Iteris - Q3 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and welcome to the Iteris fiscal Q3 2022 financial results conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Todd Kehrli with MKR Group. Please go ahead, sir.

Todd Kehrli (President)

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Iteris' financial results for its 2022 fiscal Q3 ended December 31, 2021. Joining us today are Iteris' President and CEO, Mr. Joe Bergera, and the company's CFO, Mr. Doug Groves. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions from the company's covering sell-side analysts. Before we continue, we'd like to remind all participants that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company, which are statements based on current information, are subject to change, and are not guarantees of future performance. Iteris is not undertaking an obligation to provide updates to these forward-looking statements in the future.

Actual results may differ substantially from what is discussed today, and no one should assume that at a later date, the company's comments from today will still be valid. Iteris refers you to the documents that the company files from time to time with the SEC, specifically the company's most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K, which contain and identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are contained in any of the forward-looking statements. As always, you'll find a webcast replay of today's call on the Investor section of the company's website at www.iteris.com. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Iteris' President and CEO, Mr. Joe Bergera. Joe?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Super. Thank you, Todd, and a good afternoon to everyone. I appreciate all of you joining us today. I wanna remind everyone that we completed the sale of our agriculture and weather analytics segment to DTN, LLC on May 5, 2020. As such, we're reporting the results of that segment as discontinued operations for all periods presented in today's earnings announcement. I'll be discussing only our continuing operations for the remainder of this call. The company reported fiscal 2022 Q3 total revenue of $32 million and fiscal 2022 year-to-date total revenue of $99.3 million, representing a respective 14% and 16% year-over-year increase. At the same time, our Q3 annual recurring revenue of $8.1 million increased 27% year-over-year, while year-to-date annual recurring revenue of $24.9 million increased 43% year-over-year.

In other words, our annual recurring revenue growth significantly outpaced total revenue growth, which resulted in the company recording about 25% of both Q3 and year-to-date total revenue as annual recurring revenue. Due to the continued favorable customer response to our ClearMobility platform, we reported record Q3 total net bookings of $40.9 million, representing a 99% increase compared to the same prior year period. This brings our year-to-date total net bookings to a record $113.6 million, representing a 28% increase year-over-year. Given our sustained record net bookings, we ended the December 31 period with record total ending backlog of $92.3 million, representing a 20% increase year-over-year and an 11% increase on a sequential basis. As always, our reported net bookings and ending backlog figures reflect firm customer orders.

Of our $32 million in Q3 total revenue, 50% was recorded as product revenue and 50% was recorded as service revenue. As a point of comparison, 52% of our $99.3 million in year-to-date revenue was reported as product revenue and 48% as service revenue. The company's product revenue is composed of two components. First, our intersection detection sensors, travel time sensors, and infrastructure-to-vehicle communication devices. Second, third-party products that we distribute, deploy, and often integrate with our own products. Our fiscal 2022 Q3 product revenue was $15.9 million versus $16.4 million in the same prior year period, representing a 3% decrease year-over-year.

The decrease was due to a continued divergence in the sales performance of Iteris products, which increased 10% year-over-year, and third-party products, which declined 49% year-over-year, due largely to the inability of certain third parties to meet critical delivery deadlines. We saw a similar issue with the performance of third-party products in our Q2. With respect to our own products, we too experienced some supply chain issues in the Q3. These issues prevented us from shipping approximately $1.9 million Vantage sensor product orders, limiting the revenue growth of our own products to 10%, as just noted, and precluding us from offsetting the third-party product revenue variance. At the same time, we incurred unplanned costs to source and expedite components from alternative suppliers who were necessary to manufacture our products.

Although we expect these issues to resolve eventually as global supply chains renormalize, we implemented a 10% price increase on certain products effective January 1, 2022. To help offset these increases in cost of goods sold. Later, I'll discuss our product pricing dynamics in more detail, including the timeline to start to realize the impact from our price increases. Notwithstanding the recent supply chain issues, Iteris continues to take market share in the intersection detection, travel time monitoring, and infrastructure to vehicle device product categories. Our share gains are due to excellent sales execution and continuous innovation across our product portfolio that enables us to set the performance standards for the product categories in which we compete. For example, during the Q3, we launched a first of its kind vehicle to everything, or V2X-enabled detection solution branded as Vantage Fusion in partnership with Continental AG.

Vantage Fusion, which uniquely fuses infrastructure and in-vehicle sensors, enables advanced intersection visualization and real-world V2X applications such as virtual basic safety messages, cooperative perception messaging, near-miss analysis, queue detection, and pedestrian activation. Thus, Vantage Fusion will help transportation agencies and automotive OEMs achieve their objectives of safer, smarter, and more sustainable mobility, as well as provide a pathway to level three to level five autonomous driving. Now let's discuss our service lines of business. We recognize two forms of services revenue. One is project-based revenue that is associated with our consulting activities, and two, annual recurring revenue from our software-as-a-service solutions and from our managed services activities. Our fiscal 2022 Q3 services revenue was $16.1 million, versus $11.8 million in the same prior year period, representing a 37% year-over-year increase.

On a year-to-date basis, Fiscal 2022 services revenue was $47.7 million, versus $38.4 million in the same prior year period, representing a 24% year-over-year increase. As mentioned earlier, our Q3 annual recurring revenue of $8.1 million increased 27% year-over-year, and our year-to-date annual recurring revenue of $24.9 million increased 43% year-over-year. In the Q3, we recorded $26.2 million in net services bookings, with the following bookings being some of the more notable. A $6.8 million contract for the first phase of a vehicle-to-infrastructure connected bus signal priority system for L.A. Metro. As you may recall in our recent Investor Day presentation, we noted that transit signal prioritization represents a near-term use case, an important use case for connected vehicle applications.

A $4.5 million signal synchronization project and cloud-enabled managed services contract with the Orange County Transportation Authority. A $1.5 million integrated corridor management, or ICM, contract with the Florida Department of Transportation's District Five. Over $1 million in total contracts from several state and regional agencies for our advanced traveler information system, ClearRoute, and a $1 million traffic signal synchronization program with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority. Additionally, we amended the contract with the state of Iowa that we discussed on our last earnings call. As a result, we resumed the development of new commercial vehicle operations software capabilities that will enhance our existing compliance and inspection software. Under the terms of the contract amendment, we have retired the prior financial risk while preserving our ability to retain the intellectual property rights as well as co-market the solution with the state's support.

In summary, customer response to our ClearMobility Solutions roadmap continues to exceed our expectations, resulting in record total Q3 and year-to-date net bookings, as well as record total ending backlog. Before I discuss our fiscal 2022 Q4 priorities and full year expectations, I'd like to turn the call over to Doug to provide some more color on our Q3 financials.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. As a reminder, please see the company's 10-Q filing and press release, which is posted on our IR website, for a further description of matters under discussion during the call today. As Joe mentioned, we faced several supply chain challenges that impacted both the top and bottom line results this quarter. While we had planned for some of this disruption, it turned out to be more severe than we'd anticipated. From a revenue standpoint, there were approximately four core components as part of the printed circuit card assemblies within our Vantage sensor product family that were simply not available, driving the revenue miss that Joe referred to.

On the cost of goods sold side, we had multiple components that were not available from our normal suppliers, so we had to access secondary markets where we saw prices on these components increase anywhere from 2 to 50 times their normal cost. These component cost increases, coupled with lower overhead absorption due to the lower volumes, impacted the product gross margins by about $1.5 million or almost 1,000 basis points. Obviously, we have many ongoing initiatives to manage this situation. However, we do expect there to be continued supply chain pressure for the next few quarters. On the bright side, demand for our products and services continues to be strong, as evidenced by our record bookings and backlog in the quarter. Now I'll move on to the details of the Q3 results.

Total revenue for the fiscal 2022 Q3 increased 14% to $32 million, compared to $28.2 million in the same quarter a year ago. Our gross margins in the Q3 decreased 670 basis points to 34.7%, compared to 41.4% from the same quarter last year. As previously mentioned, this was due to higher component costs and some unfavorable overhead absorption due to the lower volume in our hardware business. Turning to revenue mix, product revenue decreased 3% to $15.9 million compared to $16.4 million in the same quarter last year. The biggest impact was the approximate $1.9 million in revenue that slipped out of the quarter as previously discussed.

Adjusting for this, product revenue growth would have been 8% year-over-year, and our Vantage sensor product revenue growth would have been 25%. Product gross margins declined 1,410 basis points to 34.5% compared to 48.6% from the same quarter last year due to the volume and supply chain issues mentioned previously. Our service gross margins grew 37%. Excuse me, service revenues grew 37% to $16.1 million compared to $11.8 million in the prior year quarter. As Joe mentioned, in the Q3, 25% of total revenue was annual recurring revenue, compared to 23% in the same quarter last year. Service gross margins increased 360 basis points to 34.8%, compared to 31.2% from the same quarter last year.

This was due to the higher volume and a better mix of more annual recurring revenues. Operating expenses in the Q3 were $13.1 million, compared to $12 million in the same prior year quarter as a result of the TrafficCast acquisition in the Q3 of fiscal year 2021. However, the current quarter operating expenses were down $400,000 on a sequential basis with the prior quarter, and we continue to focus on keeping our general and administrative expenses flat to get more leverage in the P&L and improve our operating margins, notwithstanding the supply chain issues in the current quarter. We reported a GAAP operating loss in the Q3 of $2 million, compared with a GAAP operating loss of $309,000 in the same quarter a year ago. This was driven by the supply chain issues as previously mentioned.

The GAAP net loss from continuing operations in the Q3 was $2.4 million or a loss of $0.06 per share, which compares with a net loss from continuing operations of $261 thousand or $0.01 per share in the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA for the Q3 was $100 thousand or 0.3% of revenue, which compares to approximately $1.5 million or 5.2% of revenue in the Q3 of last year. Given the supply chain challenges in the current quarter and continued expected supply chain headwinds, we are expecting some continued gross margin pressures for the next few quarters. Turning to liquidity and capital resources. Total cash and short-term investments were $27.5 million at the end of the Q3.

The $700,000 decrease quarter-over-quarter was a result of changes in our working capital. Specifically, we're buying more raw materials as buffer stock to hedge against the ongoing supply chain shortages we're seeing. We spent $64,000 in purchases of property and equipment in the Q3, reflecting our asset-light business model. In summary, while we experienced supply chain challenges during the quarter, which were very frustrating, we recognize that we're not alone in this situation. Many Fortune 500 companies have also reported similar experiences given the global shortages on a multitude of products. Some of the examples of steps we're proactively taking to mitigate this situation include extending lead times on our purchase orders, buying ahead where we can, and in some cases, re-engineering certain aspects of our products to find replacement components for those that are just unavailable.

In the meantime, we're pleased by the continued strong demand for our products and services as evidenced by our record bookings and backlog in the quarter, and expect to see our organic growth rate start to accelerate in the Q4 as a result. With our industry-leading products and services, we believe Iteris is well positioned to capitalize on the investment that will be made over the next several years to modernize this country's transportation infrastructure. With that, I will turn the call back over to Joe. Joe?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Great. Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it. Despite the global pandemic and associated economic turbulence, Iteris continues to enhance its position in the large, dynamic and highly fragmented smart mobility infrastructure management market, a sector characterized by favorable secular trends, as well as historic new investment flowing from the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA. Iteris' market access, sizable backlog, and platform-based strategy provide degrees of freedom and optionality that most companies in our sector lack. As a result, we are very optimistic about the opportunity in front of Iteris and believe the current environment actually improves our ClearMobility value proposition and competitive position despite some near-term disruption.

For example, in our fiscal 2022 Q4, we'll launch a new software-as-a-service solution, ClearAsset, which will help state and local transportation agencies better manage the life cycles of their intelligent transportation system or ITS assets. Given the increase in federal funding from the IIJA and the simultaneous impact of supply constraints on agency operations, we believe the timing of ClearAsset's launch is particularly favorable. As you may recall, we already offer asset management as a cloud-enabled managed service to several agencies, including the Georgia Department of Transportation. We've incorporated our asset management best practices into the ClearAsset feature set. Additionally, ClearAsset leverages our ClearMobility cloud and interoperates with our family of smart mobility infrastructure management software.

Therefore, it offers transportation agencies a proactive ability to monitor, manage, and optimize the health of their mobility infrastructure. Going forward, we'll offer ClearAsset on a SaaS basis to agencies who want to manage their own ITS assets, as well as use ClearAsset to deliver our asset management cloud-enabled managed service to agencies looking to virtualize this process. Due to the inherent scalability of ClearAsset, this new approach will expand our asset management addressable market beyond state departments of transportation to include regional and local agencies who are critically challenged in this supply constraint environment to maintain their ITS assets. Similarly, we're seeing a significant increase in demand for our congestion management cloud-enabled managed service, which we've also referred to as Intersections as a Service.

With about 3,000 intersections adopting this model to date, we have achieved meaningful customer validation, and agencies are increasingly interested in this form of process virtualization to mitigate the labor supply shortages they face. As a result, we have a sizable backlog of intersections pending deployment of our congestion management cloud-enabled managed service. To accelerate their deployment and associated revenue recognition, we're continuing to expand our customer success function. Additionally, we now have sufficient customer feedback to characterize the significant return on investment and reduction in carbon emissions associated with this cloud-enabled managed service. Next week, we'll begin a multifaceted communication and demand generation program to promote these compelling benefits.

Given our market leadership, superior solution portfolio, and the timeliness of our value proposition, we are well situated to implement certain price increases to offset the increase in our cost of goods sold and better capture the full value of our solutions. For example, as mentioned earlier, we implemented a 10% price increase for our family of Vantage sensors effective January first. The impact will be de minimis in our Q4 since most of the quotes for the period were generated prior to January first. Still, these price increases will have an increasingly positive impact as we progress through calendar year 2022. In addition to certain price increases, we'll continue to take actions in our Q4 and beyond to manage supply chain challenges.

Doug noted that we're already extending lead times on our purchase orders, buying ahead as feasible, and redesigning aspects of our products to swap components for those that are unavailable. Moving on to guidance. The company's sales pipeline, which includes both public sector and private sector demand for our ClearMobility platform, continues to reach new historic levels due to the sustained release of best-in-class technology and solid sales execution. Therefore, we anticipate continued bookings growth in our Q4 and beyond, even though results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, especially as we continue to pursue more multimillion-dollar contracts, including complex agreements with large private sector entities. Based on our current record backlog and anticipated bookings growth, we anticipate double-digit organic revenue growth in our fiscal 2022 Q4.

However, we are lowering our full year total revenue guidance to $134 million-$136 million due to supply constraints and third-party product delays. This new full year revenue guidance represents year-over-year revenue growth of 14% at the low end and 16% at the high end of the range. Although we continue to anticipate elevated supply chain costs for the next few quarters, this will be better offset by higher sales volume and other mitigations beginning in the Q4, including the price increases that we mentioned. As a result, we anticipate a Q4 improvement in gross margin and operating leverage that should yield a low single-digit adjusted EBITDA margin, producing full year adjusted EBITDA margins of 5%-5.4% of fiscal 2022 full year revenue.

We will provide fiscal 2023 financial guidance when we announce our fiscal 2022 full year results in early June. In the meantime, I wanna reiterate that we continue to make solid progress in executing our platform-based business strategy and anticipate sustained above-market demand for our ClearMobility platform, which is translating to notably improved performance of our service revenue lines. With regards to our product lines of business, we're taking actions to mitigate the impact of supply constraints, and we expect to continue to see strong demand for our industry-leading sensors. Given our industry-leading products and services, Iteris is well positioned to capitalize on the historic investment that will be made over the next several years to modernize the country's transportation infrastructure, and we are very optimistic about the opportunities in front of us. With that, we'd be delighted to respond to your questions and comments.

Operator, could you open up the line, please?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off by your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Your first question will come from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Hi, everyone. Joe, is it fair to say that lowering guidance was really almost all due to supply chain headwinds?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah, Jeff, thanks for the questions, good to hear your voice. Yeah, it was entirely due to supply chain constraints. Those are supply chain constraints that impact our ability to manufacture and ship our own product as well as supplier issues, that's the ability of third parties to provide critical equipment where we're actually operating as a reseller. As you may recall, in our Q2, we indicated that there was about a $1.5 million slippage in third party product sales, which we had hoped to make up in the Q3 that didn't materialize.

This particular quarter, as we mentioned, we were unable to ship about $1.9 million in our own product, and we are anticipating that, you know, even though we are forecasting double-digit organic growth in the Q4, we believe we could have done better than that if not for the supply chain and third party supplier constraints that we're facing. Yes, the reduction is entirely due to supply chain issues.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. And I know you mentioned that you're taking a number of steps to mitigate the supply chain pressures, but overall, would you say it's worsening at this point? It appears to be to me, but just, I guess, your overall assessment of supply chain, is it getting worse? Where do you see or when do you see light at the end of the tunnel?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah. Doug, do you wanna take a crack at that question?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Yeah. Well, we've been talking about supply chain issues, you know, since the Q1. I would say that, you know, they're gonna continue to be there. You know, I think we're getting a little, you know, better at understanding, you know, what the impact is gonna be, but I don't think it's going away in the next couple of quarters. I mean, if you know, heard GE or Intuit or any of the big, you know, companies say it's here at least to the middle of 2023, some say the end of 2023. It's really hard to tell, to be blunt, but just know we're doing everything we can to manage it.

I think, you know, we are expecting to see, you know, a little better improvement in Q4 in the margins, but there's still gonna be a lot of pressure.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. If we can just turn to, I just had a couple questions on your guidance. What level of organic growth is reflected in the 14%-16% revenue growth for the fiscal year? What level of organic growth is in that?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Sure. If you look at the midpoint, it's about 6.8%. At the low end of the guidance of $134, it's 5.9%. At the high point, it's about 7.7%.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Kinda mid-single organic revenue growth for the year. You may have mentioned this, but what was the organic revenue growth in the quarter you just reported?

Doug Groves (CFO)

It was about 3.4% in the quarter.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Did you give us, and again, I apologize if I missed this, but did you give us the mix of managed services and SaaS? Did SaaS continue to grow faster than managed services?

Doug Groves (CFO)

No, we didn't mention that. I mean, the annual recurring revenue, you know, was about half of the service revenue that Joe mentioned. The mix continues to be, you know, about 50/50 because, you know, remember, the SaaS revenue is gonna grow, but it takes longer to grow just because of the nature of the contracts and that, you know, it's amortized usually over a three- to five-year period. To get, you know, a good comp, it takes, you know, several quarters to do that.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. If we're thinking about kind of, I guess, getting back to supply chain, the pressure you guys have there, what level of gross margin do you think is feasible for you to reach in the next, you know, the fiscal year that's about to begin? What seems feasible? I don't know if you wanna give a range or just, you know, maybe a sense of what you're thinking.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Well, I think you have to bifurcate, you know, our product revenue from our service revenue, right? You know, because those do have different margin profiles.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Mm-hmm.

Doug Groves (CFO)

You know, historically, the product revenues, you know, have ran in the 45%-50% range. You know, they obviously were way down in the quarter for the reasons we talked about. You know, we would certainly expect over the next several quarters that, you know, they would get back to that 45%-50% range where they were. I mean, they were only 34.5% in the current quarter. You know, I think that was a very, very low, maybe an all-time low, you know, from a product margin standpoint. You know, we're expecting that to come back over the next couple of quarters, you know, hopefully as we continue to work our way out of the supply chain issues like everybody else.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. That's product. What about service if we're thinking about kind of modeling the next fiscal year and getting to a consolidated gross margin?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Yes. Well, I mean, those have been running, you know, at around 35%, and that's, you know, where they've kind of settled in. As I said, you know, we do expect those to, you know, increase as the amount of annual recurring revenue goes up, but we'll be giving, you know, more specific guidance when we get to our Q4 call.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Fair enough. I just wanted to, just so everyone's clear on this, on operating expenses, just say, let's call it all else being equal, excluding incremental acquisitions that you may make, what would you expect operating expenses to be in dollars in the new fiscal year? I guess as a percentage of revenues, and how much would you expect to leverage on OpEx?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Well, as I mentioned, you know, our plan is to keep, you know, the G&A, you know, almost flat year-over-year. You know, we would expect that, you know, R&D probably, as a percentage of revenue, goes up 1% or 2%, and that, you know, the sales and marketing is gonna go up, you know, a few percent as the revenue grows just because, you know, investments we'll be making in our, you know, sales force, as well as, you know, marketing campaigns such as we bring on a lot of these new products. You could take the current run rate as a percentage of revenue and add a couple of percent to, you know, each of those lines with G&A staying relatively flat.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Then one more if I could squeeze it in, then I'll turn it over. Can you give us your latest thoughts, maybe for Joe, your latest thoughts on kind of the M&A pipeline, what it looks like, I guess size of potential targets? How many acquisitions do you think we might see in the new fiscal year?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah, sure. Jeff, as you know, we've said that we'd like to do at least one acquisition every 12-18 months. We closed our last acquisition in December 12 months ago. We're now 13 months beyond that, so we're into that 12-18-month window. As you can imagine, we're you know working hard at trying to identify and develop new acquisition targets all the time. As we've said previously, you can assume that at any point in time, we're probably in some level of active discussion with at least one target. But unfortunately, you know, we need to date you know a lot of you know girls before you know we get engaged. Certainly people fall out and

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Mm-hmm

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

... you know, and then we continue to, you know, find new dates. In terms of the overall kind of deal pipeline, if you will, I would say that it is probably a little bit more favorable now than it was six months ago. By that I mean we're seeing, you know, we're always pursuing opportunities. There's a lot of outbound activity, but I would say right now there's probably more inbound activity than certainly we saw six months ago. You know, we'll have to see what happens, but my sense is that targets are probably a little bit more realistic about valuations.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Mm-hmm

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

today than they were six months ago. You know, it's. There's this is a very attractive market. There's a lot of capital, you know, focused on this market. I don't wanna make it sound easy. It's not. I would say that, you know, overall, I feel more optimistic or more bullish about our acquisition opportunities today than I did when we talked over the summer.

Jeff Van Sinderen (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Good to hear. Thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Thanks.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll now take the next question from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Good afternoon, guys. Curious on the supply chain, you guys talked a little bit. I don't know that I got a full explanation or maybe I missed it, but I guess what has gotten worse specifically within the supply chain here over the last couple months?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah. Doug, do you wanna take a crack at that?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Sure. Sure, yeah. No. Well, I think it's specific really to the components that we need to source our products with. You know, there's, you know, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know, there were 4 components that were just literally completely unavailable. Then there were, you know, a couple of dozen components where we had to go to secondary markets, you know, meaning usually brokers, to find these components. You know, as mentioned, the prices are, you know, from double to 50 times what they normally are. You know, to be honest, it ebbs and flows. It's a, you know, massive trillions of dollars supply chain in electronic components. You know, I think for us, it's the particular components that we need to manufacture our products, you know, with.

It was more exaggerated in the current quarter than it was, you know, in the Q2. You know, again, we've been talking about this every quarter that, you know, there's been pressure, and it just seemed like the mix of products and components we needed, were worked against us this quarter. As I also mentioned, we're, you know, I think getting ahead of it with placing, you know, longer lead time POs and even, you know, reengineering certain aspects of our products to find components that are available.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

How much, when those the supply chain improves and you can get those components, are customers ready to receive, you know, shipments and installations where you can see kind of an immediate recovery, or will this be spread over, you know, a multi-quarter kind of duration to recover those potentially deferred sales?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah. I'll take a crack at that.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Yep, sure.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Ryan. I think there is the opportunity for, you know, an acceleration in revenue, if you will. In the past, we haven't had the same kind of situation, but we had sort of some similar ones. At that point, you know, I was advising people not to expect there to be, like a kind of a massive increase in revenue as a result of that, 'cause it would take time, you know, for the market to absorb this product. But I think the current circumstances are different. A lot of our customers actually are in critical need of product and are able to attain it right now because of supply chain impacts to us, but also to other vendors.

I would expect that, you know, that agencies are not only in a position but are in dire need of, a lot of this product. Should the components become available and we were able to accelerate our manufacturing and our shipping, it could result in a, like a windfall, if you will, you know, that could happen within any given quarter.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

as we think, I know you're not guiding to next year. We're, you know, one quarter away. Sounds like you could get some big recoveries pretty quick. I guess the medium-term guidance targets is for low double-digit top line growth organically. How confident are you-

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Right

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

... in that, kind of given the current situation?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

From a demand perspective, we're extremely confident. I mean, if you just look at the, you know, the year-to-date, well, the Q3 bookings and the year-to-date backlog, I think it's, you know, it's like the backlog growth, which was 20% on a year-to-date basis, would indicate that, you know, there's certainly more than low double-digit demand, you know, for our products and services. It's gonna be simply, you know, a matter of supply. As Doug said, the market, you know, supply chain continues to be a challenge. I think everybody's hearing that, you know, across all sectors. We're certainly, you know, impacted by that the same way that everyone else is. That being said, we started taking a number of measures in the Q3.

We continue to take them. I would say that having gone through this in the Q3, we're probably, you know, better prepared to manage in this current environment in our Q4 than we were in the third. We're cautiously optimistic on the supply side. Again, on the demand side, we're highly confident about our ability to achieve double-digit growth.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Last one for me. You mentioned M&A pipeline. Your stock has also pulled back here. How do you think about capital allocation and, the most accretive use of that of a share buyback versus M&A?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah, Doug, you wanna talk to that?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it really depends upon the target and the, you know, the seller, to be honest, and the characteristics of the asset that we're buying. You know, obviously issuing stock at $4 a share is not ideal. You know, that would be certainly lower on the list. You know, quite frankly, we have looked at things where the sellers want. They don't want stock. They just want an all-cash deal. It really depends upon the purchase price and the financial characteristics of the target that really drives how we think about, you know, how we might pay for that. You know, we have ongoing discussions with, you know, lots of private equity firms. You may have saw, we put in, you know, a small line of credit with Capital One.

We've got various different options we can look at, but it's really dependent upon the target, their financial characteristics, and, you know, what the seller's willing to work with.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Just a clarification. I was referring to a share buyback.

Doug Groves (CFO)

A share buyback?

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

On your own stock.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Yeah. I mean.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

M&A

Doug Groves (CFO)

... we do have an open authorization from, you know, our board, and it's something that, you know, we continue to look at and talk about. You know, at some point, if something on the, you know, M&A horizon doesn't look like it's gonna materialize, you know, that's certainly, you know, one option. As Joe mentioned, the pipeline is definitely, you know, looking better now than it was during the summer. We're continuing to feel like that's probably the best use as opposed to, you know, a share buyback.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks, guys. Good luck.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Ryan.

Operator (participant)

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off so your signal can reach our equipment. We'll take the next question from the line of Michael Latimore with Northland Capital. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, this is Aditya on behalf of Michael Latimore. Could you give some color on if you're getting any signals from the federal government regarding any programs that could benefit you or any potential benefit from the infrastructure bill that could emerge by the end of this calendar year?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Oh, absolutely. As we've said before, we expect that most state and local agencies will start to see an impact from the IIJA in their new fiscal year. Those fiscal years in general start either July 1 or October 1. A number of different program areas that would certainly benefit us. One particular area that's been in the news lately is related to safety and the creation of a National Roadway Safety Strategy by the U.S. Department of Transportation. We're actually affiliated with a coalition that is working closely with the National Roadway Safety Strategy. That's actually a relatively small amount of funding.

The initial funding is $1.5 billion, but that's just an example of one activity that we're closely engaged, you know, with key sponsors, and that's, you know, quite topical because it's been in the news lately.

Speaker 6

All right. Which states are most active when it comes to investing in your technologies and other related programs?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

For sure. Yeah. If you look at the total national spending in smart mobility infrastructure, it's largely concentrated in California, Texas and Florida, which are our three largest markets. I'd say in combination, those three markets represent about 40% of the total national spending. Not only do they tend to spend the most in general, they tend to be on the vanguard. A lot of the newer ideas are generated, tested, validated in those markets and then later adopted, you know, throughout other regions of the country.

Speaker 6

All right. Could you also tell me how much did TrafficCast contribute to this particular quarter?

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Sure, yeah. Doug, do you wanna talk to that? Are you there, Doug?

Doug Groves (CFO)

I'm sorry, I was on mute. It's about $3.7 million in the quarter.

Speaker 6

I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Sure. $3.7 million of revenue in the quarter for TrafficCast.

Speaker 6

All right. Fine. Thank you.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah. Actually, Doug, I'm sorry, just to confirm though, was that $3.7 million in the quarter, but as opposed to $8 million in the prior quarter? Was it a net $2.9 million dollar impact, or did I-

Doug Groves (CFO)

Oh, yeah.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Do I have that wrong?

Doug Groves (CFO)

Yeah. It was $800,000 in the prior year quarter. The net of the TrafficCast revenue on a compare basis was $3.1 million. That you can reconcile that back to the organic growth of 3.4% that I mentioned.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Speaker 6

All right. Got it. Thanks, guys.

Doug Groves (CFO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Bergera, I'd like to turn the call back over to you for any additional comments or closing remarks.

Joe Bergera (President and CEO)

Super. Thank you, operator. I appreciate it. As always, I appreciate everybody's support and the thoughtful questions. On the investor relations front, we'll be participating in various investor outreach events this quarter with our covering sell-side analysts. We'll also be presenting at the B. Riley Institutional Investor Conference on May 25th and 26th. If you'd like to meet with us or you are participating in the B. Riley conference, please plan to attend our presentation and/or schedule a one-on-one meeting with us. In the meantime, we look forward to updating you again on our continued progress when we report our fiscal 2022 Q4 and our full year results in early June. With that, we'll conclude today's call. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect your lines.