VirTra, Inc. (NASDAQ:VTSI) Q4 2021 Earnings Conference Call August 2, 2022 4:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Bob Ferris – Chairman & Co-CEO
John Givens – Co-CEO
Marsha Foxx – Chief Accounting Officer
Conference Call Participants
Richard Baldry – ROTH Capital
Jaeson Schmidt – Lake Street.
Allen Klee – Maxim Group
Operator
Good afternoon. Welcome to VirTra’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Vikram and I will be your operator for today’s call. Joining us for today’s presentation are the company’s Chairman and Co-CEO, Bob Ferris; Co-CEO, John Givens and Chief Accounting Officer, Marsha Foxx. Following their remarks we will open up the call for questions from VirTra’s institutional analysts and investors.
Before we begin the call, I would like to provide VirTra’s safe harbor statement about that includes cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during this call. During this presentation, management may discuss financial projections, information or expectations about the company’s products and services or markets or otherwise make statements about the future, which are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. The company does not undertake any obligation to update them as required by law.
Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be made available for replay via a link in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at www.virtra.com.
I would now like to turn the call over to VirTra’s Chairman and Co-CEO, Mr. Bob Ferris. Sir, please proceed.
Bob Ferris
Thank you operator, Vikram. And thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. After the market closed today, we issued a press release that provided our audited financial results for the full year ended December 31, 2021 along with highlighted business accomplishments. We also filed our 10-K with the SEC today which is available for review at your discretion.
As we discussed at a high level on our March conference call, 2021 was a very successful year for VirTra on many fronts. We grew revenue 28% [ph] from the prior year to record $24.4 million as we generated strong growth in both the commercial and international markets, while our core government market remained a healthy contributor. We also remain profitable on both an adjusted EBITDA and GAAP net income basis. This also represents a rare accomplishment for any business. It is the 16th consecutive year of top line growth, revenue growth at VirTra.
In our commercial segment, which includes military sales through a prime contractor, revenue grew 145% from the prior year to $3.2 million, largely as a result of a strategic contract win. We believe this strategic military contract will situate us well for future business as we demonstrate our capabilities and build a track record with military customers. However, this initial contract required extensive development and testing in order to deliver product features desired by this military customer and contributed to downward pressure on our margins in 2021. And the fourth quarter in particular, where most of the contract revenue was recognized.
Nonetheless, we believe this contract is very much in the best long term interests of VirTra and could prove to be an important beachhead for future contracts, since we have now been able to develop unique capabilities and expertise for military solutions through this work.
Going forward, we expect to earn a margin profile and the military market that is more in line with the value we believe we provide, especially when considering the track record of our new Co-CEO John Givens, who you will hear from shortly.
Internationally, we saw an almost tenfold increase in our revenue to $4.4 million, as our international business greatly benefited from a return to more normal operating conditions, as COVID significantly limited our ability to sell internationally during 2020. With the world having largely returned to more normal operations, we expect our international segment to continue to generate healthy growth.
Our government revenue declined modestly from the prior year from $17.4 million to $16.8 million due to fewer shipments and installations of simulators, which is how we recognize revenue. Keep in mind our backlog was sufficiently large that if we were able to install more equipment than we would have exceeded last year in this category as well.
We also continued to generate strong growth from our subscription training equipment, partnership or step program. As a reminder, the step program provides higher margin recurring revenue for VirTra that also provides an easier on ramp for agencies interested in our solution, but are perhaps budget constrained for an outright purchase.
In 2021, step revenue was $2 million, representing 8% of total sales and growing almost 150% from the prior year. And we continue to internally focus on driving this valuable recurring revenue in the future. In addition to our strong revenue growth in 2021, we also took an opportunity to strengthen our balance sheet with the strategic $18 million common stock issuance and April 2021. We believe having a strong balance sheet with adequate liquidity is key to working with larger potential customers and competing in more significant contract opportunities for VirTra, especially as we see continued demand justify the scaling of our operations.
As part of our expansion plans, we also used a portion of this ability to acquire an industrial building in Chandler Arizona to be the new site of VirTra’s headquarters. We began our move in in December 2021 and we remain on track to complete our full move in by the end of the year. Recall this state of the art facility will give us a larger and more centralized footprint, providing us greater operational efficiencies than our two currently leased facilities, both of which we plan to sublease once we move out. We are excited about the capabilities we will have once this facility is 100% operational, as we think it will be the most advanced and capable simulation training headquarters in our industry, and should attract some of the largest customers in the market to VirTra.
I will now turn the call over to our CO-CEO John Givens, who joined our board in November 2020 and was announced as CO-CEO in early May. John has had a tremendously successful history in the military simulation market. He was the founder of the U.S. division of Bohemia Interactive Simulations, which started at $0 in sales, and recently sold to BEA Systems for $200 million. I am honored he has brought his industry leading talents to VirTra, and I look forward to working with him to make VirTra far more successful than ever before. John?
John Givens
Thank you, Bob. It’s a pleasure to be speaking with all of you today. Since this is my first conference call as CO-CEO of VirTra, I thought it’d be helpful to provide a bit of background on myself and the opportunity I see for the company. I most recently was president of a company called Bohemia Interactive Simulations or BISim, which I founded in 2010 and led it to become one of the most widely deployed simulation products throughout all branches of the U.S. and allied military forces.
While building this company I became familiar with VirTra and Bob and we grew mutual respect for one another’s products, company and dedication to providing value add products and services to those who put their lives on the line to defend and protect our country. As a U.S. Army veteran myself, working with law enforcement and military professionals is a business I’m passionate about. So when the opportunity presented itself to get involved with VirTra, I eagerly took a seat on the board in 2022 to provide strategic advice and business referrals when appropriate. But given my full time commitment to BISim, my time was obviously largely committed to that company. Ultimately, BISim had a very successful exit with a $200 million sale to BEA Systems earlier this year, and while I very easily could have retired, I saw such an amazing opportunity with VirTra, especially in the military markets, which is my background. Bob and I began having more serious conversations about leadership structure that would increase my role, with the company culminating in a Co-CEO structure we have today.
Going forward, I plan to focus much of my time on fully exploiting the military markets for VirTra, where I see great product market fit, a need for stronger training solutions, and an overall massive market that VirTra historically has under penetrated given its focus on the bread and butter law enforcement.
Another reason for under penetration, I believe, has been under investment in the Orlando Florida area, which is the epicenter of military simulation market. Over the coming quarters, we plan to build out a more meaningful presence in Orlando, given us boots on the ground access to better position ourselves to win this military business. While the military market can certainly be challenging to break into, it can be done and I’m determined to succeed with VirTra. Much like Bohemia, VirTra began with humble roots, but now has a dominant law enforcement market share and likewise, I believe we have a great opportunity to increase the market share in the military segment, leveraging VirTra’s world class capabilities and my experience, relationships and success from my time at BISim.
I’m now going to turn the call over to Chief Accounting Officer Marsha Foxx to provide financial updates.
Marsha Foxx
Thank you, John. And good afternoon, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be speaking to you today to review our audited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2021. Our total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was $8.6 million. This was a 32% increase from the $6.6 million of revenue we recognized in the fourth quarter of last year. For 2021, total revenue increased 28% to $24.4 million from $19.1million in 2020. The increase of revenue resulted from the increase in sales of simulators, step sales, accessories, curriculum and training and recurring extended warranty revenue.
Our gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 decreased to $2.8 million from $4.8 million in the fourth quarter of last year. Gross profit margin for the fourth quarter of 2021 was 32.7%, which was lower than the 72.5% in the fourth quarter of last year.
For 2021, gross profit decreased to $11.4 million from $11.9 million in 2020. Gross profit margin for 2021 was 46.7%, which was lower than the 62.3% for 2020. The decrease in gross profit was primarily due to a specific military contract with a lower profit margin profile, differences in the quantity and type of simulator systems, type of accessories and variety of services sold, combined with an increase in cost of sales.
Our net operating expense for the quarter of 2021 was $3 million, compared to $3.4 million in the fourth quarter last year. For 2021, net operating expense was $10 million, compared to $10.7 million in 2020. The decrease was primarily due to a $346,000 allowance for bad debt on accounts and notes receivable and a one-time $840,000 impairment loss, both recorded in 2020.
Turning to our profitability measures. For the fourth quarter of 2021, we recorded an operating loss of $196,000 compared to $1.3 million in operating income in the fourth quarter of 2020. For 2021, our income from operations was $1.5 million an improvement compared to $1.2 million for 2020.
Net income for the fourth quarter of 2021 totaled $13,000, or $0.00 per diluted share, a decrease compared to net income of $1.6 million, or $0.21 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2020. For 2021, net income totaled $2.5 million or $0.25 per basic and diluted share, an improvement compared to net income of $1.5 million or $0.19 per basic and diluted share for 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA or non-GAAP metric for the fourth quarter of 2021 was a loss of $220,000 compared to $2.2 million in positive adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2020. For 2021, adjusted EBITDA totaled $2.1 million, a decrease from $2.8 million in 2020. The change in adjusted EBITDA was significantly impacted by a one time impairment on the TEC note, the onetime event of the official forgiveness of our PPP loan and the lower gross profit.
Turning to our bookings in backlog, we identify bookings as the total of newly signed contracts and purchase orders received in a defined period. For the fourth quarter and full year 2021, we received bookings totaling $8.4 million and $32.9 million, respectively.
Furthermore, we define backlog as the accumulation of bookings from signed contracts and purchase orders that are not yet started or uncompleted and cannot be recognized as revenue until delivered in a future period.
Backlog also includes extended warranty agreements and step agreements that are deferred revenue recognized on a straight line basis over the life of each respective agreement. As of December 31 2021, our backlog totaled $23.1 million, which was up 6.5% from the prior quarter, and 58.2% from December 31 2020.
And finally to our balance sheet, as of December 31 2021 we had unrestricted cash and cash equivalents of $19.7 million compared to $21.5 million at the end of the prior quarter. From a working capital standpoint, at the end of this fourth quarter, we had $25.9 million in working capital a slight increase from $25.8 million at the end of Q3. For additional details of our financial results, please reference our form 10-K, which was filed earlier today.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I’ll now turn it back to Bob.
Bob Ferris
Thanks, Marsha. I now would like to spend a few minutes to discuss our audit and ERP implementation. As we’ve discussed in the past, we began implementing a new company wide ERP system to consolidate three independent systems and provide us with better operational efficiencies, and more scalability given our business growth over the past several years.
There is still optimization work that will be on-going over the course of 2022. And we expect the need for continual improvements, which were common with ERP systems. But we are happy to have much of the initial implementation work behind us. Case in point is the successful completion of our independent audit and the filing of our 10-K today for the full year ended December 31, 2021.
As we laid out to NASDAQ, we expect to file both our 10-K for the full year ended December 31, 2021 and the 10-Q for the first quarter ended March 31, 2022 by August 12 2022, which remains our expectations today as we plan to file our 10-Q for the first quarter on August 11. Additionally, we expect to file our 10-Q for the second quarter ended June 30 2022 on August 19 2022, which is within the seven day extension period allowed by the SEC.
With these filings, we will be caught up with our financial reports to maintain our NASDAQ listing. I would like to take a moment to thank the employees of VirTra for their hard work and dedication to push through this and get us back on solid footing with our financial reporting practices. We are disappointed that we had a delay in timely reporting to our shareholders. And we are committed to reporting our financial results on time going forward.
Now on to the topic of margins, which were below our historic levels in 2021, particularly in the fourth quarter. As Marsha mentioned, gross profit margin for the full year 2021 was 46.7% and for the fourth quarter of 2021 it was 32.7%, both below our historic norms. The lower margins were mainly caused by the pursuit of a strategically important military contract, while negatively impacting margins in the short term, we believe this will situate us well for certain future military business going forward.
Another way to think of this contract is akin to paid R&D, and that VirTra was able to earn revenue, while developing new product offerings that will have direct applicability to future military opportunities. With the expertise and experience now more significantly developed, we expect to earn a margin profile in the military market that is more in line with the value we believe we provide. And I personally believe John will be a great driver of ensuring we generate the value purchase products deserve.
The second reason is inflation, which is impacting all types of companies around the globe as I’m sure most of you are aware by now, and VirTra has not been immune. We have seen higher labor material and travel costs, all of which have negatively impact our gross margins. We are actively working to mitigate or offset as much of these impacts as possible.
Looking ahead, we expect gross margins in 2022 to improve relative to our 2021 levels, as the strategic military contract was largely completed in 2021. And we continue to optimize our business to adjust to the inflationary impacts we have been seeing.
To conclude we are pleased to be able to resume communicating our results to shareholders and look forward to filing and announcing our remaining financials for the first half of 2022 to catch up on our reporting in the coming weeks. As we put these delays in the rear view mirror, we look forward to shifting focus to the immense opportunities we see for our business as John Givens shifts from focusing on operationally preparing VirTra for larger volumes of business to winning the larger volumes of business. His industry leading expertise, leadership, operational excellence, and military track will be great assets for VirTra and its shareholders. Our sales pipeline remains robust and we are in a strong financial position to capitalize on our opportunities with $19.7 million of cash and equivalents at the end of 2021.
And with that, I’m going to wrap up my prepared remarks and we’ll open the call up for your questions. Operator, please provide the appropriate instructions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator instructions] We have a first question from line of Richard Baldry with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.
Richard Baldry
Thanks. We’re now seven months down in 2022. So I’m sort of curious if you can give any commentary on how operations have been year-to-date, if not, quantitatively, maybe qualitatively. Do you feel like you’re up versus year ago? Has there been continued hiring maybe as an indicator that business continues to grow? Or anything to put our eye on how to look at 2022 now versus 2021, from a revenue or earnings perspective? Thanks.
Bob Ferris
Yes, I appreciate that question. But at this point, we are we’re still, we’re still getting all the numbers together for the auditor review. And we really can’t comment on that until we have that information back from the auditor. So yes, we’re still working until it’s complete. But it will be good news is that we don’t have much time from now and tell her be on the phone again, and giving updates for this year.
Richard Baldry
Okay, thanks.
Operator
Thank you. We have next question for the line of Jaeson Schmidt with Lake Street. Please go ahead.
Jaeson Schmidt
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. John, you mentioned under investment in Orlando, potentially being one of the gating factors in the military business. But just curious if you think that investment is really going to go towards kind of marketing and improving perception of the simulators in the military market? Or if you think the simulators are maybe lagging from a technology standpoint in that investment areas really going to that bucket?
John Givens
Yes, thanks for that call. So I’ve been in the Orlando market for multiple decades. And the reason why you have to have presence there is that is the acquisition epicenter of the planet for the military, all branches. So it’s the visibility. So we recently actually opened up an office, where we’ll be placing simulators there so that all those acquisition officers and everybody that’s buying anything in the simulation environment comes to Orlando, they’ll come into our office, and be able to look at review and actually get their hands on our products, the technology that VirTra has today, some of it is as the industry has, but much of it is what the industry doesn’t have. So the only group that has really benefited from this technology and the innovative items that have been put together is the law enforcement. And this is what’s going to drive that what I might call it’s just an untapped market for this type of quality product.
Jaeson Schmidt
Okay, that’s helpful. And then I’m just curious if you could comment on what you’re seeing from a supply chain standpoint. I mean, obviously, it seems like the environment remains challenging out there for most, but is that creating any sort of significant headwinds for you guys this year?
John Givens
Yes, appreciate that question. I, I do think that COVID and supply related issues did hurt us somewhat in 2021. In some areas, again, it’s a combination of, of the scheduling that VirTra can put together and the scheduling the customer will allow so in other words, there’s times when a customer we might be ready to ship and install a simulator and recognize the revenue but the customer says they’re not ready and they’ve and we’re going to always cater to the customer as far as you know, what their timing is to be able to install and train them on the equipment. And, and so I would say that that the supply chain issue is a constant monitoring and overstocking. So our approach has been to, to err to the side of always make sure we have the ability to supply simulators to those who need it and be able to take the sales order, when it’s given to us, strike while the iron is hot attitude.
And so we have increased our stock levels of certain items far, far beyond anything that we ever stocked prior to the supply chain, headaches that COVID created. I’m really quite impressed by our team in this area. And that we’ve been able to keep the flow of our products going in our market space. And so we have so far been able to have a steady supply of products. There’s areas we need to improve internally. And that’s already been mentioned in this call. And, and we’re making headway with those improvements.
But when it comes to making sure we have the right products on the shelf, fulfill orders. So far, we’ve done a great job of that, but it’s a constant. We have to be constantly vigilant about that. So we have not seen those issues subside at this point. Vigilance is required on-going right now.
Jaeson Schmidt
Okay, got it. And then just the last one from me, and I’ll jump back in the queue. I know, you’re going to be releasing kind of 2022 results here shortly. But just curious from a customer standpoint, are you seeing customers are delaying purchasing decisions pushing these decisions to the right, just given concerns on the overall macro environment recessionary fears etcetera?
John Givens
We are we are not seeing changes in at this time.
Jaeson Schmidt
Okay, got it. Thanks a lot, guys.
John Givens
Thank you for the questions.
Operator
Thank you. We have next question for the line of Allen Klee with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.
Allen Klee
Good afternoon, can you for the quarter, can you quantify how much of the costs you would kind of say was more one time related to auditing changing account and implementing the ERP system? And, and anything else, because we did see G&A jump around, over 400,000 sequentially. So it would be helpful to know if some of that maybe is potentially one time. Thank you.
John Givens
Yes, thanks for that question. I do think you, in many ways answered your own question. So you’re right. There was quite a bit of one time impact. And in that in that quarter and we mentioned that, so yes, we think there’s quite a bit of one time involved in that in those numbers.
Allen Klee
And that type of and that probably continues for the next quarter or two, I guess, but then maybe comes down after that. Seems like a reasonable assumption, I would guess.
John Givens
Not where we’re at. Right now we are still working on those numbers. But we’re, we think that fourth quarter of last year was a pretty unique quarter that it did, it did absorb some onetime items that we don’t see as because they were one time at that time. We’re not seeing them as recurring. So yes, I do think that fourth quarter was pretty unique. We, we consider it potentially a bit of an outlier, just because of the forces behind it that unique military contract with a lower margin profile. So we do really do think that that is, is unique. There’s some things that we discussed about inflationary pressure, that would be on-going, but those overall were a much smaller magnitude of impact.
Allen Klee
Okay, and then is there anything you for the military contract that that you were awarded and worked on? Is there anything you can tell us about that? And then anything about it that you can explain how that can expand the military business potentially?
John Givens
Yes, so on the details on that one we have signed NDA related to that. So we have very major limits on what we can speak to on that. I think the best thing we can do is say that we feel the capabilities that came out of that effort are valuable to VirTra and valuable to other military customers, we believe. We do think that that the work was good and positioning us for future work. But we can’t really get into further detail than that. And we also have to be careful getting into too much detail because of the competitive landscape as well. So, but we definitely have limits on what we can speak to in detail. I hope to have those limits removed someday, but as of right now, we have to honor the agreements, and that’s considered confidential information.
Allen Klee
Okay, on a prior call, or at some point, you had spoken about how you haven’t had an opportunity in Canada, which, which I thought at the time could be pretty attractive. Any update on how that market is doing with that opportunity?
John Givens
Yes, we so we did, we did have an announcement that we won the standing offer in Canada, that competition was a critical one we think, and virtual one it and they only awarded to one, they could have done it in various ways. But they decided that they would have one winner of that standing offer and VirTra was the company that won it. We then announced that we received the first order from it. But you’re right, there has not been a lot of press release related to Canada. But I also believe you are right in that Canada that that standing offer and that unique opportunity, which criss-crosses, essentially every single non-military agency across Canada. So that’s all of their various law enforcement related, security related, even their prison, their correction groups are all under that, that agreement. So we think that there’s a really good future for that. And our team is working diligently on that.
Allen Klee
That’s great. My last question, I didn’t get to do the math on this yet. Could you tell me what the CapEx and depreciation and amortization was for the quarter? And is it reasonable to think that those are decent run rates going forward?
Marsha Foxx
Well, if you recall, we did purchase the new property for our new headquarters in August of last year. So our depreciation expense reports, fourth quarter included the additional on the building. And our depreciation expense for the year was 585,000 and change. But that was that does include all of our step assets as well.
John Givens
That’s the subscription, the recurring revenue subscription program.
Marsha Foxx
So there was about a —sorry.
Allen Klee
Go ahead. No, go ahead, sorry. Go ahead.
Marsha Foxx
That does represent about a $200,000 increase over the prior year.
Allen Klee
Okay, great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
John Givens
Thanks Allen.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. And I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Ferris for his closing remarks. Over to you sir.
Bob Ferris
Thank you. We really appreciate everyone taking the time to join us today. Please know we are dedicated more than ever before to building shareholder value and building the world’s most effective simulation training products. So that the warfighter and the law officer can serve their country, their community, accomplish their mission and make it home safely. I firmly believe the best days for VirTra are ahead of us. Be safe, take care and God bless.
Operator
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today for VirTra’s fourth quarter and full year 2021 conference call. You may now disconnect your…
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