LifeSpeak Inc. (LSPK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of LifeSpeak Inc. Please note, this meeting is being recorded. I would like to introduce Nolan Bedermen, Executive Chair of LifeSpeak Inc. Mr. Bederman, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I'd like to welcome you to the annual meeting of holders of common shares of LifeSpeak Inc. I now call for order this meeting of the shareholders of the company. My name is Nolan Bederman, and I'm the Executive Chair of LifeSpeak Inc. In accordance with the company's bylaws, I will chair today's meeting. It's my pleasure to welcome the shareholders, directors and officers of LifeSpeak Inc. and guests present today. The persons entitled to attend and vote at this meeting are the holders of common shares of the company or their validly appointed proxy nominees as of the record date. Also presenting today is Michael Held, Chief Executive Officer; other LifeSpeak executives in attendance include Michael McKenna, Doug Berkowitz, Stanley Bergman, Daryl Smith and Jason Campana. All the individuals standing for election today, other than Kevin Smith, who was unfortunately called away this morning are in attendance. They include Sanjiv Samant, Rajesh Uttamchandani, Caroline Starner Dadras; and Mario Di Pietro. As this meeting is being held virtually via live audiocast, we think it is necessary to set out a few rules for the quarterly conduct of the meeting. For the purposes of this meeting, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot through the TSX Trust System. Only registered shareholders and validly appointed proxy nominees are able to vote by electronic ballot. Voting on each business item will open for all resolutions now and will close after the presentation of the last business item. Note that any votes cast by electronic ballot during the meeting will supersede any votes previously submitted by proxy. Therefore, the shareholders that have already voted by proxy and do not wish to change their vote, do not need to vote on polls taken during the meeting. Those in attendance who have registered as guests are not able to move motions or vote, but are invited to submit questions at any time during the meeting. These questions will be answered during the management presentation portion. When you're asked to vote on the TSX Trust Platform, please click on the voting icon. You will only have a certain amount of time to vote when the polls are open. Once the electronic balloting closes, your votes will automatically be submitted. We will provide you with all voting results for all resolutions at the end of the meeting. For specific vote tabulations, please see LifeSpeak's report of voting results, which will be posted to LifeSpeak's SEDAR profile at sedar.com shortly after the meeting. Questions or objections in respect of a motion can be submitted by any registered shareholder as applicable or any validly appointed proxy nominated by contacting TSX Trust. Please note that there may be a delay of approximately 15 seconds before the moderator will be able to see a submitted question. Therefore, at various intervals throughout the meeting, we will pause and provide you with 15 seconds to ask your questions using the messaging interface. If you feel 15 seconds is not enough time, please indicate that you have a question using the messaging interface, and we will pause the meeting until you've had an opportunity to submit your question. Although questions can be submitted throughout the meeting, they will be addressed at the appropriate time during the meeting. Please limit your questions to topics relating to today's subject matter and keep your questions short and to the point. For each question we answer, we will read the questions and provide an oral response. Any questions which were already answered or that are redundant or repetitive will not be answered. For the sake of expediency, the company has arranged for certain shareholders, namely Stanley Bergman and Daryl Smith to move and second motions today, respectively. We will now proceed with the formal portion of the meeting. Unless there is any objection, Mike McKenna, Chief Financial Officer, will act as Secretary of the Meeting, and TSX Trust will act as scrutineer of the meeting. If you have an objection regarding the appointment of the secretary or the scrutineer, you now have 15 seconds to submit your objection via the message link. As no objections have been received, I will now move to the constitution of the meeting. The purpose of today's meeting is set out in the management information circular dated May 8, 2023, which I will refer to as the circular, made available to shareholders on May 18, 2023, together with the notice of the meeting, which I'll refer to as the notice in the form of proxy or voting instruction form as applicable. The circular and other meeting materials have been posted on the company's website at investors.lifespeak.com and on the company's profile at sedar.com. I have here an attestation from TSX Trust indicating that proper notice of the meeting has been given in accordance with the Canada Business Corporations Act and the bylaws of the company. I directed a copy of such proof of service via annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. Copies of the circular and other meeting materials are available under the company's profile on SEDAR. I will dispense with the reading of the notice and will now move to the scrutineer's report and quorum of the meeting. The scrutineers provided me with a preliminary report regarding shareholder attendance at the meeting. I've been advised by the scrutineer that there are sufficient shareholders here in person or represented by proxy to constitute a quorum. I direct that the formal scrutineer's report be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. I now declare that the meeting has been duly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The first item of business is the presentation of the company's consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended December 31, 2022, and the auditor's report thereon. Unless there is any objection, I will dispense with the reading of the auditor's report. Are there any objections? As no objections have been received, I will proceed to the next item of business. The next item of business is the election of the directors. The 7 directors to be elected by the shareholders of the company shall hold office until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until his or her successors are duly elected or appointed: Michael Held; myself, Nolan Bederman; Sanjiv Samant; Caroline Starner Dadras; Kevin Smith; Mario Di Pietro; and Rajesh Uttamchandani, have been nominated as directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Each of the persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director. Each of them qualifies as a director under the provisions of the Canada Business Corporations Act. Stanley Bergman, would you kindly introduce a motion proposing the election of these 7 directors?

I move that each of the 7 persons nominated be elected directors of the company until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until such time as their successors have been duly elected or appointed.

Mr. Chairman, I second that motion.

Unless there are any questions, we will proceed to voting. You have 15 seconds to submit your question via the Ask A Question link starting now. As there are no questions and in accordance with the advanced notice provisions of the company's bylaws, no further nominations may be made at this time. I would now ask shareholders and proxy holders present to vote online. We will now pause for 30 seconds while you record your votes on this motion. You will be able to vote for each director individually. Again, as a reminder, if a shareholder has previously voted and does not wish to change their vote, you do not need to do anything. Shareholders and appointees, please click on the voting button to open the voting. [Voting]

I will now move to the next item of business. As noted earlier, voting results for all resolutions will be summarized at the end of the meeting. The next item of business is to appoint MNP LLP as the auditors of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration. I call upon Stanley Bergman to make the motion.

I move that MNP LLP be appointed as auditors of the company until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and that the directors be authorized to fix their remuneration.

Mr. Chairman, I second that motion.

Unless there are any questions, we will proceed to voting. You have 15 seconds to submit your questions via the Ask A Question link starting now. As there are no questions, I'll proceed. I would now ask shareholders and proxy holders present to vote online. We will now pause for 30 seconds while you record your votes on this motion. Shareholders and appointees, please click on the voting button to open the voting. [Voting]

Voting is now closed on all resolutions. Scrutineer has provided a preliminary scrutineer report with votes for all resolutions and will provide final results after the meeting. Based on the tabulation, I can confirm that the requisite approvals have been obtained for the election of the nominated directors and the appointment of auditors. The voting results of this meeting will be posted on the company's SEDAR profile at sedar.com after this meeting. The formal items of business as set out in the notice have now been dealt with. If there isn't any other business, we will proceed to terminate the formal part of this meeting. After that time, I will provide further comments. Is there any further business? If you would like to raise any further business at this meeting, you can do so using the Ask A Question link. You have 15 seconds to submit any further business using the Ask A Question link. As there is no further business, may I have a motion that the meeting be concluded.

I move that the meeting be concluded.

Mr. Chairman, I second that motion.

Is there any objection to the meeting being terminated? As there are no objections, I declare the formal portion of the meeting terminated. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank you for attending today. We will now turn to a presentation by management, followed by the opportunity to ask questions.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you attending our 2022 virtual AGM. During this presentation, we may be making forward-looking statements and citing non-IFRS financial measures and key performance indicators that are not recognized measures under IFRS. So we'd encourage you to review Slides 2 and 3 in greater detail. I am pleased to report that 2022 is a period of significant progress for LifeSpeak. We began the year with a clear awareness that our market was asking or one trusted source that can provide mental health, physical health and caregiving solutions that could effectively address the well-being needs of employers, health plans and other organizations. For too long, a disconnected market existed that inefficiently address these needs or didn't address the metal. That awareness drove us to acquire LIFT session, Torchlight and ALAViDA at the end of 2021 and and Wellbeats in 2022. These acquisitions provided LifeSpeak with a holistic product suite covering mental health, physical well being, child and elder care and substance use disorders. Essentially, in 2022, we became a one-stop shop for organization that required preventative digital education and human expertise to support employees and end users. We spent much of 2022 integrating the 4 acquired businesses into LifeSpeak and now have one unified organization, which exceeded 1,000 customers by year-end. Our clients now have a well-positioned partner with nearly 20 years of experience that can uniquely address bold person well-being. In addition, despite the overall challenges in the global economy in 2022, we managed to build a business that is more diverse than ever before with the majority of our customers now outside of Canada. This is an exciting opportunity for LifeSpeak, and we believe that the market's enthusiasm for our business is reflected in our improved financial results in 2022. Client wins and contributions from our acquisitions helped drive us to much stronger financial results in 2022 compared to 2021. Our 2022 revenue was $47.4 million, more than 100% higher compared to $23.3 million in 2021. Our annual recurring revenue, ARR, was $52.8 million at the end of 2022, an increase of 49% compared to ARR at $35.5 million at the end of 2021. Of the $52.8 million of ARR reported, 66% originated through clients outside of Canada. Importantly, we continue to maintain profitability with the 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 18%, a margin that has been trending positively as we integrated our acquisitions and rationalize our cost base. A significant catalyst for our success is that organizations across the world are increasingly seeking mental health and total well-being solutions to address the correlation between well-being and productivity. And that's the space where LifeSpeak can really make a difference. Our B2B SaaS-based mental health and total well-being platform consists of a full suite of mental health and total well-being tools scalable SaaS technology, a deep proprietary database of content and a unique customer understanding and curation expertise. All of this can affect positive change for employees and supports our leading position in an industry where organizations highly value the mental health and total well-being of their people. I will now turn the presentation over to Nolan for his remarks. Nolan?

Thanks, Mike. As we look at our business today and forward to the remainder of 2023 and beyond, we are confident in our growth prospects and our ability to continue to execute on our strategy. Recent changes to our internal organizational structure, including a revitalized sales force and reallocation of certain responsibilities will support these initiatives. Of note, Jason Von Bank has moved from the role of Chief Operating Officer to Market Advisory Chair. In this advisory role, he will continue to help LifeSpeak build senior-level sales relationships throughout the U.S. Health and Well-being sector. Jason is taking on the role of Chief Executive Officer at Kaleidoscope, a start-up in the higher education scholarship award space, a very different sector than LifeSpeak. Fortunately, we will continue to benefit from Jason's advice and deep market relationships going forward. In addition, we'd like to announce that Doug Berkowitz, our Chief Administrative Officer, will be retiring from LifeSpeak on July 7. We would like to thank Doug for his years of service to the LifeSpeak family and for his contribution to our company's collective culture and vision. Doug remains a strong supporter and shareholder of LifeSpeak and has played an instrumental role in our growth and success to date. As a reminder, our strategy has consisted of adding adjacent services and expanding our solution offerings by leveraging our disciplined and strategic acquisitions. To date, we have completed 4, and now believe we are best positioned to meet our client needs with a holistic client solution. Focusing on the acquisition of new clients, which has resulted in 972 clients in the enterprise cohort as of March 31, 2023, and 990 clients overall and expanding geographically. We're focused on domestic growth and expanding further outside of Canada. As of March 31, 2/3 of our customers came from the U.S. and other international markets, which is a substantial increase since our IPO. Overall, we believe we remain in a very strong position to leverage our leadership position in the industry in order to build greater value for shareholders. We believe that our deep and diverse customer base demonstrates the efficacy of our business model, and we believe we are only beginning to realize our full potential. We believe the scale we've reached today, the pace at which we've grown and the resulting retention rate we achieve all demonstrate that our solution is important to our clients and their employees. We're looking forward to updating you on our progress in the coming weeks and months, and we'll now open the meeting to questions.

Thank you for attending. Now back to the operator to end the meeting. Please remain on mute/silent until we terminate.

Ladies and gentlemen, as the meeting is now concluded, you may now disconnect.