Thank you and welcome to the Boxlight third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. By now, everyone should have access to the third quarter 2020 press release issued this morning. This call is being webcast and is available for replay. The remarks today will include statements that are considered forward-looking within the meaning of securities law, including forward-looking statements about future results of operations, business strategies and plans, customer relationships, market trends, and potential growth opportunities. In addition, management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current knowledge and expectations as of today, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and may cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. A detailed discussion of such risks and uncertainties are contained in the company's most recent Form 10-Q, Form 10-K, and other reports filed with the SEC.
The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. On this call, management will refer to non-GAAP measures, that when used in combination with GAAP results, provide additional analytical tools to understand the company's operations. The company has provided reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in the earnings press release, which will be posted on the investor relations section of the company's website at investors.boxlight.com. With that, I'll hand the call over to Boxlight's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Pope. Sir, the floor is yours.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Our progress during the third quarter was the most significant in our history and included fundraising of over $60 million in debt and equity, the acquisition of Sahara Presentation Systems, a leading interactive solution provider with significant penetration in the EMEA region, the addition of tremendous talent to our sales leadership, our formalized partnership with Samsung, enhancements to our product offering, and a drastically improved balance sheet and financial outlook. Although our revenue of $9.5 million and gross profit of 21% lagged our expectations in Q3 due to several factors, including the effects of COVID-19, we are seeing increased demand in the fourth quarter and we are executing on a strong sales pipeline.
With the addition of the Sahara operations, and considering our quarter-to-date results and current pipeline, we expect to generate greater than $27 million in revenue and positive adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter. During the third quarter, we had several new wins with interactive flat panel displays including Bennington Public Schools and Ord Public Schools in Nebraska, Granite School District in Utah, and Ohio County School District in West Virginia. We also began deployments of our MimioClarity classroom audio solution in two school districts in Michigan, installing over 300 units. We continue to deliver on key contracts such as San Diego Unified in California, Harford County Public Schools in Maryland, Tangipahoa Parish School System in Louisiana, and Highland Park, Klein, West Orange-Cove, and Alvin Independent School District, all in Texas.
Outside the U.S., our Latin America business is growing through key partnerships in Puerto Rico, Peru, and Costa Rica. In Europe, we delivered more than 500 interactive displays to the Academies Enterprise Trust in the U.K. and are seeing significant opportunities in Germany, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. We continue to win business with strong partners such as TROX, CDW, Howard Technology Solutions, Central Technologies, Tierney, Information and Data Network Supplies, Interactive Concepts, Abacus Computers, GV Multimedia, and Digital Age Technologies. During the third quarter, we closed a $34.5 million secondary offering and received a $22 million investment from The Lind Partners. Additionally, we'd entered into a $6 million asset-based lending agreement with Sallyport Commercial Finance that provides substantially better terms than our previous factoring and PO finance facilities.
On September 24th, using the proceeds from recent financings, we completed the acquisition of Sahara Presentation Systems, our most significant transaction to date, with a purchase price of approximately $80 million in cash and preferred stock. Headquartered in the U.K., Sahara is a leader in providing audiovisual solutions for education and corporate environments, including its multi award-winning touchscreens and digital signage products under the brand Clevertouch. Sahara is an ideal strategic fit with its significant penetration in the EMEA market and tremendous management talent, including Mark Starkey as CEO, Pat Foley as CFO, and Shaun Marklew, COO. In September, we added two seasoned sales leaders to our America sales organization, namely Scott Willett as Vice President of Sales and Dan Deem as Vice President of Sales over Platforms and Services.
Both Scott and Dan bring tremendous experience in the industry from companies such as Apple, Promethean, Dell, and Panasonic, and will manage our sales organization in Americas. In August, we formally announced our strategic partnership with Samsung Electronics America to provide their displays bundled with Boxlight software and professional development. We have dedicated substantial resources to the Samsung partnership, and we expect to begin delivering sales this quarter, with substantial growth in 2021. As a result of our recent fundraising, as well as our acquisition of Sahara, we closed the third quarter with a healthy balance sheet, including cash and cash equivalents of $10 million, inventory of $22 million, working capital of $25 million, and stockholders' equity of $44 million.
We were recently selected as a finalist in five categories for the 2020 AV Awards, including for our IMPACT Lux Display as Visual Technology of the Year, our UX Pro as Collaboration Technology of the Year, and Clevertouch as Manufacturer of the Year. We were also nominated under the AV in Action category for our COVID-19 reaction strategy. We're committed to providing best-in-class interactive technology solutions that improve engagement and communication in diverse business and education environments, and we are proud of our progress during the third quarter to enhance our solution suite. We recently launched both our Clevertouch Technologies non-interactive CM series with embedded digital signage and our Clevertouch Technologies Pico 5, which is our compact yet fully featured digital signage player. On October 1st, we introduced our LYNX Whiteboard software, which was completely redesigned for touchscreens with drag and drop, pinch-to-zoom, and easy swipe menus.
LYNX Whiteboard runs across multiple platforms on an array of devices, and it's available for download in all major app stores. We are seeing positive interest in our subscription-based MimioConnect software platform, designed for blended learning, which we announced in June of this year, and we are demonstrating and testing the platform in several districts. We added various enhancements during the quarter, including monitoring of student engagement with teacher visibility and one-on-one text coding. We are also completing development to provide compatibility with Samsung's Tizen operating system. Our MimioClarity audio solution is being piloted in several districts in Michigan in hybrid learning environments. MimioClarity allows teachers to amplify their voices while wearing masks to both students in the classroom and those learning virtually. MimioClarity is also available with a CareHawk system providing functionality for bells, public announcements, emergency notices, classroom-to-classroom communications, as well as classroom-to-administrative communications.
We have also enhanced the Boxlight Unplug'd screen mirroring software to allow for nine simultaneous student shared devices and have developed a teacher control center, which allows the teacher to highlight student screens, control all shared screens through teacher feedback, and control student collaboration functions. As you can see, we are fully committed to providing industry solutions that create engaging and collaborative experiences in diverse environments. Specifically, our feature-rich solution bundles provide integrated hardware and software partnered with professional development and training resources to drive adoption. With our tremendous foundation of talented management and outstanding solutions, we are fully committed to delivering strong financial performance in the fourth quarter and showing continued improvement in future quarters with a specific focus on revenue growth, increased gross profit margins, and positive earnings. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Takesha Brown.
Thanks, Michael. As Michael noted, the company acquired 100% of the outstanding shares of Sahara on September 24th, 2020. Included in the three-month and nine-month periods of 2020, as will be discussed, are Sahara's operating results for the period from September 25th through September 30th. Sahara contributed approximately $1.1 million in revenue and approximately $0.1 million in gross profit. Sahara's total operating expenses were $0.3 million, and they incurred a net loss of approximately $0.3 million. Sahara's gross profit and net loss was negatively impacted by the purchase accounting impact of $0.2 million as a result of marking the inventory up to fair value at acquisition date. I will now review our third quarter 2020 consolidated results. Revenue for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $9.5 million, a decrease of $1.8 million or 16% compared to $11.3 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019.
The decrease in revenues in 2020 is related to the reduction in sales of panels, software, and STEM, primarily attributable to the school closures as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Gross profit for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $2 million, a decrease of $1.2 million compared to $3.2 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The resulting gross margin was 21.4% for the three months ended September 30th, 2020, compared to 28.6% for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The decrease in gross margin from 29% to 21% was related to changes in the company's product mix with a reduction in higher margin products such as software and STEM, a 33% increase in distributor sales compared to 2019, and a $0.2 million purchase accounting impact of marking the Sahara inventory up to fair value at acquisition date.
General and administrative expenses for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $3.3 million compared to $4.2 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The decrease primarily driven by reductions in compensation and benefits of $0.7 million, travel and entertainment of $0.2 million, and stock compensation of $0.2 million. Research and development expenses for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $0.5 million compared to $0.4 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The change in research and development expense is primarily driven by an increase in contract services related to software consultants. Operating loss for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $1.8 million, a decrease of $0.4 million or 30% compared to $1.4 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019.
Other expense and income for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was an expense of $2.5 million, an increase of $3.4 million or 381% compared to income of $0.9 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The increase in other expense was related to a change in fair value of derivatives liabilities of $1.6 million. A loss from settlement of Lind debt of $1.7 million. Net loss for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $4.2 million, compared to $0.5 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. The increase in the net loss was primarily driven by a decrease of gross profit, an increase in other expenses, offset by a decrease in operating expenses.
The resulting EPS loss for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $0.10 per diluted share, compared to $0.04 per diluted share for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the three months ended September 30th, 2020 was $0.9 million, an increase of $0.4 million, or 66%, compared to $0.5 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019. Our financial results for the nine months ended September 30th, 2020 were as follows. Revenue for the nine months ended September 30th, 2020 was $23 million, a decrease of $4.1 million or 15%, compared to $27.1 million for the nine months ended September 30th, 2019. The decrease in revenue in 2020 is related to the reduction in sales of panels, projectors, software, and STEM, primarily attributable to school closures as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Gross profit for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $6.3 million, a decrease of $1.6 million, compared to $7.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2019. The resulting gross margin was 27.4% for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, compared to 29.1% for the nine months ended September 30, 2019. The gross margin decrease from 29% to 27% was related to changes in the company's product mix, with a reduction in higher margin products such as software and STEM, a 15% increase in distributor sales compared to 2019, and a $0.2 million purchase accounting impact of marking the Sahara inventory up to fair value at acquisition date. General and administrative expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $10.4 million, a decrease of $1.5 million or 12%, compared to $11.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2019.
The decrease was driven primarily by reductions in trade shows of $0.3 million, contract services of $0.6 million, compensation and benefits of $0.4 million, and travel and entertainment of $0.4 million. Research and development expenses for the nine months ended September 30th, 2020 was $1.1 million, an increase of 18% compared to $0.9 million for the nine months ended September 30th, 2019. The increase in research and development expense was driven primarily by an increase in contract services for software consultants. Operating loss for the nine months ended September 30th, 2020 was $5.2 million, compared to $4.9 million for the nine months ended September 30th, 2019. Other expense for the nine months ended September 30th, 2020 was an expense of $2.4 million, an increase of $0.8 million or 49%, compared to expense of $1.6 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2019.
The increase in other expense was related to a loss on settlement of Lind debt of $2.3 million, increased interest expense of $0.3 million, offset by a gain on settlements of EDI accounts payable of $1.7 million, and a decrease in change in fair value of derivative liabilities of $0.3 million. Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $7.6 million, an increase of $1.1 million or 17%, compared to $6.5 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2019. The resulting EPS loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $0.31 per diluted share, compared to $0.62 per diluted share for the nine months ended September 30, 2019. The increase in the net loss was primarily driven by a decrease in gross profit, an increase in other expense, offset by a decrease in operating expense.
Adjusted EBITDA loss for the nine months ended 2020 was $1.6 million, a decrease of $1.5 million or 50%, compared to $3.1 million for the nine months ended September 30th, 2019. With that, we'll open up the call for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is open for questions. If you do have a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to provide the best sound quality. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question or comment, please press star then one on your telephone keypad at this time. First, we'll go to John Nobile with Taglich Brothers. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, Mike and Takesha. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question, actually I have a lot about Sahara. I know that they have a portion of their sales to the corporate market. I was hoping you could kind of break out percentage of Sahara's sales are to the education market?
John, thanks for joining the call, and great question. We're still going through the Sahara financial statements, and we're actually working on having their financials audited in preparation for filing our 8-K in early December, which will include their standalone historical as well as, of course, the pro forma combined statements with Boxlight. Historically, their corporate over recent quarters, their corporate business has been about 15% of their total sales, and about 85% has been education. That's kind of a rough number for you. It's a little higher in the U.K., and then it's a little lower throughout other parts of Europe that they sell into.
The bulk, obviously education, but 15% corporate market. I'm just curious, being you're really focused in on the education market, if you'd be looking to grow the corporate or the non-education market of Sahara's business, or you're looking really to just focus on the education market?
Our focus primarily is education, we do expect to grow the corporate market as well. We follow pretty closely a resource called Futuresource. They put together some research on the interactive flat panel or interactive display market, and we follow that pretty closely, and we're seeing an uptrend in interactive displays being sold into the corporate market. We're about in line with that with the Sahara Group. We're, I think, about 15% of the total market today. Futuresource is projecting that to increase pretty dramatically over the next few years. In fact, I believe by 2024, it was supposed to be upwards of almost 30% of total value and north of 20% in units. I would expect, if we're at 15% today, approximately within that group, I think we're going to start to see that increase over the next few years.
Again, overwhelmingly, our business will be education.
Okay. I just want to make sure I understand that going forward, you had mentioned, what was it? Looking at growing to 30%. Is that of total sales? Am I getting this correct?
Yes.
For Sahara?
Well, Sahara today.
Okay
is about 15% is where they are of their total sales. I do think that'll start to increase over future quarters because it is a focus of ours. Yeah, the 30% number was from Futuresource about the total interactive display market, which still is largely education, but they're projecting that by 2024, that of total sales, that the corporate market will make up almost 30% of the total market. I would think that we had a trend at a minimum, we had a trend with that, I think, within that vertical.
Okay. Actually for Takesha, I was hoping to get an idea of what the blended gross margins would be with Sahara going forward. Now, you're going to have a complete fourth quarter with Sahara, so I know that typically, well, you had some things in this quarter, but we were looking at high, not high 20s, but 30% gross margins before the acquisition. Now with Sahara, what would be a good ballpark figure to kind of figure for gross margins?
The first thing from an adjusted perspective, we probably have a range of 25%-30%. One of the adjustments that I spoke about in my discussion today was related to the markup of the inventory to fair market value. As a part of purchase accounting, we had a markup of about $4 million to inventory, and only about $200,000 of that turned in the last six days of the quarter. If we just take that run rate, we would anticipate about $3 million of that to reverse out during fourth quarter, which is going to have a significant impact on our margin for the quarter. Unadjusted, it could be in a range from 15%-20%.
John.
Just for Q4?
Yeah, that's for Q4 only.
That's for Q4.
That's due to the accounting treatment.
Right. Q4, that's what I wanted to make sure of. For Q4 2020, 15%-20%. After this inventory mark, if we could just kind of figure out for 2021, if you could give a ballpark figure for what the gross margins would be once this is finished.
Yeah, I think that's going to be that original adjusted range that I talked about of the 25%-30%.
25%-30%?
Yeah, closer to the 30% end of it.
Okay, it's not that far off from pre-acquisition margins then.
That is correct, because if you think about it, the largest majority of Sahara is going to be the panels, right, which is kind of in line with what it is that we've been experiencing at Boxlight.
Okay. Well, great. Thank you for that. I just have one final question, a general question. If you could just kind of talk about the synergies that you expect from this acquisition of Sahara.
I think that the most significant synergies are going to be around top-line opportunity. By combining the companies, we're bringing in some more talented management, which is helpful. Of course, we're opening up our opportunities in other markets, but also we're able to combine the product suites to really come up with best-in-class solutions. We're seeing improvements on both sides of improvements to the product suite. I think at the end of the day, we're going to start to see more revenue top-line opportunity in both Europe as well as in the U.S. as a result of combining the companies.
Obviously, there's going to be some good cross-selling opportunities with that.
That's right. Yeah, I mean, just a couple of quick examples. In Europe, Sahara has been selling a great solution suite, but they haven't had a core audio solution. We have one, of course, in Mimio Clarity. That's something we're going to look at potentially selling over into EMEA. On the flip side, there's some great assets, including on the interactive flat panels that Sahara sells. They have an Android app store. That's something that we haven't had. That's something we're looking at adding to our displays under the Mimio or Boxlight brands. There's a lot of things like that we're looking at, dozens of potential opportunities around the solution suite. Over the next couple of quarters, we'll start to realize those benefits.
Okay, great. I appreciate the input. That's all I have. Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Thank you.
Next, we go to the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. This is Jacob on for Brian. Thanks for taking my questions. You talked before about the corporate market. Is there ultimately a software play on that?
Absolutely. Every display that we sell, we're including software on the display. In the corporate market, we have whiteboarding software that can be used in corporate environment, which is key. The Sahara group had acquired a company by the name of Sedao, which is a digital signage company, and there's a great amount of software that we have within that group too, through the digital signage acquisition. There's a good amount of software we're offering, yes, as part of the solution we're selling to the corporate market.
Okay. Can you talk about the progress you're making on the Samsung partnership, have they started to sell the bundle yet? Has this had any material impact on the results so far?
Yes. It has not had a material impact at this point in time. We expect to start seeing some business go through this quarter with a real focus on 2021. I would just tell you that we've invested a tremendous amount of resources into the relationship, as have they. We're just now to a point to where we can offer the solution and actually ship the solution. Agreement's finalized, logistics is finalized, and now we're turning our focus to sales and marketing. We have a pretty big target for 2021, but I expect in 2020, in the fourth quarter now, that we'll seed a handful of units, but nothing ultra substantial. Again, you're going to see the real uptick in 2021.
Okay, then a follow-up on Samsung. Is your plan to ultimately leverage the Samsung partnership and use them as a supplier to Sahara as well?
That's something we look at. Right now, our agreement with Samsung, it's just for the U.S., so our focus is on the U.S. today, and our focus is on the bundle we're offering, which includes their displays with our software, as well as our training modules that we're offering. I think right now we're focused on 2021 to start to see good uptick in selling units, and it's something we could evaluate down the road. Right now, again, our focus is just selling that bundle in the U.S., and we'll see where that leads.
Okay. Can we expect to continue seeing, with the businesses combined, some seasonality in the December and March quarters, and what kind of levels of seasonality do you think we would see?
Yes. It's going to be stabilized a little bit as we become more global because schools have different schedules internationally in some areas than they do here in the U.S. That being said, we still expect to see a lighter Q1, and then it to uptick a little bit in Q2. Q3 is still going to be the strongest quarter. Q4 will be strong as well. You ought to expect to see Q1 lighter. We'll provide some more guidance on that as we start to stabilize our reporting internally.
Okay, last one from me. What was the reason for the increase in distributor sales, and is this something that you might see in future quarters?
The increase in distributor sales was because we entered into a new distribution agreement with D&H Distributing, which is a large $4.5 billion distributor here in the U.S. They have multiple logistics centers throughout the U.S., they sell a tremendous amount in education. We entered into that agreement for a couple reasons. One, they had committed to carry inventory in their distribution centers. Number two, they've committed a quick turnaround to ship. If our partners that we sell through, if they place orders with D&H, there'll be a quick turnaround in inventory. Those were the main reasons. Beyond that also, D&H has a large network of channel partners, some of which we don't sell through today in education, we had hoped that we could start to gain access to some of those partners, I believe we'll start to see that happen more.
That being said, there is a cost to selling through D&H distribution or through other distribution, and on average, it's costing us from 2%-5%, depending on the orders that we place through them. We did see an uptick because we had a lot of our partners that chose to buy from D&H versus directly through us, and we pushed some partners to D&H as a result of, again, providing a better service to our partner network. We believe that over time, we can offset that a little bit with improving margins in other areas. We did take a little bit of a hit to last quarter with the shift of that business to distribution.
Great. Thanks. That is all for me.
There you go.
I apologize. Next, we go to the line of Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.
Great. Hi, Michael. Hi, Takesha. Congrats on the quarter and the Sahara acquisition. Thanks for taking my questions. Michael, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that you're seeing increased demand in the fourth quarter, and you expect to generate revenue of at least $27 million, along with positive adjusted EBITDA. I'm not sure if you'd provide this or if you feel comfortable providing this yet, but can you provide any more granularity on that $27 million+ revenue guide between maybe what you expect core Boxlight versus Sahara to what that mix would be?
Yeah. I could provide a little bit. Let me just mention that the way we came to that $27 million number was, number one, looking at, of course, orders that have shipped already during the quarter. Number two, we look at our back orders that we believe we can fill. Number three, we look at our weighted pipeline and look at realistically what we believe that we can sell and deliver from within our pipeline. We feel really good about that $27 million number. I'm not in a position right now to try to break out what the historical Boxlight was versus what Sahara would be, because honestly, we don't even track it like that anymore. We're really focusing on markets. Internally, we're tracking U.S. as a market, and then we track EMEA as a market.
Largely in EMEA, we're going to be selling the Clevertouch brand. A lot of the partners in the past that were selling our Mimio-branded solutions, a lot of those will start to shift over. The U.S., we're focused primarily on our Mimio K-12 brand. There is some Clevertouch that's being sold in the U.S., and that's going to continue. Our key focus going forward is going to be on the Mimio brand. That being said, I think I could give you kind of an idea perhaps at the end of the quarter, but generally it's going to be market-based. As far as what we're seeing for the historical core Boxlight business, we're having a great quarter. I'll just leave it at that we started out really strong, much stronger than where we started off last year.
We expect even that core business to be significantly stronger than it was the same quarter last year. I would just mention that the industry also is seeing a strong increase. I mentioned some of the research from Futuresource, which is the research report that we track pretty closely. If you look at what they say around the growth in interactive displays, they're expecting Q4 to be a really good quarter. In fact, Q3 was actually a strong quarter for the sale of interactive displays, where Q3, if you look at the globe excluding China, it actually had a pretty good increase of about 11%. If you look at just the U.S. alone, the U.S. also had an increase that was about 11% over the same quarter last year. EMEA had about an 8% increase over the same quarter last year.
Even though it's been a strange environment with COVID and schools trying to figure out how to operate in this new environment, there actually was an increase in sales of interactive flat panels last quarter over the same time last year. We actually got hit with some of our contracts where I don't know that we saw that broad impact, but now that we're a much larger, more global company, I expect us to trend a little closer to the market going forward. If you look at Futuresource, what they're projecting in future years, they're showing good growth. 2021 is going to be higher than 2020 and 2019 were. 2019, 2020, they expect to be roughly flat, which shows that Q3 was good, Q4 should be strong. If you're looking at growth over the next three years, they're showing good growth.
Again, I think we're going to see good uptick in both the U.S. and EMEA on a go-forward basis.
Got it. That's helpful. A lot of added clarity there. I appreciate it. Maybe if I look at Sahara's 2019 financial statements and just do a rough conversion to US dollars, their 2019 revenue looks like it was about $100 million. Can you provide just any insight or any color on how Sahara's revenue has tracked during 2020 relative to their 2019 numbers? Has revenue been up, down, flat? Given COVID and everything, I just have zero insight into that. I'm wondering if you could provide any clarity there.
Yeah. We're a little hesitant, Jack, to provide too much in the form of numbers, just because, again, we're still going through the audit. Once that's complete, we're going to provide those pro forma combined statements, both standalone and pro forma combined, that's going to be first week of December, it's just around the corner. I would tell you that they're performing quite strongly. They've had a good year year-to-date. They had a tremendous October, we're expecting a really strong Q4. They have not seen a significant decline. They've been upticking in most markets. That being said, too, they've had strong gross profit, actually slightly stronger than historical. That's why we're expecting to see, as Takesha mentioned, combined gross profit of 25 points to 30 points, possibly on the higher end of that gross profit margin range.
Got it. Okay. That's helpful as well. Then maybe if I just back to Boxlight core products, can you provide maybe a status update on MimioClarity and what your business expectations are from this product in terms of revenue? I believe earlier in the year, a couple quarters ago, you had initially planned for this to be like a 10% of revenue contributor before the launch was delayed because of COVID-related issues. Any update on MimioClarity sales and, I don't know, revenue attribution?
The delays on MimioClarity, which we did have substantial delays, those were on the manufacturing side, where we had a lot of complications trying to get that to market. Those are essentially largely behind us. We have a finished product. We're actually piloting the product in several school districts as we speak, and it's going quite well. We picked up our first sales during the quarter. We sold about 300 units that were sold during the quarter. I still think that 10% or even potentially something north of that is very possible for that solution and a high margin. I think Q4 is going to be a good quarter for us to be able to give you another update after Q4 of what we've sold of that audio solution. We stand behind it.
I believe it's the best in the market, and we think that we're going to have a really good attachment to the displays that we sell of selling that audio solution as well.
Got it. Just one more question from me. Can you talk about, just as it relates to your overall customer base, and maybe percentage you would say have already purchased a Boxlight virtual hybrid learning solution from you? Which I believe would be considered your Mimio Connect offering. What would you say your overall penetration is of your existing customer base, and what's left for remaining opportunity to sell the Mimio Connect offering?
Yes. I would tell you first that we are very optimistic about the platform. It's fantastic. I don't think there's a better platform out there, and it was built directly to address the need of today in these hybrid environments, but also virtual, but also it's fantastic in a traditional environment, so it's built for all environments. That being said, we're early on to where we launched the platform recently. We've been demoing it, showing it. We don't have any large implementations that we can point to yet, but we are having it used in several districts, and we're expecting to start to see those. In addition to that, something that we're offering to districts that buy panels, that we're going to include MimioConnect for a trial period. That's going to give them a chance to test it and use it as well.
We're just now starting to launch some marketing efforts. I think, again, I think Q4, Q1, you're going to start to see some good adoption. To this point in time, we don't have any large deployments yet of Connect. I would say there's several potentially in the works, but none that we could announce at this point in time.
Okay, great. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate the added color and look forward to what Q4 and beyond brings to the Boxlight story. That's it for me. Thanks.
Thanks, Jack.
Our next question or comment comes from the line of Allen Klee with National Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. This might be a definitional question, but you're guiding to $27 million+ of revenue, but you said your orders increased to $9.3 million and your backlog is $9.7 million. Those numbers sound kind of low to be estimating $27 million+ of revenue. Could you explain that a little more?
Well, the order figure you're looking at, those are orders for last quarter. Those are Q3 orders. That's not applicable to the guidance we're providing for Q4. Now, the back orders are. That back order figure, you could expect the vast majority, if not all of that, would be fulfilled within Q4. When we're coming up with a Q4 number to guide towards, number one, it's those back orders, right? At this point, we know what has been fulfilled to this point in time, which would be a large chunk of that. Number two, we're looking at if new orders have come in during the quarter that we can fulfill. Number three, we're looking at our pipeline, our sales pipeline. The combination of those have allowed us to guide to that $27 million.
I will say also, we've done a lot of diligence on the historical pipeline that Sahara has had, as well as their performance to pipeline and also performance to their forecast. We feel really confident the combination of where they are, where they've been, as well as what we have with the historical Boxlight business. Again, we feel really strong about those figures. The only relevant figure of those two, Allen, just to be clear, it's going to be the backlog that would be fulfilled in Q4.
Would you know what your amortization expense run rate would be and depreciation going forward?
We're still working on finalizing the purchase accounting. We have, of course, so long to kind of finalize that since we closed the acquisition on September 24th. We have not yet finalized that. Once we get that number finalized, once we get those balances finalized, we'll be better able to provide an amortization amount. From a depreciation perspective, we have minimal PP&E, both Boxlight and Sahara, so there's not going to be much of a change there. The bigger change is going to be related to the intangibles that have been identified for the Sahara acquisition.
Okay. If I look at the historical financials that are available on Sahara. I realize they're not GAAP. You have to take them with a grain of salt. Is there any reason to think that those type of bottom-line numbers are somewhere in the range of kind of where the run rate could be for their contribution?
Allen, I think you're generally safe on that. We're not making substantial changes to their business. I think you're generally safe on that. The one thing, though, is you got to be careful if you're trying to calculate net income number, that there could be some things in there from the purchase accounting. We're hesitant to speak to a net income number because we don't know what the amortization will be or if there'll be other implications from the purchase accounting or otherwise. If you're looking at adjusted EBITDA number, we feel very comfortable about adjusted EBITDA number to be in line with what you would calculate with their numbers generally historically.
Okay, very good. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Allen.
Next, we go to the line of Howard Schwartz with MicroCap Headlines. Please go ahead.
Hello, Michael, and hello to Takesha. I tip my hat to you for the recent, what I consider blockbuster news announcements over the last several months. Just want to start with that. The Sahara acquisition, what were the terms of the preferred stock? It's convertible, correct?
That's right, Howard. The preferred stock is convertible. The price was set the day after the acquisition, which ended up being $1.66. That all of that preferred stock is convertible at $1.66. Now it's redeemable, meaning, of course, the company could pay off that preferred stock at any point in time prior to the conversion. It's only convertible after there was GBP 10 million in Series C and GBP 12 million in Series B convertible preferred. The Series B is convertible after 2024, and the Series C is convertible after 2026. My point is, we have a long time before that potentially could convert, and then between now and then it's redeemable. If it is allowed to convert at some point in the future, right after those dates, it's $1.66, that's the conversion price.
There is a leak- out provision to where it can hit the market all at the same time.
All right, $1.66 is the absolute set price? Correct?
That's right, $1.66. Yeah.
Okay. Currently there's approximately 50 million shares total outstanding. Is that fully diluted with taking into account the preferred stock converted or no?
There's about 51 million shares outstanding, yes. It's only going to take into account a portion of the preferred. Takesha, you want to speak to that?
Yeah. Currently we have about 51.2 million shares outstanding. We also have the Lind convertible debt, which is about $24 million on the balance sheet right now. We amortize that monthly over two years. We pay it utilizing stock. There's a stock or a cash option. We pay it using stock, and there's a 10% discount, and a 20-day look back on that. We have that as well, in addition to the preferred stock that Michael talked about previously.
That's with the Lind Partners?
Yeah. You got 51 million shares approximately outstanding. You got about $24 million in the convertible notes to Lind Partners, and then you got about $29 million in preferred stock. Depending on how you look at that, again, the convertible notes amortize over two years. We're on the early end of that, we could elect to pay that off with cash if we wanted to, which in that case, it wouldn't be dilutive. Same thing with the preferred. If we redeem the preferred at some point, we wouldn't be as dilutive. If we were to do an equity raise in the future and we have multiple years to address that, perhaps not as dilutive, but you'll have to run your own calculations on that.
Right. Absolutely it's not a toxic provision, with Lind Partners or the preferred, of course.
No. the payments to Lind Partners, like we said, it's over two years, monthly payments. Those are payable in stock or cash at our option. Yeah, I don't believe it would fit into that toxic category.
Right. Okay.
it's convertible at a premium. The most recent $22 million we raised is convertible at $3.50. If the stock were to run north of that, yeah, they could convert at $3.50. Then also I would mention that the cost of capital is relatively low, and we had a low interest rate on that. Total cost was low teens if you take the OID plus the APR.
Right. All right. To me it looks like with approximately $44 million in shareholders' equity with what's total outstanding, your book value is about $0.90 a share. You're trading right now under 2x book and trading under 1x revenue with the current price of the stock. At $2, you'd only be trading at 1x revenue.
Howard,
Just making a statement.
That sounds like a good entry point, maybe. Look, we're believers. We've come a long way.
Yeah, I'm just-
that have been following us the last few months. Yeah, we've come a long way.
Yeah, I'm just making a statement because the stock has been moving up over the last few days to over $1.70, and it closes today down at $1.50. Kind of baffling to me. Maybe whoever the sellers were didn't fully understand this acquisition. They're just looking at the third quarter, not taking into account that you're only picking up a fraction of the revenue for the third quarter. It's all going to be in the fourth quarter.
Yeah. We're definitely excited to share the fourth quarter and start sharing next year because then you're going to see the combined financials of both companies.
Right.
You're spot on.
Okay, great. Well, thanks again. Thanks for the answers.
Thank you, Howard.
Okay.
This concludes our question and answer session. We return to Michael Pope for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining the call. Thanks for your support. We look forward to speaking with you again in March when we report our fourth quarter results.
Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a great day.