Hello, everyone. Welcome to Plurilock's second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. My name is Prit Singh, and I'll be the moderator for today's call. For those that are unfamiliar, Plurilock is an AI-driven cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces that aims to capitalize on the 1.75 million... 1.75 trillion cybersecurity industry. Plurilock traded on TSXV under the ticker PLUR, and on the OTCQB under the ticker PLCKF. Before we begin, I would like to take, like to take note of some comments today that will contain forward-looking information and statements. I will pause here for a second so that our viewers can review our disclaimer. Please note that all dollar amounts mentioned in this presentation are in Canadian dollars.
On today's call, we will be covering Plurilock's second quarter fiscal 2023 financial and operational highlights, as well as its growth outlook for the remainder of 2023. Following Plurilock's management's comments, the call will be open for questions. Questions can be sent in using the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, or alternatively, if you are calling in to listen to the webinar today, please email your questions directly to info@thesiscapital.ca. Again, that is info@thesiscapital.ca. Our presenters today will be the CEO of Plurilock, Ian L. Paterson, and CFO of Plurilock, Scott Myers. With that out of the way, I will now turn the call, conference call over to Scott, CFO of Plurilock, to discuss the company's second quarter fiscal 2023 financial results.
Thank you, Prit. First and foremost, I would like to highlight several key business milestones that we've achieved for the six months ended June 30, 2023. Our total revenue increased to CAD 28 million for the six months ending June 30, 2023, as compared to CAD 16.1 million over the same period in the prior year, directly attributable to our strategic acquisitions of Integra and Atrion in 2022. Our gross margins increased to 12.5% for the six months ending June 30, 2023, as compared to 8.6% over the same period in the prior year, driven mainly by Plurilock's 2022 acquisitions, pricing strategy and its focus on securing high-margin software sales. Our high-margin software sales for the six months ended June 30, 2023, increased approximately 445% year-over-year.
A total of 26 sales orders and contract renewals were announced as of June 30, 2023, since January 1, 2023, including a cross-sell purchase order with a Fortune 500 company for the company's Plurilock AI platform. Moving on to revenue. Total revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, was CAD 12,251,143 and CAD 28,018,471, respectively, as compared to CAD 9,106,547 and CAD 16,059,599, respectively, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022.
Revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, is significantly higher than the prior year periods ended June 30, 2022, as a result of timing of the acquisitions of Integra, as well as the asset acquisitions of Atrion and CloudCodes, along with an increase in organic sales volume and cross-selling among the Solutions and Technology Division. Hardware and system sales revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, totaled CAD 10,368,483 and CAD 22,812,612, respectively, compared to CAD 8,359,715 and CAD 14,855,611, respectively, in the prior period for the same periods.
Software license and maintenance sales revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, was CAD 1,150,767 and CAD 3,864,345, compared to CAD 610,523 and CAD 1,039,979, respectively, in the prior year for the same periods.
Professional services revenue was CAD 731,893 and CAD 1,341,514, respectively, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, compared to CAD 136,309 and CAD 164,009, respectively, in the prior year for the same periods. Hardware and system sales revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, accounted for 84.6% and 81.4%, respectively, of total revenues, compared to 91.8% and 92.5%, respectively, for three and six months ended June 30, 2022.
Software, licenses, and maintenance sales revenues for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, accounted for 9.4% and 13.8%, respectively, to 6.7% and 6.5%, respectively, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022. Professional services revenues for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, accounted for 6% and 4.8% of total revenues, compared to 1.5% and 1%, respectively, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022. Now moving on to gross profit and gross margin.
Gross profit as a percent of revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, increased to 11.2% and 12.5%, respectively, compared to 10% and 8.6%, respectively, in the prior year for the same periods. The change in gross profit and percentage primarily related to the company's continuation of the price architecture and following the growth of high project, high-margin product sales. Expenses. For the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, Plurilock's R&D expenses totaled CAD 494,774 and CAD 1,005,654, respectively, compared to CAD 742,002 and CAD 1,289,415, respectively, in the prior year for the same periods.
R&D expenses primarily include salaries and benefits, contractors, fees, communication, and IT services. The net decrease in R&D expenses is due to the decreased use of contractors and the reduction in employee headcount, and salaries, and benefits. The company received government assistance from the IRAP program, which also contributes to the reduction of R&D expenses. For the three- and six-month period ended June 30, 2023, the company's sales and marketing expenses totaled CAD 694,750 and CAD 1,472,342, respectively, compared to CAD 826,318 and CAD 1,613,660, respectively, in the prior year for the same periods. Sales and marketing expenses primarily include salaries and benefits, marketing, contractor fees, and web hosting fees.
The increase of sales and marketing salaries and benefits is due to the additional sales staff from the acquisitions from prior year and the direct correlation with increased revenue during the year. The decrease in contractors expenses is due to the termination of certain sales contractors and decreased spending in the office and general. For three and six months ended June 30, 2023, G&A expenses totaled CAD 2,224,210 and CAD 4,151,846, respectively, compared to CAD 1,203,576 and CAD 2,257,315, respectively, during the prior year for the same periods.
G&A expenses primarily included salaries and benefits, professional fees such as auditing and accounting, legal, corporate finance, as well as investor relations, regulatory filing fees, communication and IT services, as well as office and general expenses. These increases in G&A expenses compared to the prior year, relates to increased investor relations and regulatory filing-related expenses, amortization of capital assets acquired through the acquisition, web hosting, office and general, and business insurance, covering multiple entities, as well as increased salaries and benefits as a result of increased headcount following the Atrion, CloudCodes, and Integra acquisitions. Finally, moving on to cash position. As at June 30, 2023, and December 31, 2022, the company had CAD 3,034,374 and CAD 2,712,684 cash and cash equivalents, respectively.
As at June 30, 2023, and December 31, 2022, the company had CAD 140,423 and CAD 140,423 of restricted cash. That is all for the financial update on Plurilock. I will now turn the call over to Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock.
Thanks, Scott. I will now cover Plurilock's operational highlights for the three and six months ending June thirtieth, 2023. And then from there, we can move on to the Q&A section. Significant sales and gross margin growth. As Scott alluded, our total revenues have increased significantly to approximately CAD 28 million for the six-month period as of June thirtieth, 2023, which is primarily driven by the increase in organic sales and cross-selling through our Technology and Solutions Division. We also saw a significant increase in software sales, which led to our gross margins increasing 12.5% for the six-month period as of June thirtieth, 2023, as compared to 8.6% over the same period in the prior year.
As a result, we intend to continue securing more contracts for our high-margin software solutions and services to improve our bottom line, with the goal of reaching cash flow breakeven. Furthermore, we secured our first cross-sell purchase order for the Plurilock AI platform with a Fortune 500 company in May 2023 through Aurora. As we continue to strengthen our relationship with existing customers, we plan to cross-sell more high-margin, proprietary technology offerings to our existing customer pipeline and client network of over 400 active organizations. Focus on maximizing cost efficiencies. As part of our strategy to achieve substantial cost savings, we've appointed Jord Tanner as Chief Information Officer to implement best practices across all our business units and realize operational efficiencies by deploying automation. With 4 acquisitions completed since going public, we aim to streamline our operations and integrate our business units to unlock cost synergies.
On August 28, 2023, we enacted a plan that will reduce our headcount and other costs as part of our ongoing strategy to realize acquisition synergies. We expect to realize roughly CAD 2 million in cost savings on an annualized basis as a result of these actions. As part of the plan, we intend to reduce 18% of our headcount costs. To date, we have reduced certain overhead in our general and administrative expenses. Moving forward, we will continue to evaluate our operations and implement new initiatives to reduce our overall business expenses in order to improve our bottom line.... expansion of Plurilock's AI-driven technology portfolio.
In Q2, 2023, we decided to shift our focus towards addressing cybersecurity threats revolving around AI solutions due to the rapid adoption of generative AI tools within the workforce, as well as the growing market for generative AI, which is expected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2032. As a cybersecurity provider that is founded on AI, with a world-class AI and data science team, including numerous in-house PhDs, we intend to leverage our state-of-the-art cybersecurity products and services to provide organizations with tools to make employee AI use safe without disrupting their productivity. We filed a provisional patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO, for an omnibus system of AI-driven Cloud Access Security Broker, CASB, technology features that protect against the inadvertent or the intentional release of sensitive data while generative AI tools are being used.
Our goal was to develop this technology into an enterprise solution that provides a way for businesses and other organizations to manage and govern the data revealed to AI platforms, without having to block AI, either access in general or certain kinds of AI prompts in particular. This led to the development and launch of our first generative AI guardrails product, called Prompt Guard. Prompt Guard is a new AI-driven cloud access security broker that supports employee AI use while ensuring that sensitive data is not released to AI systems.
It provides strong AI guardrails without obstructing AI use, and relies on a combination of mature data loss prevention technology and new patent-pending Plurilock AI platform technology, to enable users to interact with generative AI, such that the AI platform does not receive sensitive data through user-generated AI prompts, and the user need not be aware of any anonymization or redaction having taken place. Prompt Guard is currently available under Plurilock's Early Access Program, EAP, as a closed by invitation beta experience, and today the first 10 channel partners across the world have signed up to distribute Prompt Guard. Overall, we will continue to develop new AI-based technology to not only expand our product suite, but also strengthen our intellectual property. Moving forward, Plurilock will continue to employ a multi-pronged strategy to ensure continued rapid growth, with the goal of reaching profitability.
First, we aim to continue streamlining our operations and realize operational and financial efficiencies to achieve significant cost savings. As I highlighted earlier, we will reduce our headcount as well as integrate various business functions across all departments to maximize cost efficiencies without disrupting our productivity. Furthermore, we intend to organically acquire new customers for our high-margin product offerings through leveraging our extensive distribution channels and employing channel partners. Following 4 successful acquisitions, we have secured over 400 active customers and clients worldwide, and we aim to continue capitalizing on cross-selling opportunities. Additionally, in regions without a direct Plurilock presence, Plurilock will work with a certified channel partner with certified channel partners to drive awareness of our Plurilock AI platform.
Lastly, we also intend to expand our technology portfolio and release more advanced AI-driven cybersecurity products that are designed to protect a company's workforce in today's tech-savvy landscape, where organizations and their employees are becoming more susceptible to cyberattacks due to the rapid adoption of new AI tools and solutions. Before we move to Q&A, I would like to conclude this review by emphasizing that we will continue ongoing efforts to secure more high-margin product sales, while also streamlining our operations in order to drive significant revenue and gross margin growth, as well as maximize cost efficiencies. As noted earlier, our goal is to reach cash flow breakeven. I will now turn the call over to Prit, who will be moderating our Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. For those unfamiliar, if you are calling in today, you can email us at info@thesiscapital.ca, info@thesiscapital.ca. If you're on the Zoom call today, you can submit your questions to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. The first question: What is the company's strategy to reach profitability?
So I'll take that one. We have a few levers here. So first and foremost is to grow our revenue, especially in the software as well as professional services, so what we're calling higher margin offers. And then the second one is to find cost synergies and efficiencies, which we have been doing. Again, you know, been here less than 90 days, we've already found CAD 2 million of cost synergies, and really want to highlight that we have a secret weapon, somewhat in our India offshore, as well. So we'll be moving functions there at a lower cost basis.
Thank you. Next question: Can you expand on the company's recent significant software sales growth?
... Yeah, just struggling with my mute button there. So, there's really three ways that we're growing software sales. I think the first is that there's new customers acquired, either direct or cross-selling through our Solutions Division. Where we've ended up as a company is that the majority of our sales and marketing operations is through the Solutions Division. They're actively talking to customers on a daily basis, and so that creates opportunities to introduce and then sell our Technology Division products. Second is that we are seeing renewals, upsells, and expansion revenue from existing software clients. And so that creates an opportunity to take an existing client, either increase the price that they're paying because they're on a legacy pricing plan, for instance.
Or if they've, if there's opportunity to increase the number of seats, that that client has, or potentially upsell to some additional functionality, or to take as an example, to take a Plurilock AI customer and then offer, Prompt Guard to them as well. And then the third is that, we did see a bump up in software sales as a result of the acquisition of CloudCodes last year, which also includes some software revenue as well.
Thank you. How has the company garnered a lot of interest in PromptGuard?
Yeah, I'll take that one. So I think the thing that I've found surprising is the amount of interest, but also how it's generalized across both all industries as well as all company sizes. So in comparison with cybersecurity software, there are some pieces of cybersecurity software that are really only specific to larger enterprises. So if you look at a category like data loss prevention, typically you're not gonna have a mom-and-pop of 10 employees. You're probably not gonna have data loss prevention software deployed in that environment. It's more gonna be once you're in the hundreds or thousands of employees in size. Similarly, depending on what industry you're in, you might face stronger regulatory controls.
So if you're in healthcare or financial services, you might have a mandate by a regulator or a third party that say, "You must have certain types of cybersecurity software deployed." And so what that means is that for most cybersecurity offerings, they're verticalized, or there's at least a vertical go-to-market, as well as segmentation based on company size. The surprising thing that I've found with Prompt Guard, but also just the interest of our customers using generative AI, is that the interest we're seeing is across the board. Companies of all sizes, but also companies across all verticals, are asking the same types of questions around AI usage, and how to do so safely.
And so I've been speaking extensively, both with our current clients, as well as prospective new clients who are all struggling with how to adopt applications like ChatGPT or DALL-E or similar in a way that is safe for their business. What's interesting, too, is that there's concern both from a PII perspective, so companies who deal with personally identifiable information or personal health information, they're concerned about what that means to interact with public AI models, with those types of data, but also just from a general privacy standpoint, disclosing what the company is doing to these public AI models. And then there's a lot of fear and uncertainty about what happens to that data inside those public AI models.
So I would say that just from a broad statement, there's just a lot of attention right now on this new type of technology and what that means for businesses.
Great, thank you.
I can even jump in there, like from the financial world, you know, I'm certainly concerned about customer data, just in general, and especially depending on where you are, the fines that could happen if that data gets out. Also, just confidential data being released. So I think, you know, from a public market standpoint, you wanna keep your confidential data tight, and you have a regimented release date. So I think that's, again, something that we are solving for. And then finally, just if anything else gets out that could be misconstrued, you wanna keep your data pretty... Of your finance teams, you know, in-house. So there's a broad range of applications here, not just in finance, but also alone.
Okay. Thank you. Next question here. Q3 is traditionally the strongest revenue quarter, but margins will be pressured. What level of margins can be achieved in Q3?
I'll maybe take the first part of that. So I think it's worth reminding that we have a very large portion of our business, which is to the U.S. federal government. We've always seen that as a strength, because going into potentially uncertain economic climates, we've been quite reassured that we have good, strong customers that we are interacting with. Now, what that has meant for us historically is that a lot of. We see a lot of activity towards the end of Q3. That's typically when we see a lot of our our U.S. government buyers procuring solutions, because that's, there's a change in where their budgets run out. And that's typically right at the end of Q3.
As a result, we see a lot of demand. Certainly the team is usually very, very busy right at the end of Q3. I think that the second component of that, though, is that in a lot of cases, the products and services that those buyers procure can run the gamut. And so it could be, it could be hardware, it could be software, and so those are just some of the dynamics that we have seen in years past. So it is definitely worth remembering that we do tend to see some seasonal fluctuations in the business. That's been the case for a number of years. And that's just one of the things that's a little bit different about Plurilock.
Scott, would welcome if you wanna chime in as well on, on that.
Yeah, I mean, for sure, the mix impact of the margin is going to be, you know, in terms of margin rate, again, this is the busy season, and we're gonna see a lot of resale activity, so it's more a margin dollar play than margin rate on that side during Q3. The you know, mixing in at what we've been doing with software and professional services has, you know, given us that elevation in past quarters of margin rate, and we expect to continue doing that as part of our growth strategy, as well as just performance objectives.
Okay, thank you. Next question, long-term goal on gross margin on the VAR side of the business?
So when we look at the VAR side itself, again, we have I think I would break out the business in a few separate chunks. One is the federal government business, one is, like, what I call traditional VAR, and then we also have professional services we're selling through, just on that side. So the goal is to layer in more and more professional services to increase the margin rates. In terms of long-term goals, I mean, we're staying a bit away from forward-looking, but again, our we do have goals to continually layer in professional services. I think we have a lot of room for growth and opportunity there.
I'd just jump in. I think one of the areas that we're actually seeing a lot of demand on the customer side is help with professional services. Last year, I believe the statistic was that there's 3 million jobs unfilled in cybersecurity, and that's really having customers face the inability to hire qualified people to do all of the work they need to do. Now, if you pair that with the increase in compliance obligations that are occurring, so some of you may have seen this already, but the SEC, for instance, just published a new rule that there's now a 4-day reporting timeline. So if a public company in the U.S. suffers a cyber incident, they have 4 days to report upon that.
That's a new obligation coming into U.S. public companies, which we believe will drive more focus for cybersecurity products and solutions inside publicly traded companies. At the same time, we're also seeing just a tremendous amount of cyberattacks coming in the other direction, in the form of ransomware. Canada in particular has been hit, Suncor, Sun Life, just a number of industries, and so we're seeing a lot of just threat activity occurring. And so what that's causing now is our customers have these increased regulatory obligations. They're also seeing increased risk. They need to do more.
They can't hire enough people, and so it's a perfect storm for them to turn to trusted partners like Plurilock to say, "Hey, can you help us?" So that's just a little bit of the nuance behind what we're seeing in the market and the need for additional assistance to actually do the things that they need to do, which could be as simple as, "Hey, you sold us some products or some capabilities. We need help to, not necessarily deploy, but we might need help to integrate." So getting Prompt Guard, for instance, deployed and integrated, and then connected into their log management system like a Splunk or a security incident and event management system, which is shortened to SIEM.
Those are some of the dynamics that we're seeing in the industry today.
Okay, next question, have any large cybersecurity companies shown interest in integrating your product into their solutions?
Yeah, I'd say at a high level, cybersecurity is a team sport, and so even the example that I just gave, where we have our system and we might be deploying it into a customer environment, and that customer says, "Oh, well, I want to consume the logs from one system in another system." And so Splunk is an example. Plurilock is actually has a on the Plurilock AI side, we actually have a public integration with Splunk to make that easy to do. And so for customers who want to consume that log information inside Splunk, we provide an easy way of making that happen. So you don't have to redo work for every deployment. You can just...
It's a more automated way of doing that. So, so anytime you have those types of integrations, there's usually interest from larger incumbents. And so we've publicized a number of them over the years. I certainly expect that we'll continue to want to collaborate and work with other cybersecurity companies, so I don't think that's gonna change. I would also say that from an industry perspective, we are seeing a focus change from individual best-of-breed point solutions to more of a platformification. And so customers, again, because of all of the drivers that we just talked about, compliance, regulatory, increased threats, and the inability to do all the work that they needed to do.
What we're seeing is that customers are looking for an easy button where they can just buy a whole platform to do as much of the work as possible. Now, that platform could be, like, a technology platform, but the platform could also be trying to standardize on a couple of key vendors, which could be Plurilock, and then looking to funnel all of their demand and needs through a couple of key vendors just to manage from a procurement standpoint. So rather than saying, "Hey, we need 200 cyber products, we're gonna get that from 100 cyber vendors," working with, you know, maybe five or six to have more of an integrated, consolidated capability.
So that's a bit of a shift compared to where it was two years ago, three years ago, where what we saw more of were customers who were wanting to say, "Hey, we want to, we want to get, you know, the best, the best of the best, and we'll integrate it." Now, they've bought too many things, they can't integrate it, and so they're looking for some assistance.
Okay, great. Next question: You have a great product. But many Fortune customers are reluctant to take a chance on a not very well-known company. How do you plan to overcome that issue?
Yeah, good question. So I think, so I think it was, you know, like Fortune 1000 customers, like larger enterprises. So we definitely see, we definitely see that dynamic. So typically, it's what happens is there's a large company, whether it's a Fortune 1000 company or a Russell 2000 size company, and they're looking for trust. They're looking for how do we, how do we get trust and confidence in potentially taking on a new capability? What we have found with our model, through the acquisition of solutions providers and then having that channel, that actually creates, and in a lot of cases, inherits trust. So they're already used to working with Aurora. They've been working with them for potentially 2 years, potentially 5 years, potentially 10 years.
There's a good trusted relationship, and so then when that sales rep that they're already used to working with presents a new option or says, "Hey, you've got a problem over here, we have a product that can solve that." There's more trust built up as compared to if you're somebody that they've never heard of. It's difficult even to take the... for them to get a meeting scheduled, and then you have a higher level of suspicion or similar to present the product. And so that's been a key for us of our strategy, and that's why we're different in that we're trying to make it easier to present those new capabilities. And I think that we already have some evidence that is successful.
I mean, we talked about the Fortune 500 client that procured some Plurilock AI licenses earlier in the presentation, and that was as a result of that was a cross sell. That was a result of a long-standing trusted relationship that the company had with that client over many years. And so as a result, we were able to to make a recommendation, "Hey, there's a new capability. You may not have heard of it." and ultimately led to a sale.
Okay, great. Should you have any more questions, you can submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, you can email us at info@thesiscapital.ca. Again, that's info@thesiscapital.ca. So last question, Ian and Scott, can you provide us with some catalysts investors can expect from the company over the next 6-12 months?
Yeah, I'll take the first part of that. So I think the first, and we've covered some of these already, but I think the first one is that historically, Plurilock has been very, very busy in Q3. So again, because U.S. federal government is a very large customer of ours, there is that end of budget timing. And so historically, we've seen a lot of a lot of orders in that Q3 timeframe. So we're just coming into that. So that's I think that's the first one. I think the second is that the end of the year for 2023 will be the first year that we've had all of the acquisitions fully on the books.
And like we've shown, we've already started to realize some synergies and some integrations. So operationally, those are two key items. I think the third one that I would just speak to is with regards to Prompt Guard. The thing to keep in mind is that while we've announced Prompt Guard, we've actually announced it under a beta program, so what we call our early access program. So we actually haven't, we have not fully released it yet. The reason being is that we very intentionally launched the capability under our EAP program very early, because we wanted to get it out there in front of customers, potential customers, as early as possible to collect that feedback.
So again, one of the key themes that you've heard through this call is that cybersecurity is a team sport. There's oftentimes integrations that need to happen, or there might be areas of process that you have to work through with any new capabilities. This is not unique to us. This is true of any cybersecurity or even IT software capability that comes to market. So the next thing that happens after our beta program or after our EAP is a full what we call a 1.0 launch, or what's also called general availability, GA, in the industry. So you first have the beta program, then you have a 1.0 launch and a general availability.
At that time, that's actually when sales start, 'cause so you have a fully featured product out there in the market, and then you can go out and land sales. And then from there, you continue to iterate on that as a result of customer demands. So just to remind where we are in that process, we've already filed the intellectual property. We've launched under EAP. We are actively working with both current clients as well as channel resellers, because we want to refine the capabilities, and we wanna make sure that what we have is relevant to that channel.
And then after that, typically, you would have a v1.0 launch, and then from there, things kind of get into more of a steady state. So those would be three items. Scott, maybe turn it over to you with any additional?
Yeah. Thanks, Ian. That's a, I think, a great summary there. The only thing I'd add to that is, you know, we're still gonna go through continued cost reduction, so we're looking at, you know, our expenses and our contracts that are coming up. So keep in mind, some of them are term contracts, so when those terms are over, we'll be switching those out for more cost-effective options, as well as the continued use of our India shared services team and continued look at our just expenses overall and reducing everywhere we can.
Okay, great. I think that's it for the Q&A session of the webinar. So thank you both, Scott and Ian, for the presentation today and the overview of Q2. For our attendees, if we did not get to your questions, please email us at info@thesiscapital.ca, info@thesiscapital.ca, and we will address them immediately. I would like to thank everyone for attending the webinar today. Just as a quick reminder, again, for those that are unfamiliar with Plurilock, the company trades in the TSXV under the ticker PLUR, and on the OTCQB under the ticker PLCKF. We will have a recording of this webinar shortly after. Thank you, everyone, for attending today.
Thanks, everybody.