Avante Corp. (XX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and welcome to Avante's 2023 Fiscal Second Quarter Investor Webinar. Joining me on the call today are Emmanuel Mounouchos, Founder and CEO of Avante; and Raj Kapoor, the company CFO. This call is being recorded. There will be a question-and-answer session at the end of the call. I trust that everyone has received a copy of our financial results press release that was issued last week. Listeners are also encouraged to download a copy of our quarterly financial statements and management discussion and analysis from sedar.com. Please note, portions of today's call other than historical performance include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. Forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions and that this discussion is qualified in its entirety by the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements that is appended to our news release. Please review our press release and Avante's reports filed on SEDAR for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections. We use terms such as gross profit, gross margin adjusted EBITDA and RMR on this conference call, which are non-IFRS and non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definition set in our management discussion and also. And with that, let me turn the call over to Mr. Emmanuel Mounouchos, Founder and CEO.

Thank you, Pardeep, and welcome, everybody. We truly appreciate everyone joining us today. I'd like to start today's call by addressing our investor communication efforts in the past 12 months. I want to assure you that the company has been very busy over the last year working on restructuring the business, fixing what's broken, growing sales, on making a couple of acquisitions as we haven't been able to spend a lot of time to host investor-related calls like this one today. Moving forward, we expect to improve investor communications and provide updates more regularly to our shareholders. We promise that we will do a better job in this regard. We thank everyone for their patience in this transition period and look forward to continuing to provide enhanced profitable security solutions and services to our customers model. On today's call, our CFO, Raj Kapoor, and I will provide a general update and the business overview of where the company is today. We will review our quarterly results released last week and give our view on the company's strategy and positive outlook. As you're probably aware, in March of last year, I rejoined Avante as a CEO and helped us tend Board of Directors committed to a successful turnaround of the company. In addition to the sale of Logic Security division, we also work towards improving the financial efficiency of the business through the implementation of various cost-saving initiatives and streamlining operations. Most recently, we also completed the acquisition of NSSG and expanding our global operations. Today, I can primary announced that the company's debt is fully paid off and that map is now growing revenues and generating positive cash flow. We are in a very strong financial position going into 2024. We're starting to gain traction on our initiatives to increase emission and green state or high level of service. Our clients are noticing the difference in the level of service being provided to them and are becoming our advocates to providing a significant increase in number of referrals. Meanwhile, we continue to actively seek new opportunities to expand or enhance our services. Now if we can just go to our Slide #2, please. So we'd like to meet the team. To you, to have not met us on in annual [indiscernible], I don't think about 1996 and had a vision to grow a security company that service high net worth line tow with the white glove type of service and using technology to better ourselves and any other security company. I previously stepped down as the CEO in 2015. And then took it public in 2008. Raj Kapoor joined me last year as CFO. Raj, if you want to say a little bit about yourself.

Nice to meet everybody on call here. I joined the company last September as a CFO. I have experience running a finance department for 2 years in a variety of different companies. Most recently, I came from a consultant from downtown, called [indiscernible] NBR.

If you can move to Slide #3 please. The successful turnaround, we paid off our debt. I joined March 2022 and establishing Board. We sold LOGICS for a significant amount of money that helped us pay off our debt and focus back to what the high value proposition that we initially started the company with. In June 1, 2022, debt was fully repaid and implemented cost savings. In July of 2022, I arranged a 10 million term facility with Fairfax, which is still sitting there for us to use. September of 2023, acquisition of 55% interest in North Star Support Group allowed us to go on to a global scale. The overview. We are a diversified to create platform specialized in providing securities to high-value commercial and higher networks residential markets. We leverage technology to make this better. Right now, we're growing organically, and we have a couple of acquisitions that we made in the last year, and we intend to expand into the international markets. Cash flow is positive and that we have a strong balance sheet. Our experienced management team has been putting together and they have a strong solid track record. Raj, do you want to talk about the company's snapshot?

Our company had offices located here in Toronto at 1959. The company was founded in '96. And currently, within Toronto where we have about 125 bodies. Trailing 12-month revenue number is at 21.2%, again, there's not prudent with and our [indiscernible] and are trailing development EBITDA of $1.4 million. Our current cash flow bank is of $4.9 million, and we have not joined on [indiscernible] new credits either with the bank or with their effect.

Market core, if we provide a combination of protective services and enhancing protective services with technology. Let me explain a little bit further. We train our people to the highest [indiscernible] we possibly can and it never ends. So as we evolve, we have new training programs, and I believe that training everybody here is very important. We also like to leverage our technology where we build our own technology or we enhance existing technology to make these people better. Together, a unique service that really isn't offered by anybody else, hence, not having the competition that we have here in Toronto. And with all my travels, I don't see any of this competition anyone in the world as well. So we provide protected services, which we are the manpower side, rapid alarm response where we get into the client to call us or if alarm goes off or if somebody trespasses on the property and an average of 6 minutes. And we put in all the systems hardware and whatever a traditional securing company does. Our mission is to deliver elevated security globally, similar to our local service, serving, get achievable and also with white log mentality to the high net worth people. Next slide, please. The problem with the security industry usually only one service provider for each company. So an alarm company will install the system, they monitor it, but they don't respond to the alarm condition. They rely on a third party to do it. There's a sophistication, physical security tends to be a uniform bird with low billable rate. So the manpower side is not sophisticated in my view, there's no elegance to the service and they're really just a body more than somebody who sits there and can actually protect the client. The few options are available in high-risk situations. Typically, a family will hire a security team, which belong to the family. The security companies don't have as many clients as a high net worth as we do under one roof. So there's limited options for the high net worth families. International transport again is serviced by very large corporations where the client is just a number, and they service them with no real detail, no openness and they just in voice and they move on. It's all generic for these big companies. With Avante, we've been managing risk in providing security solutions for 25 years. We've learned what's needed for high network homes, high-profile individuals, high-profile businesses. We're the expert in the security industry, we feel and we cater to our clients' needs. But the beauty, again, is merging the technology with the operations, providing organizations with secure international transport and we meet their duty of care obligations. We have the ability to track people so that we know that our clients are safe or they boarded on airplanes, when they landed. And this also is used by NSSG. Next slide, please. Straight came, what we offer. We appreciate everybody knows this, but we have video analytics, which are intelligent software that detects people trespassing on the property, and we dispatched before they reach the house, before they break into the house. Our latest service detects limbs; it doesn't need to detect the entire [indiscernible] of a person. So if a foot is hiding in the bush, our software will detect it and we dispatch. We have QF Axis control to allow the plying to get into their home using scramble pads and key pads that will allow access without a key event of emergency. Our intrusion systems are similar to everybody else's. We'd just like to provide full security, so we harden the target by putting security film. We have glass break detectors. We have motion detectors, we have the cameras outside. So really to get into Avante client's home, you have to penetrate 4 layers to get into the house. Our operators too are severely trained. They're licensed with the ministry. We have them pass a CPR and into [indiscernible] training courses and they understand how to deal with sophisticated clients and in a manner that is service-oriented. The client experience is the number one focus of our company right now, and it's in all levels. The rapid 6-minute response again differentiates us from everybody else. We do corporate investigations. We install higher security locks, and we do the international transport, as I previously mentioned. We do a lot of cyber and reputation monitoring right now, which is becoming one of our fastest-growing services. Next slide, please. Our present finds here in Toronto serves by Avante as you can see are big corporations. This is getting bigger and bigger. These corporations provide us very unique services, not just Avante alarms systems or panic Avante systems. Next slide, please. With the acquisition on the NSSG, a little bit of history of NSSG. So NSSG was a spin-off of an [indiscernible] company that I used to use back in 2010 to service our international transport business. That was a high-margin business. It was high touch, and we were doing it uniquely around the world where the competitors are actually looking at us. When I left this business went down and Avante was doing zero international transport. As I returned, I started contacting some of our older clients who welcomed us back, and we started doing more international transport. We used NSSG and we're doing a great job. And eventually, I thought of why not acquire them? Then we will get more of the pie and we can enable them to use some of our technology. So the synergy and services is fantastic. What it allowed NSSG to do is be transparent to use Avante as the public company. It's a Canadian company with great reputation, so it's helping them open up doors. And we'll talk a little bit about that later. Our global expansion is a plan that allows NSSG to expand in markets where they possibly could have done before using the technology that we provide. We have innovative expertise and operational efficiency. So we have 2 dual command centers right now, one in Toronto, one in Bucharest, and we service our clients to a level that others cannot, including medical services around the world with the help of Argus. So once the Argus app is pushed, it calls our control center. And our clients can say, "I need a car." Or, "Where is my driver, I need to transport." But it's connected to our medical services through NSSG, where they say "I'm not feeling well, I need to speak to a doctor." The doctor comes on the phone, connects with the client. And then from there, the doctor decides what has to be done. We can recommend them to a medical facility. We can get a doctor in country, whether it's Cairo, whether it's Nigeria, anywhere in the world to go to the hotel or we can need them back as be needed. Next slide, please. As you can see, NSSE clients are top-tier Fortune 500 clients. They have a small slice of the pie. And since our acquisition, we'll be getting more and more pieces of the pie, new clients coming on board. These are great clients that are looking to give NSSG more business. But because of the situation that they're in, small private company in Bucharest, there wasn't much traction in that. But these are the clients that we service today. Next slide, please. So what's our vision? Toronto is a $22 million company. We service a niche market, a very welcome community, and we get into the corporations, slowly we're expanding into the commercial side of our CEOs and network families that we're servicing. I want to take that and I want to model it. Our first place to model it is Florida. On Palm Beach, for example, we have 24 existing Canadian clients that are willing to give us the business so we can start off there and duplicating what we do here. Along the coast, there are many communities. There's Hollywood, there's Boca. There's Vero Beach. There's so many communities there that I think that they would easily generate $10 million as we expand. So what I see organic growth as being is expanding our growth here and then modeling this vision down in the U.S. along Florida to begin with. So it's not a lot of cash needed as we're going to grow a little bit at a time. Then I want to leverage the NSSG relationship to grow globally. We already, we've been introduced to some of their clients and they've gained some new clients as well. By using our technology and NSSG current clients, they're gaining a lot of respect and a lot of knowledge and opportunities. And it's amazing what doors are being opened for NSSG right now and a lot of them. We introduced the Avante Black in January. It's a service that is a little more than investigations. We've helped families with situations that are very sensitive. For example, we had an effect when we closed NSSG September 21, we had a plan, and it was to grow while October 7 hit and with the help of NSSG and our clients, we evacuated 37 families out of Israel. We brought them to Cypress. We run the Athens, we brought them to Bucharest. Some with the Canadian passports we drove them to Oman, to Jordan through the Marka airport and out to safety. Not all of these people were clients. Some of them were referrals from clients, some of them were friends that knew and what we were doing is we were everlasting our clients, asking them wherever needs help to contact us, even the Canadian Consulate was reached to help us. This all happened in timing that we couldn't even expect, but it proved that this NSSG relationship is going to be big, and we gained a lot of relationship building with that and a lot of appreciation. Next slide, please. So back to the model. We believe that the best people, the trained and the best technology together provides the best solution for our clients. We are a differentiator with other security companies, with a Smartbox. When the Smartbox triggered an alarm, it went to our vehicles and went to our control center, and that's how we respond in 6 minutes or less than the time we hear the alarm. Then we developed the camera software that detects trespassers back in 2002, 2003. Now it's basically things we can buy off the shelf. We do modify our version. We modify so that it works to our needs and have special characteristics that others don't have. So once somebody steps on a property, now we dispatch, and we arrived in 6 minutes or at least before they break into the home. All this is unique to Avante. And when you speak to people in Florida, they welcome it and they want us to try to get there as soon as possible. Future technologies or technologies that we recently launched was about the Argus. It was successful. It's only available to Avante executive clients. So it's not for the public to use. It's not for people that don't subscribe to our executive services. It's a very unique product that's available to Avante clients. We're doing some cybersecurity testing and remote access launching in 2024, and we have some global solutions for NSSG to use and where it's predictive risk monitoring and assessment of the global platform. Next slide, please. For the financial performance, I would refer to Raj, please.

So we have there regarding our trailing 12-month revenue in the last 8 quarters. And as you can see, it's increased every quarter. We expect to have this continue to grow over the next number of quarters. Also, if you look at our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA number, we've been positive now for 6 straight quarters and are showing at least some consistency at this point and expect that also to grow. As you can see here, our quarterly results year-over-year, our revenue has grown from $4.9 million to $5.3 million, representing an 8% increase. Our adjusted EBITDA also increased in a similar fashion. And our recurring revenue has increased 10% year-over-year. As you can see here, this is a graph, we're showing our revenues, comparing recurring revenue versus our other revenue. And as you can see, right now, our most recent quarter, we were over 50% of recurring revenue, and that has pretty much maintained over the last numbers of different quarters. Our average contract is 1 year, but our clients were net. We have a 98% client retention and renewal rate, and that remains strong.

Our next slide just gives us a little bit of history for you who don't know. We have a proven acquisition model. We acquired, rebuild, we generate cash; we move on the last year, we purchased same alarms in Muskoka. This allowed us to expand and have more presence in Muskoka to allow that office that's there and the people that work there to generate some revenue. And we're the only alarm response company in Muskoka that arrives and makes it part of their business in a reasonable amount of time. And then again, everybody knows about NSSG. So we're working hard to make this whole NSSG relationship success. Next slide, please. Raj?

Here we have graphed our historical share price and volume. I think the key item here to look at is our enterprise value of $17 million. We believe that, that is highly undervalued. And based on our recurring revenue, I would assume that you would think the same way.

Our key management team, Alessandro Martello, who's the Founder and CEO of NSSG. He founded and is June 2017, but I know Alessandro for at least 5 years prior to that, he's always been a standout person. Shlomi Burshtein who's the Director of Avante Black. He is leading the Avante Black and managing all the sales that are coming in. I'm happy to see that Avante Black is about 10% of our annual sales at this point, and we haven't finished the year yet. Kevin Menard, he's the President of Operations. He previously served as Canadian Army has a naval Communicator and stand up a solid person that is helping me manage and lead our operations on a daily basis. Next slide, please. Our Board of Directors, you all know them, myself, Emmanuel Mounouchos, Bruce Bronfman, Rob Klopot who has a successful business called Forest Hill Group; Dan Argiros, who's Conundrum Capital and the Chairman of Arch Corporation; and Wade Burton, who is the Chief Investment Officer of Hamblin Wasta investment. Next slide, please. Our investment highlights. We are the leaders in North America for security solutions to close to 500 clientele. I don't believe there's any one company that services as many clients as we do that are in the higher spectrum of financial wealth. The net wealth of the families that we service is tremendous. We have a technology differentiator of technology that we build and also modify off the shelf to make it work. Organic growth with strategic global expansion. We have a proven scalable acquisition model, positive cash flow and strong balance sheet, and we are undervalued. And experienced management team is going to help us get further into growth and profitability. That's the end of our presentation deck. Finally, I want to thank the entire team at Avante, including the employees whose hard work continue to elevate the company to higher levels. We want to thank our customers around the globe for trust and rely on us to use innovative technologies to manage risk and provide elevated security solutions and services. Also, I'd like to thank you for all joining us on this call today. We look forward to providing more updates next year. I will now hand it back to Pardeep for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Gabriel Leung of Beacon Securities. Are there any specific geographic areas that the company would like to expand into over the short to midterm? And what services will be offered in those particular regions?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, the opportunity to extend at Florida is as low as hanging through. We have clients there that are willing to pay us right away. And we also have relationships there that will allow us to build more clientele very quickly. The few American clients that we do have presently spend a lot of money for our services. I can tell you that they're probably one of the highest spending clients that we currently have. And we believe Florida is just there, it's Florida wanted. They love the glitter, they love the image. They love the whole black card and luxury service, big bodyguard type of security officer or suit and time, and then we can drive them to their functions. We can drive them everywhere that they need like we do here. So Florida is the place to be, but we don't want to overspend. We want to make sure that we grow strategically and properly.

We have another follow-up question from Gabriel Leung of Beacon Securities. What investments are expected to be made into NSSG to accelerate the organic growth? Can you talk about the potential synergies of Avante's existing customer base?

Well, the synergies with Avante existing customer base are enormous. And when we did this acquisition, we're looking to grow the list of our corporate clients who travel. With the help of NSSG, we've already shown what we can do in Israel. We have received more business for more clients internationally, locally, from our local clients here. And we intend to further build the relationships. The investment isn't a huge investment and is profitable. And we feel, together, we have an opportunity to accelerate the growth just organically.

We have a question from a shareholder here. Can you provide some additional details on your cash position at the end of September 2023 versus the prior quarter ending in June 2023. What other items has resulted in a decline in the cash position during the quarter, excluding the payout for the NSSG acquisition.

Raj, maybe you can help me on this one?

You're correct. The cash balance did decline this quarter, the largest contributor being the NSSG acquisition like you mentioned. In addition to the NSSG payment, we also advanced a loan of EUR 500,000 to NSSG, cash- Canadian equivalent of $720,000. We also had some other large payments. For example, we prepaid some large expenses in the quarter, the largest being insurance. In the past, the company was paying it monthly. We were able to save the interest cost by paying the whole thing up at once. And we also had onetime implementation costs relating to our new software implementation. There was also a cleanup in accounts payable. Our suppliers are now pretty much current in the past, that was not the case. We use some of the cash to make sure that our suppliers are content with their payment terms that we're providing. In addition, we've also improved our accounts receivable. I have replaced the individual that was in charge of that in the past. And we've had positive cash flow with regards to collections in the most recent quarter. We are not expecting cash levels to decline in fiscal Q3 as they did in Q2. And overall, if we add back the SSG investment, our working capital number has actually improved from March until now from $9.9 million to $10.5 million, representing a $603,000 improvement.

We have a question here from [indiscernible] Securities. What are the contributors to organic growth in the period, volume of new customers versus pricing increases.

So far, the organic growth has mostly been driven by adding new customers and new services. We added a number of new services such as the Argus app, 24-hour video monitoring, our 6- to 6 or 12 hour video monitoring. We have 2-way voice in our video monitoring. We've implemented on Argus, which has stop many clients from their vehicles being stolen and Avante black. NSSG services call retention of existing customers and also drive new customers to our platform. The increase in our pricing has to be strategically implemented because of the existing software that we have, some of the pricing is all over the place. So we would have to send a letter out to the clients, letting them know what the new pricing is and then implement the invoicing accordingly.

Here's the second question from [indiscernible] Securities. Can you update us on your M&A pipeline and if you plan to use your debt facility to fund future acquisitions?

Well, for more M&A, we're looking for acquisitions that makes sense to us. We really want acquisitions that will enhance our control center, our monitoring facility so that we have recurring monthly revenue increase. If it's not a recurring monthly revenue increase, then we're looking for a bigger number with a bigger margin like the NSSG, which gives us somewhere between 50% and 60% margin for all the jobs that they do. We're looking for a little acquisition in the United States and Florida. I think that if we can buy a little security company with not much -- it doesn't cost much we have that technology footprint and platform there where we can grow. But they have to be strategically in our area. So we're not going to buy something in Miami and try to service Palm Beach. Again, there is some strategy that we have to follow and we don't want to spend a lot of money.

Another question from a shareholder here. This individual is pleased to see Avante [indiscernible] But is asking what are the plans does the company have to increase its investor communications?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, we are making a true effort to improve our investor and shareholder communications. This webinar is the first step of the process. We are currently developing our Investor Relations plan for 2024. But I can tell you that we plan to do more investor webinars and are planning on attending some investor conferences. We will be doing some marketing to analysts and institutional investors over the next year. We have a great story, and we want investors to know about it.

I see another follow-up question from [indiscernible]. Can the consolidated gross margin be scaled higher? And if so, what is the formula get there.

With the addition of the new services, we can drive gross margins higher as technology-based services generally have a higher margin. We can also achieve better margins with more scale. For instance, we have capacity to expand in new geographies, which we can still serve from our current location that will allow us to help higher margins and not have to duplicate in the U.S. or anywhere else. So we add new geographies, we get more scale and more revenue with higher gross margins.

And here is another question from someone on the call here. What does the company's outlook for cash and EBITDA looks like in 2024?

I think you see from our presentation today, we've really stabilized the company's EBITDA. And now a proven track record of generating positive EBITDA. We expect that EBITDA should grow as we scale the revenue moving forward. Our ongoing goal is to be net profit positive, have positive earnings per share. We are doing everything with that in mind as our ultimate goal. We had a decline in our cash in the second quarter because of the payouts that I previously mentioned around the acquisition and software. But we expect our cash balance to stabilize at this point. Going forward, our free cash flow profile should improve as EBITDA increase.

We have one more question there from Doug Taylor, analyst at Canaccord. The NSSG acquisition looks like a nicely profitable business that expands the global footprint, but it looks like it's largely consulting and implementation contracts. How does the team build this contract pipeline? And what is the typical contract line?

The NSSG model is similar to what our international transport model is. We build a relationship with a corporation, whether it's BlackBerry, whether it's Apple, whether it's Google, they use us for transport or a body guarding or secure driving or even a black card service with known people. And then they just keep on using us. So the length of contract may be a week or 2 weeks, but they use us all the time. And since they have so many employees, we have multiple jobs going on at the same time. So it's not what your typical understanding is where you sign a 1-year contract. We provide services on a quote and on a contract based on that quote every day.

We'll now pass the call back to Manny for closing remarks.

Well, I'd like to thank everybody again for coming today and being online. I'm always free to answer questions, Raj and my team. If you please just contact us, it would be a great opportunity to meet everybody.

And with that, we will end the call.