Alarum Technologies - Q3 2023
November 28, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Alarum Technologies Corporate Update Conference Call for the three and nine months ended September 30th, 2023. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment, please lift the handset before making your selections. This conference is being recorded today, November 28th, 2023. Before we get started, I will read a disclaimer about forward-looking statements. This conference call may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws.
Forward-looking statements include statements about plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events of performance and underlying assumptions, and other statements that are different than historical fact. These forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may result in expectations not being realized and may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include those discussed under the risk factors in Alarum's annual report Form 20-F, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, on March 31st, 2023, and in any subsequent filings with the SEC. All such forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, made on behalf of the company are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements, and such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we caution you not to place all undue reliance on these.
At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Shachar Daniel, the company's CEO. The floor is yours.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to Alarum Technologies' First Quarter 2023 Earnings Results Conference Call. As is customary, with me, Shai Avnit, our Chief Financial Officer. I am pleased to highlight some key achievements and strategic directions that have shaped our recent performance and our vision for the future. Before we begin, I want to quickly note that reconciliation tables for any non, non-GAAP or non-IFRS metric referenced on this call are available in the press release we published earlier today. We are thrilled to announce that we have achieved our first ever profitable quarter. This significant milestone is a testament to the dedication and our hard work of our team, and demonstrate our commitment to delivering value to our shareholders. At the end of 2022, we made it our leading goal to set our best toward profitability.
We are excited that in the third quarter we have managed to achieve our goal and announce on a net profit of $1.1 million. As mentioned, our success can be attributed to the strategic decision we have made in the recent years. We have successfully executed acquisitions that have boosted our capabilities in line with our vision and direction. We have also been agile in making decisions like scaling down low profitable revenues, allowing us to allocate resources more efficiently towards growth and profitability. Most importantly, we are focused on our successful business, NetNut, our enterprise data collection business. When we took this strategic decision, we know it might have impact on our revenue stream. We are happy to present a positive trajectory with minimal impact due to our directional decision.
$6.7 million of revenues for the quarter represent a significant growth in our enterprise business and excellent performance quarter after quarter. Our accumulated revenues from the beginning of 2023 amounted to a stunning $19.44 million and exceeding revenues for the whole year of 2022. In a short period of time, we have managed to generate record revenues and net profit for the first time. Additional highlights for the first quarter include the attractive gross margin of 77% and record adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 million. In July 2023, we announced the closing of $4.25 million private placement, a private placement in which senior management, including myself, took part due to a strong belief in its promising prospects. The investment further strengthened our balance sheet.
We are well-funded with approximately $8 million in cash as of September 30th, 2023, no debt and a low amount of warrants. I would like now to elaborate on our enterprise data collection business, NetNut. NetNut was acquired in 2019, with annual revenues of approximately $3 million. Over the past few years, we have transformed NetNut from a small company with minimal revenues into a market leader in the IP proxy network segment. This achievement has positioned us at the forefront of the data industry infrastructure layer. Over the last two years, we have invested significant resources to build one of the fastest, most reliable and advanced network. In the past few quarters, we have expanded our product offerings and expanded our footprint to the data collection market, estimated at $17.1 billion by Forrester....
This market is driven by the growing importance of data-backed decisions for businesses, necessities of a constant flow of data. It is supported also by the AI-based product expectation, in which data collection and labeling play a critical role in model development, accuracy, and functioning of AI systems and products. In addition, the social media segment, in which monitoring and understanding of social media activity, enabling more effective marketing and improving user experience for digital marketing growth. NetNut is a well-known brand in its field, enabling us to constantly identify and penetrate new market segments. Among our recently entered customer segments are the artificial intelligence-powered sales intelligence market, fintech markets, AI recruiting markets, and more. In each field, NetNut has already won multiple new customers and continue to do so.
Our vision is to continue our growth in the IP proxy network vertical, building on strength and success we have achieved thus far. As the data collection market rapidly grows, it is our mission to introduce new innovative products to meet new emerging needs. In this regard, we took our first step this quarter by releasing our inaugural product in this vertical, the SERP Scraper API. Our overarching goal for the future is to leverage our success in the infrastructure layer of the data collection industry, with dozens of satisfied, successful customers already on board. We aspire to become the one-stop vendor for all the changing needs of our customers. This means providing comprehensive solutions that span the entire data collection process, from infrastructure to data extraction and beyond.
I want to mention one more recent remarkable achievement by NetNut, the granting of our U.S. patent that further strengthen the company assets and innovation. I would like now to turn the call over to Shai to discuss the financials for the quarter in more detail. Shai?
Shai Avnit (CFO)
Thank you, Shachar, and hello, everyone. I will summarize our third quarter 2023 financial results from continuing activity, which are compared to our third quarter of 2022 results from continuing activity, unless otherwise stated. All figures in this summary were rounded up for simplicity. Revenue for the third quarter of 2023 totaled $6.7 million, and revenue for the first nine months ended September 30th, 2023, was $19.4 million. This compared to revenues of $4.8 million and $13.4 million, respectively, for the equivalent periods in 2022. The increase is attributed to the organic growth in the enterprise access business revenues, despite a reduction in the consumer access business revenues.
Gross profit for the third quarter of 2023 was $5.2 million, compared to a gross profit for the corresponding period in 2022 of $2.6 million only. The increase in gross profit was primarily driven by the increased revenues. Gross profit for the nine months of 2023 was $13.5 million, compared to a gross profit for the corresponding period in 2022 of $7.3 million. Our third quarter 2023 operating expenses decreased 25% year-over-year to $3.7 million from $5 million in the third quarter of 2022. This decrease is mainly due to operations strategy scale down in the consumer internet access business.
Operating expenses in the first nine months of 2023 summed to $20.8 million, an increase of 22% from the $17 million in the first nine months of 2022. The increase reflects recording a one-time goodwill and intangible assets impairment loss of $8.5 million in the second quarter of this year, which is related to the CyberKick cash-generating unit due to the decrease in its forecasted operating results. This increase was partially offset by the company's success in minimizing the actual operating expenses in this segment, as well as reducing the general and administrative expenses from $5.3 million to $3.2 million due to lower professional fees.
As a result, and after the impact of finance expenses and tax benefits, IFRS net profit for the third quarter of 2023 reached $1.1 million or $0.03 basic profit per ordinary share, compared to a net loss of $2.3 million, or $0.07 basic loss per ordinary share for the third quarter of 2023. For the first nine months of 2023, IFRS net loss totaled $7.3 million, mainly due to the CyberKick impairment losses or $0.20 basic loss per ordinary share, compared to a net loss of $9.4 million, or $0.30 basic loss per ordinary share in the first nine months of 2022. The company monitors key business metrics-...
To help it evaluate and establish budgets, measure the effectiveness of the sales and marketing efforts, and assess operational efficiencies. The non-IFRS key business metrics the company uses are EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. EBITDA or EBITDA loss is a non-IFRS financial measure that we define as a net profit or loss before depreciation, amortization and impairment of intangible assets, interest and tax. Adjusted EBITDA or adjusted EBITDA loss is a non-IFRS financial measure that we define as EBITDA or EBITDA loss, is further adjusted to remove the impact of impairment of goodwill, if any, and share-based compensation. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2023 was positive at $1.9 million, compared to adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.6 million in the same period of 2022.
For the first nine months of 2023, adjusted EBITDA totaled $3 million, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $6.5 million in the first nine months of 2022. The Company's cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2023, totaled $7.7 million, compared to $3.3 million as of December 31st, 2022. As of September 30, 2023, shareholders' equity totaled $10.9 million, or approximately $1.87 per outstanding American depositary share, compared to shareholders' equity of $13.3 million on December 31st, 2022. The reduction is due mainly to the goodwill and intangible assets impairment recorded in the second quarter of 2023, offset by September 2023 private placement. Lastly, I wanted to touch base upon our share count as it stands today.
On an outstanding basis, we have around 58.6 million ordinary shares, or 5.86 million ADSs. On a fully diluted basis, we currently have around 81.4 million shares, or 8.14 million ADSs outstanding. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Shachar.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thanks, Shai. We undertook ambitious goals in recent years, and Alarum's current position is definitely a testament of the remarkable journey and the milestones we have achieved to date. These achievements underscore our ability to adapt and thrive in dynamic business landscape. Our three growth engines have been realized, and our significant competitive advantages have been crystallized. Both our financials and non-financial key metrics are moving in the right direction and align perfectly with our strategic vision. In conclusion, we are extremely proud of our recent achievements, especially our first profitable quarter and the growth we have experienced in our core business segment. We are excited about the future as we continue to expand our footprint in the data industry, delivering value to our customers and shareholders alike. Now, I would like to open the call for any questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great, thanks. I've got several questions. First, I wanted to talk about the expense base of the business. It's the first time we're seeing results excluding CyberKick. So-
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Brian, Brian.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Yes.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Brian, can you change your... I hear you, I barely hear you.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Okay, hold on. Can you hear me now?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yeah, yeah, it's better.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Hello? Great. So, first I wanted to talk about the expenses. It's the first time we're seeing the results excluding CyberKick. So, the gross margin of 77%, is it sustainable? And what would drive that to increase or decrease from here? And then I'm curious, on the OpEx side, are there any significant investments you need to make, and are there any significant variable costs to sales?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay. First of all, hi. Second, so for your first question, so basically, as you know, we scaled down the CyberKick business. Due to this, some of the cost of goods, you know, major part of the cost of goods are not, we, we are not expanding, they are not in our expenses anymore. In addition, as we discussed in the past about our data business, about the enterprise business, so basically, we succeeded to improve our cost of goods, in addition to the growth in the revenues, made us to achieve this 77%....
Regarding the future, and, let's talk about, I don't know, next year, for example, we think that, the current, OpEx structure or expenses structure, more or less, not significantly, if you ask if we need to significantly invest in order to keep the growth, so at this point of time, we don't see a significant invest in order to keep the trend of our growth in the IPPN market, including releasing, as I mentioned in my, pitch, this year, one of our targets we start here next year, is to expand to the next level, to the next layer of the data business, which is the product layer of the scrapers and, and others.
So basically, also in order to expand to these markets, we will need to invest, but we don't see a significant change from our current expenses structure.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great. Great. And then on the internet access piece, that's driving growth, how are you differentiating from the competition? Why are enterprises choosing your solution, and what does the competitive landscape look like?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay. So I will do it very simple. It's a question of brand and, and performance, and maybe brand is, is driven by the performance. So as I mentioned also in the last two years, and by the way, we are going to do it all the time, but we invested a lot in our product, in our network, in the stability of our network, in the geographical coverage. And, in our space, customers are very sensitive, sorry, to the performance, to the speed, to the downtime, et cetera. So the size of our network, the stability of our network, allowing us now to work with big customers, with huge demand, and that's what made us to be, a leader in this space, together with additional, two or three companies.
But basically, if I'm looking back two and a half years ago, I think that we went all the way from being, I don't know, in the eighth place, seventh place in this space, to be, in the first three, leading vendors in this space. And again, it's due to the stability, to the performance, to the support, to the, sales teams, et cetera, et cetera. But, regarding the competitive advantage, these are the main topics.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great. Then you mentioned some new customer wins in the AI intelligence market and also entering the fintech market. Can you just maybe tell us where these customers are generally located, and can you also describe how they're using your technology?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yeah, of course. It's all about data. So, in these spaces, I think 80% of our customers are based in the U.S., and the rest, I think we have one in the Far East, one, maybe one or two in Europe, but basically, most of them are in the U.S., in these spaces. And as I mentioned, Brian, it's all about data. So imagine yourself that you have, a kind of, thriving intelligence, so a recruitment intelligence or others, that when you say intelligence, so they have their own algorithm that knows how to analyze data from many, many web and internet sources. In order to be able to scrape and to collect this data, in scale, they must use, sorry, our kind of products behind.
The same regarding the AI tools. At the end of the day, everybody, all these industries are based on data that they need to collect from the web. They need to get a transparent data. They need not to be blocked. They need to simulate themselves like they are coming from all over the world in order to get the relevant data in the relevant geographical zone. So without our products behind, just from their domain or from their premise, they cannot do it. They must have an automatic tools behind, and our IP proxy is mandatory for them to have and to get the data and to analyze it.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Got it. So you're enabling AI to do their analytics?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Enabling-
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Algorithms.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Data.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Yeah.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
To collect the data. The analytics is from their side.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Yep. Yep. Okay, I'm gonna ask one more question, and then I'm gonna get back in the queue. If no one asks questions, I have a couple more. I'm just curious, with the recent offering, what the fully diluted share count is today? Then I'll get back in the queue and ask some more.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Fully dilute? Okay, so-
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
The fully diluted share count.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yeah.
Shai Avnit (CFO)
Yes, it's about 8.1 million ADSs.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great. I got a few more. I'll get back in the queue and hit star one again.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from George Moore, from Carter Terry. Please proceed.
George Moore (VP of Investments)
Hi, guys. Congratulations. What a very good quarter. My question is real quick. It goes twofold. Is the impact of scaling down on the consumer segment, right? With that, are you still deriving revenue from there? When will that ultimately end? And then going along with Brian's question on the growth of Alarum's vision for the next couple of years, how do you expand and grow off of that?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
... Okay, so, thanks for your question. Thanks for the compliment. I will merge your two questions to one answer from my side. So as I mentioned, yes, we took a decision to scale down the consumer business. When I'm saying scale down, we are not investing anymore, not in R&D at this point of time, and not in consumer acquisition, and we are just maintaining our current product and currently bearing fruit from our current customers that are paying on a monthly basis. And when we took the decision, this decision, we took into account that we are going to kind of losing maybe significant revenues. But for the future, it's the right strategy for the company. We are very happy that even from revenues perspective, the impact is minimal, almost zero.
From profitability and strategy and focus of the company, the impact is huge. So at this point, revenues from our consumer business is not material comparing to the enterprise business. And basically, it's going to stay like this for the coming future. Regarding your question, sorry, for the vision. So, the vision is basically to expand our products penetration in current markets, to continue to develop innovative products in addition segments of the data collection market, and leverage them with our current customer base. Meaning, the data collection market and space, like many other spaces, are built from layers. Now, we took a step and the leadership in our layer of the infrastructure, which is the IP proxy network. We have hundreds of satisfied customers.
The next stage is to offer them also the product, the scraper, the datasets, the AI tools, the insights, or the analytics of the data, in which direction that we will choose, and to come and tell them, "Okay, you are working with us anyway. You are very satisfied. You prefer to work with one vendor than to split your infrastructure and your solutions for few vendors, and now let's cross-sell these customers with our new and innovative products." This is our strategy, how to take the market, and we see that it currently works quite well. We released the first product just in the middle of 2023, and the future look very bright from this perspective. Hope it answers your question.
George Moore (VP of Investments)
Yes, thank you. I'll go back in the queue.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Emily Patterson, from... who's a private investor. Please proceed.
Emily Patterson (Shareholder)
Good morning. My question is pretty quick and simple. Does the path to profitability come at expense of growth?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
So sorry, but I didn't hear you well.
Emily Patterson (Shareholder)
Yes. Can you hear me now?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yeah, yeah, now it's better.
Emily Patterson (Shareholder)
Okay. My question's pretty quick and simple. Does the path to profitability come at expense of growth?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay. So it's a very, very good question. So basically, our transition to profitability was made possible thanks to a calculated balance that we made between growth and profit. It is our intention to continue keeping this balance, that will allow the company to continue growing alongside sustaining itself. As we did it before, management will consider, and we will consider the two aspects all the way. For example, if we will decide to invest in development of a new product or a new demand or new market, investing more in marketing to enter a new segment, all of those actions will be taken in order to secure future growth and profitability. Meaning we proved to the world and more important to ourselves, that our current business can be profitable and can fund itself.
Our intention is to stay profitable and to stay efficient. Of course, that if we will see an amazing opportunity of expanding, developing, investing in R&D or in new markets, maybe we'll take a decision to change a little bit this balance, but the direction is this direction. I hope it answer your question.
Emily Patterson (Shareholder)
It does. Thank you so much.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Robert Smith, from the Center for Performance Investing. Please proceed.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on the steps to profitability. You mentioned that in the particular area that you've been addressing, that you leaped from eighth or ninth to about third. Can you give me some ideas to the first two companies that are basically ahead of you at this point, and what kind of volume of business do they do?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay. So, these are two companies. Again, it's not according... They are private companies, so what I can mention is also only from my knowledge and understanding the business, not from any formal numbers or statistics or data that we have about these companies.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
I understand.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
... The leading company in this space, according to my knowledge, is an Israeli-based also company. The name is Bright Data, and the second company in the second place, again, according to our knowledge, is a European company. The name is Oxylabs, which is basically a sister company of the biggest, maybe consumer VPN in the world, which is NordVPN. These two leaders are leading the market. They are more mature than us, and they started a few years before we started. And regarding the numbers, I don't want to mislead you, but I can tell you in high level that as far as we know, both of them are doing more than $100 million a year, and they are profitable, and they are growing.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Thanks so much, I'm grateful. Good luck.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Brian Kinstlinger, from Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great. I want to follow up on one of the questions that was just asked. I'm curious of the KPIs that you look at in order to give you confidence that you can continue this growth path for the next 12-18 months, and is that growth path similar to the growth that you are seeing currently in the business? Is it a little bit slower? Is it a little bit faster? Just trying to understand, you know, that piece.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Okay. First of all, it's not only in our company or space; the major KPI in order to maintain growth and sustainable business is the retention of the current customers. The purpose, of course, is to have a minimal amount of churn, and of course, the second target is to have new customers or upsells that will be higher than the churn month after month. And by this, we can maintain the current customers current stream of revenues and to grow.
From this perspective, I can tell you that in the last, let's say, one and a half years, six, eight, seven quarters, since we invested a lot, as I mentioned before, in our network and the stability of our product and the performance of our product, we see an amazing retention for most of our customers that some of them are in an annual mode, some of them in half, six months subscriptions. Some more, basically, most of them are in monthly recurring revenue basis. This is our space, and this is also the competition. So, we are trusting the level of satisfaction of our customers and the professionalism of our business development and sales team that will maintain them, in addition to bringing new customers, upsells and cross-sells for our new products.
Regarding the growth, you know, this year, we grew in amazing numbers, to be honest with you, even much, even more than I expected, which was an amazing surprise. Hope I will be surprised all my life from this kind of growth. The target is to keep the growth all the time. We are a growth company by bringing new customers, by releasing new products, by cross-sells, by upsells. Now, to tell you if we will have the same rate of growth, the target is, yes, is to grow.
Of course, we have our target numbers, we have our budget, and we know what we want, but I don't want at this point to talk about numbers, just to tell you that we are trusting our team, trusting the, by the way, the industry, the market that is growing, you know, the AI that came in, the database decisions, that many huge organizations are announce themselves. The fact that everybody need data and need... And understand that data is the bright light of everything, also providing us level of trust that we will grow together with the market and the fact that we are one of the leading brands in this space.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
So just to follow up, can you share what churn is today and maybe what it was three years ago? And then in addition, is there any pipeline metrics that measures your potential new customer wins over the next 12-18 months? Is there any way to track that?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yes, it's the churn is a very... It's not, it's not a one number, okay? Because you can measure churn, Brian, in many ways. And we have our formulas, but it's a very complicated explanation. I can tell you that the churn is around 2x-2.5x better than the churn that we had two years ago. And we are planning, I guess, in the next quarters also to release KPIs for our retention, churn, lifetime value of our customers, and then we will explain, and then it will be much easier for me also to elaborate about it in the investors call. So basically, at this point of time, I prefer not to mislead and starting to explain about our churn formulas, LTV formulas, et cetera.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Can you discuss in any way pipeline to evaluate the new customer side of the equation?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
You know, we have now basically pipeline of millions of dollars. That we are discussing, negotiating. They are in trial, in proof of concept. We call it trial, but it's the same like proof of concept in our pipeline. Some of them, it's a very short sales process that can take one-two weeks. By the way, most of our customers are in a very short sales process, and some of them, it will take time because they are big organizations. You know, they have their chain of approvals. You need to go through due diligence, procurement, due diligence course, et cetera.
But we have pipeline of from new money perspective of millions for 2024, that according to our formulas, and, you know, where probability, some of them are in 70%, some of them are in 90%, some of them are in 50%. And we have our formulas that we generate from these formulas, the our projections for new customers slash new upsells, cross-sells for the next four quarters of 2024.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Okay. The last question I have is, I believe from your, when you pre-announced the numbers, I think you said you were at... You generated operating cash flow. Can you share what your third quarter operating cash flow is? And as we think about going forward, should adjusted EBITDA somewhat track cash flow, or will it be lumpy?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
As we announced, Shai, correct me if I'm wrong, our operating cash flow is around $1.5 million for the quarter.
Shai Avnit (CFO)
Yes, we said more than 1.5. More than, a bit more than this, yes.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
A bit more. The adjusted EBITDA, as you saw, is $1.9. Your question, Brian, is what is, how do we see this gap in the next, quarter?
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Is that a similar ratio we should think about going forward of cash flow to Adjusted EBITDA?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Shai, you want to explain?
Shai Avnit (CFO)
As we see it, there shouldn't be any huge differentiation going forward, at least for the foreseen future, between the EBITDA and the generation of cash from operating activities.
Brian Kinstlinger (Director of Research, Managing Director, and Head of Technology Research)
Great. All right. Thank you so much. Certainly, a 20% operating margin on a smaller business, although it's not even smaller, is much better than a break-even operating result, so congratulations.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you very much, Brian. Appreciate it.
Shai Avnit (CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Robert Smith, from the Center for Performance Investing. Please proceed.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Yes, just a couple more questions. First, do you feel that you have the financial resources to proceed without raising additional capital in the foreseeable future, say, the next 12, 18 months?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Yes.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Okay. And secondly, are you-
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Again, just to add more comment, besides of, you know, maybe we will take a decision in the future to have a special, you know, events like M&A or something like this, but for our current operation and our current cash in the bank, and of course, the fact that we are not burning money, the opposite is the correct. We are generating cash, so we don't need to raise money.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Okay. Are you hiring people now?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Of course, all the time.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Yeah. And what... How would you characterize the availability of talent out there?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
In Israel?
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Well, whoever is possibly to help you, to help you in growing the business.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
No, you asked the availability of talents in globally or specifically in our region, in our country, which is Israel?
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Yeah.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Just to ask your question.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Yeah. Yes. Where are you concerned?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
So, you know, you know, I'm saying it proudly. Israel is, you know, full of talents, but full of great companies. But I can say, and by the way, I didn't discuss about it because it's not measurable, but I can say also proudly, that due to the fact that due to these numbers and, you know, the success of the company, you know, employees wants to work in a place that demonstrates a success and, like, a winner place, okay? So we see a trend that a lot of CVs of employees are sending to us. A lot of employees want to work here. We can sometimes even do a hunting, and we are doing it for talents from other companies.
So at this point of time, with the help of God, it will stay like this. We are an attractive place for employees. Of course, in Israel, the talent is a very expensive resource, but we are managing it.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Are you impacted by what's happening in geopolitical and everything that's happening in the Middle East there?
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
You are asking if we see an impact on our business?
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Well, I mean through personnel.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Ah, from personal perspective?
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
No, personnel. People-
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Ah, personnel. Yeah, of course. Well, of course, of course. You know, we have some employees that are in the army now, and by the way, most of them, you know, in the intelligence unit, so they are sitting in front of computers, but they are still in the army. So first of all, our country is more important than everything, so we are supporting them. And second, our employees and myself knows that one of the targets of our enemies is to kill our economy. So even if someone is not in the army now, we feel that our donation and value to the country is to work harder to maintain the economy of this country and to show our enemies that nothing will break us.
So we are starting succeeding to recover from this, and by the way, to do it even better, because, you know, the motivation and the spirit of everybody now in Israel is something that is, you know, in regular days, is much higher.
Robert Smith (Research Analyst of Technology and Software)
Mm. Now, best wishes for, for your future prosperity.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Shachar Daniel for closing comments.
Shachar Daniel (Co-Founder and CEO)
Thank you, operator. Thank you, all of you, for joining us today. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to continue providing positive updates on our business progress.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.