RIWI Corp. (RIWI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much. It's Neil Seeman here, the Chairman of RIWI Corp. I'm just going to thank you, call the meeting to order. It's 11 a.m. Eastern, yes, just double-checked. So the Annual General Meeting for the year ended December 31, 2021, will now come to order. My name is Neil Seeman, and I'm the Chairman of the corporation, I will be acting as Chairman of the meeting. With your approval, I will now -- I will ask Amber Schaefer, Corporate Secretary of the corporation, to act as secretary for this meeting. With your approval, I will ask Debbie Parsons and [ Jamie Basik ], the representatives of Computershare, to act as scrutineers of the meeting. Would the secretary, Ms. Schaefer, please assure us that the Annual General Meeting has been properly called?

I have before me an affidavit of a representative of Computershare Trust Company of Canada attesting that the notice calling this Annual General Meeting, together with the information circular and form of proxy, were delivered in accordance with the Canada Business Corporations Act and applicable securities laws. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, the Annual General Meeting has been properly called.

Thank you. I am advised that according to the preliminary report of the scrutineer, a quorum is present. The scrutineer's report will be read later when it has been compiled in detail. I now declare the Annual General Meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. Before commencing with the business of the meeting, I would like to ask the secretary to explain the voting procedures to be followed at the meeting.

There is one outstanding cost of shares in the corporation, common shares, which are entitled to vote. The holders of common shares are entitled to one vote for each common share held. Voting will be by show of hands for some matters or by poll where designated or required by law. Each holder of common shares entitled to be present is entitled to vote. On a show of hands, every person who is present and entitled to vote will have one vote. Section 141 of the Canada Business Corporations Act allows any shareholder or proxy holder entitled to vote at the meeting to demand a ballot, either before or after any vote by show of hands. A ballot so required or demanded shall be taken in such manner as the Chairman shall direct. The bylaws allow a demand for a ballot should be withdrawn at any time before the ballot is taken. If a ballot is taken, each person present shall be entitled in respect of the shares which he or she is entitled to vote at the meeting upon the question to that number of votes, and results of the ballot so taken shall be the decision of the shareholders upon said question.

Thank you. The minutes of the last meeting of the shareholders of the corporation are available for a review of any shareholder. This is in respect to 2021 AGM minutes. Unless someone wishes them read, I hereby move them -- move to take the minutes as read and confirmed. Is there any discussion on the motion? In that case, all those in favor, please signify by raising a hand. [Voting]

Against, if any? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the presentation of the audited financial statements of the corporation and the report of the auditors thereon for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. Copies of the audited financial statements and auditor's report are available from the secretary. Accordingly, unless someone specifically requests, the auditor's report will not be read to the meeting. Unless there are questions arising from the audited financial statements and auditor's report, I shall consider them received by the shareholders as submitted to this meeting. It is now in order to proceed with the election of directors for the upcoming year. The management information circular, which was mailed to shareholders, contains the names of and information about management's nominees to the Board of Directors. There are 7 positions to be filled, each to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The following individuals have been nominated to be directors of the corporation: Neil Seeman, Robert Pirooz, Annette Cusworth, Donald Shumka, Kevin Mahoney, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman. Are there any further nominations? [Voting]

Each of the nominees has previously consented in writing to act as a director. If there are no other nominations, I would ask for a motion that nominations be closed.

So moved.

Thank you. Would someone please second this motion?

I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? Jason, do you see any discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, please signify by raising a hand. [Voting]

Against, if any? [Voting]

Carried. All those in favor of the appointment of Neil Seeman, Robert Pirooz, Annette Cusworth, Donald Shumka, Kevin Mahoney, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, please signify by raising their hand. [Voting]

Thank you. I declare that these individuals have been elected as shareholders of the corporation for the ensuing year to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. I'd like to move on please to the appointment of auditors. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors. It is proposed that the corporation appoint KPMG LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants as auditors of the corporation at remuneration to be set by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. Accordingly, I ask for a motion that KPMG LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants be appointed as auditors of the corporation for the ensuing year and that the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors be authorized to determine the remuneration to be paid to KPMG LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants for the ensuing year.

So moved.

Thank you. Would someone please second this motion? Thank you. I think I see Amber Schaefer, madam secretary.

I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? All those in favor, please signify by raising their right hand? [Voting]

Thank you. Against, if any? [Voting]

Carried. Scrutineers' report -- sorry, the scrutineers' report reads as follows. I have the scrutineers' interim report. We have 41 shareholders by proxy representing 8,492,916 shares -- 41 total shareholders holding 8,492,916 shares. The total issued and outstanding as of the record date of common shares are 18,004,428. The percentage of outstanding shares represented at the meeting represents 47.17% of the total issued and outstanding shares. I adopt the scrutineers' report and declare accordingly that a quorum is present. Other business. In the formal part of this meeting, is there any further business? If not, all the business for which this Annual General Meeting was called has now been completed. I now call for a motion to conclude the formal part of the Annual General Meeting of this corporation.

I move that this meeting be concluded.

Thank you. Would someone please second this motion?

I second the motion.

Thank you. All those in favor, please signify by raising a hand. [Voting]

Against, if any? [Voting]

Thank you. I declare the formal part of this Annual General Meeting of the corporation concluded. Thank you for your attendance and continued support. Thank you. So now we have 1 or 2 folks in person here in the office. We're just having a kind of casual Q&A with our CEO, Greg Wong, who's here. So a member who'd like to sort of stick around just for, I don't know, some people may have thought, met Greg before, spoken with Greg, and here may be an opportunity to spend a bit of time to have some Q&A. But at this moment, I'd just like to thank madame secretary and everyone who has supported the technical operations here, and of course, the scrutineers from Computershare. Thank you. So let's move it to Greg.

[ Paul ], you have a question?

Thank you. Okay. [ Paul Vernon ] is my name. I live in Burlington. The -- can you give kind of a brief sum-up of the company? Looking online, it says you're doing software for consumer studies in an international way. Maybe that's not quite right. I'd like you to sum up the focus of the business. What's the ticker symbol and the share price?

So share price, we'd have to look for the changes every day. So we can look online. But the focus of the company is we invented the technology several years back called Random Domain Intercept Technology, or RDIT, and that technology enables us to intercept domain traffic or web traffic and then provide surveys to those [ sample ] that we capture.

Okay. So you're providing surveys to...

To 3 different customer segments, international development customers, so think about those aid agencies, humanitarian agencies, government agencies like that, as well as financial service customers. So think about it as investment banks, banks, fee firms, people looking to either gather data for research, for trading or analysis. And then the third customer segment we focus on today is public health and health systems, so think about it as large hospital systems and government agencies that are, again, health care.

Okay. Got it. Say that the 4 words at the beginning, the...

Random Domain Intercept Technology, RDIT: Random Domain Intercept Technology.

Random...

Domain.

Domain Intercept...

Yes, technology.

Okay. So you're developing that software?

Correct. Really people don't buy our software. They -- our software is a process of which to survey which is different. So it's less that people are buying our software today. They're buying the use of our software to gather data.

People use your software to gather data. And you're -- this is international, like it's here -- it's the whole world, isn't it? Correct?

Yes. We can survey...

So you're charging a rental fee to use your software?

Partially. So there is a subscription component to our software, but there's also a cost per survey because there is a cost for us to do these surveys, recruit people around the world to do these surveys. So again, we're intercepting the domain traffic, web traffic all around the world. So whether you're in China, whether you're in Turkey, whether you're in Myanmar, whether you're in Afghanistan, U.S., Canada or the G7, we're intercepting web traffic essentially. And there's a cost to get that web traffic and then provide the service. Most of our customers will either buy based on a subscription basis. They will buy based on a certain number of complete or gain access to a certain number of people. There's a whole bunch of different mechanisms.

Okay, okay. So that could include not just the developed countries, it could include the emerging and Europe?

Any web-enabled country, so any country that has access to internet. If they don't have access -- if a country does not have Internet access, then our [ exclusive ] will not operate there but any country with access to internet which is quite a few.

Okay. So what's the ticker symbol?

R-I-W-I.

R-I-W-I. Is it on the Venture Exchange?

On the Venture Exchange.

This is quite interesting. Like it strikes me you've got a huge market, the whole world.

We have a large market. I think it's about focus. It's about making sure we understand our customers, and there's lots of people that can do surveys. Well, we are unique in how we can gather that data, and it's about really understanding our customers and what they want to accomplish. The more we understand our customers, the more we'll grow.

So you just have one office here.

Correct. We do have people in various locations, though. Not everybody is in Toronto. We have people in Washington. We have somebody in the U.K. We have people in different locations.

That work under you?

Correct.

Washington?

We've got people in Washington. We've got people in Pennsylvania, British Columbia. So we are essentially a virtual company. We have an office, so we operate in more of a hybrid, I guess, type working environment. But in the end, with modern technology, with Zoom, with Google Meet, with all the networking, there's no reason that we need most people in the office. We need to be closer to our customers.

All of these directors are -- were on the computer screen, were they?

The directors were not necessarily on the computer screen. The only director that was on the computer screen was [ Anil Stephen ]. The other directors were not on this call.

Wouldn't they want to know what's going on? They'll get a report, I guess.

Well, we have, obviously, our board meetings. We have updates that we provide to the Board, and they guide us in different areas. So they've already approved well the [ info cert ] that you're looking at right now as well as our annual financials. So before we can publish something out, they approve everything.

It's an interesting idea that you've come up with. It's -- you've only been in business for a year or so.

No, several years. Neil Seeman actually founded the company several years back, and he started out of the University of Toronto which was more incubated there and then became a for-profit company. Neil, you can give a bit more of a history.

Yes. Thanks, Greg. I mean big-picture calls, yes, this was started out in my [ research community ], which was affiliated just down the street with basically with [indiscernible] which from...

What year was that?

Neil, can you move closer?

Incubated at...

Yes. I probably just wouldn't use the word incubated because it sort of implies that it was part of the work. It was sort of -- let's just say the work was done there physically, and that was 2009 legally. However, I still -- this was at the side of my desk, and I still caught up until 2015. So -- and we went on the what's called the Canadian Securities Exchange, the other exchanges in August 2015. And then in 2021, we moved to the Toronto Venture Exchange. So it really -- I mean, in terms of full commercialization, I'd like to -- I mean, it grew over time, but I would sort of -- I'd like to point to sort of 2017 when we had a full-time CTO, full-time sort of profit-focused, revenue-focused business. And Greg began as CEO in September of last year. Just wondering if there's anybody on the...

There's no hands up on the screen.

These people on the computers, I mean, they're not...

No. They're part of a...

A different company.

Yes, exactly. Any other questions, Paul, or anybody else on the line?

No. That's all for me.

Hey, Greg. It's Jeron of Pathfinder. Do you mind maybe for the business outlook this year, maybe touch on 3 items, kind of what you guys are doing to get more people to land on your pages; maybe something on survey engagement, too, making sure people are kind of getting involved? And then finally, maybe on the data monetization side, just high-level stuff when you guys are kind of looking to hit this year.

Sure. I'll go backwards, just because I remember exactly what you said. On data monetization, so we've been investing time right now to understand all of our data, the data that we have, what value that data has, not as far as ongoing surveys but what data we've collected. I mean, we've got over 2 billion responses of data in our database across 229 countries, so we've got a ton of data in our database. So we've been going through to understand what data is shareable, what data is not shareable and what value that data has to who. So we started that process. And we are in discussions with a number of different organizations to understand how they might be interested in that data, how they might want to consume that data and how they might want to subscribe to it. We're trying to turn this call -- this database that we have of all this rich data into more of a subscription model that will be ever growing and changing, but we're in the early stages of getting that out. I would not expect any significant revenue commercialization on our -- what I'll say, our standard data this year. We will hopefully get that launched this year, but I would not expect any significant revenue from it this year. That's more of a, call it, 2023-type goal to really get product commercialization. I think the second question you asked and I'm going to ask you back, just to make sure I got it, was how do we get more people landing on our pages. And maybe just to make sure I answer the right question, are you asking about people landing on our website or our domains? Or what are you asking?

Yes. When -- basically, how do you get more people to land on your pages after they've kind of gone to a wrong website or something like that? Like do you have additional partnerships? Or kind of what's the -- kind of -- is there anything you guys can do on that side that you guys are looking to implement this year to kind of increase the amount of hits you get?

Yes. So there's a number of things that we're doing. The first thing is around ensuring data quality. So as we get people landing on different domains or traffic that we're either captured or intercepted, the first thing that we can do is make sure that we understand who these people are that we're able to qualify them into a strong data quality and filter them to the right type of survey. So this -- that's the first focus. And any kind of anomaly detection is one of the early things that we're doing. And our CTO has spent a lot of time, as well as EVP of Operations, has spent a lot of time to help ensure that because just that alone will have an improvement. Some of the other things that they're looking at is additional type of access to these random web users. So we traditionally intercept traffic, but there's also a number of things you can do with apps, mobile apps, intercepting traffic pop-ups on websites. There's a lot of different ways and a lot of different things we're investigating. The key for us is really ensuring that we have a strong data quality. So if we're going to use a different method or if we're going to add additional methods, additional more complex suppliers, we got to make sure they have the right data quality, the right attributes so that we deliver high quality to our customers. But there is a lot of work went on that, and I expect that when we'll have more ability to -- or ability to reach more people faster as well as we're working on bringing our costs down in that area. And I think you had one other question.

No, that kind of answers both. It was kind of in survey engagement, but you kind of touched on it with kind of the pop-ups and other different avenues you're investigating and looking at. So that kind of touched on it, anyways. That's perfect. Appreciate it.

No problem. I see another question from Paul.

Yes. Okay. I'd like to -- the database, the numbers you gave, say them again. It's pretty -- a very big number.

We've got about 2 billion different survey responses in the database.

Okay. Let me write $2 billion survey responses.

Correct, across 229 countries.

Across 229 countries.

Yes.

That's really interesting.

Yes. Any other questions from anyone? Well, thank you all for the questions. Happy to answer any more now or in the future, and feel free to reach out to us. Our goal as an organization is to be very investor-friendly. So while we will have sessions like this and we do touch in with other investor groups where there's Q&A, I mean, as an organization, feel free to reach out to us at any time with any questions. I mean, we want to answer them. We want to make sure that the investor community understands our strategy, understand what we're doing and how we're progressing. And so again, we're always open to any questions at any time. Reach out, call or e-mail in the future or at any discussions, but thank you for the engagement.

And please follow us on social media.

First revenue was 2023?

First revenue was 2023.

Is that right? Did I misunderstood?

2023 is next year, so...

Yes. No, no. I mean, what year are you actually going to generate revenue or maybe you are now.

We're already generating revenue.

You're already generating revenue.

You'll see a lot of those data highlights in the [indiscernible]

Okay.

Thanks, everyone online. Take care. Thank you all.

Thank you.