Latest news with #MichaelHill
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Developers abandon Lone Oak solar project
ANDERSON — The planned Lone Oak solar facility in northern Madison County has been abandoned by the developer. Invenergy has withdrawn its appeal in Grant County for a judicial review of the Madison County Board of Zoning Appeals decision not to grant an extension for the start of construction. Jeff Graham, attorney for Madison County, said Tuesday that the withdrawal of the appeal means the project will not move forward. In March, the Indiana Supreme Court denied a request by the developers of the facility to consider a decision by the Indiana Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals denied the request of the developers to overturn a decision by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to assume jurisdiction in a complaint filed by Invenergy, affirming a decision in April not to take jurisdiction. The company obtained a special use permit from the Board of Zoning Appeals in 2019 with construction to have been completed by Dec. 31, 2023. Previously, Invenergy asked and the IURC agreed not to exercise jurisdiction over the project. In a 2024 complaint, Invenergy maintained that it was unreasonable for the Madison County Board of Zoning Appeals to require that the Lone Oak facility be operational by Dec. 31, 2023. The company wanted the IURC to rule that the county's decision not to grant a two-year extension was unreasonable and that the county's 2017 solar ordinance should be voided. If that action was not approved, the company wanted the state commission to provide an additional three years to complete the project. The original request for the IURC to assume jurisdiction asked that one of two steps be taken to allow for future construction of the $110 million project that would produce 120 megawatts of electricity on 800 acres. The company was asking the IURC to rule that the county's solar ordinance is unreasonable or void. In its decision, the IURC noted that Invenergy had requested a judicial review of the BZA decision and that the review was pending in Grant County. Invenergy maintains that it couldn't begin work on the Lone Oak facility for several reasons, including a pending lawsuit by remonstrators that hindered financing, the COVID-19 pandemic and related supply-chain issues. At a 2023 hearing, Michael Hill, an attorney for Invenergy, said that if the IURC declined to exercise jurisdiction, the ordinance and BZA denial of the extension would 'effectively kill' the facility.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q1 2025 Upland Software Inc Earnings Call
John Mcdonald; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Upland Software Inc Michael Hill; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, Interim Secretary; Upland Software Inc Ian Black; Analyst; Needham & Company Inc. DJ Hynes; Analyst; Canaccord Jeff Van Rhee; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Operator Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Upland Software first-quarter 2025 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) The conference call will be recorded and simultaneously webcast at and a replay will be available for 12 months. By now, everyone should have access to the first-quarter 2025 earnings release, which was distributed today at 9:05 AM Eastern Time. If you're not -- if you've not received the release, it's available on Upland's website. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jack McDonald, Chairman and CEO of Upland Software. Please go ahead, sir. John Mcdonald All right, thank you and welcome to our Q1 2025 earnings call. I'm joined by Mike Hill, our CFO. On today's call, I will start with a Q1 review. Mike will provide some detail on the Q1 numbers and guidance, and then we'll open the call up for Q&A. Before we get started, Mike, would you please read the Safe Harbor statement? Michael Hill Yes. Thank you, Jack. During today's call, we will include statements that are considered forward-looking within the meanings of the securities laws. A detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with such statements is contained in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. The forward-looking statements made today are based on our views and assumptions and on information currently available to Upland management as of today. We do not intend or undertake any duty to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements. On this call, Upland will refer to non-GAAP financial measures that, when used in combination with GAAP results, provide Upland management with additional analytical tools to understand its operations. Upland has provided reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our press release announcing our financial results, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Please note that we're unable to reconcile any forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures to their directly comparable GAAP financial measures because the information, which is needed to complete a reconciliation, is unavailable at this time without unreasonable effort. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Jack. John Mcdonald All right. Thanks, Mike. So here are the headlines. Very solid Q1; we beat our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoints. Our core organic growth rate in Q1 was flat but we are seeing positive growth momentum with our core organic growth rate moving to 2% here in Q2, and we see further increases in that as we move through the rest of 2025. Q1 adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million. That resulted in adjusted EBITDA margin of 21%. Now, that's up a little bit from the 20% that we reported in 2024. But here's the bigger point, we are seeing momentum with adjusted EBITDA margins moving to 26% here in Q2 and then further expanding as we move through the second half of 2025. Q1 free cash flow came in at $7.9 million, which was higher than expected. On the go-to-market side, we continue to see some nice sizable product wins, including with our AI-enabled products. We welcomed 107 new customers to Upland in the first quarter, including 19 new major customers. We also expanded relationships with 245 existing customers, 26 of which were major expansions. These new and expanded relationships occurred across our AI-powered product portfolio. So it was a good start to 2025. We are excited about the progress we're seeing on our growth plans -- more to come on that in a moment -- with increasing core organic growth and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion through 2025. On the product front in Q1, I'll note that we earned 76 badges in G2's Spring 2025 report. And those were across our solutions. Upland BAI Insight, our AI enablement product, received valuable recognitions along with Upland InterFAX, our AI-enabled cloud fax service. AI knowledge management solutions, Upland RightAnswers and Upland Panviva, also continue to garner numerous badges. Again, G2 is the world's largest and most trusted software marketplace, and their rankings are based on data provided by real software buyers. Upland Panviva in the first quarter launched Sidekick, which is a modern way to deliver compliant and contextualized knowledge to contact center agents. As a trusted leader in highly regulated industries, Panviva delivers next-generation AI-powered guidance for complex and compliance-driven organization. The product offers flexible solutions that meet customers' omnichannel needs, such as integrations with chatbots, AI agents, and CRMs. With the power of Gen AI curation that is approved by business experts, really providing that best of both worlds, organizations can deliver real-time recommendations when agents and customers need it most from a knowledge base that is trusted and secure and auditable. Upland Adestra announced a big move forward in its data-driven analytics in the first quarter with the launch of Audiences. The new capabilities bring the power of train of thought analytics to email marketers and data analysts, enabling them to build greater intelligence and maximize campaign performance. Building on Adestra's strong legacy of marketing and deliverability expertise, these new cutting-edge capabilities give marketing and data professionals the ability to answer critical questions around who their best customers are, exploring new audience segments, motivating prospects, increasing subscribers, and driving lead engagement. Now, subsequent to the end of the first quarter, subsequent to March 31, 2025, we sold our mobile messaging product lines. With this divestiture, we sharpened the focus of Upland to markets where we have the strongest competitive advantage, higher margins, and higher growth. I'll note that excluding these divestitures, our net dollar retention rate for the core business as of December 31, 2024, would have been 99% as compared to our reported 96%, so really, focusing the business on those products that are stickiest, that have the highest growth opportunity, and that are also the highest margin. Now, those mobile messaging divestitures lowered our 2025 revenue guidance midpoint by $25 million. But they had no impact on 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance. Again, we now anticipate higher core organic growth rate, again, starting with 2% in Q2, moving higher as we get into the back half of the year. But again, drilling in on that margin point, higher EBITDA margins, so moving to 26% here in Q2 and then further expanding during the second half of 2025. And I would note that we published today a new investor deck. It's linked in our earnings release and available on the Investor page of our website, and I would welcome folks to take a look at it. It really lays out clearly the new positioning of the company and the fact that we have now turned the corner and anticipate, beginning here in Q2, positive core organic growth for the business together with higher margins, together with higher net dollar retention rates, together with a more focused product story on markets where we've got the strongest competitive advantage. Now with the proceeds from our divestitures and free cash flow and cash on hand, in the first quarter, we paid down debt. And if you look at total paydown to date here in 2025, we paid it down by $34.2 million. And now, this is in addition to roughly $189 million of debt paydowns that we made in 2024. And with that, net leverage has been coming down, and we see net leverage declining to roughly 3.7x by the end of this year. So with that, I'm going to turn the call over to Mike. Michael Hill All right. Thank you, Jack. I think Jack covered most of the points on the financials for the quarter. So I'll just make a few additional comments here. On the income statement for Q1, revenues came in better than expected due to some customer go-lives, which allowed us to begin revenue recognition a quarter earlier than expected, and our InterFAX product line delivered more usage volume in Q1 than we originally expected. Q1 gross margins trended up from Q4 as expected, and gross margin should continue to trend up in future quarters by a few hundred basis points as a result of our recent divestitures. As a result of this increased revenue, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 came in above our guidance midpoint and adjusted EBITDA margin was 21% . That's up from 19% for the first quarter of 2024. As you can see from our forward guidance midpoints, we see adjusted EBITDA margin expanding to 26% here in Q2 and expanding further in Q3 and Q4 for a full year adjusted EBITDA margin of 27%. On to cash flow. For the first quarter 2025, as Jack mentioned, GAAP operating cash flow was $8.3 million, free cash flow was $7.9 million, which was benefited by about $1.2 million of -- from the sale of some of our interest rate swaps in the quarter. On the balance sheet, after paydowns of $34.2 million of our debt during the quarter, at the end of Q1, we had outstanding net debt of approximately $226 million, factoring in approximately $34 million of cash on our balance sheet. At the end of Q1, our gross debt was approximately $259 million. Our variable to fixed interest rate swaps effectively fixed the interest rate at 5.4% on approximately $217 million of our outstanding debt as of March 31, 2025. The remaining $43 million of our outstanding debt floats at an interest rate of SOFR plus 385 basis points, which was 8.2% at March 31, '25. We plan to continue paying down debt with our excess cash flow generation. On to guidance, our core organic growth outlook is projected to improve, as Jack mentioned, to approximately 2% growth right now here in Q2 and expanding in the second half of 2025. The growth rate assumes that we do not see any macro disruption from the tariffs. As mentioned, subsequent to quarter end, we divested our mobile messaging product lines. This divestiture lowered our 2025 revenue guidance midpoint by about $25 million and had no impact on 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint. For the quarter ending June 30, 2025, we expect reported total revenue to be between $50.3 million and $56.3 million, including subscription and support revenue between $47.5 million and $52.5 million for a decline in total revenue of 23% at the midpoint from the quarter ended June 30, 2024. Second quarter 2025 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $12.1 million and $15.1 million, which is -- which at the midpoint is flat compared to the quarter ended June 30, 2024. Second quarter 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be 26% at the midpoint, which is a significant increase from the 20% that we had back at the quarter ended June 30, 2024, a year ago. For the full year ending December 31, 2025, we expect reported total revenue to be between $209.5 million and $227.5 million, including subscription and support revenue between $197.5 million and $212.5 million for a decline in total revenue of 20% at the midpoint from the year ended December 31, 2024. Full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $55.0 million and $64.0 million, which, at the midpoint, is an increase of 7% from the year ended December 31, 2024. Full year adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be 27% at the midpoint, which is a significant increase from the 20% that we had last year for the full year of 2024. And with that, I'll pass the call back to Jack. John Mcdonald All right. We are ready to open the call up for Q&A. Operator (Operator Instructions) Scott Berg, Needham & Company. Ian Black This is Ian Black on for Scott Berg. You guys terminated your Chief Sales Officer in April. How should we view go-to-market strategy going forward? (technical difficulty) Operator (Operator Instructions) John Mcdonald Yes. Go ahead. Sorry. We lost our telephone connection there for a minute, but we're back. So thank you. Ian Black Okay, okay. Glad to have you. This is Ian Black on for Scott Berg. You terminated your Chief Sales Officer in April. How should we view go-to-market strategy going forward? John Mcdonald Yes. We've made a ton of progress on go-to-market strategy and the divestitures that I have noted during the prepared remarks are a part of that. We've focused the business on markets where we've got the strongest competitive advantage, higher growth rates and higher margins. So we're seeing growth turn positive here in Q2 at 2% and then increasing in the second half of the year. As a part of those divestitures and focusing the business, we have realigned sales with our general managers of our product groups, and so do not need a centralized management for the sales function. And we are excited about that motion. It's one that we think is going to provide more focus on individual products, which is where we succeed, and it's also a more efficient motion. Ian Black And then you've now completed three divestitures in 2025. Should we expect additional deals as you guys streamline towards growth? John Mcdonald Nothing material. At this point, we have completed, substantially, the repositioning of the business. And we look at a core business today. We look at core revenue of about $194 million, a core organic growth rate of between 2% and 3% this year with very strong gross margins, 27% EBITDA increasing as we move through the year and a substantially delevered business. And the markets where we're focused in today are stickier. So we see a net dollar retention rate moving up here to 99%. So we love the product focus, the blue chip customer base, and we've got, again, a strong and growing market opportunity. So I think it's a significant turn for the business. It's one that we've been working on for the past couple of years. And of course, more to come as we report quarter by quarter from here. Operator DJ Hynes, Canaccord. DJ Hynes Nice to see the improving outlook over the balance of the year. I'll aim this one at Mike, but Jack would love to get your thoughts. Mike as an outsider, it's hard to tell what's driving the faster organic growth, the improving margins? Just qualitatively, like how much of that is just narrowing in on your better products and kind of divesting underperforming assets, versus those better products actually getting better? Is there any way to kind of frame that conversation for us? John Mcdonald Yes. DJ, it's Jack. I'll take that one. Narrowing in, focusing on where we have the strongest competitive advantage the highest growth, the highest margin is driving the bulk of that improvement. So that's the answer to the first part of the question. But I would say part of this growth plan over the past couple of years has been building a centralized digital marketing capability. And we have seen real progress there. And if you look at our business over the past six or eight quarters, when we look at internal KPIs around marketing sourced bookings, it has been a stair step function up quarter-by-quarter in terms of increased marketing source bookings. And these are the basics that we put in place around organic SEO, around intent data, the investments we've made in our sales development reps, the investments we've made in product marketing. And I would say the final piece of that is what we've done on the product side. Over the past couple of years, we've completed the build-out of our India offshore development center. And using that capability as well as the talented developers we've got around the world, we have made substantial investments in and improvements to our products, performance, capabilities, but we've also been AI-enabling our products. And we're starting to see the benefits of that in terms of bookings. So right here in the first quarter, I think about one important sale we made, $0.5 million plus in ARR to a major tech company that was doing a substantial enterprise LLM and the customer implementation in -- around customer support. And this is a business that has got tens of millions of customer touches a year, well-known blue-chip company. And that kind of implementation is pulling forward products like Upland RightAnswers, which provide the knowledge bases, the trusted, secure, auditable knowledge bases that are needed and that these enterprise LLMs are trained on. So again, this is just one example of how the product innovation is driving this growth. That deal was a marketing sourced booking. So it's an example as well of the progress we've had in building demand gen. And again, when you now focus the business on those highest margin, highest growth, highest renewal rate products, when you take your NDRR from the mid-90s to the high 90s up to 99%, it provides a much more solid platform for organic growth. So we are targeting some increases through the back half of the year and then even higher next year. Sorry. Ian Black No, it makes sense. It's a helpful explanation and nice to see the progress. Operator Jeff Van Rhee, Craig-Hallum. Jeff Van Rhee A couple of quick ones. Just on the India. If you revisit that, just refresh me, I think you said that played out over a few years. When was the full build-out completed? When have we started to see the benefits of that increased productivity for the dollar rolling into the products? So just trying to get a little bit of sense of the timing there? John Mcdonald Yes, full build-out completed at the end of last year. And -- and the -- if you look at our spend, our R&D spend as a percentage of revenue, that will stay relatively constant here in the mid-teens. But the degree of throughput that we're getting for that is increasing substantially. Jeff Van Rhee That's helpful. And Mike, on the free cash flow, if I have it right, I think you were looking for $23 million last quarter, you bumped it down to $20 million. And I think you called out on the slide show, there was a $5 million -- I think it was a one timer related to a divestiture. Just reconcile the changes in the free cash flow outlook there and if I have that $5 million, correct? Michael Hill Yes, you do, Jeff. And so $20 million of free cash flow this year before that $5 million. So we've got these onetime costs that are really divestiture-related expenses, as we restructure the business here around the divestitures. So from a cash flow standpoint, yes, $20 million, if we ignore that $5 million additional bullet here in Q2. Jeff Van Rhee Okay. And just back -- a follow-up on just the prior questions around pipeline and visibility. Jack, any other commentary about the visibility into that top line acceleration? And specifically speaking to maybe -- it sounds like the digital marketing lead gen side has really picked up for you. I think you spent a lot of time to try to get better quantification and measurability in pipeline. Just any color from a pipeline standpoint in those businesses? Whether it's coverage ratios or others that just give you a conviction beyond the 2% for the quarter getting up to 5% and beyond? And just how visible that is and what the metrics are telling you? John Mcdonald Yes. So a couple of things on visibility and some basics here. it's a strong visibility business in the sense that 93% of our revenue is recurring. Net dollar retention rate pro forma for those divestitures, Jeff, is now up to 99%. Our average contract term is up to two years now. And our average customer lifetime, if you look at the core business today, is up over eight years, close to nine years. So those are all positives. Pipeline build has continued to strengthen quarter by quarter over the last six to eight quarters. Coverage ratios are decent. You always want them to be better. We have a pretty good degree of confidence here that we're going to beat the 2% in the second half of the year and get closer to 3%. And then we're looking at -- our internal forecast are showing something north of 4% next year. Now obviously, we got to execute to get that done. But if you look at this business over the past few years, that's a real turn from where we were. And again, it's married to EBITDA margins that are -- they're going to be closing in on 30% here in the second half of the year and as we move forward into next year. So Upland as a business has not seen that sort of rule of mid-30s territory in quite some time. So we view that as a positive. Jeff Van Rhee Yes. Yes, understood. And one last thing on the debt, real nice progress. In terms of paying down the debt going forward, the thought still targeting paying down $2 million a month, I think that was what you had commented previously, although we've had some lump sums in between here and there? John Mcdonald Yes. We have had some lump sum. So -- but yes, cash flow dependent, that is the target going forward. Operator There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Jack McDonald for closing remarks. John Mcdonald Okay. Thank you very much. Sorry for that telephone line interruption in the middle there. We appreciate the questions, and we will see you on our next earnings call. Thank you. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect. 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CTV News
10-05-2025
- CTV News
Brazen Ottawa smash-and-grab caught on camera
Thieves targeted a Michael Hill store in Place d'Orléans Shopping Centre in Ottawa, the fourth jewellery heist in the city in a month. (Reddit/MadGoat)
CTV News
10-05-2025
- CTV News
Micheal Hill jewellery store in Place d'Orléans falls victim to another smash-and-grab
A smash-and-grab at Michael Hill in Place d'Orléans caught on video on Friday, May 9, 2025 (courtesy Reddit: r/MadGoat)
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Yahoo
Judge to consider Lake District zip wire ruling
A hearing into a controversial plan for a Lake District tourist attraction has ended, with a ruling expected on a future date. Friends of the Lake District claimed planners misunderstood their responsibilities when they gave the go-ahead to a proposed zip wire at Elterwater Quarry. The charity said a "tranquil" vision of the national park was at stake in the case. A lawyer for the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) told a judicial review hearing the body had applied the relevant law when awarding planning permission. The Elterwater Quarry Experience would allow visitors to explore a cavern using zip wires and viewing platforms, according to planning papers. Friends of the Lake District said its main concern was that it would bring too much traffic to the "tranquil" area. The planned operator of the site, Zip World, has produced a travel plan designed to encourage the use of public transport and bikes to reach the site. But Friends of the Lake District's chief executive Michael Hill told the BBC the plan was "broken" and would not work. Ned Westaway, representing LDNPA, told the High Court hearing in Manchester the authority had imposed a "workable" planning condition on the developer to ensure its travel plan was satisfactory. Friends of the Lake District argued LDNPA had failed to place enough weight on conserving the natural beauty of the area in making its decision. National park authorities are obliged to prioritise this characteristic ahead of promoting enjoyment of the park by the public, such as through visitor attractions, if the two are in conflict. Michael Brett, representing Friends of the Lake District, told the court it was "common sense" that efforts to promote enjoyment of the park should not undermine the very qualities people enjoy. But Mr Westaway said the authority had applied the law correctly when weighing up the pros and cons of the development. Mr Justice Mould told the hearing he would "think carefully" about his decision before handing down a judgement on a future date. If he favours Friends of the Lake District, the planning permission will be quashed and the decision reconsidered by LDNPA. Zip World and the site's owner, Burlington Stone, are yet to respond to a request for comment. Follow BBC Cumbria on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Plans for zipline in national park quarry approved Lake District National Park Authority Friends of the Lake District
