Idt Corp (IDT) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Good evening. And welcome to the IDT Corporation’s Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Call. In today’s presentation, IDT’s management will discuss IDT’s financial and operational results for the three-month period ended January 31, 2022. During prepared remarks by IDT’s Chief Executive Officer, Shmuel Jonas, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After Mr. Jonas’ remarks, Marcelo Fischer, IDT’s Chief Financial Officer and Jonah Fink, Chief Executive Officer of IDT’s net2phone business will join Mr. Jonas for Q&A. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, either in the prepared remarks or in the Q&A session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the Company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that IDT files periodically with the SEC. IDT assumes no obligation either to update any forward-looking statements that they have made or may make or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast. In their presentation or in the Q&A session, IDT’s management may make reference to the non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP earnings or loss per share. A schedule provided in the IDT earnings release reconciles adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP earnings or loss per share to the nearest corresponding GAAP measures. Please note that the IDT earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of the IDT Corporation website. The earnings release has also been filed on Form 8-K with the SEC. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Jonas.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to IDT’s earnings conference call. I'm joined on the call by Marcelo Fischer, IDT’s Chief Financial Officer and Jonah Fink, CEO of net2phone, who was prepared to do these calls on his own. The three of us will be available to answer questions after my remarks. My discussion today will focus on the second quarter of our fiscal year 2022, the three months ended January 31, 2022. For a more detailed report and discussion on our financial and operational results, please read our earnings release filed earlier today and our Form 10-Q that we expect to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, March 14. Our second quarter financial results were highlighted by year-over-year improvements in gross profit, income from operations, and adjusted EBITDA driven by the continued expansion of our growth businesses. In our FinTech segment, NRS accelerated the growth of its customer base activating nearly 1,400 new POS units and 1,200 NRS pay accounts during the quarter. As of January 31, NRS served 16,500 active POS terminals and 8,000 NRS pay accounts. NRS’ recurring revenue increased 118% from the year-ago quarter to $9 million led by triple-digit gains from advertising and merchant services revenue. For purposes of sequential comparison, keep in mind that our second fiscal quarter includes January, which is invariably, the slowest month of the year for advertising revenue. We are still in the early stages of NRS development in terms of our addressable markets, new service offerings, and monetization of our current offerings. Net2phone subscription revenue increased 32% year-over-year to $12.5 million in the second quarter of 2022. Growth was strong in our Latin American markets, particularly in Mexico where we continue to find success with larger customers. Net2phone's reach into the mid-enterprise market will expand significantly in the coming quarters as we leverage the Integra acquisition that closed just last week. Integra is a fast-growing CCaaS provider with an entrepreneurial team. We're delighted to welcome them to the IDT family. We will incorporate Integra’s CCaaS service with net2phone UCaaS solutions to create a higher value integrated offering that we expect to drive growth and significantly enhance net2phone's unit economics as we become more competitive in the market. We expect to pay a total of approximately $15 million in cash and stock for Integra, inclusive of an earn out of approximately $3.5 million as the business grows, as we expect to grow in the next few years. In calendar 2021, Integra generated a little over $3 million in revenue and $1.2 million in EBITDA. Integra’s CCaaS ARPU is approximately twice that of net2phone’s UCaaS offerings. Our goal is to complete the spin-off by the end of the current fiscal year on July 31, should our Board authorize it. Also, within our FinTech segment, BOSS Revolution, Money Transfer transactions increased 21% year-over-year, while revenue decreased 6% to $12.5 million. An apples-to-apples basis adjusting for the impact of transitory foreign exchange and improved second quarter fiscal 2021 results, transactions in the second quarter of fiscal 2022 would have increased 36% and revenue would have increased by 48% from the year-ago quarter. We continue to invest in the long-term growth of our payments business with the acquisition of Leaf Global Fintech, a startup with an innovative mobile wallet platform operating in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. Leaf was designed to help traders, refugees, and other vulnerable populations store value and conduct financial transactions safely and securely by leveraging the Stellar blockchain network to track balances and activity. Leaf also uses USSD communications protocol, which is a viable option for 2.4 billion people worldwide who use feature phones rather than smartphones. We are excited to work with Leaf and hope that their team adds significant value to IDT over the coming years. Finally, in our traditional communication segment, revenue decreased 3.2% year-over-year to $300.4 million. However, revenue less direct cost of revenue for the segment increased 6% led by the expansion of our Mobile Top-Up business. While still growing 20% year-over-year, mobile top-up revenue has declined over the past three quarters. The decline was predominantly in our lower margin wholesale B2B channel where we capitalized on the large opportunity during the third quarter of fiscal 2021 that significantly boosted mobile top-up revenue but which has since narrowed considerably. We continue to believe that there is a large opportunity in mobile top-up, and we expect to return that channel to growth mode soon. Also, within our traditional communications segment, both BOSS calling IDT Global, which is our wholesale carrier services business, experienced an acceleration in the rate of revenue decline, reverting back to levels we were experiencing before the COVID pandemic. To wrap up, we continue to allocate capital to accelerate the development of our growth businesses through R&D and acquisitions. Concurrently, our traditional communication segment continues to generate increasing margins and robust cash flow. Across all our businesses, we remain focused on creating value for our stockholders, and we expect the spin-off of net2phone will be exceptional in that regard. Now, Marcelo, Jonah, and I will be happy to take your questions.

We will now begin the Q&A session. The first question comes from Brian Warner, Private Investor. Your line is live.

Actually, I had three if I could. First one is on NRS, you've done a great job with advertising. And frankly, I'm surprised how well it's done and I congratulate you. But I'm wondering a couple of things. Are you surprised how well it's done? And can you give a little color on how you're selling it? And if there's anything changing in your plans there and you're selling direct to large advertisers now and just sort of maybe you can give your thoughts around that. Second question relates to your UCaaS business. I'm just wondering if there's pricing pressure that you're seeing in that business, maybe you can contrast that question in both USA and international operations. And then also, if you could give us a sense of where you're trending in terms of maybe average account size for a number of lines, stuff like that. And lastly, if there are any material hurdles to the spin-off in your mind? And then finally, on the money transfer business, it's just a little confusing for me to sort of try and reconcile all the various numbers. I realized there was a very unusual transaction a year ago. But can you give us a little bit of color on the puts and takes, you point out that the revenue would have been up? I believe it's 48% and the units would have been up maybe 46%. I'm wondering if you could reconcile the difference between those two numbers and maybe just give a little color around the calculation.

Okay. I’m going to try to answer your questions in order as I remember them. As far as the advertising sales for NRS, I don't believe that anything has changed in the way that we sell it or our expected growth for that business. So there's no material change. As we said in the earnings release, there is some seasonality to advertising in general, and that's why year-over-year comparison is better than a comparable quarter-over-quarter comparison. However, we are making an attempt to increase our direct-to-brand salesforce. So we hope that will increase the advertising sales over the coming quarters as more brands hear about us. I'm actually going to let Jonah take your question on net2phone, so I would warmly like to welcome Jonah Fink to our earnings conference call and take it away.

Before I respond to the question, firstly, I just want to thank Shmuel and Marcelo for inviting me on today's earnings call. I'm honored to introduce myself formally to our valued IDT Net2Phone communities. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank what we've coined internally as net2phone world. Net2phone has now successfully launched our UCaaS product line in nine markets around the world, and it's due to the net2phone employees that have really brought us to this point. And as we can discuss shortly, a big welcome and virtual hug to our new members in Montevideo, Uruguay at Integra. To answer the two questions specifically in terms of number one pricing pressure, we are not encountering what we've been able to do is really maintain and sustain ARPU levels for net2phone UCaaS. We look at ARPU very carefully as an operational KPI in our dashboards. And like I said, we've been able to maintain and sustain pricing ARPUs around the world. In terms of user size, currently today, average user size for UCaaS at net2phone is set to 11. But we do expect because of the CCaaS offering, that CCaaS will not only create value in and of itself, we also expect a lift into our UCaaS business as we have an experience for our customers to get one bill at the end of the month for both UCaaS telephony and CCaaS.

What was your third question before I turn it over to Marcelo to answer your money transfer question?

I think your question was regarding the timing of the spin-off. Well, the answer is no. Obviously, we wanted to start the process a bit earlier, but because of the Integra acquisition, which is material for net2phone on a standalone basis, we had to wait until that acquisition process was completed. Now we make sure that we get audited financial statements for the standalone Integra business, which will be incorporated into our registration statements. So now that's behind us because now we focus and try to get this spin-off done by the end of the fiscal year.

I see.

Okay. In terms of I think, I believe your question about money transfer. So indeed, Q2 one year ago, as we had mentioned multiple times before, benefited significantly from special FX opportunities, particularly in Africa. Those opportunities that we have in the past are behind us. So when we look more apples-to-apples to what would have been business a year ago versus now, you would think revenues growing about 48% year-over-year. That fee revenues growing around 55% to 60%, FX revenues growing around 45% on a blended basis that 48% rate that we shared with you. Obviously, our B2C money transfer business is growing at a much faster clip than our retail channels, our D2C is growing at a around 55% rate year-over-year whereas retail grown around 35% to 40%.

Great. Thanks so much.

The next question is coming from Jason Lustig with J. Goldman. Jason, your line is live.

Jonah, nice to have you on this call. Can I start out by asking you a little bit about the Integra acquisition, the strategic rationale and how it folds into net2phone and your strategy?

Yes, Jason. Absolutely hope all is well. So I'm thrilled to announce the acquisition of Integra by net2phone. Just in terms of the what, let's start with the what, net2phone, Integra is not only a complete, modern and robust cloud-based contact center solution. Integra is also a developer platform that will allow for items such as customizations and integrations in AI, more for the modern global contact center workspace. So really, net2phone is getting into the foray, Jason, selling experiences. The acquisition in general made a ton of sense for us for a variety of reasons. One, and most importantly, our UCaaS customers and partners are asking for a cloud-based contact center solution hosted by net2phone, it feels almost on a daily basis. Our customers love the idea of having a single invoice at the end of the month for all their cloud-based communication needs. UCaaS plus CCaaS all under net2phone. Just as businesses across the globe have migrated and are migrating their on-premise communication systems net2phone over the cloud. So too, contact centers and enterprise-based call centers will be migrating to net2phone via the cloud as well. On a single bill to our valued customers, net2phone will be serving the complete enterprise needs for UCaaS, telephony, and CCaaS. And Jason, as you know, over the past five years, net2phone has built one of the most efficient UCaaS distribution businesses in the world. Net2phone continues to act global and think local. And we've deployed talented teams locally in these markets to now have conversations around go-to-market for CCaaS. Net2phone has also forged over the past five years significant partnerships with leading master and direct agencies for cloud communication services. Net2phone continues to onboard new partnerships in the space with leading master agencies such as Avant, based in Chicago, that has a wonderful and current, might I add, foray into the UCaaS and now CCaaS market in that segment. The above-stated allows for quick and efficient go-to-market. Sales teams are in place, support teams are in place, and the customers and partners are eager to adopt our net2phone technologies.

I'll just add two things to it. One is that we did business with Integra before we entered into a transaction with them, so we had some firsthand dealings with them as a partner before they became part of the net2phone team. And from everything I heard directly from the team using them, they were really great partners before they became part of the team. The second thing that I think is important to add is that they've also developed everything internally. So besides this being a talented sales organization, it's also a very talented development team that we think we can leverage to enhance net2phone overall. So it's multifaceted in my opinion, not just from being a call center solution but also being a general technology solution for net2phone.

Okay, great. And I guess, moving to NRS. And just a few questions about, you guys have given great disclosure about revenue and the various line items over time. Can you talk a little bit about how we should think about gross margin, and maybe also the difference between the hardware gross margin and the recurring revenue gross margins?

Hi, Jason. It’s Marcelo. When you think about NRS’ recurring revenues, whether it's SaaS fees or advertising and data or merchant services for all those revenue streams, our margins are approximately close to 100%. When we talked about the margins on the POS sales, obviously, our goal is not to achieve high margins, our goal there is just to distribute the POS now in strategic ways. We price it differently depending on different opportunities. But historically, the margin on the POS terminals has ranged anywhere between 10% to 20%. So when you add this all together, now you probably see a blended rate of about 85% to 90%. And obviously, that blended rate will continue to move further towards 100% for the recurring revenue, the technological portion of the business.

Yes, however, we intend to allow more POS, so that might pull down a little bit.

Can you talk about that? I mean, it seems like there was, the net ads for POS seem to have taken a large tick up in the quarter, which is very nice to see. Can you talk about some of the changes that have gone on in the business that have allowed for that step-up?

I can see two things, I mean, one is an increase in sales and that has definitely helped. The other thing is in terms of making sure that we don't have any churn. There's nothing we can do about a store going out of business. But we really have put an emphasis on the service that we provide the stores, and that's really been helping, keeping churn to as low of a level as it has, and we continue to make improvements. When a business is in rapid growth mode, it's sometimes hard to solve every piece of the puzzle. But I really give the NRS team credit, because they've really put a big emphasis on making sure that the service levels are where they need to be considering the growth.

Great. And then, I guess, just lastly, what was the adjusted EBITDA for NRS in the quarter?

For NRS, they did around a little more than $2 million in EBITDA for the quarter, so it is showing pretty nice growth compared to about $1.25 million in Q1. So the trajectory is good. And obviously, that EBITDA may vary up and down depending on whether we accelerate investment or not, but all else being equal, we should see that EBITDA trend continue to move upwards.

Great. Thank you very much for the questions.

The next question is coming from David Polansky from Immersion Investments. Your line is live.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. And I really appreciate it. I think everybody else does appreciate you putting a hard date around the net2phone spin. But I actually want to talk about traditional a little bit and I think you almost answered my question in the commentary, do you anticipate being able to grow traditional EBITDA on a go-forward basis?

I mean, I would say that different parts of traditional are growing and different parts of it are contracting. The carrier is not in growth mode. We definitely intend to be able to squeeze out more profit from PIN-less than we have been, and that area continues to grow. So, I would say that, net-net, we do intend to be able to continue to grow EBITDA, whether or not we can do that for years and years to come, I can't tell you at this point. But maybe I'll let Marcelo address.

Yes, I mean, David, tradition consists of three distinct primary businesses. The reality is, when we think about the wholesale carrier business, that business revenues and operational margins have been challenged ready for quite a while. Even during the pandemic, the wholesale business suffered quite a bit. We have been maximizing that business in terms of generating maximum gross profit. Similarly, on the BOSS Revolution PIN-less business, we got a fairly nice lift and a reversal of the trends during the pandemic. Now, the trends towards revenue start to decline again have come back again. That being said, gross profits for PIN-less have not been impacted significantly at all, and that's both because of costs for termination have improved, as well as our mix of our revenues shifting more towards our B2C channel, which is higher margin and helps mitigate the revenue decline. So at the same time, Mobile Top-Up continues to grow quite nicely at 20% year-over-year and we have seen nice growth specifically in the B2C channel we see in Mobile Top-Up. So there's a revenue decline, I think there will be tremendous focus on trying to maintain the gross profit around the current levels. And as we continue to place greater focus on reducing the cost structure, both in terms of capital expenditure, we may be seeing, I wouldn't say that the salary improvement in EBITDA, perhaps we will get Mobile Top-Up going a little faster. But certainly, we hope to maintain the current EBITDA levels until mobile top-up starts showing more in the bottom line.

Okay. So basically, if I flatlined EBITDA for the remainder of the year, I have traditionally thought about $100 million business. I have fintech, which is roughly breakeven, I've net2phone at negative $15 million in EBITDA, which is going to be gone in several months. So pro forma, I'm looking at a business that today, including net2phone, is $700 million in enterprise value. I have $100 million in EBITDA because I'm getting driven net2phone. And then I have NRS, which, as you just disclosed in a previous question, is actually EBITDA positive and growing 100% year-on-year and quickly on its way towards $75 million, $100 million in ARR. I mean, you can kind of put whatever valuation multiple you'd want on NRS. And basically, the pro forma value for all of IDT, post spin, is like, three or four times. So I guess, how low does the stock have to go before there's some action like you do a buyback? You accelerate the NRS spin, and you pull it forward a little bit and say, the stock's too low, it's too cheap. We need to realize some value here because the stock fell like 10% the other day on the Integra acquisition on some belief that you wouldn't be able to affect the spin because, oh, well, they're doing an acquisition, so they're not going to do the spin, you clearly just told everyone that you're doing the spin. So I guess where I'm going with my question is the market doesn't care, right? I mean, the market clearly doesn't care, they're not going to give you credit for anything. So at what point do we just say, screw it, let's just gobble up all of our shares, or accelerate and pull forward the NRS spin. So I guess that's where we come in from. I appreciate an answer on that.

Yes. I mean, I don't think that we have a definitive answer on that. I mean, again as you know, we have purchased back shares before and we say dividends before. And all options are always on the table. At this moment in time, we are laser-focused on completing the previously announced net2phone spin, and making sure that investment continues to do really well, even when it's no longer under IDT anymore. And we're also laser-focused on making sure that NRS continues to grow even more than it has previously. And that also takes additional investment in both time and resources. But if our stock continues to perform as poorly as it's done over the past couple of months, it's definitely not out of the question that at some point, we would start to either buy back shares or some other ideas. But again, I don't want to say that we're going to do it because we haven't discussed it with our Board, and we do not have a plan in place at this particular moment.

Yes, that's okay. I guess where I'm coming from is just, clearly the execution is there. You're doing well, you're performing and more importantly, you're doing what you say you're going to do, which is effective right now, at least it's effective spin, not too fun, and you're doing so that's why I asked.

And we think we're also putting net2phone on a really great foot with this acquisition. I mean, again, entering a space that arguably is significantly more attractive than UCaaS is at the moment. I think is a major net benefit to our shareholders that unfortunately they didn't see in the release. I mean, again, I was going to say that actually, before I forgot, when Jason asked this question about Integra, we looked at their business model, I would say like without net2phone, and it was an amazing business model even before net2phone got involved. And I would say that, over the course of the next five years, it's going to look like a home run, irrespective of how well it gets integrated into net2phone. So I think it's actually very, very exciting piece of news that was unfortunately not loved by the markets but markets are weird. I don't know what else to tell you. I mean, listen and, frankly speaking, we're also going through, I mean crazy time in the world right now that I think is putting a lot of pressure on a lot of companies and we're very lucky that we don't have those kinds of financial pressures affecting our decisions. And that we can stay the course and make sure that we do what we told our investors we were going to do. And we think that we'll be handsomely rewarded for that.

And, David, totally agree with your calculation that you provided before. Just bear in mind that we do also have about $10 million of corporate costs, okay, which is a negative to the EBITDA number that you gave.

Yes, I can break this down in many ways. This stock is very inexpensive, and the management team is executing well. There are several catalysts and valuable assets involved. I can present it in many different perspectives for you. It's still undervalued, but I appreciate the clarification. I would like to follow up on Integra. Shmuel, did you mention that the revenue was $3 million or $30 million? Was that $3 or $30?

$3 million. It will be one way. But right now it's $3.

Okay. But it's doing $1.2 million and positive EBITDA, right?

That's correct.

And you bought for $15 million, I think.

Yes. And not all of that is paid upfront. I mean, that includes a larger amount.

That's great. Well, I love seeing it, keep doing what you do and talk to you next quarter.

The next question is coming from Sean Berger with Adirondack Retirement. Your line is live.

Hi, Marcelo and Shmuel, congratulations on a good NRS quarter. Just a question about two things. One is I'm wondering if there's any material impact from Eastern Europe as far as disruption of any tech support or employees or anything like that? And then, the other question is, if there's been any change in the reserves for any possible legal settlements with regard to the Straight Path litigation, that's it.

So I mean, the answer is unfortunately, like, we always joke that whatever happens in the world somehow it affects IDT. And listen, we have a very large office in Belarus and we have some really amazingly talented employees who work for us there. And I can tell you from speaking to many of them directly how they feel about Ukraine and how their government feels about Ukraine are completely different. However, that being said, it does create a very unstable environment for them to live in. And we are relocating many of them outside of the country, however, many of them do not want to be relocated. It has not affected any of our deliverables or our ability to pay people but it's definitely a moving target, I'll say, like that. And depending on what happens with sanctions, it could eventually affect us, but at this moment in time, it doesn't. I'm going to let Marcelo answer your second question.

Hi. No, we have not had any changes in terms of type of provisions or anything like that as it relates to any of our litigation.

Yeah. And I will say that we also have a number of employees in Ukraine, and we really feel for what's going on there. Obviously, on a personal level, these are our colleagues, but also just watching the news is just terrible. So our prayers are with them.

Okay. Sean, do you have a follow-up question?

No. That was it. Thank you. My prayers go out to the people as well. And I'm just wondering if there is any known business impact at this time. That was it. Thank you.

The next question is coming from Adam Wilk with Greystone Capital. Your line is live.

Hi, guys. Thank you very much for taking my questions. My condolences to your employees, who are having to deal with this situation. Hopefully, everything is okay. I guess one of the pitfalls of going last or toward the end of the line here is that most of my questions have been asked, some really good ones about net2phone and the acquisition and buybacks, etc. I guess I just have a couple of hopefully quick ones. I may have missed this, so I'm sorry if it's repetitive. But I'd like to dig in a little bit more to Mobile Top-Up, obviously still showing impressive growth numbers. And I'm wondering where you see things shaking out in a few years between wholesale versus the direct opportunity and the revenue split there? Because my aim in asking that is, I think the economics could improve materially for both Mobile Top-Up and traditional as a whole if you kind of push toward that direct channel, and please correct me if I'm wrong? Thank you.

Well, I'm going to let Marcelo also talk about it a little bit. But I mean, I will say that direct definitely has higher gross profit than wholesale. That being said, there is cost of acquisition and that is usually in the early years or months depending on how lucky we are in terms of cost of acquisition that can affect the ability to acquire customers at the rate that we would want for direct-to-consumer. However, really where we've seen pressure of late is really in the wholesale business, not in the direct-to-consumer business. And I think that's a large part of that is based on some of the competitors that we've talked about recently getting large investments and them spending that money to try to make sure that we don't steal all their business, and that definitely has affected the wholesale business in the short term. However, that being said, we have some very exciting product launches that we think are going to really differentiate our wholesale business over the next couple of months, and we think that we are going to gain back a lot of that business. Marcelo, do you have anything to add?

No, just I think that our strategy for Mobile Top-Up under the leadership of Emilio is to continue to focus and grow both the B2B channel, as well as the direct-to-consumer channel does not independent of each other. I think that we have made large strides in improving our B2B wholesale platform. Our acquisition of Sochitel most recently have helped us towards that. They have a very robust platform for B2B. And we'll not be leveraging on that platform to position our products for better and faster growth in that space and to take more of our leadership space position in that area. And at the same time, Emilio continues to be very focused on trying to grow the catalog of products, trying to continue to leverage our offerings in our apps, as well as trying to penetrate further, especially into the African continent.

Thank you, that's helpful. Jonah addressed some questions regarding conference center services, including the demand drivers and the opportunities available. I am curious to follow up on that. I believe I heard Jonah mention in the background that revenues could reach $30 million someday when a question was raised about $3 million or $30 million. Could you elaborate on the overall conference center opportunity? It seems like there is genuine demand and it's not just a trend that everyone is rushing into. Additionally, it appears you paid around four times revenue, excluding the earn-out for Integra. How did you arrive at that multiple, and is it related to market conditions? Any details would be appreciated. Lastly, when can we expect to see an impact on the P&L from this? Thank you.

I mean just in terms of the opportunity, again, the same ways that net2phone-UCaaS has successfully migrated professional businesses over to the cloud. We see that opportunity now as the right time in the world we live in for cloud-based contact centers to move from on-premise to the cloud as well. As I mentioned before, we have sales teams and partnerships in place to cater towards that. The benefit down to the contact center is not only just the cost savings but being able to modify and configure and edit any type of settings for the contact center in the cloud instantaneously is a major value-add for these call centers to move over. And might I add, it's not just contact centers. But if you think of larger enterprises, and this is why we're very hopeful that our average user per account will increase with CCaaS. We have large enterprises with call center functionality residing within the enterprise for call queues, support, billing, sales. So that can also layer in very nicely to our UCaaS customers in terms of our partners as well. In terms of the acquisition and the price and the valuation, right now I can say that on our side and our teams were laser-focused on the plan. We're laser-focused on the go-to-market. We're laser focused on defining the offer and introducing this into the channel. So at this point, our reserve discussions around the economics in terms of right now, the go-to-market, the channel adoption, the business integration between the two firms, us getting out there into Uruguay, a very energetic and passionate team awaits us, and we're going to focus mainly on the go-to-market.

In terms of valuation, I don't believe we paid the lowest price for a call center company. However, the quality of their software and the fact that they were already EBITDA positive were significant factors that influenced our decision. We are typically cautious with our investments, but we recognized this as a great opportunity for net2phone, which is why we proceeded.

Yes. And I think from the perspective of Integra, now they see the combination with UCaaS in net2phone as a great way for them to expand their product portfolio to have a partner in net2phone to allow them to grow in a way that they on a standalone basis cannot do so right now. So they see it as a great opportunity to partner with us. They will take a portion of the purchase price in equity and they want to be able to ride on the opportunity together with us.

Yes, that's helpful. Thank you. I wasn't suggesting that the price was too high, just curious about the factors behind it, so I appreciate your insights. As a follow-up to your comments, can we expect to see some buy and build or buy and integrate strategies with net2phone moving forward, either after the spin-off or is this just a one-time initiative for you?

Listen, I think we're always browsing new technologies. I think the Integra acquisition is a great use case where net2phone wants to go to market with new modern technologies in the cloud communications space. Nothing prevents us from browsing. I think the fact that I've noted before in my remarks that we've built this really efficient global UCaaS distribution team and now we're layering in CCaaS. I think there are other experiences that we could focus and concentrate on. But again, our number one focus right now is to continue growing our UCaaS business and our CCaaS business. And I actually think that CCaaS being the top of the sphere of new conversations that we have with enterprise will actually provide a lift rate for our UCaaS business as well.

Right. And our history in net2phone has been with a combination of both, right. We have made acquisitions in Canada. We have made acquisitions in Spain in growing the business of technology growth internally is now pretty full right now. We always have to measure whether we are able to continue to build versus buy. So we've got to get into a mix that makes sense. So buying into CCaaS is that building it with other fab players in terms of devaluation and speed, as well as the fact that our technology roadmap is pretty full right now.

Great, that's really helpful, thanks. I have one more question, possibly for Marcelo or whoever is appropriate. I’d like to delve a bit deeper into the Straight Path litigation. I'm curious about your current stance on wanting to resolve this matter and move past it, as it seems beneficial for both parties to reach some sort of settlement. Is there any hesitance from either side, and where do you stand on achieving a resolution?

So the trial is scheduled for May of this year. If that timing calls, you'll probably expect the decision later in the year. We are vigorously defending ourselves, and we are optimistic about achieving a favorable resolution and would be our disclosures on all our pending legal matters in our 10-Q. But beyond that as a matter of policy, we really cannot comment on pending legal matters or any strategy around it.

Okay. Yes, fair enough. Thank you very much. Great job, and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

As there are no more questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session and conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.