UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) (“UrtheCast” or the “Company”) today announces financial results for the three and twelve months ending December 31, 2015. The Company reported revenues of $13.4 million and $41.1 million for the three and twelve month periods ending December 31, 2015, respectively, compared to $11.9 million of revenues for both periods in 2014. The Company’s non-IFRS adjusted EBITDA, excluding share-based payments, was a loss of $7.7 million in the fourth quarter (compared to a profit of $7.4 million in 2014 due to the recognition of $8 million in insurance payments) and a loss of $12.9 million for the year (compared to a loss of $2.4 million for 2014). At December 31, 2015, the Company had total cash balances of $47.5 million and working capital of $44.2 million.
2016 Financial Guidance
For fiscal 2016, the Company expects to achieve non-IFRS revenue between $55 million and $60 million (representing an IFRS revenue range of $78 million to $83 million). The difference between IRFS and non-IFRS revenue is the exclusion of our non-cash revenue. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $4.2 million and $6.2 million. Approximately $6 million of continued development expenditures are expected to be incurred on the UrthePlatform in fiscal 2016. If these development costs were excluded, adjusted EBITDA would increase to between $10.2 million and $12.2 million. The Company expects its first quarter 2016 adjusted EBITDA to be negative.
Additional Recent Highlights
Earth Observation Business Consolidated and Fully Operational
With all four sensors now fully operational, the Company’s Earth Observation business has been fully consolidated, from satellite operations through to sales and customer service within the new Earth Observation group. Theia, Iris, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 now form a diverse suite of sensors in an integrated market offering. UrtheCast’s distributor network has been provided with the Company’s joint sales materials and price lists and the Company’s consolidated sales team has been presenting the combined offering to customers around the world. This alignment of UrtheCast’s sales efforts coincides with the upcoming Northern hemisphere growing season.
OptiSAR™ System and Synthetic Aperture Radar (“SAR”) Technology Development
Working with its strategic partners, UrtheCast’s engineering team has successfully completed several technical and programmatic milestones for the SAR sensor development and the spacecraft design for its planned OptiSAR™ constellation. The initial design has advanced well past the R&D phase, with successful prototype testing completed of the SAR digital sensor electronics and novel dual frequency antenna demonstrating the advanced performance capabilities and powerful cost efficiency that UrtheCast’s technology enables. UrtheCast believes that achieving these critical milestones substantially reduces the technical risk of the Company’s ground-breaking new technologies and will provide prospective customers with greater confidence.
Web Platform Development and Rollout Continuing on Track
UrtheCast’s innovative cloud-based web platform continues to be built out and developed with strong customer input. Over the last quarter, the Company’s development team has completed work necessary to allow continuous updates to the web platform of new data being acquired by Theia, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. With this work complete, UrtheCast has released customer pricing for its GeoTIFF monthly subscription program, allowing customers to subscribe to an Area of Interest (AOI) and constantly receive GeoTIFF images via UrtheCast’s API’s as they are added to the Platform. UrtheCast believes the ability to provide a continuous stream of fresh data to web platform users is imperative to the Company’s analytics customers, and is another key benefit of the Deimos acquisition.
New Organizational Structure and Better Alignment with Strategy
Having now transitioned from startup to full operations under new CEO Wade Larson, UrtheCast’s leadership team recently undertook a review of the Company’s operations, its expenditures, and its strategic plan for 2016 and beyond. That effort culminated in decisions to reallocate investments to areas of greatest profitability growth and to implement a new organizational structure to realize better operating efficiencies between its North American and European operations. The new, vertically-integrated Company structure consolidates its operations in the three new “pillars” of Engineering Services, Earth Observation, and the Web Platform.
Debt Financing Improves Cash Position
The Company obtained a senior secured term loan of €25 million, representing approximately CAD$37.5 million from Banco de Sabadell, S.A., which provides solid footing to execute on its 2016 objectives. The loan has a five year term and will accrue interest at the EURIBOR 6 month rate (but no less than 0%) + 2.6% per annum. Of the loan, €20 million was used to reduce an inter-company loan made by UrtheCast to its Spanish subsidiary in connection with the acquisition of Deimos Imaging, S.L.U. from Elecnor, S.A. in July 2015.
Insurance Claim
In the fourth quarter of 2015, the Company made a final claim of $7.3 million under its insurance policy. Notwithstanding these claims, Iris continues to produce videos that meet the needs of certain segments of the market.
