Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jenny, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Dye & Durham first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. I would now like to turn the call over to Ross Marshall, Investor Relations, on behalf of Dye & Durham. Mr. Marshall, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Jenny, and good afternoon. Welcome to the Dye & Durham earnings call. Before we start, we'd like to remind you that all amounts discussed on this call are denominated in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Please note that statements made during this call may include forward-looking statements and information and future-oriented financial information regarding Dye & Durham and its business, and disclosure regarding possible events, conditions, or results that are based on information currently available to management, which indicate management's expectations of growth, results of operations, business performance, business prospects, and opportunities. Such statements are made as of this date hereof, and Dye & Durham assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect events, disclosures, or circumstances, except as required by applicable securities law. Such statements involve significant risks and uncertainties and are not a guarantee of future performance or results.
A number of these risks or uncertainties could cause results to differ materially from the results discussed today. Given these risks and uncertainties, one should not place undue reliance on these statements and information. Please refer to the forward-looking statements and information and future-oriented financial information section of our public filings, without limitation, our MD&A, our earnings press release issued today for additional information. Joining us on the call today are Matt Proud, Dye & Durham's Chief Executive Officer, and Frank Di Liso, Dye & Durham's Chief Financial Officer. A question and answer session will follow the formal remarks for research analysts. I now turn the call over to Matt for his opening remarks. Matt?
Thanks, Ross, and good afternoon, everybody. The business performed extremely well in the quarter, which was our second best in terms of adjusted EBITDA and third best on a revenue basis. Adjusted EBITDA also outperformed on a sequential basis. In addition to that, in the quarter, we paid back CAD 45 million in net debt. Our core business is doing very well, and its performance underscores the strength and consistent ability to generate cash flow to fuel our growth and finance our operations. We heard investors, and reducing our leverage ratio is a priority for us. Our aim is to bring the business down to below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA as soon as possible, and we're looking at all available options to help us achieve this goal.
As I mentioned, in the first quarter, we reduced our debt by CAD 45 million, and we're focused on growing earnings and increasing, increasing our cash flow conversion to continuously pay down debt. Making significant improvement to our free cash flow performance is also a top priority. To that end, we've launched a business performance improvement plan, targeting improvements of greater than CAD 70 million in free cash flow performance to be realized by the end of Q3 fiscal 2024 on an annualized basis, compared to Q1 fiscal 2024, i.e., the current quarter. In October, we've already actioned CAD 40 million of annualized improvements towards this target, with the full benefit of this action being realized in Q3 of fiscal 2024.
We're implementing a series of measures to achieve this goal, including a reduction in capital expenditures, product price optimization, and further reducing one-time charges as we are lowering our operating costs. As you recall, over the past two years, we've made a dedicated effort to diversify our business and focus it on the legal practice management software market. We've made meaningful progress in this regard, which has put us in a much stronger position today and made the business stronger off. The impact of real estate on our business, to be honest, is quite misunderstood. To be clear, we sell SaaS software to law firms to help them grow and efficiently manage their practice. This software is mission critical to legal professionals, regardless of not if they're conducting real estate transactions or not.
To quantify this, the downside risk to Dye & Durham from the entire Canadian real estate market was only 27% of total revenue in the first quarter. We view this as comfortably manageable, especially when you consider that some businesses have revenue concentration of more than 20% in the hand of a single customer, not an entire end market. Shifting our focus to selling practice management software has served to improve and diversify our business, including increasing our annual recurring revenue. ARR was CAD 117 million as of September 30, 2023. That's more than double what it was at the same time last year and represents highly, highly quality revenue growth across our full portfolio of software solutions. ARR is 27% of our total revenue, compared to basically nothing we started two years ago, and we're making meaningful progress towards our target of 50%.
Our ARR today is made up of two broad categories. The first being the gold standard per seat, per user revenue, and the second being minimum spend contracts. We continue to be very disciplined and thoughtful to our pricing strategy. During the quarter, we announced a variety of price changes across our global portfolio, in some cases, to offset higher input costs due to inflation, and in other cases, to bring our prices in line with other market providers. Case in point, today, we're arguably the largest provider of legal practice management software in the United Kingdom and Ireland, thanks to our recent acquisitions. However, the per seat, per user price for our practice management software solutions being offered is still significantly lower than market. We're in the process of addressing this over the remainder of fiscal 2024, across more than 20,000 users in that market.
At a high level, we believe that price can consistently contribute roughly 10% annual growth to revenue. At the same time, we've also improved our cash conversion. You started to see this in Q4 fiscal 2023 results, and we continued to make progress in Q1 fiscal 2024, with approximately CAD 6 million in acquisition restructuring add backs that were cash-based. We believe we can continue to show improvement in this area. We believe for a business of our scale, with CAD 250 million or more in Adjusted EBITDA, that's a reasonable goal, and reducing charges to 10-15 million on an annualized basis over time, which will free up more cash flow for our capital allocation priorities. It's really a healthy business. Our payments infrastructure and banking technology business also performed well in the quarter.
It's a business that has a lot of upside in it, and we're seeing significant growth. It offers best-in-class digital infrastructure to most major Canadian and Australian lenders, providing critical technology and products which support essential functions like payments, information services, property settlement, and core banking infrastructure. This business has trusted long-term relationships with more than 95 lenders and financial institutions. It represents an opportunity for us to generate more cash in the near term. To build this momentum, we're working to further professionalize the management team in that business and hire a new CEO for that business. We're also looking at ways to highlight the value of this business better to investors in the coming quarters. Before turning it over to Frank to highlight the financials, I'll briefly address the recent Convertible Debenture transaction.
The terming out of approximately one-third of our convertible debentures by 2.5 years or 5 years of runway in total, in a highly undiluted piece of paper that only increased the yield to maturity by 2.4% and a nominal amount of increased cash interest of CAD 2 million when looked at in the aggregate, was the right move for the company. I've talked to some people who look at only one side of the trade and say it's expensive. We believe both sides of the trade should be considered to draw a fair and accurate conclusion. We believe it was the right trade for the business. It reduces the convertible debt and reduces risk on our overall capital structure. Without a doubt, it's been a challenging few weeks for us. I understand that shareholders are frustrated.
We are frustrated too, but our interests are aligned with yours. Today's results demonstrate the improved performance of the business delivered in the past quarter and show our strategy is working. We believe we have all the ingredients to build on from here. We operate a differentiated global business with a large, diversified customer base of small and medium-sized law firms, with a sticky, best-in-class practice management offering that is mission-critical to customers. I'll now turn it over to Frank to review the financials.
Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. This afternoon, we reported our first quarter of fiscal 2024 results. Our results continue to demonstrate the resiliency and consistency of the business, independent of market size, cycles, and ability to generate cash flows. Our diversification strategy and build-out of our practice management solutions are working. We continue to increase our annual recurring revenue contracted and reduce our exposure to real estate transactions. Annual recurring revenue contracted was 27% as of September 30, 2023, compared to just 13% in the same period last year. Revenue exposed to real estate transactions globally in Q1 was 49%, compared to 62% in the same period of fiscal 2023, while revenue exposed to real estate transactions in Canada was only 27%, compared to 37% in the same period of last year.
We reported revenue of CAD 120.1 million during the first quarter, which is in line with the same period in fiscal 2023. In that prior period, there was an additional CAD 9.3 million of revenue from TM Group, which was divested on August 3, 2023. Excluding the impact of TM Group, revenue has grown by more than 8% in the first quarter of fiscal 2024. We generated Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 68.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, an increase of CAD 4.3 million or 7% compared to the same period of fiscal 2023, our highest quarterly amount since Q4 of 2022. This is primarily a result of lower adjusted operating expenses and growth in revenue after taking into consideration of the TM Group divesture.
We continue to maintain our strong EBITDA margins, coming at 57% this quarter, our highest level since Q4 of 2022, and is in line with our target range of 50%-60%. Total adjusted operating expenses, which includes direct costs, technology costs, G&A, sales and marketing, were CAD 51.4 million for the quarter, or 43% of revenues, an improvement of CAD 4.3 million or 8% compared to the prior period, when total operating costs represented 46% of revenues. Net of the impact of expenses from fiscal 2023 acquisitions, our operating costs for the quarter were CAD 43.6 million, which demonstrates improvements from our cost reduction initiatives implemented early in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. As we acquire assets and manage the broader business, we continuously look for ways to drive cost synergies and eliminate redundancies.
This is one of the methods to continually improve cash flow performance, which Matt addressed earlier.
... We expect our ongoing operating costs to be within the 40%-50% range of revenues. Net finance costs for the quarter were CAD 35.1 million, compared to CAD 16.2 million in the same period of fiscal 2023. The increase is due to an increase, an increase in interest rates and higher net debt levels, as well as lower favorable non-cash impacts from the change in fair value of our Convertible Debentures as compared to the prior periods. Acquisition, restructuring, and other costs for the quarter were CAD 6.4 million. This was a decrease from CAD 18.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. As Matt mentioned earlier, improving cash flow conversion is one of the paths towards driving down our Leverage Ratio below 4x. We believe we can deliver additional improvements in this cost item over time.
We are targeting CAD 10-15 million acquisition, restructuring, and other costs on an annualized basis. You should expect continued improvements in the second quarter and beyond, as this is one component of our CAD 70 million annualized business improvement plan mentioned earlier. Now, turning to our balance sheet, we reduced our overall debt by CAD 45 million during the quarter, mainly with the proceeds of the sale of TM. At the same time, this quarter, we closed small deals in legal practice management space that we locked into in late fiscal 2023. Our leverage ratio, based on fiscal 2024 consensus, including the impact of the convertible debenture, is currently 5.1x as of September thirtieth. We have sufficient resources to manage our debt levels. The business generates strong, sustainable cash flows.
But we understand the necessity to drive down our leverage ratio, and we have set a clear target to reduce it below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We're taking actions to increase our cash flow performance and placing a greater emphasis on this measure. Our Q1 cash flow operations increased by 4% versus the prior year. We've built a business of scale that is mission-critical to small and medium-sized law firms and financial institutions. Despite the challenging macro market conditions, today's results and plans demonstrate the resiliency of the business and the opportunity in front of us. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Questions will be taken in the order received. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press the star followed by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Once again, that is star one should you wish to ask a question. Your first question is from Thanos Moschopoulos from BMO Capital Markets. Please ask your question.
Hi, good afternoon. Matt, maybe just to clarify regarding the focus on deleveraging, should we be thinking that you'll be taking a pause on M&A for the next few months in order to deleverage, or will you still consider opportunities, albeit more selectively?
Look, our main focus is, you know, we heard investors deleveraging is a priority. Look, as we deleverage, that will free up more cash flow that in the future will let us to, you know, get back to business. But, you know, we kind of heard the message loud and clear. So, for us, in the near term, it's getting that debt to Adjusted EBITDA as a metric to look at below 4x ASAP. And look, we—as you would have seen last quarter, there was, you know, aside from the practice management acquisition that was announced in the Q4 results, CAD 2 million of very small acquisitions we did that were accretive, given what we paid for them, but they were very, very small.
Okay. Now, as far as your end markets, you have better real-time visibility than we do. The data gets a bit lagged. Is it still the case that we're kind of bouncing around the bottom, or are you seeing any trends across your geographies?
So, I mean, look, our business is performing really well. If you consider that compared to Q4, you know, we sold TM, yet still came in sequentially with the same amount of revenue as we had Q4, which is generally always seasonally slow. Then that implies that our core business is doing really well. Look, I assume your question relates to kind of real estate transactions, which are now a minority of our revenue. Look, we're still kind of. If you look at kind of the numbers we see and kind of correlate with businesses we have that do track purchase and sales, yeah, I mean, it's still a fairly depressed market out there. But, you know, at some point, pent-up demand comes back, and that will be, you know, great upside in the future.
But today, even without that, you're seeing great performance in the business. As is demonstrated by the results, we were able to kinda, you know, sell what was about 16%, 16% of our revenue, and still, you know, in a quarter is generally sequentially down, kind of be flat through our last quarter. Which again speaks to the strength of the business. So yeah, I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, yeah, it does. And then just as we think about the December quarter, just given seasonality in some of your markets, and given a bit of TM going away, I guess, would it be reasonable to expect that revenue EBITDA will be down a little bit sequentially versus the September quarter?
Yeah. So generally, we have our Q3 22 is a bit softer than Q4 and Q1.
Yeah, just remember that in Q1, we still had just a month left of TM revenue, so naturally that will fall off in Q2.
Maybe just to confirm that amount. From the disclosure, it seems maybe CAD 16.5 million of TM revenue. Is that in the general ballpark?
Yeah, generally. Yeah, that's, that's a good number. But as I mentioned before, the year-over-year impact on revenue was 9.3 revenue - 9.3 million CAD. So that's three months compared to one month.
Yeah. All right, thanks. I'll pass the line.
Thank you. Your next question is from Kevin Krishnaratne from Scotiabank. Please ask your question.
Hey there. Good evening. Just a question on the CAD 70 million free cash flow. There's a number of categories that the benefits are coming from. Can you give us a sense of, you know, where the greater impacts are to come from? With CapEx, is it the product price changes, OpEx? Any color there?
Yeah, I could take that, Kevin. So they are, we have purposely put them in order of significance. So, as you mentioned, the first couple being the reduction in CapEx would be something that we've already actioned. And then followed by reduction in one-time charges and then the, you know, price optimization initiatives that we have.
Okay, gotcha. And then I thought it was interesting, the comments you made on, you know, the opportunity in practice management. I think it was in UK and Ireland. I might have misheard. Did you say 20,000 users there? And there's an opportunity for an uplift there. I'm just curious to know, how do we think about the level of that, you know, uptick? And then did you say going forward, you would think that that's a business that you could do 10% increases year-over-year? I'm just curious about the commentary that you made there.
Yeah, it's Matt, Kevin. Look, it was kind of case in point example of, you know, some of the upside we have in our business when you're just... You're looking at businesses we have and your price points, you know, quite deeply below market. So that's a case in point. We have 20,000 users that are paying, in many cases, you know, as much as CAD 100, you know, a month below market, when you kind of convert to Canadian dollars. That's just one example of some opportunities we have in the business.
When you kind of back up and look at it, kind of, you know, from 50,000 feet, this is a business when you kind of look at all the opportunities that we have, every year, you can grow it, you know, kind of 10-ish%. We've consistently done that for many years and in most cases, you know, been delivering that.
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thanks for that. The 19 to 20-- 19% ARR to 27% ARR, you know, in the quarter, it was a nice jump. Was that mainly driven by M&A? And also, you know, how's progress being made on the minimum volume contracts?
It was driven by both. There was a practice management application, you know, acquisition in there that we talked about in our Q4 financials, that would also be in these financials. But there was also a lot of that was driven from kind of minimum spend contracts, particularly out of Canada.
Yeah, Kevin, Kevin, the increase is actually 13-27 year-over-year. But the given Q4 was our obviously high period. As Matt mentioned, there were a lot of contracts that were signed in Q4 that had partial benefit in Q4, so you're getting the full, the full three-month benefit in Q1.
Sorry, was, did you not do... You did 19% in Q4, right? So I was going from-
Correct.
- from 19 in Q4 to 27. Yeah. Okay.
Correct. Yeah.
[crosstalking] I'm sorry. I thought you meant year over year.
Yeah. No, all good. The last one for me, just on some cash items there. Number one, how do we think about cash taxes for the year? They were a little bit elevated, I think, in 2023. Just wondering where they land in 2024. It looked like it was pretty modest in Q1. And then the second one on cash is, can you remind us of, you know, any a rough estimate for holdbacks and potential earn-outs that you're gonna be paying out in 2024?
Yeah. So for cash taxes, we have implemented a series of plans in Canada to get a better handle of our uses of cash. And you know, we do expect reductions in cash relative to the fiscal 2024 amount. You should look at an effective rate of about 25%. But given that we have such large loss carryforwards of approximately CAD 200 billion, we do tend to put the good use in this fiscal period in Canada. And your question on holdbacks, we do have a disclosure in our notes about the total amount of holdbacks.
So you can refer to that, Kevin, but you know, off the top of my head, I think it's roughly around CAD 10 million-CAD 15 million over the next 12 months.
Perfect. Thanks a lot. I'll pass the line.
Thank you. Your next question is from Gavin Fairweather from Cormark Securities. Please ask your question.
Oh, hey, good afternoon. Congrats on the results. Just, a clarification first on the CAD 70 million free cash flow, annualized increase. It sounds like you actioned about CAD 40 million in the, you know, current quarter. Should we think about a lag to some of the benefits, both on the cost side and pricing side?
Yeah, that's right. So in the month of October, we actioned about CAD 40 million of it. And there's some more are going to come on in the rest of the quarter. So you'll see that impact happen in the results we release in February for this quarter, but then you'll see the full CAD 70 million annualized impact on a quarterly basis next quarter.
... Okay, makes sense. And then in your prepared remarks, you talked about some of the pricing actions that you've been undertaking recently. I'm sure you're watching kind of revenue per customer and churn trends pretty closely. Are those kinda generally falling in line with your expectations? How would you describe that?
Yeah, I'd say everything's in line with expectations. I mean, we have, you know, churn is generally very low across the business. We have multiple, you know, multiple products in many cases sold across the same customer, which generally leads to a sticky customer. And so there's a real focus on getting more customers under contract, which even helps reduce that more.
Next for me, you referenced the, you know, 4 turns of leverage target a few times. Would you be willing to put a kinda timeline around that? Or any kinda thought on when that might be achieved?
No, we're not gonna commit to a timeline today. Let's do it ASAP. I would say, though, like, in the kinda longer term, what we will-- we're gonna get it below that. We kinda know you gotta be between 2 and 3.5 times, given what our, you know, the ability of our business to perform, a cash generation perspective. But in the near term, we like to get, you know, ASAP below 4 times. We think that's an important kinda number to demonstrate that we can quickly bring it down to.
Okay, and then lastly, maybe for Frank, just on the working capital, it looked like a little bit of net flow this quarter. Is that just timing? Should we think about a reversal in the quarters ahead?
I don't think there's a reversal we're expecting, Gavin. So we, you know, actually get, as you know, paid a lot upfront for some of the services that we offer. So that will continue. There's nothing extraordinary that I can remember that's in the working capital this quarter.
Okay. I'll pass fine. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Your next question is from Scott Fletcher, from CIBC. Please ask your question.
Hi, good evening. Most of my questions have been answered, so I will just ask one. On the... You sort of spoke to the potential for 10% revenue growth as a result of price increases. Last quarter, you talked about targeting, you know, between, I think it was 20%-25% total growth, with half of that organic. So that would sort of imply, you know, sort of limited growth from new customers or customer expansion if you're doing 10% from pricing. Is that, is that the case, or is there sort of, you know, do you think there's additional upside from winning new customers to that 10, to that 10%-12.5% organic growth number?
Look, we have, like, large market share across a lot of the markets we're in, where the name of the game isn't adding new logos, it's adding more services to existing customers. That's what we focus on, the cross-sell, and the cross-sell under contract has been a big focus of ours. So, kinda that's the way I would look at it, Scott.
Okay, thanks. And then I guess, yeah, one question I'll ask Jen is just on the gross, gross margins were, you know, materially improved in the quarter. Is that, is that a level we can look at going forward?
Yeah, I think one of the bigger implications, as we mentioned before, Scott, was the faster of TM. So they would have carried a lot lower margins. So yeah, that's the level you should expect. And you know, given that there was a one-month contribution of TM in Q1, you know, expect it to rise slightly higher.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question is from Robert Young, from Canaccord Genuity. Please ask your question.
Hi. The progress on ARR expansion, is that all driven by Canada at this point, or has that expanded into other geographies?
We started both in the UK and Australia, but most of what you would have seen was the pipeline we built over last year in Canada coming online, particularly, as Frank mentioned, towards the end of Q4.
The plan to reduce CapEx that you're highlighting within that CAD 70 million of better free cash, would that have an impact on any of the initiatives to consolidate under Unity and then expand that strategy, even if it started in the UK and Australia?
No, a lot of that work is coming towards an end, so that's why we're having a big reduction in that spend. That's part of the reduction in CapEx due to that being concluded or towards conclusion.
Okay. And then you added a new head of product and new CRO, head of sales, and so maybe if you guys give us a sense of the changes and how that's going relative to your expectations, then I'll pass the line.
Yeah. So we brought in a new CRO, and you know, really was to build upon the success we'd had in Canada in selling contracts and taking that and building that infrastructure to be able to do that out globally. So you know, we're in the process of kind of rebuilding part of our global teams. A lot of that's already happened, and so you're seeing us continue to grow ARR even through the first quarter, as Aaron came on board. So really excited him on board. You know, a veteran when it comes to technology sales, so a real strong add to the team. Our David Nash, our Chief Product Officer, also joined in the quarter.
These are two kinda hires we were looking for for better part of the last fiscal year, as there were two areas we knew we wanted to do better in. So also happy to have David on board as he kinda looks and helps us kind of prioritize a bit better, our product strategy. Really relates to, you know, having more focus on our global legal practice and software business.
Okay. And if I could ask one last question. You talked about some of the businesses and payments, information service, property settlement, core banking, all of that piece. Could you just expand on what you were? I might have missed the very beginning of that. What’s the point of putting special emphasis around that piece of the business? What are you doing with that going forward? Any other color there would be helpful.
Well, the point is to give, you know, give the market just enhanced disclosure around a business that we see a lot of opportunity in. You know, this is a business that is somewhat different to our core legal tech business. You know, sales cycles are different with banks than they are with law firms. You're talking a handful of customers, just under 100, versus, you know, tens and tens of thousands of them. Really focused on small and medium law. So, just reflecting that and having that disclosure, we think is helpful for people to understand our business more, Rob.
So does that mean you're gonna break out segmented revenue, EBITDA? What exactly are you gonna expand there?
Yeah, those are defined IFRS criteria, Rob. So, we didn't meet that threshold in Q1, but as Matt mentioned, putting more emphasis on that and showing the business, then that will be a decision that we make for Q2.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Stephen Boland from Raymond James. Please ask your question.
Thanks, guys. Just one question. Obviously, a lot of talk about delevering. Maybe you could just focus a little bit on the convert that seems to be getting a lot of attention. With this action plans in place, you know, cost reductions, higher revenue, I mean, are you confident that this additional free cash flow will get you in a position to either pay off all of that 2026 convert before it becomes due, or a majority of it? Or do you need another terming out transaction like the one you just did? I'm just—I think that would be helpful for a lot of people looking at your cash flow over the next couple of years.
Yeah. So there's two years left for the remaining convert until it comes due. So we feel very confident in our ability to manage that before it comes due. Look, Stephen, we took the opportunity, as I said, in a way that for the company offered provided very little additional yield and maturity to term that out. So we'll continue to look at ways to reduce our indebtedness, including the convert, really as soon as possible.
Okay. So basically, you know, you feel pretty confident that organically, if it doesn't happen, you can still have some other options. Is that a fair way to think about it?
Yeah.
Okay. That's all I have. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. No more questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Marshall for the closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. We look forward to addressing you in February when we issue our Q2 results. Good night.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now ended. Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect.