Okay, let's get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to BuildDirect's Q1 fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. For those that are unfamiliar, BuildDirect trades in the TSXV under the ticker BILD, B-I-L-D. My name is Prit Singh, I will be the moderator for today's call. Before we begin, I would like to note that some of the comments today will contain forward-looking information statements under applicable securities law that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Any such information and statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information statements. Please refer to the various materials the company has filed with the Canadian securities regulators for a broader description of operational and risk factors that could affect the company's performance. Please note that all dollar amounts mentioned in this presentation are in US dollars.
On today's call, we will be covering BuildDirect's Q1 fiscal 2023 financial and operational highlights, as well as its growth outlook for the remainder of 2023. Following BuildDirect's management's comments on the presentation, the call will be open for Q&A. Questions can be sent to the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, if you are calling in to listen to this webinar today, please email your questions directly to ir@builddirect.com. Again, that is ir@builddirect.com. Our presenters today will be the CEO of BuildDirect, Shawn Wilson, and CFO of BuildDirect, Matthew Alexander. I will now turn the conference call over to Shawn Wilson, CEO of BuildDirect.
Thank you, Prit. For first-time viewers, BuildDirect operates e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores that provide flooring products and services to home improvement professionals. Our aim is simple, to become the leading provider of flooring to the pro customer in North America, and we're well on our way. Here's a quick glance at our financial highlights for Q1, which will be covered in greater detail by Matt during today's call. For the three months ending March 31, 2023, we generated $17.85 million in total revenue while producing a gross margin of roughly 39.2%. Lastly, we generated a total adjusted EBITDA of roughly $1 million. I am quite pleased to announce the results of our continued focus on profitability, which will enable future plans to scale the business.
I'll now turn the call over to Matt, who will discuss our first quarter results in greater detail.
Thank you, Shawn. I'll speak to our key financial highlights for the three months ended March thirty-first, 2023. Total revenue was $17.8 million for the first quarter. As expected, this was a decrease of $6.6 million, or 26.8% year-over-year, and $3.9 million or 21.6% sequentially quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year changes are a result of the business substantially scaling down our e-commerce operations, which accounted for roughly 44% of our total revenue. This change reduced our revenue, however, improves the business's overall bottom line. The sequential quarter-over-quarter change is a result of a larger portion of in-transit e-commerce sales at quarter end and the timing of installation projects moving into Q2.
Now that we have the e-commerce go-to-market strategy and cost structures right-sized, we believe we are poised to scale revenues back up with positive adjusted EBITDA margins. Looking on the right-hand graph, I'm happy to report our focus on the pro customer can be seen in our pro revenue results, which reached $15.4 million. Pro revenue now represents 86% of our total revenue, which is a 9.6% year-over-year increase. Moving down the P&L, our gross margin percentage in Q1 was 39.2%, an increase of 340 basis points year-over-year and 280 basis points sequentially quarter-over-quarter.
Both the year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter changes are driven by, firstly, the improvement to BuildDirect's e-commerce product margin with a shift in pricing strategy from everyday low pricing strategy to a high-low pricing strategy. Secondly, improvements to our independent retail product margin as we source more product directly through BuildDirect's direct manufacturing procurement model. Finally, our inbound freight costs have come down as supply chain costs start to normalize. Moving to expenses. In prior calls, we've discussed scaling back the expenses in our e-commerce business, which started at the end of Q2 2022. The results of this change can be seen in our Q1 2023, as expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2023 decreased by $3 million or 30% compared to the same period in 2022.
The decrease in expense can be attributed to a renewed focus on our core customer, focusing resources and reorganizing our staff model to better align with drive and value. As noted by Shawn, I'm pleased to report that we achieved total adjusted EBITDA of $1.04 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2023, an increase of $1 million year-over-year or $600,000 quarter-over-quarter. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA results and is the highest EBITDA quarter since becoming a public company. The change is straightforward. As mentioned above, we made substantial changes to the e-commerce cost structure last year, and we are starting to see the benefits in our adjusted EBITDA results now. Moving to the balance sheet.
As at March 31, 2023, our current assets primarily consisted of cash equivalents, receivables, and inventory totaling $17.5 million. Our current liabilities primarily consisted of accounts payable, accrued liabilities, loans payable, promissory notes, and deferred consideration, totaling $16.1 million. Overall, we ended the quarter with a positive working capital balance of $1.35 million, which represents a $6.2 million improvement since Q1 2022. A couple other notes on the balance sheet. The company's inventory continues to decrease, and as at March 31, 2023, was $6.5 million, a decrease of $200,000 compared to December 31, 2022. The change was a result of actively reducing our inventory values as supply chain delays are resolved. We believe the current level of inventory is a better reflection of what's required for the business moving forward.
As mentioned, we also had a lot of sales in transit at the end of Q1. This resulted in the company's deferred revenue increasing to $2.6 million as at March 31, 2023, up from $1.8 million as of December 31, 2022. We expect the deferred revenue to come back down in Q2 and beyond. For our financing activities in the quarter, we have paid down the following principal debt and deferred consideration amounts. There's $311,000 paid for the promissory note, $227,000 paid for loan payables to Deans Knight, $675,000 of deferred consideration related to the FloorSource acquisition. As well as the principal and deferred consideration payments, we also made $236,000 payments of interest.
Even with all these financing outflows, the company increased its cash balance from $4.8 million to, up to $4.8 million as of March 31, 2023, as compared to $4.1 million as of December 31, 2022. To reiterate, BuildDirect generated positive cash flows from its operation, which exceeded the total outflows in connection with its financing activities. I'll turn the call back over to Shawn, who will go through the operational highlights for the company.
Thanks, Matt. As a reminder, BuildDirect is currently focused on the U.S. flooring industry, which is worth roughly $70 billion. It consists mainly of independent retailers. It's a fragmented market with only a limited number of large competitors, and therefore, we believe there is significant opportunity for us to capture given our omni-channel strategy, which includes both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores. During the first quarter, we continued the overhaul of our e-commerce operations. First, we focused our marketing efforts on pros in the flooring industry. Second, we made significant progress simplifying our legacy technology stack that was costly and inefficient. Lastly, we're making improvements to our fulfillment and logistic programs. The teams made substantial progress addressing these three areas, the benefits of which have already started to show up in our financials with much more to come. Regarding growth, our focus has not changed.
We aim to become the leading provider of flooring materials to the pro customer in North America. As a result, we are looking to scale our e-commerce and brick-and-mortar operations and potentially expand our product suite to include value-added services that are specifically designed to serve pros in growing their respective businesses. In addition, we intend to continue identifying areas in our business where we can achieve more operational efficiencies. Most notably, we aim to integrate the fulfillment of our e-commerce business into our existing brick-and-mortar locations, which reduces fulfillment costs and increases inventory utilization by sharing inventory between our e-commerce and brick-and-mortar locations. We remain optimistic on our growth and profitability outlook for the remainder of the year. I'll now turn the call over to Prit, who will moderate the Q&A session.
Thanks, Shawn. Thanks, Matt. As mentioned at the top of the call, if you do have any questions, you can submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, if you're calling in today, you can email us at ir@builddirect.com. That's ir@builddirect.com. First question. With the current macroeconomic condition, what is your outlook on the current housing market, and do you expect that there will continue to be high demand for flooring products?
Matt, do you wanna take that one?
Yeah, I can start off. I think first off, the total addressable market is $70 billion, which means we have a lot of room to grow regardless of the macro conditions. Further, the company is segment agnostic, which means we can shift customer focus from customers that are focused on new builds to customers that are focused on renovation and remodel. We're starting to see the housing stabilize quarter-over-quarter, and we're not expecting those, we're expecting, we aren't seeing the current economic conditions impacting our revenue and growth expectations.
Yeah. Just to, kind of, you know, further that point, when we look at how we target the market, we are very pro-focused, and as Matt mentioned, segment agnostic. We specifically design our marketing programs and our offering to serve new build construction, commercial renovation. Retail renovation is definitely the biggest segment for the flooring industry. Those, you know, those products and services are agnostic to any specific segment. We have seen some penetration shift from new build to commercial and, you know, vice, kind of vice versa amongst the different operations. It's an important part of our, kind of our growth story and our modeling for the future.
Okay. Thank you. What is the % of the inventory cost affected from high freight? Are you planning to reduce the prices? If you do, how will it affect the balance sheet?
Yeah. Matt, you wanna take that one or want me to grab that one?
Yeah, I can, I can touch on that one. We anticipate. As inbound costs come down, our cost of goods come down with it. We anticipate passing some of those along to customers as we go through it. We feel like there's still an opportunity for us to grab margin while we shift. I think that's part of it. I don't know, Shawn, if you had anything else on that end.
Yeah. No, I would say, you know, the flooring industry, especially with a lot of the supply chain disruptions, you know, different companies responded in different ways on inventory flow, what they kinda built up. I would congratulate the BuildDirect team. They did an amazing job, really controlling inventory and not getting kind of over their skis on inventory that was paid at higher fulfillment costs. I'd also mention that our fulfillment model, we'll get into the details, you know, on this call, but it's very lean. There's not a lot of touch points, there's not as many opportunities for, you know, for inflation to come along the way.
That's very different with other companies who have funkier or more touch points in their, in their import model, where they're buying through, you know, distribution, so on and so forth. Regarding the industry, I would say kind of first and foremost, not about, you know, really anything aside from delivering quality products and services. You know, for the pro, the pro is much more time sensitive. It's more important to have what you need at the right quality when you need it for the job site than it is, you know, a pricing game, if that makes sense. We anticipate, if anything, our margins continuing to improve and continue to, you know, build out products and services that really help kinda drive that segment.
Good. Thank you. Can you elaborate on what makes BuildDirect products and services unique to pro customers as compared to its competitors?
Yeah. I'll take that one. You know, when you look at the pro customer, the remodeler, the A&D firm, even the flooring contractor who's completing projects and has a business kind of in their own right, you know, generating their own, you know, customer leads, you know, really providing installation services on their end, not on ours. When you think about what they need, it's much more than just, you know, products at a price. They need products that are specifically tailored for smooth installation and very, very few problems. Our claim ratio rate of the company is extraordinarily low, which I can kinda just reference my history in the flooring industry to help support that.
In addition, like when you go to our brick-and-mortar locations, they're set up for the pro. Think about what that means practically speaking, instead of, you know, going into a, you know, a big parking lot where you have this giant store and all these other categories that are available for, you know, homeowners or pros across all these, you know, different segments, you know, plumbing, electrical, so on and so forth. Our facilities are just geared for the flooring pro. We have, you know, the right docks that allow them to back right up. We have extremely fast load out times. We have marketing programs that are preset.
When you think about kind of everything we do, we don't start off with, you know, really anything besides, you know, what does a pro need to actually build their business and be successful, enable them to stay focused on, you know, on that. You know, with that kind of, you know, focus, it allows us to make a lot of decisions that, you know, look and feel different than what you might see out there with different types of, you know, brick-and-mortar locations or even e-commerce experiences. Our internal e-commerce team, for example, are highly skilled, but the conversations that we have with pros are far beyond, "Hey, can you help me find, you know, what aisle that product is on?" They're actively working with our customers to ensure they're successful.
Yeah. Thank you. In the near future, does BuildDirect plan to focus more on either its e-commerce platform or brick-and-mortar locations or both?
I would say both. When you kind of zoom out, you think through the kind of history of the company and the opportunity for, you know, continued continued growth. Our e-commerce operation was, you know, was overhauled as we talked about. Now that we have most of that work done, the intent is to continue using e-commerce to enter into a market. It's a very effective kind of tip of the spear where we can generate interest and, you know, really, you know, drive an initial base of volume. From there, as far as fulfillment, we have a different, you know, handful of different options that we use. As we're building up interest in the customer base, that's when we put in brick-and-mortar locations.
It's a really interesting model to build interest and then be able to backfill. Once those locations go in the market, they both fulfill e-commerce as well as they, you know, sell locally. If you look at our past acquisitions, that's really what it was all about. We had a lot of volume in certain areas. When we were focusing on the overall business, e-commerce is absolutely our tip of the spear, and we'll scale back up in our belief, we intend to scale that back up quite a bit. Also along with that, you know, selectively also build out locations. A couple things I should mention.
When it comes to locations, we're effectively adding extra services locally, things that we, you know, that are really kinda geared towards that local relationship. In addition, all of our brick-and-mortar locations also carry carpet, rolled carpet, which is, you know, still about 48% of the overall flooring industry. That's a category that's a bit clunky to sell online. It's a massive category that we add at our brick-and-mortar locations.
Okay. Thank you. As mentioned to our audience, if you have any questions, you can submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you're calling in today, you can email us at ir@builddirect.com, ir@builddirect.com. Next question. What are your thoughts on the do-it-yourself trend and its significance as compared to the pro segment?
Yeah. When you kinda think about when a pro gets involved and also how even on the kind of the big box retail side, 'cause there's obviously, you know, pro customers that shop there as well. When you think about the pro customer, typically they're coming in to do larger projects. Look, you know, I've tiled and also done other hard surface flooring in small spaces, you know, personally in the past, albeit probably not very well. But when you're DIYing a bathroom renovation and you're, you know, pulling out, in some cases, carpet actually, in other cases might be some other kinda old flooring and, you know, doing that small little confined area, that's much more kinda DIY.
A pro's called in when you're, you know, redoing your downstairs, and you have all of a sudden, you know, break points and you have transitions, kinda things like that. Our business is very much focused on the pro and the types of projects that the pro gets pulled into. Not nearly as much as kinda DIY. Do we have customers that, you know, buy products, install themselves? Sure we do, but we find that those orders are typically on the, on the smaller side compared to the types of projects that the pros handle.
Okay. Thank you. Next question. You commented earlier that supply chain issues were resolved. Can you tell us more about BuildDirect's strategy in ensuring an efficient supply chain?
Sure. When you, when you think about our, you know, our, kinda legacy e-commerce, you know, operation, you know, the first real, you know, key asset that was created was a very lean supply chain model. I'm saying lean supply chain model, I'm referring to working directly with factories and skipping all the potential points kind of in between. Along with that, driving specs. It's very normal for us to work with factories on creating very specific specifications to make sure products are geared towards the pro and are also, you know, a good fit, you know, a good fit for us. We for us.
We put that work in versus, you know, going to trade shows and looking at samples and buying what's off the shelf. There's, you know, kind of more due diligence there. Now, along with that, as we look at our brick-and-mortar operations as well, there's a lot of opportunity to further integrate that more direct model into those businesses that may or may not have historically kind of gone that route. It's pretty unusual for independent retailers to kinda go that direct route. For us, we try to keep things extremely lean, as few touch points, you know, really in between. Kinda fashion ourselves as, a, you know, having one of the leanest supply chains in the industry.
We get there by, of course, you know, putting in the work and staying focused on, you know, focused on that as a key advantage.
Yeah. I think just to add to that quickly. I think it was a kudos to the team for surviving COVID and some of the supply chain issues that we had at that time. I think a lot of the competitors that we saw had real challenges with the supply chain problems. I think it was our ability to weather that storm has been great to see. I think now that things are returning, it adds an additional kind of benefit for us going forward, so.
Okay. Great. What are some catalysts investors can expect in the next six-12 months?
Matt, we have kind of two parts there. I'll start with the operational if you wanna get into the finance after.
Yeah.
You know, one of the, you know, main projects, you know, for us is to integrate our e-commerce operation for fulfillment into existing brick-and-mortar locations. We're working through that. That's a massive kind of alignment with our operation. I'd be on the lookout for that. There's other examples kinda like that, where we're talking through operational efficiencies, and when we put those out there, they're not, you know, they're, you know, they tend to be very substantial and effectively align more and more to that, the model of the store warehouse kinda format, supporting e-commerce and then also having local, kind of local programs.
In addition to that, on the technology side, as we wrap up the kinda overhaul of e-commerce, we'll talk more about kind of, what we're doing there and scaling that business, you know, back up and very kind of, you know, straightforward and, you know, ways that are fairly easy to, you know, to model. Matt, do you wanna touch on the finance side?
I think, probably said this about 5 times already, but I think profitability, and now being able to prove that and show that in our results, is gonna be hugely helpful as we move forward. We're making some improvements to our balance sheet, and we continue to expect to clean up our balance sheet to give ourselves the stability, the financial stability so that we can execute on these growth strategies. I think as we look into the past, I think, without that profitability, we weren't able to necessarily have the stable footing to execute on some of the growth strategies. Really excited that we've now turned that corner. We're showing those positive adjusted EBITDA results and now have a solid financial foundation to start growing responsibly.
Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions we have. Any parting words, Shawn?
No, I just wanna thank everyone for tuning in and, you know, for following our story. We're very excited on where we're at, what we have really in front of us, and it's gonna be a lot of fun. I just wanna say thanks to the team. Thanks to everyone on the call. As Brad mentioned, if you have any follow-up questions, by all means, feel free to reach out to our IR department.
Yep. Just as Shawn mentioned, if you do have any additional questions, that we didn't address or any follow-ups, you can email us at IR@BuildDirect.com, IR@BuildDirect.com. Thanks everyone for attending and have a good day.