Digi International Inc. (NASDAQ:DGII) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Aguanno: Thanks, guys.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Anthony Stoss: Good morning, guys. Ron, can you maybe address any changes that you have seen as of yet on from your recurring revenue customers and then, maybe, Jamie, any thoughts on OpEx kind of for 2024 on a quarterly basis? Thanks.

Ron Konezny: Hey. Good morning, Tony. Yeah. We are excited to grow ARR faster than the topline. So we think overall it’s a real compelling message and we are seeing a lot of our customers quite frankly focus on their internal expertise and decide to trust us with the solution rather than management internally. So we feel that’s, if you will, a mini trend under this megatrend, the industrial IoT, where customers having more success getting there faster by trusting companies like Digi with the entire solution and trying to manage the bits and pieces themselves. So we feel really boldened on this journey and feel, first and foremost, it’s in the customer’s best interests, and of course, secondly, that we deliver incredible, impeccable solutions that are performing at a higher level than what could they could do on their own.

And so I think that’s just a really good favorable backdrop and trend for this position on solutions and then having that translate, of course, for us to ARR. Jamie, I will let you comment on the OpEx side.

Jamie Loch: Yeah. Tony, I think, from an OpEx perspective, if you — you have to look over a little bit of a trend, right? In Q4, this is typical, you will get some accounting treatments that ends up flowing through that line through several lines that can create kind of a weird result if you just look at that standalone. But if you look at it over a four quarter period, you will see that it’s trending, it’s — there’s nothing wild that’s really happening. We continue to be open to the right investments for the business whether that would be capital or operating expense investments. But I would project as we watch this transition take place from one-time to more of recurring, that we would manage our bottomline in appropriately, part of why we say that we see ARR and profits growing faster than revenue. We will be monitoring that pretty closely.

Anthony Stoss: Pretty good. Thanks, guys.

Operator: One moment for our next question. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Greg Mesniaeff with Westpark Capital. Your line is open.

Greg Mesniaeff: Yes. Thank you. Can you guys give a little bit of color on your current sales model in terms of direct versus third-party distributors?

Ron Konezny: Hey. Good morning, Greg. Yeah. On our Solutions segment, we are primarily a direct distributor. So we are selling directly to the end user and making sure that the customer is aware of the solution how to deploy it, how to get the ROI. In product and services, it’s primarily indirect. Most of our opportunities are going with and through a channel partner.

Greg Mesniaeff: Right. And how has that ratio trended recently and how do you expect it to go moving forward? Thanks.

Ron Konezny: Yeah. It really is trending similar to what’s done in the past and we expect that to continue. One of the opportunity certainly is on the channel side to bring them into some of our solutions and have them partake and embrace the solutions element, which we are seeing really good results, because again they don’t let select other companies as well. So, but we think that the trend is likely to continue that work through channel partners on the products and services side and direct on the Solutions side.