Realbotix Corp. (XBOTF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Tokens.com Q1 financial review conference call. My name is Jen, and I will be your moderator. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew, you may begin.

Thanks, Jennifer, and thanks, everyone, for joining our Q1 conference call. We will try to answer a bunch of questions. I think our last annual audited statements came out quite late. A lot of people maybe didn't have a chance to come on to that call or ask questions. To start off with, I wanted to chat a little bit about what's happening with the business, and there's obviously some pivots that we came to in a press release back in November with respect to taking a strategic review of the business. To provide some context for people, last September or so, we lost a major contract at Metaverse Group. What we saw is that Web3 industry was starting to retract instead of grow. Metaverse Group and Hulk were both losing money, couldn't cover their overhead. And this was similar to a whole bunch of other metaverse and gaming businesses that we were speaking to globally. Obviously, we were in touch with everybody in the business. On the capital markets side, the investors never really attributed any value to those businesses. Really what we were trading off of is our token value and our cash value. And when we looked at Metaverse Group, it would have required further substantial investment with no assurance of success, and in fact, the revenue in that business was starting to decline. For people, just to recall, Metaverse Group started as a Web3 metaverse company where we were buying digital land with the view of renting it out. As the value of that land collapsed and interest in platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox really declined, we have to pivot to figure out what to do with that business. And so we started building in Roblox, Fortnite and third parties. We started off really strong. The interest level there particularly in 2021 and early was '22 tremendous. But as we sort of moved, those businesses started to struggle. Ultimately, we had to make a decision as to how we want to allocate our resources. As I said before, it was either invest capital into these businesses, which would have required us selling our tokens as it looks -- at a time when it looks like we're heading into a bull market, or raise capital at levels which I think don't accurately represent the value of the business. StoryFire is an ideal buyer. They're well capitalized and they have a need for products that Metaverse Group and Hulk develop, which is gaming, 3D immersive experiences. They have about 2.5 million subscribers and growing that are looking for content. So this is a good fit for us. We retained 15.3% of the upside in that business that could one day be a unicorn. We either terminated or moved out close to $1.5 million in overhead. And we remain lean, we keep our Ethereum going into a bull market instead of selling it to fund these businesses. We love those businesses, Metaverse Group and Hulk, but perhaps they were a little bit too far ahead of their time. The market didn't really see value for them. And then we needed to look at the bigger picture here is to surviving, preserving capital. We think we did the right move there and putting it with a larger player that can surface the value in ways that are better than what we can. Other things just to chat about quickly are on the audit. For people that did look at our audited statements, the new auditors took a very conservative view of the business. That's why the audit took a little bit longer to complete. With them being fresh with the file, we ended up being delayed. Essentially, the view that they had was to write down everything to 0 that wasn't cash or a token. That included writing down Metaverse Group, the domain names, everything else to 0, although we know they're worth more. We did produce reports and the valuations of the domain names that were in several million dollars but, however, those weren't accepted. Genesis is another example of that. While we have fairly good assurance there that we'll be receiving back our tokens or at least a large majority of those tokens, that was really written down to 0. A restructuring plan at Genesis has been approved that's set to repay 80% to 100% of in-kind deposits. We've had offers to buy those deposits at around the 60% value at this level. The auditors felt it was more conservative to write that down and make them to 0. Clearly, there's value there and a whole bunch of these things. But from an accounting perspective, they prefer to take that conservative view. In terms of looking forward, and then I'll turn it over to Martin to talk about the quarter, the strategic review continues. We're in discussions but nothing to report as of now. The company is going to be much leaner here with much lower overhead going forward. Yes, as I said, we'll retain the upside in StoryFire and in owning our tokens. We remain on the lookout for accretive acquisitions. We've had discussions with possible acquirers. We've had a lot of conversations with targets. The sale of Metaverse Group and Hulk makes those conversations easier. Because in the past, when we've had those conversations, the people looking at us were not interested in assuming the costs related to those businesses. In other words, the overhead on those businesses was getting so large to keep them going that it was hurting our ability to create future value by doing new deals. The company today feels clean and fresh. Look, we took a shot at those businesses. We didn't succeed the way we wanted to. Fortunately, we've been prudent. We haven't had to go out and do any diluted fundraises. We're still well capitalized and we're looking to continue to grow the business. We're not giving up here. But at times, you have to know where to allocate your capital and went to fold your hand and when to bet it. And at this point, our choice has been to bet more on holding the tokens and putting more capital than hiring more people into these other service businesses. Maybe with that, I'll turn it over to Martin, and he can walk through Q1.

Great. Okay. Thank you, Andrew. I'm going to share my screen and show the financials to everyone. Okay. Thank you, everyone, for being here today. So the numbers that I'll present here shortly will be all in USD unless otherwise stated. First of all, I'm showing the balance sheet which is not much different from year-end. The most difference here is the balance of our crypto currencies, which went up from $5.7 million from year-end to $8.3 million at quarter end, thanks to the increase in crypto prices during the quarter. Our cash and crypto balances at the quarter end was $11.3 million, which is very important for our working capital, which is an equivalent of CAD 15 million. Our total assets was USD 11.8 million or CAD 15.7 million. Now I'm going to go over to the income statement. Our revenue for the quarter was $219,000 to $151,000 for the prior quarter of last year. The increase here was mostly due to the stake-in revenue that we recorded for Q1 2024 of $165,000. This is mostly due to the increase in crypto prices during the quarter and also the company is starting to receive transaction fees for the stake-in of the Ethereum. Our operating expenses were $856,000 for the quarter compared to $718,000 of last year quarter. Most of the increases were due to increased staffing and headcount of Metaverse Group and Hulk. And with the StoryFire deals expected to be closed in March, we expect most of the increases to be eliminated or transferred over to StoryFire on the next quarter. We recorded a $2.6 million gain on the revaluation of the cryptos, mostly the Ethereum, compared to a loss of $1.3 million last year. And that contributed to a net income and comprehensive income for the quarter of $2.1 million compared to a loss of $1.6 million of the prior quarter of last year. And that is an equivalent of net income per share of $0.02 compared to a loss of $0.02 of last year. And with that, I'll end my summary here and I'll turn it back to Andrew, but I'm happy to answer any questions later with respect to the quarter or the year-end financial statements. Thank you, everyone.

Thanks, Martin. Jennifer, why don't we open it up for questions, if there are any.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, looks like we don't have any questions. So maybe we'll just give it a minute.

Okay. Well, if anybody does have questions, you can always contact us. Lots of investors do have my personal e-mail address. As well, you can just send it to [email protected] with any questions to schedule one-on-one calls or ask questions. We certainly try to be responsive to everybody. Again, we understand the frustration here. We've been frustrated as well. Some of the calls we've made on these businesses have not come to fruition the way we had hoped. We're hoping to turn the company around. We're well capitalized. I think we're sitting on some -- a lot of Ethereum here and other tokens that have the chance to appreciate quite significantly here over the next 12 months, which will put us in a stronger position to either be acquired or to make an acquisition. And we're certainly looking at both options right now. We hope to have something new to report in March, but we are working to continue to make strategic decisions on behalf of the business. So with that, I will close it off, and thank you, everyone.