Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Adcore's Investor Update Conference Call. All attendees are in a listen-only mode for the duration of this conference. On the call today, the company CEO, Omri Brill, will provide a management declaration. This will be followed by an introduction from Adcore's Director of Finance, Amit Konforty, and subsequently, Adcore's CFO, Yatir Sadot, will present a financial overview of the company's third quarter 2023 financial statement. We will then address pre-submitted questions, and time permitting, take questions from participants in the chat below. Before we proceed any further, I want to ensure your attention to the safe harbor statement applicable to our discussion today. It's important that you take a few minutes to read this statement carefully. The statement will also be viewable on our website once the call is finished.
As mentioned, the statement will be viewable on our website afterwards, but I will now be turning the call over to Adcore CEO, Omri Brill.
Thank you very much, Danny, and welcome everyone. Let me share my screen. Okay. So again, welcome everyone, and it's my pleasure to discuss Adcore third quarter 2023 financial results with you and give you some context and highlights. But actually, before we can start or get started talking about third quarter results, I would like all of us to take a moment and talk about the horrible terror attacks that Hamas did on Israel on October 7th, almost a bit more than one month ago. I would like to obviously say that the hearts of everyone here in Adcore goes to the families that lost their life, a loved one during this horrible attack, and obviously, we pray with the rest of you for the quick return of all the kidnaps.
So it's not an easy time for us now in Israel, but I can say that it's also very encouraging time for us in Israel. There's a lot of peoples that stepping up, whether as individual, as companies, taking some action, supporting the communities, and basically, I'm always proud to be Israeli, but in times like that, I'm even more proud than ever to be Israeli. I would like to discuss with you a few very important initiatives that Adcore took as a company in order to support the communities. So I don't know if everyone is aware, but due to the war, more than 200,000 childrens and the families from border towns around Israel, many in the south and the north of Israel, have to evacuated.
So these communities evacuate to kibbutzim, to hotels in the center of the country, and basically, there's a lot of needs to support these evacuated communities, and Adcore took a few initiatives regarding that. The first initiative I would like to cover is what we call Icy Treat. So basically, we open an ice cream booth and go to each community, and we visit more than 10 communities around Israel with the ice cream booth. So the Icy Treat is one initiative, and you can see some familiar faces from Adcore taking part of this amazing initiative, obviously, including myself and others within the management and the rest of the team here in Tel Aviv.
I wanna cover another initiative that we took, which is, I would say, currently the main focus of the company, as an initiative, and what we call the Keep on Riding project. Under the initiative of the Keep on Riding, we decided that we would like to contribute new or used bikes to children from these evacuated communities. It started as a need to come from specific communities that we knew were evacuated, and we decided we can expand it and reach more kids and more communities, and obviously, with your help, we can reach even more. I would like to share another video from this effort, and then we can discuss this effort a bit further. ... This specific project is very dear to our heart.
Collectively, between what Adcore contribute to this project, what management and individual contribute to this project, we already collected more than 100,000 ILS to this project, and we hope that with your help and the help of others, we can collect even more and reach even more children in needs. So basically, we're gonna share this presentation, but you can donate clicking on this button, Donate Now, or you can simply visit our the company website, adcore.com/relief, and find more details about this important project and how can you help and take part of it. I encourage everybody to take involved. Usually, you say that when you give something, you get more in return than what you're actually giving, and I can tell you that that's actually true.
Helping these communities and helping these kids is the most important thing we can do right now as individuals, and obviously as company, it's important, and we need your help to continue supporting this important project. So after we talk, we discuss some initiative, obviously following the seventh of October attack, I wanna go deeper into the third quarter 2023 report and provide some highlights and context to the numbers. So all in all, yet another strong quarter for the company, and this strong quarter go back to back with and not, like, first, strong first quarter result, strong second quarter result, and now a strong third quarter result. So definitely a very positive start of the year.
We already collected more than 80% or 86%, if I'm not mistaken, revenue this year than what we did in the entire year of 2022. And bear in mind that fourth quarter historically is the strongest quarters of the month for us, so there's, like, still, still, more good news hopefully to come. If you look at about the top-line numbers and gross profits, so total revenue in third quarter were CAD 8.2 million. That's represent a healthy 10% year-over-year growth compared to the previous period last year. And if you look at the nine months, we're looking at almost 30% year-over-year growth, so which is a very strong indicator of how the entire year of 2023 gonna end for us.
Gross profit, again, we saw quarter-over-quarter increase of more than 10% to CAD 3.3 million, and all in all, both top-line numbers and mid-line numbers looking positive for us. And if you're looking at quality gross KPIs and gross margin was 40%, which is within the normal, for we would like it to be between 40%-50%. So again, where we would like it to be, and North America was remain flat, but we expect to see a very strong growth in North America, actually in fourth quarter, and obviously in 2024 in general. So we are very optimistic about what we can achieve in this specific market.
If we talk a bit about Amphy results and a few highlights regarding the results, we discussed that we would like to reduce the burn rate in Amphy for the bare minimum. So if the average burn rate in Q1 2023, monthly burn rate was CAD 81,000, we already reduced it by 50% to CAD 41,000 in third quarter 2023, and we expect this trend to continue in fourth quarter 2023 to CAD 25,000. So again, the burn rate is now gonna be in the bare minimum, and that's something that we are definitely think very positively about.
And from the flip side, when we look at the number of visitors to Amphy.com and Amphy blog, you can see definitely positive trend of increasing numbers of visitors. Q1 was 48,000, Q2 was a bit less than 100,000. third quarter average monthly was 115,000 average monthly visitors, and we expect fourth quarter to end up in around 130,000 monthly visitors. So again, the two graphs are acting exactly the way we want them to act. Cost going down, number of visitors going up, which is obviously positive. So just to sum up, revenue grew 10% year-over-year. If you're looking at 9 months, it's almost 30% year-over-year, which is amazing. Email, solid growth of 20% year-over-year.
APAC, solid growth of almost 20% year-over-year, and cash and cash equivalents grew by 21%. This is actually something that it was a focus for the company, and if you remember in previous earnings call, we discussed that the company anticipate to have, like, a stronger balance sheet towards the second part of the year, and actually it came a bit earlier than what we anticipated. So we are very happy with the result, both in cash flow and cash position for the company, which were improved significantly in the third quarter of the year, and Yatir will provide a bit more color to these numbers on his presentation as well... and comparables.
And so again, when we look about the current share price and the company valuation, obviously there's a big gap between what we think the share price should be and where it is. This gap, for us at least, represent an opportunity. This is why Adcore continue to purchase shares within the market. Obviously, every day we buy the maximum allowed amount of shares that we can do under the NCIB plan, and we continue to do so as long as we think the share price don't really represent the true company valuation. So I think, like, again, for us, this gap represents an opportunity, but every shareholder obviously is smart enough to do his own calculation.
And finally, I would like to go back a bit and reflect on the goals that we discussed regarding 2023 in the beginning of the year, and see if the company was enabled to meet them or not. So the first goals that we took on ourselves in third quarter was to maintain a strong balance sheet. So obviously now in third quarter, both cash position and cash flow were improved, and we are very optimistic about what we can achieve in fourth quarter as well. Obviously, traditionally, fourth quarter should be the strongest quarter of the year. So again, we improved the balance sheet, and we expect the balance sheet to improve even further during the last quarter of the year. And keep the gross margin within the 40%-50% range.
Again, checked on this one. Achieve double-digit growth in revenue and gross profit, checked. The company grew 10% in the third year on a yearly, on the third quarter, and grew almost 30% for the nine months of 2023, compared to the same period last year. And expand our global footprint in North America. So again, we saw like, we saw like good results coming from all regions, but the company is very optimistic about the growth we can achieve in North America, specifically from fourth quarter and beyond. And that's something that we definitely will encourage you to keep a closer look on, because that's a bigger market for us, and it present a massive opportunity for the company. And striking a strategic partnership, checked.
You know, Microsoft, Criteo, RTB, and I can name a few more, names like that, that all of them, have a very strong partnership, with both Adcore, obviously Google, and, and Facebook or Meta as well, and invest in R&D. So our continued investment in R&D is responsible to some of the, of the fruits that we see now in the third quarter earnings report. So again, all the goals which we took on ourselves in 2023, I am proud to say that we met all of them, and hopefully the same positive trend that we saw in, let's say, in the first three quarters of the year will continue into fourth quarter, as well. So I think with that, I concluded my part, and I'm gonna hand it over back to you, Danny.
Thank you, Omri, for your performance insights. I will now pass the call over to an introduction from Adcore's Director of Finance, Amit Konforty.
Thank you, Danny, and good morning, everyone. Allow me to introduce myself. So my name is Amit Konforty, and I am currently serve as the Director of Finance here at Adcore. Starting next week, I will be stepping into the role of CFO. During my time at Adcore, I've been deeply involved in all of the financial aspects of the company, and I believe that this experience has prepared me well to the transition to the CFO position. A bit about my professional background. I am a CPA with over 10 years of experience in various industries and also in public companies. Lastly, I wanted to say that I am very excited about the opportunity to continue Adcore's success, and also drive its growth and financial stability even further. So thank you, and with that, I will turn the call back to Danny.
Thank you, Amit. We look forward to seeing you start in your role here at Adcore. Lastly, we will hear from Adcore's CFO, Yatir Sadot, who will provide an overview of the third quarter 2023 financial statements.
Thank you, Danny, and good morning, everyone. I would like to present a clear and comprehensive overview of our third quarter financial results, highlighting both GAAP and Non-GAAP metrics, all denominated in Canadian dollars. As Omri mentioned before, despite facing a difficult business environment, our team performed well in the third quarter, maintaining the same positive momentum we experienced in the first two quarters of 2023. Since mid-2021, we've strategically focused on higher margin revenue streams and building relationships with scalable and resilient clients. This approach has enhanced our business sustainability and improved our long-term profitability. Now let's dive into details. For the three months ended September 30th, 2023, we delivered a revenue of CAD 8.2 million, compared to CAD 7.5 million year-over-year, an increase of CAD 0.7 million, or 10%.
In terms of sequential growth between the quarters this year, we are delighted to have achieved a 19% increase in revenues, amounting to an impressive increase of CAD 1.3 million when compared to the second quarter of revenues this year. Gross profit was CAD 3.3 million compared to CAD 3.4 million, almost the same level year-over-year. This quarter, gross margin was 40% compared to 46% in the same period last year. We kept the target range of gross profit between 40% and 45%, and we feel pretty much confident about that result. As for operational expenses, R&D expenses were CAD 0.3 million, or 4% of revenues, compared to CAD 0.5 million, or 7% of revenues year-over-year.
The main reason for the decrease is primarily attributed to the strategic shift towards operational efficiency and the successful reduction of development expenses in Amphy. Sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses were CAD 3 million, or 37% of revenues, compared to CAD 2.5 million, or 33% of revenues year-over-year. SG&A expenses increased mainly due to partnership expansion and marketing expenses. Operating loss was CAD 0 million compared to an operating profit of CAD 0.4 million, and net loss was CAD 0.2 million, compared to a loss of CAD 0.3 million year-over-year. Total revenue. As you can see, on the left wing of the slide, we went up by 10% year-over-year. On the right wing of the slide, you can see the growth for the first nine months of this year by 28% compared to the same period last year.
Another bully fact: over the first three quarters, we've secured more than 83% of last year's total revenues, setting the stage for a robust fourth quarter upturn. Revenue breakdown. As of our geo revenue breakdown, EMEA and APAC regions show the most growth year-over-year. As you can see, EMEA grew by 20%, APAC grew by 90%, and North America went down by 18%. We continue to observe a strong momentum and notable expansion in our partners plan. Net cash used in operating activities. In the three months ending September 30, 2023, the company provided CAD 1.5 million in net cash for operating activities, a significant improvement from the CAD 1.7 million used during the same period last year.
This positive shift can be attributed to the team's excellent effort in enhancing our collections from clients, reducing vendor payments, and securing improved terms with existing suppliers. Same trend you can see since the first quarter this year. The trend of healthy cash flows also reflected consistently across the quarters of 2023. You see from the first quarter of this year, we used over CAD 1 million of cash flow for operating activities. On the second quarter, CAD 429 thousand negative cash flow, and on the third quarter, for the first time, we went up for a positive significant cash flow.
In terms of financial position, we ended third quarter with cash and cash equivalents of CAD 7.6 million as of September thirtieth, 2023, compared to CAD 8.8 million at December thirty-first, 2022. Total working capital of CAD 7.7 million, compared to CAD 9.2 million at December thirty-first, 2022, a decrease of CAD 1.5 million, or 16%. The decrease in cash is mainly attributable to the media payments related to the fourth quarter of 2022, purchasing shares through NCIB, as Omri mentioned before. This is a strategic decision that the management took, investment in Amphy, and expanding our partnerships plan. We anticipated reducing our cash expenditure in operating activities and increasing our cash and cash equivalents in the latter half of 2023.
That was my expectation, Omri's expectation in the first quarter as this year and the second quarter, and we did it, as you can see. On the other side of the balance sheet, we still don't have any significant low debt. So it's very healthy for a company like Adcore to preserve zero debt in a hyperinflation environment, as we have today. In terms of Adjusted EBITDA, our quarterly Non-GAAP results reflect adjustment for the following items: depreciation and amortization, total CAD 208,000, share-based payment, total CAD 32,000, and for the three months ended September thirtieth, 2023, Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 240,000, compared to CAD 734,000 for the same period in 2022.
Excluding Amphy's EBITDA, and looking only on the Adcore EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA for the Adcore activity was CAD 350,000, showing a very strong result for the Adcore activity. With that, I will turn the call back to Danny.
Thank you, Yatir. We value your time here at Adcore, and we wish you all the best in your next challenge.
Thank you, Danny.
... We will now move over to our pre-sent questions. The first question, for EMEA and APAC, what drove revenue increases?
I can take this one. I think it's mainly the normal course of business, right? It's client acquisition, the same store growth within the existing client portfolio, and all in all, like, a strong activity going for these two specific regions.
Thank you. For our second question, what impact has the war in Israel had on your business, both from customer and human resources standpoint?
Okay, so that's, that's a fair question. We did address this question in a PR that we released earlier on this month, but I would say the following. The company's first and foremost priority is the safety and wellbeing of our staff. So, when everything started, we switched immediately to work remotely. Thanks to COVID, I don't know if you can say thanks to COVID, but the company already used to work remotely if needed, and operations were going smoothly and ongoing as usual when we switched to work remotely. And now I'm happy to report that we are gradually going back to work from the office, at least hybrid, working remotely and from the office as well, which is obviously a good sign that things are getting back a bit to a sense of normality, which is important.
I would say with regards to client activity, so Adcore, lucky enough, is a global company, and our specific operation within Israel is relatively not so big in terms of the overall activity. So even if the entire operations that we had in Israel were shut down to zero, still Adcore impact wasn't so great. Having said that, that's definitely not wasn't the case. So I think, like, a lot of e-commerce client, actually what we saw at the beginning, they stop some activity but then resume immediately, and now we can see they actually, they're getting better numbers than usual. Maybe it's November related, maybe it's a bit, like, COVID effect, that people staying at home and prefer to buy online, even during time like that. So I think e-commerce running as usual, or even a bit stronger.
We saw some stopping in travel-related activity, but on the flip side, since since Etko won the largest tender of online advertising for the Israel Advertising Agency, so we got a lot of budget that is, I would say, war-related. So I think, like, all in all, we don't see a decrease. If anything, we see an increase. I don't know if it's make too much sense, but that's the reality on the ground.
Thank you. Our third question is, are you still expected to be net income positive in fourth quarter?
Maybe, Yatir, you want to answer this?
Yeah, yeah, I will take it. Thank you, Danny. Yes, we anticipate to be profitable and generate positive cash in the fourth quarter, which is historically the strongest quarter for the company. So, yes, the short question.
Thank you. And for our fourth question, do you plan on continuing to participate in the NCIB, and are there any other plans for cash?
Yeah. So I would say it's, it's two questions, but obviously they are related because they're cash related. I think, A, NCIB, we are participating. I see the current plan gonna run until May, if I'm not mistaken, 2024. And obviously, if we still seeing this gap and opportunity for us to purchase more shares for consideration, we continue to do so. Bear in mind that we are restricted by the plan, so it's not like we can use everything that we have in order to purchase the plan, there's limitation. But within the limitation of the plan, we are doing everything we can, let me put it this way. And, in terms of reserving cash, efficiency, operational efficiency is number one priority for the company.
We talk about it time and again, how importance for us, you know, to, to be a operation, net, net positive in operation as well, and, I think also improving the balance sheet. So we already proved that we can do it in the third quarter, and I think, like Yatir said, we anticipate this positive momentum gonna carry well into the fourth quarter as well.
Thank you. For our fifth question, which region, which regions do you expect to see strong growth in over the next 12-24- months?
Yeah. So from one end, you know, like I need to... Everything is, I would say, something the company anticipate to say. I don't have a crystal ball that gonna tell me the future. But like I mentioned during my CEO remarks, and I, we think that North America has the potential to become a very strong and important region for us, fourth quarter and definitely 2024 as the, than the entire year. So if I need to bet, I would put my chips on North America, which is, by the way, goes in line with the company's strategic decision to focus more and more in this important market.
Thank you. For our next question, are interest rates and a fear of recession impacting the business?
Good question. Yatir, what do you think?
So basically, we have witnessed a recession in the last two years. So far, the recession has not affected the company's result, and I don't foresee any harm or impact in the foreseeable future. Regarding the high interest rates, since we are not a leveraged company with that, the interest rate allow us to enjoy good conditions under the short-term investments, like the deposits. We have like a effective rate of 6%, which is very high.
It's not bad, right?
Keep it up. It's an advantage, not a disadvantage.
So you don't wanna see the Fed starting the decreasing rates, yeah?
Mm-mm, not yet.
Okay.
Thank you. How is fourth quarter going, and do you think it will be in line with any prior expectations?
It's a fair question. I would say it's a bit too early, because you need to bear in mind that most of the spend in fourth quarter is actually happening in the last week of November, which is Black Friday, and then obviously in December. So I think, like, we didn't really see the beginning of fourth quarter yet, so I think, like, it will be a bit more safe to have a remarks or some type of a outlook regarding fourth quarter, post at least November, post the Black Friday sales. Having said that, we don't have any negative indications, so up until now, all the indications are positive, and we are in line with the positive trend that we saw during Q1, Q2, and third quarter as well.
And for our penultimate question, can you provide an update on Amphy? For instance, what are your plans for this business, as we have not heard much on it for some time?
Yeah, so I think, like, it's, it's not entirely true, because we do talk about Amphy in almost every annual call, and we saw some numbers. I think, like, with Amphy, I would say a few things. Around six months ago, we did, like, a shift of focus and decided to focus more on a, on a business-related educational materials, and the entire, let's say, skin of the website changed, and everything changed, the entire focus of the different materials that we have. And we put a lot of effort, you know, to transit Amphy from more B2C to a more B2B2C type of business, and so that's one thing.
I think the main priority with Amphy is is reduce the burn rate to the bare minimum, and I think we can definitely prove that we know how to do it. We expect the burn rate to be very minimal, CAD 25,000, not even dollars, in a monthly in fourth quarter 2023. And I think all in all, if we can maintain the same positive trends, that the costs are going down, and basically we see some improvement in momentum in the business activity, then I think that we can be on the right track. Obviously, things take time. You can't build, unfortunately, business overnight. Also another important things to consider is that fourth quarter traditionally also for Amphy is a very strong quarter.
Thank you. And for our final present question, can you provide any update on earlier learnings from MediaBlast app?
Obviously it's a bit early, right? It's still, it's recently launched. We launched it on the Google version, and we are now, every week now, I think, like, next day, next week even, we can release the Microsoft version of the app, so the app can support both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising as well. I think so far we see a very positive trend. There's a lot of, let's say, demand for this app, and actually in terms of, let's say, how much revenue this app has generated in a very short period of time, then I think it's a, it's a, it's definitely a success story.
Thank you. We have two questions here from people in the chat. Do we have time for this?
Yeah, why not? Of course.
Okay, so our first question is from-
Do you have anything better to do, Danny?
No, no, this is where I would love to be.
Okay.
Our first question is from Alexei Edelman, who would like you to elaborate on why you feel North America sales have declined in this past quarter.
Okay. So I think, like, A, obviously, these few factors that can impact the decline. Typically I would say a decline in this type of activity, some of it can be seasonality or, let's say, transition of earning between one quarter to another quarter, so that can have some impact on the result. But I say, I think that in the long run, Q1 2024 and even fourth quarter 2023, we are very bullish regarding North America. So I think that's a plateau, but this plateau will turn into a spike that we're gonna see in a earning coming from this specific region. So again, I'm very bullish regarding this specific region, and it's a strategic region for the company in general.
Thank you. Our second and final question from the chat is from Matthew Charon, who would like to know what you have to say regarding the share price and its continuation in falling.
Yeah. So I would say the following: A, obviously, we have little control about the share price, unfortunately, so we do everything we can do under our power in order, whether it's NCIB and also, purchasing shares as individual or management, as well. But I think, like, again, the way I see the current share price. It's more market related than Adcore related, and if any, it represent a real buy opportunity. But again, you shouldn't listen to me. You should do your own analysis, and then decide whether you wanna take position, increase your current position, and everybody should know better what to do with his own money. Adcore is a company, and I'm as individual, definitely all in and buying shares when possible.
Thank you, Omri. I will now hand it back over to you for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you, Danny. Can we stop sharing? So, thanks, everyone. I wanna take this opportunity to thank Yatir for the four years in Adcore. Yatir joined the company when we just started our journey as a public company, help us build the financial reports that we see, help us build the infrastructure. When Yatir joined the company, I think it was like we had one... like, two, maybe two companies, right? We had Adcore Inc. and Podium, which is the Israeli entity, and today, how many entities we have? Yatir, you muted.
We have six entities.
And counting.
Yeah.
And, a lot of the structures that we have today, a lot of the, you know, like, the different... It's not easy to have a global organization. A lot of this is done, thanks to Yatir and the team. He helped to build the finest team. He helped to build it in Tel Aviv and for Adcore. So best of luck, Yatir, in your new role as well, in your new venture.
One second. Thank you very much, Omri. First of all, thank you for the opportunity and the trust that you gave me throughout the last four years. I couldn't ask for a better CEO. I mean, you're not only a CEO, you're also a friend, and I'm going to be, like... I'm going to be here around for Adcore, for you guys, as much as you need, and I'm always, you know, this is my family, so-
Great. Uh-
Thank you for everything.
The feelings are mutual, and I wanna obviously take this opportunity as well, and say best of luck to Amit with the new role as the new company CFO. We know Amit for a while now, and everybody in the company learn to like Amit, because he's a likable person. He's a very solid solid guy, come with a lot of experience. A lot of the financial statements that the company released, and the last one in our fields, have been done mainly through the hard work that Amit did. So Amit is a detail guy.
He knows everything that he needs to know about the company, about the company's financial structures, and I'm sure, Amit, that you're going to do as you did an excellent job as the company Director of Finance. I'm sure that you're going to do even a better job as the company CFO. So best of luck in your new role as well, Amit.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Cool, cool. Guys, so thanks everybody that join us today, and obviously, stay in touch with the company PR, get involved in the company initiative. We need you guys to be involved, and hopefully, we can report even a stronger quarter in the next quarter, in fourth quarter.