Mobivity Holdings Corp. (PNK:MFON) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mobivity Holdings Corp. (PNK:MFON) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript April 16, 2024

Mobivity Holdings Corp. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Mobivity Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Results Call. Hosting the call today are Tom Akin, Chairman of the Board; and Kim Carlson, Chief Operating Officer. Before I turn the call over to management, I’d like to call everyone’s attention to the company’s Safe Harbor policy. Please note that certain statements made on this call will be forward-looking statements which are subject to considerable risks and uncertainties. We caution you that such statements reflect the management’s best judgment based on the factors currently known and that the actual results or events could differ materially. Please refer to the documents filed by the company from time to time with the SEC and in particular, its most recent filed annual report on Form 10-K.

These documents contain and identify important risk factors and other information that may cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made during this call are being made as of today. If the call is replayed or reviewed after today, the information presented during this call may not contain current or accurate information. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update those forward-looking statements publicly or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, even if the new information becomes available in the future. Today’s call may include non-GAAP financial measures which require a reconciliation to the most directly comparable financial measures which are calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP and can be found in today’s press release, along with the recent corporate presentation which is also available at mobivity.com.

With that said, I’d like to turn the call over to Tom Akin. Tom, the floor is yours.

Tom Akin: Thank you, operator. And hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Mobivity’s Q4 2023 earnings call and full year 2023 call as well. 2023 was a year of transition for Mobivity where we proved the viability of our Connected Rewards business and demonstrated that our programs not only work but provide measurable value for both game publishers and brand partners far above comparable programs. We made significant steps towards completing the pivot of our business to focus on Connected Rewards. We significantly cut costs, we focused our product offerings and reshaped our team and directed our capital and efforts towards building the technology that is resonating in the market and generating revenue today. We closed the year running full speed into what we believe will be a momentous year for Mobivity.

In the first part of 2024, we launched ground-breaking new programs with gas and convenience brands like Marathon, Chevron and TXB [ph]. These programs have far exceeded expectations at both the game partner and brand level, validating the strength of our Connected Rewards platform. Our pipeline of additional brand and game partners is healthy, valuable and growing which gives us confidence in continuing our growth in 2024. We fully expect the Connected Rewards business to overtake the legacy techs business from a revenue perspective midway through 2024 and anticipate that growth to ramp up materially through the year. The response to our platform continues to be overwhelmingly positive from both brands and mobile game publishers. Our team has made impressive progress in expanding our brand partnerships and we’ve also innovated and launched new products that expand our already robust addressable market and drastically reduce our sales cycle.

We remain highly optimistic about the prospects for our business and are confident in the path forward to grow and scale with Connected Rewards. The steps we took in 2023 to transform our business and focus on this highly scalable and profitable platform are already yielding positive results and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout 2024. I’ll now hand the call over to Kim Carlson, our COO, who will discuss further details of our continued business transformation. Kim?

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Kim Carlson: Thank you, Tom. Mobivity is targeting a market that annually spends over $40 billion on user acquisition and retention. Our Connected Rewards platform offers a new performance-based channel that is resonating in the market. We’ve seen tremendous success at scale and have continued to innovate new product offerings as we feel pull from the market. It’s important to emphasize the simplicity and power of what we do at Mobivity. Our Connected Rewards platform seamlessly drives consumers between brick-and-mortar brands and the digital environment of mobile casual games. We facilitate these interactions and get paid between $3 and $7 per transaction, all while maintaining an attractive gross margin. This model is proving to be highly effective for our partners and rewarding for Mobivity.

Continuing the momentum we built in 2023 in the first quarter of 2024, we launched new products with some of the largest brands in the country. These include placements inside the Chevron fuel app, the Marathon fuel app, Kura Sushi’s [ph] app and programs with Circle K’s owned media. Our results from these programs have far outpaced return on ad spend goals for our mobile game partners, demonstrating the effectiveness of our platform in driving profitable user acquisition and retention. At the same time, our programs are performing well beyond thresholds of value in driving loyalty audiences to brands. These results showcase the value we provide on both sides of the equation. Our pipeline of potential opportunities is robust and we are excited about the growth that can come from optimizing our current platform and expanding within the immediately available addressable market.

As we move through 2024, we remain focused on expanding our technology partnerships to build our potential offerings, launching innovative products and quickly capitalizing on our platform’s vast potential in the mobile user acquisition and retention market. Our team is dedicated to delivering exceptional results for our partners and driving growth of our Connected Rewards business. With that, I’ll now hand the call back to Tom for closing remarks.

Tom Akin: Thank you, Kim. We are all really excited about the progress that the company has made in 2023 and the first part of 2024 and look forward to executing throughout the rest of the year. We’ve opted not to discuss financials instead directing investors to the company’s public filings. I’ll now open it up for Q&A.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Mark Peterson [ph], a private investor.

Unidentified Analyst: It’s Mark Patterson [ph]. Given some of the comments Tom and Kim, you both made today about the current state of the business, I’m guessing the Q4 results are very meaningful for investors. But I just want to let you know, I haven’t seen the fourth quarter release posted yet, so I haven’t been able to look at it. But I did have a couple of questions, I guess, for Kim, maybe a 2-parter. I wondering, Kim, I know you mentioned Chevron, Marathon, I think you said Kura Sushi [ph] and Circle K with some of your new products. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about the new products you’ve launched in the first quarter of this year? And I guess, secondarily, how you see those partnerships contributing to the overall growth strategy of the company?

Kim Carlson: Yes, thank you for the question. You’re right. We did launch new products within the Chevron and Marathon at Kura Sushi [ph] app. Specifically, they are placements inside the branded own apps, these placements incentivize users to take an action like downloading a game in exchange for a reward at the brand. For example, a discount of gas or a free item within the store. These placements give game publishers a valuable placement really not found anywhere else within these large brand audiences and allows the brand to incentivize their audience and grow their audience while driving traffic and volume. So ultimately, we’re creating a very sticky environment within the branded apps. The programs are amplified by communication from the brand.

So the brands are pushing notifications to their app users, for example, push notification and inbox notifications, signage at the store, etcetera. These partnerships are going to be core to our continued growth strategy as they are longer-term partnerships, allowing us to grow with the brands and games in our pipeline and innovate around ways we operate with the programs to increase performance. As far as the kind of part two of the question, as I mentioned, they are longer-term contracts. They are showing tremendous app engagement. We hear from our brands that one of their pain points is growing app activity from maybe 2% to 3% to moving that to the double-digit percentage in multiple double digits. They want more people transacting in the app.

So this product offering is our newest and our real pillar for our growth going forward through this year.

Unidentified Analyst: That’s great. I know you joined less than 2 years ago. But it’s really been great to see the meaningful progress that Connected Rewards has had. I know it’s been under your stead and the transition, as I think Tom said, seems to be going pretty well and picking up some speed. So it’s really great to see and appreciate it all.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Bruce Evans [ph], private investor.

Unidentified Analyst: Could you expand a little bit more on the recurring revenue model?

Tom Akin: Sure.

Kim Carlson: Go ahead, Tom.

Tom Akin: I was going to say — sure. Kim will answer that but I do apologize. We — it appears our press release is a little late getting out but Mark was quite right. The financials are really for ’23 and don’t reflect what we’re doing in Connected Rewards going forward. A lot of these programs that we’re talking about here were really just launched in March, April. And so they’re probably going to be a little bit in the future when you’re actually going to see the revenue results from that stuff. But Kim, why don’t you answer the Bruce’s question, please?

Kim Carlson: Sure. Thanks, Bruce. So our game publishers and our game marketers pay us on a fixed cost per install basis. And the growth and recurrence of that model is the more we hit or beat their return on ad spend dollars, the more they will scale the revenue. And I’m happy to say that we’ve had a 100% fill rate on our supply and we have game developers requesting and asking to spend more. So we’re already experiencing a recurring revenue model by having a high, high retention rate of our game publishers that are paying us a steady or growing transaction fee on the CPI. And it’s a matter of continuing to build the supply. So that recurring revenue continues to grow.

Operator: Your next question comes from Bob Berlacher from 45th Parallel Capital.

Robert Berlacher: I’ve actually got several questions, if you’ll bear with me. First, if the connected rewards you said is going to take over the majority of the revenues or at least eclipse the traditional legacy business by midyear. Historically and I haven’t seen the fourth quarter numbers. So — but historically, you’ve done $300,000 to $400,000 [ph] plus a month, basically $1.2 million [ph] revenues. I would assume then that the connected rewards at some point here soon is going to hit that hopefully, magic number of $400,000 a month or more but can you provide any details on the growth of that business going forward here? And I realize the first quarter is now behind you. So you said it started in March. It’s continuing in April. And if you would just give us some idea of the growth trajectory for that business at least?

Tom Akin: Sure. I think, Kim — I think Bryce [ph] is probably best suited to answer that question.

Unidentified Company Representative: Yes, thanks for the question. I think a couple of things. I think as Kim mentioned first, we’ve built really strong relationships with these brands that provide a couple of things that inform our growth outlook. First, they’re largely sustainable and longer-term relationships. So we’re not having to fight for the ability to run our campaigns every month. These relationships allow us to build meaningful case studies that we can then use to bring on new brands. And we’ve seen early success in that through the first part of 2024 already. Second, although we’re seeing really great results for brands and game publishers, we’re still really in the very early innings of optimizing these results.