Good afternoon, welcome to ikeGPS's first quarter results webinar. From the company today, I'm joined by CEO, Glenn Milnes, and CFO, Brian Musfeldt. Before I hand it over to Glenn, I'll remind you that you can ask a question via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. I'll now pass it to Glenn to start the presentation.
Thanks, Max. Thanks, thanks, everyone, for taking the time to join for the Q1 update. What I'd like to do today is try to pulse through some slides, first and foremost, get through those within 12-15 minutes, and then leave time open for Q&A. Please take note of this important notice. I know there's some folk that aren't familiar with IKE. In terms of our FY 23 performance, we grew last year to about $31 million of revenue with 93% growth. Continuing to build the business, addressing the electric utility and communications market. In the United States, we've got around 380 enterprise customers today. From a Q1 perspective. This is looking at PCP in terms of the chart on the left.
We were slightly down on Q1 of FY 2023, which was a well signaled change in terms of transaction revenue. This is volume from some important customers. We'll talk a bit more about the revenue mix and the components of the forecast as we look forward. Our subscription revenues continue to grow through the last few PCP periods, we had about 36% growth in terms of underlying subscription revenue. Keep in mind, our business model is that every customer subscribes to the IKE platform, we have multipliers around per seat or transaction revenue.
We'll talk a bit more about the next generation IKE PoleForeman product that's being released into the market in FY 24, which we think will have a potentially a very positive impact on this underlying subscription revenue component. Our transaction revenue on a PCP basis is down, but it's trending positively. The reason it's down in Q1 is because of some leading customers that are working with utilities that have some old style practices in terms of how they consume fiber attachment information.
We've actually worked through this with the underlying customers. Our indications from our long-term customer base, they give us, you know, fairly accurate and robust guidance around volumes and revenue, is that things will pick up very strongly through the latter half of Q2 and through the rest of the year and beyond. We always release this chart in terms of the key metrics in the business. I think there's probably two notable items. The first is around the gross margin profile for transactions. You know, we do have some fixed costs that sit behind the transaction product item. Because volume dipped off this quarter, our gross margin has fallen off accordingly. We do expect that to come back strongly through the balance of FY 2024.
You can see growth in terms of number of enterprise customers. Our products tend to be very sticky. We have very little churn in terms of customers, and customers grow over time. You know, we've continued to add about one customer a week in terms of our sales footprint, and the subscription revenue piece of the business has grown, you know, consistently strongly over the last few years. I'll pulse through these slides quite quickly. I know many of you know our business well, but some others do not. From a market perspective, we're lucky to be in the right place at the right time. We're addressing two specific segments in North America. We're headquartered in North America, in Colorado. The first is supporting companies that are deploying-
Can you hear Brian? It looks like we just had a little drop off. Yeah, I can still hear you, but I think we've lost Glenn in the presentation. Apologies all. I think we'll just give Glenn a second to hopefully rejoin, and we can commence the presentation.
Yeah, I just spoke to Glenn. He'll join back in here in a minute.
Hi, Brian, Max. I'm just checking if I'm back.
You're there, Glenn.
All right, let me share my screen. Apologies, everyone. I hope I'm back. I just lost connectivity. Ironic, given we're talking about fiber networks, and deploying them better and at speed. I'm not quite sure where I fell off, but talking about our market, it's just very significant what's happening with fiber. It's probably running as a tailwind for us until 2028. We help networks get deployed faster. We've got many of the largest fiber businesses using IKE. Hoping that we will win, arrange more of them over this next 12-24 month period. Some more data there, just in terms of where we are in terms of the investment super cycle into fiber and broadband and 5G deployment in North America.
The second market we support is the electric utility industry. There's 3,200 electric utilities in the U.S. There's about 110 investor-owned utilities. They're the largest groups, but there's a really big long tail in terms of the utility market. Approximately 2,000 engineering companies that support those electric utilities to keep their networks hardened and resilient, and building capacity for the electrification of virtually everything over the next 20-30 years. If you think of the electric vehicle market and the carbon zero targets, and what that's doing to grid capacity. Again, we help the design process and the maintenance process of distribution assets for electric utilities. We're lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
Just these big market tailwinds make a lot, or contribute a lot to the success of growth companies and technology companies being in the right market at the right time in terms of growth. We're privileged to be supporting these important infrastructure companies. Again, some more data. Just the level of spend into distribution networks where we play. Today, we've got around 395 enterprise customers across North America. It has taken some time and a bit of a sense of humor to win these really big infrastructure companies. We target across the communication side, some examples of logos that may or may not mean much, but AT&T is the biggest communications company in the world.
Crown Castle is the biggest fiber deployment company in North America. Now we've got 6 of the 10 largest electric utilities in the United States using our platform. It takes time, but if you serve these customers well, you know, we have very much a land and expand sales model, and we're seeing that play out. A lot of our growth is coming from existing logo growth over time, and, you know, we've only got 6% of the market at the moment in terms of logos, so just a lot of room to continue to expand. Given the connectivity outage, I'll go really fast here. We sell, we brand, and we deliver directly to customers. Our headquarters is in North America.
80 of our 105 people are based here in North America. We've got some really brilliant people that are expert in deploying networks, and our products deploy that or reflect that approach. We have 3 software products that are connected. One is around the design, the digital design of power infrastructure. The next is around the collection and assessment of power infrastructure, and the third is around how we, at real scale, like, whole of network scale, use technology to be able to assess distribution assets. That product's called IKE Insight. And we provide technology-enabled services through IKE Analyze, and our goal there is to automate as much of that process with technology as possible.
Just a reminder, if you just look at the circle on the left-hand side, not all the words. Every customer subscribes to our IKE platform, we have a multiplier. Often that's transaction revenue. That just means, it's how a lot of the industry operates. Every time they put an asset through our system for design or assessment, we charge a fee and clip the ticket on that process. There were 2 slides before we go into Q&A that I did want to focus on a little bit, because over the past 2 years, IKE's invested significantly into engineering and product development. The exciting thing is a number of products and capabilities that are coming to market right now. Through FY 2024, we are launching the next generation of our IKE PoleForeman product.
It's already used by 6 of the 10 largest utilities in the States and many others. It's been designed with a product council to meet the standards of the industry or the needs of the industry. The interesting thing, I think, from an investor perspective, is the ability here to, you know, it's not a forecast. From a range perspective, we can, we could 5x the current annual subscription revenue from this product, just from our existing customer footprint, and that will be very material over the next 12 months, I think, in terms of our revenue mix and just the predictability of very high quality subscription revenue. We're excited about that. We've also worked very hard around automation capability specific to power pole Infrastructure.
We've partnered with one of the biggest data collection businesses in the world. In essence, we've got a capability now to be able to process data that's coming from Google Street View, Apple Look Around, or Microsoft Bing Streetside data, and apply it to power pole infrastructure and fit into the workflows of utilities. Every utility in the United States needs to perform joint use audits and joint use activities. This is an activity that happens every year in perpetuity. We're excited at the point where we're getting to now, going to market with a very big data collection business and the ability to do these joint use audits at whole of network scale.
I think for shareholders and investors, this is important because, again, we've invested in product development, over these last, 2 years or so, and we think these will pay back fast, if we execute well from here. With that, I will pause, and Max, pleased to take any questions.
Thanks, Glenn. Glenn, just a quick reminder, you can ask a question via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. First up, can you shed some light on what contributed to the decrease in margin on transaction revenue? Is this cost or price pressure, or is it a fixed component? How do you see this tracking into the future?
That's a good question. There's a fixed component. We're building our transaction capability to continue to scale as fast as it has been. When we have a, you know, a down quarter of volume, like we just did, you see that margin compression. We do think it'll bounce back strongly through FY 2024. I mean, the second part, Max, is we're also building automation capability, so we take people out of the process. Again, that should drive margin growth.
Thanks. Transaction revenue appears to have fallen over three quarters since the high point in Q2 FY twenty-three. Apart from the two large customers impacted this quarter, are your other customers increasing their use of the platform?
Yeah, we've had no churn in terms of... All of these customers subscribe to our platform as well, and we ride the volumes that they deliver. We've, you know, there's some seasonality through winter, but it's not overly material. All of our indications... We're lucky to have long-term relationships with many of these groups, and the indications are that volumes, again, this isn't a forecast, but the indications are that volumes are gonna grow substantially over the next, you know, 12-24 months, just based on their commitments to programs.
Thanks. Just there's a few questions regarding the PoleForeman product. Why does it drive value, and why could it drive a material uplift in annual subscription revenue?
We've spent two years building this next generation product with our customers. We really think we're meeting the needs of the industry. You know, five of that customer council group are in the top 10 investor-owned utilities in the country. We've got some unique capability. It's quite technical, but in terms of multi-pole design analysis, just the simplicity and the visualization of the software, we think is really unique and powerful. And then the second part, so that's value for customers. The second part is we move to a full per user subscription model. We've got customers with hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of users, and they're very well accustomed to moving to a subscription model, you know, with many other software providers.
You know, the opportunity here is to very materially grow our annual subscription revenue base, very fast over this next 12 or 18 months. That's exciting, I think, from a revenue mix perspective.
Who is IKE partnered with on the bulk data side for AI application, and what is IKE's value in the partnership?
It's a great question. There's two parts. When we began investing in automation, being able to use bulk data that's, you know, coming from imagery, or drones, or lidar, or whatever it might be, and applying it to distribution pole projects for an electric utility. One of the first things we did is start to engage with the people that are collecting most of this data, which is no secret. It's Google, it's Apple, it's Microsoft, it's. There's a couple of other players. One of them, who we can't name just yet, although we're going to customers together, in sort of early stage market launch. You know, they're looking for partners that can add value to the raw data.
You know, we've worked on solutions that just plug straight into the workflow needs of an electric utility. That, you know, one of the applications is looking at joint use analysis. You own a power pole as a power company, you're trying to understand who's attaching to your asset. It might be a fiber company, it might be plain old telecommunications services, it might be cable TV. You're trying to understand if you're getting your billing right. You're trying to understand if you are meeting regulatory standards in terms of who's attaching and where. Then going right through into the back end of their systems and workflow. That's what we're in the process of launching at the moment.
Which is, I think important for our shareholders and investors to understand, because we have invested a lot in these processes. It's a, you know, we're trying to meet industry-wide needs in a shrink wrap kind of way.
Thanks, Glenn. There's a number of questions just here on cash. Can you just sort of touch on the cash balance, and what is your view looking forward on that matter?
Well, I mean, I think we're lucky. We're in good shape in terms of balance sheet strength, and it's the number one priority for us as a leadership team. We intend to keep a very strong balance sheet. We intend to transition the business to, you know, favorable or positive EBITDA and cash flow operation through, you know, through this year and beyond. I think we're in really robust shape on that front.
Thanks, Glenn. Just one more question here. Why are you confident transaction revenue will grow overall going forward?
As mentioned, we've got very long-term and established relationships with our existing customer footprint. Their guidance is that their transactions, their activity, is gonna grow substantially and, you know, materially over FY 2023 levels, through this next 12-24 months. They've normally been a very good guide for us on that front. We're also developing new customer relationships at the moment, you know, hopefully, we'll be closing some new important tier one customers over the next quarter or so. Yeah, I mean, we're, you know, cautiously optimistic.
Thanks, Glenn, and Brian, I'll just hand it back to you for some closing remarks.
Thanks, Max, and once again, I appreciate everyone taking the time. I'm sorry for the loss of connectivity, Brian and my email address are on the front page of the presentation, which we'll make available, so be happy to follow up with any questions.
Thanks. That concludes this webinar.