Beonic Limited (BEO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
April 29, 2021
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Wayne Arthur
executiveOkay, good morning. Thank you, everybody, for making the time to join us today. I hope everybody has enjoyed a solid summer and looking forward to [Technical Difficulty] year in FY '21. Welcome to the FY '21 Third Quarter Results presentation for Skyfii. I'm joined today by Skyfii's Chairman, Andrew Johnson; Skyfii's Chief Operating Officer, John Rankin; and our Investor Relations Consultant, Craig Sainsbury. Q3's results present -- or represent a consistent return to the pre-COVID growth trajectory. We delivered our highest quarterly recurring revenue number since the company's inception. Nonrecurring revenues were slightly down on the quarter, but as expected. And we have also seen a continuation of strong growth in our rolling 12-month pipeline. It is now almost exactly 12 months since COVID started to cause venue and border closures across the globe, and we're extremely pleased to be able to report that from a recurring revenue level, Skyfii has grown nearly 25% over the past 4 quarters since the end of March 2020. The reason this is so significant is because recurring revenues represent contracted long-term customers who are either -- who have either been successfully retained over the period, or new customers who have been successfully converted despite the global climate over the past 12 months. And this is again a very strong validation of the critical need that our customers have on the data intelligence that we provide. And this global need has only been further exacerbated by the impact of the last 12 months. We've seen a continued increase in demand for our products and services in all regions as venues are reprioritizing technology decisions, improving their customer data solutions, and putting in place systems to ensure that they are prepared for all scenarios in the future, including the extenuating events that no one was fully prepared for over the past year. Now we'll outline later in the presentation that in addition to what has been strong growth over the past 12 months relative to the climate, that our sales pipeline has grown exponentially over the past quarter, itself up 32% quarter-on-quarter, representing the evidence of venues bringing forward budgets or reinstating projects that were slated for late in 2020. So as you might tell, we are pretty pleased with the company's performance in Q3 of FY '21 and over the past year, and importantly, on having delivered now 3 successive quarters of growth since the beginning of FY '21. In addition, we remain very optimistic about the company's continued growth for the remainder of FY '21 and into FY '22. So moving on to Slide #2. Our vision is to improve visitor experience in physical and digital environments through providing a better understanding of consumer behavior. We help our customers deliver value to their customers and in their operations, through the provision of technology and through assisting them with the application and use of data. At the core of our business offering is our proprietary tech platform, which gathers data from a multitude of sources. It aggregates this data and contextualizes this data and then it visualizes the insights. We work predominantly with our customers on 3 key principles: number one, the right data, working with our customers to establish what data can be collected and analyzed to help solve their specific business challenges; number two, applying intelligence technology to collect and analyze this data; and number three, providing highly experienced people to assist in the consultancy and application of the data to real business outcomes. Skyfii has some of the world's leading experience with domain experts in engineering, data science, PhD research, software development and digital strategists to help our customers deliver on their data and marketing strategy. We provide a full-service solution to our customers from solution design through project management, managed services, software as a service solutions, and ongoing customer success. And finally, post-quarter, our team has now grown significantly largely due to the complementary acquisition and accretive acquisition of CrowdVision, which we're going to discuss in a bit more detail throughout the presentation. Moving on to Slide #3. So the technology that we developed, which collects all of this data and underpins our services offering, is called the IO platform, which as I mentioned in the previous slide is 100% proprietary to Skyfii. Data itself is not very valuable unless it can be captured, analyzed and visualized in a form from that delivers insights or action for a business. And this is why Skyfii's IO platform is such a critical tool for our customers, many of whom are landlords, retailers, government bodies, health care or education professionals; and not technology companies and therefore do not traditionally possess the in-house capability to be able to analyze, visualize and most importantly, action new data. So our suite of software as a service products includes Connect, which is our data collection and centralization product; Insights, which is our BI dashboard, visualization tool and automated reporting products and also where our newly acquired acquisition of Blix and CrowdVision will reside; Engage, which is our multichannel marketing product suite; and then IO Labs, which is our research and innovation environment. Each of these product offerings contributes to a different stage of the customer's data journey and often over their buying life cycle. Moving on to Slide #4. So what are the counter data sets that we collect in analogs? The answer is any infrastructure type that has the ability -- or capability, shall I say, to transmit data is a possible data source that we either do or can collect. The data that we work with most often include data gathered from cameras, people counting sensors, WiFi networks, beacons, mobile data; device applications, social media platforms, CRM systems, IoT sensors, point-of-sale systems, and more recently, LiDAR sensors, to name a few. And what we do, and I guess the problem -- one of the problems that we're solving is we aggregate all of this data from all these different solutions together to form an actionable insight on customer behavior for our premium partners. So for example in shopping centers, which is a key -- has been a key vertical for us over time, we provide things like heat maps, which detail where people are congregating, which retailers they are visiting or not visiting, which parking days are open versus occupied. In airports, we provide real-time monitoring on travel times from check-in to gate lounge; or queue wait times through security and immigration, which is a new capability for high-security checkpoints, which we now have inherited by the CrowdVision acquisition. In universities, we provide accurate attendance registers to determine which curriculums are popular and importantly, which student is outperforming or not performing. For restaurants, we help to build and optimize loyalty programs through the collection of a marketing database delivered through our guest WiFi solution and by driving targeted content to patrons to increase their visitation likelihood. With the acquisition of Blix, we have now got a very strong and credible solution within the automotive industry, where the focus is on footfall insights and sales conversion metrics, to help salespeople track success and for dealership managers to forecast sales performance. Finally, the recent acquisition of CrowdVision provides us with a global market-leading position in the airport vertical, particularly around security checkpoints, airline ticketing and immigration zone analytics or similar use cases relevant within the stadium, hospitality and casino gaming sectors. So in today's world, as venues have shifted their focus to facilitate structural and operational changes as well as customer experience management, a great deal of our services are still being used to help them venues manage occupancy levels, monitor crowd density, optimize staffing levels and improve customer safety and security. So moving on to Slide 6, key operating highlights. So moving into Q3, we are extremely pleased to have announced that we have so successfully converted 15 new customer contracts to the Skyfii portfolio. The more notable contracts include Porto Alegre airport in Brazil, where we are deploying our solution on initial 3-year contract term across all 3 of our software licenses: Connect, Insight and Engage. Norwich Football Club in the U.K. who have also recently come on board to add to our growing footprint in stadiums across Europe. And again, we're going to talk in a bit more detail about CrowdVision in a second, but certainly stadiums is kind of the next frontier for the rebound story once the airports start to reopen back up. Hancock Regional Hospital Group, who have signed on for our guest WiFi and Engage solutions on an initial 12-month contract term across 4 of their health care clinics in the United States, with the potential for a broader rollout. Nando's Canada. So Nando's have been an existing client of ours for the past 4 years, I think, today. And we recently welcomed the Canadian Nando's footprint onto our customer portfolio as well. And they are currently utilizing our Connect and Insight product, with some further upsell opportunity with our Engage solution to follow soon. Really exciting to announce ShopCore, which is one of the U.S.'s largest REITs, real estate trusts. They have about 69 properties across the U.S. Today, they have deployed, or just recently they have deployed our people counting solutions for OccupancyNow, on an initial 3-year contract at one of their flagship properties in the New York area. And naturally, we'll be focusing on hopefully rolling out this solution across potentially all of those properties across the United States over the coming months. And then post the end of the quarter, during April we announced another casino win in the United States with Rolling Hills Casino, which is a California-based casino, who have contracted on a 3-year contract term also for our people counting solution using OccupancyNow and also our Connect solution for guest Wifi. Moving to Slide #7. So aside from the new contract conversion and the new customer wins that we've announced during the quarter, we've also announced a couple of other operating highlights. Most recently, a partnership with BrainBox AI, who is a globally recognized market leader in the delivery of technology for commercial HVAC systems. Skyfii partnered with BrainBox AI via the analytics and reporting platform for that technology, which is helping customers such as AMP, who are one of the cornerstone joint customers, to rapidly optimize using their occupancy data, which is delivered through the Skyfii solution, to drive significant savings and predictive savings for more efficiently managed HVAC across their commercial and retail properties. So pretty exciting move for us, that's definitely going to open up more opportunities in the IoT ecosystem across not just commercial real estate, but potentially other venues like airports, smart cities and stadiums over time. And then secondly, for the fourth consecutive year we are extremely proud to have been acknowledged by Deloitte as one of the fastest-growing technology companies, or continuing to be one of the fastest-growing technology companies across the Asia Pacific region. So with that, I will hand over to John Rankin, moving on to Slide #8. And John will take you through some of the key financial highlights delivered during the quarter.
John Rankin
executiveThank you. Next slide. Before we begin, we'll just -- I'll just run through the audience today around how Skyfii generates revenues. There's really 2 buckets of revenues. Recurring or SaaS revenues, which are generated from ongoing subscription fees for access to the IO platform, which Wayne presented earlier. And recurring revenues are charged as a fixed fee per month per venue priced and typically contracted on 3- to 5-year terms. The monthly recurring revenues can really range from sort of $50 per month up to sort of $10,000 per venue per month, depending on the size of the venue, whether that be a stadium or a quick service restaurant store. Secondly, nonrecurring revenues. Revenue is generated from a combination of professional services generated by our data and marketing services team, which sort of underpin the deployment of our platform; and also the deployment of hardware, infrastructure, implementations, upfront setup fees, which underpin ultimately recurring revenues. And this includes technologies that Wayne touched on earlier, including wireless access points; 2D and 3D cameras; people counting sensors; AI cameras to monitor objects such as cars, pedestrians, bicycles; IoT sensors to detect desk and meeting room utilization and climate control. And finally through the acquisition, as Wayne mentioned earlier, the inclusion of LiDAR technology and CCTV camera technology that helps grow the increasing number of data sets that we present in the IO platform. Moving to the next slide, Q3 results. So if we turn our attention to recurring revenue growth in the quarter, we're pleased with the results. The $2.9 million was a 4% improvement quarter-on-quarter and also on our previous guidance to the market. Whilst the growth quarter-on-quarter and against our forecast was more conservative than our performance in Q1 and Q2, this trend is very consistent. And really, what we've done today is present that on the graph in dark blue. It's really consistent with our performance for the corresponding periods across the last 4 years. Total operating revenues were marginally down at $3.6 million versus Q2. And again, Q3 is typically a quieter quarter as our customers shut down over the busy Christmas holiday period. And what we typically see is a strong rebound in Q4, which is the final quarter of the year. If we focus our attention to the recurring revenue performance across the last 12 months, the company has delivered 24% growth. We believe this is a great result, considering the state of the world 12 months ago as the COVID pandemic took hold of the global economy. If we reflect on the last 4 quarters, despite modest performance in Q4 and Q1 FY '20 largely a result of suspension of services of custom subscriptions, the company has recovered extremely well with quarter-on-quarter recurring revenue growth delivered across the last 3 quarters, a trend that we expect to see to follow into Q4. Cash collections across the quarter were extremely strong, up 19% quarter-on-quarter, which saw the company deliver cash flow positive results in Q3. And we had delivered that same result over the last 3 consecutive quarters. Cash at bank of $2.8 million was a $500,000 improvement on previous guidance provided on the 6th of April. Cash was marginally down on Q2, but noting the company did incur some one-off costs in the quarter, including the cash settlement for the deferred consideration of the acquisition of Beonic Technologies, which was acquired in July 2019. And lastly, the company held $1.5 million in undrawn funds in a debt facility. Moving to the next slide, the sales pipeline and FY '21 forecast. Just to begin, there's a few themes in our operating performance that I would like to point out. Number one, the pipeline continues to build as venues continue to reopen post the vaccine rollout, particularly in our international markets. Number two, the extended lockdown in Europe in Q3 did slow pipeline conversion for the business, but we are witnessing a recovery in this region as well. Number three, inbound lead generation and new business inquiries has really been focusing on some key verticals, those being smart cities, smart buildings, airports, health care, hotels, and retail. And finally, as the guidance provided below in the table demonstrates, we expect Q4 to be a very strong quarter for the company. If we turn our attention to the rolling 12-month sales pipeline, it's important to note before we discuss it in detail, this is by no means our total pipeline, but merely a snapshot of the rolling 12 months sales pipeline, so those deals that are sitting in that advanced stage. I'll also point out as well on the right-hand side of the presentation, that advanced stage pipeline actually represents the Skyfii core business, and at this point in time excludes the CrowdVision pipeline, which we'll talk about in a little bit more detail. What we are pleased is that the sales pipeline has experienced significant growth in the -- since the last quarter. The deals sitting in advanced stages have increased by 32%, as referenced by Wayne at the start of the presentation, since our Q2 conference call in January, which is a great result. Further to this, over $6 million in deals has made its way into the advanced stage sales pipeline since the start of April, when we provided an update to the market. The Skyfii sales pipeline currently does exclude the CrowdVision sales pipeline, which for the next quarter will add a further $9 million in deals that sit in advanced stage. So certainly, that business comes into the Skyfii Group with a very strong forward-looking position. If we turn our attention to the FY '21 full year forecast, the company provided guidance on the 6th of April. We were expecting between $15 million and $16 million for the full year total operating revenue, and between $10.5 million and $11.5 million in full year recurring revenues. We're pleased to provide an updated forecast to our investors today, which is inclusive of CrowdVision, with the expectation that the company will deliver full year total operating revenues of between $15.5 million and $16.5 million and full year recurring revenues of between $11 million and $12 million, noting that the contribution from CrowdVision is effective from the 6th of April. So in summary, the combination of the Skyfii and CrowdVision pipeline finds the company really well placed as we close out FY '21 and has us well positioned to deliver strong revenue growth as we enter into the new financial year. I'll now pass you back now to Wayne to talk through the CrowdVision acquisition and the capital raise. Next slide.
Wayne Arthur
executiveThank you, John. So if you just turn your attention to Slide #13, I'd like to just now take you all through a bit more detail on the CrowdVision business and some of the key terms of the recent acquisition. CrowdVision is an artificial intelligence-driven analytics company, which specializes in the delivery of highly accurate footfall and checkpoint analytics, whose technology is deeply rooted in the application of computer vision. The company has 32 employees and 35 large enterprise, mostly, airport customers spanning the U.S. and EU markets. Some of the key investment highlights for us included the quality of their advanced analytics technology, underpinned by computer vision; an attractive financial profile with a higher percentage of recurring software as a service revenues; a highly sticky blue-chip customer base, which currently sees CrowdVision being the market leader in the airport vertical in the U.S. They've enabled key partnerships with the likes of the TSA in the U.S., they are actually the only TSA-approved tech vendor in the United States; and others, including a go-to-market partnership with Verizon, which is planned specifically around stadiums as they begin to reopen. CrowdVision delivered revenues of USD 3.1 million or around AUD 3.9 million in 2020, calendar year 2020, with USD 1.7 million in recurring revenues or AUD 2.1 million in the same period. And we've already started, as John has pointed out, to see growth on those metrics in calendar year '21. So moving to Slide 14. As discussed on the previous slide, the CrowdVision technology, which will soon be fully integrated into the Skyfii technology stack, is underpinned by computer vision, which drives the business rules that drive the reporting on the key metrics such as people detection, directional movement, occupancy on a highly granular highly accurate and high fidelity basis. This type of solution is best applied in high-density situations or areas such as ticketing desks, security checkpoints, immigration zones, food and beverage updates, stadium turnstiles and even taxi and [ large shared queues ] as well. So moving to Slide #15. As mentioned on the previous slide, the main use cases for the current CrowdVision deployments are centered around highly accurate, almost mission-critical queue monitoring and occupancy counting metrics for high-volume checkpoints, such as ticketing, check-in areas, security and immigration points, as I mentioned, food and beverage areas, or concession areas of airports and stadiums. Even baggage claim areas and restaurants are also on the docket. So it impacts passengers or customers on their journeys, both inbound and outbound, to their journeys. Moving to Slide #16. So Slide 16 highlights the complementary nature of the Skyfii solution and the CrowdVision solution side by side. We obviously think and know it is a little bit of commercial deal for us. I've highlighted some of the key investment criteria that are important to us. But on a side-by-side basis in the current customer base, it's important to note that today Skyfii operates -- or should I say prior to CrowdVision, Skyfii operates in 32 airports worldwide, and CrowdVision operates in 35 airports worldwide. And we do not cross over or coexist in any of these locations yet, so there's no cannibalization from a customer perspective currently. In addition, as you can see and as this slide is highlighting, the reasons that venues like airports will deploy Skyfii and CrowdVision are very different, and the use cases therefore are very different. Skyfii is typically used or deployed to cover common area analytics using WiFi mainly and sometimes people counters for entry and exit points, to assess flow and understand traffic patterns and sometimes occupancy levels at the entry and exit points. Whereas CrowdVision are typically deployed using different technologies, technologies such as fisheye cameras and LiDAR in most cases, but generally in the higher-volume areas of ticketing, security and immigration areas. So really, we don't cross over physically or even in terms of use cases in the footprint, so clearly a lot of revenue synergies for us to unlock in the short and medium term. On Slide 17, we provided a snapshot or an overview, shall I say, of some of the key customers currently contracted in some form by CrowdVision. And I mentioned the term "in some form" because a lot of these brands or logos or customers have only just started to deploy or roll out the solution. So we see a lot of upside revenue now and in the future in some of these accounts as they progressively roll out CrowdVision across multiple terminals or multiple checkpoints within terminals. Some of the key logos then include the likes of JFK, Charlotte Airport, Denver International, Miami, London, Heathrow, Chicago O'Hare, to name a few of the key ones. They are currently in 9 out of the top 15 airports in the U.S., which has been evaluated based on -- the top airports evaluated based on the number of passenger movements. Or look at it another way, they're in 13 of the top 30 by passenger volume in the United States. In addition to the -- I guess the key contracts or key customers they have under contract, they've also secured go-to-market partnerships with the likes of -- I mentioned Verizon and TSA already, but also with SITA, who are probably the world's largest IT services provider to the airport vertical. They also have secured a partnership with Hitachi, who is obviously a manufacturer of camera equipment. So strong go-to-market opportunities through the likes of those 2 players, amongst some of the others. So a very strong outlook in terms of where some of those processes can go. And naturally, we are focused already on TSA, DHS, SITA and Verizon as we look to scale this business forward. So moving on Slide #18, where I will summarize some of the key highlights again of the CrowdVision business and also recap on some of the key transaction terms. So as a reminder, the CrowdVision business delivered USD 3.1 million or AUD 3.9 million in calendar year '20, with USD 1.7 million being delivered in recurring revenues. The transaction was modeled or evaluated obviously based on a multiple of the ARR. So the EV of the business was calculated on that basis based on calendar year 20's results or the USD 1.7 million. So the key terms were Skyfii paid $1 million upfront in cash, which would be upfront consideration. And then the deferred consideration is payable after 90 days post the transaction. We had the decision or it's at our election as to whether we pay the deferred consideration all in scrip or all in cash or potentially a hybrid of the 2. And so the EV is based on -- will be funded -- determined should I say, based on how we choose to pay for that deferred consideration. So somewhere between USD 7 million total EV or USD 8 million, depending if we pay all cash or all scrip to that deferred piece. And importantly as John has pointed out, the -- on a pro forma basis, CrowdVision has added AUD 2.3 million to our ARR. And so our pro forma ARR today stands at $13.3 million. And then as I'm sure everybody is aware, we also alongside the announcement of the acquisition, we completed a capital raise placement of AUD 10 million and subsequently concluded an SPP of just over $700,000, which has been used to fund the acquisition of CrowdVision, but also to provide additional working capital for us to support and scale up the growth in both Skyfii and CrowdVision as we move forward. So with that, we'll skip forward to Slide #20, outlook and strategy slide. So these are really the 6 key areas that we are focused on as we look to close out FY '21 and moving into FY '22. I guess first and foremost, and as part of obviously the placement funds received, we're going to be focusing investment around further sales resource, particularly into our international markets as we look to scale up our offering there around taking CrowdVision and Skyfii to market and in our current international markets and potentially opening up some new regions. We'll also be continuing to invest into marketing, which has definitely paid off for us. I think as we've recapped over the past 3 quarters, marketing has been really a recent investment for us over the past 9 months predominantly, and certainly has been a strong performer in terms of the lead generation and quality of leads and the resulting pipeline that John passed on to everybody a couple of slides ago. We're going to be absolutely laser-focused, and we are already absolutely laser-focused on leveraging the rebound that is already existent in the airports vertical. Clearly, we have a very, very strong story to tell. We already did, but we now have an even stronger story to tell in the airport space through the acquisition of CrowdVision. So as -- obviously as passenger volume is increased, airports are automatically enabling more budgets to be spent in their venues. And security checkpoint and occupancy monitoring are top of the priority list in terms of technology investments for these venues. So take peace of mind that, that is a little bit of key focus for us to close out and convert that pipeline as soon as possible. As always, we will continue to invest in the development and rollout of new products. As we've spoken about in the past, our product development pipeline is what's called agile. And so we are releasing new products every couple of weeks -- or features, should I say, every couple of weeks, and definitely new product offerings at least every quarter. So that will continue. OccupancyNow has been a very, very strong performer for us over the 9 months -- over the last 9 months as an example of a new product release. We will continue to maintain and focus on profitable growth. And I think as John mentioned, we actually delivered a cash profit through the last quarter. We will maintain our trend of positive operating EBITDA growth and maintaining a strong cash and balance sheet position. We are -- again whilst we're focused on near-term pipeline conversion, certainly very important for us that we accelerate the immigration of the CrowdVision business and also the CrowdVision technology solution. I think we indicated in previous conversations that the technology integration is already underway and is definitely ahead of schedule. But for the meantime, we will continue to run its technology alongside our solution. So we won't slow go-to-market and the conversion of that pipeline, but certainly company and product integration are top-of-mind priorities for us. And then I guess we've been in the market for the last 9 months, which has been the result of the recent placement and acquisition of CrowdVision. We're certainly laser-focused on making sure that that is [ betted down ] and we give that particular business the opportunity to grow. But certainly we'll keep our eyes out for any accretive acquisitions that make sense, that we can afford on the current balance sheet as well. So with that, I will stop with the talking. I'll hand back, and we're happy to move into a period of Q&A. Thank you all for your time.
John Rankin
executiveThanks, Wayne. We've got a couple of questions. A question from Chris. "John, I hope you can cover this question, please, R&D intellectual property from investing to operating cash flows. Is this a change in policy? If so, why?" Look, it's not a change in policy. We actually make the adjustment to accounts at audit time. But -- and we've referenced in our Appendix 4C a little footnote to reference that. But really, that adjustment is for the capitalization of labor and other related costs attributed to development of the Skyfii platform. So certainly we do that to the R&D, but that is adjusted at the half year mark across each financial year. So hopefully, that answers the first question. Second one, what is the quantum of temporary suspensions due to COVID? Wayne, do you want to answer that? Or would you want me to answer?
Wayne Arthur
executiveYou go, go ahead.
John Rankin
executiveLook, the -- I'll sort of break it down, and will talk and reference back to the recurring revenue graph where we did, on that slide, mention and demonstrate the impact across Q4 and Q1. So certainly -- Q4 FY '20 and Q1 FY '21. So certainly, that was the peak of I guess requests and support that we provided to our customers and that sort of phase 1 of the impact of COVID. We then saw a genuine lift from that period, so a rebound in Q2. But certainly from our perspective, there was a little bit of a lag with the international markets where some of markets we operate in, went into the phase 2 and phase 3. And so therefore, some of those suspensions are extended through. I am pleased to say now, though it is relatively minimal. There is still some support we're providing to customers in our Brazilian market who are still severely impacted by COVID as well as some suspension of services in a couple of other regions that we work in. But needless to say, we're talking circa 20,000 a month in terms of impact. So hopefully that answers the question.
Wayne Arthur
executiveI'll just add to that, John. So I think at a high level, we were -- at the worst case, the impact was somewhere in the order of 50,000 to 60,000 a month. And that's come right back down to definitely sub-20, actually very close to 15,000 a month at the moment. So as John mentioned, definitely improved. Some while still outstanding, the majority of which we expect to return as these markets finally emerge from the COVID sort of pandemic.
John Rankin
executiveRight. So next question is from [ Stella ] in relation to the pipeline chart, and the fact that it's increased by 6 million from sort of the start of April. "Could you please help us understand which sectors that growth is coming from?"
Wayne Arthur
executiveSo I'll grab that one. So Stella, I guess first of all, we really pleased to have seen that. We weren't expecting such a sort of, rebound, I suppose, in such a short period from last quarter to this quarter. But predominantly, it's really across all regions actually. And I think it speaks more to the sort of shift in sentiment. I made the comment at the beginning of the presentation around the reprioritization of technology budgets around security, safety, things that we do or CrowdVision does. So definitely, we've seen that escalate up people's priorities. And so CapEx projects mainly have come back on -- or sorry, should I say predominant CapEx projects make up that uplift in airports, retail, CRE, commercial real estate where those projects are kind of put on hold for a period of time. Potentially, they're coming back at some stage and then now have been triggered by I guess the return to work or the return to life in some countries like Australia, where things have gotten a little more open. But also in the airport space, it's a pretty hard metric where passenger -- in some of the discussions that we're having, once passenger numbers get back to 75% of where they were pre-COVID, then these budgets just get automatically released again. And we're just starting to see that happening. So the phone's really inbound once again, which is always a good thing.
John Rankin
executiveSo the next question relates to data privacy increasingly on mobile phones, users minds, do you see decreasing WiFi log-ins in commercial properties? Would that affect the take-up of Skyfii products such as Insight?
Wayne Arthur
executiveYes. So look, it's a good question. It's a common question in that, I guess, the privacy situation has obviously changed in many markets over the last few years, but also the proliferation of things like 5G have raised questions, similar questions as well. The short answer is not really. In our solution basically, for users to be able to use the system, they do need to obtain and accept terms and conditions, which have been built around GDPR policy. And in other markets, there's other labels for that. And so users who opt in or opting in on the explicit basis that they're comfortable with the privacy exchange basically of data, we have not seen a decrease in WiFi log-ins in commercial properties, period. It is actually probably more of the opposite. But you've got to remember that it's off a relatively low base. For us, our -- the main body of our Insight solution is actually driven by anonymous devices who don't opt in or don't need to opt in, but we also don't know who they are. There's no privacy breach at that point. So the predominant use cases that we provide around movement and flow of people is using anonymous device probes. So that doesn't cross any privacy barriers. We don't exchange any personal information. And that sample set has remained pretty much intact. As long as someone's WiFi is turned on on that device, then we can pick up that device's location on a completely anonymized basis. On the flip side, for those people who opt in to use WiFi networks, we generally have seen, from day 1 of Skyfii Genesis to now, an average of 10% to 15% people do that in a venue. And that is a very statistically relevant sample set. We don't need to be 100%. 5% would still be considered relevant and statistically relevant. So yes, it doesn't really affect the value that we're providing or the take-up of our solutions. But also, sorry, the final thing I would say is WiFi continues to be a very important part of our data solution, but it's one of many. And so it's -- even if it were to dilute, we really don't see any reason to think it will or -- and it hasn't. The vast majority of our Insight solution is driven by the combination and aggregation of solutions, cameras, beacons, mobile apps, mobile, GSC and WiFi and so on.
John Rankin
executiveGreat. There's a question in relation to the multiple paid for the Beonic acquisition, which was circa 1x ARR, versus the multiple that was paid for CrowdVision. Can just sort of expand on?
Wayne Arthur
executiveSure. So the -- you're correct in saying that Beonic acquisition was roughly 1x ARR. And that was a business that just had not -- at the time that we picked it up, had not had a lot of investment into it. It was definitely being run on a sort of fairly casual basis. And the valuation that we managed to secure for that was reflected in that particular multiple. Pleasingly for us, we picked it up and it's growing at the same rate that Skyfii is growing at. So we've benefited in terms of the accretion there. CrowdVision was a company, should I say, that was on its way up. And certainly obviously, 2020 in the airport space was not a particularly good year for it. So our good fortune is picking up the residual pipeline and portfolio of customers there. So the valuation methodology was a little different. We weren't picking up a distressed business. We were picking up a business that was about to rebound and start to grow significantly. And the reason that the vendors or the major shareholders of that business chose to sell was because it was owned in a U.S.-based fund that was being retired. And so they had to dispose off all the assets. So to the multiple though, you are not entirely correct. The multiple is based on the calendar year 2020 ARR of USD 1.7 million or AUD 2.3 million. So the actual equivalent ARR multiple is -- on the low end is 4.2 and on the high end is 4.7x ARR. So still accretive to where Skyfii has been -- generally been trading, but reflective of the fact that we bought ourselves a business that is also going to be high growth and also cognizant of the quality of the technology as well.
John Rankin
executiveExcellent. There's a question in relation to sales resource. There was a request around the cost -- annualized cost of our sales resource. But perhaps you might -- we don't have that at hand today, but perhaps you might want to talk about our go-to-market strategy between direct and partner and how we typically structure our sales teams globally.
Wayne Arthur
executiveSo it's a good question. I think my opening comment would be to say very transparently that our sales organization is relatively light. All of our executives, including myself, have been -- continue to be involved in sales activity. And so part of the investment that we're going to be making in the next 6 to 9 months from the placement proceeds is going to be around more sort of mid-level, senior-level sales functions in all regions. But to date, sales -- essentially we have appointed sales leaders, customer success manager and technical, I suppose, sales consultants in each market. And those -- that kind of pod is -- takes care of that particular region and reports back into our, I guess, our global structure, which is headquartered still out of Sydney. And so that's how it operates. In addition to that, we continue to enable a network of channel partnerships that we've worked with or worked on in the last 6 or 7 years. We still have a global relationship in place with Hewlett Packard or Aruba, specifically their wireless arm. Cisco, we work with the likes of Optus in Australia, AT&T in the U.S.A.. And so those are the partners that are taking us into some of the, I guess the bigger enterprise customers that we sell-through. But in addition to that, we've got our small pods of salespeople that will go direct, but also will support those channel partnerships in terms of those deals. But I will restate. Certainly, sales resource is going to be -- sales and marketing resource is going to be an area where we will be investing in the next 3 to 6 months.
John Rankin
executiveExcellent. Look, just final question relates to just ARR growth over the last 12 months. Wayne, if you consider acquisition of Blix and the IRR in Q2 FY '20. Can you just talk to organic growth versus churn within the business over the last 12 months?
Wayne Arthur
executiveYes, I think that's exactly where the answer lies. I think the opening comment that we made -- I made, sorry, at the beginning of the presentation, was that we -- and you can see this in the numbers. And I think everybody in every business in the world had a reasonably tough Q4 of FY '20. We had a very strong Q3 of FY '20. I think second to this last quarter, it was our strongest performing quarter from a recurring revenue perspective. But then clearly, the lights went out for so many venues and businesses in Q4 FY '20. And I guess our result was reflective of that. And we've been rebuilding since then. So I think I made a comment that at the high end, we were sort of backwards at one point, around 60,000 in revenue suspensions and some customer churn in Q1 of FY '21, and we've been on the recovery since then. So effectively, those new contract conversions have made up the difference where there's been churn through the fact that venues have just either gone out of business because of COVID or remain shut or has further gap in that revenue suspension that we haven't had reflected as of yet. And so there has absolutely been growth on a relative basis in the core business. And then we're still yet to see the final results of those revenue suspensions that may still return to the P&L over time. But what I will say is we do absolutely feel that -- and we have to sort of put these tapings up categorically. But we certainly feel like we found the bottom sometime in Q2 or Q3 in terms of suspensions or cancellations, shall I say, due to COVID. And we're definitely on the up and up now and certainly expect to see growth acceleration here.
John Rankin
executive2 more questions. "Are you reiterating EBITDA guidance?"
Wayne Arthur
executiveSo we aren't in a position yet to provide guidance at this point. Not to say that we won't potentially do that at the end of the financial year. What we are saying, though, in terms of EBITDA, operating EBITDA guidance is it will remain positive. That is definitely something that we'll continue for moving forward. We're still obviously in the process of balance sheet cure here and figuring out whether there's any crossover or cost synergies that we can ascertain, and obviously revenue synergies that we can ascertain from the CrowdVision acquisition, which is only a few weeks old. So we're not in a position to provide any confidence around a number, but we are confident to say that it will continue to remain positive throughout the next financial year as well.
John Rankin
executiveExcellent. That answers our last question, Wayne. So there's no more questions in the chat for today.
Wayne Arthur
executiveVery good. Thank you, everybody, for your time. We appreciate you dialing in. It's been a really good turnout. We like that. The recording will be provided on the ASX shortly, and certainly a copy of the presentation as well. But my closing comments would simply be we are -- we're super excited about where this is going. We've been looking to acquire a little bit of technology to accelerate the growth in certain verticals like airports. We really do believe in the growth story there, and we've already seen that growth come through in the early stages of the takeover from CrowdVision. We're 100% -- and Chris, you've made the point in some of your questions. We're 100% cognizant of continuing to show growth in the organic business. We will be doing that. We can see that. We ask for you to give us the confidence in Q4. It's going to be a good result for us. And it historically and seasonally is a good result for the business. So we look forward to presenting back some positive news at the end of Q4. Thanks for your time, everybody
John Rankin
executiveThank you. Call is finished. Thanks a lot.
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