Earnings Call Transcript - LGMK Q3 2021

Operator, Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here, and welcome to the Nxt-ID Third Quarter Results Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. I will now pass the conference over to your speaker today, Chia Lin Simmons, CEO of Nxt-ID. Thank you. Please proceed.

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

Thank you, Cherry. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which consist of statements that cannot be confirmed by reference to existing information, including statements regarding our beliefs, goals, expectations, forecasts, projections, and future performance and assumptions underlying such statements. Please note that there are a number of factors that will cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, including factors identified and discussed in our SEC filings. Please recognize that except as required by applicable law, we undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements and you should not place any undue reliance on such statements. Today we'll summarize our financial results for the recent third quarter and 9-month 2021 period. I'll also discuss operations. In August, I spoke about establishing three pillars to put us on solid ground: mainly the right timing, product, and people. Let's first talk about time, where we've been spending it, and how our company is poised to take advantage of the demographic shift we currently find ourselves in. To ensure we have a solid foundation from which to grow, I spent much of my time keeping the company listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. Adjusting this challenge became a priority because we plan to increase our sales channels, structured partnerships, and think beyond harbor opportunities. All much easier when a company is listed on a well-respected stock exchange. We asked you, our shareholders, to approve a reverse stock split of our common and preferred shares. It was a consolidation of shares to make each one work more to maintain the minimum price of a dollar per share that NASDAQ requires. I'm pleased to say that we received approval for both the preferred and common reverse split. And we have also now received the formal compliance letter from NASDAQ. Thank you to all our shareholders for your support and our team for helping push this through. We also have spent time raising additional capital to ensure we can build the products and hire the talent necessary to bring our vision to life. We raised $16.4 million in capital to focus on product, marketing, and operations. At the end of September, we had $60 million in cash. The equity offering allowed us to attract new investors to the company who share our desire to see change in a market that has not seen much technological innovation that has tremendous opportunities. Investing time to shore up capital and our corporate structure has been timelessly spent. And we hope to further expand our institutional shareholder base because we have the opportunity to take advantage of the silver tsunami that will define the next 40-plus years of personal monitoring, safety, and security software and devices. We shared some of the statistics about the growing population in America and globally last quarter, and the need to apply new thinking to the sector. Our vision is to build a platform to power a new caring economy to support the silver tsunami and the sandwich generation that supports them. Our proprietary products, the Freedom Alert and Guardian Plus 911, currently support seniors by providing critical solutions without a monthly fee. There are many seniors on a fixed income on Medicare or Medicaid for whom recurring billing would force them to choose between their safety and security and potentially other critical needs in their lives. With a strong base of existing products, we're excited to expand into new product offerings, non-monitored and monitored services, both domestic and international, in-home, professional services for senior living, and direct-to-consumer markets. Here's our vision; many of you are familiar with Software as a Service (SaaS). Our Communicating Platform as a Service (CPaaS), will act as a center of our offering to the care economy and technology space. This open model not only encompasses our own proprietary products but allows us to collaborate with potential partners in the health-tech and healthcare communities. To date, Nxt-ID has 26 pending and issued patents. I'm pleased to share that two provisional patents were filed around fall detection this past quarter. Each year, approximately one out of four adults over 65 experience Parkinson's. Less than half tell their doctors. And once they fall, their chances of falling again doubles. One out of five of those falls results in serious injuries. Three million older people are treated in ERs for falls. While falling may not result in serious injury, it does cause fear resulting in a reduction of daily activities. When a person is less active, they become weaker, resulting in an increased chance of falling. Despite a pressing need to improve fall detection and ensure response times are more rapid, Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) and caregiving technology have not evolved for decades. Nxt-ID is looking to develop solutions to meet these needs. Our latest provisional patents are focused on improving fall detection. One of the reasons why many people do not like to wear monitor PERS products is because of false positives that can come from fall detection. It can remove a sense of independence and cause embarrassment. We're developing patents in fall detection technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, that we believe will help us better identify an actual fall event versus a false positive. Better technology around fall detection will not only save lives but also save money. In 2015, total Medicare medical costs for falls were more than $50 billion. Medicare and Medicaid shoulder 75% of those costs. Reducing medical costs for our government and individuals is another reason why I'm so passionate about the caring platform as a service. As you have seen in the news, many industries have been affected by supply chain issues and semiconductor chip shortages. In our case, the biggest impact we have seen is the availability of chips and certain components. Despite these challenges, we have been able to meet the demands. As a company that is nimble and fast-moving, we're able to seek opportunistic spot markets, and redesign quickly to ensure that we can continue to operate with as much speed and efficiency at a challenging time for many companies. While higher chip costs may impact our margins, we have been able to secure the supply we need and we'll continue to focus on product development and shipments to our customers. Finally, let's briefly discuss people. As we hope to increase our revenue stream from existing products and new product development, we also hope to grow our already talented team. Our recent funding allows us to do so. We are in growing discussions with a number of candidates currently and hope to make some announcements by the end of 2021 or early next year. At this point, I will hand over the call to Mark for a brief summary of financials.

Mark J. Archer, CFO

Thank you. As Chia-Lin said, it was quite an intense quarter for us with the successful completion of two separate fundraisings and the special shareholders meeting to approve the reverse split of our common stock. Now with that behind us, our focus is back on the business. I'd like to discuss the company's unaudited financial and operating results for the third quarter ended September 30th, and for the 9-month year-to-date period. First, the third quarter, revenue was $2.4 million, a decrease of 10% from the same quarter last year. While third quarter revenue was soft, we're encouraged by the lift we saw in revenue in October, which was up 6% from the prior year. Gross profit was $1.3 million for the quarter, a decrease of $611,000 compared to the same quarter last year. Gross margin was 53% compared with 71% in the prior quarter. Gross profit was mainly impacted by lower revenues and a $314,000 reserve for obsolete inventory that was recorded in the quarter. Gross margin was impacted by both the inventory reserve and the higher manufacturing cost for our new 4G Guardian product that was introduced late in the fourth quarter. Operating expenses were $1.8 million compared to $2 million in the prior quarter, and $2.4 million in the same quarter last year. We do not expect this year-over-year favorability to continue as we begin to add resources to support new product development and launch. Operating loss for the quarter was $497,000, slightly better compared to the operating loss in the same quarter last year. And finally, net loss was $743,000 or $0.12 a share compared to a net loss of $1.1 million or $0.32 a share in the same quarter last year. The earnings per share numbers have been adjusted for the one-for-ten reverse stock split made in October. Now, let me talk about the 9 months year-to-date. Revenue was $7.6 million, a decrease of 14% compared to the 9-month period last year. Gross profit was $4.6 million, a decrease of 29% from the same period last year. Gross margin declined from 73% to 61%. As was the case with third quarter results, gross profit and margin were impacted by lower revenue, the inventory reserve, and the higher manufacturing costs for the 4G Guardian product which was launched in November of last year. Operating expenses for the 9 months were $6.1 million, essentially flat to the prior year. Operating loss was $1.5 million compared to operating income of $410,000 during the same nine-month period last year. And finally, net loss was $7.7 million or $1.43 per share compared to a net loss of $1.4 million or $0.44 a share in the same nine-month period last year. This year's results included $6.6 million of non-recurring expenses. And again, the EPS numbers have been adjusted for the stock split. Now, let me speak to three key events that happened after the close of the quarter. On October 18th, we closed our Oxford, Connecticut corporate office and consolidated corporate functions in our Louisville divisional operating office, an opportunity for us to further rationalize our cost structure and run more efficiently. On November 1st, the company's wholly owned subsidiary, LogicMark, made a $1.1 million payment towards the senior lender, completely satisfying all of its financial obligations with that lender. With that payment made, the company no longer has any senior debt. And then finally, on November 3rd, we set the record date for our Annual Shareholders Meeting to be held in New York City on December 17th. This concludes my remarks. Cherry, let's open the call up for questions.

Operator, Conference Operator

Please hold while we set up the Q&A session. Our first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger at Alliance Global. You may proceed with your question.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst

Great, thanks for taking my question. Just one question, actually. Prior to you joining NXT, I would say it was not really a great executor. And so really, we didn't really allow the company to succeed in my opinion. What are the maybe two or three keys to stronger execution notwithstanding capital? Is it a better-to-go-to-market strategy? Is it that you need to update the technology, sales, leadership? Just I'm curious about what you think are the primary things you can do to turn the story around. Thank you.

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

I'll go ahead and take that. Thank you, Brian, for asking that question. I think that it's a key for any company in the technology space, not just ours. When it comes to success, we absolutely need marketing and sales capabilities. My background is actually in marketing and I've been a revenue generator for every company I've been at for the last 26 years from a technology side. Secondarily, we haven't launched any product since November of 2020. The 4G product is fantastic, and we are excited to be selling that product. But we also need to continue to look at innovation and provide offerings back here and actually expand the spectrum of a consumer's lifecycle. And certainly, I think that for the unmonitored product space, we're doing a fantastic job ensuring that those who have needs and cannot afford recurring billing are able to help them stay safe and secure. But you'll see us looking at addressing additional customers in separate segments. I think that's really key to helping us and our consumers as they age into the different products in their lifecycle. So we have some products for every part of that sort of life cycle of that customer. And I think third, it's really important for our technology company not just to have, I would say, R&D acumen, which I think this company has had a lot of, but also the capability to have their trade team members execute against those, which means stronger looks at engineering talent and product talent to bring on to the company, and the capabilities to execute and market those products. If you bring all of those things together, we absolutely have all of the ingredients, and we are gathering all of those ingredients for success for the company moving forward.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst

Great. If I could ask just one follow-up. Regarding your workforce, you mentioned wanting to bring in talent through cash relationships. Aside from the key management roles you mentioned, how does the labor shortage, if at all, affect your business as you seek to recruit people?

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

Sure, that's a great question. I think that certainly every company is experiencing the talent squeeze. I'm chuckling a little bit because obviously, I want to hire the best and the most talented executives, but we also are very interested in hiring some of the best talent on many levels. We recently filled an amazing Marketing Manager position, who came to us from Timberland. She has been managing social media. As well as other marketing pieces, and she actually joined us, I think it was around October 18th, and she's already executing up to speed in helping us with product marketing, as well as getting our social program together. We're not looking at, I think, across-the-board. We are absolutely like every company looking at a tremendous amount of shortage in talent, but I'm very happy to note that I have an extremely vast network when it comes to technology talent, and I'm focused on the technology industry that I'm tapping into for all levels of hiring for this company. And I think the second part is that I've often told people that we should operate with speed and efficiency, and so sometimes that can mean that we're outsourcing some of that development work, and not having to hire anyone to do it because that's a faster way to do it. Sometimes, that could be a partnership in terms of development work. So we're looking at all these different options because I think that to be a nimble company, and for the shareholders to benefit from a company that can operate like a startup and reap the results of a company that can operate with speed. That's something that we need to look at.

Operator, Conference Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Thornhill from SoundView. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Hi there. Thanks for taking my call. Congratulations on establishing a more sustainable capital foundation for the company. I have a couple of questions. It's still early, but as you think about your direction for the next few years and your product mix, do you see the company primarily becoming an AI software company, or how much will you focus on the physical device segment compared to potential partnerships you might engage in?

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

Thank you for the question. I think that is a great question. I think we're looking at a mix. For a successful company aiming to transform this industry, I think we need to be looking at a mix of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, as well as hardware. I'd like to think that we can develop hardware that would be a perfect fit for people who are a little bit older. And when we think about our customer base, we have to consider the way that AARP has been operating for the last several years. It used to be that when you retired and turned 65, that's when you got the letter from the AARP as confirmation. I'm sure they're sending AARP letters earlier in life, right? Probably around 50 even nowadays. We need to think about our customer's lifecycle and how we can support them throughout it. Also, how do we partner with our customers as they age, not just them, but also the caretakers? So how are we developing products that fit their life journey? I see that as a combination of not just software, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, but also, I think we will probably stay to a certain degree in some level proprietary hardware work. As well as partnering with other hardware companies as part of that. So if you're considering what devices like Apple's do, you could see us looking at expanding software and services into that category space. However, we all know that when you get a little older, manual dexterity often makes it challenging to utilize small form-function devices. Therefore, we may never be able to completely exit the device space. I think we would want to stay there because our customers need us to be there. You'll always see us probably mix providing a blend of software services, as well as hardware.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Thank you. I appreciate that. My second question is regarding the current business. It doesn't need to relate to legacy operations, but I'm interested in the existing business. Do you believe it has been operating at a stable level for a long time? Do you anticipate that this will continue to support your operations like an annuity? Are there any short-term risks for that business, or is your positioning strong enough to rely on it quarterly to sustain your operations?

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

I think if we are referring to our incredible partnership on the LogicMark side with the Veterans Administration and others, I think you can absolutely say that we hope to continue to earn their trust as providers of needed products to the veterans of the United States. I think that we are proud to have that partnership. We will continue to basically do everything we can to be the best partner possible for the Veterans Administration. As you can imagine, we've got no GSA work last year, and so we will continue to look to expand our government work into other sectors of the government. Today, we offer our products into the largest healthcare system in the United States, which is the Veterans Administration in hospitals and clinics. We would like to look at what that means for the GSA to expand into the Medicare and Medicaid side, as well as state and local municipalities. So I would say that our legacy business, the business where we serve the government of the United States, will continue to not just service the Veterans Administration, but we will be looking to expand the government business, as well as add on direct-to-consumer, B2B businesses, and professional products.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Okay, that's great. I'm glad to hear that. Last question for me for now is obviously, closing the Connecticut Office makes a lot of sense, and Louisville is an existing location. What are your thoughts on physical locations? Do you need one? Are you guys going to be more virtual? How are you thinking about that?

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

So it's just a question I'm sure every company gets to ask nowadays in the world of COVID. Ironically, this company has always been somewhat remote-oriented since the beginning. LogicMark, which is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, had been, I believe, started in Virginia. Therefore, we've always had employees based in a multitude of different locations. I'm proud to say that we have a very strong foundation in looking for the best employees wherever they fit in the United States. We'll continue to look at growing that footprint where we find the best, I think employees that we can find. I think that physical location in Louisville is fantastic. From Louisville, we can reach 80% of the United States from a distribution perspective. And that’s something that we think is important to have. Our warehousing, customer support, and operations are managed out of Kentucky, and we'll continue to be there for the foreseeable future.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Okay. Terrific. Well, that's all I have for now. I'm eager to watch you guys develop over the next few quarters. Thanks very much.

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

Thank you for your questions.

Operator, Conference Operator

I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Ms. Chia-Lin Simmons.

Chia Lin Simmons, CEO

I want to thank you all for participating in our call today and for your continued support. Just a reminder that the replay will be available on our website. And feel free to send any comments or questions to us through the Investor Relations email at investors@nxtid.com. As we are entering the final months of the year, I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season with your family and friends. Thank you.

Operator, Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, now this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.