Minehub Technologies Inc. (MHUB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and welcome to MineHub's Investor Webinar for the quarter and fiscal year ending January 31, 2025. My name is [ Rajan Sohal ], and I will be the moderator for today's call. Joining me on the call today are Andrea Aranguren, CEO of MineHub; and Monika Russell, the company's CFO. This call is being recorded. There will be a question-and-answer session at the end of the call. I trust that everyone has received a copy of MineHub's financial results that were issued yesterday. Listeners are encouraged to download a copy of the company's annual financial statements and management's discussion and analysis from SEDAR+. Please note portions of today's call, other than historical performance, include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. We provide forward-looking statements solely for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. We do not 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 if it is required by law. Please refer to yesterday's press release and in our management discussion and analysis filed on SEDAR+ for our disclosure of risks, uncertainties and various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. And with that, let me turn the call over to Andrea Aranguren, CEO of MineHub.

Thank you very much, Rajan, and welcome, everyone. We really appreciate you joining us today. On today's call, I'll provide an overview of MineHub, plus I'll comment on our customer activity and product development efforts. And after that, Monika, she will review our financial results for the fiscal year, and I'll then conclude with the company's strategic goals and outlook for fiscal 2026. For new listeners on the call, I'll provide a little background on MineHub. So we are the digital supply chain platform for the commodities markets, making raw material supply chains more efficient, resilient and sustainable. MineHub provides enterprise-grade digital solutions that connect buyers, sellers, laboratories and financiers within physical commodity supply chains in a digitally integrated workflow. Users of MineHub solutions are in full control of their supply chains, enabling them to optimize their use of resources, respond better and faster to disruptions and provide better customer service. Global enterprises are already using our solutions as part of their operations. The ongoing trade policy shifts and disruptions highlight the urgent need for digital solutions that provide real-time visibility and robust risk management. With MineHub, companies can efficiently navigate these complexities. They can gain a competitive edge and they build more resilient future-proof supply chains. Looking back at our 2025 fiscal year, there are some highlights I'd like to mention. We're very pleased to report that we maintained a 100% renewal rate among our key enterprise customers this year. This reflects the mission-critical role that MineHub plays in their operations, and it validates the long-term value we continue to deliver. We also achieved $14.7 billion in gross merchandise value transacted on the MineHub platform, that's year-over-year increase, driven by both new customer activity and expansion within existing accounts. We also made meaningful product advancements this quarter. To address critical workflow pain points. Among the highlights were the launch of our Document Uploader, the Trade Insights Dashboard and the Assay Exchange Dashboard. Each of these features is already seeing strong adoption, and I'll speak to them in detail shortly. Finally, we expanded our partner ecosystem with the onboarding of CargoGo, a major supply chain visibility platform owned by Elane Technology. This partnership strengthens our presence in Asia and helps us better support the region's growing customer demand. Over the past fiscal year, we've started to accelerate our expansion into new regions with some exciting developments. On September 26, 2024, we announced an agreement with our first Chinese smelting company as a user of MineHub's Trade Management platform. This marks an important milestone in our expansion into the Chinese copper market. With the largest smelting capacity in the world and a robust domestic manufacturing supply chain, China is a critical market for the global copper ecosystem. On October 16, 2024, we announced the expansion of our commercial agreement with Sumitomo Corporation to include all of Sumitomo's nonferrous metals business. This milestone solidifies the successful relationship between our companies and unlocks new opportunities for growth beyond copper markets where we had been focused to date. Expansion into additional metals markets is expected to be a key driver in our potential future revenue growth. On November 26, 2024, we announced that we signed an agreement with Elane Technology Co Limited, a prominent logistics technology provider based in Beijing, China, and owner of CargoGo, a major visibility platform supporting supply chain efforts for 57 China-based Fortune 500 companies. This strategic partnership will leverage the strengths of both companies to unlock enhanced shipment tracking and visibility capabilities across the commodities markets in Asia. Along with the increase in customer activity, we strive to amplify the value delivered to customers by enhancing the offerings of features and functionality available on the MineHub platform. We added the following functionalities to the platform this fiscal year: First, we launched the Document Uploader, which automates the capture and organization of critical shipment documents. This has significantly reduced manual processes for our users, enabling faster, more resilient supply chain operations. Secondly, we rolled out the Trade Insights Dashboard, which gives users real-time analytics on trade execution and supplier performance. It's helping customers reduce risk, improve logistics and strengthen supply chain relationships across the global commodities markets. And third, we announced the release of the Assay Exchange Dashboard to streamline the management of assay certificates in concentrate shipments. This tool enables mining companies to better track assays, manage workflows and reduce turnaround times by as much as 10 days through real-time data-driven insights. I will now turn over the call to Monika to go over our financial results for fiscal 2025.

Thank you, Andrea. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today. Turning to our financial results. I am pleased to report that we achieved strong results for the 12 months ended January 31, 2025, as we continue to successfully transition towards annually recurring SaaS subscription revenues. MineHub achieved revenue of $2 million in fiscal 2025, a slight increase of 1% as compared to the prior year. The composition of revenue has shifted as the company focused on growing stable, recurring SaaS revenue instead of pursuing nonrecurring and highly variable professional services contracts. As a result, SaaS revenue increased by $240,000, representing a 17% increase compared to fiscal 2024 and this growth in SaaS revenue more than offset a decrease in professional services revenue. Net loss for fiscal 2025 was $6.2 million compared to a net loss of $6.5 million in the prior year, a 4% improvement. This improvement in net loss is primarily due to operating expense reductions, partially offset by nonrecurring other income in the prior year. The company had approximately 87 million shares outstanding as of January 31, 2025. This concludes the financial update. I will now turn the call back over to Andrea to provide an update on our goals and outlook for fiscal 2026. Andrea?

Thank you. MineHub's growth trajectory is a testament to the value our platform brings to partners and customers alike. Management is confident of MineHub's long-term growth potential and is pleased to provide our key goals for fiscal 2026. First, we're focused on landing and expanding within the copper and aluminum markets by increasing trade volumes with existing customers. These are some of the most active pipelines and present a clear path to recurring revenue growth. Second, we're capitalizing on regional momentum in areas like China and India, where MineHub's ability to navigate regulatory and operational complexity positions us as a critical enabler of supply chain digitization. Third, we're seeing strong early interest as we accelerate pipeline development into adjacent verticals like steel, nickel and scrap markets, demonstrating MineHub's ability to scale beyond our core commodities. And finally, we're working to deepen integrations with key strategic partners, including Surecomp and Abaxx to unlock cross-selling opportunities and expand our revenue streams through broader ecosystem connectivity. The outlook for MineHub is promising with the continued enhancements of our offering, the ongoing onboarding of our new customers and their ecosystem partners. MineHub's achievement and progress for the year-to-date have provided a very solid foundation for the year ahead. Management believes that platform enhancements, cost containment strategies, continued ecosystem growth and rapid sales pipeline development in new markets have laid the foundation for growth in ARR and progress towards profitability. As mentioned, the company is now more actively exploring opportunities to launch the MineHub platform into adjacent markets as well as into additional regions. The company is also evaluating strategic opportunities that include niche platforms that align with MineHub's mission to become the comprehensive digital backbone of global commodity supply chains. We're very excited about the future of MineHub. We believe MineHub is a favorable investment opportunity for the following reasons: MineHub's customer base and broader ecosystem includes some of the largest resource companies in the world. We have a very diversified B2B revenue base with customers from different sectors. There is still a large greenfield opportunity to digitize the commodity supply chain ecosystem. MineHub has validated its industry-leading SaaS platform built with significant domain expertise and IP. We have a strong management team that has a proven ability to execute. And finally, this is a massive market opportunity with an addressable market of $7.5 billion. Market -- MineHub is emerging as the market leader within the physical commodity supply chain market. The company is providing solutions in a massive greenfield opportunity, where there's still relatively low penetration of digital solutions. MineHub is benefiting from increasing tailwinds such as new regulations and increasing compliance requirements that are driving a recognized need for digitization throughout the industry. Finally, I want to thank the entire MineHub team, including the employees whose hard work continues to support the company's growth. We want to thank our customers who trust and rely on us, and I want to thank you all of us. I want to thank all of you for joining us today. And I will now hand it back to Rajan for questions.

Thank you, Andrea. With that, we will now open the call to questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note that priority will be given to questions from equity analysts. The first question is from Gianluca Tucci of Haywood. Mr. Tucci asks, can you give us an update on how you're seeing sales cycles evolve? Are there any challenges or green shoots to highlight?

Thank you, Gianluca. Yes, so we are seeing a very, very strong increase in sales pipeline momentum and development, especially as we've now started to expand our sales outreach into new commodities and new regions. So we're seeing a huge growth and new opportunities filling the pipeline. We are also seeing some really strong momentum as those opportunities move to the last stages of the pipeline. Unfortunately, because of all the volatility that you're seeing in global commodities markets with uncertainties around tariffs, what's a bit unusual this year is that usually companies would have negotiated their commercial contracts by May, certainly for the year. But we're seeing many companies still renegotiating their actual purchase and sale agreements for their commercial business. And therefore, many of our customers' legal teams have been very busy. And so we are seeing some delays on the contract execution side because of these legal delays as companies try to refine and finalize all their commercial agreements before they can finalize their vendor agreements. Nevertheless, we're still seeing super strong commercial momentum broader than ever before, and we're hoping to get many of these deals that are in the late stage of the sales pipeline over the line shortly.

And a follow-up question from Mr. Tucci. How are the partnerships with Surecomp and Abaxx coming along? Are you able to comment on how these have impacted your pipeline?

Sure. Thank you for the question. I'll start with Surecomp first. Surecomp is a really interesting platform. They're a trade finance automation platform. And as I've said before in the past, trade finance is a very interesting area for us where we think we could add a lot of value. So we progressed significantly in our partnership with Surecomp. We've actually completed an API integration between the 2 platforms to share shipment document information, and we're refining a joint value proposition with them. And then after that's complete, we'll then shift to really finalizing and targeting a sales pipeline for a broader MineHub-Surecomp sort of joint comprehensive solution. So that's really promising and very exciting. And Surecomp actually went through an acquisition. They purchased a company called ELCY, which is the premier commodities trade finance platform. So now there's a lot more overlap in our pipeline and our prospecting activity. So that's really accelerated a lot of the traction between the 2 companies. We're really excited about that partnership. Abaxx as well remains a very key strategic partner for us. We are constantly engaged with Abaxx in a couple of different fronts. Most notably on the commercial side, we have regular commercial touch points with them, and we're constantly exploring cross reference -- cross-referral opportunities within new markets, obviously, nickel, lithium and in carbon markets. So we have regular touch points with the team to collaborate there, also refining the joint value proposition, the go-to-market approach as well as the sales introductions and referral opportunities. And we're seeing some really interesting opportunities arise from that dialogue and that collaboration, and we appreciate Abaxx' continued support there. And then on the product side, we also have the product and the technical teams constantly in touch as we're also refining the requirements and opportunities to integrate the platforms and to leverage each other's capabilities.

A question from a listener here. What is your plan for future acquisitions? Can you provide some color on the types of M&A opportunities you'd be looking for?

Sure. I can take that one. It's interesting because years ago, there were very few platforms that were targeting the commodity supply chain specifically. But we've seen companies start to recognize the significant need for digitization in the space. So we're actually seeing smaller niche players emerge. So this includes companies that are focused on AI-based reporting tools for sustainability reasons or otherwise for regulatory reporting, traceability passports, marketplaces and many others. So we're seeing some very interesting opportunities to incorporate these more niche platforms and solutions that are solving more specific problems for our customers into our broader MineHub platform. And our platform really is a natural home for those products. So by bringing together a variety of different solutions, we can offer the market a more comprehensive tool set that more broadly meets their needs and should lead to broader market adoption of the MineHub platform. We -- of course, we can't go into more detail at this time, but I'll just say that we are actively exploring M&A opportunities, and we're encouraged by the potential that we're seeing.

Great. And another question here from a listener. What were the key factors behind the shift away from professional services revenue? And how has this impacted near-term margins or cash flow?

I can take that one. Hang on while my video gets sorted out. Here we go. So we are focused on SaaS revenue because it's stable and recurring, whereas professional services can be much more unpredictable. We're making the shift intentionally to lay the groundwork for the future we envision for MineHub, though it's definitely come with some short-term impact on margins. So professional services had higher margins in fiscal 2024 than our SaaS business did. But as we scale up that SaaS business, our margins should trend up and normalize in ranges comparable to other SaaS companies, but that's likely more of a long-term focus. I should also note, we have intentionally invested in additional customer support staff in the second half of fiscal 2025 in order to ensure we have trained staff ready to take on new growth. That put some downward pressure on our margins as well, which we'll continue to see in Q1. The good news there is we're ready for new customers when they come in, even though sales cycles are slower than we anticipated. And then I think the other part of the question was related to the cash impact of that. So switching away from professional services makes our cash flow much more stable as we can plan on recurring monthly inflows rather than lumpy project fees. But I do want to highlight this is the shift -- we've had a very successful shift in terms of offsetting the decrease in professional services revenue, but this is not a short-term quick win as we're seeing with the sales cycles being longer. There is some patience required to see that fully reflected in growth in revenue going forward.

Thank you, Monika. Another question from a listener here. You mentioned a 100% renewal rate among key enterprise accounts. Can you elaborate on what drove that retention? And whether it included any upselling or volume growth?

No problem. I can take that. The 100% renewal rate is really a testament to the strength of our value proposition and to our ability to meet our customers' evolving needs. We've been saying sales cycles can be longer at times than we wish. But the great thing is that once we do sign a customer, the platform is incredibly sticky, and we are incredibly effective at delivering value to our customers. And as we've noted, land and expand is a key part of our strategy. So once we do sign a customer, not is it -- not only is it very sticky, but there's upside opportunity as there's an opportunity to expand within our customers' business. And fortunately, for most of our renewals, that did include either price increases and/or additional volumes that we're going to be managing either because we're adding additional types of metal or new regions. So that's incredibly positive and a really strong validation from the market.

Great. And another question here from a listener. What does the increase in GMV indicate about usage trends? Are you seeing more transactions per customer? Or is it new customer contributions?

I can take that one, Andrea. So GMV, just to recap, is our volumes multiplied by the prices of the underlying commodities. So it's an indicator of customer and ecosystem engagement. We've seen over the past year, new volumes from new customers and their ecosystem users, but also growth from new -- or sorry, existing customers as well. Our revenue model, in many cases, is tied to volumetric fees. So increasing GMV should be somewhat correlated with revenue growth in the long term. It can also be impacted by fluctuations in the price of copper and aluminum. But in this case, the prices used in our calculation were relatively unchanged. So the growth is mostly due to volumes.

And another question here. You've outlined initiatives beyond copper and aluminum into other metals. Can you provide a bit more color on that on how far along we are on these efforts?

No problem. I can take that question. The different efforts, they're really in varying stages. Our scrap outreach is definitely the most mature, where we have a really solid understanding of what the scrap market needs, what their pain points are and how our platform can address those. And that's been broadly tested with many different conversations from different aspects within the scrap market, whether it's manufacturers purchasing scrap or scrap dealers selling scrap or any intermediary in between. And we're also in pretty -- some advanced discussions with potential partners to help us accelerate entry into scrap markets. The other commodities, nickel, steel, zinc, lead, even precious commodities, they're all still in the stage of pipeline development. We've invested in new AI tooling to really amplify our sales outreach approach, and we're seeing incredible results from that. We're seeing a huge increase in new meetings every month or even every week and as well as a huge increase in new opportunities. And a lot of that net new pipeline growth is driven from these other new commodities verticals where we're really seeing a lot of strong interest.

And more financial question here. Can you comment on your EBITDA? When do you expect to be EBITDA positive?

So our journey to EBITDA positive is highly dependent on our revenue growth. We have certainly scaled back our cost to the point where we're operating as lean as we can, and we are doing everything within our control to ensure that we're managing our EBITDA, but we really do need more top line growth in order to get there. And that's a difficult time line to even speculate on because we can't always predict or control when those deals will close. As Andrea mentioned, we have a number that are sitting seemingly right at the finish line, and we're always trying to do everything we can to make those closed. But to some extent, it is largely out of our control. And so we're doing everything we can to fill that pipeline and make sure that we're, again, doing everything we can do to ensure that growth comes through.

Thank you, Monika. Another question here from a listener. You mentioned China and India specifically as targets. What level of interest are you seeing there?

I can take that, Rajan. We are seeing very strong interest in our track and trace capabilities in regions like China, Japan and in India. And we are thankfully in very advanced sales discussions with a number of companies in the region. So we're seeing a very strong interest predominantly around our track and trace capabilities.

Great. Thank you, Andrea. That is all the time we have for questions. I will now pass the call back to Andrea for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. In closing, I just want to thank everyone again for joining our call today. Thank you to our analysts for their questions. And we look forward to providing more updates in the near future. Thank you so much. Have a great day.