INEO Tech Corp. (INEO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. We'll get started then. Hello, my name is Pardeep Sangha, Head of Investor Relations at INEO. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and welcome to today's webinar. Just a reminder, this call will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] Please note, a portion of today's call on 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 involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, many of which are outside of INEO's control that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are further outlined in our previous quarterly management discussion and analysis, which you can find on SEDAR. We provide forward-looking statements solely for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. We don't undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations, or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law. And with that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Greg Watkin, Chairman and Founder of INEO.

Well, thank you, Pardeep. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this call. Before we begin, I want to mention that unfortunately, we are not able to use the names of certain retailers that we're working with due to a nonpromotion clause in the agreement. We would obviously prefer to share the names of these retailers, but regrettably, we are not able to. For the benefit of our shareholders, analysts and potential new investors on the call today, we will do our best to provide plenty of commentary on the nature of our rollouts without actually naming the retail chains. I'd like to start today's call by mentioning our news flow. As you're all aware, we've been very quiet recently, and I want to assure you that the company has been very busy over the last few months working on strategic contracts. This has been a major strategic initiative, and we believe that these new contracts will position the company to reach a positive cash flow much sooner. Due to current macroeconomic conditions, including inflation, increasing interest rates, and recessionary pressures, we continue to actively work with several large retailers and have a growing pipeline of opportunities. Furthermore, the company has its own intellectual property that provides a moat around our business. To the best of our knowledge, there's no other company that provides a retail loss prevention system integrated with an in-store retail media network. INEO is an innovator and leader in this industry. On today's call, I will provide some commentary on our latest solution, ORCA, as well as provide an update on the current rollout progress with our retail partners. Our CEO, Kyle Hall, will then discuss the recently announced updated commercial agreements as well as provide an outlook for the business. Yesterday, we announced ORCA, our AI-driven solution that enhances retailer capabilities to combat organized retail crime and prevent theft. In today's rapidly evolving security landscape, retailers are facing increasingly sophisticated threats from organized criminal groups. Traditional security and surveillance methods are labor-intensive and retailers often struggle to keep pace with these challenges, making it an operational imperative for them to adopt cutting-edge technology to protect store merchandise. In a press article earlier this week, Target stores announced the closure of multiple stores in certain markets because of high theft rates from organized retail crime groups. Walmart has announced a pilot project to co-locate a police substation within one of the stores to try and combat theft. ORCA is our latest product and have flowed from discussions with one of our largest retailers on how to address ORC or Organized Retail Crime. ORCA is our acronym for Organized Retail Crime Alerts. The ORCA system, leverages artificial intelligence to meticulously analyze stored CCTV footage of captured loss prevention alarm events. ORCA then learns and adapts to detect organized retail crime patterns such as repeated behaviors, specific attire or group formations, which often go unnoticed by human operators. Once a recurring pattern associated with retail crime has been identified, an immediate alert is sent to the loss prevention team to act upon. I want to stress that we are not using facial recognition technology as any part of the ORCA system. By analyzing historical video from loss prevention alarm data, our ORCA system can predict potential crime hotspots allowing retail loss prevention teams to proactively allocate resources and prevent criminal activities before they occur. The implementation of AI-driven surveillance can significantly reduce the need for extensive manual monitoring and analysis leading to cost savings for retailers while enhancing security. INEO's committed to making retail a safer and more profitable place through cutting-edge AI technology, and we're excited to provide solutions that empower retailers to stay one step ahead of organized criminals, safeguarding their merchandise and preserving profits. I'd now like to provide an update on the role of progress with our current retail partners. First, I'm happy to announce that the company remains ahead of schedule on its initial 2023 Welcoming System deployment plans with 108 locations installed as of today with a major retailer across many states in the U.S. We've successfully completed installations in key major cities such as New York, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles and deployed systems in additional states, including Tennessee, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Florida, to name but a few of them. Secondly, we expect to continue installing additional systems for our retail partners throughout the remainder of 2023 and beyond. We're proud of the significant milestone of over 100 installed locations with a key retailer in the U.S., and we look forward to continuing this momentum into the final months of the year. Finally, we've begun planning for the rollout of 1,000 stores over the next 3 years with one of our major retail partners. This expansion will grow the INEO Media Network across all of their retail locations throughout the U.S. For context, these 1,000 stores represent approximately 270 million customers and more than 22 billion advertising impressions annually. With that, I'd like to turn it over to our CEO, Kyle Hall, who will discuss our recently announced updated key contracts.

Thanks, Greg. So everyone, I'm here too. Now I really go through what we saw in some of the exciting things that we've been doing over the last few months. And that said, the ORCA announcement from yesterday, we've had a huge groundswell activity on it already. We'd love to dive into that with you a little bit more in the future. But there's going to be some good business coming from that. But on the contract side, there are some key things that we learned. Obviously, when we started down this path couple of years ago, we are new at that time. And we thought 2- to 3-year contracts would be great. That would be really solid. That's what we could bring investors in on. That's what we could build a business on but with the amount of capital we're having to deploy and the technology being deployed and our new strategy of bringing in a large media partner, it became clear that 2 to 3 years wasn't enough. So we went out to our retail customers, and we proposed much longer terms. It was a bit of a challenge but in the end we hadn't been in the minds with them on where we want to go, and I'll get through some of this and why in a few minutes, but we were able to get 5- and 6-year agreements with all of our customers. It's monumental for us. It gives us long-term planning ability, long-term security in terms of our revenue sources and really, it just fits us right inside the retailer's business for that time. So we're so happy to secure these long-term contracts. The second thing we went after was the right to deploy more screens within the stores. When we just install in a Welcoming System at the front entrance of a retail store, by default, we're putting the technology in there to actually run digital screens throughout the store, doing it for the one implementation that we have at the Welcoming System of the front entrance, because the wireless technology we put in and our infrastructure that we put in to do that, we have the capability of putting in many more screens within those stores. So we went back to the retailers and within the course of the contract discussions, it became clear that we were able to meet up where they wanted to go with in terms of signs within their stores, too. And we will expect to secure in U.S. the exclusive signage, digital signage provider in the stores, exclusive. So we are the only one putting digital signage in these stores. And you'll see up to 6 screens in some stores. Depending on the size of the store, it could be 4 screens, it could be 6 screens, it depends on the store layout. But getting those extra screens in the store was crucial because we want to be able to sell the full dwell time of the customer in store. When we get the Welcoming System of the front entrance, we get the time of people walking by the system at the front, it also has seen throughout the front entrance of the store. The whole front, maybe 1/3 of the store will get dwell time when customers are in viewing of that screen. When customers go elsewhere within the store and having our infrastructure there, including screens and means that if a customer is in the store for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, we'll be able to sell the impressions to advertisers the whole time that they're in the store. This is hugely attractive to our advertising partners. They want to know that when they're playing ads on the new network that the customer can actually see these ads and see them on the screens. And if we have that many screens in, it's hard for the customer to actually miss the ads running. So that was a big thing, and that's into our contracts now as well. The next piece was the exclusive right to sell the advertising. So think of this. We put the infrastructure in the store, we put the technology in the store. The last thing we want is another sign of new store that is selling against us, one, it doesn't do us any good just in the pure -- getting customers on board and advertise on board, but it also drives down the price, right? They're competing against us and they might undercut us, and we undercut them. So we couldn't have that. We're deploying technology. We're pulling this hardware in the store. We're doing all this infrastructure build and building out the partner to sell the advertising, we can't have competition in that store on that advertising because it's not good for us, it's not good for the retailer, it's not good for our partners. So we were able to get an exclusive agreement for us to be the only seller of advertising on these digital screens in the store. It's -- in the end, it's good for us, for our retailers as well. They understand that there'll be more dollars flowing if we have [indiscernible]. So we are able to do that to. And as Greg mentioned, as exclusive provider, the numbers add up hugely, right? 270 million visitors in one customer throughout the course of the year, 25 billion impressions. It means if a brand wants to now sell or to advertise in this retail store, they have to do business with INEO. Big change for us from where we were with our previous contract. The other points that we have with 2 main points that left the right to sign the ownership of the advertising within the store and the right to sign the ownership of the hardware. So let's talk about the advertising first. When we put the systems in there, we have to, of course, fill them. Our revenue is dependent upon putting advertising on the screens. So if we have the right to sign it to a third-party media partner, it opens up the doors to possibilities worldwide of who we partner with. We've done okay in the beginning of us putting advertising the systems and running the systems. But we've done okay. But we have much grander vision to being just, okay, we want to be great at this. And being great really means that we have to find the best partner to do this. Our early discussions with the retailers were that they would provide the advertiser on the screens, that they would work with the brands that they have in-house, that they would leverage those relationships and they would put advertising on there, but they've been quite reluctant on using their inside trade dollars and spending their capital that they get from these brands that they -- for shelf listings and end caps all that and using that transition over to the national advertising that's needed for the screens. And so as we progress, we realize that the model wasn't quite what we thought it was in the beginning, but it's still very advantageous for advertisers in the stores. We just need the right partner that has the nuance on how to sell the advertising has the relationships out there already with the media agencies and the brands to put advertising on the screens. And do a partnership with them. So we need the right deal to say, okay, retailer, we need to sign the right of selling this advertising to somebody other than a retailer or INEO. And we've secured that. So with this structure in place, we can aggressively take bids from media agencies and media companies on who our partner can be to sell this advertising. We don't need to build a large sales team. We don't need to actually even be involved in the advertising side as long as we have a partner that does it and generates the revenue flow for us. And then of course, the last piece, which is a very strategic piece for us is and renegotiates retailers was assigning the physical hardware of the Welcoming System, ownership to a media partner. When we started talking to some of the media companies, it became quite clear to us that the media companies wanted to own the asset. And I don't know whether we quite understood that in the beginning, but we firmly did have it for about the last year now. And If you look at some of these large media companies, they pay to lease places to put their signs. They pay to put their signs in, they pay to operate their signs. And then once they have all those 3 things done, they have no [ problem ] to have those assets and building those assets, then they sell the advertising. And over 3, 4, 5 years of runway, they make back all that money spent to put the asset in place and generate revenue from it. We realize that we need to fit in that model a bit better. That we needed to have the media partner have the capability of owning the hardware asset in the store. INEO still owns technology, INEO still owns the IP, INEO still operates the network. But we need the right to sign the hardware asset to a third-party media company. And so we were able to secure that within these agreements. Once we're able to do that, it effectively removes the capital requirements from INEO. It'll be funded by a third-party media partner. It significantly reduces our cash needs. The focus then gets the media partner to be quiet sticky in terms of how they view the relationship. They own the asset. They need to sell the advertising to generate the income from it. That's what we want. That's what the retailer wants. So it works for everybody. INEO's place in the food chain is we're still the technology provider, and we're the operator of the network. We will be paid for our technology, and we will be paid to operate the network. Our business is still going be a monthly fee-based business, but now it's based on a secure, reliable revenue stream from the media partner, who is the one who owns the asset and is outselling the space on that asset. So I hope everything is clear on that, and we'll open up to questions in a few minutes. But overall, the updated contract structure, it's really for us is to match the strong demand that we've had for the Welcoming Systems from retailers, with the demand for access that we're getting from the media, but doing it in a model that works within the media industry that they understand it, the model much better and they fit in there and want to partner with INEO to do that. So overall, we're very optimistic, very positive on our growth. We're still continuing to deploy, as Greg said, could deploy aggressively in the stores, ramping up locations with the contracted customers. We still have a lot of pilots running out there. We have more customers that we're hoping to move to contracts soon. The updated agreements will enhance our growth, it will improve our margins, and it will definitely give us the flexibility to do some things differently within the marketing distribution, expanding the network with a media partner. The capital allocation needs changes drastically with a media partner involved. And the ultimate goal for us is to reach cash flow positive much sooner. So in summary, we're, as I said, very optimistic about the business. And with that, I'll turn it over to Pardeep.

Yes. Thanks. Kyle, I'm not sure if you could still hear. Maybe if you're having an audio problems, maybe just turn off your camera and go into Greg's office. Is that possible? If you can hear me? Can you hear me, Kyle?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. So we'll continue then. [Operator Instructions] We will be giving priority to questions from analysts. To start with, if Greg or Kyle can you address sort of just give an update on Prosegur, kind of you had talked a lot about Prosegur in the past, just provide an update on Prosegur where that relationship is at?

Why don't you take it, Greg.

So Prosegur is still a partner of ours. We're still pushing ahead with Prosegur. Happy with them in regard of they have a lot of pilots running with us. They've been a good partner that way. Maybe the downside is we haven't closed a lot of those pilots yet. We're expecting those things to move a little bit faster than have. But still a working partnership and things are still good with them. So we're still a big part of their plans going forward. And our media partner strategy is going to work with them, too. So they're excited about that, having a media partner coming in. They see the benefits of a media partner owning the asset, selling the advertising, where Prosegur fits in is, they are quite capable on placing systems, on maintaining systems and, of course, relationships with certain retailers to get the systems in the first place.

So my understanding is that the -- there's one customer, I guess, in Colombia that you've signed? Or is that through the Prosegur and then maybe just give an update on that as a Prosegur update and...

Sure. Greg, do you want to take that?

Yes. We're working closely with Prosegur on finalizing a contract. We've had a pilot installed in Colombia with them for probably the better part of a year now. It's taken a little bit longer for them to get that contract in place, but we're comfortable that Prosegur is going to be a place to have something coming up with them soon. And we look forward to them closing some of these deals and rolling out. These are very large accounts that we're talking into the thousands of stores at these locations. And at the pilot that we were running with them, the one store, I think, had 5 or 6 systems at each doorway. So the scale of that is quite large. Prosegur is a very strong partner of ours, and we're going to work and do whatever we can to help them support them to get them to close that contract.

We've got a couple of questions here around being cash flow positive. Maybe if you can talk about that in general.

So what we're doing on the structure of these -- of our retailer contracts was predicated on. Greg and I examining where we were, where we're heading, what our cash needs were going to be for the next year, what our deal flow was looking like. This was back in January, February, and we started down this path. And there is obviously some preamble work that had to go in with our retailers, had to go in with exploring who media partners might be. And we arrived at where we had to go on this early spring, and we've been working on executing that, getting us to a position where we do not have to carry the hardware where we do not have to spend on the sales and marketing of the ad network, can drastically change the profile of cash needs for the company but also our OpEx side of things. So we aren't ready to say when we will be cash flow positive, but we know it's going to be much sooner than where we were a few months back, getting these deal structures in place was the first, as Greg and I talk about each, the first domino to fall is getting the retail dealer structures in place. And then the next step will be with the media company.

And indeed, with the reduced needs for cash being able to fund it through a different source. It allows us to focus on the deployment of systems, and that's why we're looking at over the next 3 years, you're putting in close to 1,000 systems and we'll now focus on the execution of being able to put in those systems much faster for these locations and focus on our production.

So just to be clear, like you talked about the customers that are 1,000 locations. As you roll out those -- to those locations, there will be -- somebody else who's going to be funding the hardware. The hardware is not going to be funded by INEO. So therefore, you don't need to have a lot of cash requirements, if I understand that correctly.

That is correct. And the one thing I might have missed in my prepared remarks as I might have skipped over the paragraph was that we also anticipate selling the existing hardware that's already deployed. So 130-ish odd systems in Canada, 108 already in the one customer in the U.S. to sell those to the third-party media partner. Like I said, they have a -- it's not a requirement, but I need or want to own the hardware asset that they're actually advertising on.

Yes, that's a very common thing. If you take a look at a lot of the advertising companies, certainly the large ones out there, a lot of them are REITs, real estate investment trust, and they treat it as a real estate asset, them owning this asset and securing a long-term lease at the front door of the store is critical for them in a partnership. They want to be able to have that much like they do in their existing portfolios.

So when you sell these existing 130 in Canada, 108 in the U.S. sort of systems that are already deployed, when you sell these systems to a third party, you're basically bringing nondilutive cash financing to the company basically and strengthening your balance sheet by doing that.

Correct.

Okay. So there's a question here around what should we be looking for in the next couple of quarters, maybe from Philip?

Our immediate outlook is deal flow in terms of the media partner, we've been working hard on that. Surprisingly, the number of parties that were interested, and we've narrowed it down and are working to close one.

Yes. Just another question follow-up on what we're talking earlier about the third party buying the hardware that's already installed. Can you just sort of provide some more color on that? How does this happen?

So INEO still has the contract with a retailer. So that's we're not giving up the contract with the retailer. What we've built into the contracts is now it's the right to sign the ownership of that hardware -- of that asset, the right to sign the selling of the advertising on that. We will still own the relationship with the customer and the contract with the customer, but the media partner will now own that entity, that physical asset, as Greg said, like they're used to doing that. That's what they do. They set up the company is all about owning that asset and generating cash flow from it over time, right? And we're fitting into that structure much better. So we expect to be able to sell the in-place hardware for -- at a minimum of the costs that it took to put us in -- cost it took for us to put them in, in the first place.

And those discussions are currently underway with potential acquirers of the existing network hardware?

They are.

Okay. Maybe just talk a little bit about the business model going forward. There's a couple of questions kind of related to that. Just with regards to you have the media company, you have yourselves, you have the retailer. How does the business model kind of work then going forward when you're putting advertising on these units? And then -- and essentially, INEO becomes pure -- more of a pure-play SaaS software company that's basically got high-margin business, right? So let me just talk about that.

We always envisioned that there -- it was a monthly fee type business as we regain our value that's what we're going to drive. But a lot of it was from advertising from the retailer side and advertising that we were selling and we realized, okay, there are some things that have changed. Retail Media has evolved so quickly, and the retailers are looking at it a little bit differently than they were 2 years ago, 3 years ago. And again, being smart and being able to move quickly and fit into the model of the retail media players, the retailers, it's where we're positioning the company. The asset -- the things that we put in the store, everything that we've been saying from the get-go of the Welcoming System going into the front of the store, it's the trigger. It's an innovative way for us to get digital signs in store. The infrastructure goes in, also we get more signs throughout the store, right? So the strategy on that side has worked out quite well. What we've tried to clean up here now is the revenue generation side of getting that in there, a very crucial piece. But in the end, it's going to be a monthly fee from the media company for us to operate the network for them. So you think about these systems in the store, there's still the loss prevention piece. We've got the new ORCA running on top of it. There's a lot of technology and innovation that INEO is doing to have these systems in the store to provide value to the retailer, and it's why we're able to get a 5- and 6-year contract and why we're able to get all these exclusivity terms that we were able to get is because we provide them the value. But now the media company owns the asset, they still need us to run it. It's our technology. It's our -- they know to sell. They don't have to place the advertise on the systems. We give them the interfaces to do that. They can operate interfaces and schedule the advertising when they want to run. They can run their business. We still run the assets in the store. They pay us to do that. So we get a monthly fee from the media company. And that's why we're -- we like this model because it's predictable. The monthly fees come no matter how much they sell or what the retailer does, we get those monthly fees.

Can you comment about the manufacturing? I mean, what's the plans in terms of manufacturing? Who's going to be manufacturing these units going forward?

In the short term, we are going to continue with the manufacturing. We are scaling our business. We use lean manufacturing processes in-house. But our focus now is we're starting to increase our volumes, is working on optimizing the production, looking at overseas suppliers of it. We will be selling the hardware to the media companies. We will be making margin on that addition -- in addition to ongoing fees. But our goal is going to be to drive efficiencies into the manufacturing process as we ramp up production to meet the growing demands from our customers.

Okay. There's a question around promotion, in terms of trading and getting the word out. Just if you can comment about that with regards to IR activities.

Yes. And we apologize to everybody and our investors have been this call for being so quiet. We had some deals right on the tip top, and it was like, okay, a couple of weeks, and we'll just -- we'll announce it and if the things get as you can imagine, some of the -- we're dealing with some very large players and some of the deals they dragged on much longer than we wanted to, but we got what we needed, right? And we got what we wanted. And in the end, the retailers are very happy with what they got to. They're getting immense value. You think of the value we're giving them with the Welcoming System. So -- but again, I apologize that it took us so long, we were quiet for so long. It was not our intent to go quiet for 3 months. We've got a lot of technology pieces that we've been building in the background, ORCA is one of them. There's a few more that we've got going. Greg and his team have been really busy. There's been no lack of heads down work over here to add features and capabilities to the network into the system. That's why the retailers love us, right? Again, we're doing things for them in their stores, which they don't have access to. They haven't had these for years. The simplest thing that the Welcoming System does it reports back it as a loss prevention event. [indiscernible] does that. Why, right? And it does so much more than that. And data that we give the retailer, and we'll have a few more announcements around data and analytics. The data that we give the retailer is crazy good in allowing them to run their business. So anyway, long answer for -- we plan to be a little more forthcoming forward. We do have one more big thing we have to get done, right? We have -- and we've alluded to it all that is called the media partnership, we're working on and -- but we won't be quiet until that time. Go ahead, Greg.

This was our first domino. And as Kyle said, it was very important for us to get this contract right because this is where we see the value in the company and being able to have an effective media partner to join with INEO on the commercialization.

Yes. It's quite an undertaking, I guess, you can't say enough about having to go through and update all of your contracts and stuff from 2-year contracts to renewing them to 5-, 6-year contracts. That's quite a commitment from the retailers, and I think that takes a lot of time. I mean, just in for context, you had to basically -- every single liquor store network -- liquor store had to be updated on their contract as well, right? So that's quite a few liquor stores that you had to go through and do all the paperwork and agreement and negotiation, et cetera, right, which takes a lot of time.

Correct. Yes. And I think we're clear on. But unless we got these contracts in place, we couldn't -- we wouldn't be able to accomplish the second part of what we're doing within the media company complex, right? They need that long-term runway. It's -- when they place signage out there, they're looking at a 3- to 5-year return on their investment. And we had to line the contracts up with the way that they looked at the business to be able to invest in the hardware that's going into the stores.

We'll end up with their. Any other following last remarks from Kyle or Greg, if there are any closing remarks, please?

I appreciate everybody for joining us on the call today. And again, with your patience and commitment to INEO on our investors, our shareholders, our employees, partners. It's been great to see the support that we've had. We are hoping to change the trajectory of the stock in the near future. It's always on our mind. We have to make sure the business is right in the first place, but we believe we've done that now, and we'll concentrate on that a little bit more, too. Over to you, Greg.

Yes. Again, thanks to all of our shareholders for their support. It's taken a while to get some of these building blocks in place, but we're quite confident that this is going to be the springboard to move the company forward. And thank you for your support and look forward to your continued support.

Thank you, everyone.