Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss iPower's financial results for its fiscal Q3 ended March 31, 2022. Joining us today are iPower's Chairman and CEO, Mr. Lawrence Tan, and the company's CFO, Mr. Kevin Vassily. Mr. Vassily, please go ahead.
Thank you, Charlie. Good afternoon, everyone. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal Q3 2022 earnings press release, which was issued earlier today at approximately 4:15 P.M. Eastern Time. The release is available in the investor relations section of iPower's website at meetipower.com. This call will also be available for webcast replay on our website. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before I introduce Lawrence, I'd like to remind listeners that certain comments made on this conference call and webcast are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which are being made only as of the date of this call. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to any forward-looking statements. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to iPower's Chairman and CEO, Lawrence Tan. Lawrence?
All right. Thank you, Kevin. Good afternoon, everyone. Our fiscal Q3 was another period of exceptional growth for iPower. Revenue was up 74% year-over-year to a record $22.9 million, which was driven by continuous strong demand for our products and increased sales in our largest channel. As mentioned on previous calls, the sale of in-house products is always top of mind. In our fiscal Q3 , this makes up roughly 82% of revenue. Throughout the quarter, we continued to introduce new SKUs in each of our product categories by working diligently with our partner, including recently acquired global co-engineering partner, DHS, while also retiring SKUs that are slower moving. Over the past few months, we have seen strong order volumes from our largest channel.
We believe that this consistent increase in volume speaks to our product research and development as it directly align with consumer trends. Our investment into our businesses, specifically in R&D and merchandising, will only push this momentum further as we roll out new in-demand products in the future. We continue to effectively navigate the choppy supply chain environment during the quarter, in large part due to our extensive network of supply partners. This remains a key differentiator for iPower as our channel partners and customers know that they can rely on us to deliver products in a timely manner and avoid many of the roadblocks that others face in the global supply chain. Now I'm gonna talk about initiatives over the quarter. Expansion into Europe and the UK.
This past January, we expanded our business into Europe and the U.K. with the completion of our first order delivered for consumer abroad. This order contains trimming devices, air filtration service assistance, tents and other accessories that services the DIY hydroponics consumer. We continue to believe that the European market is still in its infancy and present a significant medium to long-term opportunity for us as their consumer hydroponics market develops. The launch of e-commerce logistics JV, Box Harmony. Shortly after our expansion into Europe, we partnered with strategic individuals at Titanium Plus Autoparts, one of the largest seller of collision-related auto parts on eBay and Amazon, to create a full service e-commerce logistics company, Box Harmony.
This JV provides us with a low cost option to expand into e-commerce value chain services, which is a natural fit for us given our expertise in the online hydroponics equipment market. In fact, we already signed our first client, which happens to be a furniture brand, reflecting our entrance into a vertical outside hydroponics. Our JV will service logistics for this client at our Southern California facility for both B2B and B2C shipments. While it's early days, this JV is just beginning to ramp, and we plan to carry this momentum going forward. We have the launch of a global social commerce platform JV. This is our second JV that's a partnership with a social media marketing and entertainment company to form a global social commerce platform.
This JV was formed to combine our partner's social media marketing expertise with our own supply chain and e-commerce expertise to create a fully end-to-end solution for brand manufacturers looking to sell their products via social channels. We plan to utilize global social commerce platform for new business as well as our own benefits to expand our global product awareness as in geographic exposure through various social media channels. We acquired the global co-engineering partner, Dalicent, Inc, also known as DHS. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent volatile supply chain environment, we relied heavily on DHS to source consistent high quality products in a timely manner. It was for this reason that we decided to acquire 100% interest in the company.
This acquisition expands our current supply chain and e-commerce capabilities with in-house product sourcing, manufacturing network management, quality assurance processes, and R&D expertise. Not only did we bring our key supplier and logistics partner in-house to benefit our businesses, but also reduce the risk of a potential supplier turnover. We plan to utilize DHS in tandem with our other resources to create a new suite of offering that will service a broader set of consumers and partners in the future. For our own brands, as we continue to grow and execute our organic and inorganic initiatives, we felt it was necessary to invest our core image to properly showcase our business as well as the various components that make up our brand.
As such, we are in the process of completing a company rebrand that we expect to unveil later this summer. This development will enable us to optimize how we are perceived and positioned in the market as well as how we allocate our marketing dollars. Although we are proud of our success and strong momentum in our business, there is still plenty of room to grow and improve. We plan to continue developing new in-house SKUs and also expand into additional markets while strengthening our current ones, and all while continuing to deliver value for consumers and channel partners along the way. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Kevin Vassily, to take you through our financial results in more details. Kevin?
Thanks, Lawrence. As Lawrence mentioned, our fiscal Q3 was another strong period of growth for iPower. Total revenue was up 74% to $22.8 million, compared to $13.1 million in the year-ago period, driven by greater product sales to our largest channel partner, as well as strong demand for our ventilation products, commercial fans and some of our new shelving products. As Lawrence mentioned, we continue to execute on prioritizing the sale of our in-house brands, which accounted for approximately 82% of revenue in the quarter. Gross profit in the fiscal Q3 increased 59% to $9.2 million compared to $5.8 million in the year-ago quarter. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin was 40.3%, compared to 43.9% in the year-ago quarter.
With the decrease, driven by, product mix, as well as higher freight costs. It was also impacted by stronger orders in our direct import, channel program, which carries lower gross margins but better operating margins for us. Despite experiencing record high freight costs, in addition to some, higher input costs, we were able to maintain gross margins above 40%, thanks to our extensive supplier network overseas. Total operating expenses for fiscal Q3 were $7.8 million, compared to $5 million for the same period in fiscal 2021. As a percentage of revenue, you know, operating expense improved 360 basis points to 34.3% compared to 37.9% in the year-ago quarter.
The operating leverage was primarily driven by the positive impact of the aforementioned direct import program we have with one of our large channel partners. We were able to increase operating leverage despite higher costs from new warehouse capacity coming online this quarter, as well as increased G&A costs associated with the DHS acquisition. Net income in the fiscal Q3 increased to $1.2 million or $0.04 per share, compared to a net loss of $0.2 million or $0.01 per share for the same period in fiscal 2021. Moving on to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents were $2.6 million at March 31, 2022, compared to $6.7 million in June 2021.
The decrease was attributed to the timing of accounts receivable, not an indication of any other business operating trends. As of March 31, 2022, total long-term debt stood at $13.4 million as compared to $0.5 million at June 30, 2021. This increase was also a function of timing as the company utilizes its revolving credit facility to manage working capital. Finally, looking forward to the final quarter of our fiscal year. You know, we plan on continuing executing on our growth strategy and close out the year on a strong note. You know, as we've done in prior quarters, you know, we plan to mitigate the impact of the supply chain environment where we can by managing channel product mix, channel program mix, doing bulk procurements as well as larger production runs where prudent.
You know, we look forward to touching base with many of you this summer through various investor conferences and non-deal roadshows to talk more about the company and its strategy going forward. With that, this concludes our prepared remarks, and we'll now open it up for questions. Operator?
Sure, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, press the pound key. Again, that's star one to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Scott Fortune with Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for the questions. Real quick, can you provide a little more color on the new sales channel initiatives? I know you were looking at progress with potential big box retailers and going down those channels. Is there any update or opportunities as we look into this coming quarter or to next fiscal year for those big box retailers coming on board here?
Yeah, I'll take that one. We are actively working on it. As you all understand, the big box retailers, it happens a lot slower than the online channels. We are actively working on it and we are making pretty good progress. I don't know if we're gonna see large purchase orders before the end of the fiscal year. It's a work in progress, but we made good progress.
Got it. Appreciate the color there. Then really quickly, you know, we've seen big headwinds and challenges on the consumer side of things and also on the commercial hydroponic industry with oversupply and significant slowdown from that industry. It seems like your do-it-yourself business remains very robust here. Can you unpack what is really driving the growth from a product standpoint and the pickup in specific channels? You mentioned your large channel partners. Then how much is coming from the new initiatives in Europe and the JVs and the NAFTA side? Is that more of a next quarter and the next fiscal year going forward for those new initiatives here?
Sure, sure. I'll answer those questions in two parts. The fundamentals of our company, why we've been growing with abundant growth, we noticed like increasing share of our in-house products. We also had an extensive supply network, and we've been able to navigate the supply chain issues pretty well, I think, well above the others. They all helped. We also noticed that the ventilation category continued to increase. Fundamentally, our business model, our ability to use data and analytics to be able to efficiently operate through our own in-house ERP systems as well as, I think we've managed the workflow pretty well. That all fueled into the growth.
Now as for the JVs, the Box Harmony and Global Social Media, these are more mid-term, more strategic so that we could, you know, combine with what we have ability, what we have now, it will enable us to be able to grow at a fast pace without bottlenecks. Now, the social media play, I would say we'll probably start to see something later this calendar year or beginning next year. Anticipating the growth, this is, these are the moves ahead of time. We start to see some revenue from the Box Harmony ones.
You know, these, I'm just trying to say that these two are strategically placed so that we can grow in the future in a relatively rapid pace without hitting the bottlenecks that it could be happening.
Thank you.
Scott, as you're talking Europe too, I think, you know, I think we're hoping to see some follow-up orders and deliveries this quarter. We haven't seen them yet. I think, you know, the bulk of our growth in Europe will start in the next fiscal year.
Perfect. I appreciate the detail, and I will jump back in the queue.
Thank you. I'm showing no further question at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Kevin Vassily for final remarks.
Do you wanna ask Scott if he had a follow-up question? I think he said he was gonna jump back in the queue.
Sure, sir. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Scott Fortune from Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Last thing, as far as more Kevin, kind of the cash flow of $2.6 million, you know, your inventory's been built up a little bit about $22.4 million here. Can you-
Mm-hmm.
Kind of address those needs? I know AR, you know, timing wise, but kind of address your needs there for flexibility and additional initiatives for the business kind of going forward. Just kind of address some of those points there. That'd be great.
Yeah. In inventory, you know, a big portion of what we were doing in the quarter was bringing as much product as we could ahead of.
The Chinese New Year, which was earlier in the quarter. We wanted to make sure, although we didn't have any kind of real insight into the state of kind of some of the COVID lockdowns that are impacting China now, you know, some of that is precaution and, you know, through some of the sell-through information that we get from our channel partners, that we had sufficient inventory on hand to be able to meet demand. That was part of the strategy there. From a flexibility standpoint, you know, we still have, you know, a fair amount of room, you know, within our revolving line of credit to tap if need be. You know, most of what we're tapping now as well is on the AR side.
As you know, kind of, you know, we feel good about, you know, where we have our accounts receivable. It's probably one of the best kind of credit lists that are out there. You know, I think we're comfortable that we've got, you know, sufficient both capital and flexibility to meet what we need to do over the next several quarters, including providing some resources if necessary to the joint ventures that we undertook earlier in the quarter. Does that help?
Yeah, I appreciate that. Congrats again on differentiating yourself in a challenging hydroponic industry. That's been a challenge for that space, but congrats again. That's it. I appreciate the detail.
Yeah. Appreciate the compliments.
There are no further question at this time. I will now turn the call over back to you, sir, Mr. Kevin Vassily, for final remarks.
Okay. Well, we wanted to thank everyone for joining. We appreciate your support and look forward to chatting with you on our next earnings call, will be sometime, probably late August or September. Thanks again. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.