Earnings call transcript: Wishpond Q4 2024 sees revenue decline, EBITDA growth

Wishpond Technologies Ltd (WISH) reported its financial results for Q4 2024, highlighting a decrease in annual revenue but a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA. The company’s stock experienced a 4.17% rise following the announcement, closing at $0.25. With a current market capitalization of $9.38 million, InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is trading below its Fair Value, despite receiving a "FAIR" overall financial health score of 2.18 out of 5.

Key Takeaways

• Annual revenue fell to $21.6 million from $23.1 million in 2023.
• Adjusted EBITDA surged by 129% to $1.7 million.
• Positive cash flow from operations reached $519,000, a substantial improvement from negative cash flow in 2023.
• The launch of SalesCloser AI generated $800,000 in annual recurring revenue.
• The company renewed a $6 million secured revolving credit facility.

Company Performance

Wishpond’s overall performance in 2024 showed mixed results. While the company faced a decline in annual revenue, it achieved record adjusted EBITDA growth, indicating improved operational efficiency. The reduction in sales team size contributed to a 30% increase in revenue per account executive, reflecting the company’s focus on optimizing its cost structure.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $21.6 million, down from $23.1 million in 2023.
• Gross profit: $14.8 million, slightly down from $15.2 million in 2023.
• Gross margin: 68%, up from 66% in 2023.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $1.7 million, up 129% from $759,000 in 2023.
• Cash balance: $1.1 million as of December 31, 2024.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Wishpond’s stock price increased by 4.17%, closing at $0.25. This movement reflects investor optimism about the company’s operational improvements and future growth potential, particularly in the AI-driven sales automation market.

Outlook & Guidance

Wishpond is targeting a 40% annual growth rate, with expectations of revenue acceleration in the second quarter and the second half of 2025. The company plans to expand the utilization of SalesCloser AI and focus on improving margins and reducing customer churn.

Executive Commentary

CEO Ali Tajskander emphasized the company’s strategic positioning in the AI sales automation market, stating, "We are building a fully autonomous marketing and sales engine that takes a prospective customer from the moment they show interest all the way to a finalized deal." He also highlighted the rarity of a software company of Wishpond’s size maintaining strong recurring revenue and positive adjusted EBITDA.

Risks and Challenges

• Potential market saturation in AI sales automation.
• Challenges in maintaining growth rates amid economic uncertainties.
• Competition from larger players in the AI and software markets.
• Dependence on successful implementation and adoption of new technologies.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the adoption and performance of SalesCloser AI. The company reported having 30 active paying clients with an average monthly revenue per client of approximately $600. The sales cycle for this product is around one month, and Wishpond is actively expanding its international market reach through AI agents.

Full transcript - Wishpond Technologies Ltd (WISH) Q4 2024:

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: Thank you everyone for joining us today and welcome to Wishpond’s twenty twenty four fiscal fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four financial results conference call. My name is Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, and joining me on the call today is Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO of Wishpond and Adrian Lim, the company’s CFO. This call is being recorded. We’ll be having a question and answer session at the end of the call. I trust that everyone has received a copy of our financial results press release that was issued earlier today.

Listeners are also encouraged to download a copy of our quarterly financial statements and management discussion and analysis from cedarplus.ca. Please note portions of today’s call other than historical performance include statements of forward looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the Safe Harbor provisions of those laws. Please refer to today’s press release and in our management discussion and analysis for a disclosure of risks and uncertainties. We provide forward looking statements solely for the purpose of providing information about management’s current expectations and plans relating to the future.

We do not undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except if it is required by law. We use terms such as adjusted EBITDA, annualized revenue run rate, and monthly recurring revenue on this conference call, which are non IFRS and non GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definitions set out in our management discussion and analysis. And with that, let me turn the call over to mister Ali Tushkander, chairman and CEO.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Thank you very much, Pavitra. Good day, everyone. We truly appreciate everyone for joining us today. Wishbone is a provider of AI enabled marketing and sales solutions that are built for helping businesses with their customer acquisition and increasing sales. We currently serve thousands of businesses around the world, and it’s been great to work with them and give them the sales and marketing tools they need to attract customers and grow their businesses.

2024 has been another remarkable year for Wishpond, highlighted by our tenth consecutive quarter of generating positive adjusted EBITDA as well as a 29% increase in annual adjusted EBITDA, reflecting our ability to deliver consistent profitability. I’m also thrilled to share that Wishbone achieved positive cash flow from operations of $519,000, a significant improvement from 2023, showcasing the effectiveness of our cost optimization efforts. This consistent improvement in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow has been a top priority in 2024, and we remain steadfast in this commitment as we look towards 2025. Furthermore, our annual revenue of $21,600,000 reflects the continued demand for our software solutions and drives our ongoing efforts to build a fully autonomous AI enabled marketing and sales platform designed to streamline the entire customer journey. As we enter 2025, we are extremely excited about the prospects of SalesCloser AI, which we believe will be a key driver of growth moving forward.

SalesCloser has quickly become Wishbone’s fastest growing product ever, now generating approximately $800,000 in annual recurring revenue or ARR, with a significant portion of this growth having occurred in the first few months of 2025. To continue accelerating sales closers adoption, we have been actively exploring new sales outreach initiatives and strategic channel partnerships. For example, we’ve seen great success with our recently launched SalesCloser white label reseller program, which enables agencies and businesses to brand and resell SalesCloser as their own, driving new revenue streams and expanding our general market reach. Overall, with an expanding sales pipeline and an increasing demand for our AI solutions, the company is well positioned to capitalize on new opportunities, and we will continue to solidify sales closer as a key driver of growth for the business in 2025. On today’s call, I would first like to pass the call over to our CFO, Adrian Lim, who will provide a financial summary of our results.

I will then return to share some general commentary on where Wishbone is heading and our vision for a full a for a fully autonomous AI enabled marketing and sales platform. Finally, I will provide some commentary on our outlook for 2025. Adrian?

Adrian Lim, CFO, Wishpond: Thank you, Eli, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call this morning. I am pleased to report that we had very strong annual and fourth quarter results for the year and three months ended 12/31/2024. Wishpond achieved annual revenue of $21,600,000 during fiscal twenty twenty four compared to $23,100,000 in fiscal twenty twenty three. The decrease reflects a strategic focus on prioritizing more profitable revenues, including a reduction in spending from the company’s legacy email delivery services customer, a reduction in the sales team size as part of cost optimization efforts, and a transition to utilizing SalesCloser for executing outbound demos. Our revenues were also impacted by an algorithm update by Google that affected email deliverability across our outreach platforms, including Persist IQ.

The issue has since been largely resolved with email performance metrics stabilizing in Q1 twenty twenty five. The other product lines are operating as we expected with consideration for reduction of our sales team and cost optimization efforts. Wishpond achieved gross profit of $14,800,000 in fiscal twenty twenty four compared to $15,200,000 in fiscal twenty twenty three. The decrease is primarily attributable to decline in revenue from the company’s legacy e mail delivery services customer who reduced their spending during the year. Wishpond achieved gross margin percentage of 68% during fiscal twenty twenty four compared to 66% in fiscal twenty twenty three.

The improvement in gross margin percentage is primarily attributed to a reduction in sales from the large legacy customer, which allowed for a shift towards more profitable business. During fiscal twenty twenty four, Wishbone achieved record adjusted EBITDA of $1,700,000 compared to $759,000 in fiscal twenty twenty three, an increase of 129%. During fiscal twenty twenty four, Wishpond generated positive cash flow from operations of $519,000 compared to cash used in operations of $260,000 in 2023. Our commitment to cost reduction and operational efficiency has led to significant gains in both profitability and cash flow. We continue to have a clean and healthy balance sheet.

And as at 12/31/2024, Wishbone had $1,100,000 in cash and had withdrawn $1,300,000 from the credit facility compared to cash of $1,400,000 and credit facility balance of $1,000,000 as of 12/31/2023. The reduction in cash balances was caused in part by investment in R and D, investment in sales closer marketing activities and changes in working capital. Wishbone successfully renewed its $6,000,000 secured revolving operating credit facility with National Bank of Canada on 08/01/2024. As of the end of the fourth quarter on 12/31/2024, the company had 58,636,045 fully diluted securities issued and outstanding. Looking ahead to 2025, we anticipate an increase in the company’s cash balance in the second half of the fiscal year as we continue to scale from SalesCloser and experience a return to growth across our core sales and marketing suite of products.

The ramp up in revenue from SalesCloser is expected to be a key driver with the platform’s growing adoption and expanding customer base contributing to a significant rise in ARR. Additionally, we foresee a rebound to growth for other Wishbone products driven by increasing demand for AI powered sales and marketing solutions. Furthermore, with the uncertainty with, global trade policies, I would like to highlight that Wishpun is a tariff resistant business. The company’s ability to serve its customers is not impacted by US tariffs as we are a software vendor that has no physical goods crossing the border. Additionally, as the buy Canadian sentiment grows, we are seeing favorable trends in the Canadian market such as businesses showing increased interest in choosing Canadian software vendors like us and a general increase in marketing campaigns launched to target Canadian audiences.

Overall, Wishpond remains in a very strong financial position with a healthy balance sheet, solid monthly recurring revenue, and a very good visibility for revenue and cash flow. Wishpond is currently able to continue growing without the need for any additional equity or debt capital raises. I’m also excited to share some updates regarding our sales team performance, which has been a key area of focus for us. One of the most promising trends we’re seeing is a consistent improvement in the effectiveness of our sales team, which has translated into higher productivity. We’ve seen a steady increase in revenue per account executive over the past several quarters.

This metric is an important indicator of both the efficiency and productivity of our sales team. Notably in Q4 twenty twenty four, revenue per account executive was $187,000 a 30% increase from $144,000 in Q4 twenty twenty three. Despite a reduction in account executive headcount each quarter since Q4 twenty twenty three from 42 AEs down to 25 in Q4 twenty twenty four, we’ve been able to drive higher revenue per account executive. This trend speaks to the enhanced productivity and efficiency gains that we’ve been able to achieve through process optimization, better targeting, and leveraging our AI driven sales tools like SalesCloser. This improvement also reflects the quality and focus of our sales team, which is now able to generate more revenue with fewer resources, allowing us to optimize our cost structure and improve overall margins.

We’ve been able to streamline operations and increase the effectiveness of our sales efforts by providing our team with better tools, more targeted strategies, and the ability to engage customers more efficiently. Our focus on improving the effectiveness of our sales team is a core part of our broader strategy to scale efficiently, improve profitability, and maintain a lean, performing organization. We’re encouraged by the, progress we’ve made so far, and we’re committed to ensuring that our sales team remains an engine of growth for the company. That concludes my financial update, and I will turn the call back over to Ali.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Thank you, Adrian, for that update. I would like to now spend a little bit of time on our vision for our future product suite, a fully autonomous AI enabled marketing and sales platform. Picture a business where every step of the buyer’s journey is handled automatically and intelligently, and no manual work is required. That’s the vision driving us at Wishbone. Here at Wishbone, we’re building a fully autonomous marketing and sales engine that takes a prospective customer from the moment they show interest all the way to a finalized deal.

By freeing professionals from tedious tasks, we aim to empower them to spend their energy on strategic thinking, creative ideas, and building genuine relationships. This vision is more than just a technology road map. It’s our commitment to helping businesses of all sizes grow faster, reduce costs, and achieve more consistent results. We believe that the best kind of technology doesn’t replace people. It elevates them.

When AI handles the routine, it gives humans the freedom to do what they do what we do best, connect, innovate, and lead. The key benefits of our fully autonomous fully automated platform are significant. One is fully automated. By eliminating manual work, our platform requires no human intervention. It operates seamlessly around the clock twenty four seven, ensuring that businesses never miss an opportunity and that all processes run smoothly regardless of time or location.

Secondly, no expertise is required. Our AI driven system provides data driven recommendations and decision making without the need for expert input. The system is designed for ease of use and offers seamless integration by connecting and syncing marketing efforts across multiple tools and campaigns, enabling businesses to optimize their strategies effortlessly. Also, thirdly, it is scalable and cost effective. As businesses grow, our platform can handle increasing demands without requiring additional resources.

This scalability ensures that businesses can continue to thrive without the need to expand their teams or invest in costly agencies. What’s more, Wishbone offers enterprise level capabilities at a fraction of the cost, allowing companies to leverage advanced marketing and sales solutions with minimal over overhead. In essence, Wishbone’s platform offers businesses an unprecedented combination of efficiency, scalability, and cost effectiveness, giving them the tools they need to accelerate growth and achieve success in today’s competitive landscape. These tools include our growing list of AI agents, which you can see listed in the blue box on the left. With our platform, businesses can also utilize virtual AI agents to deliver intelligent conversational experiences and can serve multiple purposes within an organization from sales support to customer service and more.

Our AI virtual agents deliver measurable impact on business performance and provide a flexible solution tailored to company’s specific needs, whether speeding up sales cycles or ensuring that no opportunity is missed. For instance, SalesCloser is one of many agents that we have in our platform. Businesses can create their own SalesCloser virtual agent to deliver personalized round the clock sales calls and product demos twenty four seven to engage leads, close deals. Businesses can also use their own AI call receptionist agent, which answers all inbound calls and general customer inquiries. Businesses can utilize WishOne’s virtual AI customer support support agent, which can help customers twenty four seven and in 10 different languages, ensuring the businesses can continue engaging with their customers and keep them happy and satisfied.

Furthermore, our virtual AI agents are adaptable across a wide variety of industries, including software as a software as a service, professional services, financial services, education, travel, and hospitality, insurance, and more. This broad industry applicability ensures that our clients can leverage AI to enhance their business operations regardless of their sector. In short, Wishbond’s virtual AI agents are truly powerful and are at the forefront of transforming business operations, empowering companies to deliver superior customer experiences while achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness. Our AI agents are a key component of our fully autonomous AI enabled marketing and sales platform. I want to demonstrate how Wishbone can be involved with the entire customer acquisition journey from website creation to lead generation, closing the deal and delivering exceptional customer support.

Our suite of AI marketing and sales tools can cover every stage of the process to streamline the customer journey. For example, a business needs to start by creating a website to attract customers. Wishbone is able to help businesses right from the beginning with our AI website builder, which can create dynamic optimized websites that are designed to convert visitors into leads. No need for a team of designers. Our AI is able to do it all.

Next, businesses may want to launch ad campaigns, which is where our Braxy AI ad management solution can take over the task of automating and optimizing digital advertising campaigns. This AI solution ensures that ads are served to the right audience at the right time so that businesses can run campaigns without the usual headaches of manual management. Businesses can then use Wishbone to quickly build high converting landing pages that align with their ad campaigns, ensuring a seamless experience for potential customers. To keep cam to keep leads engaged, businesses also leverage our email marketing tools with personalized and automated email campaigns that speak directly to each customer’s needs. And as inquiries come in, our AI email responder instantly delivers personalized replies so no customer response goes unanswered.

When it’s time to convert the lead to a customer, Wishbone’s calendar booking tool allows businesses to schedule appointments with their leads easily and effectively. Businesses can even use our calendar booking tool to schedule appointments with our SalesCloser virtual sales agent, which can take a prospective lead through a sales call or even a virtual product demo using the power of AI. Now with payments integrated directly into the platform, businesses can process transactions smoothly, making it simple for customers to make a purchase. After the deal is closed, our AI customer support agent can step in to provide round the clock assistance, ensuring that customers are always satisfied. Lastly, our referral marketing solutions empower businesses to drive growth and expand their customer base.

Our referral contest builder simplifies the creation and execution of referral promotions across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and different websites, and more. Together, these tools create a cohesive AI powered ecosystem that helps businesses automate, scale, and thrive all while reducing operational costs. With Wishbone, businesses don’t just manage the customer journey, they perfect it, creating smoother, faster, and more profitable experiences at every touch point. This fully integrated AI driven platform enables businesses to engage with customers seamlessly, automate key processes, and ultimately improve conversion rates. By leveraging Wishbone’s comprehensive suite of tools, companies are able to scale their marketing and sales efforts in an efficient, cost effective manner.

I would now like to share an update on some of the progress we’ve made with Sales Closer AI, our virtual sales agent that can deliver personalized round the clock sales calls and product demos twenty four seven to engage leads, close deals, and deliver insights in 10 different languages. While it’s still only in our first year, the feedback from our customers on SalesCloser has been incredibly encouraging. I’m extremely proud to announce that SalesCloser has quickly become Wishbone’s fastest growing product ever, now generating approximately $800,000 in annual recurring revenue. I would also like to highlight that a significant portion of this growth occurred in the first few months of 2025, representing two and a half times growth year to date. SalesCloser is an incredibly exciting product for us as we’re seeing that the platform has broader appeal beyond the SME market, contributing to our growing sales pipeline.

We are pricing SalesCloser between 250 to $2,000 USD per month for anywhere from sixteen to two hundred hours of virtual agent usage. As customers use more hours, the MRR, monthly recurring revenue, also increases. We believe sales closer will have a positive impact on our overall MRR in the future. SalesCloser also has a higher gross margin profile in comparison to our other Wishbone products, which we believe will positively contribute to improving our gross margins and overall profitability in the long term. To accelerate adoption, we are actively exploring new sales outreach initiatives and strategic channel partnerships that will enable us to act to access larger customer bases more efficiently and effectively.

We recently announced the launch of our new SalesCloser white label reseller program, which enables businesses to brand and resell SalesCloser AI under their own name, a program that is actually very popular and very on demand. The program provides complete brand control, seamless integration, and creates new revenue opportunities for agencies, consultants, and sales teams. By enabling third party businesses to resell the platform under their own brand, we are aiming to scale our distribution network without incurring the cost of direct customer acquisition. The white label reseller program is also anticipated to strengthen our customer retention by embedding Wishbone’s technology into existing sales and marketing workflows, further solidifying our position in the AI enabled sales automation market. We have announced two partnerships, one with Roomview Technologies, a real estate marketing platform with over 220,000 real estate agents, and the second with VenOps Inc, a leader in health care regulatory compliance and consulting services.

Roomview will leverage SalesCloser to enhance lead follow-up and increase sales conversions. By integrating SalesCloser’s advanced AI driven follow-up technology, Roomview’s real estate agents can efficiently engage with leads, schedule in person meetings, and drive successful real estate transactions. Meanwhile, VenOps will market and sell Wishbone’s sales closer platform white labeled as Provensis to clients in the medical industry. Such channel partnerships and collaborations underscore Wishmo’s commitment to expanding SalesCloser’s reach into new verticals and delivering tailored AI solutions that transform sales prospect processes and empower businesses of all industries to achieve their grow goals. Looking ahead to 2025, we are planning a broader rollout of SalesCloser by adding more partnerships and white label programs, which we expect will play a role in increasing adoption and driving new growth.

One of the key areas we’ve also been focused on is developing a strategic patent portfolio around our SalesCloser AI technology, which will be essential in strengthening our competitive edge and ensuring long term market leadership. In particular, we have been developing and filing a comprehensive set of patents around the conversational AI technology behind SalesCloser. Let me walk you through some of the critical patents that we have filed so far. One, we have filed a nonprovisional utility patent entitled virtual artificial intelligence AI representative to protect the underlying technologies of our SalesCloser AI platform that can perform automated demos, calls, presentations. The technology is a breakthrough in AI powered presentation technology utilizing advanced large language models and deep learning techniques for voice synthesis.

Second, we have filed a nonprovisional utility patent entitled enhanced state manager in a virtual AI representative. This technology improves the ability ability of AI systems to manage complex real world conversations, addressing challenges such as interruptions, tangential topics, and premature conversation endings. Third, we have filed a nonprovisional utility patent application entitled human takeover in a virtual AI representative, which allows human operators to seamlessly assume control of a call from an automated AI call agent when necessary. This innovation bridges the gap between AI driven interactions and human oversight, ensuring smooth and contextually rich customer experiences. Together, these technologies form the foundation of our advanced AI sales agent, which are designed to outperform traditional systems.

As we continue to expand and refine our port patent portfolio, we are confident that it will not only enhance our product offerings but also increase the overall value of our company. These patents protect our innovations and ensure that we are well positioned to capitalize on the growing demands for AI driven sales solutions. We are very optimistic about the company’s growth prospects, and I’m pleased to share Wishbone’s key goals for 2025. Number one is to accelerate organic revenue growth and increase monthly recurring revenue. Two, increase utilization of SalesCloser in internal sales processes to drive sales of Wishbone’s own products.

Three, accelerate revenue growth of SalesCloser and other virtual AI agents to external customers. Four, improve margins, decrease churn, and increase long term customer value. We’ve had an exciting year of growth and innovation. And as we look forward to 2025, we’re confident in our ability to return to historical growth levels while building on the strong foundation we’ve established. Our investments in technology, product development and customer acquisition are all aligning to position us for a year of strong expansion.

With the momentum we have built, we expect to see a return to growth compared to 2024, driven by the ramp in sales of SalesCloser AI and increasing sales of other Wishbone products. The demand for AI driven sales automation is growing rapidly, and we believe that Wishbone is well positioned to capture significant share of this market. We expect to see we expect to see higher gross margins in 2025 as we scale our business, improving operational efficiencies and increase the value of our product offerings. We are also in a position where we can continue to fund our growth and new product launches without the need to raise additional equity or debt capital. We expect to continue funding strategic initiatives, including product innovation and expanding our sales efforts without diluting shareholder value or taking on additional debt.

In summary, we are extremely excited about the prospects for 2025. Our strategy is focused on returning to historical growth levels, further improving our profitability, and ensuring that we can fund our growth internally. We are confident that these efforts will position us for continued success in the years ahead and deliver significant value for our shareholders. It is rare to find a software company of our size that has a strong recurring revenue model, maintains gross margins of over 65%, and is also adjusted EBITDA positive. Truly is a unique and profitable company, and we remain committed to delivering profitable growth in the future.

Finally, I want to thank the entire team at Wishbone whose hard work continues to elevate the company to higher levels. We want to thank our customers who rely on us to help them with their digital marketing and sales needs. Also, I’d like to thank you all for joining us on this call today. We look forward to providing an update next quarter. I will now hand the call back to Pavitra for questions.

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: Thank you, Ali. And with that, we’ll now open the call to questions. Just a reminder that questions from analysts will be given priority. First question is from Gabriel Young of Beacon Securities. Please go ahead, mister Young.

Gabriel Young, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple of things, Ali. Just on the on the sales closer, revenues right now, the sort of 800 k and ARR. Can you talk a little bit about the the breadth of the number of customers that are in that ARR and maybe some of the use cases that SalesCloser has been applied to so far?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Yeah. I think right now, it’s around 30, active paying clients. So average monthly revenue is about $600, roughly. So it is it is, you know, not couple of, you know, active utilizations. It’s quite broad, and it’s from a variety of different industries.

And and, you know, there’s a few things that are really, really interesting about the demand that we’re seeing. We see demand in areas that are sales and support, and we see demands even in areas where our AI agent can help that are not even purely sales, but they are a customer interaction, a receptionist, or, you know, a two hour call replaced with AI. We’re seeing a lot of the use cases where they’re starting on, relatively speaking, smaller subscriptions of that $600 and and growing usage over time. And we’re seeing some of the conversations where they’re significantly larger, where, you know, some of the individual conversations can be as big as the overall revenue of sales calls that we see so far, and and there’s gonna be a ramp to that. But but, you know, that is something that is quite exciting, and we’re working with them actively.

Adrian, anything else you wanna add to that?

Adrian Lim, CFO, Wishpond: I think you you pretty much covered it. I think I’d just add in terms of a numbers perspective too, just within the last three and a half months, we’ve been able to pretty much 2.5 x the amount of ARR since 12/31/2024. So it’s over a 50% increase there. So we’re seeing some very promising, trends in that area.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: And, Daragh, to, also add to that, which I I find quite interesting and encouraging is that because we are a pioneer in this field and, and and definitely one of the best products out there, when we launched, we didn’t even know of any competitors. Now, obviously, there are competition. But one of the things that is quite interesting with that, you know, first mover advantage and technological, superiority is that, for example, you search for AI sales agent, we’re number one or number two on Google, which is really significant and important, and that will, you know, now push us into areas where we’re getting very strong demand for the products, that we have to figure out how to address.

Gabriel Young, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Gotcha. And with your first couple of customers signed up, can do do can you talk a little bit about, you know, sort of the what you would experience in terms of sales cycle timelines? I guess from the time that a customer might file a product first and try it internally the time they give you a, you know, a a purchase order for, you know, x number of users, you know, how long do you expect that sales cycle to be on a go forward basis?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: It is little bit longer than what we’ve seen in the past in terms of the SMB customers of Wishbone where they just wanna get started with a with with a marketing campaign, or marketing activities. In the case of SalesCloser, obviously, it involves some changes to their business processes or how they’ve done things in the past. But what we’ve seen is still there’s so much excitement and so much potential, that is still the sales cycles are generally around the one month mark. But the larger deals that we’re working on, those are obviously taking longer, as you would expect, and and they start smaller and grow. But overall, yeah, I think that around one month mark

So it’s not a long sales cycle by any stretch of imagination.

Gabriel Young, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Gotcha. And just one more thing. I know in your your preamble, you talked about the business being sort of tariff resistant. But, have you seen, you know, over the last couple of months, any changes in terms of sort of lead gen activity or sales conversion rates or anything of that sort, in the business?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Yeah. Good question. So one of the things that, Adrian alluded to is, some of the changes in the way Gmail, Yahoo, and some of the other mail providers have, the changes that they’ve made. And the changes were made beginning of 2024, and they impacted our ability to do cold outreach and, you know, cold email activities for our own sales as well as, and more importantly, for our customers in the Persist IQ business unit. So for the Wishbone one, it meant that we were starting to have a dip in terms of how many conversations we can have and how many, of our emails were being answered.

And we quickly, you know, turned that around and improved that for our own outbound sales activities, and, we’re in a good place on that. But the more significant impact negative impact was with Persist IQ business unit because that one was, basically helping a lot of different clients with their cold outreach program, and, that is, that that was a challenge that took longer. And, you know, around now is basically where I would say we’ve mostly turned it around and improved that, but it did result in a decline in that revenue stream.

Gabriel Young, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Gotcha. That’s great. Appreciate the update. Thanks a lot.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: No problem. Thank you.

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: Next question is from Daniel Rosenberg of Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead.

Daniel Rosenberg, Analyst, Paradigm Capital: Question. My first one is around, the customer profile. So given kind of the early signs you’re seeing with sales closer, Are you thinking about, your go to market differently, given some of the scale, in the pipeline that you’re seeing? Just curious, you know, contrasting that with your historical roots in in small business.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Right. Yeah. So I’ll pass it to Adrian as well in case, Adrian, you have other thoughts. But some of the differences that we see are historically, a lot of our sales and growth have been, outbound focused, outreach, cold outreach, you know, email focused, and that is definitely part of the equation for SalesCoser. But in the case of SalesCoser, the bigger portion of the activity and interest actually is marketing driven, whether it’s ads, but, I mean, more importantly, organic marketing activities.

So people who are actually coming to us on the website, finding us because of the marketing activities, because of the blog post, because of, you know, our ranking on, on on search engines. So that, changes things, and it changes things in a number of ways. One is that, obviously, there’s a little bit of spending on ads, but, also, it means that the marketing is a bigger driver, and type of customers that you get are more sophisticated a lot of times. The ones that are in the market for this kind of solution, more early adopters, some of the larger, more established. Also, it means that with Outreach app on Outreach, called Outreach, you have more control over exactly who you’re going after and what geographies you’re going after.

With marketing and inbound, you get a mix from, you know, let’s say, geographies, different willingness to pay profiles. And so part of the change that we also see is that hybrid approach that we are now rolling out of well, not everyone has to get on a call with a salesperson. Some of those people, especially with the lower, you know, profile in terms of willingness to pay regions, they can actually just sign up, put in their credit card, you know, start with a free trial and and go. So that’s one of the differences. So the differences I mentioned so far are outbound versus inbound and marketing, self sign up versus sales driven, so product led growth versus sales led growth.

And the other difference also is, channel. With the rest of our business, channel partnerships historically have not played a major role in our, sales and growth. With SalesCloser, it is actually quite significant for us. It is early days for that, but the interest is really, really significant. I would say, you know, what I’m what I’m hearing from our salespeople and from the calls that I watch, one out of every five or six, demo calls that we have is someone who wants to resell Salescloser to their own audience.

So we’re still at the early innings of that, and that’s something that we have to support them and, you know, all of that. But, I think that would be another difference, that we’ve seen between, this go to market versus the rest of our products. Adrian?

Adrian Lim, CFO, Wishpond: Yeah. I think the you pretty much covered it there, Ali. And I think the only thing I would add to that is that, you know, the interesting use case of SalesCloser too, even just internally as we start to use that more, is that it expands the the breadth of what we can tap into in terms of international markets as well. And we’re seeing that we’re starting to get more interest and able to book more demos in these different regions that we wouldn’t have normally been able to. Let’s say, an example in Australia where the time zone is so different that normally an AE and our our full time AE wouldn’t be able to tap into, and we would be able to with SalesCloser.

I think there’s gonna be some increases in terms of customer profile of different international regions that we didn’t have before, and we’re gonna see, some some better mixes there in terms of the diversification of our geographical revenues. Then as Ali mentioned, the reseller program there has taken off really, really well. We’ve signed up, several resellers already just within a very short time span of us, releasing the program. So that one is very promising as well.

Daniel Rosenberg, Analyst, Paradigm Capital: Hey. Good to hear. I was curious about the product road map. I mean, you outlined in your slides, you know, really a focus on AI and supercharging your core products set, but, I’m curious what that means practically speaking. Like, for now, Sales Closer is its own business, especially when it comes for enterprise?

Or, how do you see, you know, that going forward your core business of marketing, software and solutions?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Yeah. Great question. So, increasingly, what you’re gonna see and that’s active development efforts actually going on right now. Increasingly, what you’re gonna see is, the products come together more closely and SalesCloser be able to feed off of the rest of Wishbone and use that as an advantage and advantage and and Wishbone be able to feed into SalesClosure. One example of it is that you have a, call, an agent of SalesClosure where it needs to send a text message as a result of that.

Let’s say, you know, it’s a medical clinic and, you know, someone asks for a booking or appointment and you wanna not book it on the call even though that’s one of the capabilities, but for demonstration purposes, you wanna actually send them a text message with a link. That text message capability would come from Wishbone. Or you wanna send them an email, that would come from Wishbone. Or vice versa, within Wishbone, you’re tracking the activities of a lead, and all of that profile is becoming available to Salescloser. So Salescloser is one part of, the customer journey, and the rest of the Wishbond cover a a pretty wide area as well.

And and we’re putting them together in a way that I would say it doesn’t mean that anyone who’s signing up to SalesCloser would have to use the rest of the platform, but it would be very easy and very natural for them to turn on the rest of the platforms and benefit from them. And one of the things that we’ve seen that is very, very promising is a lot of the conversations that we have with customers, about SalesCloser is people who actually have needs for the rest of what Wishbone does that, hey. I actually need to generate more leads as well, to use SalesCloser with that. Right? Or people who are using Wishbone, they’re generating leads, but, you know, they’re too busy to answer calls.

One example, customer who, you know, was paying $350 for, their their the phone systems that they use for their pizza shop, And, you know, they have to have someone, even minimum wage, always manning that as opposed to helping in the kitchen, instead of that using SalesCloser, bring their existing phone bills down and free up that resource, to use that. So now that’s someone that then would also say, well, okay. Now I also want more advertising help, more lead generation help, as well. So they they go hand in hand, and that’s the future of it. And concretely speaking, you know, if you wanna imagine it, imagine any interaction that you have with the Wishbone products, increasingly will be very easy for you to have a very natural human interaction with.

Meaning, let’s say you’re creating a landing page and you have the drag and drop functionality, but if you want, you can pop up an AI agent on the side and chat with it and say, hey. I don’t like that tagline. You know? Can you change that? I don’t like that image.

Can you add another section where it has our contact us, form on it as well? Okay. Or vice or or the other way would be not even inside one product, but across all the products that you’re talking to an AI agent and saying, you know, there’s I don’t know. Easter is coming up or, you know, some some holiday is coming up. I need some marketing help.

And then it answers you that, hey. Here’s some ideas. And you select one of the ideas, and then it goes and creates multiple components across all products that here’s the ad campaign, here’s the landing page that goes with that, here’s the email drip campaigns that go with that, and here’s, you know, follow-up, call activity if that’s relevant, sets that all up, and then you can continue talking to it for refinements, for insights. That’s gonna be increasingly what you’re gonna see. And in that world, you’re not gonna really need an agency anymore.

You’re not gonna need to be a marketing expert yourself anymore. You don’t need a designer per se. I mean, there are more sophisticated use cases where, sure, we will we’ll hand you some help on that. But that’s kind of that’s the trajectory, and that’s the setting level playing field that we’re working towards. Maybe we’ll let’s see the part in the road.

Daniel Rosenberg, Analyst, Paradigm Capital: And so when it comes to I think it’s Tuesday. Some of the optimism around growth, it sounds like the second half, sales closer is contributing to that. But, I think in your prepared remarks, you’ve mentioned return to historical levels. Historical has you know, that spans the gambit, I think, from, you know, moderate growth to 70% growth in in some periods. So, I was wondering if you could just help set expectations a little bit or goalposts around what that means in the next year or

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: For sure. I I think the in the short term, because of some of the optimizations we did and also decreases in number of account executives that we had, even though it helped us in the short term, it helped us with cost optimizations. But still, you know, having fewer account executives to begin with, it did have a negative impact on the top line revenue, and we’re gonna see some of that weakness show up especially in q one. And q one historically is a weaker quarter for us as well. That’s in the short term, we’re gonna see some of that and the reacceleration.

You know, we expect that, you know, in in q two and especially the second half of the year to happen. And, when we talk about historic growth rates, I mean, I think the goalpost is kind of that 40% annual growth rate. But in the more short term focus, I think quarter over quarter growth is gonna be the the milestones that we wanna hit first.

Daniel Rosenberg, Analyst, Paradigm Capital: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ll pass the line.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Thank you.

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: We have a couple of questions from the listeners here. So the first question is, you mentioned SalesClosure has launched partnerships in the real estate industry and also health care services industry. What other industries are you targeting next, or have you seen some positive general trends in?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Good question. I mean, I would have to look at, the list of some of the ones that are coming because some of them are, coming daily that we’re not, you know, necessarily myself, I’m not involved with. Right? But some of the ones that I’ve seen, for example, one who actually is a customer of SalesCloser was very impressed and said, you know, actually, the bigger opportunity I see is reselling this. They work with larger enterprise customers with their cloud, cloud needs, you know, whether it’s Amazon AWS or, you know, Microsoft Azure or or what have you.

And they were very interested in being able to provide sales closer to that audience and and expand with that. That that’s one of the examples. I see some in the financial industry. I see some marketing agencies who want to provide this to their clients. I think marketing agencies is a big part of it as well.

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: The next question is, are you only targeting new customers for sales closer in terms of inbound? Will you also look to cross sell sales closer to your existing customer base?

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: It’s it’s really both. It’s really both, but I think majority of the growth so far has been new logos.

Pavitra Sanga, Investor Relations, Wishpond: There are no further questions. We now pass the call back to Ali Tajskander for closing remarks.

Ali Tajskander, Chairman, Founder and CEO, Wishpond: Thank you very much. Once again, I wanna thank everyone for joining the call today. Thank you, the analysts, for your questions and the audience. Everyone, please stay safe and healthy, and we look forward to providing more updates, this year. Thank you.

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