Ooma (OOMA) reports, plus Quick Updates on Asure (ASUR), MindBody (MB) and BioTelemetry (BEAT)
Ooma (OOMA) Ooma reported yesterday after the close and nearly all the analysts following the company are disappointed, including me. Revenue growth should have come in at 15%, but only grew by 12.8% to $27.6 million (missed by $560,000), while EPS of $0.02 beat by a penny. Those weren’t great numbers, but more damaging was management reduction of this year’s guidance. It now sees revenue of $113-$116 million (8%-11% growth) versus prior expectations of $121 million–$124 million (15.8%-18.6% growth). EPS guidance of a loss of $0.08–$0.13 was kept the same.
The issues are threefold. First, Business Promoter continues to struggle (no surprise here), bringing in only $850,000 versus $1.8 million a year ago. Second, Talkatone mobile app revenue fell by 10% to just $1.4 million, and 15% of added inventory went unfilled (versus a surplus of demand last year), probably due to increased competition from Google and Facebook. Third, the rollout of devices for Ooma Home service was delayed due to limitations in sensors. The company has redirected advertising dollars from Ooma Home to Ooma Business, so (as expected) sales growth in Ooma Home has slowed to 12%. That’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and we’d like to see to home security services ramping up more quickly. Management sees increasing home competition from Amazon Alexa and Google Home. The bright spot continues to be Ooma Office, which was up 63% and now accounts for 21% of total revenue, versus just 13% last year at this time.
The bottom line here is that the Business Promoter business is dying (which we’ve known). But now Talkatone appears to be withering too. And management has failed to execute a quick introduction of the home security solutions for Ooma Home, mainly because it is focused on the Ooma Office rollout internationally. That sounds like a rational decision given scarce resources and how big the WeWork opportunity can be. But it comes at a cost. This is a small company and it doesn’t have the resources to fight the battle on multiple fronts at the same time. In fact, it seems like it doesn’t have the resources to push its main solutions, Ooma Office and Ooma Home, at the same time. That’s the main reason why the stock is taking a hit today—the market is concerned about the Ooma management team’s ability to execute on two fronts.
One of the topics of discussion is the potential to fully integrate Ooma Home with Alexa to bring full telecom capabilities to that platform, which is now just limited to Alexa to Alexa calls. This idea appears to be a pitch by Wunderlich analyst Matt Robison (he’s brought it up before) to help prime the pump for a larger collaboration between the two companies, or possibly ignite M&A discussions.
If we step back and look at Ooma right now, what we see is a $150 million market cap company in a competitive market that is changing rapidly. We thought they were on the forefront of change, and had a platform that allowed them to be both nimble and opportunistic. They appear less nimble than we thought.
They also have two old acquired assets (Talkatone and Business Promoter) that could be divested to reduce the number of balls in the air (granted they bring in some profits, but at what mental cost?). What’s left is a small business telecom solution (Ooma Office) that appears to be competing well (growing over 60%) in the same space occupied by $2.5 billion market cap RingCentral (RNG). And a home solution (Ooma Home) that suddenly appears to be seeking new leadership/investment before the growth rate falls below 10%, but which offers a ton of features (call blocking, 911, mobile integration, home security, etc.) for a fraction of the price of competing solutions. It seems like this company should be sold to the highest bidder, which would represent a drop in the bucket for Amazon, Google or Microsoft.
Shares were trading around 12 prior to the call, at a level well below consensus price targets (which were mostly near 16). Those targets have now come down to the 10–12 range (where the stock was yesterday), but the stock is now trading just below 9, which is where we jumped in. In short, we’re back to where we started. I don’t want to add to the selling pressure today. I think shares will bounce a little tomorrow, and there could easily be some potential acquirer interest given the weakness. Let’s take this pounding today and move to our corner to consider our options right around our break-even price. Taking down the stock from Buy to Hold. HOLD.
Asure Software (ASUR) Our biggest recent mover retreated from 15 to 13 last week. As hoped, it held at 13 and has moved back above 14 this week on no material developments. Maintain at hold. HOLD.
BioTelemetry (BEAT) The company has had to up its offer price for LifeWatch (by $10.2 million) to $275 million to pull in the 12% of shares owned by Aevis Victoria and Antoine Hubert, who had previously made an unsuccessful bid for LifeWatch. The offer period has also been extended to end on June 8 rather than May 31. The additional acceptance period now runs from June 15 to June 28, if needed. I still expect it to be successful. BUY.
MindBody (MB) On Monday, MindBody announced a secondary stock offering of 4.4 million shares, which represents roughly 11% dilution. The stock took a small hit initially and then bounced back. Why? Because this offering is almost certainly being done to help fund acquisitions, and somewhat sizeable ones at that. The company ended the last quarter with $88 million in cash (it adds a couple of million a quarter) and zero debt. At around a $28 offer price, 4.4 million shares should net over $130 million. Why would it need a total of almost $220 million in cash? No reason, other than to buy something. That’s what the market is realizing and why shares aren’t down 10% after the news. We don’t know the precise offer price just yet. I think this is interesting news but it doesn’t change my rating on the stock until we know more. Maintain at hold. HOLD.