Audinate Group Limited (AD8) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] maybe frame this more generally. I think we've been doing -- over the last sort of 6 to 9 months, there's been a lot going on in Audinate, particularly with respect to platform strategy. So today, we're here to talk about Iris, but I'd like to provide perhaps a little bit more context about some of the other things that have been happening just very briefly before we get into the meat of the conversation around Iris today. So if you've been following Audinate for a while, you know that for a long time, we felt that a lot of the value in Audinate's business is really around providing our platform for the provision of audio-visual products and services primarily in a software form. So we started in audio. We've been quite successful with networking and audio. We've expanded into video. And more recently, we've started to deliver products that are very much more on the control side of things with Dante Director and most recently Dante Device Link. So the time has come really for us to invest in our platform strategy more broadly or more explicitly. And so we've been doing that in a number of ways, which I wanted to touch on. Probably the first, I guess, big move that happened was 12 months ago with the appointment of Nick Peace, our Chief Strategy Officer. And I guess what we're seeing today is some of the fruits of Nick's work over the last 12 months. And particularly, he's done a lot of the heavy lifting, as has Chris, with respect to the M&A process and the DD and everything else that's going into this particular transaction. So I really wanted to talk about 3 things. One is recruiting talent. The second thing is Iris, which we're going to spend most of the time talking about this morning. And I also wanted to talk briefly about some organizational changes and how we're trying to set the organization up. So one of the things we've been doing is working on recruiting talent that will help us with our platform strategy long term. And in particular, we've recruited a very significant person, a guy called TJ Adams from a company called QSC. And so TJ will be joining Audinate as Chief Platform Officer, and he will be working for Nick. And his mission is really to build out an initial business plan with respect to the next products and services that we'd like to deliver as part of our platform strategy. So TJ was responsible for the product evolution and architecture of the Q-SYS platform. So he's an industry veteran, and he's been involved in delivering both a software platform with QSC and a whole ecosystem of products associated with that. But also in previous companies, he's also been involved in this space of audio-visual software and products and applications of various sorts. So I think TJ is going to be a massive asset to us in Audinate and particularly in combination with the Iris team and Noah as well. So the first bit is that we've been recruiting talent and picking up good people that can help us on the platform strategy side. We've done this transaction, which I think is also extremely significant with respect to our platform business. And the third thing I wanted to mention just in the context of other things going on at Audinate is that we've made some changes in our organization in order to create some strategic focus around moving our platform business ahead. So in particular, TJ will be reporting to Nick, as will Noah, who's the CEO of Iris. And the intent there is really to provide some focus on platform business. And we've also carved out the ops functions to do with delivering our SaaS products like Dante Director. So we can't have -- like I think it's impractical to have some kind of big bang where we smoosh the Iris business and Audinate together. But I'm wanting to make sure that we have some strategic focus on delivering our platform products and integrating Iris in the rest of the company. So we need a bit of focus and direction as we try and draw those threads together. So I'm super excited about where we are because I think we've got this really nice mix of people that's joining the organization. We've got a veteran in TJ, and we've got an ambitious young co-founder in Noah. So we've got talent. We've got experience. We've got the young and the old, the veteran and the ambitious. And I think that's going to set us up really well. A great mix of talent for the future. So moving on to sort of agenda for today. So that's my kind of comments around the context of other things that have been going on at Audinate. So we want to touch on transaction highlights, who is Iris, what are they, where do they fit, what the strategic rationale is for Audinate. And then Chris will talk to the financial implications of the transaction. So transaction highlights. I don't want to read everything on this slide, but I do want to sort of hit -- many of the points are sort of variations on similar kinds of themes through here. So I think the -- one of the reasons why Iris -- we came to the conclusion that it was a great transaction for us to pursue is that it hits both the video platform side of things and also control. And so being a control-first video company is actually almost the perfect complement to our 6 million audio devices in the field. So Iris brings some 1.5 million devices into the Dante ecosystem. So that's adding 1.5 million video products to the existing 6 million Dante audio products that are in the field. And in addition, they have -- their platform is a control-first cloud-oriented platform built on, I guess, what you would call modern tech stacks of web-friendly stuff, browser control, the type of things that people use for delivering network and cloud-based applications and products and services today. So in terms of control, why are they control play? The main application for Iris at the moment is associated with event production. So think -- it could be an event like this, but a small-scale event where you have a couple of cameras. Somebody is controlling those cameras in order to follow or to cut between different video sources or different scenes. And so there's usually an operator that's actually required to move those cameras around and choose shots and follow the talent around the stage, for example, that type of thing. So Iris can do all of that through a web browser and remotely. And so that's very much a control function of the cameras that are installed into a facility or that are being used in an event. So another way of thinking of this is that every camera that Iris controls has a myriad of different configuration parameters and knobs and buttons that need to be pressed. So if you're familiar with cameras, you're no doubt aware of things like focus, white balance exposure. And then with pan-tilt-zoom cameras, there's also things like the position of the camera, preset positions for the camera, things like that. So that's the type of full feature set of control functionality that Iris actually delivers. So that's kind of the sort of thumbnail. Sort of like many things with Audinate is a complicated thumbnail, but it is at least the sort of nutshell of what Iris does. We think that it improves Audinate's strategic position in 2 areas, video and control, which is -- certainly, they are the 2 aspects that we've been looking to strengthen and invest in. And I think it really strongly aligns with our customer base. There's a very large overlap between people using Dante technology today and the sorts of customers that Iris would have. So that maps into corporate, unified communications, corporate events. It also maps into entertainment applications, sports, government, house of worship and higher education. So there's a strong overlap with our customer base. If you look at Iris, you will see that they are initially targeting remote production use cases. But I think it's important for investors to sort of look through a little bit the initial application for Iris, which we believe there's certainly revenue and a business that can fund the transaction. However, Iris is very aligned with Audinate's view of the world in that they believe there are long-term opportunities for what they would call fleet management associated with the cloud-based management and control of a wide array of audio-visual devices. So in Audinate's world, that is very complementary to the mindset that we have with respect to controlling, monitoring and managing audio-visual devices with a product like Dante Director, again, a cloud-based SaaS platform for monitoring and managing devices. So the Iris platform, interestingly, is offered as a software subscription to end users. So it's also an interesting product and platform because it's targeting end users as opposed to manufacturers. So it's on the similar sort of -- it's selling products and services through a very different channel from our current channel that we have for Dante technology today going into manufacturers. So in that sense, it's like Dante Director and Dante Domain Manager in that it's going into the Dante installation as opposed to a product or a manufacturer of a piece of equipment. They are an early-stage company, and so Audinate will need to invest further. I'm sure Chris will probably touch on this. And in particular, there will be some investment needed in terms of their go-to-market and scaling up market development activities and really starting to drive the use of their products and generation of revenue. As I mentioned, they've got 1.5 million devices kind of in the portfolio of products. And that's really coming from 14 PTZ camera OEMs. So they've signed up a big slab of the camera manufacturers in the industry. And from a sort of deal transaction mechanics, we're talking about a $28 million deal, $20 million upfront with $8 million in terms of earn-out and retention that are going to go primarily to the team that joins Audinate. In terms of funding the transaction, if you've been following Audinate, you know we raised a couple of years ago -- a few years ago now. And so this transaction is funded out of that capital that we've had on the balance sheet. So post transaction, Audinate is still going to have plenty of dry powder in that we'll have a net cash position of $78 million. So next slide. Yes. So about Iris, I think I've probably touched on a bunch of this. So again, it's a control-first platform, and it's a control-first video platform. So that actually fits very well. It's very complementary to Audinate's audio strengths. And one of the key features of it is that it enables remote audio-visual device control via a web browser. So it's very simple to use, and it's got a very low friction in terms of being able to adopt and use the technology. So AV professionals can remotely access, manage, monitor devices in real time. And one of the key things about Iris is that like Audinate, they are manufacturer agnostic. So the idea with Iris is that you can manage and control cameras from different brands using the same control functions and interfaces. So in that respect, it's sort of similar with Dante Controller in that Dante Controller works across a wide variety of brands and similar to Dante Director. I already mentioned that it's targeting cameras and production applications. One of the interesting things in the Iris world is that they're very interested in automating the production side of cameras -- sorry, the production side of camera control. So if you're thinking about tracking a person across the stage or something like that, they've got various kinds of prototype features that can track users and really simplify the problem of doing an audio production -- sorry, doing a video production when you've got sort of talent moving around on the stage. In terms of market launch, well, obviously, part of the due diligence for us was digging into their commercial agreements and their relationships. And so we're happy they've got good solid relationships with 14 leading camera brands, tons of actual units. So different makes and models of cameras are supported, and that's how we get to that 1.5 million users that are in the Iris ecosystem today. They have actually launched, but the launch was actually a white-label product called Hive. So if you Google around, you'll find Hive from PTZOptics. That is actually the Iris system. So the plan was to do a white-label launch with PTZOptics and then do a public launch of the Iris service, which goes sort of directly to end users in September. So watch this space for the public launch of that. And so we'll be working with Iris towards that. As I already said, it's a SaaS model, monthly and annual subscription options of various sorts. And I think one of the things that I'm most excited about is the team. I think this is a cracking team. Noah is absolutely a hard-charging kind of guy. I think he's your classic entrepreneur technology guy -- well, actually, he's not really a technology guy. He's more of a sort of product entrepreneur. And his CTO, Hunter, is also fantastic as well. So me personally, I feel like these guys have got a good, strong synergy like in terms of they see the world in a very similar fashion to us. But in a way, it's a sort of generational shift in that it's the sort of younger team who are looking at this same application and world with a whole lot of new tools that are available and in a different type of way. So I'm really excited about how they will be able to bring, I guess, their world view into Audinate and how we'll be able to make the most of not only TJ, who's an industry veteran, but a bunch of people that are able to do things differently in the industry and charge forward. So in terms of strategic rationale, so you can see on the right-hand side, these are actually some clips from the website. And I'm conscious that we had a sort of minor snafu with our presentation in that we did not give you the URL for the website. So I think, [ Denzel ], if you could drop the URL in the chat, it is try-iris.ai. And so the tricky bit is if you just Google Iris, you'll get 50 squillion other things. And if you Google Iris AI, you'll get something which is not this. So please grab that URL, try-iris.ai, and you'll be able to see the use cases. So these are from their website. So rationale, strengthens audio -- strengthens Audinate's video platform by onboarding 1.5 million devices and accelerates our broader vision for interoperable control and management. Very simpatico. Every one of these devices has complex control functions. And so this is the thing that I think fits very well with our vision of the world with Dante Director. Clear alignment of the customer base. So we think there's synergy between our marketing databases, and we will be able to help them in terms of reach to integrators in the industry and people that we know who are the designers and users of audio-visual installations. And also, I mentioned before that there's a very strong overlap in terms of applications and market segments. One thing I didn't mention is that this Iris product is actually very complementary to Dante Studio, which is our PC and Mac video product. And that's actually how we got into the conversation. So we were originally talking with them about how we might partner to support some of their products and features, how they can make use of Dante video with their software and platform. And then when we got into the conversation, we realized that perhaps the best thing that we could do is actually move towards some kind of transaction. Yes. So I don't think I want to walk through the stuff on the right. I think you can read. But yes, URL, try-iris.ai. And I feel like I've been talking a little bit long, so I do want to sort of get to Chris. And then we can have some herein.

Yes. Thanks, Aidan. So just taking you through some of the financial impacts of the transaction. So looking at the financial structure and also the commercial potential. So structuring the transaction as a total consideration of USD 28 million, upfront cash consideration of $20 million. We've also got 2 elements of contingent considerations. So firstly, $4 million in cash, subject to achieving certain revenue and performance hurdles over a 3-year period, and also USD 4 million in Audinate shares. Again, that's subject to achieving certain performance -- or certain service conditions over the period of 3 years as well. It's -- deliberately, we've structured the earn-out portion to ensure that we've got strong alignment and with Audinate shareholders over the medium term and also ensuring that there's strong incentive there to drive performance of the business. As Aidan has outlined, our balance sheet remains strong post the acquisition. So on a pro forma basis, we'll have net cash of AUD 78 million. We'll continue to invest in the Audinate business in terms of -- in the Iris business in terms of scaling that up. So the main costs we're looking at are ensuring that we've got the right go-to-market focus and also a continued focus on product development over that course. At this stage, based on our expectations, we would expect a material contribution in free cash flow within the next 3 to 4 years. That's obviously subject to achieving certain milestones and expectations of the products. So there's some variability given the early life cycle -- or the early stage of where this business is at. And looking ahead, we do see a significant revenue opportunity for us. The commercial strategy is essentially to convert a large growing hardware base into a recurring software subscriber base. It's been an excellent start in terms of the 14 OEMs that have already been signed up, and what that essentially gives us access to is an installed base of around $1 million to $1.5 million -- 1.5 million PTZ cameras and annual sales of somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 units. So it gives us an excellent base in which to launch from. So that's the main focus of the commercial and transaction structure. Aidan?

Awesome. All right. So I think that's probably the main sort of content that we have. We should probably sort of move to Q&A. Maybe you can shift that so that Nick can be seen as well. Yes. So extremely excited by this opportunity. And I'm hoping that we're still connected.

Yes, first question, just in relation to the video strategy. So does Iris change the go-to-market strategy for video and control? Or is this an acceleration of the existing strategy?

Yes, good question. I don't know. Do you want to jump that? Or do you want me to?

I think it's -- I would think of it kind of as augmenting and additive. So it's a different channel to market, a different approach in terms of we are taking a software offering through to end users in production and long term beyond that. But we're working with the same OEMs. We're working to the same goals in terms of interoperable video. So neither of those categorizations is truly correct. I see it as another string to our bow, but it's highly complementary to what we're already doing in video.

Yes. I agree with that. I think there are differences in detail with respect to the go-to-market because of the product and the way that it really does connect very strongly to cameras. But the sort of fundamentals of selling to the installation or to the user, that's very similar to Dante Director. So it's not completely different species, but there are differences in detail. Damen, you had another couple of things in there, which -- 2 questions in one. Is it pre-revenue? There is revenue. It's not enormous at this point. So you'd have to say that it's early stage. And so they have begun to make initial sales and things like channel checks and stuff that we've done. I think they have enthusiastic customers and enthusiastic manufacturers using their technology. I might jump to the next one with Chenny. You mentioned that Iris brings 1.5 million video products into the data ecosystem and adds to the 60 million Dante Audio. How do these 1.5 million products become Dante enabled? Yes. So this is part of the drawing the threads together piece. And I think there's a lot of sort of internal work that needs to be done. Step 1 was actually getting the transaction over the line. What Iris is doing with their products and services is quite complementary with the way we think about the world. So a lot of these cameras have a video software stack that is very similar to Dante AV-H in them already. And the other thing that Iris is doing is, as we have said, it is a control-first video strategy. So in that respect, it's actually quite similar to the way we've approached either Dante AV-H or Dante AV-A. So I think there will be a fair bit of synergy in how these things become part of the Dante ecosystem, but it is not required that these products actually have a copy of Dante AV-H inside them, for example. So Iris is actually solving that problem in a slightly different way. But clearly, what we want to do is we want to make sure that these Iris products are part of and manageable via the Dante ecosystem like things Dante Controller and Dante Director. And so there's some work to be done to figure out how to put those things together. Brands, flagship camera brands?

Yes. The question just around the name of some of the brands that Iris are currently working with.

Yes. So as we've mentioned, it is, in round terms, 14 brands that the guys are working with prior to their full launch in financial Q2 this year. So for those of you who will search on this, you'll be able to see PTZOptics, Marshall, Telycam and a range of others are amongst the brands -- Lumens are amongst the brands that they've already sort of publicly disclosed that they've partnered with.

Yes. Chenny asked a question about commercial agreements with 14 leading camera brands. Why do we need these agreements? What are they for? Will they not renew, et cetera? The agreements are about embedding Iris software stack in the camera and also to do with co-promotion and I guess the business model of the camera manufacturer, incorporating the function into the camera in order to be able to sort of deliver the service, the Iris service. So there are also things like exclusivity agreements in there. So there's some legal protection as well. I think those contracts are, from memory, 5 years.

Typically. Typically, 5 years.

Five years. So there's no sort of sense in which a renewal thing that needs to be done. So [ Michael Wu ]. I noticed Iris currently supports protocols like NDI, which can be competing with Dante AV. Could you share how this works going forward? Would Iris remain protocol agnostic? Yes, Iris will, in many respects, remain protocol agnostic. And whilst they support Dante -- sorry, whilst they support NDI and they can also support Dante AV as well, they actually don't need either Dante AV or NDI to be present in the products. So one of the really interesting things with this is, for us, we were of the view that for this particular segment and the way that they have done it, by being able to make use of control functions in the camera that can use existing video networking technology that's built into the camera from the chipset manufacturer, this actually represents a significant challenge to both NDI and the Dante AV business model. So from our point of view, I think acquiring Iris is actually mitigating a significant strategic risk in terms of this business model as opposed to the business model that NDI has and that Dante AV has had to date. How big is the Iris team? There are about a dozen people, U.S., Mexico, pretty much. Do you want to...

Yes. So just in terms of the question around investment on top of the transaction costs. So we are expecting to continue to invest in the Iris platform. Still working through the final details of what that looks like. And it's also, as we go through our budgeting process, looking at the impact that, that has on the existing Audinate business as well. I think the main thing from a cash flow perspective, internally, the expectation is that we'll be generating positive cash flow in the next 3 to 4 years is the area where we're focusing on.

I think we need to -- we've got lots of questions and not a massive amount of time. So I'm just conscious that I would like to finish it in a couple of minutes. We will have more opportunity to take questions with like road show coming up. So we've got results season roadshow and things like that. So there will be lots of opportunity. Or alternatively, shoot us an e-mail, and we can try and respond. Owen has like a 3-part question. How many players are there in the -- what was the sort of logic behind this, build versus buy, et cetera? I think the logic was not particularly complicated. There's just loads of details. So we looked at a number of different players in the space. There's only so many players in the space that are actually really of genuine interest to us in the sense that we are certainly looking for things that could enhance our platform strategy. So it might be video. It might be control. It might be processing. It might be orchestration. I've talked about this before. So I think there's a unique combination in Iris of a decent-sized device pool, a good approach to actually -- from a technology perspective in getting into the camera, a good business model and actually some good traction in terms of beta programs and an initial customer in PTZOptics that is white-labeling this function and actually promoting it through all of their initial -- the white-label version of the product is on the market and being used today. So we're already getting some feedback in it. In terms of addressable market, I think there's probably not too much I can sort of say with respect to the overall. The specific addressable market of the video production use case is it's a relatively narrow slice, but that's not why we bought Iris. We bought Iris because they -- that particular slice of remote real-time control of an audio-visual system, in this case, it's event production with video, that technology or that capability is then usable across a very wide range of markets and product sets. There's a question about costs, which I'll maybe come back to later. Do you want to talk to that? Transaction -- Sinclair. Can you please explain whether the transaction offers opportunity and has design wins for Dante across the other 14 OEMs? Absolutely. It absolutely does. And in particular, it gives us some competitive and strategic advantages. For example, in the competitive fight that we have with NDI at the moment. So not only can we bring OEMs to Iris, but the Iris architecture and the way they're actually delivering it gives us some really good opportunities to go and speak to some customers who are currently all in on NDI. Yes. I think we probably should grab 2 more. Do you want to grab 2 more? Jules. I think the question was just in relation to investment plan over the next 3 or 4 years. Nick, do you want to sort of address in terms of some of the activities that we're going to be going through?

Yes. Beyond the basic point, this is a company that's going into market launch. So as you'd expect from market launches, there's a lot of marketing. There's a lot of sales enablement. There's a lot of channel enablement. Just all the activities you'd expect when you go into sales mode. So -- and it's important to note, this is an offering that is global. So really, there's a whole range of activities around go-to-market that guys are right in the thick of. So we think some of the assets that Audinate already has in terms of our footprint, in terms of commercial relationships are going to accelerate that. But there's a lot of stuff that the Iris team need to optimize for bringing a product like this to market that we got to optimize for this particular product.

Okay. I think one more question, which is probably -- Jules has got another question around the partnerships and monetizing the end user. So I think one of the things we should do is talk a little bit about how that model works. So are we making money from the OEM? So can you talk about how that process works? How does Iris make money?

Yes. So just to perhaps paraphrase the question, Jules' question. The question basically relates to -- if I can paraphrase it, the OEM partnerships, how does that actually translate to the generation of money, would be probably the most simplistic. And apologies, Jules, if I've sort of oversimplified your question. But just to perhaps reiterate, I was partners with the OEMs. So partnering involves 2 things primarily, enabling Iris capability within the camera portfolio or device portfolio of an OEM and then working jointly with that OEM to market and promote that offering across their customer base. Where Iris makes money is from selling recurring revenue subscriptions to its application to the customers of the OEM, those who have Iris-enabled devices that want to use it either for remote production or other applications down the track. So just to be clear, Iris makes money from end users. It's different to the Audinate current Dante revenue model where we make money from the OEMs. So it's important to make that distinction here.

Yes. So the OEMs ultimately are a kind of channel for the OEM -- sorry, for the Iris product, and so are the distributors of the various cameras. So there's various combinations that work in there. It's a different go-to-market from the current Audinate products, but I think it's...

It's certainly consistent with what we're doing with Director and our other managed Dante offerings in terms of -- so it's consistent with the direction of travel of the business. But it is important to note, the OEM side of what Iris have done, they've done tremendously well. We're really impressed with what they've done. And that builds a firm foundation for then monetizing at the end user side.

Okay. I'm just conscious of time. So I think we should probably call it a wrap. Thank you for all the questions. My apologies that we didn't get all of them. There will be further opportunities. Result season's coming up. We can talk more in detail during that. Or alternatively, if you want to shoot us an e-mail, please do, and we'll get back to you. So thank you very much for your time. I'm excited, and I think it's very satisfying to me personally that we've made some significant moves over the last year or so on our platform strategy, starting with the appointment of Nick but also talent-wise in terms of the -- apart from Nick's talent and the people that we've got onboard now and also now this transaction as well. So thank you very much. And with that, I think we'll call it a wrap.