Tucows - Earnings Call - Q1 2025 Prepared Remarks

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to Tucows First Quarter 2025 Management Commentary. We have pre-recorded prepared remarks regarding the quarter and outlook for the company. A Tucows-generated transcript of these remarks, with relevant links, is also available on the company's website. We will begin with opening remarks from Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows and Ting, followed by business remarks from Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains, Justin Reilly, CEO of Wavelo, Elliot Noss on Ting, Ivan Ivanov, Tucows CFO, who will discuss our financial results in detail, and we will finish with closing remarks from Elliot Noss. In lieu of a live question-and-answer period following these remarks, shareholders, analysts, and prospective investors are invited to submit questions to Tucows Management. Please submit questions via email to [email protected] until Thursday, May 15th.

Management will either address your questions directly or provide a recorded audio response and transcript that will be posted to the Tucows website on Tuesday, May 27, at approximately 5:00 P.M. Eastern Time. We would also like to advise that the updated Tucows Quarterly KPI Summary, which provides key metrics for all of our businesses for the last five quarters, as well as for full years 2023, 2024, and 2025 year-to-date, and also includes historical financial results, is available in the Investor section of the website. The updated Investor Presentation is also available. We have stopped producing the Ting Build Scorecard following our winding down of new market construction and direct investors to the Quarterly KPI Summary for relevant Ting data. Now for Management's prepared remarks. On Thursday, May 8, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025.

That news release and the company's financial statements are available on the company's website at tucows.com under the Investors section. Please note the following discussion may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are described in detail in the company's documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on the Forms 10-K and 10-Q. The company urges you to read its security filings for a full description of the risk factors applicable to its business. I would now like to turn the call over to Tucows President and Chief Executive Officer, Elliot Noss. Go ahead, Elliot.

Elliot Noss (President and CEO)

Following four consecutive years of consolidated revenue growth, we continue the momentum in Q1 with an 8% year-over-year increase in revenue. Gross profit grew 29% year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA more than doubled, driven by substantial operational efficiencies and early gains from the 2024 Ting restructuring initiative. We also continue deleveraging with a Q1 $2.5 million repayment on the balance of the syndicated bank loan. We're in a rare time and place where the macroeconomic environment, in terms of both the global economy and the impact of AI, might be more impactful and important than any specific business context. This is a time for thoughtful execution and choices of direction. I'll now turn over to Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains.

David Woroch (President and CEO)

Thanks, Elliot. Tucows Domains continued to grow revenue, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter, building on our performance in 2024. Domain services saw strong year-over-year growth in Q1, with revenue rising 6% to $65.3 million from $61.9 million in Q1 of last year. Gross margin increased 9% to $20.2 million, outpacing revenue growth and reflecting continued margin expansion and solid underlying performance. Adjusted EBITDA grew 15% to $11.5 million from $10 million in Q1 of last year, highlighting improved operating efficiency. Domains under management declined 2%, and total transactions fell 6% year-over-year, primarily due to one large customer transitioning their domain operations in-house, a regular occurrence in our business. Historically, we consistently offset this through new customer wins and growth within our base, and we're seeing more of our resellers incorporate AI into their customer solutions, an exciting development.

Net of that customer, our core business remains solid, with domains under management slightly increasing and transaction volumes holding steady compared to last year, while both revenue and gross margin continue to grow. Moving forward, our growing registry business will also add incrementally to the core business. Our wholesale channel delivered solid performance in Q1, with revenue rising 6% year-over-year to $55.9 million from $52.9 million for Q1 of last year. Gross margin increased 10% to $15 million from $13.7 million last year, reflecting our continued margin expansion. Within the wholesale channel, domain services delivered a stable and modestly higher gross margin of $9.6 million, while value-added services delivered a standout performance with a 30% year-over-year increase in gross margin to $5.4 million, driven primarily by strong, high-margin sales from our expiry stream. Our retail channel continued its steady growth in Q1, with revenue increasing 4% year-over-year to $9.3 million.

Gross margin expanded 6% to $5.2 million, reflecting a healthy contribution and higher margins in the retail segment. The overall combined renewal rate for the Tucows Domains brands is up to 76.5% for Q1 and remains above the industry average. Further to my comments earlier this year, I have just returned from India, where I spent time with NIXI, the registry operator for the .in ccTLD and our team there. Our office is operational, and we have onboarded the team that are dedicating to supporting our partnership with NIXI. We are making great progress and expect to have their TLD operational on our platform by the end of the month. We're also looking ahead to 2026, when ICANN's anticipated new round of gTLDs, the first in a decade, will open up new opportunities to grow our registry business. The application period runs from Q2 to Q3 in 2026.

Our Q1 results reinforced the strength and resilience of our core operations, and that momentum is carried into Q2. Five weeks into the quarter, performance remains solid and consistent with the steady growth we've delivered over the past year. While we anticipate adjusted EBITDA growth to normalize to single digits in the coming quarters, our focus remains on driving top-line growth, expanding margins, and maintaining disciplined cost management. Now, over to Justin Reilly, CEO of Wavelo.

Justin Reilly (CEO)

Thanks, Dave. The first quarter of 2025 marks Wavelo's single best quarter since its inception, further reminding us of how these businesses tend to perform when we align our success with our customer's success. Wavelo's revenue was $11.4 million in Q1, a 15.3% increase from last quarter, and a 21.4% increase from Q1 2024. Gross margin was $11.3 million this quarter, a 20.2% increase from last quarter, and a 24.6% increase from Q1 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was $4.4 million, an increase of 20.9% quarter over quarter, and a 59.6% increase from Q1 2024. The growth year-over-year and quarter over quarter is fueled by existing customer subscriber growth, as well as the new rate card introduced as part of the EchoStar four-year renewal that we announced earlier in the year.

In the quarter, I'm pleased with our team's ability to balance growth and profitability in the face of shifting macro winds, a Tucows tradition that Wavelo proudly inherits. We are now in the 2nd quarter of a competitive go-to-market team and are seeing early signs of that investment paying off in our pipeline. Our pursuit of higher total contract value opportunities is gaining momentum, and we have several promising deals in the last stage of our sales cycle. For the first time in Wavelo's history, we have a handful of global Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities in regions like Latin America and Europe that are showing promise. While these deals take a while to work and mature, I'm encouraged by the activity and interest.

We continue to hear harrowing tales from large operators about their existing providers, and our R&D investments are specifically targeted at simplifying the mess and letting telecoms actually take advantage of the promise of AI. We are also seeing an increase in inbound interest from systems integration partners and adjacent technology providers who believe that Wavelo is a valuable co-sell partner and natural extension of their value proposition. As these partnerships take shape, we expect them to provide an indirect pipeline of opportunities that nicely complements our direct sales efforts. Finally, we recently hired a new head of marketing, bringing our marketing department to a whopping two full-time employees. It will take a few quarters, but as the team ramps, we expect to see a steady increase in leads from target account-based marketing efforts.

Overall, I'm pleased with where the team is and am encouraged by the sustained progress in the early parts of this year. In 2025, I would be remiss if I didn't spend a few moments on artificial intelligence. A decade ago, working inside one of the world's largest telecoms, we were spending billions of dollars of capital on models, and today, all of you can access that same compute with a $20 subscription to ChatGPT or Claude. Every single week, I do something with a large language model that I've never done before, and this is compounding in truth for our teams at Wavelo. We are experimenting in every wing of our virtual headquarters. Our go-to-market teams are more efficient at responding to cumbersome RFPs. Engineering cognitive load is decreased as we offload tedious tasks to machines.

The act of surveying our distributed workforce is now more human and more thorough, driving better engagement and performance. These moves are a shift from author to operator. This transition is one not without its challenges, not just for Wavelo, but for teams all around the world. In previous technology revolutions, the cohorts to retrain were blue-collar workers or customer service agents. Today's challenge is the fundamental retraining of software engineers. This is both a practical endeavor and an emotional one, as it challenges the very identity of much of the modern internet workforce. Fortunately for Wavelo, we not only have some of the best engineers in the industry, we also have some of the most curious. It is in this curiosity, within an industry rampant with apathy, that we win. Thanks for listening, and now over to Elliot.

Elliot Noss (President and CEO)

Thanks, Justin. Ting continues to grow revenue and profitability. We had double-digit revenue growth, reporting $16.3 million in Q1, a 16% increase year-over-year. The growth was driven by increased ARPU and a 12% year-over-year increase in subscribers, which brought us to 51,700 subscribers from 46,100 in Q1 of last year. The first quarter ended with a total of 187,400 serviceable addresses, an increase of 19% from Q1 of 2024. This breaks down to the 133,400 Ting-owned addresses and 54,000 partner serviceable addresses, which increased 64% year-over-year. Given the scale of our Colorado Springs and Memphis partner markets that are just starting to accelerate their builds and our pivot from building new markets to partner markets, we expect the growth to come primarily from partner markets going forward.

Ting gross margin increased 20% year-over-year to $10.5 million in Q1 as we continue to gain efficiencies from no longer carrying excess construction capacity, which would have been charged to COGS. Ting's adjusted EBITDA also continues to trend in a positive direction, with a loss of only $0.9 million in Q1, down from a $9.5 million loss in Q1 of 2024. There were some one-time costs in Q1 that brought that number down a bit, and our goal remains to finish 2025 for Ting as adjusted EBITDA neutral. There are two items I will update on. First, we are seeing opportunities in the partner space as we commit to it in a more focused way. Subsequent to the quarter, in fact, just last week, we signed a deal to be the ISP and to oversee, but not fund, construction for one of the largest senior communities in the country.

This is a roughly 12,000-home opportunity, but will not start producing revenue or have an impact on cash flow until 2027, such is the long-term nature of this business. Second, the reinvention of our marketing and door-to-door functions is starting to bear fruit. While this won't be visible in the numbers for a bit, we are seeing the right signs of progress. In marketing, this manifests in the standing up of some core marketing infrastructure that needed refreshing. In door-to-door, cost per order and productivity per rep have both already improved by more than 60%, and there is still more to go. The trick with insourcing door-to-door relative to using a third party is scaling, but thankfully, this is an area where AI should be able to help.

Finally, we're very much focused on ensuring our short-term cash needs are met, which includes going to the ABS market, disposing of non-strategic assets, and looking at structure and finance options to improve our cost of capital. As noted previously, we have closed and are in the process of closing a few of the small cleanup transactions that we have talked about. These not only provide capital, they also further clean up and simplify operations. Now we'll hear from our CFO, Ivan Ivanov, who will discuss our financial results in detail.

Ivan Ivanov (CFO)

Thank you, Elliot, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. The first quarter of 2025 marked a significant step in executing on our financial priorities, including driving sustainable, profitable growth, and maintaining capital efficiency. The theme of Q1 is strong top-line growth, expanding margins, and disciplined execution across our business units. We delivered an 8.2% year-over-year increase in total consolidated revenue to $94.6 million, extending our multi-year trend of top-line expansion. More notably, gross profit surged 28.5% to $23.5 million, driving a 393 basis points improvement in consolidated gross margin to 24.9%. This margin expansion translated directly into operating leverage, with adjusted EBITDA rising 225% year-over-year to $13.7 million. At the bottom-line level, we narrowed our net loss year-over-year by 43%.

Our net loss for Q1 was $15.1 million, or a loss of $1.37 per share, compared to a net loss of $26.5 million, or a loss of $2.42 per share for the first quarter of 2024. Our adjusted net loss and adjusted EPS in Q1 2025 are $14.9 million, and a loss of $1.35 per share compared to Q1 2024 adjusted net loss of $23.4 million, and adjusted EPS loss of $2.14 per share. Let me now walk you through the performance of each business unit, starting with Tucows Domains. Domains continues to be a fundamental driver of our financial strength. Revenue grew 5.5% year-over-year to $65.3 million, driven by expiry sales and continued resilience of the core business. Gross margin expanded 9.1% to $20.2 million in Q1 2025 from Q1 2024, holding steady at a 31% margin as a percent of revenues.

Adjusted EBITDA for Tucows Domains increased 15.3% year-over-year to $11.5 million for the quarter. Moving on to Ting. Ting continues to be a major focus for us, and we are seeing the results of our efforts to optimize capital efficiency while continuing to drive penetration and ARPU in our existing footprint, as well as partner markets. Revenue grew 15.7% year-over-year to $16.3 million, while subscribers grew 12% year-over-year. Ting's gross margin climbed 20% year-over-year to $10.5 million, with a Q1 improvement in gross margin percentage from 62% last year to 64% this quarter. Finally, adjusted EBITDA improved significantly, moving from a $9.5 million loss in Q1 2024 to a $0.9 million loss this quarter. The improvement in adjusted EBITDA at Ting is a direct result of our disciplined approach to managing costs, streamlining operations, and driving incremental ARPU gains.

These are structural improvements that set the stage for continued margin expansion. Moving on to Wavelo, Wavelo continues to manage its operations tightly and deliver results as it focuses on building its growth funnel. This was the best quarter for Wavelo yet, with revenue increasing 21.4% year-over-year to $11.4 million. Gross margin was 99%, and adjusted EBITDA increased 59.6% to $4.4 million, underscoring a well-run, capital-efficient software operation. Corporate revenue reduced to $1.6 million, and adjusted EBITDA declined to negative $1.5 million for the quarter, largely due to erosion in our legacy mobile base. On the cash flow, capital expenditures in PP&E for Q1 were comparably low at $5.4 million, highlighting our shift to partner markets in the fiber deployment strategy. We ended the first quarter with cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents of $55 million, while continuing to reduce our syndicated debt.

The amount of our corporate net debt now stands at $192.1 million, bringing our leverage ratio down to 3.14 times, while related interest expense declined 20% year-over-year. Separately, as of quarter end, on a net basis, the Ting fiber business carried $288.6 million in asset-backed securitized notes and $122.2 million in redeemable preferred equity. These facilities remain structured within the Ting entity. Altogether, the quarter's strong results are a testament to the continued execution of our priorities, achieving top-line growth while also significantly improving margins and operating efficiency. This step-up in margin is a direct outcome of higher revenue, disciplined cost management, and maintaining a leaner cost structure. We remain committed to that level of execution throughout the year in order to achieve our annual guidance. With that, thank you, and I'll pass it back to Elliot.

Elliot Noss (President and CEO)

Thanks, Ivan. The strong results from the first quarter drove us to achieve 30% of our consolidated annual guidance for 2025. This was primarily from Wavelo's and Domains' strong first quarters, as well as a lower corporate loss, which is typical in Q1. We expect levels to potentially moderate in the coming quarters. Currently, the macroeconomic environment is characterized by an unusually high degree of uncertainty. I would say the greatest I have seen in my lifetime. The causes are, I think, fairly evident. Persistent inflation, despite tightening monetary policy, escalating geopolitical tensions, and mixed signals across global demand and employment data all contribute to a global environment that is difficult to read. The impact of that uncertainty is beginning to show itself. The cost of risk capital is increasing, while the cost of highly secure capital is declining.

Perhaps the clearest window into this dynamic is in the pricing of asset-backed securities. In that market, spreads on the C tranche, the riskiest, are widening, while spreads on the A tranche, the investment-grade tranche, are compressing and have excess demand. In short, risk is being penalized more heavily, and security is being rewarded more heavily. We believe this divergence will only grow over time. Why? Because we have not even completed a full quarter under this new climate of uncertainty. If we mark April 2nd, Independence Day, as a symbolic beginning, it is also just the beginning of the second quarter. The true effects of this shift will not even start to be visible until companies begin reporting second quarter results in late July or early August. Until then, uncertainty will continue.

After that, it may abate, or it may deepen, but we are confident that the new normal will involve a significantly higher baseline level of uncertainty than what we experienced prior to April 2nd. One thing we know with absolute clarity: capital hates uncertainty. How does all of this impact our business? The effects will vary across our different segments. For Ting, this environment validates the strategy we are already executing, minimizing CapEx while focusing intensely on increasing revenue throughput. That means driving higher utilization across our existing organic footprint and ramping up the activation of partner addresses, which continue to come online at an accelerating pace. These efforts directly enhance our ABS capacity by improving the consistency and scale of our cash flows. Of course, we would like to lower our cost of capital. For Wavelo, the impact may be more muted, but not insignificant.

Growth capital will become more expensive and harder to access. Whether we're considering increased sales and marketing investments or exploring tuck-in acquisitions, we should expect the bar for capital allocation to be higher. That will require us to be more thoughtful, more creative, and more disciplined in how we pursue growth. The Domains business is perhaps the most interesting in this context. If we return to our core premise, risky capital is getting more expensive, while secure, predictable cash flows are becoming more valuable, then Tucows Domains stands out. What defines this business is the reliability and consistency of its cash flows. I'll put forward a hypothesis that in a higher uncertainty environment, the cash generated by Tucows Domains may become more valuable than it was before, because risk, after all, is relative.

Being thoughtful and strategic about capital in a world full of geopolitical uncertainty and shifting demographics will separate not winners from losers, but living from dead. With that, I look forward to your written questions and exploring areas that interest you in greater detail. Again, please send your questions to [email protected] by May 15th, and look for our recorded Q&A audio responses and transcript to this call to be posted to the Tucows website on Tuesday, May 27th, at approximately 5:00 P.M. Eastern Time. Thank you.