right opportunity, we will do that. This is very much aligned with our high level view on the cash that we have so far. One is the buyback, which already announced and second, of course, is the M and A effort, which is of course relevant to what we're expecting to do next with the cash.

Speaker 13

Thank you.

Operator

Let me just I just get an answer for my team about the previous question. Why Vistar got the deal with Lamar? So it turns out that Lamar actually owns part of Vistar. So there was no RFP there. That was just part of the ownership.

Speaker 8

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us today and thank you for being part of our journey. Even though we saw a big change lately, we are confident in our future. We're investing in technology, we're investing in our clients and we have all the resources needed to succeed. So thank you again and I hope to see you again in our next earnings call.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

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Perion Network Q1 2024
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