PowerFleet, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWFL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Searle: Got you. And lastly, if I could, just looking at the core business today, the outlook as we go into the first half of 2023, what are you seeing? I think you — I’m not sure if I heard some specific guidance as it relates to services, but I was wondering if you could just kind of talk to what the outlook looks like? What the pipeline. You’ve got a lot of engagement early on the Unity Platform. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that’s transitioning to more rich feature sets and higher ARPUs within the customer base? And maybe just a quick update in terms of supply chain headwinds, what you’re seeing there, if that’s causing any problems and push out of some revenues? Thanks.

Steve Towe: Yeah. Thanks, Scott. I’ll try and break those down. So, firstly, in terms of pipeline, we feel very good, very bullish about the future. We’ve invested a lot in new sales and marketing to drive that pipeline and I think we’re ahead of schedule in terms of getting some of the customers on to the Unity Platform. Unity is today feature-rich by combining all of our previous platforms together, the launch of the first new module. We’re very excited about safety and security, which is coming out at the end of this month. And obviously, from an ARPU perspective, the modularity of it allows us to drive significant increases over time. The first deals that we’ve got are probably, I would say, 20% higher in ARPU than our standard deals have been due to the kind of promise of Unity moving forward. So we feel very good about it, we feel very confident that we have a winning formula with the platform and we’re bullish about the future.

Scott Searle: Great. Thank you. I’ll get back in the queue.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.

Daniel Park: Hi, guys. Good morning. This is Daniel on for Mike. Thanks for taking my questions. So, I guess, first off, congrats on the solid Q4 results and recovering gross margins. I just wanted to double click on this, was this primarily driven by mix, maybe improving supply input costs or other factors such as passing on increased costs, obviously, we know the supply chain remains pretty challenging. But can you just discuss how you’re managing this and what it means for hardware gross margins over the next year?

Steve Towe: Sure. So an apology, Scott, I didn’t finish some of answering your question around the supply chain piece. So, I mean, supply chain remains challenging. We received price increases out of the blue from our partners that, obviously, we try and move as fast as we can to pass some of that onto our customer base where we can and where it’s appropriate, and there are still component challenges out there. I think we’ve done a superb job in the last 12 months of making sure that we can fulfill for our customers. We took a lot of headwinds in the first half, I think, over $4 million worth of one-off spending for high priced components. But we’ve really tried to reengineer and manage a lot of those components out, which is why we’re seeing the improvement.

I think we’re doing better quality deals, I think we’re managing price and value a lot better as a company, and we expect that to continue. If you added in the FX wins that we had, in the second half and we’re probably a couple of 3 percentage points higher than reported today. So we look to maintain that. It is — there is volatility out there, but we’re confident that we can drive it forward. But I would say, it’s just better sales execution, better management of our costs and better alignment in our organization.

Daniel Park: Great. And I guess in regards to the pace of the additional $2 million savings, is this both in gross margin and OpEx or just more in OpEx?

David Wilson: It’s both, but I would say, heavily weighted towards OpEx.

Steve Towe: I mean I think one thing that I talked about in January last year was we were going to execute ruthlessly the changes that we need to make. And I’m, again, very encouraged by the way that the team has taken on the challenges, really creating a very strong basis for success moving forward and tackling a lot of tough challenges in the business. I think if we look at the efficiency programs that we’ve run, the way that we’ve been able to rebrand this — rebrand repurpose the company, bring in some super talented individuals and reduce costs at the same time, plus do an acquisition is testament to a team that is very focused on the opportunity ahead of us.

Daniel Park: Great. Thank you very much for additional color.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Gary Prestopino with Barrington. Please proceed with your question.

Gary Prestopino: Hey. Good morning, everyone. Several questions here and really a lot to get through in a short period of time from when you issued the press release, but first of all, on the $2.5 million of the business that you did not or you walked away from in Q4, how does that break down between products and services?

David Wilson: Yeah. I would say 95% of it is product. So the vast majority is product.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. So 95% is product. Okay. So now that business doesn’t include or does it include your value — your evaluation that you’re going through with Argentina, Brazil and South Africa or was that included in that $2.5 million?

Steve Towe: No. That was some contracts in various territories around the world, some in Latin America, some in Europe, some in the U.S. So it was spread plus. We have a historic heritage business of course locator, which was hardware-only business. And that’s in the light of India, Colombia, Croatia and it’s just not high-quality business for us. So we walked away from a number of opportunities and running down contracts and inventory in that space. Our ambition

Gary Prestopino: So

Steve Towe: Sorry. Go ahead.