Iteris, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joe Bergera: Again, the several hundred basis point decrease, again, was, I believe, more attributable to the subcontractor content and the professional services revenue than these new agreements. So again, I just want to make sure that you understand that.

Jeff Van Sinderen: Okay. That’s helpful. And then if we could shift for a minute. I know, you mentioned the SoCal project that is soon to be a contract. Any sense you can give us kind of the size of that project for you in dollars in the time frame when you can realize that?

Joe Bergera: Yeah. So we don’t want to negotiate against ourselves by making any sort of specific comments about any of the financial aspects of the contract. But I would say this is a relatively large contract for us.

Jeff Van Sinderen: Okay.

Joe Bergera: And I think other than that, I need to leave it at that. And then further with respect to the time line, as I said, we were anticipating that it would probably be a couple of quarters, like probably about six months before this progresses from award to contract. But I have to like €“ I always get in trouble when I put out a time line, because it’s amazing how long it can pay for €“ in certain circumstances for awards to convert to contract, we actually have seen it be in excess of a year. But this seems to be moving along pretty quickly, and I would anticipate approximately six months.

Jeff Van Sinderen: Okay. That’s helpful. And I guess I’ll also see a welcome forward to Carrie, and I guess he’s joining tomorrow to take a while for them to get up to speed.

Joe Bergera: Yes, but I know he’ll be interested in meeting all of our analysts and any interested investors as well. So I’d encourage you and any investors who would like the option to speak with them to just reach out to Todd or me, and we’ll make sure that we make those introductions happen

Jeff Van Sinderen: Okay. Terrific. And then just one more, if you don’t mind. I think you’ve got a couple more months here to your fiscal year. You got a pretty solid backlog. Backlog continues to grow €“ and I’m not asking you to guide here, but any early thoughts on €“

Joe Bergera: Yes, you are Jeff. I just don’t really asking.

Jeff Van Sinderen: And any €“ well, I guess what I’m trying to get at €“ and this really isn’t a quantitative guidance. I’m just trying to get a sense if you think that you can sustain sort of an above-market revenue growth rate in fiscal 2024, or we have a little bit of a kind of rebound or a pent-up effect, I guess, you would say at this moment. How are you thinking about that? How are you sort of thinking about revenue growth normalizing over the next several quarters?

Joe Bergera: So in other words, what’s your guidance? So as you know, we’ve really tried to make a practice we’re a pretty small. We’re a small public company for sure, right? And so like small variances make like in percentage terms can be pretty sizable, right? So we really don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. And as a normal practice on our €“ when we do our fourth quarter earnings will provide full year guidance. But just I think you’re basically saying like €“ but still, like how strong does the market seem, what kind of €“ what €“ how does your pipeline velocity look? Do you think that overall sort of demand signals are they like — like strong or weak? Are you seeing like a change one way or the other? And so to try to answer that kind of a qualitative question, the environment still seems very positive.

And I think that that’s true really across the broader sector. But I do feel that our product strategy is really resonating well in the marketplace. And our sense that we’re going to continue to take market share I can’t say exactly for how long, but obviously, we’re going to continue to move the ball forward, take a leadership position, try to define their competitive landscape. And as I said in my remarks on today’s call and I said in the past, I think that we’ve got the most productive channel in the industry, and we’ll continue to invest in that and improve on it.

Jeff Van Sinderen: Okay. Great. Thanks so much for taking my question and best of luck.

Joe Bergera: Thanks.

Doug Groves: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Mike Latimore from Northland Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Mike Latimore: All right. Great. Thanks, and Doug, nice working with you. Best of luck in your new ventures.

Doug Groves: Thank you.

Mike Latimore: I guess just a basic question here. From an OpEx standpoint, should we think about OpEx as sort of remaining stable here from this point for a while?

Joe Bergera: Absolutely. I mean if you look particularly at the G&A line, you’ve done a pretty good job of keeping that really flat for quite some time. And the sales and marketing was up a little bit this year, but that was a conscious decision to invest in that part of the organization, bringing on new salespeople and product support people. And R&D, I think we’ll continue to probably hover around that sort of 5% to 5.5% of revenue. So I think with the increase in the revenue, we will start to really see some leverage in the P&L with the hardware business now getting back on its feet.

Mike Latimore: Okay. Great. In terms of the roadside unit product category, do you have a rough range of what that contributed to the quarter?

Joe Bergera: That’s a good question. Look, I would guess because we don’t actually break it out that way, but I would guess it would be in the range like even $2 million to $4 million?

Doug Groves: Yes, exactly. Yes, about 10% to 20% of our sensor revenue.

Joe Bergera: All right. Got it. And remember, we only started talking about that on our — that segment, that whole product strategy a year ago, December. And this is a very early stage market. We think that the total addressable market in North America right now is probably $30 million to $50 million. But our expectation — I think most people’s expectation is it over probably a five-year time frame, that could look like a potential $1 billion TAM.