Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the POSaBIT Systems Corporation Second Quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation.
It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, James Carbonara. Sir, the floor is yours.
James Carbonara - Hayden IR
Thank you and once again, welcome. With me on this call are Ryan Hamlin, Chief Executive Officer and Matt Fowler, Chief Financial Officer.
I would like to begin the call by reading the Safe Harbor statement. This statement is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call, with the exception of historical facts may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although the company believes that expectations and assumptions reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it makes no assurances that such expectations will prove to have been correct.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties. For discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please see risk factors detailed in the company’s Annual Report and subsequent filed reports as well as in other reports that the company files from time to time with SEDAR. Any forward-looking statements included in this earnings call are made only as of the date of this call. We do not undertake any obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent knowledge events or circumstances.
The company will also be citing adjusted EBITDA in today’s discussion. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure used by management that does not have any prescribed meaning by IFRS. And that may not be comparable to a similar measures presented by other companies. The company defines adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss generated for the period as reported before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization and it’s further adjusted to remove changes in fair values, and expected credit losses foreign exchange gains and/or losses and impairments. We believe this is a useful metric to evaluate our core operating performance for both Canadian and US investors.
Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ryan Hamlin, Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Fowler, CFO. Ryan, please proceed.
Ryan Hamlin - Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, POSaBIT Systems Corporation
Thanks, James and thanks everyone for joining the call today. I’ve arranged my comments as follows. First, I’m going to highlight some of our high-level financial results. A reminder: All the numbers that we’re sharing with you today are in US dollars.
Next, I’ll spend some time providing a brief operational update, and then we’ll dive deeper into our financial specifics. We’ll conclude the call today with some Q&A.
Let’s begin with the financial highlights.
Q2 was an excellent quarter for POSaBIT. It was our highest grossing revenue quarter in the history of the company, up 232% year-over-year, finishing at approximately $5.0 million dollars.
Given our growth rate, and with 1st half revenue now exceeding our full year 2020 revenue, we are increasing our revenue guidance 20% to $17.5 million to $ 19 million for the full year ending Dec 2021, which is an increase of $3 million dollars from our previous forecast.
As far as margins, gross profit was over $1.1 million in Q2, an increase of 350% from our Q2 2020 gross profit of $292K.
Our strong financial results - including positive Adjusted EBITDA – are enabling us to reinvest for additional growth.
In fact, we anticipate we will double our current headcount over the next 12 months to support the hyper growth we are experiencing.
Turning to our operational highlights… As the year progresses, we will continue to focus on the following
● growing our merchant base for both payments and point of sale
● improving the breadth of our offerings specifically around our payments infrastructure
● and continuing to forge strong partnerships with industry leaders
…all of which will drive our financial performance and set us up for continued hyper growth through the duration of 2021.
In terms of our Merchant Base performance, we are seeing strong results across both existing stores and new stores, which has accelerated our growth in 2021.
● Starting with our existing stores, we are seeing large growth and adoption in terms of the percent of transactions going through our system. Simply put, customers prefer cards over cash. The same can be said for our merchants.
● Stores continue to see significantly higher average tickets with card transactions vs cash transactions. Net/Net, merchants are actively promoting our solutions to their customers.
● Regarding new merchants… we had our best quarter ever in terms of newly signed merchants. Among the new stores that joined the platform were 2 large multi-state operators, each comprised of 20+ locations.
We attribute the increase in new stores joining the platform to our reputation in the industry as the payments infrastructure leader.
● Finally, we are also seeing continued expansion and adoption of our suite of payment offerings.
Turning to our next major operational highlight, expanding our product offerings.
A few of the new offerings we are currently working on include: B2B ACH payments, In-Store Payment Kiosks, more POS Integrations, Loyalty Integrations, a true Mobile Application, Payments Rewards, invoicing, and much more. What we’re aiming for in both the long and short-term is for POSaBIT to offer a comprehensive payments infrastructure.
These new offerings will continue to fuel our revenue growth in 2022 and beyond.
So that completes the second of our three major financial highlight categories. We’ve now touched on our Merchant Base and our Offerings.
Now, let’s turn our attention to partnerships. Last quarter we officially partnered with Olla, a next-gen eCommerce platform for cannabis retailers. The partnership features a full integration of the Olla eCommerce platform with the POSaBIT point of sale.
We also announced a deep partnership with I Heart Jane, the premier online ordering and menu platform for cannabis retailers. These integrations cover every facet of the industry, including online menus, loyalty systems, marketing, analytics, and more. We continue to be excited to have both Olla and Jane as our integration partners.
Looking ahead in the second half of this year, we are planning to announce several loyalty and marketing partners with our point-of-sale service. This will involve a two-way integration of customer loyalty between our POS and the marketing service provider.
We also have several ongoing partnership discussions focused on expanding our payments infrastructure platform. Cultivating these kinds of opportunities will drive growth, and we look forward to having more to update you on by our next call.
We’re also building out a strong internal team. In April this year, we announced that Matt Fowler was appointed Chief Financial Officer of POSaBIT USA. Matt brings over a decade of diverse finance and operating skills to POSaBIT.
Also, as we mentioned earlier, we intend to double the size of our team in the next year to support our hyper growth. We’ll be hiring across the board for all positions.
Our current momentum has us poised for another quarter of extraordinary growth. As we continue to increase our offerings, announce new technology partnerships, expand our internal team and secure new payment and point of sale merchants. The market opportunity remains enormous and we continue to be very excited about the future of POSaBIT and our 2021 results, as we prepare for 2022 and beyond.
One additional note: we continue to work towards our QB OTC Symbol for US investors and expect the listing to be approved no later than November 1, 2021. There have been several delays that have affected all companies who are registering with the OTC right now due to a significant backlog from the pandemic.
We will now turn our attention to our specific financial operating results for the period ending June 30, 2021. I have asked our CFO Matt Fowler to review the numbers for you. Matt, take it away.
Matt Fowler - CFO, POSaBIT USA
Thanks Ryan.
Our overall financial and operating results for the quarter improved significantly from the prior year. Payments processed for Q2 grew 232% compared to Q2 last year, processing over $87.3 million through our payments platform, while gross profit increased approximately 350% year-over-year to $1.3 million. Gross margins improved to 27% of sales compared to 20% in Q2 2020.
Total revenue was approximately $5 million, an increase of 232% from $1.5 million in Q2 of last year. Operating expenses increased in Q2 by 100% to $1.1 million versus the prior year period of $571 thousand, primarily due to the continued expansion of our internal team.
Additionally, our balance sheet strengthened during the quarter with $8.3 million in assets versus $3.6 million for the year ended December 2020. Cash on hand increased by 407% to $5 million versus $1 million at the end of 2020. This was driven by increased volume from our payments business, attributing to a significant increase in cash on hand and receivables, as well as approximately $762,000 of cash received from the exercise of outstanding warrants during the period.
We are very happy to announce our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA in Q2 of $185 thousand. This is compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $240 thousand in Q2 of 2020.
That’s it for me, Ryan. I will hand it back to you to conclude our call.
Ryan Hamlin - Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, POSaBIT Systems Corporation
Thanks Matt. In conclusion, I now want to reiterate that we are increasing our 2021 guidance. Specifically, POSaBIT provides the following revenue, gross margin and transactional guidance for the full year of 2021; total revenue of $17.5 million to $19 million, gross margin between 28% and 32% and transactional sales of $350 million to $375 million. This represents a 20% increase in guidance for revenue and transactional sales from last quarter’s prior guidance. POSaBIT will also expand beyond the current 14 US states, and add 5 to 8 new states primarily on the east coast that will be fully supported by our POSaBIT payments infrastructure.
Thank you for your attention on this call. I’ll now move to the Q&A portion of the conference. At this point, operator, we’re ready to open the floor for questions.