Powerfleet Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 8, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Please note this conference is being recorded.

Operator

Today's remarks will contain forward looking statements. Actual results may differ from those contemplated by these forward looking statements. Factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements are described in today's earnings press release. Any forward looking statements made on this call are made only as of today and PowerFleet assumes no obligation nor does the company intend to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. During this call, both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures will be presented.

Operator

A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP measures is included in today's press release. The press release is available on the Investors section of the company's website at ir.powerfleet.com. I will now turn the call over to Steve To. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. With the SEC comments successfully resolved, I'm delighted to be able to provide additional detail and context on our Q1 operating and financial performance. Our results clearly demonstrate executional excellence in implementing our operating plan since the business combination. We have much to share on today's call. So let's start with the recap of the strategic rationale behind the MiX transaction.

Speaker 1

Securing scale is critical to distinguishing our combined business from competitors and to go head to head with the current market leaders. As the core telematics industry rapidly transforms, the winners in the industry are poised to capture the majority of shareholder value through shifting towards AI led software solutions and data monetization. The most innovative and agile organizations will thrive through rapidly evolving market consolidation by leveraging advanced AI platforms and next generated data capabilities to become mission critical partners to the customers they serve. Moving forward, success in this evolved industry hinges firmly on platforms that go well beyond traditional telematics, delivering high quality actionable insights for business improvement in a flexible and profitable manner. Our ability to capture significant market share centers on SaaS monetization of PowerFleet's Unity ecosystem.

Speaker 1

The market and customer response to our Unity product strategy is overwhelmingly positive, signaling its high value and differentiation. Uniti's unique data highway creates compelling pathways for revenue synergies underpinned with best in class solution sets from both sides of the business and an opportunity to reach a much extended enterprise customer base through our improved scale and higher velocity direct and indirect routes to market. We now have a rich subscriber base of close to 2,000,000, many of whom offer us an increased wallet share opportunity through our combined solution portfolio. This underpins our expectation of accelerated double digit growth in future years. Simultaneously, we are well positioned to achieve significant EBITDA expansion by extracting a targeted $27,000,000 in cost synergies through a proven and battle tested integration playbook.

Speaker 1

The playbook's 1st chapter focused on building and executing a rapid transformation plan post close. Our top priority is to drive radical change without losing traction and disrupting operations. The successful execution is evident in our strong financial performance this quarter, with combined revenue increasing by a highly encouraging 10% and EBITDA by an exceptional 50% compared to the prior year on a pro form a combined basis. These transformation efforts are also critical in establishing a performance based organizational culture focused on delivering exceptional outcomes for our customers and shareholders. We've effectively aligned our operations, integrating teams across regions and ensuring that our strategies are cohesive and targeted.

Speaker 1

Key areas such as go to market, technology, hardware, operations and customer experience have seen smooth transitions with important frameworks and processes established to drive efficiency and innovation. An essential part of this progress is our work in ingesting mixed device data and core software capabilities into the Uniti ecosystem. This capability is crucial as it unlocks the full potential of Uniti for the legacy customer base of mix. We are making significant strides in this area and remain on track to complete full integration within the 1st 6 months post close. Achieving this milestone opens up opportunities for Uniti centric revenue synergies in the second half of fiscal twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1

Moving on to our commercial wins, we've had an impressive and confidence building quarter, particularly with the continued momentum of our safety and compliance centric solution sets. Unisease continues to be a game changer, delivering impressive results across various industries. I'd like to highlight our recent press release regarding our partnership with IMC, a leading intermodal company in the U. S. Initially, IMC operated with dual sources of technology with PowerFleet holding a smaller footprint compared to another market leader.

Speaker 1

However, Uniti's advanced data ingestion engine and unified operations integration capability gradually distinguished our offering, prompting IMC to consolidate their datasets from the other provider and their OEMs into Uniti. As a result, PowerFleet has now become their full mission critical partner for the future. Increasingly, companies are recognizing Unity as their core data consolidator and a key provider of insights that drive transformative business change. Another notable win came from a major U. S.

Speaker 1

Caterpillar dealer now leveraging Uniti to provide more automated and value added solutions. This strengthens our partnership and reinforces Uniti's versatility in addressing diverse industry needs. We're also gaining momentum in new markets for our in warehouse solutions, most notably in Mexico, highlighting our ability to scale and adapt our solutions globally. Our AI led pedestrian proximity detection solutions continue to gain traction with established customers in industries like pulp and paper and pet nutrition expanding their use of this technology in Q1. Overall, our Uniti Safety solutions demonstrated an impressive 25% year on year growth in the U.

Speaker 1

S. This quarter. Ahead of sharing my forward looking thoughts and perspectives, I'll hand the call over to David to provide additional detail and insights into our financial results.

Speaker 2

David? Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Before diving into our Q1 financial performance, I want to share my insights in the business' operation in the 1st 4 months upon the close of the NICS transaction. The strength of our financial results is no accident. They're founded on a disciplined rigorous approach with a clear mission.

Speaker 2

Executing highly accretive M and A is a core competency at PowerFleet, not an afterthought. In the past 20 months, this has been proven twice. Firstly, with the Movidos acquisition, where we seamlessly integrated a team of 35 engineers and swiftly neutralized $4,000,000 in annualized EBITDA burn within 6 months. Now on a larger scale with the mix, our Q1 financial results reflects our ability to execute quickly and effectively. This speed of execution and the traction we've gained are sources of deep pride.

Speaker 2

We are implementing a well established playbook, leveraging the talents of key leaders across the organization to achieve high impact outcomes in specifically targeted areas. Our success is measured by key financial achievements, a remarkable 10% year over year increase in revenue, an expansion of product gross margins from 25% to 32% and the rapid execution of our cost synergy program resulting in $8,700,000 in annualized savings exiting Q1, approximately $5,000,000 through the elimination of duplicate costs and $3,000,000 through changes in the way that we work. Importantly, we achieved all of this without missing a beat operationally. Before I review our detailed financial results, there are a few important points to highlight. Pro form a comparisons.

Speaker 2

All comparisons versus prior period results discussed on this call and in our press release are based on the pro form a financial results of the combined business. This contrasts with our 10 Q filing, which will only include the legacy PowerFleet numbers. One time expenses. The expenses incurred this quarter include one time transaction, restructuring and accelerated stock based compensation costs totaling $20,400,000 These are backed out of adjusted EBITDA and EPS to reflect ongoing run rates. Amortization impact.

Speaker 2

This quarter's results also reflect the onset of amortization of intangible assets related to the MiX acquisition, resulting in an incremental $3,000,000 in non cash expenses and reducing service gross margins by over 5%. Now let's dive into the detailed numbers for the quarter starting with revenue, which increased by 10.2% year over year to $75,400,000 from $68,400,000 This growth was primarily driven by the success of our differentiated safety centric product solutions with product revenue rising over 29% to $18,700,000 There are 2 important points to note regarding our product revenue. 1st, as we have transitioned out of our hardware only business, strong product revenue serves as the lead indicator of growth in service revenue. 2nd, robust performance of our safety centric solutions more than offset pressure in North America's more commoditized logistics segments contributing to a 7% expansion in product gross margins, which rose to 32% from 24.7%. Service revenue also showed strength increasing over 5% year over year to $56,700,000 This growth driven by an expansion of our installed base to nearly 2,000,000 devices underscores the strength of our Unity product strategy and the risk diversification benefits of operating at scale globally.

Speaker 2

This has allowed us to effectively mitigate the impact of previously announced churn in the legacy mix customer base, challenges in the U. S. Logistics market, macroeconomic headwinds in Israel. Service gross margin was lower at 59.4% compared to 65.9% in the prior period, mainly due to the non cash charges of $3,000,000 from the amortization of intangible assets related to the MiX transaction. On an adjusted basis, service gross margin was 64.7%.

Speaker 2

Combined gross margin was lower at 52.6 percent compared to 57.2% in the prior year, also primarily due to the $3,000,000 non cash expense just mentioned. Excluding this expense, total gross margin was 56.5 percent relatively comparable to the prior year period. Moving on to operating expenses, which totaled $57,900,000 for the quarter. This includes $20,400,000 in one time transaction, restructuring and accelerated stock based compensation costs. After adjusting for these costs, total OpEx was $37,500,000 in line with the prior year.

Speaker 2

On an adjusted basis, selling, general and administrative expenses were $34,400,000 representing 45.6 percent of revenue compared to 49.5% in the prior year. Within SG and A, general and administrative expenses were 33.6 percent of revenue, providing a rich environment for additional cost optimization. Investments in research and development, including $2,900,000 in capitalized software costs totaled $6,000,000 or 7.9 percent of revenue compared to 8.6% in the prior year and we were still in the process of rationalizing spend following the Moving Dots acquisition. This level of spend is highly efficient and reflects the affordability of high quality engineering talent in South Africa. Moving on to adjusted EBITDA, which increased by an impressive 52.2 percent to $13,700,000 from $9,000,000 This growth was primarily driven by strong top line performance generating an additional $3,500,000 in gross margin after accounting for $3,000,000 in amortized intangibles.

Speaker 2

Net loss attributable to common stockholders was $22,300,000 or loss of $0.21 per basic and diluted share compared to $0.04 in the prior year. After adjusting for one time expenses and the amortization of acquisition related intangibles, adjusted EPS was breakeven or $0.00 for the current quarter. Closing with cash and the balance sheet, We ended the quarter with net debt of $108,200,000 which includes cash of $31,400,000 and total debt of $139,600,000 After adjusting for $6,000,000 in unsettled transaction costs, pro form a net debt stands at $114,000,000 compared to $110,000,000 at the close of the MiX transaction. The $4,000,000 increase in pro form a net debt is primarily due to a net working capital burn of $7,000,000 in the quarter, driven by an increase in receivables attributed to strong top line performance. As discussed in our April fireside chats, we anticipate a net cash burn in the first half of fiscal twenty twenty five with a recovery expected in the second half.

Speaker 2

Finally, given our strong start to the fiscal year, we are reiterating the increased guidance that we shared on our August 6 fireside chat with full year 2025 revenue to exceed $300,000,000 up from initial guidance of approximately $300,000,000 and our adjusted EBITDA guidance to exceed $60,000,000 which includes an incremental $5,000,000 in secured exit run rate cost synergies compared to our initial guidance of approximately $60,000,000 That concludes my remarks. Steve?

Speaker 1

Thanks, David. Long term shareholders and tenured analysts on today's call can appreciate just how far we've come in a short time. The transformation of the business since we implemented a new vision for the company in early 2022 has been outstanding. While I'm proud of what our team has accomplished, this is just the beginning. Our goal is to achieve and surpass the rule of FortisaaS performance over the next 2 years, which would significantly enhance shareholder value by potentially increasing our valuation multiple from today's 2 times level to the 5 to 8 times revenue typically seen in public SaaS companies meeting this benchmark.

Speaker 1

The Uniti ecosystem is the central pillar in driving this transformation in value and our confidence in realizing its full potential has never been higher. Starting first with the market, where the customer response to our device agnostic capabilities, rapidly growing library of third party integrations and breadth of solutions from in warehouse to over the road is compelling. We are gaining more and more traction with large enterprises who are looking for data consolidation, harmonization, simplification and integration. The value and visibility these capabilities provide to complex organizations running low on skilled resources is immense. The requirement for automation and digital optimization is becoming mandatory as organizations face the need for increased efficiency.

Speaker 1

The excitement and engagement with the mixed customer base reaffirms our understanding and conviction that Uniti provides solutions to address acute pain points across market verticals and geographies. We're off to a strong start in achieving our cost synergy commitments, securing $8,700,000 in annual savings within the 1st 90 days. We have a clear plan to reach our target of $27,000,000 in annualized savings within 2 years of the MiX transaction, which will continue to support EBITDA expansion. We're going deeper into our savings plan to pivot more and more resources into our go to market and customer success teams. Additional savings we are realizing over and above the $27,000,000 EBITDA expansion programs is giving us the ability to hire a 30% uplift on our coil to carrying sales force.

Speaker 1

We plan to continue scaling our customer facing operations significantly as we leverage our increased efficiency and extended capabilities over the next 2 years. In summary, we have all the key components in place to accelerate revenue growth and expand EBITDA through scale, enhance gross margins and strategically targeted cost rationalization. We look forward to maintaining this momentum and sharing the results of our efforts as we continue the march towards Rule of 40 performance in our regular quarterly updates. Before concluding, I'm pleased to share that we'll be holding a further Investor Day in New York City on November 21st this year, going deeper into the progress we've made within the combined business and focusing on our path to accelerated growth in the coming years. We'll be communicating more about this to you in the coming weeks.

Speaker 1

I'll now turn it back to the operator for Q and A. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. Your first question for today is from Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on the quarter. It's nice to see service growth returning and congrats on getting the filings done.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Scott. In terms of the filings, they're still to come, they'll be coming this week, but we're very well positioned there.

Speaker 3

Okay. Steve, maybe to start, hearing you talk more and more about AI, device agnostic data and the customer requirements. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more color in terms of the magnitude of the pipeline that's building around those kind of capabilities because they're unique, I think, in terms of the competitive landscape out there. What that's translating to in terms of ongoing customer dialogues? How that's impacting the pipeline?

Speaker 3

And I don't know if you'd want to take a stab at giving us an idea of the magnitude of that pipeline and kind of what the near term TCV looks like?

Speaker 1

Yes. So Scott, we're going to save some of that until we get to our Investor Day in terms of magnitude and quantification, but it is what I would say is it's highly significant. So we are seeing a number of large enterprises across the globe, whether that's insurance companies, large logistics companies, complex organizations who have a lot of a subcontractor base, who are seeing an acute pain point with not being able to get true visibility across their fleets. And then secondly, they're also not able to make sense of all the different data streams that are being presented to them and they don't have the resources to actually collate, understand, refine and do something with the data. So the play that we now make in terms of really kind of being that one stop shop for that capability, positioning ourselves in the center of their organizations to ultimately harmonize ingest the data, harmonize the data and then present it to them in a fashion which is easy for them to consume, which also means other monetization opportunities for us is making a real, real difference.

Speaker 1

So I would say it is a significant increase in our pipeline as we get to realize some of the benefits of that and we expect to have some customers who come and talk to you all about that in the future. You'll see kind of that magnitude come through. But what I would say at this point is, it is significant. It is global and it's across multi verticals and multi industries.

Speaker 3

Great. Very helpful. And if I could, Steve, just to follow-up. I think at the August 6 update, you talked about new logos versus in house. I'm wondering now, given the expanding product set and offering and the global availability of Unity, what that number looks like now in terms of the opportunity set of upsell with the existing customer base versus new logos?

Speaker 3

And real quickly on gross margins, service gross margins pro form a adjusted around 65%. I think the target level is higher than that. I wonder if you could just give us some idea about how that progresses over the next couple of quarters? Thanks so much.

Speaker 1

So I'll let David answer the second question. But in terms of the first question, I think that what we're seeing is customers really having the need to have this differentiated solution, which ultimately is driving both new business because the new business is coming from they're insisting on their 3rd party contractors taking our solution, but then obviously evolving within themselves. So we're at a seventy-thirty split from existing customers to new in Q1. But we see where this is kind of having a compounding effect is, we're getting more growth with that installed base because of just the general services. But this insistence on them taking our solution as a subcontractor or an alliance partner of the end customer is also then bringing the new logos to us as well.

Speaker 1

David, do you want to take the service gross margin, Pete?

Speaker 2

Yes. So Scott, if you look at services gross margin this year versus last year, you're absolutely right. If you adjust for the amortization of intangibles, we were sort of rounding up 65% this year versus rounding to 60% last year. In terms of what's driving that, it's primarily higher levels of depreciation of in vehicle devices, particularly in South Africa and also from known churn in the legacy subscriber base that we discussed previously. So that's the primary drivers.

Speaker 2

In terms of looking forward, target actions have been undertaken in terms of improving that and we do expect services gross margins to expand steadily in future quarters between now and the end of the year. So we expect it to sort of increase over time above and beyond the levels we're at last year.

Speaker 3

I apologize. I'm going to toss one out and then I'll get back in the queue. But Steve, it seems like the confidence level in double digit growth continues to grow. It sounds like you're more enthusiastic. Could you give us an idea about when you think we might start to be punching through that sustained double digit growth, particularly on the services front?

Speaker 3

Thanks so much.

Speaker 1

Yes. So I don't think we've ever not been enthusiastic. I think we're being very measured in terms of the transformation that is taking place. If you think about the seismic shifts that we're making in the organization, then year 1 has always been about getting on the very front foot of that EBITDA expansion, which I think we've demonstrated wholeheartedly in this quarter and we'll continue to do so. So I think we're not changing our guidance in when we expect to get to the sustained double digit growth, but what we are seeing is validation of that thesis and momentum growing from a pipeline perspective, from a customer reaction perspective.

Speaker 1

And I think we in the prepared remarks, we quoted the fact that we've never had higher confidence that we have a winning play here and we very much stick to that and that will flow through. Also as well, I think you've heard that we are currently hiring a large increase in our sales force, which will take time to become productive. I think those two things, a little bit of time, more build out of the pipeline and realizing that pipeline and then just the scale and momentum in the business, we feel very confident around the rule of 40 performance that we've projected. And obviously, double digit growth is a key part of that. And as this really kind of scales and we're able to take the extended engineering force that we now have to scale Unity at a faster rate, then the accelerated double digit growth in outer years is something that we feel very, very good about.

Speaker 3

Thanks so much.

Operator

Your next question is from Gary Prestopino with Barrington Research.

Speaker 4

Good morning, Steve and David. A couple of questions. You're realizing you said you had some churn, but you also mentioned that your subscriber base was up year over year. Did I get that right? And can you give us some idea of what the percentage change up was and maybe an absolute number of subscribers?

Speaker 4

Are you willing to give that number?

Speaker 2

Yes, I can cover that, Gary. So subscribers at the end of the quarter was 1,950,000. It's up about 9 percentage points versus the prior year. Okay.

Speaker 4

And even with the churn? Yes. I'm sorry, even with the churn?

Speaker 1

Correct, Gary. Yes. So David was referencing mix public came out and said that they had some churn in their base in the final quarter before the combination. So that subscriber base is including that churn. And this is where we're particularly proud of all the headwinds that have been in front of us in terms of mitigating that churn in terms of the macroeconomic challenges that some of our regions have faced and also some of the industry challenges where PowerFleet in the U.

Speaker 1

S. Has been successful in the past in the more commoditized logistics space. So not just the subscriber growth and the retention, but also the overall top line growth has been has mitigated all those elements. So that's why we're particularly proud of this quarter and when we are just putting a business together. This is a merger of equals.

Speaker 1

So you could get extremely distracted. Your customer base could get disjointed. Your sales teams could be confused. We've managed all of that supremely well and that's why we're very, very proud of the results that we've been able to post across the board.

Speaker 4

No, that's great. And did I hear you right that you said all of the mix customer base will be transitioned to the Unity platform by the back half of this fiscal year?

Speaker 1

What we've said is by the end of quarter 2, so the end of September, the mix customers will be able to consume the Unity capabilities. So they will have the ability to consume those. Unity is an ecosystem. So one of the parts of the strategy here is not to force migration across to another platform because that comes with a lot of risk, both technologically and also from opening up to customers to go back to market. So what we look to do here is that they can still consume everything that they've enjoyed and signed up for, but then they have the ability to take on those improved services, that variation in terms of the solution sets that they can get.

Speaker 1

And that's having the ability not only with Unity in kind of the data highway perspective, but also the in warehouse solutions as well. So customers will be able to consume those fully from the end of September from the mixed customer base.

Speaker 4

So as they elect to move on to Unity, that is going to be a key lever to get service revenue growth accelerating. Is that kind of a correct assumption?

Speaker 1

100%. So this is ARPU expansion. It's increased wallet share. It becomes more sticky from a retention perspective. So and this is one of the biggest differentiators Unity.

Speaker 1

So you have the ability to harvest far more in the customer base. And if you think about the device agnostic piece as well, so you can bring other sensors or the data streams in, that creates a very sticky arm lock with the customer. The more integrations you do into their 3rd party operating systems is also the same. And that then allows you to have really strong conversations across your customers' estate to say what other applications, what other modules would be attractive for the customer and build a kind of long term strategic roadmap in the true sense of what a SaaS company would do. So that's what excites us.

Speaker 1

And to your very salient point, that gives us the ability to accelerate service revenue.

Speaker 4

And then just two more questions, I'll jump off. With that 1,950,000 subscribers, can you give us an approximate split, what were legacy PowerFleet, legacy mix, just so we can get an idea of the magnitude of these subscribers that can elect to join Unity and drive service revenue growth?

Speaker 1

Yes. So it's roughly $1,100,000 $1,200,000 from mix and the remainder was PowerFleet. So substantial opportunity and there's still substantial opportunity in the PowerFleet base as well, so of subscribers. So we've built it out globally, but we do see and obviously one of the major strategic rationale for the combination was to bring those services to the rich customer base and subscriber base that MiX has.

Speaker 4

And then just very briefly, I don't know if there's an easy a brief answer to this question. You talked about some competitive takeaways here with IMC and then a cat dealer. Was the Unity platform one of the key selling points there?

Speaker 1

It was the selling point.

Speaker 4

It was the selling point. Okay. Thank you very much guys.

Operator

Your next question for today is from Anthony Stoss with Craig Hallum.

Speaker 5

Good morning Steve and David. Steve, I wanted to follow-up on the strong SafetyCentryx revenue and you highlighted a 25% year over year growth rate. Can you share with us your view on perhaps the percent of the market that's been penetrated or the overall market potential? And then I had a follow-up for David.

Speaker 1

Yes. Penetration still remains low. I mean, if you quantify it from basic driver behavior, then a lot of telematics solutions for many years have offered driver training and performance management around driver scoring. But ultimately now there is a much improved and increased capabilities with the likes of driver distraction, the camera based solutions that are offered. And if you look at what we do in the warehouse stuff, we've got ADAS based systems that will stop the forklift trucks banging into people, etcetera, etcetera, and causing injury and harm.

Speaker 1

So we see a big opportunity in front of us. And we see a uniqueness to that opportunity when you talk about how broad is it, because organizations are not just trying to manage the safety of their individuals and their mobile resources on the road, but also as well there are other employees within the warehouse. So this is where we have that unique capability to give a safety director, a compliance director, visibility of control and understanding of performance around safety across pretty much their whole estate. So that is a big driver where we're seeing the traction and having that unique proposition across the 2. And 8 times out of 10, the person who is responsibility for safety on the road is also the person who is responsible for safety in the warehouse.

Speaker 1

So we see it as a very, very significant growth area, not just from the safety element itself, but the regulatory requirements that are coming in on a global fashion in terms of organizations having to be super, super competent in making sure that they keep their employees safe, that they're managing working hours and fatigue and distraction and ultimately manage risk. And if you then extrapolate that out to the likes of insurance companies who are more and more looking to create risk based profile premiums in their estates and then be able to adjust premiums off the base of what the risk profile is for that fleet from a safety and security perspective. So we're very excited about that. It's seen very much as cameras lead that and we see a very strong element for that. But the use of that data to feed other systems, other operators, other value propositions that surround the safety space is significant.

Speaker 5

Very good, Steve. Thank you for that. And then David, just on overall gross margins, I'm curious if you have any change or what you see the trajectory to hitting your overall gross margin targets down the road?

Speaker 2

Yes. So Tony, obviously, if you look at the midpoint of our current guidance, it's 57.5 percentage points for the year. We feel very comfortable with that out there in the public realm. So we're well positioned. And as I noted earlier, expect services gross margins to improve steadily between now and the end of the year.

Speaker 5

Perfect. Very good guys. Thank you. Thanks.

Operator

Your next question is from Dylan Becker with William Blair.

Speaker 6

Hey, guys. It's Faith on for Dylan. Just kind of wanted to talk about this Unity platform. And as you continue to migrate the mix capabilities over, how is this resonating with maybe additional stakeholders or use cases that you haven't been able to directly sell to in the past? And then maybe adding on those investments you called out in sales capacity, how are you thinking about unlocking this cross sell opportunity as productivity ramps?

Speaker 1

Yes. So in terms of the use cases and opportunities, traditionally the market, we've been selling to the operators who manage the asset itself. What this is doing is evolving into very much a broader set of stakeholders across our organizations who want to use this technology. And that's from a Unity perspective and we've just used safety as a great example. But we're seeing the ability for us to have great conversations and do business with CIOs, with CTOs, with CFOs, and the compliance directors, the safety directors, as we said.

Speaker 1

And even the need for CEOs to have a visibility across their organization from a compliance perspective is something which is becoming more and more important. So this is moving to a true SaaS sell across the organization. We're selling the same data points into multiple applications for different use cases. And so it's extrapolating our opportunity multi dimensionally moving forward. And then in terms of can you just remind me of your second question?

Speaker 6

Just as you guys continue to invest in your sales and go to market. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1

So the efforts that we're putting in there, the growth we're putting in there is twofold. One is more enterprise SaaS salespeople who can sell that multi dimensional solution, whether it's around the device agnostic piece, further applications or integration. And then secondly, it's more in quota carrying customer success individuals. Because when we talk about that stickiness and we talk about being able to harvest into the account new module applications, new AI and data science led insights, then you can do that more from an installed base perspective and a customer success perspective. So those two things mixed with the added capabilities, primes us very much for that accelerated growth.

Speaker 1

And Unity is built in a way, as we've said, where it's very, very easy for a customer to maintain their current service and solutions and then add on incremental layers with us over time.

Speaker 6

All right, great. Thanks for the color. Then one more if I can add on. Maybe just from an innovation standpoint, now that you have this increased capacity with your engineers, in the next 6 months once you're done kind of mixing the mix, legacy mix and PowerFleet capabilities together, is there anything else on the horizon that you guys are going to focus in on, whether it's platform expansion? Or is there any adjacencies that you're looking to enter into?

Speaker 1

No. We've got more than enough capabilities for the time being. That said, we are building new applications, which we will bring to market over time. But the very laser focus that we have now is around scaling the platform. To the earlier questions and dialogue in terms of pipeline build and the willingness and want and need from our customers, both new logo and existing base to take these added capabilities, then we're very much pivoting the resource to be able to cope with that scale.

Speaker 1

And that's something that we will see will differentiate us and allow us to increase our speed to revenue and speed to adoption. So that's very much the immediate focus right now. That said, as people that know us well, we are always innovating and we will be bringing some new solutions and added value solutions to market, but the first priority has to be to manage that scale because we're getting more and more anchor accounts now who want to take these added capabilities that exist today.

Operator

Your next question for today is from Alex Schuyler with Raymond James.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks for the question. This is Jonathan Makary on for Alex. So I wanted to touch on the subscriber additions in the quarter and I know you mentioned building out sales heads around the enterprise. Can you give any color on the breakdown of additions between the enterprise versus the smaller customer cohorts? And how do you think about that mix longer term?

Speaker 7

And then is there any difference in demand environment between those two cohorts that you call out?

Speaker 1

Go on, David. You go first.

Speaker 2

Yes. So we obviously have a global business. If you think about the business as a whole, the future is really centered on enterprise. It's centered on Unity. The key markets there are going to be North America primarily and also increasingly Europe where there's a lot of regulatory demand.

Speaker 2

So that is the focus. That is the future of the business. That said, we do also have what we described as franchise businesses, both in South Africa and in Israel, which are the dominant or one of 2 key players in the market. And they are businesses that are performing very, very well. So we are seeing good growth there.

Speaker 2

They're fast generators of cash. And so it's always a blend. When you look at the subscribers, it's a blend, but we're definitely seeing sort of strong demand in terms of our franchise businesses.

Speaker 1

And what I would just add is Unity is super flexible. So for small and medium fleets, there are elements of the Unity ecosystem that are very, very relevant for the small and mid market as well as the whole singing and dancing full end to end solution in the enterprise space. So we've built this very much in a way that our regions, depending on their market conditions, can target medium sized, smaller fleets or they can go for the big enterprises. And Unity gives them the ability to really have that flexibility because even if it's a piece part of an integration to a third party system or just a couple of device integrations or if it's actually utilizing a more advanced set of capabilities because smaller organizations have less skilled resources to actually manage that, it is very flexible. So I think what we've shown from how as our regions have managed to mitigate a lot of the storms and headwinds out in the industry is they're very able quickly to pivot to new pipeline to different types, focusing on different types and elements of their customer base.

Speaker 1

So it's a full flexible tool. But as David said, for Unity, it's really an enterprise play from an end to end perspective.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. Thanks. And then just one quick one for you, David. So it's obviously been good progress ahead of schedule on the cost synergy realization. And then good color on some of the go to market investments you spoke to.

Speaker 7

So just how should we think about the linearity of cost savings implied in EBITDA outlook just through the rest of the year?

Speaker 2

Yes. So we spoke about realizing $8,700,000 of run rate savings. If you think about the guidance that Melissa shared in April, the target was $16,000,000 of exit run rates at the end of March. So that will be obviously an add on to the $8,700,000 realized. I would view that as being more sort of second half of the year in terms of that incremental pickup in terms of seeing the benefit there.

Speaker 2

But in terms of the $8,700,000 that we realized, we didn't get the full benefit of that this quarter. So do expect to see an improvement in terms of our G and A E to R from next quarter onwards.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning, Steve and David. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the quarter once again. Wanted to kind of get some color on could you remind us what the drivers were of the expected churn from the mix customer base were? And did I guess that level of churn play out as you anticipated?

Speaker 8

Was it potentially less impactful than originally anticipated?

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 1

I'll take it, David. So no, I mean, we work very seamlessly with the mix leadership team and had full transparency. It played out as expected. And that was really, I think, the particular industries that a couple of customers were playing in had evolved and mix was mix hadn't really had the investment capability to move at the speed that maybe some of the competitors had in the very niche markets in which these customers play. So we feel very good about moving forward now.

Speaker 1

And as David said, we've been able to mitigate that churn. But it was as expected, nothing different.

Speaker 8

Got it. That's helpful. And if I could just kind of overall growth expectations this year on the product side versus the service side. Is there anything you can address in terms of your expectations there? And maybe when we would get a sense that those segments maybe normalize given the strength you had in Q1 with product revenue?

Speaker 2

Yes. So it's the right question to ask, Greg. So in terms of the product revenue, obviously, it was exceptionally strong this quarter. We're not forecasting that level of performance between now and the end of the year. So again, it's tough for us to sort of talk about the individual pieces of revenue given we have guidance for the blended, but do expect the level of product growth to remain robust, remain strong, but certainly not at the levels we enjoyed in Q1.

Speaker 2

And then from a services side of things, clearly that is the future. Everything that Steve discussed in terms of being able to get all of the MiX devices ingested into Unity that gives us some additional benefit in the second half of the year, which will be helpful. And we also have work to do in terms of really sort of leveraging the indirect channel that the mix has, that will initially be a pickup in terms of product revenue. But as always, the more product revenue you have, the more momentum you have from a service standpoint as well. So again, we feel good about our overall guidance for the year in terms of being north of $300,000,000 But at this point, we're not going to sort of break it down into the individual line items that make up that revenue number.

Speaker 1

And what I would just add from just a kind of contextual perspective is people are buying our product because we have uniqueness within the safety and compliance space. All of that revenue in the product that we sell comes with services attached. So that will you'll see that layer in over time. But the reason that we have the strength is the uniqueness that we have in the overall solution and people are looking to choose our hardware as part of that, which if you think about the double saw that we now have both in terms of the strength and capabilities of our own product and then the ability for us to ingest other devices, it makes us very, very well placed to be that overall partner of choice in large organizations, where not only will they want us to ingest their data sources, but any future hardware purchases they will look to do through PowerFleet. So there's a combination there, which is super good for future revenue growth.

Speaker 8

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color. Thanks.

Operator

We have reached the end of the question and answer session. And I will now turn the call over to Steve To for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

So thanks everyone for the support. Obviously, this earnings call is later than it would have liked to be. We're delighted that we've got through the SEC review and we very much look forward to speaking to you again, most notably at Investor Day on November 21. So once again, thank you for your support. We're highly, highly encouraged with the start that we've made as a combined organization, and we look forward to future updates in the future.

Speaker 1

Have a great day. Thanks.

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Earnings Conference Call
Powerfleet Q1 2024
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