Sabio Holdings Inc. (TSXV:SBIO)
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May 12, 2026, 12:26 PM EST
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 25, 2022

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Okay. Hey, good morning, everyone, and Welcome to the Sabio Holdings Earnings Call for the Second Quarter of 2022. The financial statements and MD&A have been filed, and they can be accessed through the SEDAR website. My name is Aideen McDermott, Investor Relations Associate, and joining us on our call today is Aziz Rahimtoola, Founder and CEO, and Sajid Premji, Chief Financial Officer. Also on the call today will be Arinder Mahal, Advisor to the company. We will start today's call with Aziz and Sajid discussing the financial results, and then we will follow that up with a Q&A session. Just before we begin today's call, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made today may contain forward-looking information that is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors.

For a complete description of risks and uncertainties facing the company, please refer to the company's MD&A and other continuous disclosure filings that are also available on the SEDAR website. With that, I will turn it over to Aziz.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you, Aideen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. Despite continued macro environment challenges, which without a doubt affected our momentum in the quarter, we delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of strong growth, delivering 70% year-to-year increase through positive momentum of our streaming TV business, with 20% of the 106% growth in CTV/ OTT coming from our recent acquisition of Vidillion. Essentially, we're increasing market share in a fast-growing marketplace. There are three key components to our catalysts for our phenomenal growth. A, connected TV streaming market growth, B, our unique technology platform, and finally, key investments across sales, marketing, operations, and technology that we have made. As you may be aware, we are in the early stages of a rapidly growing streaming and more specifically AVOD, advertising video-on-demand marketplace.

In fact, streaming viewership has now surpassed cable TV for the first time in history. Next slide. In fact, it passed cable TV for the first time in history, with consumers opting to use streaming services more than broadcast or any other platform. At the same time, consumers are also looking to cut their subscriptions on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and some of these other platforms, as you can see by the churn rates to the right. In fact, in our early and continued investments in proprietary ad serving technology, which is our Sabio DSP, analytics, our App Science, and content enablement technology, Vidillion, are coming together effectively in one of the most complete tech stacks in the advertising video-on-demand market. Effectively, we can partner up with content creators.

Essentially, we can partner up with content creators to launch streaming TV apps, effectively place ads on existing apps, all while providing unique analytics and validation for all participants. This is what we call EMV, Enablement, Monetization, and Validation. Once again, Sabio is unique in the sense that we have a full tech stack solution that is taking advantage of all three components. Taking a deeper dive into the validation element of our business, our App Science 55 million household footprint, which basically uses 280 million mobile devices cross-screen to 110 million CTV devices, provides us 55 million validated households across the U.S. In one such case, what we're using that platform for is to provide deeper insights and understanding in the multicultural landscape.

An example of that, there's a report, our newly re-released report on streaming multicultural audiences, provided insights such as Asian Americans are 33% more likely than the average consumer to use streaming apps, along with the fact that Hispanic consumers are significantly more likely to download music apps. It's these type of insights and understanding that our brands and agencies are looking for in the CTV/ OTT, and mobile space, and we are uniquely positioned to provide them these such insights. Our ability to leverage all three businesses collectively or independently is what is helping us win market share and grow. I'm gonna hand it over to Sajid Premji, our CFO, to provide more details on our 2Q results. Sajid?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Aziz. We are pleased to close a record second quarter for Sabio. This is our fourth consecutive quarter of record sales and our fifth consecutive quarter of over 50% growth. For the three months ending June 30, 2022, we generated $7.2 million in sales, up 70% from the prior year, which is also considered to be a strong quarter where we grew by 180%. The second quarter increase was once again driven by CTV and OTT streaming sales, which were up 106% to $3.2 million from $1.5 million in the prior year. We continue to grow ahead of the overall CTV/ OTT market and gain market share.

Mobile sales grew 44% to $3.9 million from $2.7 million in the prior period. As a percentage of our overall sales mix, CTV continued to expand, making up 44% of our sales mix for the quarter versus 36% in the prior year. This expansion and our ability to expand our share of our customers' wallets underpinned a 48% increase in our average deal size and a 27% increase in sales per seller. The advertising business is seasonal, with the third and fourth quarter producing the greatest spend. Our business is no different. To normalize the seasonality, we've constructed a trailing twelve-month visual illustrating that we are now generating over $30 million in US dollars in sales on a trailing twelve-month basis. The upward trend remains consistent.

In comparing the trailing twelve months for Q2 2022 versus the prior year, sales increased 96% from $15.4 million in the prior period to $30.2 million. Moving over, our cost of sales is directly tied to revenue and is a full costing of our media, technical, creative, and data costs incurred in generating sales. We continue to grow our sales at a significant pace while maintaining strong gross margins. For the three months ended June 30th, 2022, we delivered gross margins of 59.3%. We have maintained our ability to hold margins around 60% through the immediate integration impacts of the Vidillion acquisition, which closed at the beginning of the quarter.

This is a testament to our value proposition, anchored by our App Science analytics platform that maximizes the ROI on ad spend for our clients in a challenging macro environment. Note that our Vidillion integration efforts are still in the early stages as we integrate staff, systems, and technologies, and we have yet to implement the cost synergies and renegotiation opportunities identified during our due diligence. Our adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $1.37 million versus a neutral quarter in the previous year when we were a private company with fewer overhead requirements. Last year, during the second quarter, we closed our first round of pre-RTO financing.

Since then, we have significantly strengthened our sales and marketing team through several key hires, including a new chief revenue officer and chief growth officer and additional sellers in our key markets of New York, Detroit, L.A., Chicago, and the Pacific Northwest. The second quarter of 2022 represented the first quarter where all the associated costs were incurred in full. The company is seeing the benefits from these investments as we negotiate upfront and longer term commitments with both new and existing clients. For example, in the first quarter, our new additions were instrumental in helping the company secure the largest contract in our history. Our new office in New York drove 21% of our sales growth during the quarter. The returns for the build-out of our political and advocacy function are also performing well.

The category drove 35% of our sales during the quarter, and we haven't even entered the U.S. political midterm cycle yet. We have already notched early success in the 2023 upfront season. We believe the heavy investment period in our operating infrastructure is now largely complete, and we continue to grow more efficient as sales per seller continues to increase.

We expect to be adjusted EBITDA profitable in the second half of the year and see continued improvements in operating margin in 2023. Importantly, we also continue to be well-funded and capitalized. We ended the quarter with $2.4 million in cash on our balance sheet and ended the quarter with positive working capital and over $3 million available under our line of credit with Avidbank. Finally, at quarter end, we had 45.6 million shares outstanding, 38 million. 3.88 million options outstanding, and 4.2 million warrants outstanding, with insiders owning 65% of the company. Back to you, Aziz.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you, Sajid. Really what is helping us propel this type of growth is a few things, and give you a little context of the what lies ahead. First of which, we have a very strong pipeline for the second half of the year. As Sajid mentioned, we are confident about being EBITDA positive, neutral to positive for the second half of the year. We have a lot of upside potential in political and advocacy business. These are investments we made for the last few years, and especially last year, continue to grow that business. Our adjusted EBITDA, as I mentioned, profitable in the second half of 2022 and improving operating margins in 2023.

We are seeing, as you saw from some of the stats that Sajid talked about, increase in revenue per seller, deal size, and we are executing at the highest level possible. What's not on here is we are also doing this with a culture and organization that is happy, that is driven, as reported by our most recent polling numbers of, by our HR folks. We not only have a great culture, we're executing at a high level, and everything is really coming together at the right time. On that note, I'm gonna hand it over to Aideen for any questions. Thank you.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Aziz. Aziz, thanks, Sajid. Okay, we're now going to open up the call for a Q&A. The analysts on the call have been given speaker's permission, so if you guys could please raise your virtual hand, and then if anybody else has a question, just please post it in the chat. Okay, first up we have Gabriel Leung from Beacon Securities. Go ahead, Gabriel.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on all the progress. Aziz, I wanna talk about the top line for a second. Obviously, there's a big focus on CTV, but I mean, quite frankly, your mobile business has been growing quite nicely as well. I'm curious, what are some of the drivers behind the strong growth in that segment?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

What is happening, Gabe. First of all, thank you for the question. What is happening, Gabe, is we are seeing our clients who are obviously interested in CTV, and that's really getting them interested in using us, using our platform, new clients that never used us before. Our existing clients are using mobile and now switching over to CTV. There's a combination factor here. Existing clients wanna continue using mobile and now they're using CTV. New clients are using CTV and they're starting wanting to use mobile to push down lower funnel conversion. We're unique in the sense that we have this cross-screen capability. That household graph that I spoke about earlier, that 55 million household graph allows us to identify those households in a privacy compliant way, not only reach them on CTV, but mobile devices. One thing I wanna clarify here.

When you know, other companies in our space, including Roku, talk about cross-screen, what they're talking about is the same user on the Roku device on their TV and then that same user on a Roku device on their mobile phones. When we talk about cross-screen, we're talking about a consumer who is on one app on their TV and a totally different app on their phone. The ability to bridge that consumer and tie that in and really kind of push lower funnel conversions is really what's unique in our offering in addition to the analytics. That's what's really driving mobile.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Just shifting over to CTV, I mean, obviously, it's being viewed as, you know, obviously the key growth driver in this segment for every player out there. I'm curious in your thoughts around, you know, your ability to maintain the type of growth you've been putting up, and what are some of the challenges you might face over the midterm in maintaining that growth? You know, whether from a large competitor perspective, and I think of sort of the Netflix, Microsoft partnership on that from that perspective, you know, smaller guys or maybe some of the walled gardens, some of the larger content providers might be deploying. I mean, what are the challenges you see facing over the midterm?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

What we're finding is, our biggest challenge is just visibility. As brands start using us, more brands use us, we tend to hold them and expand them. Really it's just a matter of scaling up our business. Outside of our sales team, as Sajid talked about, we are now focusing on upfront deals, bigger conversations, which we've never had before. Really our challenge is visibility and we've added to our marketing teams to increase on that. We really don't, you know, going back to your question of, you know, do we, you know, do we feel like it's gonna be challenging to continue this growth? We don't. Thus far we have not seen any headwinds, even when our peers in the space have.

We believe we're uniquely positioned with the EMB enablement, monetization, validation capabilities in a full stack that quite honestly our competitors do not have. We're uniquely positioned because of the technology stack we have and we think that the biggest challenge is just simply visibility. When clients speak with us and they start working with us, they really understand what is our value proposition. You know, being a smaller company when you have major players in the space that spend a lot of money on exposure, that really is the only constraint we have.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Gotcha. Thanks for that. Just a couple questions for Sajid. Just to confirm the Vidillion contribution, net contribution in the quarter to revenues, was it about $100,000 to you guys?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

It was a bit over $300,000.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Was that the total revenue or the net of intercompany contributions?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

That's the net of the intercompany contributions.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Okay. Understood. Gotcha. Thanks. On the gross margin side, you know, I'm curious with the Vidillion in the mix now and some of the integrations you're working on, are you still targeting to have gross margins above, at or above 60%?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Yeah, we do anticipate that we're gonna stay around that 60% mark now. You know, our margins have historically tended to gyrate around 60% depending on our sales mix. We did expect some initial deterioration as we adjusted, you know, the teams and systems of Vidillion's. Historically it is a bit of a lower margin business, but a higher EBITDA performing business. That said, we're not seeing a whole lot of movement right now, and we're seeing, you know, our ability to maintain that margin around 60%. We feel quite comfortable with that.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Gotcha. Just one last thing, you know, obviously you guys are forecasting a positive EBITDA in the second half of the year, on rising revenues, but on the operating expenses side, are you guys is this the level that you expect to maintain over the course of the remainder of the calendar year, outside of maybe some sales commission?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Yeah. We're not anticipating a heavy lift in our operating expenses from the current run rate. As we kind of touched upon, you know, the significant investments in our operating infrastructure are now substantially complete. You know, if you look at last year, we did about 70% of our sales in the second half of the year, and we do anticipate doing the bulk of our sales for this year also in quarter three and quarter four. We're gonna be EBITDA profitable, and going into 2023 we are seeing, you know, improving operating margins as we do kind of hold this kind of level of expenses with some moderate growth.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Some of that, you know, to add to that, Gabe, some of the our expenses are, you know, going back to work costs, and we are in a very much a hybrid model that has been effective for us. We have our teams go in twice a week, and that's been beneficial. There are companies out there who talk about remote, 100% remote work. We're not one of them. We believe that the hybrid model is really working for us and effective, and there are costs associated with that. Some of that, some of those costs do show up in the CapEx expense.

Gabriel Leung
Managing Director of Research and Technology, Beacon Securities

Gotcha. Thanks for the feedback and congrats on the progress.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you.

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Gabriel. Next up we have Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital. Daniel, go ahead.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Thanks, good morning, Aziz and Sajid. My first question was around, you know, the growth you're seeing in terms of the channels where they're coming from. Could you help us understand that mix between current accounts spending more versus new logos signing on?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Sajid, do you wanna cover that or prefer I do that?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

We're seeing, you know, the bulk of our revenue still being generating from existing clients as we make, you know, further inroads into them. We really are scratching the surface with, you know, some of these big names. At the same time, you know, around 30% or so is being driven by new names as well. We are continuing to add new logos. You know, as Aziz had talked about some of the early successes we have in the upfront season. You know, some of those include some new names that we're talking to. I think with what you're seeing is that you're seeing our existing customer base stay loyal, stay very sticky to us, but we are definitely expanding our horizon.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

In terms of winning new accounts, could you provide some color on I mean, there's a number of parts of the story that you highlight as differentiators, but are there any key aha moments for a customer that makes them sign on to you? Is it or is it really after a campaign and it's run, they see the numbers and the results that makes them commit, or is it really the feature offering or both? Can you help us understand that dynamic?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

As Sajid said, App Science accounts for 20% of our existing client business in terms of revenue, but App Science is playing a disproportionate percentage of our new deals closed. What that means is, you know, preface this, Vidillion is fairly new, so the Vidillion offering is still in the early stages of being integrated. We think that's gonna be a key differentiator with unique inventory. At the present time, App Science is, you know, of our new accounts and clients, App Science accounted for above 80% of that, meaning the clients started working with us because they were excited about the analytics we're providing via App Science. It is a big driver in our business and continues to be a differentiation.

As we continue to scale up Vidillion's gonna provide us even a set of really unique inventory that no one will have access to as we continue to scale that up. Those combinations are gonna play or gonna be critical as it relates to how we move forward. One thing I forgot to mention is not only does App Science provide us great analytics, it provides us unique targeting capabilities that other competitors don't have in the space. This ability to connect mobile devices and CTV homes and understand app behavior and visitation behavior is unique. That continues to be. You know, going back to your question of the aha moment, that's it.

It's the components of how we can reach consumers, how we can validate it, and you know, grow their business overall. Then provide great metrics and, you know, they obviously have their own independent metrics, but continue to execute on their metrics while providing them unique metrics that we can give them insights on.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Thanks for that. It speaks to your performance in a quarter where we've seen some big players kinda slow down that you guys are accelerating. I was curious in terms of that pipeline. Some of the industry commentators suggest, you know, really heavy spending with political advertising coming up, and then combined with a shift of dollars from other digital channels to CTV. Do you think that there's potential upside for you in the back half of the year to disproportionately capture some of those dollars?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Well, there's still a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace. We do feel pretty good about what we're seeing in Q3, and of course, the early signs of Q4, but, you know, in the current times, it's hard to really say how. You know, at the present time, we feel pretty good about what we're seeing, but we all know everything can change in a minute's notice. There is still some uncertainty out there as it relates to, you know, Q4 and then of course, upfront for next year. We feel good overall about our positioning, but we do believe that we are, you know, once again, we are very much on track to execute based off of some of the numbers that, you know, yourself and other Beacon have put out there.

We feel good about those numbers, but as it relates to increasing past those numbers, that's really. It's hard to say, because once again, we're in a very fluid environment and things can change very quickly.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Lastly, just one for Sajid. On the cash flow profile, I mean, naturally you're gonna face seasonality as well as this political spending that should support the back half of the year. Is it a fair assumption to kind of track towards last year's cash flow profile for the total year?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Yeah. Yeah. That, that's kind of what we're modeling in that right now as well, that we probably end up in a similar spot. You know, as you mentioned, Daniel, in the first half of the year, that's where we make our investments to really, you know, reap the rewards in the last half of the year when the heavy spending occurs. There's always, you know, if you look at our cash flow, it always moves in a bit of a U, right? You start off high as you collect on the high Q's in Q4. You tip down towards the summer months when you collect on the slower Q1 sales and then you ramp up again. We're now in a ramp-up period.

We do anticipate a strong finish to this year.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Great. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats again on the continued success.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you, Daniel.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Daniel. Up next we have Neehal Upadhyaya from iA Capital Markets. Neehal, go ahead.

Neehal Upadhyaya
Equity Research Analyst, iA Capital Markets

Hey, morning Aziz, morning Sajid. Congrats first off on getting that first market study by App Science out. It was quite insightful. Obviously over the call it's been fairly clear that App Science is a key differentiator in terms of winning, you know, new customers and clients. So I just wanted to ask, who would be your closest competitor for App Science?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

At the present time, the only established competitor in the space is Nielsen.

Neehal Upadhyaya
Equity Research Analyst, iA Capital Markets

Okay.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

At Nielsen you have Comscore, and they're really the entrenched players, you know, who have been in the TV space for some time. There are some entrants that are certainly popping up, but we don't think that there's any real comparison to what we're doing because we're using we have the ability to use mobile data. Now, Nielsen does get some of that mobile data, specifically, I believe, still from Facebook, so they're probably the closest competitor relative to, you know, what we're doing.

Neehal Upadhyaya
Equity Research Analyst, iA Capital Markets

Perfect. Just the last one that I've got. There's obviously lots going on in the area of user privacy and consent. Do you see any impact of that on App Science's ability to access that data and then continue to provide the kind of analytics that you have been providing? How do you guard against any potential challenges there?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

In the short term, we do not. The regulatory environment is constantly changing, and that's actually the reason why one of the reasons we purchased Vidillion. Vidillion allows us to really interface with the consumer directly. It allows us to work with apps that they're already supporting, launch other apps that interface with consumers directly, and we get the opt-ins directly from those consumers. This is always the way we approach our businesses. We're looking at multi-faceted challenges in the marketplace. Thus far, we made the right moves, as we've seen from Vidillion's just contribution to our streaming TV business.

They also now are contributing a great level of great data to us, and then the privacy component is something that will help us, you know, help us shield against any major changes on that as well.

Neehal Upadhyaya
Equity Research Analyst, iA Capital Markets

Okay. Perfect. Thanks guys. I'll pass the line.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Neehal. That appears to be it for all the questions today. I will hand it back to Aziz for his closing remarks.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Great. Well, thank you, Aideen, and thank you for joining us on the call. Once again, we are executing at a high level. We have the right team in place. We have the right

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Hey, Aziz.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Uh-huh?

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Chris has a question, I believe.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Oh, sorry.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey, guys. Sorry about that. A little bit late there on the hand raise. Maybe, Aziz, can you just remind us how Apple app tracking transparency is impacting your household graphing? Then, you know, also, you know, Google keeps delaying their cookie deprecation, but, you know, that's gonna be inevitable at some point. Does that impact your validation process in any way?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

I'll answer the cookie portion first. We've never used any component of the cookies. For us, we've always been cookie-free, focusing on the ID, the Apple ID, element, Apple and Android ID that's in the phone. As relates to the changes Apple continues to make, we've anticipated these changes. We've been dealing with Apple for seven years. You know, they constantly are changing how they approach the business. Thus far, we have not seen a huge amount of deprecation, and in the instances where we have, what we're doing is we're using a lot of machine learning. What we do is we do a lot of machine learning and also some predictive modeling as to what a consumer has apps-wise. That combined with the existing historical data we've had is really beneficial.

In fact, these changes in privacy create a moat around us because you don't have entrants into the space who are using mobile data. It's just not happening. In fact, Apple just talked about, you know, the decrease in shipments for their phones. The reality is what's happening is people are holding onto their phones much longer. This idea of churn and the idea of the IDFA changes that it could, you know, privacy changes it continue to make. In fact, recently, I don't have any data points on this, but recently I was told by a developer that Apple is actually loosening some of the restrictions.

I don't have any factual information or proof of that yet, but we do believe that, you know, we are positioned right and, we've weathered the initial hits of their changes, and thus far we haven't seen any major concerns on our part. Once again, we've set up our systems for so long and, you know, we've been in this business long enough to where we have navigated the cat and mouse game that Apple, you know, tries to play. We feel like we're set up to continue to grow and protect our household graph.

Speaker 7

Okay. I appreciate that. Maybe for Sajid, you know, you guys mentioned average deal size is growing. Are you able to quantify those metrics?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Yeah. Right now what we are seeing right now is around the $100K mark in the average deal size. So, you know, in the last quarter it grew 48% year-over-year. What we're seeing right now is, you know, the average deal size of the revenue per sellers, you know. It's as Aziz kind of mentioned, 20% of our existing sales had an App Science component, but the new customers, over 80% of them have an App Science component as far as where new deals go.

As we're selling them that full EMV tech stack, which includes the App Science, the Vidillion, and the Sabio, you know, that's increasing the average deal size inherently. We're seeing it continuing lifts of that happening going forward as well.

Speaker 7

Okay, that's helpful. Just, on the OpEx, can you remind us, you know, what your headcount was at the end of Q1, where it is at the end of Q2, and, any more hiring plans, just so we can kinda figure out your operating leverage going into next year?

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of Q1, we had about 89-90 employees. I think at the end of Q2 it's up to about 110-120 if you included the staff that we got through the Vidillion acquisition. That was the more significant additions to our headcount during quarter two. As far as the hiring plans for next year, we do intend to grow, but not at the same pace, basically. I would expect, I mean, we're going through our annual operating budget process right now for next year. But I wouldn't expect the same kind of growth that we had this year and next year as well.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's great. Great.

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

There's some moderation on that.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

A stat along those lines is, 60% of all the people who are at Sabio today have only been with the company less than eight months. You know, that tells you the context of hiring we have been doing, and as Sajid mentioned, we certainly are gonna continue hiring, but not at the current pace that we have been doing overall.

Speaker 7

Understood. Thanks for taking my questions.

Sajid Premji
CFO, Sabio Holdings

What you're saying as well is the positions that we're hiring for next year are not the same higher paying positions that we filled the last few years. Like, as I mentioned in my transcript, that we kind of, you know, we hired a new CRO, a new CGO. These are, you know, C-suite level roles. From that perspective, you know, those are now filled. I think what you're gonna see that with more of a shift towards more of the lower salaried roles.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Great.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

Thanks, Chris. I believe that Daniel from Paradigm Capital has another question. Daniel, if you'd like to go ahead.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Thanks. I just had a follow-up on the sales team investments. I know you held your sales meeting earlier in the year. I was just curious, what is the ramp-up time for a new hire, understanding that you did some high-level hires here, but just for a typical account rep or account executive, what is the ramp-up time and how do you see the team sitting as of today in terms of being optimized, for you know, their potential output? Are there any capacity constraints that you're seeing?

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

In terms of the average time it takes for someone to actually start delivering, we have seen, anywhere, on average, it's in the past, historically, it's been about 6-8 months. That timeline has been reduced to four-six months, where they actually started delivering some revenue. What we're really focusing on, that will answer your second question, is not so much the need to hire a lot of sellers. What we're focusing on, as Sajid alluded to, is organically growing bigger deal sizes. We already made an announcement earlier this year of a multi-year deal that we signed with a major brand. We're working on some major deals now, and going into next year. That is what's changing.

We don't believe now that we have the EMV stack in place, we have a differentiated offering in the streaming space, which allows us to now negotiate some bigger upfront deals. In terms of constraints, going back to your other, the next question, Daniel, our biggest constraint at this present time is we have more opportunity than we have manpower or people power to essentially, you know, have these conversations. But what we believe is the way the approach is not necessarily going to be hiring a bunch of, you know, sorry, a lot more salespeople. What we believe is the approach is more support folks that could then, you know, help convert some of the stuff that, some of the opportunities that we have going on.

Those opportunities, by the way, are not only happening on Sabio. We're seeing a new level of interest and growth in App Science as well, and that's not even counting the, you know, the opportunity growth that we have on Vidillion. Vidillion is, once again, still in the early stages of integration with us. That's gonna provide some really unique opportunities there as well. At this point it's simply what we have set up and, you know, you know this, you've been obviously covering us from day one. We also have built a team in India, an operations team in India. We actually have the ability to take on even more capacity. Right now we don't have capacity constraints as relates to execution.

Our biggest challenge is capacity constraints in terms of talking to all of these brands who actually wanna have conversations with us on multiple levels. It is, you know, doing bigger deals takes longer period of time. Those conversations have been going really well. We feel pretty good about where we're heading, not only for the rest of this year, but setting us up for 2023.

Daniel Rosenberg
Equity Research Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Great to hear. Thanks for that.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Thank you.

Aideen McDermott
Investor Relations Associate, Sabio Holdings

I believe that is it for the questions. Aziz, I'll hand it back to you again for your closing remarks.

Aziz Rahimtoola
Co-Founder and CEO, Sabio Holdings

Great. Well, thank you, Aideen, and thank you everyone for joining our call. As I mentioned, I'm just saying we are executing at a high level.

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