ShotSpotter, Inc. (NASDAQ:SSTI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Another part of Sam’s responsibility is also going to be kind of scouring the marketplace to see other capabilities that we can bring to market because we are making a fairly significant investment as a company in being a platform company. So although historically, we’ve been known in ShotSpotter and a part of our rationale behind changing the name to SoundThinking was really to kind of signal that we’re much more than acoustic gunshot protection, although we appreciate that capability, it kind of gave us our start, if you will. But we have an opportunity to provide technology to help public safety initiatives across the board, become more efficient, effective and equitable by offering other solutions and capabilities. So we’re really excited about that expansion, and we think it’s going to be one of the things that helps us continue to drive profitable growth over the medium to long term.

Yi Fu Lee: Thanks for the color on that. And if I may follow up on the Chicago and Puerto Rico [indiscernible] it sounds like Puerto Rico, you’re handling it very well. You got a 20% upside, right? I was wondering if you go double click on the Chicago side, you mentioned that in a couple of weeks, you’ll know the outcome. But it sounds very positive, the new superintendent Snelling that like budgets aren’t decreasing at least, right? I just want to see like ringfences exposure. Is it about $7 million, Alan, on the ARR exposure in Chicago and about $2 million in Puerto Rico. And it sounds like you guys are positive on the renewal in Chicago.

Alan Stewart: Yes. So I’ll start with the actual ARR. Chicago is actually north of $8 million. Yes, that would be positive as well. And Puerto Rico is actually a little bit north of $2 million. So especially if we’re able to continue the significant increase that Ralph mentioned, which is over 20% higher than the last contract that we have with them.

Ralph Clark: And I would just add, in terms of Chicago, I mean, we’ve put a lot of work in Chicago in terms of continue to build upon a positive relationship, frankly, that we’ve had for over 8 years. We were delighted to see the announcement and selection of superintendent Snelling to become the new leader of Chicago PD, he kind of grew up in Chicago PD, he’s been a very strong local defender of technology at large and specifically acoustic gunshot protection. And so that’s really, really quite encouraging. And then the next thing that was quite encouraging is that despite calls for selected folks or activists within Chicago around defund the police or reduce the budget that the new mayor has made the right decision, we believe, to increase the law enforcement budget of close to 3% to almost $2 billion, and there is a specific line item in that budget calling for acoustic gunshot detection.

So we’re not there yet. One of the reasons we’re holding off on our guidance is a proposed budget, it’s not a final adopted budget. And so we’re going to wait and see what actually gets hopefully ultimately signed off on and finalized the final budget, and we’ll be feeling a lot better about things. And we’ll still have some gates to go through because then you have to kind of take those budget dollars and get them to a realized contract, which will have until mid-February to do, which is when our current contract with Chicago ends.

Yi Fu Lee: One last question for Alan. Is the MSRP price increase for about 7% you mentioned for 2024. I think you mentioned, is it like Tier 4 and Tier 3 cities. I was wondering if you could help us manifest on the exposure on that. So it’s more of a modeling point for us. We just want to see the upside of the price increase. And that’s it for us.