Boxlight Corporation (NASDAQ:BOXL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Starkey: Michael, do you want to take that one or do you want me to take that one?

Michael Pope: Yes how about you jump in Mark on that?

Mark Starkey: Yes. Yes. So, you’re right. I mean FrontRow was a little slower than we expected last year. But definitely we are seeing things pick up for FrontRow solutions. In particular we’ve integrated part of FrontRow solutions into what we have with both Mimio and Clevertouch, so that we have an integrated solution across the campus, which we call ATTENTION! and that is getting a lot of attention because the K-12 customers in particular are seeing how we can show an integrated solution that can give an alert, not just an audio alert, but integrate it to all the screens that they have on their campus. That really differentiates us from the competition having that integrated solution. And we are seeing definitely more recently things picking up for FrontRow. And the business is being integrated into our business now. The sales force it is one sales force, it’s not two sales forces in the US. So, things are definitely more positive for us on the FrontRow side.

Michael Pope: Yeah. And I would add that I think there’s been quite a bit more interest in recent weeks and months, partially due to more focus on school safety. That ATTENTION! product in addition to being a great communication tool to communicate in any way needed. In the event that there is an emergency alert, we can push those emergency alerts across the campus both across every screen as well as every speaker throughout the campuses. So the ability to do that is unique and it’s really unique to us and there is more focus on that. We talked about an opportunity in Texas with government funding and specifically around school safety. And we think that we could do quite a bit of business in the State of Texas this year with Audio. But I would just echo what Mark said that, we’re seeing more interest. I think you’re going to see an up-tick in 2023 of Audio sales whereas as you mentioned 2022 was below what we had expected.

Jack Vander Aarde: Okay. Great. I appreciate the color. But despite these headwinds, I do want to point out and mention congrats on your first full year of positive cash flow from operations. It’s a big moment for you guys. It’s been a long time coming. So that was great to see. As you look forward in 2023, I imagine you’re pretty confident about that cash flow growing cash from operation is growing even in a flat environment it seems. Can you just speak to your outlook with the cash from operations? And maybe as that builds, where else do you look at in terms of putting that cash to use? Is there additional acquisitions, or is it more of reinvesting in the organic growth of the business?

Greg Wiggins: Yeah. I think in the near-term it’s going to be about building what we feel are adequate cash reserves building up cash in the business. Obviously we paid down $8.5 million of principal on our debt in Q4. So — and that was paid with cash flow from operations. So part of it is building that — building our cash back up to a sufficient level of serves as Michael kind of alluded to earlier, it’s also with share buybacks and potentially in other ways to reinvest in the business there. From an acquisition standpoint, I think we feel like there’s a lot of room organically right now to grow the business. We’re targeting new areas both in the U.S. and EMEA to target our sales efforts or increase our sales efforts in. So for the short-term those are probably kind of the primary uses of our cash.

Certainly, we — there’s other avenues we could explore from as we continue to pay attention to our capital structure and whether it’s either paying down debt or through share buybacks as we kind of explore those options. But I think in the near-term it’s really just making sure we are maintaining good cash reserves and building that up. And that will progress throughout the fiscal year 2023.