Inuvo - Q2 2024
August 8, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Inuvo, Inc's Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 8, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Natalya Rudman of Crescendo Communications. Please go ahead.
Natalya Rudman (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Joanna, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today for the Inuvo second quarter 2024 shareholder update call. Today, Inuvo's Chief Executive Officer, Richard Howe, and Chief Financial Officer, Wally Ruiz, will be your presenters on the call. We would also like to remind our shareholders that we plan to file our 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission this evening. Before we begin, I'm going to review the company's safe harbor statement. The statements in this conference call that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements relating to future events, and as such, all forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.
When using this call, the words anticipate, could, enable, estimate, intend, expect, believe, potential, will, should, project, and similar expressions as they relate to Inuvo, Inc., are such a forward-looking statement. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those anticipated by Inuvo at this time. In addition, other risks are more fully described in Inuvo's public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which could be reviewed at www.sec.gov. The company makes no commitment to disclose any revisions to forward-looking statements or any facts, events, or circumstances after the date hereof that bear upon forward-looking statements. In addition, today's discussion will include references to non-GAAP measures. The company believes that such information provides an additional measurement and a consistent historical comparison of its performance.
A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in today's news release on our website. With that, I'll now turn the call over to CEO, Rich Howe. Please go ahead, Rich.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Thank you, Natalya, and thanks everyone for joining us today. We are pleased to report that for the quarter ended June thirtieth, 2024, we delivered 9.4% year-over-year growth. For the first half of the year, we've delivered a healthy 23.6% year-over-year growth. And that, of course, is coming off of a very strong second half of 2023, where we also grew 32%, 32% year-over-year. The third quarter has also started off strong with unaudited revenue coming in around $7.7 million for the month of July. And that compares to the roughly $5.9 million per month average we experienced throughout the first half of 2024.
We also experienced a significant improvement in our Adjusted EBITDA within the quarter, with a $1.1 million improvement year over year, and a $2.4 million improvement for the first half as compared to the prior year. Free cash flow has also improved over the first half of 2024 in comparison to last year. Wally will share more details about our second quarter 2024 financial results shortly. We've had strong momentum within existing and new clients. We've had some wins with our new product, newer product sales, and we've had a material and what we believe to be positive event occur across our industry within the second quarter. What I'd like to do now is spend some time discussing these items. Let's begin with the industry.
Google, of course, announced a new position on the deprecation of cookies within their Chrome browser this past quarter. For several years now, Google has been developing an alternative technology to replace cookies. This technology has aptly been named the Privacy Sandbox. Unlike Apple, with their Safari browser, Google, whose business is predominantly advertising, has had to satisfy a chorus of constituents that include governments, the ad tech industry, the consumer data industry, and various other groups with a vested interest in the cookie's survival. Now, it's very likely their efforts to satisfy all these parties have been difficult, and consequently, what they appear to have decided to do now, is put the power of making the decision about the cookie in the hands of consumers.
As a reminder, the cookie is the way your browser tracks your activity around the Internet and is the means through which consumer data is accessed. Google has not been specific about exactly how they plan to empower consumers, but we believe it will be similar to the way Apple engaged consumers when they wanted to eliminate app tracking. When Apple gave consumers that option to opt out, over 90% of them chose to do so. Consequently, what Inuvo believes is that this is good news for consumer privacy advocates because history has shown that when consumers are given a clear choice regarding the use of their data and the tracking of their activity, they overwhelmingly say no.
The simple reason why this is a good thing for Inuvo is because the majority of our competitors need this cookie ID to decide whether or not to bid on a media placement transaction on behalf of their clients. And of course, Inuvo's AI does not. Within programmatic advertising channels, already 70% of these media transactions no longer contain a persistent cookie ID, and that number includes everyone using Apple Safari browsers, where cookies were blocked starting in 2020. The remaining 30% is effectively Google Chrome users, and consequently, we fully expect that number to drop very quickly following the informed consumer choice Google plans to give its users. While we have said this before, it's worth mentioning again that Inuvo's audience discovery and targeting AI already outperforms, by a wide margin, the best of cookie-based technologies. So we have never required that the cookie disappear.
However, its deprecation and ultimately obsolescence is a catalyst for industry change that we believe will accelerate demand for Inuvo, given our single biggest obstacle to adoption continues to be the hold incumbents have on clients and the fear those clients have of a change. Let's shift now to products and clients. As we have discussed in the past, Inuvo has developed two AI technologies, one for audience discovery and targeting, and the other for the measurement of marketing's performance. Now, we developed these solutions because we knew these would be the two biggest problems facing advertisers as the internet adapted to a consumer privacy-based paradigm. Across the industry, we continue to be amazed at just how inaccurate the systems are within corporations for measuring the effectiveness of what, for many of these brands, is their largest expense line.
We frequently observe them using KPIs that incentivize poor behavior in their vendors, while inaccurately measuring the influence of the various channels they're using on their business. As has been the case with media targeting, the industry over time has built technology to help companies understand performance. However, that technology has also depended on tracking consumers around the internet. As I mentioned earlier, that mechanism is now severely broken, and consequently, so are these measurement solutions. This is why we built our predictive media mix modeling capabilities. We have a number of clients now using this technology, including our largest retail client, who began doing business with us, not only for our audience technology, but also for the capabilities of our media mix technology.
This client now uses this capability to measure and optimize the contribution on sales resulting from the dozen or so different marketing channels that they deploy. Unlike existing methods that require a one-to-one consumer mapping of advertising clicks to conversions using the cookie ID, our technology requires nothing other than the actual spend over time within channels, alongside the actual business metrics. Using historical data, these very sophisticated machine learning algorithms we've developed can detect patterns that allow the AI to predict the amount of money our clients should spend within each channel. This is an analytic product that strategically positions Inuvo alongside the corner office within our clients. We see demand increasing for this product with a number of high-profile prospects in our pipeline, including a financial services company that is itself already using our audience technology.
We see this product strategically, once installed within a client, also being a catalyst for the adoption and expansion of our audience technology, in part because it can accurately predict and contrast the value of our audience technology, relative to the other marketing strategies being deployed. While our managed services business continues to drive growth, and we signed up another three new agency clients in the quarter, we have also started scaling our self-serve capabilities. Larger agencies, mostly owned by the holding companies, have historically not been our target. That has now changed, and we've had a half dozen self-serve clients sign up, including a major technology company and one of the largest car manufacturers in the world. The elegance of this self-serve product lies in its flexibility to empower our clients, with the ability to easily model and target audiences without our assistance.
It also allows us to more quickly scale certain general audience categories, like, say, back to school or the Olympics, and any one of hundreds of other similar audiences. But perhaps most importantly, the self-serve version of our AI boasts high margins for Inuvo, with gross profits ranging from 85%-95%. So accelerated sales here will drop cash to the bottom line at scale. Across our agencies and brand clients, we outperformed KPIs once again on average by about 30% in the quarter. And we expect to sign a master services agreement in the third quarter with one of the largest retailers in the world, which will allow media buyers across their enterprise to access our capabilities.
We have already been serving this client for one of their private label brands, and the success of those efforts has now resulted in this agreement. The client is forecasted to do roughly $2 million this year, with the potential to be significantly larger when the MSA is in place. This client has numerous private label brands in their portfolio. And each of those brands are, you know, generally limited to using vendors approved by the corporation. In total, it's taken us roughly 1.5 years to become this approved vendor, so the bar is high for competition here. Platform relationships continue to be a strong growth and working capital engine for our company.
These clients grew roughly 11% in the quarter, and as a group, are scaling as we head into what is typically the strongest advertising quarters of our year. One of our platform clients uses our capabilities in a manner analogous to our self-serve IntentKey product, and consequently, that revenue is also roughly at 90% margin contribution to the bottom line. As we have mentioned, this relationship only took hold in 2024, and in Q2, it generated over $200,000 of this high margin revenue that flows to the bottom line. I want to also reinforce for our shareholders how important these platform relationships are to our business. Our agency and brand clients require working capital. Our platform clients generate positive working capital. This important distinction is often missed by our shareholders.
These receivables, which historically have had low risk, can be borrowed against to fund working capital growth needs. You will also have noted from our press release that we closed a new $10 million credit facility in the quarter. We use this facility to fund working capital, and while we had an existing $5 million facility in place with another financial institution, that facility had certain constraints that did not meet our needs. We anticipate this new agreement will provide the flexibility we need to continue growing our business. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Wally for a more detailed assessment of our financial performance. Wally?
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
Thank you, Rich. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll recap the financial results of our second quarter of 2024. As Rich mentioned, Inuvo reported revenue of $18.2 million for the second quarter of this year, and that's compared to $16.7 million for the same period of the prior year. That's a 9.4% increase year-over-year. The higher revenue this quarter was driven by our largest platform client due to the collaborative effort that we initiated in 2023. Strategically, we are focused on scaling revenue from platform clients and signing new mid-size agencies and brands directly. In the second quarter of 2024, 83% of our revenue came from platform clients, while 17% came from agencies and brands.
That's compared to 79% from platform clients and 21% from agencies and brands in the second quarter of last year. We expect this revenue mix to continue for the remainder of the year. Cost of revenue was $2.9 million in the second quarter of 2024, compared to $2.4 million for the same period of last year. Cost of revenue is primarily composed of media payments we make on behalf of our agency and brand clients, and to a lesser extent, payments made to website publishers and app developers that host our advertisements. We reported a gross profit of $15.3 million, compared to $14.3 million for the same quarter last year, a $1 million increase on $1.6 million higher revenue.
The gross profit margin for the second quarter of 2024 was 84%, compared to 85.8% for the same period last year. We expect gross margins to increase in the current quarter. Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2024 totaled $17 million, down from $17.6 million for the same period last year, primarily due to lower compensation and general and administrative expense. Marketing costs were $12.4 million in the second quarter of 2024, compared to $12.1 million in the same quarter last year. Marketing costs increased primarily because of higher media expenses associated with the higher revenue from platform clients. Compensation expense for the second quarter of 2024 was $3 million, compared to $3.3 million in the same quarter of the prior year.
Compensation expense was lower in the second quarter of 2024, due primarily to lower incentive expense, lower stock-based compensation, and lower commission expense. Though the company continues to grow, we've reduced our workforce by 13 positions in the second quarter. Our total employment, both full and part-time, was 83 for the second quarter of 2024, compared to 84 in the same quarter of the prior year. At 83 associates, our revenue per associate for the trailing twelve months is over $900,000. That's nearly double that of our nearest competitors. We are confident that we can deliver on our growth plans with the resources we have, and we do not expect to add additional resources this year. General and administrative expense for the second quarter of 2024 was $1.5 million, compared to $2.3 million in the prior year.
General and administrative costs were lower this year, in this year's quarter, primarily due to lower doubtful accounts expense as our collections have improved. Net financing expense was approximately $42,000 in the second quarter of this year, compared to an expense of $38,000 in the same quarter last year. The net loss improved in the second quarter of 2024 to $1.7 million, or $0.01 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $3.4 million, or $0.03 per basic or diluted share for the same period last year. That's a $1.6 million year-over-year improvement. Adjusted EBITDA loss also improved in the second quarter of 2024. It improved to $668,000.
That's compared to a loss of $1.8 million for the same period last year. That's an improvement of $1.1 million year-over-year. As of June 30, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents of $2 million. In addition, in July, as Rich mentioned, we closed a 3-year, $10 million asset-based working capital line of credit. At June 30, there was no debt outstanding. Our capital structure is composed of 140 million common shares outstanding, 7 million employee restricted stock units outstanding, and 107,000 out-of-the-money warrants. The company has reduced its cash burn by $1.6 million in the first half of 2024, compared to the first half of last year. We expect continued improvement throughout the rest of the year.
With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Rich.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Okay, thanks, Wally. We had a strong first half, achieving year-over-year growth of roughly 24%. Throughout this period, we have also improved our Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. With $7.7 million in revenue, entering Q3 for July, we are coming into the second half with strong momentum, and second half of the year is almost always the stronger part of our year. Our higher margin products have started to generate revenue, and we are seeing traction with our predictive media mix modeling product. We are extremely excited about the potential to scale our largest retail client as a result of a Master Services Agreement, which is currently being circulated within that client for signature. Our platform relationships continue to scale with significant upside potential remaining within those relationships.
With that, I will turn the call over to the operator, to get questions. Joanna?
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by two. And if you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. First question comes from Brian Kinstlinger at Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
Speaker 6
Hi, this is Kevin for Brian. Thanks for taking our questions. So first question, with Google's announcement regarding cookies and Apple already eliminating cookies, is there an event or an aha moment where and when a consumer needs to more quickly find the tools to advertise with products that can operate in a cookieless environment?
Richard Howe (CEO)
Kevin, can you just clarify the consumer aspect of that, please? And then I'll answer it, that you're asking.
Speaker 6
Like, kind of, like, just your customers in general.
Richard Howe (CEO)
So, how are they feeling about this, maybe? Maybe, is that what you're trying to figure out, like, how are clients reacting to the, to the news from Google?
Speaker 6
Y- Yes.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Okay. Yeah. So, the answer to that is probably not surprising. There's a certain number of them who, I guess, woke up after that announcement from Google and thought, "Oh, well, so cookies aren't going away." And I wouldn't say that that was all of them, but probably a majority of them. And of course, you know, that's not what's happening. And so a lot of people, you know, you know, want that to have happened, and certainly, the people that we compete with want that to happen. But that's not what is going to transpire here, which is why we, you know, we put our own press release on this issue and clarified, you know, this issue.
Google has been investing in the Privacy Sandbox for many years now, and they were very clear about, you know, in their statement, that they're gonna continue investing in that. Now, why would you bother doing that if you're not gonna do away with cookies anymore? That's the first thing probably one should ask themselves. And the second thing is, they were pretty clear that they were gonna move to a consumer, an informed consumer, you know, prompt, related to this. Our belief, just with our knowledge of the industry, for why they're moving to this method is, is because of what I said in my script. It's like Google has this tremendously difficult job to try to satisfy a lot of constituents, and I think they probably found that almost an impossible thing to do.
So the best thing to do, in such cases, is to try to not satisfy everybody and simply ask the consumer whether or not they want to be tracked around the internet. The best historical litmus test for such a question is clearly Apple. As I said in my script, well, and for anybody listening to this call right now who has an iPhone, we've all been asked this question, and we all answer the same question when it comes up on our phone, and the answer is: "No, thank you." So yeah, we think it's gonna accelerate. As soon as Google finally puts the prompt in front of the Chrome browser users, and provided it's the right prompt, the cookies will go away rapidly.
There'll always be a certain number of them that will remain in circulation, but we think it's gonna accelerate the deprecation, not slow it down.
Speaker 6
Great, thank you. Could you maybe talk about the demand for IntentKey, both from an existing customer as well as a new logo standpoint? And, how much wallet share are you gaining from the budgets of existing customers? And then, have you seen any acceleration in the rate of new logo wins?
Richard Howe (CEO)
The pipeline looks healthy. So I can't speak specifically to the size of our pipelines, but, you know, we spent quite a bit of time, I don't know, how do I say it? Upscaling our sales organization over the last year, notably, you know, bringing Barry in, Barry as President, who, you know, for people who don't know, this was the former, you know, Chief Executive Officer of a very successful technology-oriented agency called Media Kitchen. And so he's helped us, you know, if you will, upgrade, you know, our policy, our pre- our processes and our training, and we're seeing, you know, the benefits of that now.
The only challenge we have in the sales cycle—well, I mentioned them in my call script, is like the incumbents are really good at trying to change the narrative, you know, within our clients. So we're fighting, if I can call it an ignorance, associated with the problem, you know, being propagated by the incumbents that we're up against. And then, of course, there's just the natural inertia that people don't like change, that we have to fight, you know, time and time again. So that means that our sales cycles tend to be, you know, long.
You know, I think I mentioned for the large retail client, of which we would like to get a lot more like that, by the way, you know, we've been at it at least a year and a half with them. You know, it was a year before we ever started generating any revenue, and it took another six months for us to get, you know, us in a place where we can get a Master Services Agreement signed. But once you get in and you're locked in like that, things can scale quickly.
Speaker 6
Great, thank you. Last question I have is, are you seeing any benefits of the presidential election in the third quarter? And also, as you look to the fourth quarter, which is already seasonally strong, do you have any thoughts on the impact of the election on that quarter?
Richard Howe (CEO)
As a company, we have done a very few number of campaigns over the years, but we do have a sort of a view on not going after that business, at least not right now in the evolution of our company. So we try to stay away from politics. Frankly, we don't have the relationships or the context necessary to be able to close that business. And then, of course, there's always you know the challenge of if you go into that business and you end up doing business with one or the other, you offend you know half the country. You know, and our buyers you know are who we're trying to go after. So we've tried to stay away from it, Kevin. So the answer is no.
There should be zero impact on the project, you know, the election on our business.
Speaker 6
Great, thank you very much.
Richard Howe (CEO)
You bet.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question comes from Jon Hickman from Ladenburg. Please go ahead.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Hey, Rich, can you... Maybe this is a naive question, but almost every website I visit already asks me if I want cookies or not. So what's Google gonna do that's different now than ask me if I want the cookies?
Richard Howe (CEO)
Yeah. The questions you're getting asked from the website really have a twofold reason behind them. One is, it was required to do as part of the GDPR issues. So publishers were forced to have to ask consumers about that. And the second is, it allows those websites, the publishers, to store your data and keep it for themselves. It's a-- That's a very different problem, cookie-oriented problem than what Google is going to do. And the difference is, the cookies get set by the browser, John. So the browser owns actually assigning an ID to you, irrespective of whatever the publishers do, right? And so that's what this is going to do.
They're likely to ask you, you know, if they follow the Apple cadence for this, which they may or may not, but I suspect they will do something like what Apple did. They'll probably ask you, you know, do you want, you know, do you wanna be tracked around the internet? And then when you say, if you say no to that, then the cookies will be defaulted off for you. And so, you know, nobody's gonna get an ID for Jon Hickman.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
So are they gonna just ask me one time, or every time I open the browser?
Richard Howe (CEO)
I don't know the answer to that. I don't think anybody knows that.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Richard Howe (CEO)
I, I would suspect strongly that it will be one time. It doesn't need to be asked every time, like a publisher page does. It can be asked once and then just turned off for you.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Frankly, you could do it yourself now, right? If you wanted to, right? Just a lot of consumers don't do that because it's not informed, right? And I think that's why, you know, I can't speak for Google, and I won't speak for Google, but they, you know, they're very careful with their language. And so they did use the word, "an informed consumer choice." So, you know, if you use a Chrome browser today, you could go into there and turn off your third-party cookies, and then they won't be using them. But it's hard to find, you know, it's like it's buried in settings and whatnot, so consumers just don't bother doing it. This is gonna, I think, you know, make it front and center, and they'll just ask you.
And then when you say, "No, I don't want it," then it'll be off.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, then I have another question. So you mentioned that your performance, you know, on your KPI was, like, 30% better than the-
Richard Howe (CEO)
Mm-hmm
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I guess the cookie option. So I, I have a hard time understanding why people are so reluctant, your customers are so reluctant to go with something that's better, that they can.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Yeah
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
See that's better.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Yeah.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Can you elaborate on that?
Richard Howe (CEO)
Yeah, sure can. So actually, first thing is, the 30% is really just the 30% improvement over the KPI average across all our clients. It's not necessarily,
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Mm-hmm
Richard Howe (CEO)
Against cookie base. It's like every, you know, every quarter or so, we, with our existing clients, they reset our goal. You know, and so that just tells you, we continue to outperform the goals our clients are giving us. Historically, though, it has been a good measure of how much better we are than behavioral targeting, but it's not necessarily that. So the answer to your question is the aversion to change, the risk aversion to change, even when there's a significant financial incentive involved. Very difficult thing, you know, it seems, particularly the larger the corporation gets, for folks to change.
To your questions alone, asking me this whole issue of privacy and the implications of it, there's so many companies who have literally their, you know, the life of their company at stake, you know, in this game. And they're, you know, they're telling their clients that this is not a problem or that they have a solution to the problem. And, you know, that confuses clients in their decision-making. It protracts a decision by them. You know, and if you think about that in the context of organizations that are already risk-averse, it's just, it's just obstacles that we have to overcome in our sales cycle, right? So that's why we think the best thing that could happen for us is just, you know, you wake up one morning, and they're almost all gone.
And then, you know, performance starts to decline precipitously, and as a result, they have to change, you know.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, my next question is for Wally. Wally, your comments about gross margin, my gross margin comes—I mean, I'm looking at a gross margin of 84%. Is, is that, is that what you said?
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
Yeah, 84%. That's correct.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
And then you said it was gonna get better going in the future?
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, some of the margin is dependent upon the mix of customers that we have. In fact, a lot of it is based on the mix of customers, and it was a little bit lower than we had anticipated based on that mix, and we expect it to start increasing again in the current quarter.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Mm
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
Q3.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, uh.
Richard Howe (CEO)
It's not gonna get materially better, though, John. You know, just, you know, as a side note, right, which Wally will tell you. I mean, we're already at an extremely high gross margin, so we're talking about, you know, a point here or there, right on this thing.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, so Wally, if you combine marketing expenses with the gross margin line or the cost of revenues, that number was 15.8% this quarter. Can you pontificate about what that number might be going forward?
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
Sure. Although, you know, our expectations, so it was about 15%. Yeah, it will be in that ballpark. Now, ±0.5%.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. For the rest of the year?
Wally Ruiz (CFO)
For the rest of the year, possibly. Well, certainly in the current quarter.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. So then last quarter, you guys talked about hitting the potential of hitting $100 million revenue, kind of run rate or being close to that this year. Do you have any comments about that this quarter?
Richard Howe (CEO)
I think we gave the July number so people could, you know, make this decision for themselves. We never gave guidance that we were gonna do $100 million. I think what we've said, you know, consistently, John, is that, you know, the $25 million a month, I'm sorry, a quarter, revenue number for us is where we return free cash flow positive, which is why we're chasing, you know, that number. But of course, you know, we did $74 million last year, so $100 million is not an insignificant leap. So all we can... Since we haven't given guidance, all we can say is that we're up 24% year-over-year in the first half. And we're entering the second half, you know, with a pretty good number in July, based on historical trends.
We were, you know, free cash flow positive in the third quarter of the prior year, so, you know, there's a good shot we're gonna be again.
Jon Hickman (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, thanks.
Richard Howe (CEO)
You bet.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have any questions, please press star one. Next question comes from Jack Codera at Maxim Group. Please go ahead.
Jack Codera (Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, Rich. Hi, Wally. This is Jack Kodera, calling in for Jack Vander Aarde. Thanks again for taking my questions.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Hi.
Jack Codera (Equity Research Analyst)
You know, if I could ask, you know, about the third-party cookies, you know, for a third time, and maybe ask about the customer friction in a different way. Is it, is it the strategy to, you know, basically wait for the cookies to slowly erode? Or is it more important to just get your foot in the door with new clients just so they can see how well it works? You know, how do you think it's possible to improve, you know, getting rid of that friction, improve the sales cycle? Any color there would be helpful.
Richard Howe (CEO)
I think it's at least the way things are playing out for us, Jack, is it's the latter you said, which is why we've been spending some money on marketing and trying to get our brand out there. You know, you probably have seen us on LinkedIn, where we've been doing a lot of work, promotional work, you know, to try to get, you know, obviously, the CMOs of, you know, the biggest companies in the world understanding this problem better because they literally don't. Well, I shouldn't say all of them, but let's just say there's a certain normalized level of ignorance, you know, amongst the industry itself.
So, yeah, you know, get in, start delivering results and, you know, start getting more of the budget as we do that, as our CMO customers, you know, and our agency customers start to realize that we have a better performing product that provides them with more insights, that makes them ready, you know, for the end game, so to speak.
Jack Codera (Equity Research Analyst)
That's helpful. And then, yeah, one more if I, if I may. Just speaking on kind of broader market demand, you know, given your comments on new clients, can you clarify where you expect to see more growth in terms of platform clients versus agencies and brands? Or, you know, just in general, do you have any expectation for product mix shift for the remainder of the year and longer term?
Richard Howe (CEO)
We believe both have upside opportunities, so it's not a trade-off. We want both to grow. And other than just the, you know, the right out, you know, fact that we want growth, and if both platforms and agencies and brands will grow, that's good for us. But one of the things I made a point of mentioning on this call, that I don't think we've done for quite some time, is to note that there's another strategic reason why platforms is important for a company of our size. Companies of our size, you know, are always, you know, trying to fund their working capital. It's just a consequence of being, you know, sub a hundred, trying to get into the big leagues.
It's often missed by our shareholders that the platform relationships we have actually produced positive working capital. Which again, is something we can borrow against to fund the negative working capital that's coming from, you know, the more differentiated component of our mix, which is the AI and the IntentKey. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. A very, very important thing to keep in mind from a building a business perspective. The second, maybe answering your question is, we believe the mix, it's kind of 80, 20 right now, right? We think that mix, you know, will optimize down over time, meaning 80 will drop, and 20 will rise.
And when that does happen, on a net margin basis, which is I think one of the questions Jon Hickman was bringing up, we would see an increase. So the net margins that Wally was talking about at 15%, when we can increase the 20% of the 80/20 mix, that net margin number will go up quite significantly, actually. So those are kind of, you know, the reasons behind what we're doing.
Jack Codera (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. That's helpful. You know, congrats on the quarter. I'll hop back in the queue.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. There are no further questions. I will turn the call back to Richard Howe for closing comments.
Richard Howe (CEO)
Okay. Thank you, Joanna. And of course, as always, thank you everyone who joined us on the call today, and we appreciate your continued interest in our company.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.
