Catapult Sports Ltd (CAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dr. Adir Shiffman. I'm the Executive Chairman of Catapult Group International Limited. In accordance with the company's constitution, as the company's Chairman, I am also Chair of this meeting. On behalf of the Board, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2021 Annual General Meeting. Before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge the many traditional owners of the lands on which we are joining the meeting from today. Catapult acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia; their connections to the land, sea and community. We pay our respects to the elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Ladies and gentlemen, the time indicated in the notice of meeting has passed, and as there is a quorum present, I declare the meeting open. Let me start by saying that I am again disappointed we cannot be together in person, but in response to government restrictions and the potential health risks arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board again determined to hold this AGM virtually. We very much appreciate your understanding at this challenging time and thank you for joining our virtual meeting. Due to this meeting being conducted virtually, technical issues beyond our control may arise. If this occurs, I will adjourn the meeting, and it will resume at 1:00 p.m. Melbourne time. If resumption is not possible, we will issue an announcement on the ASX with further information. The notice of meeting was published, and the covering letter mailed to shareholders on July 20, 2021. As is customary, with the approval of the meeting, I will take the notice of meeting as read. I would like to remind shareholders that, while this meeting is being streamed in audio and video via the Lumi system, only shareholders and proxy holders may vote or ask questions during the meeting via the Lumi system. Details of how to do these are set out in the notice of meeting, my letter to shareholders of July 20 and Lumi's system. I would now like to introduce you to the rest of the Board: Mr. Tom Bogan, independent nonexecutive director and chair of our SaaS Scaling Committee; Ms. Michelle Guthrie, independent nonexecutive director and chair of our Nominations and Remuneration Committee; Mr. Shaun Holthouse, Co-founder and nonexecutive director; Mr. Jim Orlando, independent nonexecutive director and chair of our Audit and Risk Committee; and Mr. Igor van de Griendt, Co-founder and nonexecutive director. I also welcome to the meeting the company's outgoing auditor, Mr. Brock Mackenzie of Grant Thornton. Also in attendance are our CEO, Mr. Will Lopes, who is in Boston; our CFO, Mr. Hayden Stockdale; and our General Counsel and Company Secretary, Mr. Jonathan Garland. The agenda for today's meeting is as follows. First, I will provide the Chairman's address. This has been prerecorded to mitigate technical risks and difficulties with today's virtual AGM. This will be followed by our CEO, Will Lopes, providing his thoughts on Catapult's FY '21 performance. Again this has been prerecorded. Following this, we will move to the formal business of the AGM. This year, we have adopted the same format as last year to make the meeting efficient and to improve the experience for attendees as a whole. I will introduce and describe all of the agenda items for consideration. Shareholders will then have the opportunity to ask questions about or make comments on all agenda items rather than dealing with each item in turn. We want to allow as many shareholders as possible to ask questions. To ensure the process runs smoothly, please keep your questions succinct and relevant to the meeting. Where there are multiple questions which are the same or have a similar theme, we will group those into a single question. Further, while we will try to answer as many questions as possible, it may not be practicable to answer every question, but we will do our best. [Operator Instructions] This is all explained in detail in the notice of meeting, online voting guide and the Lumi system. We will now run my Chairman's address. And following it will be Will Lopes' CEO presentation. We are very proud of the significant progress Catapult has made this historically challenging year. Entering the year, the company faced a sports industry dealing with worldwide postponements and cancellations of major competitions. Catapult's customers faced huge financial challenges from the pandemic's impact. Despite the challenges presented, Catapult stayed focused on customer retention, high-margin subscription sales and efficiency improvements. Catapult leveraged its technology leadership to introduce new solutions dedicated to supporting its customers dealing with COVID impacts, including the ability to train athletes remotely, provision of an athlete proximity report for contact tracing and the ability for coaches to conduct high-definition video analysis remotely. Following an unprecedented year of delayed and disrupted training, athletes using Catapult technology continued to compete at the highest level and perform at their best, including at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Catapult athletes earned 8 gold medals, 9 silver metals and 7 bronze metals overall. Most notable was the high-profile women's football final between Sweden and Canada, where Canada won gold for the first time ever. The 24 podium placements in Tokyo come on the heels of a championship year for Catapult athletes on other major competition stages, from Wimbledon to Copa America, to making NBA history in Milwaukee. The athletes using Catapult data and insights to unleash their potential are dominating competition around the world. Catapult's subscription revenue model proved to be resilient in ensuring the health of the company's balance sheet and the sustainability of its investments in growth. While more information on our FY '21 achievements and in particular the second half momentum highlights is provided by Will Lopes, it is worth me noting Catapult's major FY '21 financial and operating highlights that included growth in annualized contract value or ACV of 16.5%. ACV growth in EMEA and APAC was 57% and 34%, respectively. ACV in Performance & Health grew 32% in FY '21, far exceeding pre-COVID FY '20 growth of 12%. FY '21 ACV churn of 5.5% was a 14.1% improvement from FY '20 despite the COVID challenges. Customers with 2 or more solutions grew 17%, highlighting the value of Catapult's customer platform. We increased contribution margin from 47.1% to 48.2% as efficiency improved. Subscription revenue constituted 79% of total revenue, up from 71% in FY '20, reflecting the strategic focus on high-quality SaaS revenue over onetime capital sales. And we delivered a second consecutive year of positive and growing free cash flow, up from $2.9 million to now $4.9 million, underscoring the company's long-term cash generation capability. Preparations to scale Catapult for high growth and sustained technology leadership continued. Late in the year, Catapult announced the appointment of Tom Bogan to the Board as an independent nonexecutive director. Tom is Catapult's first U.S.-based director and the Chairman of the newly established SaaS Scaling Committee. Tom has a long, diverse and celebrated history in successfully hyperscaling numerous U.S.-based B2B SaaS businesses as a CEO, Chairman and investor, including leading several billion-dollar transactions. The enhancement of executive team capability continued. And we have added a CTO; General Counsel, Company Secretary; SVP of Product; and SVP of Revenue Operations. As Chairman of a high-growth SaaS company with a growing global customer base and market leadership, I am pleased the broader investment market is beginning to recognize the value and opportunity in Catapult. In early June 2021, Catapult's stock price had outperformed our ASX-listed technology peers in the S&P/ASX All Technology Index by 30% over 12 months. As the company's confidence in growth increases, it sharpens the focus on accelerating opportunities that Catapult is uniquely positioned to capture. Of interest are specific investment opportunities, organic and inorganic, that expand ACV and TAM as well as technology that deepens Catapult's entrenched position in customers' daily workflows and delivers sustainable EBITDA margin growth. The company will maintain a disciplined approach in applying the SaaS Rule of 40 as its core philosophy in investing for growth as we did in the acquisition of SBG. In the near term, we will be focused on delivering high growth at the expense of lower EBITDA but with the confidence that strong underlying EBITDA is achievable and that this will be delivered at scale. This disciplined approach to investment was evidenced by Catapult's strategic acquisition of SBG Sports Software in June 2021. SBG has transformed its learnings from F1 into leading global solutions for soccer and rugby, generating data visualizations that extract key information from multiple sources with real-time simulations and predictive analytics and insights that assist coaches in rapidly breaking down factors driving team performance. The acquisition of SBG enhances our mission at Catapult to deliver the most comprehensive and insightful set of performance metrics for athletes and teams worldwide by accelerating our technology capabilities in the video analytics market. The acquisition advances our development of contextualizing performance data, improving time to market by approximately 2 years and complementing our development strategy for Vision. The Board was delighted and thankful for the strong shareholder support for the equity raising to fund the SBG acquisition and accelerated investment. The institutional investor placement and SPP for retail investors were both heavily oversubscribed. In regard to the successful equity raising, I was delighted by the confidence and financial support of Catapult's 2 most recently appointed independent nonexecutive directors, Michelle Guthrie and Tom Bogan, who strongly participated in the raise at $1.90 per share. The Board and management are excited about Catapult's growth potential. Catapult remains confident in the short and medium term for continued strong organic ACV growth. The company is also confident in its long-term strategy of expanding ACV to 10x its current size. The Board is confident the SBG acquisition will improve our ACV growth trajectory. Catapult has the potential to accelerate SBG's revenue and ACV growth through the immediate and significant improvement in our video solutions, the combination of SBG with Catapult's global sales force and large customer base and an increased investment in SBG's product suite and feature sets. Catapult will continue the transition to subscription sales, especially in the Performance & Health vertical. In the shorter term, this has a negative impact on revenue, EBITDA and margins from lower capital sales now recognized over a subscription life, while the associated variable OpEx costs are still recognized upfront. In the longer term, however, Catapult is targeting the higher gross margin and EBITDA margin associated with subscriptions, which are achievable due to improved customer experience, retention and pricing. I am extremely thankful to -- for the continued commitment of the Board, the executive team and our employees around the world in what has been an incredibly challenging year. Finally, the Board is enormously grateful to athletes, teams and shareholders for their continued support in the past year. It really was a year like no other. Catapult's continued growth would not be possible without your support and loyalty. Thank you.

Thank you, Adir, for the earlier introduction. And good morning to all of you joining us today. I am disappointed I cannot be in Australia again for this AGM, but given the current travel restrictions, I am sure you all understand. However, I am excited to share today's update. FY '21 completes my first full fiscal year as Catapult CEO. Despite the hurdles COVID presented, I am proud of what the Catapult team accomplished this year. Pre pandemic, I said we would begin to operate the company as a true SaaS business, augment our management team, improve our corporate governance and return to high growth rates. At the end of my first full fiscal year, I am pleased we met these goals and did it during the most difficult period of world sports since World War II. The fact we delivered such strong results during such a unique year only enhanced our leadership position and the future potential of Catapult. As you would have seen in our annual results, we reported strong progress against all of our key SaaS metrics. In particular annualized contract value, ACV, Catapult's leading SaaS metric, grew globally at a 35% annualized rate during the second half of fiscal year '21, against a full year growth rate of 16.5%. This growth highlights the company's global leadership footprint, delivering regional FY '21 ACV growth of 57% in EMEA and 34% in APAC. While the Americas region, the largest market for the company, was severely disrupted by the -- by COVID, with approximately 90% of NCAA competition canceled, it delivered an FY '21 ACV growth of 4%. The acceleration of growth in regions less impacted by COVID highlights the significant growth potential of the Americas once COVID impact subsides. This potential was underscored by the growth in the company's Performance & Health vertical, where Q4 momentum delivered an annualized ACV growth of 55% global, almost 3x faster in FY '21 than in FY '20, with all regions growing more than 40% annualized in the quarter, including the Americas. The growth momentum did not impact the company's world-class retention rates. Catapult's successful focus on customers during the pandemic saw its annual ACV churn rate of 5.5% improve 14.1% on FY '20. This was particularly evident in the second half, where annual ACV churn to March 31, 2021, was 5.5% compared to 6.8% in the 12 months to September 30, 2020. These sustained world-class SaaS rates highlights just how important our solutions are to our customers despite the challenging financial year for professional sports. The growth momentum was further highlighted by the company's ability to upsell and cross-sell to its current customer base. Catapult delivered a second half annualized growth of 41% in customers with 2 or more solutions versus an annual growth rate of 17%. Of particular note was the success in cross-selling existing performance and health customers into the company's Vision video solution. In line with the growth momentum of Catapult's SaaS metrics, subscription revenue growth accelerated to 12.5% in Q4 versus 3.3% for FY '21. High-quality subscription revenue comprised 79% of total revenue in FY '21, up from 71% a year ago. Notably, subscription revenue in the Performance & Health vertical, the largest vertical by revenue, grew by 15.8%. EBITDA remained positive at $6.5 million but declined $3.9 million with the switch from capital sales to higher-quality SaaS deals and the impact of COVID. Free cash flow remained positive and grew 69% to $4.9 million. Sales highlights throughout FY '21 included signing the Atlanta Falcons, to achieve 100% penetration of teams in the NFL; growing our multi-solution customer base with marquee teams such as the Seattle Seahawks, Stanford University, Stade Français Paris rugby, Arizona Coyotes and the Swindon Town; signing a performance and health contract with U.S. special forces to help with soldier training; and a video exchange contract with 130 football bowl subdivision or FBS teams in the U.S. Catapult expanded its technology platform throughout FY '21 with COVID solutions, including a remote athlete solution and an athlete proximity training report, both heavily utilized by our customers. New solutions for the American football season included cloud-based full-resolution video analysis and a seamless indoor and outdoor athlete monitoring function for training sessions. Catapult also launched the player Movement Profile analytics package for soccer. With continued commitment to R&D, Catapult invested $6.8 million in R&D in FY '21; and expanded its solutions with the acquisition of Science for Sport, SBG and the signing of several strategic partnerships. As the Chairman mentioned, preparations to scale Catapult for high growth and sustained technology leadership continued. I was delighted to welcome so many highly capable and experienced executives to the Catapult team during FY '21, including Chris Cooper as our new COO, Zoe Rumford as our CPO and Parem Hedge as our CTO. All of our new executives are experienced with scaling high-growth global businesses. As planned, Catapult started migrating its sales to higher-quality multiyear SaaS subscription contracts away from onetime capital sales despite the expected short-term negative impact on recognized revenue. There were also several efforts to ensure the company is delivering on its promise of disciplined and value-generating growth and appropriately reflecting results against its largest market in North America. As such, Catapult introduced a new set of SaaS metrics for growth and efficiency, changed its reporting currency to U.S. dollars and moved the financial year to end of March (sic) [ financial year-end to March ]. Adir mentioned the recent strategic acquisition of SBG Sports Software, which we completed in June 2021. The SBG acquisition significantly expands Catapult's video offering, including feature sets, data capabilities, analytics and user experiences, thereby accelerating opportunities to cross-sell and scale; expands Catapult's total addressable market opportunities in motorsports, soccer and rugby; instantly places Catapult in an industry-leading position for motorsports as well as adding 20 new marquee clients from the top 100 teams in soccer and rugby globally. SBG's high-profile customers in this segment includes Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Paris Saint-Germain. And is materially accretive to Catapult's Rule of 40 constituent metrics with ACV growth of 28% and EBITDA margins of 28% in FY '21. From our early discussions, it was clear that SBG and Catapult shared a common vision for the future of sports technology and the significant impact data will have in helping customers optimize performance. It was even clearer that combining of our technologies, product solutions and talent will have an immediate and long-lasting positive impact on our customers. We are confident the acquisition of SBG will significantly contribute to Catapult's growth and continued focus in developing the most sophisticated sports technology platform. To reinforce the Chairman's outlook: Catapult is uniquely positioned to leverage our leadership position in sports technology. We have a large customer base, working with 3,254 pro sports teams. Catapult's experience of working with pro sports teams since 2007 means we have the most comprehensive data set, as we capture and analyze sports science data from tens of thousands of athletes, providing our customers with unrivaled accuracy and insights. As we continue to develop new algorithms and provide enhancements for our customers, we remain strongly positioned to lead the analysis evolution from descriptive to predictive and eventually prescriptive data. The company is confident in its long-term strategy of expanding ACV to 10x its current size. In terms of FY '22 business activity, please remember we are still deep in our key northern hemisphere selling season. As such, my trading update today is qualitative but positive. Catapult's sales pipeline has grown, and there is a much higher rate of closure on these opportunities compared with FY '21. And our win rates, especially in the Performance & Health category, reflect our strong market leadership position. Conditions and sales activity in the U.S., particularly in P&H, are much improved on the same time last year. We are progressing quickly as planned with the SBG integration, with a focus on sales training, aligning product road maps and preparing to support our southern hemisphere sales season in H2. Catapult customers have been positive in regards to the potential future video solutions road map and its integration with wearables. We are pleased with the number of expanded customer opportunities present in our sales pipeline as a result of the SBG acquisition completed last month. In addition to reporting our September half year results later this year, I am pleased to confirm our shareholder engagement will be enhanced with Catapult's first-ever Investor Day scheduled for September 29, Australian time. And later this year, we'll hold a prosumer update for investors as well. Finally, I'd like to thank the Board for their guidance and support; our staff for their hard work and dedication; our customers for their continued patronage; and you, our shareholders, for your belief and conviction. I am proud of results and the progress Catapult has made. We are building a business that will enable athletes and coaches to achieve what's never been done before using technology and insights that have never been available before. We have made great strides towards this goal in FY '21, which is evident in our key SaaS metrics having finished the year with an annualized ACV growth of 35% and a world-class customer retention, demonstrating the value of -- our SaaS solution provide our customers each day. Catapult remained laser-focused on our customers during the pandemic, and the business is benefiting as the pandemic's impact has lessened. So I'll close out the message that Catapult is a business with a solid SaaS fundamental and is strongly positioned to generate long-term value.

Thank you, Will, for that presentation. Before moving to the rest of the formal agenda of today's meeting, I'll say a few words about the process for voting at the meeting. Each item of business in the notice of meeting that requires a vote will be by a poll, and I will -- and I formally open the poll on all items now. This will remain open until the end of today's meeting, so please ensure that you vote prior to the end of the meeting. Shareholders and proxy holders may vote at any time during the meeting via the Lumi system on their mobile device or computer. To do so, these participants should click or tap on the voting icon which will be visible on their screen if they are eligible to vote today. This will bring up a list of resolutions which may be selected to cast a vote. To cast a vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. Participants do, however, have the ability to change their vote up until the time I declare voting closed. [Voting]

Before the commencement of the shareholder questions session, we will display the proxy votes for each item of business which calls for a vote. The voting restrictions for all items are included in the voting restrictions section of the notice of meeting. If voting on a poll, proxy holders must vote as directed, subject to any applicable voting restrictions. Any directed proxies that are not voted at the meeting will automatically default to the Chairman, and I am required to vote those proxies as directed. Except for Items 7a to 7g and 9, the Board recommends that shareholders vote in favor of each item of business which requires a vote. The Board does not consider it appropriate to give a recommendation on Items 7a to 7g and 9, as they concern nonexecutive director remuneration. Further, any open proxies that have appointed me as Chairman of the meeting or any of the company's directors will be voted in favor of each item. These Board recommendations and the voting of open proxies by me are subject to any applicable voting restrictions. I will now introduce the items of business on the formal agenda of the meeting. This item of business is to receive and consider Catapult's financial statements and reports for the financial year ended March 31, 2021, and the reports of the directors and the auditor. The next item of business is the election and reelection of directors. First, Tom Bogan retires at this meeting and, being eligible, offers himself for reelection. Second, James Orlando retires at this meeting and, being eligible, offers himself for reelection. We now come to the nonbinding advisory vote on the adoption of the remuneration report. The remuneration report is included in Catapult's 2021 Annual Report, which is available on our website. It sets out Catapult's remuneration policy and arrangements for nonexecutive directors, the CEO and senior management. The next item is to ratify for the purposes of ASX listing rule 7.4 the prior issue of 24,538,500 fully paid ordinary shares at $1.90 per share on June 30, 2021, pursuant to an underwritten institutional placement. The purpose of Items 6a and 6b is to approve for the purpose of ASX listing rule 10.11 the issue of shares under the director placement. Item 6a is for the issue of 525,825 shares to Thomas Bogan. Item 6b is for the issue of 420,660 shares to Michelle Guthrie. Note that the issue price for these shares is $1.90 per share. This is the same price paid by sophisticated and professional investors in the institutional placement. Items 7a to 7g. In Items 7a to 7g, the company is seeking approval, for the purpose of ASX listing rule 10.14, to issue rights and shares to existing and new company directors under the company's employee share plan by way of salary sacrifice. The salary sacrifice offer is designed to encourage directors to build their shareholdings in the company. It is not intended to be used for the purposes of providing directors with additional remuneration. For the listing rules, the company is required to have a separate resolution for each Director. Accordingly, Items 7a to 7f relate to, respectively, me, Thomas Bogan, Michelle Guthrie, Shaun Holthouse, James Orlando and Igor van de Griendt. Item 7g relates to new directors. Item 8 concerns the appointment of Ernst & Young as the auditor of the company. We have received consent from ASIC for the resignation of Grant Thornton as our auditor. This means that, if this resolution is approved, then Ernst & Young will be appointed, with effect from the close of today's AGM. The final item is to increase the remuneration that may be paid to Catapult's nonexecutive directors in any financial year by $200,000, from $750,000 to $950,000. An important consideration for the Board in proposing this resolution was that the headroom in the NED fee pool is currently $90,000. As such, the company currently does not have sufficient headroom to appoint a further nonexecutive director, as this would require headroom of at least $100,000 to pay that director the same base fees as the other nonexecutive directors. The Board wishes to appoint a further independent nonexecutive director and needs the ability to attract high-caliber candidates located overseas, particularly in the U.S. Therefore, it is seeking this increase. I now formally propose each of these resolutions, which are specified in the notice of meeting. Items 3a, 3b, 5, 6a, 6b, 7a to 7g, 8 and 9 are ordinary resolutions. Item 4, which is the adoption of the remuneration report, is a nonbinding resolution. For the benefit of shareholders, the proxies received prior to the meeting on each of the items calling for a vote are now showing. These votes do not include those to be voted in the meeting today. However, on the basis of the results that we are anticipating, I would like to say thank you to shareholders for their strong support. I now move to the shareholder questions session of the meeting. Shareholders were offered the opportunity to submit questions in advance. I will address these questions at the same time as those which I have received from this meeting. It is my duty as Chairman to allow a reasonable opportunity for shareholders as a whole at the meeting to ask questions about or make comments on the management of the company, audit matters, the remuneration report and other items of business before the meeting today. All questions will be directed to me as Chairman. Questions to the auditor must relate to the -- to audit matters and will be directed to me in the first instance. I will now ask Mr. Andrew Keys, our Investor Relations Manager, to assist with the Q&A process by reading questions put forward by shareholders and identifying their names. He will also introduce any shareholders who are asking audio questions.

Thank you, Chairman. A question was provided by shareholder [ Andrew May ] before the AGM. Question is, what is the Board doing to ensure management continue on an unambiguous path to growth and free cash flow generation on a sustainable basis?

Well, thank you, [ Andrew ] the shareholder, for that question. So that is a question that gives me a nice opportunity to talk about alignment of [ all ] executives with the outcomes decided by shareholders and also the longer-term strategy of the business. So the key performance indicators and metrics that -- under which executives are required to perform are aligned with the overall objective, which Will has referred to as the Rule of 40. And that is the ultimate focus of the business, which is a focus on ACV growth and also contribution margin and longer-term EBIT margin. And with executives and a business aligned to that Rule of 40, we're extremely confident that, over time, Catapult will be a business that generates substantial profitability and free cash flow to shareholders. And as you can see from the presentation that Will provided, over the last few quarters, we've seen strong growth. And we believe and the Board believes very strongly in the long-term, high-growth opportunity of this business. And the executives and directors are completely aligned in our focus on the Rule of 40 for guiding the growth of the company, and this is -- the metrics against which executives are rewarded and compensated.