Creative Realities, Inc. (NASDAQ:CREX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Kinstlinger: Great. One last question. You’ve got these 2 really large enterprise ad network solutions for Starlight Media and Strike Ten, and BPAA. They seem to me to be long term, the biggest driver of value because they are going to be recurring in addition to size. Can you just discuss from a high level, the opportunity and pipeline you see with those solutions compared to just your digital signage.

William Logan: Yes. I think those opportunities individually, we’ve talked about Bowling being somewhere in the ballpark of a $40 million opportunity. Starlight Media certainly has the capability of getting up to and in excess of $30 million on the one-time deployment revenue. And both of those certainly would be positioned to be $1 million-plus SaaS customers. I think when you flip the script and look at something as an example in food service, there is still tremendous value there. If you took the Panera footprint as an example and said, okay, they deployed 100% of their network. What does that look like? That likely translates into $50 million of one-time hardware installation services activities, but leaves behind another $2.5 million to $3 million of SaaS revenue.

So there are still very material SaaS growth opportunities within that food service or drive-through space because, again, that’s one customer. And we have 3 or 4 customers, certainly not the size right now of Panera being 2,000 locations, but several in the pipeline that are 200 to 500 sites and you can kind of do the same inverse math.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Howard Halpern of Taglich Brothers.

Howard Halpern: With regard to — well, the supply chain issue is corrected at this point but is there any lingering impact on margins in the third quarter upcoming?

William Logan: No, there are not. That issue has been resolved and we do not see any forward impact. Certainly, we had a little bump there in July as far as waiting on that product. But otherwise no, we look and feel similarly moving forward as we have in the past from a margin standpoint.

Howard Halpern: And well there, you talked about consolidating into NetSuite and some other activities. Is there going to be any incremental bump in G&A expenses in the second half of the year?

William Logan: Nothing in particular, Howard. We may have some moderate rise with respect to headcount as we deliver on the revenue, but it should be incrementally slower than the top line growth. So expect that to lead to expanding margins. There’s no other particular driver of higher expense in the next half of the year. And certainly, as we look into 2024, we’ve got a couple of things that should fall off the radar. And with the introduction of NetSuite as an example, I referenced 6 disparate applications that are going away, we think that will be net neutral at worst despite a significant upgrade in our operating platform.

Howard Halpern: Okay. If you could just discuss a little bit like Rick talked about, what is the opportunity over the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years with the ad revenue on all the signage that’s already deployed, the screens that are already out there because it seems like it’s just starting and it’s starting out pretty well.

William Logan: Yes. Great observation, Howard. I don’t even — I don’t know that we’re ready to even quantify that yet. What I can say is we effectively have 2 customers today in this realm and are doubling in size in 2023 and expect to double that again in 2024. We’re spending a lot of time this year on chasing other ad networks as customers, and that will give us a further enhanced access to grow those media revenues. Separate and apart from that, we’ve talked in the past about taking this platform monetization to existing customers who are using our traditional digital signage services. We’re getting a lot of questions and inquiries and demos for those existing customers, and we see a real large opportunity there. We think that this could easily be a $10 million-plus business beyond 2024 and maybe $20 million, right?

So a little early to really say and commit to that, but certainly, all signs point to growing demand and we are delivering for the customers that we have.

Howard Halpern: And that’s a relatively high margin business.

William Logan: That’s correct.

Operator: Our next question is a follow-up from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

Brian Kinstlinger: Sorry, one more question. As it relates to Panera. First, did I understand correctly, do the franchisees have to opt in. And then my second part of the question is, is there a significant piece that’s represented in your backlog? I was confused in the timing of when it was signed. And so I’m also then confused if the 110 backlog includes anything from Panera.