PSQ Holdings, Inc. Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings and welcome to PublicSquare’s First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, William Kent, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Dee. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PublicSquare’s first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Michael Seifert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Brad Searle, Chief Financial Officer of PublicSquare. The information discussed today is qualified in its entirety by the Form 8-K and Form 10-Q filed today by PublicSquare, which may be accessed on the SEC’s website or PublicSquare’s website. Today's call is also being webcast and a replay will be posted to PublicSquare's investor relations website. Please note that statements made during today’s call, including financial projections or other statements that are not historical in nature, may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are made on the basis of PublicSquare's views and assumptions regarding future events and business performance at the time they're made, and we do not undertake any obligation to update these statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause PublicSquare's actual results to differ from its historical results and forecasts, including those risks set forth in PublicSquare's filings with the SEC, and you should refer to and carefully consider those for more information. This cautionary statement applies to all forward-looking statements made during this call. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. During this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with GAAP or generally accepted accounting principles. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the company's quarterly filing today with the SEC. I will now open the call to Michael. Michael, please go ahead.

Wonderful. Thank you, Will. And thank you to everyone for joining our call today. The first quarter of 2024 was our most monumental quarter yet. Building upon the strength we have witnessed since launching our core marketplace platform nationwide nearly two years ago, it has been a wild ride over the last two years since July 4th of 2022, when we launched our core platform nationwide, and we are just getting started. So to jump in for a few details, from this first quarter, 2024, as highlights, we saw net revenue increase 9.2x, while cash flow from operating expenses only rose 2.2x compared to the first quarter of 2023, showcasing the fact that our business is trending in an incredible fashion toward a profitable and sustainable path of growth. So again, we saw net revenue increase over 9x from Q1 2023, while cash flow from operating expenses only rose just over 2x compared to Q1 of 2023. More specifically, we increased net revenue in Q1 by 817% to $3.5 million compared to the first quarter of 2023. And even more impressive, pro forma first quarter net revenue was greater than all of 2023 net revenue. So on a pro forma basis, Q1 net revenue was $6.4 million, including Credova, which is 12.2% greater than the entire 2023 PSQH net revenue. For the Marketplace segment, we increased our revenue by over 150% compared to the first quarter of 2023. And obviously, the revenue is indicative of greater traffic and heavier usage. Our Marketplace monthly average users in Q1 increased by 314% compared to the first quarter of 2023. And for our Brands segment, EveryLife, our life-affirming baby brand subsidiary, contributed over $2.1 million in net revenue for the first quarter of 2024. And for the most exciting statistic from an EveryLife perspective, 75% of that revenue was actually subscription-based. We love these recurring customers, and we're grateful for their building of the community at EveryLife with us. Notably, during the quarter, we acquired Credova, a buy now, pay later and business finance solution, and announced the development of PSQ payments, our pro-freedom tech-forward payments stack. We also hired Brian Billingsley, the former CEO of Klarna North America, to expedite PSQ payments, a service that our consumers and merchants have repeatedly expressed interest in. With these two important strategic business decisions, the acquisition of Credova, the leading buy now, pay later and finance solution for the shooting sports industry, as well as the development of our payments stack, we have moved decisively down the road to owning the infrastructure of the parallel economy to serve this TAM that we believe is over 100 million Americans who have long been left unaddressed by existing incumbent corporate institutions. We built the customer acquisition vertical through our marketplace and through our brands, and now it's time to own the infrastructure underneath this parallel economic ecosystem through the building of our FinTech division. We also took steps in the quarter to redefine PublicSquare broadly as a holding company that strategically unites key products and services, forming the backbone of this parallel economy ecosystem. The holding company, more specifically, is divided into three distinct segments. We have the Marketplace, so our core business, PublicSquare. We have the Financial Technology division, mainly Credova and the payment stack, and our Brands segment. Today, that exists as EveryLife, PSQ Link, as well as a new consumer product brand in the feminine care space, launching in Q3. More on that in a moment. Again, back to the marketplace. During the quarter, the Marketplace segment made accelerated progress on our e-commerce platform, launching functionality like automatically applied discount codes and enhanced search, among many other user experience upgrades, all accomplished well ahead of schedule. As a sub-event, we recently launched PublicSquare Live, a live shopping experience where our consumers can meet the founders and creators of PublicSquare businesses and receive exclusive discounts to their products. This program is hosted by former QVC host Erin Elmore. She's a dedicated patriot, a very talented on-air personality, and has quite a bit of experience in the live shopping world. This program, during its inaugural debut on May 11th, drove the highest total online orders toward our platform for one day since our marketplace launch, exceeding even Black Friday 2023. I'm blown away by what our marketplace team has accomplished in the last year, and I cannot wait to witness all that the next year has in store for our core platform as we execute our product roadmap. In the Financial Technology division, we are making a strong and expedited push into the fintech space; our consumers and merchants are demanding and have demanded FinTech solutions that are protective of their freedoms and fundamentally values aligned. During the quarter, we notably acquired Credova, the profitable leading buy now, pay later company for the shooting sports industry, and as I mentioned, we hired Brian Billingsley, former CEO of Klarna North America, to help bring this vision into reality. We are dedicating significant resources to the division and expect to launch our payment stack with certain key accounts in tandem with our Credova offerings in the third quarter of this year. On the brands front, EveryLife, our wholly owned baby care subsidiary, continues to grow dramatically as the brand's life-affirming message resonates with our core consumer base. As I mentioned, we're seeing strong subscription revenue, which was 75% of our total revenue during the quarter, and we will soon be expanding the EveryLife product portfolio in the third quarter of this year with the launch of soaps and lotions. Another item to note is that we announced in our earnings release this morning the launch of a new feminine care brand in the second half of this year. This brand will bring high-quality feminine care products and an elegant and impactful message that celebrates femininity and womanhood to our core female customer base, many of whom are also existing EveryLife consumers. As we look out into the remainder of 2024, we expect continued growth among all our verticals: marketplace, financial technology, and our brands segment, as we pursue the ongoing transformation of PublicSquare into a true holding company model that leverages the economic power of our total addressable market. Our payment stack represents the next step in our journey where we will be dedicating significant internal resources to developing and launching the service that our consumers and merchants have demanded. We continue to believe all signs are pointing in an increasingly positive direction, and we reaffirm our belief that we are just getting started. Before I hand it over to Brad, our CFO, I have one housekeeping item. I am happy to announce that Mike Hebert, our Chief People Officer for the last year or so, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of PublicSquare, PSQ Holdings, as of this morning. Mike, congratulations. The team looks forward to your continued positive contribution to the business and our continued shared success. Onward and upward, my friend. Now I'd like to hand it over to our CFO, Brad Searle, to discuss a few financial notes, including our updated 2024 financial outlook. Without further ado, Brad.

Thank you, Michael. Congratulations, Mike, and good morning, everybody. I'm thrilled to be with you here today to discuss our first quarter of 2024 results. I'd like to present a few items to note from the quarter. So first off, as Michael mentioned, we increased net revenue by 817% to $3.5 million compared to the first quarter of 2023. Also, on a pro forma basis, if we had included all of Credova’s Q1 net revenue, our Q1 net revenue would have been $6.4 million, which is 12.2% greater than the 2023 net revenue figure we reported on our 2023 10-K. I'd like to point out that in Q1, we incurred $5.9 million in share-based compensation expenses, as well as $2.3 million in one-time transaction costs related to the Credova transaction during the first quarter. In terms of share count as of 3/31/24, we had 28,177,917 Class A common shares outstanding and 3,213,678 Class C common shares outstanding. We ended the first quarter of 2024 pro forma for the previously announced insider affiliate investment with $19.3 million in cash, of which $0.2 million was restricted cash. Before I hand the call back to Michael, I will cover the updated outlook for 2024 we've provided in this morning's release. First, in terms of revenue, our guidance from March 14, 2024 remains unchanged. We are guiding to a year-end 2024 exit run rate revenue of approximately $47 million to $53 million. Moving on to profitability, Credova is expected to remain cash flow positive in 2024. We expect EveryLife to reach and maintain cash flow positivity by the end of 2024. We intend to prioritize the resourcing and growth of PSQ payments, led by former CEO of Klarna North America, Brian Billingsley. Lastly, regarding our cash position outlook, we expect to exit 2024 with approximately $8 million to $10 million of cash on the consolidated balance sheet. I will now hand the call back to Michael for some closing remarks and Q&A.

Wonderful, thank you, Brad. To wrap up, the remainder of 2024 will bring even more growth and further opportunity to the business. With the addition of Credova to the PublicSquare ecosystem and the forthcoming launch of our payment stack, along with many of the other exciting milestones we've laid out today, we are supercharging our growth potential and we're grateful for all of those who are on the journey with us. We are now excited to move on to Q&A. We will address some of the inbound questions we received before the call, and I believe we're going to hand it over to Will.

Operator, we'll take the first dial-in questions first and then I'll take some of the questions that were submitted by shareholders.

Our first question comes from Darren Aftahi from ROTH Capital Partners.

Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple by me. So can you just talk about your marketplace? Just, I know Mike, you had some comments about progress. I'm just kind of curious about any metrics you guys find encouraging. I know you launched this roughly six or seven months ago, but as it compares to the initial launch, any kind of encouraging metrics you guys saw in Q1 in terms of whether it was conversion, AOV, retention, anything like that? And then I get just supposing as part of that, how does kind of live the broader strategy fit into the commerce marketplace?

Great questions, Darren, thank you. Good to hear from you. Yes, I'll give you a few metrics that we're very encouraged by as we look at the marketplace. I obviously mentioned that bulk usage is up over 300% from Q1 of last year; that's a big deal for us. The platform is becoming more and more usable and user-friendly as each day passes and as new features and enhancements are added to the experience, like auto-saving address information and enhanced search that actually uses predictive analysis based upon past searches, saved past purchases so that you can resurface purchases you've already made and check out again. There are a lot of enhancements to the overall shopping workflows that we've added that help people experience better category grouping that we're really proud of. We've had our AOV hover right around $70, which we're very encouraged by; that's exactly where we want to be. So again, an AOV of $70 is a good metric that we look to hover right around. If we launch campaigns that have a number of quick pick-up household items, we'll have a few days to dip below that. If we're selling larger products for gifts or larger holidays, sometimes the AOV will go significantly above $70. We want it to maintain, though, hanging right around that $70 mark. I would also say that the fact that Q1 order volume was larger than Q4 is a great sign for us, especially without increased costs in marketing in Q1. The reason I say that is because obviously our marketplace is structured as a retail shopping experience, and the fact that we didn't have this massive spike during the Christmas shopping season that then descended down into a lower Q1, but it actually was the opposite. Q4 was an incredible basis for Q1, which was able to build on top of. That was really affirming for us. It's a great sign that consumers are spreading the word at a greater capacity. The last thing I'll mention is that we've continued to see our customer acquisition cost decrease as time goes on, which is a great sign that our marketing channels and strategies we're employing are working. As to the second question, you mentioned live shopping. This was a fun idea that I had earlier in the year. I've always loved the concept of social commerce, and I think the world is heading this way. We see this happening on notable platforms like TikTok and Meta; they're trying to bring the shopping experience far more into a social environment. I've also always been intrigued by the concept of live shopping specifically through programs like QVC, but QVC struggled to reach a younger audience. I thought, what if we actually put our products using credible small businesses with high-quality products to sell and impactful stories to tell? We can put that into a live shopping environment, offer exclusive discounts to consumers that are watching. Around that time, I actually met Erin Elmore, who is a former QVC host. She loved the idea, fell in love with the vision, and decided to join our team. I'll wrap it up by saying the metrics I'm excited about are that the order volume on May 11th, during the debut of PublicSquare Live, was higher even by over 10% than Black Friday in terms of order volume. What's awesome about this as well is that we were offered the spot on Real America's Voice to actually showcase this content. The pieces have all come together in a very cost-effective manner. We get excited about initiatives like this because it showcases that our consumers who are as excited about our products as they are with the stories that the businesses are telling will actually put that excitement into purchasing power when they're presented the opportunity. During that segment of PublicSquare Live, our AOV hovered right around $70. So it's the perfect encapsulation of what we're trying to do with our brand, and we're looking forward to putting some gas on the fire of that endeavor as we move forward. I know that's a lot, but I hope that's helpful context.

That is. Just a couple more on Credova. So I think you guys gave the contribution with and without for the full quarter. I think the math, if mine's right, is $3.3 million roughly. But my question is not so much the math, it's more, is there any seasonality in the payments business? I assume there is tied to commerce in general and then maybe some initiatives you guys talked about in the release to help further growth there.

Yes, great question. There is certainly seasonality in the payments business broadly. If you look at Credova on the consumer and business financing side, there is seasonality that's tied to the retailers that they serve. We obviously saw that buy now, pay later across the entire industry had a significant increase in Q4 of last year, responsible for the bulk of the Christmas shopping that the market experienced, seen with an uptick of 9% from the year before. That's certainly true of Credova as well. The seasonality generally follows shopping trends. Given that some of their largest vendors are gun marketplaces, for example, entities like guns.com, the seasonality that they experience will obviously affect Credova as well. One exception is that buy now, pay later does have the potential to break free of seasonality a little bit since consumers can experience financial freedom to purchase higher AOV items throughout the year. Payments will be a little less seasonal, given that we're not exclusively serving retailers. The payment stack we are building is designed to cater to a wide variety of different industries. So for example, we have tax professionals that see spring and winter as their sweet spot, while traditional retailers look to the Christmas shopping season. So payments will be a little less seasonal. Credova is a bit more seasonal, but even in Credova's case, there are attributes of the actual product that allow it to break free from seasonal pressure. The combination of these forces between payments and a credit product is exciting to be able to take to these retailers. It helps them increase their conversion rates significantly. We're excited to see that drive traffic to some of our great partners in this space.

Right, and then I guess last one for me on EveryLife. Business continues to grow really nicely. You guys are adding, I think you said lotions and soaps and then you launched or will be launching, Eden eating pretty soon. I guess when you step back and kind of look at the TAM for that, I mean, where are we in terms of like scratching the surface of this business? Do you feel like you have tens of segments underneath the EveryLife brand, hundreds of segments, are they all organic? I'm just trying to get a sense for, and just kind of feedback, obviously the subscription piece has been fairly strong and consistent, but just give me your general thoughts on the bigger picture with EveryLife. Thanks.

Yes, thanks, Darren, appreciate it. We continue to be very pleased with the growth of EveryLife. It's been a wild ride and a very fun endeavor to be a part of. One thing that we're positive about is the fact that our churn is just so low. Our churn is less than 10% on average, and that's a big deal for a subscription business with an LTV of about 18 months generally. We're thrilled by the new traffic that's coming in, choosing to elect a subscription offering with recurring revenue, where the diapers actually show up at their doorstep. It's a great sign of brand trust. I'm also incredibly pleased with our over 700 ambassadors with EveryLife who are utilizing their exclusive discount code, sharing them with their communities and organizations. To answer your question, I would point out a few things related to the future of EveryLife. Number one, I would say that the TAM: we are not yet even 5% of the way through the TAM for diapers and wipes in the U.S. for this specific industry cohort; this is conservative. On top of that, EveryLife has potential international applicability that excites us, and we're currently in the process of analyzing what that TAM actually looks like if we expand beyond our borders. There will certainly be future segments underneath the EveryLife brand. We anticipate that it will continue to become more of a family brand with multiple product offerings. One key driver of growth for EveryLife has been our partnerships with organizations. We have a broad network of pregnancy resource centers across the country that have expressed interest or taken action to source our diapers. We've had Catholic hospitals partner with us and major diaper drives. In fact, just last Sunday, we filmed a Mother's Day special on Fox & Friends, where we hosted a diaper drive funded by our supporters purchasing through the Buy for a Cause program. An incredible opportunity that has increased brand awareness and traffic, leading to new subscribers. I also want to highlight how well the brand has excelled with such a small team. We're excited about the roadmap ahead with the next development being soaps and lotions.

Our next question comes from the line of Tom Doherty from Maxim Group.

Great, thanks Michael, congrats on the quarter. Two questions for me. The first one, you've talked a lot about this, but I was hoping you can give like a 60 to 90 second overview on your strategy for selecting additional first-party categories beyond baby. So you talked about getting into women's care products, but what's your overriding strategy?

Great question, good to hear from you, Tom. Our strategy is consumer-led; consumers will reach out to us and share demand for a certain niche or sub-industry within our industry. We'll let us know what they would love to see represented in greater capacity on our platform. Then, we look at existing opportunities in the market to see if they already exist. If there is not, we know there is a void, and we may consider creating a consumer product to meet the demand of this base. The second thing to mention is that the products need to synergize with our overall vision and mission; we want to leverage the existing audience to catapult into new buyers, maintaining low customer acquisition costs compared to our competitors. We believe feminine care is relevant right now, and we've heard from many women that they feel many brands have ignored them or even mocked their existence. We aim to create a high-quality feminine care brand that celebrates femininity with an impactful message. The synergies across the board make it a feasible endeavor, and there's significant manufacturer crossover, utilizing our existing supply chain, mitigates costs and increases efficiency.

Great. And then my second and final question. I want to talk about your customer acquisition costs and lifetime value of a customer. You've done an amazing job of brand building to date, which has enabled you to acquire a large number of customers for free. You talked about a great spot you had on Fox News. Which sounds like another wonderful brand-building event. But can you talk about your customer acquisition costs and how that's turned over time and then just your high-level thoughts on your lifetime value of those customers you're acquiring?

Great question. Our customer acquisition cost, based on segment, will be tracked closely moving forward. We're keen on leveraging earned media opportunities that we love; there's no better customer acquisition cost than $0. We enjoy that. We are also excited to continue dialing our direct response strategy. We've discovered a large lookalike audience that is indicative of our total addressable market (TAM). Our goal is to create digital experiences that target that lookalike audience, converting them into buyers by showcasing our products and the stories of the business owners. Additionally, we use user-generated content from satisfied customers, which we then advertise on digital and social channels at a low acquisition cost. The way we're keeping our customer acquisition cost low, especially compared to marketplace comps in this space, is by utilizing partnerships in trusted organizations through EveryLife. With Credova, we have synergistic audiences; Credova brings over 2.8 million customer accounts that originated loans, providing a fantastic marketing opportunity for PublicSquare.

I will now turn the conference back to William Kent for submitted questions.

Thank you, Dee. Great, as in past quarters, we've received some questions via the Say Tech platform and we'll likely cover four or five of them here before we close things up. First question, and these, by the way, are upvoted by shareholder representatives, is on platform expansion. There is a question around when can we see expansion of the PublicSquare platform to other countries as expected and what are your thoughts on that?

I love this question. We understand that the desire for a parallel economy in certain nation-states is not exclusive to the U.S. We've heard great interest from other nations, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea, among many others. We actually have an international waitlist that has grown by the tens of thousands of people looking for our product expansion. What I'd say is that product expansion into other nations is absolutely on the table, although it will likely expand segment by segment. Our goal is to nail it before we scale it. We are also courting international ambassadors who know their economic environments well and have established trust among their consumer communities. Ultimately, we believe PublicSquare will never be the world's marketplace. Rather, it will be America's marketplace, and similarly, a dedicated marketplace serving each respective nation may develop over time, maintaining a focus on community over cross-border selling.

Thank you, Michael. The next question we got was on exposure. It seems that the last quarter exceeded expectations, yet the capital markets have not responded with the stock price moving much higher. Besides social media, how will you guys look to get additional exposure in the markets?

I'm happy to answer this question. I firmly believe that the stock price today does not reflect how our business is performing. I want to make that abundantly clear. We have continued to perform above expectations, and all signs from myself, the management team, and our board indicate an increasingly positive direction. I have never been more bullish about our business than I am right now. So I don't believe the stock is indicative of that reality. Our goal for exposure is ultimately toward consumers and merchants, growing the business, executing our roadmap, and achieving our milestones. We are not neglecting investor outreach. We have a connected board of directors and some excellent capital markets advisors and made the conference circuit this year to get our message out to a broad network.

Two more questions. The second last question is on shipping. Obviously, with EveryLife, you have some distribution related to that product; what's PublicSquare's thought on distribution centers to ship products going forward?

Our thoughts on this are nuanced, and what I mean by that is that we have several options moving forward. Some competitors choose to bring all their fulfillment and manufacturing operations in-house. Others sell off those operations, and so we watch the market carefully. What we are looking for are cost-effective and value-aligned strategies early on. For EveryLife, we've partnered with a great 3PL partner who completely aligns with our mission. We found them through our platform; remarkable folks with high integrity. I want to utilize their fulfillment network for our product development and monetize the relationship, promoting their services to other consumer brands on our site. This decision is in the works; I can't provide a definitive answer yet, but we'll keep our options open.

Our last question submitted is on business ratings. Shareholders stated part of the reasons why they like some of our competitors is their rating systems—they can see what other customers think about certain products. Is PublicSquare looking to implement something similar, and when can we expect that?

I love this question. The world of reviews is largely broken; very few platforms are fixing it. Junk reviews, bot reviews, and those from individuals without actual experience with the business are prevalent. Our review endeavor has been in the works for a while now, and we are excited to release it on our near-term roadmap. Consumers can be assured that the great businesses vetted in alignment with our values and quality expectations will receive positive ratings. We are purposely ensuring thorough thoughtfulness in our review systems, and our team is as excited about this as you are.

I believe that was our last question here. We as a management team, board of directors, and broader PSQ Holdings entity are very grateful for all of those who have joined us on this journey, whether as consumers, businesses, merchants, investors, or just interested participants. We have loved this journey so far and we continue to reaffirm the strong belief that we are just getting started. We hope that all of you have a fantastic rest of the week, and thank you again for joining us on this Q1 2024 earnings call today. We'll talk soon.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.