Ituran Location and Control - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ituran Q1 2023 results conference call. All participants are at present in listen only mode. Following management's formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. For operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. You should have all received by now the company's press release. If you have not received it, please contact Ituran's Investor Relations team at EK Global Investor Relations at 1 212 378 8040, or view it in the news section of the company's website, www.ituran.co.il. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Kenny Green of EK Global Investor Relations. Mr. Green, please begin.

Kenny Green (Co-Founder and Director)

Thank you. Good day to all of you, and welcome to Ituran's conference call to discuss the Q1 2023 results. I'd like to thank Ituran's management for hosting this conference call. With me today on the call are Mr. Eyal Sheratzky, CEO, Mr. Udi Mizrahi, Deputy CEO and VP Finance, and Mr. Eli Kamer, CFO of Ituran. Eyal will begin with a summary of the quarter's results, followed by Eli with a summary of the financials. We will then open the call for the question and answer session. I would like to remind everyone that the safe harbor statement in today's press release also covers the contents of this conference call. Now, Eyal, please go ahead.

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

Thank you, Kenny. I'd like to welcome all of you to our Q1 2023 call. I would like to thank you for joining us today. We are clearly very pleased with our achievements in the Q1. The year has kicked off with a robust start and a solid subscriber growth we saw throughout 2022. Now in the Q1 is clearly having a positive impact on our financial performance. In this quarter, we experienced record subscriber revenues with record subscriber growth margins, and also saw our highest quarterly net income and EBITDA in over four years. From a strategic perspective, we experienced strong growth in subscribers, adding a net total of 49,000 subscribers, of which 44,000 were from the aftermarket and 5,000 were OEM additions.

As we shared with you last quarter, our expectations for the growth rate in our subscriber base stand at between 180,000 to 200,000 net new subscribers as annually. We are on track. As our results show, the strong subscriber growth we have experienced now for a few quarters is being increasingly reflected in the subscription revenue growth, even despite the currency headwinds due to the dollar strength compared with last year. Q1 subscription revenue grew at 11% year-over-year or 16% growth when calculated in local currencies, which neutralize the effect of the exchange rate on our growth. We have every reason to expect that this growth trend will continue well into 2023 and beyond.

The growth margin on subscription fees continue to improve, and we have seen sequential improvements throughout each quarter last year, and now a record subscriber growth margin of 58.1% in Q1. It demonstrated the operating leverage in our model is becoming increasingly apparent, whereby we can add each new subscriber without a corresponding significant increase in cost, and it will continue to benefit us in the coming quarters. As you remember, we recently entered a few new verticals, which are performance well, such as the finance segments and the UBI. This is helping us to get traction and continue to increase our overall subscriber base. As far as the Israeli market goes, it is worthwhile noting that after many years in this market, we've seen a recent increase in the theft rates and a dramatic increase.

With thanks to our good performance in this vertical of stolen vehicle recovery, it increases the need of the insurance companies to use our services. In summary, we are very pleased with our performance in the Q1, and it represent a great start to 2023. Both ongoing solid performance in our traditional aftermarket business, a good recovery in the OEM business, and especially the growth engines we've seeded in the past years are all driving the subscriber growth. While we are aware of the global economic slowdown ahead, our 2 million-plus subscriber base paying us on an ongoing monthly basis give us significant resilience. Furthermore, our recent accelerated subscriber growth will continue to translate into increased subscriber revenue growth throughout the coming year, with faster growing profitability as the operating leverage continue working in our favor.

We've already seen the early fruits of our recent success in the current quarter. Looking ahead, we are confident the improvement we have made to our business over the past few years, leading to today's robust subscriber growth, are here to stay for the foreseeable future. We're excited for the year ahead and anticipate a positive trend will continue throughout 2023 and beyond. With that, I hand over to Eli. Eli, please go ahead.

Eli Kamer (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Eyal. I will provide a short summary of the financial results. You can find the more detailed results that we issued in the press release earlier today.

Revenues for the Q1 of 2023 were $79.5 million, a 10.3% increase compared with the revenue of $72.1 million last year. Q1 revenues from subscription fees were $55.8 million, an increase of 11% over Q1 2022 revenues. The subscriber base amounted to 2,115,000 as of March 31, 2023. This represents an increase of 49,000 net over that of the end of the period quarter, an increase of 191,000 year-over-year. During the quarter, there was an increase of 44,000 in the aftermarket subscriber base and an increase of 5,000 in the OEM subscriber base. Q1 product revenues were $23.7 million, an increase of 8% compared with that of the Q1 of 2022.

The geographic breakdown of revenues in the Q1 was as follows: Israel 61%, Brazil 24%, rest of world 25%. EBITDA for the quarter was $20.8 million or 26.2% of revenues, an increase of 8% compared with EBITDA of $19.3 million or 26.7% of revenue in the Q1 of last year. Net income for the Q1 was $11.4 million or 14.3% of revenues, or diluted earnings per share of $0.56 per share, compared to $8.7 million or 12.1% of revenue, or diluted earnings per share of $0.43 per share in the Q1 of last year. Cash flow from operation for the Q1 of 2023 was $17.4 million.

On a cash on the balance sheet as of March 31st, 2023, the company had cash, including marketable securities, of $33.5 million and debt of $9.2 million, amounting to a net cash of $24.3 million. This is compared with cash, including marketable securities, of $28.2 million and debt of $12.2 million, amounting to a net cash of $16 million as of December 31st, 2022. For the Q1 of 2023, a dividend of $3 million was declared. In the Q1 under our share buyback program, Ituran purchased 54,000 shares for a total of $1.2 million. Share repurchases were funded by available cash and repurchases of Ituran ordinary shares were made based on SEC Rule 10b-18.

With that, I'd like to open the call for a question and answer session. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're using speaker equipment, kindly lift the handset before pressing the numbers. Your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. The first question is from Chris Reimer of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Chris Reimer (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I was wondering if you could start with giving any color around the uptick in the OEM subscribers this quarter, and what kind of went into that, and is it a recovery or is it more of a one-time thing?

Eli Kamer (EVP and CFO)

Hi. Actually, we think it's something that start showing the changes in the components problems that the world were facing. It's influence primarily on the car producers. Don't forget that most of the cars produced today is based on computers and components, so I think that this allow the manufacturers of the brands that we work with to produce more car because the request was there. They couldn't supply the request, and now it's look like they succeed to do it better. When it happened, of course, it influenced positively on our growing in the OEM segment. As I said in the past, it's something that has some seasonality, has some volatility, depend on things which we cannot, of course, influence.

It looks like or our assumption that it will continue in the coming I would say year. Maybe we'll face some quarters differently, but we think like it's a recovery.

Chris Reimer (Equity Research Analyst)

Excellent. Thanks. Can you talk a little about operating expenses and what kind of strategies you're putting into place to create more operating leverage?

Eli Kamer (EVP and CFO)

basically.

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

We should consider that when you grow 200,000 subscriber a years, a year, and when you want to develop and offer new solutions, it's request us from time to time, of course, to add human resources for each of these, I would say, aspects. One is the service side, and second is the R&D side. Currently, I would say that after the last years, when we saw that our expenses are growing and we couldn't see the influence in the revenue side, I think that 2023 will show that now the operating leverage will demonstrate to our P&L because the revenue reaping these fruits happening now, and we see that the margins, that the margins are increasing.

We show it in 2021. I believe that it will continue in the next quarter.

Chris Reimer (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay. That's it for me. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

If there are any additional questions, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Please stand by while we poll for more questions. The next question is from Sasha Karim. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, gents. Congrats on the quarter. First question for me would just be on guidance for subscriber growth going forward. Do you have any more specific comments, quantitative comments you can make on the pace of subscriber growth in the coming quarters and how you arrive at those numbers?

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

Regards subscribers, we already gave at the end of 2022, and as we said today, we are still solid with those expectations. Of course, it's based on our assumption and our 2022 track records of the new segment that we penetrated during 2021 and 2022, and also assuming that we will continue to integrate our brand in that segment and also in the traditional segment, which are fleet management and SVR, which we see more and more attraction in Latin America.

Recently, and I mentioned it in my speech today, in Israel, after many years, we see that the cost of rates increasing dramatically, something that encouraging the insurance companies to add more and more models, which in the last even decade, they didn't require these kind of models to install security and location solutions, which will allow us also to increase our penetration to new segments, but also to strengthen our guidance of new subscribers along the year.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Next one for me would be on inventory. Inventory investment and CapEx seemed very low in the Q1. It didn't sound like it from your comments, but does this maybe indicate some reduced confidence about generating additional subscriber growth in Israel and Brazil? 'Cause it could be considered a leading indicator.

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

When there was a shortage of components, and we knew that we are facing a new growth of subscribers, we did a very aggressive inventory purchase in order not to be in a problem of supplying this new growth. Last year, we had a very aggressive inventory purchase. When the again, the shortage stopped or declined, we continued to be in a position to buy with a let's call it a normal inventory timeline. We saw kind of a decline that you could see it in this quarter. I believe and expect that the Q1 CapEx is something that represent a quarterly CapEx.

Of course, even in inventory, there's some volatility, we can see, but, again, shouldn't be dramatically along the year.

Speaker 5

Mm-hmm. We noticed also sales and marketing ticked up in Q1. Are there any specific projects you're investing in right now? For example, do you feel the timing is right maybe to push ICS in Mexico? In general, what can we expect in terms of OpEx? Will it rise each quarter this year?

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

Sasha, forgive me that I can't see it. As long as we know and I see, there is no any or at least no big change in sales and marketing. Can you point me the specific... The cost is actually $3.3 million in Q1 and also in Q4 last year.

Speaker 5

Apologies. Yes, I'm looking at G&A. Maybe you could just give us a feeling for SG&A in total going forward.

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

Since part of some compensation policy and inflation growing can influence you. It depend on the result, you still can see that in terms of %, and it's very, I would say that it's more correct to judge the SG&A based on the % of revenues, and this is quite stable.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks. My, my last one would just be on fleet management subscribers. Your Form 20-F implies that the growth there slowed from 30% in 2021 to 20% growth in 2022. Should we expect that slowing to continue, or do you have reasons to believe it can re-accelerate?

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

I think again, that in order to make it more, I think more, right way, when you have a subscriber base and it's growing, by definition in percentage it will decrease. For example, when you grow from 100,000 subscribers with another 100,000 subscribers, you're growing 100%. When you have 2 million and you're growing 200,000, you're growing only 10%. The percentage is something that you always have to check or to watch with the absolute numbers because our subscriber base is something that's increasing, and this is the same situation with the fleet management.

Today, when we have almost double fleet management numbers than five years ago, so in percentage if, even if we grow double than we grow, five years ago, in terms of new subscribers in percentage it will be less always. Please, I think that we are not expecting that it will decrease. We're expecting to continue the trend. In percentage, it will look always smaller.

Speaker 5

Understood. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

If there are any additional questions, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Please stand by while we poll for more questions. There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Sheratzky to go ahead with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call will be available tomorrow on Ituran's website, www.ituran.co.il. Mr. Sheratzky, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Eyal Sheratzky (CEO and Director)

On behalf of management of Ituran, I would like to thank you all for your continued interest and long-term support of our business. We hope to be speaking with some of you over the coming quarter. If you are interested in meeting or speaking with us, feel free to reach out to our investor relation team. With that, we end our call. Thank you and have a good day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes the Ituran Q1 2023 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.