Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Mar 1, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Cardlytics 4th Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Kirk Thomas, Chief Legal and Privacy Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning, and welcome to Cardlytics 4th quarter and full year 2020 financial results call. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward looking statements based on our Current assumptions, expectations and beliefs, including expectations about future financial performance or results, Our financial guidance for the Q1 year of 2021, our ability to achieve our key long term priorities, the launch of U. S. Bank, Growth in FI MAUs or monthly active users, the increase in our connectivity to our MAUs, the return to year over year growth, The launch of our new user experience, the increase in ARPU or average revenue per user, our cash position, The impact of COVID-nineteen on our business and the economy as a whole, including the stabilization of the economy and potential improvements in the economy The impact of our RISE, retain and return strategy, the sufficiency of our capital structure, continued momentum in 2021 and the closing and anticipated benefits of our acquisition of Dosh Holdings Inc. For a discussion of the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results To differ materially from today's discussion, please refer to the Risk Factors section of the company's 10 ks for the year ended December 31, 2020, that we filed earlier today and in subsequent periodic reports that we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also during this call, we will discuss Non GAAP measures of our performance, GAAP financial reconciliation and supplemental financial information are provided in the press release issued today and the 8 ks that has been filed with the SEC. Today's call is available via webcast and a replay will be available for 1 week. You can find all of the information I've just described on the Investor Relations section of Cardlytics' website. Please note that a supplemental presentation Our Q4 results has also been posted to our Investor Relations website. Joining us on the call today is Cardlytics' leadership team, including CEO and Co Founder, Lynn Loebi and CFO, Andy Christiansen. Following their prepared remarks, we'll open the call to your questions. With that, Let me turn the call over to Lynn. Lynn? Thanks, Kirk, and thank you to everyone for joining us on our Q4 and full year 2020 earnings call. We're pleased with our Q4 results, which exceeded the high end of our guidance for both billings and total revenue. I'm proud of the Cardlytics team for their ability to adapt and continue executing on our multi year strategy in what was a challenging year. Before moving to our results, this morning we announced that we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Dosh. Andy will discuss the financial details later in the call, but I'd like to take a moment to discuss our strategic rationale for this acquisition and why we believe it's a great opportunity for continued growth. Josh is a company we followed for a long time. We've been impressed with their team and their platform And we believe that their business model fully complements our efforts to drive continued growth. There are 4 key benefits and capabilities I would like to highlight. First, Dosh has an easy to integrate technology platform, which is a proven solution for neobanks, fintechs and non financial organizations. 2nd, Dosh brings partnerships with multiple neobank and fintech players, including Venmo, Betterment and Elavist. While in early stages, we believe these partnerships have meaningful long term potential and naturally align with millennial and younger consumers who are generally not with our traditional large bank partners. 3rd, Dosh's platform also enables new advertising solutions, including a solution for small and medium advertisers and expands our capabilities for advertisers in the travel industry. And finally, Dosh has a B2C app that enables them to implement consumer test and learn strategies. Being able to test new products and features and quickly learn what drives the highest consumer engagement allows advertisers to increase their return on ad spend. These results are then shared with Danske's larger financial partners to drive faster scale deployments. We believe this acquisition will benefit all of our combined partners, Create new engagement opportunities and further strengthen our ability to deliver great value to our advertising clients. I'm excited to welcome Josh to the Cardlytics team. Now let's turn to some highlights from the Q4. Total billings were $94,000,000 down 7% year over year and up 51% sequentially from Q3 2020. Total revenue, which is equal to billings net of consumer incentive, was $67,100,000 down 3% year over year and up 46% from Q3 of 2020. And adjusted contribution was $29,700,000 down 4% year over year and up 51% from the Q3 of 2020. Our better than expected Q4 results reflect sequential billings growth across nearly all of our advertising verticals. We are encouraged by the consistent month over month growth in our billings since the height of COVID impacts in Q2. It's worth highlighting that we saw 4th quarter billings from our restaurant clients More than doubled sequentially from Q3 and importantly 12 of the top 15 U. S. Restaurant chains were live in our platform in Q4. It's also notable that our U. S. Billings returned to pre COVID levels in the Q4 and were essentially flat with Q4 2019. We are pleased with the momentum we're seeing in our results and we believe this will continue throughout 2021. This momentum not only reflects the continued gradual recovery of consumer spending, but it validates the successful execution of our RISE, retain and return strategy. Let me share with you a few examples of how we're executing against our strategy and delivering value to new and existing advertising partners. In the retail category, we were able to successfully secure additional budgets Key advertisers in Q4 by driving incremental sales from their current loyal customers in addition to their existing programs designed to acquire new customers. This initiative not only drove additional Q4 billings, but positioned us for larger annual budgets in 2021. Cardlytics also worked in lock Stack was one of the largest businesses in the U. S. To help them launch their new membership subscription service. I'm pleased to say we exceeded our partners' expectations in terms of net new subscribers in Q4, putting us in a great position for the upcoming year. Additionally, we secured our first test budget with a top 5 restaurant chain in the U. S. That was interested in driving incremental purchases from both new and lapsed customers. In our direct to consumer vertical, we've proven our effectiveness to 1 of the largest Wireless service providers in the U. S. As a result, this marketer has more than doubled its upfront annual spend commitment with us in 2021. Our self-service platform continues to progress. Agencies and direct clients are expanding their investment with new larger campaigns. Like prior quarters, we are working with them to create the best user experience possible. Each quarter moves us closer to sourcing material ad budgets via agency partnerships and with small and medium sized advertisers. As for MAUs, we have over 90% of our MAUs connected to the platform and looks to get around 99% connected as we move forward with the U. S. Bank launch. Our MAU base We expect them to launch with the version 1 of our new user experience in the first half of twenty twenty one. We expect that MAU growth will eventually stabilize in the low to mid single digits in future quarters. With that, I will turn it over to Andy. Thank you, Lynn. We are excited to announce the acquisition of Dosh And I'll echo Lynn in welcoming the Dosh team to Cardlytics. I believe this acquisition will create many long term opportunities to grow our business together over the coming years. We expect our balance sheet and liquidity will remain extremely strong following the acquisition. We ended the year with $293,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents Compared to $288,000,000 at the end of Q3, depending on the timing when the deal closes, we expect our total cash position to be over 140,000,000 In December, we extended the term of our loan facility and increased the capacity to $50,000,000 which also remains undrawn at this time. Now turning to the quarter and full year performance. We are pleased with our better than expected 4th quarter results in light of the challenging environment, especially in the UK. As we mentioned before, we expected to see month over month improvement in our results through the end of the year. Actually seeing this play out gives us a lot of confidence But our return to year over year growth is right around the corner. We'll see the usual seasonal sequential decline from Q4 to Q1. We're expecting strong year over year comparisons throughout But before I dive into guidance, I'll share a few more financial highlights. Billings during the Q4 decreased 7% year over year to 94,000,000 Revenue decreased 3% year over year to $67,100,000 outperforming our prior guidance. On a sequential basis, billings and revenue in Q4 We're up 51% 46% respectively compared to Q3. U. S. Revenue during the Q4 increased 2% year over year. To slow the spread of the new coronavirus variant. Latest reports are that the lockdown will slowly unwind between April June. We anticipate some continued pressure on our UK results in the near term. For the full year, total billings was $263,000,000 A decline of 17% year over year. Total revenue was $187,000,000 a decrease of 11% from 2019. Adjusted contribution was $29,700,000 in the 4th quarter, down 4% year over year and up 50% sequentially from Q3 of 2020. For the full year, adjusted contribution was $82,000,000 down 14% from $95,000,000 in 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was a gain of $4,500,000 in Q4, which was 7% of revenue compared to a gain of $6,900,000 in Q4 of 2019, which was 10% of revenue. The decline was primarily driven by a $1,400,000 decline in adjusted contribution And the increase in headcount to enhance our product development capabilities. For full year 2020, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $7,800,000 Compared with a gain of $6,100,000 in 2019, which largely reflects the $13,000,000 year over year decline in adjusted contribution. As we have discussed, the strategic investments we are making to support our long term growth, including potential costs to support the acquisition and integration of Dosh, As well as the lingering effects of the pandemic, especially in the UK, may cause fluctuations in our quarterly EBITDA during 2021. As Lynn mentioned earlier, MAUs grew 23% year over year to $163,000,000 in Q4, largely reflecting the Wells Fargo launch. ARPU during the Q4 was $0.41 down 21% year over year. As expected, ARPU continues to experience pressure year over year Due to our significant MAU growth and lower revenue, on a sequential basis, ARPU increased 41% Our full year 2020 ARPU was $1.20 compared to $1.72 in 2019, reflecting the same factors impacting our Q4 ARPU. In the coming quarters, we expect ARPU to increase on a year over year basis MAU stabilize as we return to revenue growth. We had 27,900,000 shares outstanding at the end of Q4. Weighted average shares outstanding during the quarter was 27,700,000 compared to 27,300,000 during Q3 of 2020. Now turning to guidance. Our guidance range is a bit wider than usual, reflecting a wider range of potential outcomes due to the lingering effects of the pandemic. Please note that depending on the circumstances, we may decide to withhold guidance in the future. Additionally, our guidance does not include the DOSH acquisition. We currently expect billings in Q1 of between $67,000,000 $75,000,000 revenue of between $47,000,000 $53,000,000 And adjusted contribution of between $20,000,000 $24,000,000 I want to remind everyone of the normal seasonal decline from Q4 to Q1 Due to heightened consumer spending and advertising budgets that typically exist during the Q4. For the full year, we expect billings $360,000,000 $400,000,000 revenue of between $250,000,000 $275,000,000 and adjusted contribution of between 110 $125,000,000 Overall, we've been pleased to see the business adapt and recover in a rapidly evolving landscape. Like many other companies, we've grown more comfortable in this operating environment. As Lynn mentioned earlier, there are a lot of great stories that underpin our return to growth And those offer a glimpse as to why we're optimistic about our outlook for 2021 and beyond. As always, we remain very focused on growing long term shareholder value And growing the relationships with our partners. And we now look forward to growing an expanded set of meaningful relationships through Dosh. Now I'll hand it back to Lynn for her closing thoughts. Thanks, Andy. Q4 was a solid quarter. We continue to make good progress across each of our long term priorities of increasing the number of marketers working with us, Bringing our solution to new advertising verticals, evolving the Cardlytics platform and demonstrating operating leverage in our business. We're excited to work with our new colleagues at Dosh to drive growth vectors in our business. We're proud of our team and their response and resilience in this difficult environment in 2020. With that, I'll open up the call for your questions. Thank Our first question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Chula Securities. Your line is now open. Great. Thank you very much. And guys, congrats on the transaction. So two quick questions for me, please. First, Lynn, maybe can you just speak to the trend so far you've seen in the quarter we're 2 thirds Intuit, anything surprising you so far in terms of business trends? Obviously, some Geos like the U. K. Continues to be under a lot of pressure, but I think you pointed to the U. S. Being already up year on year in Q4, so maybe you can flesh that out For us a little bit. And then on Dosh, can you maybe just unpack their tech platform a little more and contrast and compare? I'm particularly interested in their data. So is the data they have access to by linking me or me linking my cards to the app Any different than the data Cardlytics has on me? How much is that redundant maybe or complementary, etcetera? Thanks. Yes. Okay. So I'll take the on the first question in terms of trends that we're seeing in Q1, nothing surprising. I mean the UK continues to be down, U. S. Continues to seasonally adjusted do well. We do want to point out Q4 is always our strongest quarter. So obviously Q1 is down seasonally, But the continued trends of advertisers coming back and growing their budgets, we see. And I think we mentioned several examples in the earnings call around where 6Q64 is setting us up nicely for 2021. So we're feeling pretty good about the quarter and the year. In terms of Dosh, they Do integrate with Visa and Mastercard and other APIs to get their data. So there is Some restrictions on both the amount of data that they get and the granularity of the data versus what we have by integrating directly with the banks, but it's similar. They also because they are a direct to consumer application or in their direct to consumer application get some additional data that we don't have. For example, they get location data in a way that is probably much more specific and unique than the location data that we sometimes get. So we're excited about the ability to have use cases for some of our larger banks and show proof points on, For example, the value of location data. But generally speaking, their data is similar, but less granular than ours. Does that help? Yes, yes. No, that's super helpful. And just one last quick one on just on valuation. Can you maybe and I don't know If not, I was at the right time, but maybe Andy, can you just speak to maybe the basis for the $275,000,000 valuation, how you guys got there? Because you guys didn't provide any Yes, thanks. We certainly see a lot of opportunities here over time to realize Some benefits of combining the 2 organizations, both from revenue perspective, cost perspective, it really just made a whole lot of sense. Certainly, when we look at some of the growth potential they have with some of their partners that are a bit different than ours, We obviously see a long runway for growth there. So really, it was just looking at a combination of those factors and really modeling it that way. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next Question comes from the line of Chris Shutler with William Blair. Your line is now open. Hey, everybody. Good morning. Just wanted to follow-up on The question around DOSH's technology. So my understanding is that they work with affiliate networks and thus can probably bring But more or different advertisers to the platform. They also don't require activation. So does that change your approach To activation at all and maybe just elaborate a little more, I appreciate it. Yes, you are correct about both. They do work with affiliate networks, Not exclusively, but some of their budgets do come from affiliate networks. And they do have a non activation model with some of their Direct to consumer applications and also their applications with some of their partners. We are going to study them obviously and see What we like about their platform relative to what we like about our platform and take the best from both. Certainly, some of our larger FIs have expressed interest And kind of more of an always on type of offer, which of course has a lower value and has less there's a little bit more friction for the consumer. But certainly, they've done it in the most frictionless way possible. And so we'll learn and probably take some of those practices. We'll continue to have, of course, our core platform, which drives which is the reason we can go after non affiliate budget is because of the way our core platform works We do actually require activation, which in turn drives incrementality. So it will be a blend of both, I'm sure, over time. Got it. Okay. And then, yes, I actually noticed in the app recently, just looking at my own Bank apps that I've seen a couple of offers recently with the shop local banner included. So just curious what those are if you're source In a different way and then maybe just regarding Dosh, how are they sourcing their local offers? So the shop local that you see in our current application is we have a couple of banks who are really excited about helping local businesses and so it's Your partnerships with them, they're not necessarily sourced any differently, but it's through the Cardlytics and bank partnership relationship. Josh themselves, they actually have a partnership with Rewards Network, which has an extensive amount of hyper local Offerings, that is definitely something, especially when we implement our new user experience that we'll be looking at. The challenge with hyperlocal today is in our existing user It kind of gets lost, if you will. That's one of the big advantages of our new user experience is we'll be able to have Specific unique places where customers can go to get their local content, and I think that partnership with rewards will be very valuable for us. Okay, great. And then just lastly on the EBITDA, I know you're not giving any formal guidance for 2021, but any high level commentary you can provide, especially as you bring in, DOSH? As it relates to the year, right, I guess I want to remind everybody that We had several kind of significant reductions in 2020. Certainly, as it relates to kind of what we call our COVID impacts, Both the G and E as well as marketing costs were down significantly, but probably the biggest item I want to remind everybody It's the amount of incentive compensation that was down considerably, both from us not meeting our targets for the year, But also we moved a fairly sizable amount of that compensation from cash to stock. And so that's all kind of coming back in. So when I look kind of combined in 2021, both those COVID impacts as well as the annualization of our investments that we made last year, We're going to have probably about a 20% or $20,000,000 increase in our cash operating expenses. So certainly, we're going to be looking to make some more investments on top of that. We see a lot of opportunities for investments, but we're obviously going to be very prudent in how we do that and make sure that the timing of those investments Kind of correspond with our return to growth as we talked about. But that's really how I see the year kind of unfolding there. And just as a reminder to everyone, the DOSH acquisition is Not included in any of our numbers at this point. So not in our annual guidance, not in our quarterly guidance. That will be something that will come probably next quarter. But right now, it is Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Good morning. This is Dee on for Doug. Thanks for taking the questions. First one, just can you unpack your 4Q results a little bit more? Just Curious where you saw the biggest surprise in your 4Q top line results and were there any verticals that was particularly meaningful? And then just looking at the consumer spend recovery, how much has consumer spend recovered overall relative to where we were last year? And I'm assuming travel is a vertical that are still lagging meaningfully, but are there any others where you expect to see greater recovery as we move through 2021? Yes. Hey, this is Andy. So I think in Q4, we really had a nice Pickup in the B2C area as well as specialty retail, those are 2 of our strongest verticals. We continue to see weakness in travel entertainment as well as big box retail. But certainly, I think we've been all very impressed with how our pivot to e commerce has really paid off. We've really had a nice growth there. And then as far as Next year, right, we would actually expect to see a lot of those when we talked about our RISE retain return, we fully expect to see some of that Return starts to pick back up as we get deeper into the year. We're right now, we're still seeing travel As you mentioned, probably about 75% year over year decline still. So that will begin to pick up and be a great tailwind for us. I'm not sure we're really expecting that to come back to where it was pre COVID, but certainly we're going to see some more strength there. Yes. And even though dining, just to add to that, while dining is starting to recover, it too is still down pretty dramatically, 20 ish plus percent. So we expect to see continued slow recovery going throughout most of 2021, quite frankly, in those categories. That's right. Macro level spend that we see, not just our results, but what we see from all of our purchase data, Restaurant is still down 10% year over year as of a few weeks ago. And then just as a separate follow-up, I'm just curious if you guys have any updates to share Your automated self serve platform development, if you're remaining on track for 2021 plans and how much That is included in your guide, if any. Say the last part of your question, I didn't hear it. How much of that is included in what? And your guide 2021 guide? Yes. So first of all, we are ahead of schedule for implementing self-service and I will point out that the Dosh platform has self-service capabilities that we will certainly be looking at integrating into ours and potentially be able to accelerate even more. We have hired an agency sales team. They are out actively working with agencies today as we Sales team, they are out actively working with agencies today as we speak. We continue to beta the self-service with the 2 agencies that we discussed In previous quarters, but we are now selling 2 more and expect that it will be I think what we've said to The Street is In the back half of twenty twenty one, we will tell you the amount of agency spend that is running through the platform as they engage for how self-service is being adopted. And we remain very confident that we'll be able to give you those numbers. And they may not be material relative to our overall billings number, but will be material relative to what we get from agencies today, which is effectively 0, and obviously only growth from there. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jaeson Crager with Craig Hallum. Your line is now open. Just wanted to follow-up on those vertical questions. Is there any way to quantify where verticals like travel and Just wondering if we can try to understand the potential upside in those 2 come back online? And then from a Dodge perspective, are there any major differences in the vertical exposure there? Curious if that gets Any categories where you're not currently pursuing? I'll take the Josh question and I'll let Andy talk about the verticals. Josh is Largely similar in terms of the verticals that they're in and we are in, with potentially the notable exceptions that we've discussed, They have a lot more local content than we do through their partnership with Rewards. So we're excited to bring that into our overall network. They also have an interesting travel solution that obviously is dramatically suppressed right now. As we've discussed, travel is still way down. But an interesting travel solution where consumers can actually book their own travel through the Dosh app, that's something that I think many of Our bank partners could be interested in maybe not the largest banks, but many of our midsized banks. So we'll see how that plays out in the future. But Other than those two notable exceptions, they're largely in the same types of verticals that we're in. Yes. I'll give you a couple of interesting Pieces are related to our verticals. Lines are definitely blurring, right, in e commerce and retail. But what I will say is that as we track it, our direct to consumer is now our largest vertical, as of Q4. Now that compared to say our travel vertical, which is 10% to 15% of the size of the D2C vertical. So that gives you kind of a order of magnitude of how much travel has come down and the opportunity that's still out there for that to come back next year. So hope that kind of helps direction. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Great. Thanks guys and congrats on the quarter. On the sales headcount, can you just give us maybe an update how you're expecting investing in the sales side in 2021 or sales force and maybe how that compares to 2020? Also, would the plan be to integrate sales with Dosh, maybe give us an update on kind of how Dosh kind of Go to market approach from a sales force perspective as well? Thank you. Yes. I'll take the Dodge question first. Their go to market approach is similar to ours. They obviously Sales team that's out there calling directly on advertisers. They do tend to call potentially on Different parts of the advertising business, as we said, they have some affiliate budgets, for sure. They also have Just they are smaller in scale and so they are definitely in different parts of some of the organizations where we have overlap, But a very similar approach to sales overall. Yes. As it relates to headcount, Our sales and marketing, surprisingly enough, Year over year, at the end of 2020 compared to end of 2019, it's actually down by 1 in the U. S. A lot of that has been really upskilling some positions and some of the efforts that we made to become more efficient, I should remember at the beginning of 2020, so we haven't seen a significant rise in the actual number of heads in the sales organization. We certainly look out some of the investments that I talked about before in 2021. So one of those would include a handful of folks. We're not expecting to dramatically increase the size of the sales organization in order to achieve our goals for next year. We are certainly looking to make some investments Both in our analytics teams, in some of our sales readiness organization and the like. Great. And maybe just quickly, the BOD2C side, how much of that improvement was made from newer clients added over the last few quarters versus maybe existing clients that shifted more to Shifting more to e commerce. Thank you. So B2C didn't quite double. Actually it did. It doubled year over year in Q4. And a healthy amount of that is going to be new logos. Yes. The vast majority of that new logos when you compare it to a year ago. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Josh Beck with KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Thanks for taking the question team. I wanted to ask about Dosh, and maybe the impact, if any, on the long term vision in terms of maybe where You can be from a MAU perspective as we think out 5 years because it seems like you were Really focused on obviously the core banking community and their users that seems to open up users that Might not necessarily have been included in that population. So I'm just curious to hear your thoughts there. No, you're right. I mean, we see this as very complementary. They are generally focusing on financial institutions or organizations That are different from our traditional core banks. And so we see it as very complementary and allows us to really go after that sort of neobank and urging FinTech kind of marketplace. As we I think we've discussed in past quarters, the Cardlytics technology is definitely built for very, very large Institutions that are highly regulated and have significant legal regulatory compliance kinds of requirements. The Dosh platform is quite a bit more nimble than ours, because they haven't had to build some of those same And so I think it's going to be a really great, fast, flexible, nimble platform for us to go after some of these emerging FinTech and even non FinTech partners. In terms of what it does to the MAUs, we're not Commenting on that yet because we want to really understand, but I do think your general comment on is there expansion for MAUs here, I absolutely believe there will be, but exactly how much, that's something that will come in future quarters. Really helpful. And then maybe a follow-up for Andy on some of your expense commentary that was very helpful related to Incentives and T and E, so we can obviously all build that into our models. On the other piece of it, which is, It seems like there was maybe some dependence on the way the recovery plays out. For example, if Maybe you feel like the recovery is better than your assumptions and you're moving maybe more towards the higher end of the range. You'd really look to reinvest some of that upside. I don't know if that was exactly the message, but just want to clarify with How you are really considering the other investment categories relative to the pace of the business? Yes, I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think as we look out to next year, we still see Quite a bit of intriguing investments to make that we think will drive long term value. And I think we're just trying to be as prudent and responsible as we can, just given the amount of uncertainty that still exists. We put a little bit probably wider range out there than we maybe have in Certainly on the year, but I think that that's because of that uncertainty. So we're just trying to make sure that we manage those investments. I think to your point, We will look to invest to the extent that we end up hitting some of our goals for next year. Really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.