Good morning, and welcome to the Voxtur Earnings Conference. My name is Brandon, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, during which you may dial zero one if you have a question. Please note it is zero one, not star one. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Jordan Ross, Chief Investment Officer. You may begin, sir.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Voxtur first quarter earnings call, where we will discuss our financial results for the period ended March 31, 2022. Please note that our results were released yesterday, May 30, after the market closed, and can be accessed on SEDAR or on our website at voxtur.com. Joining me today are Executive Chairman Gary Yeoman, CEO Jim Albertelli, and CFO Angela Little. We will begin with prepared remarks and then move into Q&A. If we are unable to get to your question, you are always welcome to contact me directly at jordan@voxtur.com. Angela Little will start by going over the financial results. Gary Yeoman will then present our strategic vision and initiatives for 2022 and their updates. Finally, Jim Albertelli will provide an update on how we are achieving our goals through organic growth opportunities and operational efficiencies.
Before we get started, please be advised that some of the information that we will share on this call may contain forward-looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and undertake no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or changes in our expectations. Further, on today's call, we will report using both IFRS and non-GAAP financial measures. We use these non-GAAP financial measures internally for financial and operational decision-making purposes, as we believe that they provide a meaningful measurement of financial performance and valuation. These non-GAAP financial measures are presented in addition to and not as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with IFRS.
To see the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures, please refer to our press release distributed yesterday, May 30th, and our management's discussion and analysis, both of which are available at sedar.com and on our website at voxtur.com. A replay of today's call will also be posted on our website. Finally, please note that all references to amounts or currency during today's call are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise stated. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Angela Little.
Thank you, Jordan. Good morning, and thank you everyone for joining us. 2022 is off to a great start for our company. We continue to reinvest in the company as well as execute against our strategic growth initiatives and are pleased to report that revenue and gross profit have continued to increase quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Q1 2022 revenue was CAD 40.8 million, which represents a 182% increase over Q1 2021 and a 5% increase over Q4 2021. Q1 2022 gross profit was CAD 13.9 million, representing a 93% increase over Q1 2021 and an 11% increase over Q4 2021.
Q1 2022 revenue and gross profit increased over Q4 despite normal seasonality in the title and valuation market, as well as interest rate increases, illustrating the company is rate agnostic as those impacts were offset by increases in default title and valuation, as well as increases in HELOC activity. We expect to continue to see increases in these areas, particularly in Q3 and Q4 of 2022. Revenue from U.S. operations represented approximately 96% of total revenue for Q1 2022, up from approximately 87% for Q1 2021 and 94% for Q4 2021. This is a result of our continued expansion into U.S. markets following the Apex, Voxtur, Anow, Xome, and Benutech acquisitions. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of CAD 32 million, leaving the company well-positioned to continue executing on its strategic growth plans.
For 2022, our focus continues to be on revenue growth. As I already noted, we can expect continued growth from default title and valuation and HELOC activity. We also expect increases from Benutech and our other SaaS offerings, as well as new product offerings, including the Attorney Opinion Letter, Real Property Tax Analytics enhancements, and Voxtur Wealth. These increases will primarily be in the third and fourth quarter of 2022. As a result of the increases in revenue combined with efficiencies and synergies gained from the investments made over the last year, we anticipate positive EBITDA during the latter part of 2022.
With regard to the 2022 guidance, we are confident both the revenue range of CAD 170 million-CAD 190 million and the gross profit range of CAD 87 million-CAD 97 million are appropriate based on our Q1 results and anticipated projections for the remainder of 2022. I will now turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Gary Yeoman, to provide additional guidance as to the company's strategic focus for the remainder of 2022.
Thank you, Angela, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The material investments we have made in the first quarter are in flight. As we leverage our investments in human capital, technology, and infrastructure, we remain focused on SaaS-based solutions. From the beginning, Voxtur has targeted accretive acquisitions with a focus on data as a foundation for tools that can reduce costs and inefficiencies in real estate transactions. A few constant pillars remain at the core of our playbook. We look for opportunities to grow organically within each business unit. You've watched as we've worked to strategically integrate our acquisitions with existing technology to expand our footprint within each client base. Positioning is another key growth strategy as we continue to build, scale, and drive growth in our core business units valuation, tax, and title.
We continue to refine our business model and invest accordingly, asking which products are best suited to drive our multifaceted growth plan. This, together with our investments in data, enable us to continually expand our capabilities to meet client needs in a changing market. We remain steadfast in our commitment to reduce the cost of homeownership. This is evidenced by our Voxtur AOL platform, which combines sophisticated title processes with legal expertise to create Attorney Opinion Letters with accuracy and scale. This alternative to title insurance, offered at a fraction of the cost directly for the benefit of the consumer, is gaining traction quickly with lenders of all sizes. Further, we are expanding our Real Property Tax Analytics product capabilities by leveraging a proprietary algorithm built on 40 years of historical data to generate comparison modeling.
We combine Voxtur Verified data attributes, mapping imagery and census data with local assessment data to analyze property values and verify taxes. Finally, we have accelerated the development of our Voxtur Wealth platform to create an asset management tool to facilitate more intelligent management of real estate assets. Every facet of the client's real estate investment will be transparent and Voxtur Verified. As we continue to integrate our acquired businesses with our organized business, we are seeing substantial efficiencies and strategic synergies resulting from operating on a single platform. We will continue to focus on capturing market share and improving our SaaS-based applications even further. We are confident in our ability to sustain strong growth and long-term profitability. Our previous guidance implies a profitability improvement in the second half of the year, which we expect to adhere to.
I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Jim Albertelli, to highlight our execution and operational strategies. Jim?
Thanks, Gary. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our first quarter results are indicative of our continuing investment in the market opportunities ahead of us. With that, the current environment necessitates continued discipline, and we are actively evaluating our priorities to ensure that we scale sustainably and efficiently. We continue to look for efficiency gains across the organization as we remain focused on areas that drive growth and have a proven return profile. Our strategic focus on growth through increased market share is evidenced by new partnerships and investments in infrastructure. Our partnerships allow us to concomitantly expand our expertise and our product offerings. This organic growth strategy, which includes scale-based leverage, balanced unit economics, and methodical asset utilization, will allow us to grow efficiently and profitably. Additionally, we continue to refine our strategy with the upcoming launch of our Voxtur AOL.
As you know, our AOL, as an alternative to title insurance, has been approved for use by both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As agency acceptance becomes more widespread, we see more opportunities for increased market share through organic growth and partnerships. Since our last earnings call, we've been actively engaged with our lending partners, fielding inquiries and guiding Tier 1 and Tier 2 lending institutions through the Voxtur AOL onboarding process. We are also leveraging relationships across the enterprise to build a robust distribution network. As Gary mentioned, we intend to launch two new platforms. First, we will deploy Real Property Tax Analytics, RPTA, in the United States as a tool for consumers to determine whether their taxes are too high or too low, and by how much. We anticipate that this will bring unexpected transparency to taxation as Voxtur facilitates consumer appeals through data.
By assimilating and normalizing historical data from multiple sources, Voxtur can provide lenders, investors, and homeowners with unprecedented insight into their most significant home operating expense. This offering will open the door to new lending standards, as mortgage servicers will have to do a proper data-driven comparison to choose the best line of sight on one of the largest expenses being carried on their books. We see this as an exciting opportunity. Second, Voxtur Wealth is an aggregation of various data elements that we assemble in our normalized data mesh architecture directly for the benefit of the homeowner. It's another cloud-native technology that combines all of the real property data in one location to allow wealth advisors and consumers to manage their highest value assets. Each of these three transformative platforms marks a significant milestone in the Voxtur story.
Voxtur continues to invest in solutions to serve our consuming constituents, financial institutions, mortgage servicers, mortgage investors, taxing authorities, and ultimately, consumers. Finally, we see the default business ramping up. This increase in our niche business gives us unique insight into the business of originating and servicing mortgages, which in turn allows us to better address the issues that each servicer, lender, and investor faces.
Voxtur continues to instill confidence through its partnerships, allowing continued growth in this business line. Borrowers across the United States saw a gain of over CAD 3.2 trillion in equity in 2021 alone, according to CoreLogic. With a hot housing market driving up home prices, many home buyers or homeowners are finding themselves with increased equity. As a result, we also expect to see growth in home equity as borrowers adjust for inflation. We will be prepared to serve this market as well as with products that are currently in production. Financial institutions see value in technology and innovation. Voxtur is quickly becoming one of the most trusted providers in the space. We are well-positioned to continue providing intelligent, data-driven solutions that will flourish with the macroeconomic tailwinds, and we will continue our mission to make homeownership more affordable.
The opportunity before us is significant, and we look forward to achieving our goals that we have set forward for 2022 and beyond. Thank you for joining us on the call today. We are appreciative of your time and your interest. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time. I'll hand it over to the operator to start the Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please dial zero one on your touch- tone phone. If you'd like to be removed from the queue, please dial zero two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset first before dialing. Once again, if you have a question, please dial zero one on your touch- tone phone. From Laurentian Bank Securities, we have Li Chen. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning, Li.
A quick question for me. I believe you guys briefly mentioned this earlier on. When looking at the current cycle with regards to the inflationary and interest rate environment, can you provide more color as to how the velocity of home ownership transactions could evolve and how that could impact Voxtur's business from here?
Sure. I'll take that question. I mean, it's really important to look at, you know, our four main, you know, business operations. First of all, let's look at our tax platform. Everyone knows that there are two certainties in life, death and taxes, and taxes don't go away no matter what the price is. Having this new offering, Real Property Tax Analytics, new offering in the U.S. that is, we've been providing this in Canada for some time now. It is basically counter-cyclical. We will be there in good times, and we'll be there in bad times. One thing you can't avoid is taxes, and what we want to do is bring certainty to the integrity of that amount. That's a nice counter-cyclical offering that we have.
The other anti-cyclical offering that we have is the asset management piece. With our programmatic asset management platform, we'll have the ability to provide certainty and cost savings in the management of those assets. Again, anti-cyclical. In operating a house, you need to deal with taxes, you need to deal with mortgage payments, you need to deal with grass cutting, snow removal, pest control, pool service. You need to deal with insurance. You need to deal with if you're buying or selling a property or you're managing, you know, opportunities for mortgage renewals. All of that has nothing to do with inflation. It is anti-cyclical, and that brings, you know, a consistency in our valuation.
Now, with the other two offerings with Jim and Stacy's new product Attorney Opinion Letter, obviously the number of transactions will change, you know, with the advent of interest rates. What is important in our view is that by us being able to provide a new title alternative, which basically may constitute as much as 50% or more in savings on that title, we think market penetration will more than offset any decline in the number of transactions that take place. We also think that holds true with our valuation. As everyone knows, you know, Fannie Mae has talked about the introduction of the new desktop valuation platform. Desktop valuation platform is going to, you know, reduce the number of requirements for the appraiser to sign off.
What does that mean? It means our digitized appraisal valuation process will climb to the top of the ladder. Also, which goes without mentioning, they're also now going to require sketches and, in addition to sketches, some kind of augmented, you know, floor plan layouts. We have the number one sketch mobile application in North America. It's been around for 40 years. It is ANSI certified. We believe that we carry the largest repository of sketches in North America. The advent of this digitized valuation process, which originally started with our Anow acquisition, and, you know, basically augmenting that with the sketch which we have generated from our Apex company. Combining those two together, we think it's gonna separate us.
What we have is two businesses, so we're gonna get increased market penetration to offset any cyclicality in the decline and two businesses that are anti-cyclical total because taxes and asset management are not affected by that.
Perfect. That's it for me. I'll turn it back. Thank you.
Thank you.
From Eight Capital, we have Christian Sgro. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, and thanks for the update. As I think of the gross margin expansion through the year, are there ways you're thinking about expanding margins, you know, across segments such as Xome or the settlement services, or do you think a lot of the margin expansion into Q4, will that come from new solutions under the business?
Angela, do you wanna address that?
Sure, I'm happy to. Thanks for the question. Yeah, we are obviously in Q1, we have seen margin expansion from the new tech which we acquired in December. As we look through the remainder of the year, we do expect increases from the consolidation of valuation, our Anow SaaS- based product, gaining efficiencies across the rest of the valuation platform, as well as expansions in some of our other SaaS businesses and expansions from some of the activity that Gary just discussed in AOL enhancements to the real property tax and our real wealth product.
Yeah. Christian, I was just gonna say to bring a little bit more clarity. We expect with our SaaS- based products that we're gonna have margins that are gonna be north of the gross margin north of 80%. In most cases, profit margins that'll be north of 70%. You know, as the increase in those new products start taking place, you know, and you're gonna see an acceleration in our gross margin. Hence, when we gave our forecast with respect to revenues and profit margins, all of that was modestly included in the enhancement of the new offerings that are coming out.
Okay. Perfect. The mix will drive a lot of the expansion through the year. I'll ask one more question. It's related to one of the products, to the AOL product. Just looking for maybe more candid commentary from what Jim spoke on earlier. Again, your conversations with tier one and two lenders. Just wondering.
Yeah.
From your seat, what you're hearing in the marketplace, their appetite for moving over from traditional insurance products. Maybe as a last question, what catalyst we could look out for, as you guys keep us updated through the year.
Yeah, sure. This is Jim Albertelli. I've been in personal contact with five of the top 10 lending institutions, and we've fielded inquiries from, I want to say, nine of the top 10 Tier 1 lending institutions in the United States, around the product offering. As you know, the onboarding process does take some time. The education process takes some time. The first half of this month was really spent with the GSEs having direct conversations that we were facilitating so they could get the lay of the land. At this point in time now we're beyond that. We're in the contracting phase with several lenders. Think about the increase in rates as being a great catalyst and a tailwind for Voxtur.
One, the reduction in the cash-out refinance business and the limitation on supply means that every loan is that much more important, whereas the past two years they were drinking out of a fire hose and really there was no appetite, interest or inclination in innovation, quite frankly. If they would've, they would have taken their eye off of a unique market opportunity. All that's changed. It's that exchange has been accelerated. We're looking at least two additional interest rate increases, I believe, to continue to tamp down on inflation. Certainly supply-side economics aren't gonna change that in the near term.
From our vantage point in the conversation with the lenders, you know, becoming more competitive on a per- unit basis by being able to disclose what is oftentimes more than CAD 1,000 delta in the expenses around a closing is pretty compelling. You know, with the market tightening up where you're seeing a number of lenders doing wide- scale layoffs, they're trying to staunch their flow of talent at the same time as increase the consumer's wallet share or retain the clients that they have in their servicing portfolio. To do so, they need more competitive products. That's where the AOL comes into place. Additionally, several lenders are under different forms of consent orders, as you can imagine, with various regulatory bodies in the U.S.
Some of those are necessitating a refinance of large tranches of their portfolio for disaffected and minority borrowers. As such, the AOL provides tremendous opportunities since they'll be paying the closing costs of reducing that cost profile and being more effective. That's, you know, that's what's transpiring today. I expect that the contracting process will be resolved. The distribution network, we've signed a number of large providers of settlement services in the country to confidentiality agreements. We're in the process of looking at who the top one or two or three providers might be that can help us distribute the product at scale that have considerable market share and have the same approvals or complementary approvals to Voxtur.
We see all of those factors coming together in you know throughout June and into July and starting that production in earnest. It'll be really a rampant scale exercise. I think we've got at least a two if not three -pronged attack at scale internally and externally. I think we're well positioned for that Q3, Q4 growth targets that we're highlighting.
That's a lot of helpful color, Jim. Thanks for taking my questions this morning.
Okay, welcome.
From Garrison Creek, we have Colin Fisher. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone.
Morning, Colin.
I have a couple
A couple of questions, sort of in a few different orders. Obviously, in the MIC that came out recently, there is talk about a 20-to-1 consolidation. Is that in preparation for an uplisting, and will you require something that extreme in the 20-to-1 consolidation?
Right. Well, yes, it is, Colin, as far as with respect to proposed up listing. Obviously, we're, you know, completing our prospectus and our circular and ready to make application for an up listing, which will take a little bit of time because, you know, we haven't filed prospectus before. But we were advised, you know, by our large institutions that are leading this exchange that, you know, we have to go to the shareholders, and we have to get permission, you know, to consolidate if it is necessary. So their advice was keep it as high as you can, knowing full well that there'll be an abundance of changes, hopefully in a much more positive way as far as our revenue and profits increase, so will our share price.
It gives us complete flexibility on what that consolidation, if any, is needed. It is not saying that we're gonna, you know, do a 20-to-1. What it is saying is giving us total flexibility so that we can evaluate what the market conditions are, test the waters as far as what would be the most, you know, suitable price as far as what we put on the marketplace, and then govern ourselves accordingly. It's just, you know, it's a caretaker safekeeping measure so you don't have to go back to the shareholders again.
Understood. Is there any contemplation of doing TSX prior to a U.S. listing, or would you do them concurrent still?
Yeah. It'll be a dual listing. We suspect, and again, you know, I don't have certainty, we would suspect that the TSX listing will come first, given there'll be less scrutiny since we're already on the Venture. The U.S. listing would take a little bit more time because obviously we're not, you know, on a major exchange in the U.S. right now. They're reviewing all of our acquisitions, you know, our circulars, you know, the prospectus. All of that is going to take some time and hopefully not as much as, you know, one might think.
We believe strongly that the opportunity to be able to explain, you know, software as a service offerings to be able to, you know, have that opportunity to expand it to a larger customer base, including pension funds, as well as retail and others, is extremely important. As you know, I mean, there's a number of indexes out there, whether it's a Bessemer Cloud Index fund or whether it's Software Equity Group.
When you go to those publications and you take a look at what software as a service providers are trading at, we believe that we as a company, given our offerings that we not only have, but the new offerings that are out there, we believe that we have all the indications from revenue growth, increase in profit margins, you know, profitability that will put us, you know, in a strong position in the third and fourth quarters. Profit margins obviously will all increase in material way as we go through the year.
We think that will, you know, having that understanding of who we are and what we're doing and expanding that to a larger base, including the U.S. of course, will manifest itself into, you know, hopefully, better multiples as far as what we're trading at right now.
Okay. Cheers. The other question I have is share-based compensation. That seems to be fairly consistently high on the financials. Is that a permanent fixture or is this mostly a function of the acquisitions?
It's more a function of the acquisitions, Colin, that we've had to, you know, obviously when you're putting together acquisitions, there's a lot of variables when it comes to getting people across the line and over the table, and one of the key things is basically key employee retention. The issue of restricted share units is a key, you know, retention opportunity for us.
We believe that, you know, it is, you're gonna see a, you know, significant leveling off of that, but never will it disappear because if we do, you know, an acquisition, not only, you know, the ability to kind of take advantage of the synergies with the technologies we're acquiring, but making sure that the brains behind all of that is that we got that knowledge retention as well. That will always be used as a tool, but more so because, you know, we have been fairly prolific in our acquisitions over the last year. I think it's more an anomaly than a rule.
Gary, I can provide a little.
Okay. Thank you.
For 2022, if you'd like. That number is sort of front-loaded in Q1, just how the grants and the vesting took place. It will go down considerably for Q2, and then it will go down again for Q3 and Q4 based on what's currently out there.
That's based on just what you see now without any further acquisition. I mean, another acquisition would change that obviously, correct?
That is correct. Yes.
Okay. Angela, while I've got you, the other questions I have are sort of around the cash flow from operations and the days sales outstanding. The cash flow from operations seems to be getting more materially impacted by many non-cash elements. I think out of the CAD 11 million operating loss, about CAD 8 million round numbers was from non-cash operating or non-cash items. Is that gonna be getting partially corrected by the share-based compensation issues?
That will be part of it. There's also, you know, Q1 also from a timing perspective, does have more expenses, some of them, you know, adjustments to EBITDA than some of the other quarters. You know, the amortization that you see in that add back, that's going to continue just based on the acquisitions and the intangibles. I do think you'll see some improvement in some of those other areas.
In terms of the tangibles, is that basically on a 10-year even straight- line amortization?
For the most part, yeah. We look at each acquisition obviously on its own and do you know a fair value and a purchase price allocation analysis. That's a fair average for the consolidated.
I've been noticing that days sales outstanding has been lengthening. Is that any particular business that's driving that, or is that just a market function, or what's driving the DSO?
You're speaking of the accounts receivable?
Yeah. The day sales outstanding, yeah.
Yeah. Some of that is going to correct itself in Q2. We are expecting for the accounts receivable to go down quite a bit. We're gonna be collecting on some of the related- party balances. I think you'll see a big improvement from Q1 to Q2.
Okay. I was gonna ask you about that AR stuff. I know this is a picky, tricky thing, but, you know, I know you cured it in the past and you have a great relationship with BMO, but you have another debt covenant breach. Where-
We do.
Do you expect that to solve quickly as it did the last time?
I do. I expect it to be solved for Q2. As you mentioned, I mean, BMO has obviously been a great partner to us and continues to be a great partner. We are in the midst of revising the loan covenants for the rest of this year. I expect we will be in compliance for Q2. We won't have a need for a waiver, and we should be good through the end of the year.
Okay, that's great to hear. The other question I have is gross margin looks like it's back. You know, you had decent margins last year, sort of early, just after the acquisition. It started to trend down a little bit, and then you had the Xome acquisition that materially impacted it.
Correct.
It's expanded again, which is great to see. I've run some sensitivity analysis, but is it basically that the new business as it expands? I did a simple math, which was CAD 1 million of around 80% gross margin gives you about a 1.23% increase in gross margin. Is that roughly what we're seeing? Is it just your marginal business is now just coming in at higher margins, like significantly higher margins, and the core business is dragging it back? By core, I'm sorry, not core, but legacy business like Xome is the primary drag on it at this point.
Yeah. Yeah. I think back to Gary's point. I mean, obviously our focus is on the more SaaS-based products and transitioning to that model. You know, you're right, the traditional valuation and, you know, the acquisition of Xome clearly had an impact. As we move forward and, you know, we have the Benutech acquisition in December, so that's certainly helping. You know, we continue to look for ways to enhance those SaaS-based offerings. AOL will be an example, you know, as well as the additional tax products. I do, you know, I sort of echo what Gary's already said. I think by the back half of the year you're gonna see that improve quite a bit.
Yeah, Colin, if I can just expand on that a bit. We've basically merged all of our valuation offerings into what we call Voxtur Valuation. If you explore what's happening in the marketplace today, especially with the advent in July of Fannie bringing on the new desktop appraisal protocol, what you're going to see is a really, really nice mix for us because, you know, traditional valuation is not gonna go away. It's gonna be here to stay. How quickly, you know, the transition into a digitized valuation platform with, you know, with the desk, you know, with the sketches and that is yet to be determined. Clearly, what you have to offer is both. Anow was way ahead of its time.
That full digitized platform along with an insurance wrapper around that we think is gonna be, you know, extremely prolific. Then when you add on our repository of sketches, which, you know, with a floor plan layout, you put those two together, we think we're in rarefied air, and we think we're gonna complement nicely with the existing Xome, you know, traditional valuation process. We'll be able to offer both. In addition to that, you have other alternative valuations like broker price opinion evaluations, et cetera, that are also notably higher- margin business. I think that, you know, come July and the third and fourth quarters, the valuation margins will improve.
Again, everybody knows if you took a look at all other AMCs around the country that, you know, their margins, gross margins are typically somewhere around, you know, 22%-23%. You know, our blend is higher. It's gonna continue to go higher, Colin.
Thank you. Angela, in Q1, you'd stated that you were on revenue target, and you've bolstered that again today. Me being moderately lazy from time to time, I took the approach of taking CAD 170 million and divided it by four, which gave me 42.5 as the low end.
Right.
You came in at 40.8. I'm guessing, which is only 4% off, by the way.
Right.
Which is great. My laziness paid off. My question then is, do you anticipate seeing sort of a steady ramp in the revenue throughout the year? It's not. I've just assumed it's four equal quarters, but I'm gonna guess it has some sort of ramp built into it.
Yes. It does. Q2, we don't really anticipate a dramatic change from Q1. It's Q3 and Q4 where I think you're going to see the most significant increases. I think, you know, sort of the combination of the new products that we've discussed, new business. There's, you know, we're going to have new volumes from defaults across the enterprise, in, you know, the title valuation and in our default back office. I think all of those combined are gonna make Q3 and Q4, you know, much better than what we've seen in Q1 and Q2.
With that, would there be any anticipation of potentially upgrading guidance when you get greater visibility on Q3?
Potentially. I think, you know, like I said, we're not really expecting Q2 to be dramatically different from Q1, so I think we would wanna wait and get a little more clarity on how quickly some of those new products come on, and then also how quickly some of the default work shows up. I think there's opportunity, but at this point, I wouldn't wanna commit to a firm date.
Colin, you also realize that sometimes we're loath to providing guidance because, you know, what we wanna do is we wanna overdeliver and underpromise. You know, the reason that we issued it is that we didn't want the market to anticipate that we're another CAD 100 million a year revenue business. So we felt very comfortable. We think that the upside in the new product offerings is substantial. And the only question is how quick will it start penetrating in the third and fourth quarters. You know, we're very confident with respect to what the growth is going to look like and what the total addressable.
We think our upside is unlimited, but we also want to, you know, maintain somewhat of what we call humbleness in our approach to providing guidance. You know, we felt we had to do something given that, you know, based on our pricing and that, we didn't think that the market truly anticipate us do, you know, generating that CAD 170 million-CAD 190 million guidance. That's why we issued it.
Okay. One question around the. Are you guys seeing any or do you anticipate seasonality within the numbers? Or are the businesses so disparate that you don't expect seasonality to be material through your numbers?
Well, like I said at the outset, I think there was a question asked earlier about cyclicality and seasonality. You know, they're, although they're not the same, there's some tie to each other. Maybe, I'll just turn it over to you, and you can talk about.
Sure.
seasonality issues and
Yeah.
We can go from there.
Yeah, happy to do that. There's just so much upside for the Voxtur businesses that the net effect, which you normally see in a business, you wouldn't see, you know, the growth in Q1 over Q4. You know, what you're really seeing now is that we have the benefit of, you know, the default title, the default valuation technologies that are in place, taking some of that, what would be normal seasonality out of, if you were just all on origination business.
At the same time, you know, I don't see Q4 seasonality being a major impact from the standpoint of our global business because, you know, like we mentioned, I think on the last earnings call, and certainly echo it again today, that a lot of the auditing of the portfolios that was necessitated after the moratorium or the moratoria, really, it was multiple in place. As a result of that, you know, that some of that is just gonna come off in, you know, June and July and really give us some good tailwinds.
Where you might, if you were in the standard business and you had no new product offerings, you might see that, if you were just in, let's say, just in purchase- money mortgage, you know, obviously people don't wanna move around the holidays. Typically Q4 and Q1 are depressed. Q2 and Q3 are accretive to your business on an annual basis. I don't really see that being an impact for us. I expect default to come back in line. You know, the home equity, the closed-end second, you know, mortgage business is starting, so is the home equity line of credit. I mentioned the CAD 3.2 trillion opportunity. Our product is more cost effective.
We have nothing, you know, in our numbers for that. In my estimation, is we should grow through Q3 and Q4, and you should see the results. You won't see the seasonality effect really.
Colin, I think at this time it's also important to kind of, you know, get back to our strategy. I mean, listen, real estate is the largest asset class, and if you take all the other asset classes put together and add them up, they still don't equal the value of real estate. Right now, we've 100% focused on residential, but residential in the primary market spot. I think that, you know, to give the listeners some kind of foresight into what else may be happening, we fully intend to be robust in the secondary marketplace as well, you know, with mortgage portfolios are bought and sold and transacted on the capital marketplace.
We want to start participating, you know, in those offerings and using the existing technology platforms that we have. We also know that there's a whole, you know, opportunity to double our business in getting into the ICI or investment industrial commercial side, which is also potentially on our sidelines as well. You know, not only will we be increasing market penetration through our technology offerings in the residential side, but in the primary market. We are gonna get into the secondary market, and we will ultimately, you know, down the road, you know, start looking at the ICI pieces too. We've got just unlimited growth potential with this real estate app.
With all the acquisitions that you've made, and now that the technology sector is softening and a lot of layoffs are starting to happen, are you starting to see the ability for cost control and for savings potentially on labor costs in the for some of your tech sector or technical?
Well, you have to remember, four product technology offerings, you know, that are all taking place starting in the third and fourth quarter as far as revenue. That means that there was substantive amounts of labor generated on the software engineering side of our business. We've, you know, basically established ourselves that we wanted to be the 40/60 company. You know, 40% of all of the technology people being employees, so that when the product's up and running, that we maintain responsibility and the architectural freedom to be able to maneuver. 60% is outsourced because we can get it at much more affordable rates. You know, we've got considerable costs that we've inherited over the last, you know, kind of 12 months in building these platforms and getting them completed.
I think that you're gonna see natural attrition just with the advent of our new product offerings. You know, obviously, we constantly have to look at austerity measures in areas that are not as profitable and lower- margin business and have that transition into, you know, go to sleep at night and make money because technology is taking over. You know, Jim, I'm not sure if you have, you know, want to add anything to that, but it's kind of in our wheelhouses, how we're thinking on these kind of austerity measures, Colin.
Yeah. I'd say it similarly. You know, what Gary highlighted was the amount of investment. You know, you know how many companies can launch, you know, three new products or services, you know, relatively simultaneously, all accretive to an overall platform effort, all took various scrums and focus for different dev teams. There was quite a bit of labor and recruiting. You know, is the tech market slowing down such that we could see further reduction in cost? No, I don't think the tech market is necessarily seeing that much of a slowdown at this point. However, you know, leveraging some of our variable costs per unit and offshore and other resources, bringing them up to speed because, you know, you have to provide a certain knowledge base for people to program.
Especially when they're outside of the industry, they may know code, but they have to know tax, or they have to know title, or they have to know valuation, right? That takes a little bit of a ramp. To Gary's point, with those platforms being released and launched and the development waning, it becomes more of an enhancement and a maintenance project. Then you should see some cost reduction. Obviously, with the additional sales of those platforms, you see additional revenue that's higher margin. The combination of those effects should resonate well for you.
Hey, Colin,
Yeah.
Time is running up here. I think that there may be one or two other questions from some other. Is there anything, you know, one final point that you wanna make before we. Again, we very much appreciate your questions.
Perfect timing. I just wanted to sort of get a little bit more. I don't know if you gave us enough color on Voxtur Wealth, and then just will there be any chances of either client announcements or some sort of, you know, something that will signal to us that there is, you know, before the AOL, RPTA, and Voxtur Wealth launch, will there be some sort of announcements of we're going live in these markets or and with these partners and that type of information?
Yeah. We have to be somewhat cryptic, as you already know. A lot of the lenders and the clients do not want notoriety unless it directly benefits them, so we have to be respectful of their wishes. We have to be somewhat cryptic in that it may be, you know, whatever. To the extent that clients will allow us to use it, that's fine. Others, you know, want us to be a little bit more cryptic, which we will respect. With respect to Voxtur Wealth, stay tuned on that. We're gonna, you know, we will be offering much more color on that in the future.
We believe that within the next, you know, kind of, you know, 20 days, we'll have our MVP ready to launch two clients in the marketplace, and we'll have a much more robust. You know, website to detail all of that. Certainly, significantly more color on the attributes of that will take place then.
Okay, that's perfect. I'll pass it along.
Thank you, Colin.
Thanks so much for indulging me.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.
From Cormark, we have Gavin Fairweather. Please go ahead.
Oh, hey, good morning.
Morning, Gavin.
A couple of questions for me, [Amy]. It sounds like there's been a lot of conversations on the AOL product with lenders. Curious, what types of volumes you're discussing with those customers. Is it purchase, refi, anything else? Can you shed any light on that?
Yeah, sure. Jim, do you want to take over?
Absolutely. I could do that. Happy to. Yeah. When you're talking about volumes, remember, let's take a look in relation to what we had projected, and we had looked at, you know, a 10,000- unit- a- month production level, you know, by the end of Q4, and then we would ramp up, and we believe that we could be at modestly, but 100,000 units, you know, a month by the end of next year. Right? You know, in the discussion with the lenders that we're having now, it has been about scale, about ramp, and about signing up additional distribution because of the numbers that we're discussing.
One top- tier lender alone has a special project and, you know, you're looking north of 50,000 units. So pretty prolific production. I think we're still very conservative to think that we do 10,000 by the end of the year. I think we can exceed that, perhaps by a large margin. But we're, you know, we're looking at moving towards how do we get from today to roughly 10% of the market. The mix, as you'd expect, is really, you know, the first batch looks like it'll be where lenders have more and more control, which is in that refinance business, which again, we don't have a trailing history of a large percentage, so it's all growth to us, right?
We're looking at, you know, could we capture more than 10% of the transactions by the end of next year? I think that's fair. I think that's over 100,000 units. The lenders we're talking to certainly could support that. The second piece of it is the education with the loan officers, right? I think there's another piece that really benefits us, which is the fair lending laws. For example, once you roll out AOL and you go to a marketplace, and you offer it to one group of constituents, it's not like you can't, you can offer something else to the other folks at the same price point.
In other words, you know, there are fair lending concerns that once you provide this cost reduction to one group of consumers, it should be to all. The second tailwind really for us that should really help us is that, you know, consumers now, even when they're in the purchase market and our product is set up and approved for purchase, both for Fannie and Freddie. In the purchase market, when you look at it, people are going out and getting those pre-qualifications. There are even certain lenders out there that are providing, like, we'll call it bridge financing, so consumers can compete against the hedge funds by having essentially an all-cash offer. There's a product out there called CashEdge, for example. That's a nice product out there, almost like a bridge loan.
Well, that's the, you know, the AOL is primed where you get that pre-qualification and your costs are CAD 1,000 or CAD 2,000 less, then you're less likely to be steered to a captive title company or some other third party. I think you're gonna see the combination of it'll be refinances at first t hat goes right into the production model, with a you know like I said a Tier 1 lender or one of the top couple of mortgage originators. You'll see that in production. Quite frankly, they need to do it to be competitive, otherwise they'll lose wallet share in this already tightening market.
The second thing you'll see is consumers becoming more educated, taking their pre-qualifications that they need, especially in that, I'll call it $200,000-$500,000 U.S. range, where the hedge funds have their typical buy box. You know, these alternative products and the reduction in the closing cost should be pretty compelling for those consumers as well. Hope that helps.
Jim, just to make sure that for everyone's benefit, when you're giving your estimates of 10,000-100,000 remember that's on a per month transaction basis, right?
Correct.
That's-
Correct. I'm talking monthly units. Monthly units of production.
Thank you. Thank you.
Got it. Then just secondly for me, it sounds like you see default volumes kind of building nicely throughout the year. Can you just remind us how much upside there is to quarterly numbers, maybe versus 2019 levels and how much torque might be there and maybe what you've included in your guidance for that? That's it for me. Thank you.
Yeah. I think that we're, you know, look, we've been pretty conservative on our guidance. We, you know, around the percentage default, and Angela Little can take a look at that guidance and give it to you, break down the actual percentage that's default related. But I think that at this point in time, again, with that, we're fairly conservative in nature. We believe that, you know, some of the things we've talked about, the rising rate environment, and the opportunity with home equity. But on the other side, all of the, I'll say bill collection infrastructure firing back up will result in additional defaults. You can see that right now.
I think there was an article in The Wall Street Journal recently talking about around the unsecured loans and the auto loans already seeing an uptick in default activity. Well, that's just the precursor for larger assets, right? Such as homes. I see all of those things coming together in Q3 and Q4, and we'll be right on target with our guidance. You know, what could it mean as an impact? And again, I look at the monthly impact. It could easily mean close to CAD 750,000-CAD 1,000,000 in net revenue towards the end of Q3 or beginning of Q4.
I could see those numbers start to, again, on a net income basis, be in that range. I wouldn't be shocked to see that. I also would be shocked to see, you know. There was some conversation about, you know, different related parties, which is again, like a laboratory for some of our technologies. One of our technologies goes into production that was created there in the bankruptcy space for one of the three largest Tier 1 lenders. That portends well too for our default business starting to crank up, as far as on the revenue side. That's over an 80% gross margin. So some hidden gems in that default analysis as well.
Gavin, I'm gonna remind Jim that, you know, when we merged together, a year and change ago, one of the things that we looked at, aside from this gem, which is the Attorney Opinion Letter, and the more well-rounded, you know, SaaS suite of offerings that we wanted to provide our clients, was that Jim, his business was a very profitable business in, you know, when normal defaults are taking place, to the tune of about CAD 1.5 million a month. This was pre-moratorium. That was a pretty influential consideration when we did this merge was, you know, him returning to, you know, a material profitable business. With the augmentation of the Attorney Opinion Letter, we thought it was a home run.
That's all coming true as planned. It's the merger that we did, albeit it's taken much longer for this moratorium and the hangover of COVID, all of the thesis that we went behind and strategy that we put together in this merger, I think has turned out extremely well, both for, you know, Jim's team at ALAW before the merger and us at iLOOKABOUT, which obviously rolled together to become Voxtur. I think everything is just coming together nicely as planned. We expect, you know, continual improvement in our financial results because of that.
Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you. Any more questions?
No further questions at this time.
Okay. Well, on behalf of everyone here at the Voxtur team, we thank you all for supporting us and for following us today and your questions. Look forward, and certainly Jim and his whole team are available to anyone at their beck and call as far as questions or answers. Thanks very much everyone for participating today. We'll end the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.