Good morning, everyone. Before we begin the official remarks, I will read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking information. Certain information to be discussed during this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable security laws, including, among others, statements concerning the company's objectives, the company's strategy to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to management's beliefs, plans, estimates and intentions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements reflects management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management and are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated.
Please refer to the cautionary statements and the risk factors identified in our filings with SEDAR and EDGAR for more detailed explanation of the inherent risks and uncertainties that could affect such forward-looking statements. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Tal Hayek, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of AcuityAds, to update you on the operations.
Hello. Welcome to the Q4 investor presentation. This is Seraj Bharwani, Chief Strategy Officer at illumin, and here with me is Tal Hayek, CEO of illumin. Hello, Tal.
Hello. How are you?
How are you? I'm fine.
Thank you. Thank you.
Glad we could have this conversation today.
As am I.
Obviously the most relevant question today is how did illumin do in Q4?
Well, much, much, much better than we ever expected. That I can tell you.
Nice.
I'd like to talk about Q4 in general then to talk about illumin first.
Sure.
I'm very excited about the fact that it's the second quarter in a row that we're delivering positive growth results. As you know, we are in an industry that we see a lot of our competitors actually seeing negative growth. A lot of it to do with the economic issues out there.
Sure.
We delivered positive growth in Q3. Now delivered positive growth in Q4. I'm very excited to be on that side. We did deliver CAD 40 million in revenue, versus CAD 37 million that we delivered the same time last year.
Mm-hmm.
It's a nice year-over-year growth. We'd like to see higher growth, and we're working very hard on that. That's again more or less what I can say about the quarter itself, but specifically about illumin and specifically about illumin self-serve. Could not be more excited to see how that is growing. It grew to a revenue of $2.4 million versus $1.2 million that we had in Q3, so doubled.
Yes.
We added 28 new logos that are using that system now on a regular basis.
Wow.
We're very excited about that.
Yes.
I'm very, very happy with the progress and seeing the continuous progress into this year's momentum as well.
Fantastic. I know, Tal, you've been really passionate about making the self-serve really grow rapidly. What is driving the recent acceleration in adoption? What's so unique and different about illumin that's convincing and persuading the clients to want to adopt it, use it and grow with it?
I think it is two areas to concentrate to answer that question.
Mm-hmm.
area number one is the advertiser, the customers. What problems are we solving for them?
Mm-hmm.
What did we do internally in order to move into self-serve?
Yeah.
Let's start with the advertiser first.
Mm-hmm.
There's two big problems that we're solving for advertisers.
Mm-hmm.
Number one, we give the ability to create journey advertising.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. It sounds very simple, but there's no other system out there that is capable of doing that. What do I mean by that? It means, as an advertiser, I would like to create a journey for my campaign. Usually it divides into three different segments. There's the awareness piece, there's the engagement piece, and the conversion piece. The problem is when you want to go and execute something like that, you don't have any system that allows you to do it. You just can't do it. That's why as consumers we always see the same ads repeat over and over and over again. 20x, 30x, 50x until we want to throw up by just seeing another ad.
Mm-hmm.
illumin solves for that because it gives you a system that you as an advertiser can drag and drop your creatives into it and decide on the exact journey your consumer is gonna go through based on rules, based on logic, based on AI.
Mm-hmm.
To give you example, if I, if I set up you like a certain ad, I can set it up to be watching it five times and after seeing that five times, I'm gonna move you on to the next video ad and you're gonna see that 3x After you've seen that, I might move you to the next level, which is maybe the engagement side. I'm gonna show you different types of ad, and let's say you clicked on it. I'm gonna bypass your journey, and I'm gonna move you to the conversion side. At that point it's time to give you a whole new set of creatives. This is the time you have call to actions created and you try to get the customer to convert.
Everything I just said now is all being able to do from one system called illumin, and we're very, very excited to be the one that's solving that problem. The second problem that we're solving is the fact that it's very, very hard to use programmatic systems out there. You need to be a highly trained expert to use it.
Mm-hmm.
Not with illumin. illumin is intuitive drag and drop system. We brought it down to the basic that any average person can use it with-Very retraining.
Nice. I can tell you, Tal, that was your vision from the very beginning, right? You're the one. I'm literally paraphrasing you, which was you want to democratize programmatic advertising.
Exactly.
The way you described it by making it very intuitive and be able to cover the full range of the entire journey from the very upstream end of it, driving awareness all the way down to really conversion and growing businesses revenue is a phenomenal way to help achieve everything from a single interface, right?
Exactly.
Yes. Now, when you do that, the ultimate proof point that any advertiser will ask for is like, "Okay, great, I can do all of that, but what's the proof? Can I get real results? Does it drive better outcomes? Does it really drive better ROI?" I think those are some of the things that I'm sure investors would want to know what it is that the advertisers are benefiting ultimately by running illumin.
Well, as you know, 'cause you interact with the advertisers on a regular basis, we've been able to show two major proof points. Number one, you can add scale to your campaign.
Mm-hmm.
Not anything that you could do before.
Mm-hmm.
I think that the numbers are showing to up to 60% more scale to your campaign.
Mm-hmm.
which is very impressive for advertisers who are trying to achieve more, revenue, more sales at the end. Let's talk about ROI. We've been able to show that being able to, contact those consumers on the awareness and the engagement stage.
Mm-hmm.
actually increases the ROI, which means increases the conversion and then increases the amount spent for that conversion as well. The combination of those two things are obviously increasing ROI for customers.
I think that latter evidence is quite impressive.
Mm-hmm.
To your point, when people go through that experience, our studies actually do show that people tend to end up buying more, which in industry terms is the average order value goes up significantly.
I think it's logical, right? If you're an ad. If I'm getting bombarded with the same ads over and over and over again, it's not gonna be as efficient as if I'm telling you a story. I think this is what the whole point is there, telling the consumers a story and bring them along that co-journey, co-journey in order to get them to conversion.
Tal, it's clearly very impressive, but nothing significant of this level of transformation and change gets achieved without some fundamental changes happening to the way you run the company.
Mm-hmm.
What are some of those changes that you've actually made to really get where we are now?
That is an excellent question because that's been a struggle, as you know. We launched illumin two years ago, our natural thought is, "Okay, we're gonna go and sell self-serve now." Coming from a company that's used to selling managed for all these years, it was tough.
Mm-hmm.
We had to make a lot of changes. It started by making a lot of changes, on our executive side. Bringing in, new executives, organizing. That was a year that we invested a lot.
Mm-hmm.
That was really 2022. Closer to the second part of the year, we brought in a new Head of Sales.
Mm-hmm.
Nadeem.
Yes.
Came from Salesforce.
Right.
That was a strategic move that we made, not to bring in somebody from the industry, but bring in somebody that is used to selling, maybe more long-term contracts.
Mm-hmm.
-or contracts with guarantees. things that are not, we're not used to in our industry. start effect the change internally to start focusing now on the pipelines.
Mm-hmm.
What's in your pipelines? How do we convert it into demos? How do we convert the demos into contracts? How do we convert the contracts into paying customers or customers using the system?
Yeah.
We're bringing it down to science. We're seeing a lot of, a lot of lines on our pipes. We've seen a lot of demos happening on a regular basis. We're seeing those conversions, as you see in the Q4 numbers, 28 new logos in one quarter. That's massive amount of improvement over the previous quarters, you know. In what was it? Q3, we did 17 new logos. In Q2, we did eight new logos last year. We're, we're improving tremendously every quarter, and we're bringing that down to science. We still have a long way to go until we figure out the exact formula, but it's looking really, really good.
It's a tough thing. I totally agree with you, Tal. I think me experiencing.
Yeah.
-directly what's happening in the field, I can vouch for that, in that not only have we as a company-
Yeah.
-with your leadership, brought about the transformation on the advertising and industry side.
Mm-hmm.
The changes that have happened internally to be able to support that level.
Yes.
-of transformation is absolutely miraculous. Very impressive.
Let me ask you a question.
Yes.
I get glimpse of the reaction of customers when they see illumin for the first time.
Yes.
Do you see it all the time?
Yes.
Tell me about that.
Well, the first reaction people get is, "It's just unbelievable. I can't believe that something like this actually exists." Which is a clear validation that what we went on to do was truly differentiated, truly unique, and it's one of those needs that you don't recognize until you see it.
Yeah.
It's like the first time, you know, it's like you could have done as much research as you wanted to and say, "Does anybody want an iPhone?" Nobody would know until they saw it, that that's something they had a need. I think that's the kind of stuff illumin is. Only when it was created that people recognize, "Oh my God, I always needed something like this." They finally, they see they have it, they wanna figure out how they can use it. It does take a little bit of learning, requires a change in the way they program, the way they run their advertising, and so forth. Once they get the hang of it, which of course is much easier because of the intuitive nature of the platform, there is a lot of resonance in the market.
I, you know, love those moments when I see the reaction of new marketers and advertisers when they see the demo for the first time.
Without a doubt, it's consistently positive.
Yes. Thank you, Seraj, for doing this. We're obviously doing a new format, and we wanna make it more interesting.
It's fun.
Thank you for coming in.
Yes, yes. Really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Yes.
I'd like to call on Elliot to give us some financial updates, please.
Thank you, Tal, and thank you to those joining us today on our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 earnings call. We reported record total revenue for Q4 2022 of CAD 40 million, which was driven by strong annualized and sequential sales growth from illumin of 121% and 70% respectively. We are excited by the continued momentum in the illumin platform in Q4 in terms of increased revenue, customer growth, and especially the growing self-serve component of our unique journey advertising platform. These strong fourth quarter results were accomplished in a very challenging macroeconomic environment. The growing self-serve demo pipeline we've been seeing as of late clearly speaks to the value that our prospective clients are seeing in illumin.
Our targeted investments in the illumin platform and our sales efforts through 2022 are now being reflected in our financial results, and we believe these foundational investments will produce further benefits in 2023, as we continue to enhance and expand the breadth of the capabilities of our platform. We expect to achieve positive total company revenue growth driven by illumin in 2023, as it continues to become an even larger percentage of our overall revenue. While not immune to the continuing recessionary pressures on ad spend into 2023, we believe our unique platform offering will be the differentiating driving force behind our continued growth. On that note, I'll now review our financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2022.
Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 was CAD 40 million, as I previously mentioned, up 9% from Q4 2021 of CAD 37 million and up 38% sequentially compared to CAD 29 million in Q3 of this year. Revenue growth in the quarter was driven largely by higher spend from our existing illumin clients, including illumin self-serve clients, which rose dramatically by 100% on a sequential basis compared to Q3. For the fiscal year 2022, total revenue was CAD 121 million, mostly flat, with CAD 122 million the prior year. This slight decrease was mainly a result of lower client spend, stemming from macroeconomic headwinds such as high inflation, the anticipation of lower inventory, persisting supply chain challenges, and recession concerns.
Having said that, these full-year results do not represent the recent momentum we've been seeing for our illumin self-serve, which has continued into 2023. Revenue from managed services during the fourth quarter was CAD 26.6 million, unchanged from Q4 of last year, and a 30% increase sequentially from Q3 of this year of CAD 20.4 million. For the fiscal year 2022, revenue from managed services was CAD 81 million, compared to CAD 91.8 million in 2021. Self-service revenue for Q4 2022 was CAD 13.4 million, an increase of 31% compared to CAD 10.2 million in the prior year, and a 57% increase sequentially compared to the CAD 8.5 million in Q3 2022.
For the fiscal year 2022, self-serve revenue was CAD 40.1 million, a 33% increase compared to CAD 30.2 million in 2021. For the three and 12 months ended December 31, 2022, illumin revenue was CAD 22.5 million and CAD 53.7 million respectively, compared to CAD 10.2 million and CAD 26 million in revenue in the comparable 2021 periods. This represents continued and significant growth in the illumin platform as we reach the target customer base and begin to realize illumin's significant growth potential. Our gross profit or net revenue, which is definable revenue less media-related costs, CAD 19.4 million in Q4 2022, an increase of 1% compared to CAD 19.0 million in Q4 2021. Sequentially, gross profit increased 30% compared to CAD 14.8 million of Q3 2022.
Gross profit revenue fiscal year 2022 was CAD 60.8 million, compared to CAD 63.6 million in 2021. Our gross profit margin for Q4 2022 was 48.4% compared to 52% in Q4 2021, and 51.3% in Q3 2022. For the full year, gross profit margin was 50.2% compared to the 52.1% in 2021. This decrease was mainly attributable to a strong shift in product mix during the quarter as self-service revenue, which carries a lower gross margin, continued to increase as a percentage of overall revenue during both three and 12 months period.
Our total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2022 were CAD 19.6 million, compared to CAD 16.1 million in the same period last year and CAD 16 million in Q3 of this year. Our total operating expenses for fiscal 2022 were CAD 66.3 million, compared to CAD 53 million in 2021. As a percentage of revenue, operating expenses were 49% in our fourth quarter compared to 44% for the same period in 2021, and compared to 55% in Q3 of this year. For the fiscal year 2022, operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were 55% compared to 43% for 2021.
This increase in operating expenses was consistent with our expectations as it reflects our strategic investments in 2022 in sales and marketing and technology development to enhance the illumin platform and to drive its success in the marketplace. As a result, we generated EBITDA in Q4 2022 of $0.4 million, compared to $5.9 million during the same period in 2021, and $1.6 million in Q3 of this year. For the full year of 2022, adjusted EBITDA was $5.8 million, compared to $20.3 million in 2021. This year-over-year decrease is mainly due to the strategic investment I mentioned previously to grow illumin revenue and to implement further platform enhancements.
The net loss for Q4 2022 was CAD 0.8 million, compared to net income of CAD 2.7 million to the same quarter last year, and CAD 3.2 million in Q3 2022. For the full fiscal year 2022, our net loss was again CAD 0.8 million compared to net income of CAD 11.8 million in 2021 due to the factors I described earlier. Now onto the balance sheet. Turning to our balance sheet as of December 31, 2022, our cash and cash equivalent balance stood at CAD 85.9 million, compared to CAD 102.2 million as of December 31, 2021.
The lower cash balance compared to last year was mainly related to the share repurchases we made throughout the year under our share buyback program, reflecting the belief of our management and board that the current price of our common shares does not reflect their inherent value and potential. Along those lines, during the 12 months, we repurchased 4.7 million common shares via our normal course issuer bid at an average price of CAD 3.08, totaling CAD 14.5 million. Before moving on, I'd like to comment on our capital deployment strategy. We continue to invest capital in a targeted and strategic manner to support illumin's and Acuity's future growth. Given our latest financial results, we remain confident our investments are focused on producing strong returns for our shareholders.
Our strategic focus as well as our share repurchases are all aligned towards this goal. Looking at the shares outstanding as of December 31st, AcuityAds had 56.8 million shares outstanding compared to 60.7 million the same time last year. In conclusion, we remain focused on growing our illumin platform with emphasis on the self-serve component, which we expect will be a main driver of our AcuityAds' overall growth in 2023. To support this growth, we will continue to make strategic investments to support illumin's development and market growth. With our balance sheet and cash position, we are in a solid place to continue on this course. At the same time, our considerable cash balance also enables us to cautiously continue exploring targeted M&A opportunities to accelerate our growth even further.
This remains a key focus for us and an important part of the company's long-term strategic plans. With that, I would like to pass it over back to Tal and Seraj.
Thank you, Elliot.
Tal, would you like to summarize in your own words Q4 overall and how it performed, and with the backdrop of where the economy is and where the conditions are right now, how you expect illumin to perform this year?
Yes, definitely. Start with Q4. We delivered CAD 40 million in revenue in Q4 over CAD 37 million the same time last year.
Mm-hmm.
I'm, you know, excited to go back to growth. It's been a quarter where we're showing growth and we're seeing a lot of competitors showing negative growth, during the same period. I'm very glad that we're showing growth. I think the reason that we're showing growth is because we have this product that's working, and we're going out there to the market.
Mm-hmm.
It was a really good question about the economical situation. It's hard for me to exactly answer it because we're doing well, but maybe in normal times, we would be doing even exponentially better than we do today.
Mm-hmm.
We're still going into a market, a dramatic market, which is over $150 billion. We're going after the customers who are already using it. It's not so much a function of how much is the market growing, it's a function of we are going into a market with a new product and displacing our competitors. Okay? It's a huge market to displace in, and illumin is something that nobody else has, and that's why we're seeing the success there. I'm super pumped about the fact that we're doing it on self-serve. We were able to double revenue in Q4 over Q3 on the self-serve, illumin side. More importantly, just start to bring more value to science.
I think one of the other things that I would like to share is we're testing something that is pretty unprecedented in our history. We're testing long-term committed contracts.
Mm-hmm.
Our normal way of doing business in the always-on, on-demand side of things, and even on self-serve, is usually no commitments from guarantees or short-term commitments. We are testing long-term commitments of between one and three-year contracts with minimum guarantees, means the customers are guaranteeing that the contracts as well. We're starting to see some early results. It's too early to really call it and to provide feedback on it. Believe me, we will when we have proper, solid feedback.
Mm-hmm.
There's only other two other companies that can do it in our space, and we're seeing that customers are willing to sign for those things. That's a great sign. The reason they're doing that is just because they love the concept of illumin. That's the way I see it. That's the way I look at Q4. Looking at this year, my strong belief that we're going to see another growth year. It's going to be more and more of adoption of illumin. Q1 is already looking good, and we're happy about what we're seeing there. Obviously, we're in the middle of the quarter, but so far, the early signs are really, really good. I'm very excited about what's here to come.
I didn't get a chance yet to thank the Acuity team for delivering such an amazing quarter. By the way, Q4, the CAD 49 was a record quarter for Acuity. We're very, very thankful and full of gratitude for that as well. For our investors and all our other partners that made this possible. I'd like to thank everyone. We're gonna now go to Q&A.
Thank you, Tal and Elliot. Just a reminder to our participants that if you would like to ask a question to please use the raise hand function located on the top left corner of your video screen. Also, just a reminder to our analysts, if you could please limit yourself to two questions per analyst to save time for everyone. Please wait a moment while I assemble the roster. Your first question will come from Darren Aftahi at ROTH Capital Partners.
Hey, guys.
Please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Go ahead.
I think you guys are on mute.
How is it now?
Great. Hi.
Good morning.
Good morning, Darren.
Good morning. I can see you guys. Congratulations. Nice work. two for me. The 28 logo number, sort of the inflection point, if I'll use that word. I'm just kind of curious, what do you think, is it an inflection? I guess, secondarily, like, is something changed when you look at adoption in the mainstream now? That's my first question. Second one, everybody, for the most part we've heard from in this space, has just talked about how Q1 to- date is not great. Tal, I heard you at the end of your prepared remarks talking about how Q1 looked good. I'm just sort of curious if you can kind of speak to that context. Thanks.
Yes, absolutely. Great questions. Inflection point. Well, let's share the numbers of new logos throughout the year. In Q1, five new logos. In Q2, 8, in Q3, 18, and in Q4, we have 28. Is that an inflection? I think we can raise that number a lot to a lot. And the question is, what changed? A lot changed internally. We spent last year really organizing the company, and part of it was moving our kind of D&A from selling managed to selling more SaaS, which, you know, we consider that our self-serve platform. Selling contracts versus insertion orders, which are short-term orders. That takes time.
A big focus started around mid-year when we brought in our new Head of Sales, Nadeem, that has lots of experience from his previous life in Salesforce running salespeople with selling contracts. I think that's the main thing that changed in our company. The product, of course, got better as well, and we're adding new and new things to it all the time. That's what changed from the sales focus. I think indicators are showing that we are doing great in Q1 from the self-serve illumin perspective. Also, we believe we're gonna see growth in Q1 as well over Q1 of last year as well. I would say yes.
Like I did say before, it's hard to say how it would have been in good economic times, but we're doing well under these circumstances. I think the reason is because we have a product that is very unique and we're creating a lot of excitement for advertisers.
Great. Thank you.
Pleasure.
Your next question will come from Laura Martin at Needham & Company. Laura, please go ahead when you're ready.
Okay. Hi, Tal. Hi, Elliot.
Hello.
I'll ask my two questions also simultaneously. One is, really great revenue growth and great illumin mix. Tell me about costs. Costs are rising a little faster than we thought in the quarter, and you said you're gonna have growth into 2023. Can you talk about what you think is gonna happen to cost growth compared to the revenue growth in 2023 as we think about modeling that? Thank you. That's my first. Yeah, go ahead with that one, I guess.
Yeah. I would say cost is increasing exactly how we designed it to increase. We communicated very well to the market that we're investing last year in the organization and in the sales and marketing side. That is the cost base that we had increased last year is carrying us into this year as well. We're definitely seeing the results from that. Anything you'd like to add?
Yeah. I think, definitely we are continuing our program of building the focus has shifted to more of even more technology and product evolution. Into 2023, we are working hard to create additional capabilities market presence, which I think we've kind of not invested as much as we could have in the past. There is. We are quite cautious about, and we have redirected costs from other areas that we think are less strategic. It's more of an allocation between the two.
My second question is about, I know you used to have a lot of mattress work. Is that back? More specifically, stepping up a level, is illumin particularly well-suited for certain types of products that you find yourself, like in the 28 logo wins in Q4 or the 18 in Q3 or the 8 in Q2? Are they coming in certain verticals, typically, these logo wins?
Right. The job of a platform is to work on any vertical, and that's what the AI always adapts to. you know, a lot of times we would see what the big spenders are spending online at a certain time, then naturally we will see more revenue coming from that way. It can literally work on anything and adapt to anything. It's really not geared to any specific verticals. you know, that would be my answer. I mean, we do see every quarter we see certain verticals doing better and certain verticals doing worse. Like the mattress, for example, definitely not doing anywhere close to what it used to do. but it's a function of the times.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura.
Thank you, Laura.
Thank you, Laura. Our next question comes from Daniel Rosenberg at Paradigm Capital. Daniel, please go ahead when you're ready.
Hi, good morning, Tal and Elliot. My first question was around the expenses. I just want to understand, as you went through this year of investment, is the way to think about next year, all of that investment that was sort of one time in setting illumin up, that's going back into sales and marketing?
Okay. The investments that we make, mostly in people, right? All those people that we made investments on are not a one-time investment. Those are investment to increase the capacity of our sales force, to increase the capacity of, the tech people building the product, of the product people. It really was all around. Don't forget on the, on the executive side, we've done a lot of work as well in order to get us ready for the next phase of growth. Those are things that will stay with us from an expense point of view. Again, Daniel, this is a choice that we can make and unmake at any time, but we don't see us unmaking that choice because we're seeing the results from all those investments.
You know, the main thing for us is we're seeing the addition of the self-serve clients month-over-month. You know, that creates a component effect on the revenue where you have your existing clients and you add new clients to it. Every month we're seeing the revenue and the number of clients in the system grow. This is really what we're focusing on. Where in the past we used to focus on different things, today we really focus on the pipeline of self-serve and then on the conversion to demos, the conversion from demo to signed contract, and then to activation. That has been our focus, and we're starting to break it down to science. We still have, you know, very short time data, but it's looking good so far and making adjustments to it all the time.
Thanks for that. On the sales pipeline of the self-serve customers, could you characterize in terms of any trends you're seeing on size or spend? Are you able to target a different type of customer versus what you had done in the past? I'll pass the line. Thanks.
Yes. Our main target market is the medium advertisers and medium agencies. That's what we get the most amount of business for. At the same time, we are getting a lot of interest from the bigger entities out there and we're working on those as well. The majority of it is on the midsize. Remember also simplifies the whole process. Sometimes people that would never access programmatic because it's so complicated, now it gives them the ability to do it. It opens up a big market for us as well.
Thanks for that. Congrats on the quarter.
Nice to see you. Nice to see you back in the office.
Thank you, Daniel. I will give a minute to see if there are any other questions from our analysts. It would seem that we have no more questions. Tal, I will hand it back over to you for any final remarks.
Thank you. Thank you. Again, I'd like to thank our investors. Without our partners, we would not be where we are today. Big thank you to all our partners, to the Acuity family for delivering a record quarter and for doing all those hard movements to move us into the self-serve world. That's it for today. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This concludes our Q4 2022 and full year results. You may now disconnect.