Bridgeline Digital, Inc. (BLIN) on Q2 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Bridgeline Digital Inc. Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today Mark Downey, CFO. Please go ahead. Mark Downey: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mark Downey and I am the Chief Financial Officer for Bridgeline Digital. I am pleased to welcome you to our fiscal 2021 second quarter conference call. On the call this afternoon is Ari Kahn, Bridgeline Digital's President and CEO, who will begin with a discussion of our business highlights. I’ll then update you on our financial results for the quarter and we’ll conclude by taking questions. Ari Kahn: Thank you, Mark and good afternoon everyone. It certainly is an exciting time for Bridgeline, our shareholders and our customers. After evaluating dozens of strategic opportunities, we've been fortunate to find two acquisitions that fit perfectly into our eCommerce360 strategy. At eCommerce360 we focus on helping our customers grow their online revenue with turnkey apps that drive traffic, boost conversion and raise average order value. eCommerce360 leads us to develop and acquire complimentary apps that help drive online revenue from these three dimensions. Our intelligent dashboard powered by Woorank is being trained to understand which of our apps can make the biggest impact on your eCommerce360 revenue drivers and provide recommendations as to which of our products can make the greatest impact to your website. eCommerce360 apps are out of the box, enabling them to be sold with a touchless sales process for a fast sales cycle with low sales and marketing expenses. Our recommendation dashboard will further reduce sales cost by cross selling the best apps at the right time to help our customers. Because our apps are out of the box, we can increase our gross margins as a more significant percentage of our revenue is subscription and licensed versus professional services. eCommerce360 guides our M&A focus towards apps that can drive traffic, boost conversion or raise average order value. It also transforms Bridgeline relationship with content management businesses from that of a competitor to a partner, whose products complement their tools as it repositioned our technology to be synergistic with other commerce and content platforms. In March, we acquired Woorank SRL and this month we acquired HawkSearch. The combination of Bridgeline with Woorank and HawkSearch positions Bridgeline for strong growth in 2021, with a unique product suite that will help our customers increase their online revenue with stronger traffic, conversion and average order value. Woorank is off to a strong start delivering 10 new customers per day, 1500 qualified sales leads per month, strong gross margins and exciting capabilities that all of our customers need to drive more traffic to their websites. Woorank will become a foundation for us to offer SEO packages to our customers, generate new customers who can benefit from our other products and it gives us a recommendation dashboard that can drive cross sales throughout our customer base. Woorank also reinforces our commitment to the franchise market with SEO enhancements for each brand franchisee to drive traffic to their local pages and into their store. Mark Downey : Thanks, Ari. I'm very excited to share the positive financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2021 ended March 31, 2021 with you this afternoon. Total revenue which is comprised of licenses and services revenue was $2.9 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 as compared to $2.7 million for the same period in 2020. The following are the various components of revenue. Subscription and licenses revenue, which is comprised of SaaS licenses, maintenance and hosting revenue and professional license revenue increased 8% to $2 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, from $1.8 million for the same period in 2020. Operator: Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Howard Halpern from Taglich Brothers. Your line is now open. Howard Halpern: Congratulation guys. Ari Kahn: Howard how are you? Howard Halpern: Fine. Ari Kahn: Thank you. Howard Halpern: Solid quarter. Start off with Woorank. What type of impact do you see it having in terms of you being able to leverage that within your eCommerce360. And how we’ve worked on integrating that into your operations? Ari Kahn: Woorank is interesting because it comes at eCommerce360 from a lot of different angles. First of all, it's a traffic app. It helps companies drive more traffic to their website that is square in the middle of the value proposition that we have in eCommerce360 to help companies grow revenue. Second of all, the way that it helps businesses drive more traffic is through an intelligent dashboard that can make recommendations. This moves us forward in our ability to create a more intelligent dashboard to not only make recommendations like Woorank does to improve your traffic but to make recommendations for improving your conversion and improving your average order value in selecting the best Bridgeline product to add to your website. So it moves us forward on the technical front. And then thirdly, it also is a lead generation machine. We get 10 new customers every single day. We get 1500 customers per leads per month who are qualified enough leads to enter a credit card number to start a free trial. Now those customers of 1500 leads they may or may not end up wanting Woorank but now we've got contact information, we can help them understand HawkSearch our other products and find the right product for them to start their Bridgeline relationship. So it moves us forward in all three of those directions. And then a nice bonus is that Woorank launched DataBravo. So DataBravo.com is a new product that helps marketers research sales leads and competitive websites. And this wasn't even part of our revenue forecast. And it's selling quite well. So we're very excited about that, too. Howard Halpern: Okay. Now has HawkSearch officially joined up Bridgeline, starting to generate revenues for the company, or is it still pending? Ari Kahn: It's pending. We signed the definitive agreement to acquire HawkSearch last week and the closing will be later this month as we round out some of the HR details and other administrative details behind closing the actual acquisition and HawkSearch this really reinforces our commitment to the site's search industry. This is our fastest growing part of our business with Celebros and Hawk has a ton of capabilities that are above and beyond anything that Celebros had and will be able to offer those to our Celebros customer base and Celebros has some capabilities like natural language processing, for example, that add a ton of value to Woorank. Bringing these two products together truly makes us a leader in site search. It gives us great momentum and a fantastic customer base to build off of. Howard Halpern: And how many new people you bring on board with the HawkSearch acquisition? Ari Kahn: Okay, the HawkSearch team has, we're bringing in about 15 people. And HawkSearch was one of its owners was a really strong agency, a lot of people have probably heard of AmericanEagle.com one of the leading agencies in the world, I would say, Chicago based, but they've got offices everywhere. And so we work closely with them to find the right people to join the Bridgeline team. It was the whole overall Hawk team was great. And then other people from Hawk moved into American Eagle. So it really became a win-win. And I'm excited about our relationship with AmericanEagle.com now. I think that's going to really add a lot of value to Bridgeline. Howard Halpern: Do you have any kind of numbers that it might have generated in 2020? Ari Kahn: We're not publishing those numbers at this time. We do of course internally but not for the public. Howard Halpern: Okay. And for HawkSearch, I know you talked about Woorank but what do you envision the number of I mean, customers a day or customers a month. What is your I guess, plan going into see for that HawkSearch? Ari Kahn: Sure, sure. Yes. We're seeing HawkSearch having currently it has over 350 customers and it is bringing in probably a customer a week, which is similar to what Celebros is doing. The customers from HawkSearch are oftentimes larger and have more sophisticated needs in some cases, especially when it comes to personalization, which is a very new and upcoming aspect to the site search space that HawkSearch really excels at. Howard Halpern: And is this going to carry a little higher gross margin than Celebros? Ari Kahn: It does. Well, in terms of the gross margin as a percentage is probably similar to the Celebros GM, which is strong. I mean we are talking the high 70s, 70% range. Howard Halpern: Okay and just in general, just as environment has been changing and evolving, what general kind of activity we've seen for Celebros and all your products in general just from high level view? Ari Kahn: Well, sales certainly picked up for better or worse during the last year. I don't know how much of it was because of just general growth online and to the fact that Bridgeline as a company has been maturing. And now that we've got so many more leads coming in, great partnerships, including the partnerships that came along with HawkSearch, we're expecting that to grow. Our big mantra we have set our board meeting on Friday, just a few days ago, is it is time for us to be a growth company. We expect to see great top line results. Howard Halpern: Okay. Well, keep up the great work, guys. Ari Kahn: Thanks Howard. Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Alex Investments. Your line is now open. Unidentified Analyst: Hi, there. You guys have had a busy few months here. Howard asked any number of questions that I had as well. So I'm really just left with a couple. Can you tell us what one month of Woorank generated for you from in terms of revenue and what it added? What Woorank added to your SG&A? Ari Kahn: Sure. So Woorank produced about 150k in revenue for its first month. On the SG&A side, so I'm not sure exactly. It's going to be like 100k. Woorank overall, is profitable as a standalone entity. It even covers its own earn out and acquisition costs. So it's generating leads for us. It's growing our top line and it's growing our bottom line. Unidentified Analyst: Okay, great. And that 150k, is that, is that Euros or is that dollars? Ari Kahn: That's dollars. So actually you know what, it's a little bit higher than $150,000. It's between $150,000 and $200,000. Unidentified Analyst: Okay, great. And did you say Hawk should likely close by the end of May? Ari Kahn: That's what we expect, we were to close probably not this week, but next week. Unidentified Analyst: Okay. So in theory, you should have maybe a month of Hawk in the second quarter. Ari Kahn: Exactly, exactly. I think that it would be very convenient from a accounting perspective to close Hawk on May 31 and then have a solid June for Hawk. So that gives us one month of Woorank last quarter, three months of Woorank this quarter plus one month of Hawk next quarter, three months of each of them. Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Very helpful. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Ari Kahn: Great. Thank you, Alex. Really appreciate everything. Operator: Thank you and there are no further questions at this time. You may continue presenters. Ari Kahn: Everyone, we really appreciate the support and patience of all of you and our shareholders. It's our goal to continue to deliver a buildable, scalable business model which in turn will build shareholder value. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to speaking you again at our Q3 fiscal ‘21 conference call. Stay healthy and well. Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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Bridgeline Digital, Inc. Earnings Report Summary

  • Bridgeline Digital, Inc. reported an EPS of -$0.05771, slightly beating the estimated -$0.06.
  • Revenue for the period was $3.8 million, missing the anticipated $4.22 million.
  • The company's focus on AI-powered marketing technology and strategic partnerships are key drivers for future growth.

On Tuesday, May 14, 2024, Bridgeline Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLIN), a company specializing in AI-powered marketing technology, reported its earnings after the market closed. The earnings per share (EPS) stood at -$0.05771, slightly outperforming the estimated -$0.06. Despite this slight beat on EPS expectations, BLIN's revenue for the period was $3.8 million, which did not meet the anticipated $4.22 million. Bridgeline Digital operates in the competitive Internet services industry, focusing on enhancing eCommerce sites through advanced technologies like their AI-powered product discovery tool, Zeus, featuring Smart Search.

The company's quarterly loss of $0.02 per share exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate, which had predicted a loss of $0.06 per share. This performance indicates an improvement from the loss of $0.05 per share recorded a year ago, showcasing a 66.67% beat. However, Bridgeline Digital's revenue for the quarter ending March 2024 was below expectations, marking a decrease from the year-ago revenues of $4.09 million. This inconsistency in meeting revenue estimates, with only one success in surpassing consensus revenue estimates over the past four quarters, highlights the challenges BLIN faces in a highly competitive market.

The company's President and CEO, Ari Kahn, emphasized the significance of their Zeus product launch, which is expected to be a key sales driver in 2024 and beyond. The success of Zeus, with its Smart Search technology, is supported by strategic partnerships with platforms like Optimizely and Big Commerce. Despite these strategic moves, the company's total revenue of $3.8 million for the fiscal second quarter reflects a slight decrease from the previous year's $4.1 million, underscoring the competitive pressures and the need for continuous innovation in the industry.

BLIN's financial metrics reveal a mixed picture. With a price-to-sales ratio (TTM) of approximately 0.86 and an EV-to-sales ratio (TTM) of about 0.83, the company is valued relatively modestly in the market. However, its earnings yield (TTM) of -0.76% and a current ratio (TTM) of approximately 0.69 suggest challenges in profitability and liquidity. The low debt-to-equity ratio (TTM) of 0.08 indicates a conservative approach to leverage, which could be a stabilizing factor for the company amidst its financial challenges.

In summary, Bridgeline Digital's recent earnings report reflects the company's ongoing efforts to navigate the competitive landscape of the Internet-based services industry through innovation and strategic partnerships. Despite the challenges in meeting revenue expectations and maintaining liquidity, BLIN's focus on AI-powered solutions like Zeus could pave the way for future growth and stability.