Bridgeline Digital - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY2025 revenue was $3.8M (flat YoY) with gross margin at 67% (-100 bps YoY); diluted EPS was -$0.06, and Adjusted EBITDA was -$0.193M, reflecting a modest sequential pullback versus Q4.
• Sales momentum accelerated: 28 new subscription contracts, $2.7M total contract value (TCV), and ~$0.8M ARR added; Core product Net Revenue Retention was 107%, with a 105-day sales cycle and an 18% win rate.
• Management is reallocating spend from R&D to sales and marketing to capitalize on demand and partnerships (Salesforce AppExchange, OroCommerce, Optimizely, BigCommerce), while holding overall OpEx roughly flat.
• Subscription revenue declined 1% YoY to $3.0M; services revenue grew 11% YoY to $0.7M; margins compressed YoY (overall -100 bps; subscription -200 bps), partially offset by stronger services margins (+700 bps YoY).
• Consensus estimates were unavailable at the time of query; near-term stock narrative catalysts are the aggressive go-to-market push, robust core NRR, and new connectors/partnerships that may drive MRR expansion, but formal guidance remains withheld due to size/volatility.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong sales execution: “In Q1 of FY ’25, Bridgeline signed 28 licensed sales, adding $2.7M in new contracts and $800,000 in annual contract value… sales cycle is now only 105 days with an 18% win rate”.
• Core health: Core product NRR was 107%, with core revenue cited at ~$2.1M and double-digit growth; emphasis on expanding upsell/cross-sell within HawkSearch suite.
• Partnerships as growth lever: Salesforce AppExchange connector launched; BigCommerce Catalyst connector; continued positioning in Optimizely app store; OroCommerce integration—all aimed at lowering CAC and accelerating deployments.

What Went Wrong

• Mixed profitability: Adjusted EBITDA deteriorated YoY (-$0.193M vs -$0.117M prior year) and margins compressed (overall GM 67% vs 68% YoY; subscription GM 71% vs 73% YoY) despite services margin improvement.
• Subscription softness: Subscription and licenses revenue fell 1% YoY to $3.0M while total revenue was flat, indicating limited topline expansion QoQ and YoY.
• No formal guidance: Management reiterated it will not provide revenue guidance given volatility at current scale; this reduces visibility for investors tracking near-term inflection.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Bridgeline Digital first quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. If you have any questions or comments during the presentation, you may press star one on your phone to enter the question queue at any time, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Thomas Windhausen. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thomas Windhausen (CFO)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Thomas Windhausen. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Bridgeline Digital. I'm pleased to welcome you to our fiscal 2025 first quarter conference call. On the call with us today is Ari Kahn, Bridgeline's President and CEO, who will begin the call with a discussion of our business highlights. I will then update you on our financial results for the quarter, and we will conclude by taking questions.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding Bridgeline that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future results or events. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time, and we expressly disclaim and assume no obligation to inform you if they do. The results we report today should not be considered as an indication of future performance.

Changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, regulatory, and other factors could cause Bridgeline's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward-looking statements made today. For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may have an impact on our business, please review the reports and documents filed from time to time by Bridgeline Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, please note that on the call this afternoon, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures when commenting on the company's financial performance. We provide a reconciliation of our GAAP financials to these non-GAAP measures in our earnings release. You can obtain a copy of the earnings release by visiting our website. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ari Kahn, Bridgeline's President and CEO. Ari.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Thank you, Tom. Good afternoon, everyone. In Q1 of FY 2025, Bridgeline signed 28 license sales, adding $2.7 million in new contracts and $800,000 in annual contract value. Our sales cycle is now only 105 days, with an 18% win rate on qualified leads. World-class numbers. This means it's time to invest in sales. The market is hot, and our products outperform our competition. Last year, we released eight AI-based products that are blowing the competition away, garnering strong analyst support and delivering key value to our customers. We invested in R&D, and it has paid off. We are the leader in AI-powered e-commerce search. Our growth is limited only by our marketing budget, not by market size, not by customer demand, not by competition. Now is the time to reallocate resources from R&D to sales and marketing. It's time to go all in on growth.

Our revenue can broadly be broken into two product groups. Core revenue comes from our HawkSearch products and its eCommerce 360 embeddings, including WooRank. This revenue is $2.1 million with double-digit growth, net revenue retention of 107%, CAC payback better than 20 months. Essentially, all of our new sales are core products. Our non-core products that represent the balance of our revenue include most of our professional services, and these products generate strong gross margins with minimal operating expenses, and they help fund growth in core. With momentum in sales, a leading position in AI, and a market shifting to adopt our AI products, we've made bold company-wide changes to invest more into sales and marketing and seize this opportunity.

These changes go all the way to the board level, including the addition of healthcare industry veteran and business development expert Michael Ketzler, whose expertise and network will help Bridgeline expand into additional markets. I recently had the acronym FOMO, fear of missing out, on my mind. That's exactly the mindset driving our growth strategy. With the market shifting fast, we're seizing the moment to expand our customer base. Our board and team are in full growth mode, and I'm committed to investing in new customer wins to ensure that we stay ahead. Let's take a look at Q1 sales, the second-best sales quarter in the company's history. We sold 28 licenses for $2.7 million in total contract value, adding $800,000 in ARR. Here's a few of our new customers.

BradyPLUS, a leading B2B e-commerce provider, is leveraging HawkSearch AI to improve its search functionality and deliver a more seamless digital experience. Jon-Don, a major supplier in the janitorial and restoration industry, has also integrated HawkSearch to enhance product discovery and optimize site navigation. Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance is using HawkSearch to streamline search across its extensive product catalog. Montefiore Health System has chosen HawkSearch to power a more intuitive and efficient search experience for its users. A leading supplier in the plumbing industry has chosen HawkSearch Smart Search to power their product discovery experience. The plumbing supplier will leverage Smart Search's visual and concept search features to enhance customer experience and drive growth. Another major supplier in the plumbing industry successfully launched HawkSearch to power its online search.

All this, not to mention the expanded subscription of a Fortune 100 consumer electronics customer who is powering over $1 million an hour in online sales with HawkSearch. This momentum positions us for continued growth in 2025 as we expand our reach in B2B e-commerce and healthcare, providing cutting-edge AI search solutions that drive revenue and enhance customer engagement. Our 2024 investments in R&D have opened the door to partners whose customers need the latest AI-powered e-commerce tools. Our partners bring us customers thanks to our expanded product line and joint marketing events, lowering the cost per lead for both sides. We released our BigCommerce Catalyst Connector just this week. The press release announcement will be issued soon. Catalyst will give BigCommerce customers a drag-and-drop tool to seamlessly upgrade their online stores to our HawkSearch suite.

BigCommerce has been one of our strongest partners, and we expect our Catalyst release to make it even easier for their customers to upgrade to HawkSearch. Xngage and Optimizely continue to be leading partners who bring us large sales that close quickly on HawkSearch. Many of our B2B manufacturing distributor customers are on this ecosystem. HawkSearch is listed as a top-paid app in the Optimizely store. Bridgeline earned Moblico's Partner of the Year award for its role in advanced mobile engagement for distributors. This quarter, HawkSearch has also joined forces with OroCommerce, a leading B2B commerce platform, to bring AI-driven search and merchandising to manufacturers and distributors. Importantly, in partnership with Salesforce, HawkSearch has also launched the HawkSearch AI-powered product discovery engine for Salesforce B2B Commerce. Salesforce customers can now access HawkSearch directly from the AppExchange, deploy the connector instantly, and see immediate improvements in e-commerce performance.

Partnerships will be an important part of our go-to-market strategy this year, but we're also greatly expanding our marketing budget. We've generated notable sales in recent years by focusing on specific verticals and joining industry conferences and associations. In the fastener industry, we won several customers by attending conferences like the International Franchise Expo and Fastener Fair in Las Vegas. B2B electronics and plumbing distributors have been strong with conferences such as B2B Online Chicago and Modern Distribution Management Shift generating sales. We have expanded our budget and will be targeting new B2B verticals, including advertising in vertical markets and hosting more in-person events to generate even more leads and convert into customers this year. Last year was a transformative year in our product suite with eight AI products being launched.

This year is going to be transformative in growth with our budget reallocated from R&D to sales and marketing so that we can capitalize on the market demand and on the strong competitive position that our innovation efforts have placed us within. This time, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Thomas Windhausen. Tom.

Thomas Windhausen (CFO)

Thanks, Ari. I'll provide an update of our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended December 31, 2024. Total revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, was $3.8 million compared to $3.8 million in the prior year period. Going into each component of revenue, our subscription license revenue, which is comprised of sales, licenses, maintenance, and hosting revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, was $3 million, down 1% from $3.1 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of total revenue, subscription license revenue was 80% of total revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2024. Services revenue of $700,000 for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, was up 11% from $700,000 as rounded in the prior year first quarter. As a percentage of total revenue, services revenue accounted for 20% of total revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2024.

Cost of revenue was $1.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, an increase from $1.2 million in the prior year period. As a result, gross profit was $2.5 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, down 1% from around $2.6 million in the prior year period. Overall, gross profit margin was 67% for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to 68% in the prior year period. Services gross margin was 51% for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to 44% in the same period, an increase of 7%. Subscription license gross margins were 71% for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to 73% in the prior year period. Operating expenses were $3.0 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, down 4% compared to $3.2 million in the prior year period.

Going below OpEx, the change in fair value of our liability classified warrants resulted in a non-cash loss of $114,000 compared to a non-cash gain of $18,000 in the prior year period. Moving to the bottom line, our net loss was $0.6 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to a net loss of $0.6 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, was -$193,000 compared to - $117,000 in the prior year comparable period. Moving on to our balance sheet, on December 31, 2024, the company had cash of $1.5 million and accounts receivable of $1.2 million. Our total debt outstanding as of December 31, 2024, was under EUR 400,000 and approximated $409,000. The weighted average interest rate of that debt is approximately 4.1% with payments due through the year 2028.

We have no other debt or remaining earnouts from any of our previous acquisitions. At December 31, 2024, our total assets were $15.5 million and total liabilities were $6 million. Finally, I'll give an update on our cap table, which as of December 31, 2024, included 10.4 million outstanding shares, 39,000 shares of Series C preferred stock on an as-converted basis, 800,000 warrants, and 2.1 million options. As a reminder, in September 2024, nearly 900,000 warrants with an exercise price of $4 expired. The remaining 800,000 warrants consist primarily of 180,000 warrants with a $2.85 exercise price expiring in May 2026 and 592,000 warrants with a $2.51 exercise price expiring in November 2026. Bridgeline looks forward to continued growth and success in fiscal 2025 and beyond as we continue our focus on revenue growth, product innovation, customer success, and delivering shareholder value.

Thank you for joining us on the call today. At this time, we'd like to open the call to questions and answers. Moderator?

Operator (participant)

Certainly. Everyone, at this time, we're conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Please hold while we poll for questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from Casey Ryan from WestPark Capital. Your line is live.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Thank you, Ari, Tom. Nice quarter.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Thanks, Casey.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Yeah, you bet. It sounds like we're hitting an inflection point with what you're seeing in the market and the success with HawkSearch. I have a couple of questions around that. First of all, I think you called out $2.1 million was kind of from what you're calling the core product, right? Sort of WooRank plus HawkSearch in the quarter.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Correct.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Services were about $700,000. It looks like taking $2.8 million, that services is like 1/3 of what HawkSearch sales are or sort of that core software sale. Is that a ratio that will sort of continue to be consistent so that if we played it out and the core revenue was higher, services would be higher, or is that not going to sort of hold long-term?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

It actually adds up a little bit different than that. I'm going to have Tom break it down for you.

Thomas Windhausen (CFO)

Okay. The services, right, in Ari's comments, we had services of $700,000 for the quarter. Those are not all core. I think you mentioned that in what you said.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Thomas Windhausen (CFO)

Here's how it is. We got $2.1 million in revenue for our core product line. That's both services and subscription. About 80% of that, a little bit north of 80%, is subscription. Like 19% is services, whatever that math comes out to be. That's core revenue. Core revenue is growing by double digit. That's what we're declaring. We're not going into more detail.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Fully declaring that, right?

Thomas Windhausen (CFO)

Yep. That's got the net revenue retention of 107%, CAC payback better than 20 months. The rest of the revenue for the company, services and subscription, is the non-core.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Got it. Okay. Okay.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

The reality is that we're kind of seeing the non-core declining. It has historically been declining and knocking out the growth in the core. This year, FY 2025, we're providing better clarity on that for everybody so that we can see that breakthrough growth coming in, the double-digit growth from core.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

From core. Right. Okay. Good. This is sort of a helpful way to sort of frame it. So tell me about for the core products, I guess talk a little bit about how you see the sales. It sounds like the 18% win rate is very strong. Tell me what you see from sort of the lead gen or interest side, if that's expanding sort of at a faster rate or a faster rate than maybe we had seen in revenues. Or talk about qualitatively, maybe, if it's possible, about the pipeline.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. That's the thing that's got me super excited right now. Qualitatively, we've got leads that are coming in at a higher rate than we've ever had before on a per-dollar basis. That's represented by a very strong CAC payback. Customer acquisition costs are very efficient coming from face-to-face conferences, these narrow verticals, industry verticals like fasteners and plumbing and things like that. We're not so much going to the technology conferences as we are to where our customers' conferences are.

Out of those, what we call a qualified lead, which is not a very high bar, qualified lead for us, it's an objective measurement, meaning that that person has contacted us twice, not us sending them an email, but them filling out a form on a landing page, sending us an email, or calling us two times, and has given us an indication of what their budget is and an indication of who the person is who will make the ultimate decision. That's it. We're seeing 18% conversion to a win out of someone that just goes that far or a lead that just goes that far with us.

What that tells me is that we've got the right products, we're in the right market, and we need to go all in on sales and marketing immediately and take advantage because that kind of a win rate is not going to be here forever. That's my FOMO comment. It's go, go, go time.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Yeah. Listen, I took notice of that 18% win rate. Yeah, it makes perfect sense that we should expand that as rapidly as possible, right, especially considering that low bar to sort of measuring the qualified lead perspective. That is very exciting. One thing else about the pipeline, I guess, is is it possible that people can go from lead to sort of customer through self-service entirely? It sounds like maybe there is some functionality there where people can sort of enable HawkSearch on their own, or do you always have to touch them in some way?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

With our connectors, the Salesforce AppExchange connector and the BigCommerce Catalyst connector, people could go directly on their own. The reality is that's not how it works. There's typically a digital agency or systems integrator that's involved who's managing their broader website. We have salespeople that do have conversations. The entire sales cycle from the very first time that they hit our system, way before they're a qualified lead, all the way to either buying or not buying from us, but closing one way or the other, is 105 days on average. Our sales team is currently two what we call BDRs, business development reps. Those are inside salespeople that are making the initial contact, plus two BDEs, business development executives who are actually running the deal, plus a working manager. That's our outside sales team. We also have our customer success sales team.

Because we've released so many products, our customers don't own all of them yet. We also have a three-person team that is selling to our existing customers. That is the sales org. On the marketing side, we've got a working VP of Marketing, a graphics person, an event coordinator, and then an SEO consultant halftime. That is who's doing the marketing. That team by itself right now is not the first place for us to expand. Our first place that we expand is we're just going to go to more conferences with that team, make everybody stay up all night, every night, run so many deals into them that they're choking on them, and then we'll keep on adding more and more people after those guys are so rich they stop working for us because of their commissions.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Right. Got it. Okay. You guys didn't offer any formal guidance around revenue, but sort of have you gotten a comfort around sort of looking at your sort of pipeline, I guess, and saying it's 105 days, which is a quarter, right, roughly? You say, "Okay." Have you guys built out a model where you feel you have some confidence, even if the numbers are internal, that you say, "We sort of understand where revenues will come in if things continue to continue?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Yeah. We actually have, yeah, we do have pretty good confidence. There is volatility on a company our size, which is one of the reasons why we're not doing guidance. We have our revenue broken into two halves. We have our core and our non-core. With the non-core, that's renewal of existing customers. That's pretty easy to forecast because we know all of them and we know whether they're renewing or not. We do sell core products into that non-core group as well. Those are also highly forecastable. On the core side of winning new logos, that's the part that's less forecastable, but that's 105 days, which is not very long. As you mentioned, it's one quarter. That's good visibility.

Boy, I really like selling in that model more than the old days when I used to sell these three-quarter deals that find out to the last minute. We do internally have a good sense for that. That's important because we run on a shoestring budget and we don't have a lot of room for missing something on the financial side.

Casey Ryan (Director of Research)

Right. Okay. Okay. Terrific. Look, it sounds like a real shift in tone here, and I think it's very positive. Yeah, we're excited to see where we go as we get it moving to 2025. Thanks for the time and a great quarter again.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Thank you, Casey.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Once again, everyone, if you have any questions or comments, please press Star then 1 on your phone. Your next question is coming from Howard Halpern from Taglich Brothers. Your line is live.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

Congratulations on the quarter and the customer wins. Keep it going.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Thank you, Howard. Nice to hear your voice.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

In terms of overall operating expenses, we're going to see the shift from research and development to sales and marketing and only maybe an incremental increase in overall operating expenses.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

That's right. We're going to hold the operating expenses more or less where they're at. Instead, we're just shifting personnel and consultants and so forth so that we'll be investing more on that marketing side. G&A is already running a pretty tight ship with four people in it altogether. R&D really killed it last year, did a great job, released a lot of stuff, and now it's time to sell what they built.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

Okay. Can you talk about maybe the new partnership opportunities and potentially new verticals or new sectors within verticals?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. On the partnership side, that's an important and relatively new sales channel for us. You have two types of partners. We've got what we call ISVs, and these are content management and e-commerce platforms. They include BigCommerce, Optimizely, Salesforce, Magento. These platforms, we typically will have connectors that allow us to seamlessly integrate with them. They have marketplaces where we can put our software and their customers can buy from us. They're important partners for us because their customers have already built their website, which takes a lot of money and takes a lot of time and slows deals down. Now it's a matter of just enhancing their website with whatever their default search capabilities were with our HawkSearch AI-powered search. The second category of partner is the digital agency, also called the systems integrator.

These are the teams that actually do the initial implementation of an e-commerce site. They have an ongoing relationship with the end online store to continually update their site. They are very influential in the selection of technologies that are launched on that site. They will recommend HawkSearch. These are companies like American Eagle. They're like Gorilla. There are a lot of 50-person local market system integrators/digital agencies that we partner with. That's half of the channel. Systems integrators and ISVs are involved in basically every deal. The other half of the channel is direct marketing. This is where we are finding a lot of progress with vertical, physical, human conferences. We're seeing progress where we have our own customer conference, but then we invite a partner and have them bring their customers as well.

It becomes a joint customer conference with cross-sales across the two customer bases. We, of course, do a lot of online marketing with webinars and virtual conferences and even Google AdWords that bring in a lot of leads.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

Okay. So really, the emphasis is going to be on the current verticals that you're in and then just sort of migrate to potential new verticals slowly and then add them into the mix?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

That's exactly right, Howard, because we see a great return on investment when we reach critical mass in a narrow vertical and have specific referenceable customers. The reality is that although we, meaning Bridgeline, live in the technology world on a day-to-day basis and can generalize and create analogies between how we might implement one site and another one, when we're working with someone who is an expert in the plumbing world, they don't necessarily have the familiarity with our type of software to see how what we implemented for a hospital might be analogous to what their needs are. After we want a couple of plumbing customers, then we really hit critical mass. We've got the specific example websites and the specific customer references that make all the difference in the world.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

Okay. You feel that's why the 105 days could actually start coming down in some of those core verticals?

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

That's right. In the core verticals, we see faster sales cycles thanks to the references and the case studies and example websites. Also, the 105 comes down when we are working closely with our partners on those joint customer conferences, for instance, because the relationship just gets accelerated due to the partner relationship.

Howard Halpern (Principal Equity Analyst)

Okay. Keep up the great work, guys.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Thank you very much. Nice talking.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue. I'll now hand the conference back to management for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Ari Kahn (President and CEO)

Everybody, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate the continued support of our customers, our partners, our shareholders. We're obviously very excited about the business and ongoing growth prospects. We look forward to speaking with you again in our second quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. It'll be in May 2025. Until then, be well.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.