VANCOUVER — 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.
SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION
The following table provides selected financial information of the Company, which was derived from, and should be read in conjunction with, the audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015.
|
RESULTS OF OPERATIONS |
Three Months ended December 31, |
Year ended December 31, |
||||||
|
2015 |
2014 |
2015 |
2014 |
|||||
|
Revenue |
$ |
13,267,213 |
$ |
3,944,850 |
$ |
36,519,010 |
$ |
3,944,850 |
|
Other operating income |
138,772 |
8,000,000 |
4,615,310 |
8,000,000 |
||||
|
13,405,985 |
11,944,850 |
41,134,320 |
11,944,850 |
|||||
|
Operating costs |
||||||||
|
Direct costs, selling, general and administrative expenses |
14,504,804 |
3,366,037 |
35,238,759 |
11,305,310 |
||||
|
Research expenditures |
5,351,409 |
1,200,354 |
15,668,482 |
3,048,012 |
||||
|
Depreciation and amortization |
7,406,972 |
57,836 |
13,410,237 |
188,876 |
||||
|
Asset impairment |
2,504,420 |
– |
2,504,420 |
– |
||||
|
Share-based payments |
1,015,280 |
1,247,172 |
3,312,409 |
3,276,288 |
||||
|
30,782,885 |
5,871,399 |
70,134,307 |
17,818,486 |
|||||
|
Operating (loss) income |
(17,376,900) |
6,073,451 |
(28,999,987) |
(5,873,636) |
||||
|
Acquisition costs |
– |
– |
(5,325,575) |
– |
||||
|
Net finance (costs) income |
(345,406) |
14,541 |
(621,014) |
120,754 |
||||
|
Foreign exchange (loss) gain |
(538,632) |
3,295 |
(604,911) |
(40,570) |
||||
|
Loss before income taxes |
(18,260,938) |
6,091,287 |
(35,551,487) |
(5,793,452) |
||||
|
Income tax recovery |
734,078 |
– |
651,370 |
– |
||||
|
Net (loss) income |
(17,526,860) |
6,091,287 |
(34,900,117) |
(5,793,452) |
||||
|
Other comprehensive income |
963,864 |
80,208 |
7,162,767 |
72,598 |
||||
|
Comprehensive (loss) income |
$ |
(16,562,996) |
$ |
6,171,495 |
$ |
(27,737,350) |
$ |
(5,720,854) |
|
Net (loss) income per share – basic and diluted |
$ |
(0.17) |
$ |
0.09 |
$ |
(0.41) |
$ |
(0.09) |
|
NON-IFRS REVENUE |
$ |
8,046,274 |
$ |
3,944,850 |
$ |
25,544,939 |
$ |
3,944,850 |
|
ADJUSTED EBITDA |
$ |
(7,718,680) |
$ |
7,378,459 |
$ |
(12,918,681) |
$ |
(2,408,472) |
|
FINANCIAL POSITION |
December 31, 2015 |
December 31, 2014 |
||||||
|
Total assets |
$ |
261,912,523 |
$ |
107,578,308 |
||||
|
Total non-current financial liabilities |
38,405,243 |
Nil |
||||||
|
Shareholders’ equity |
$ |
137,660,745 |
$ |
48,634,640 |
||||
“Fiscal 2015 was a tremendous year for UrtheCast,” explained Wade Larson, CEO and co-founder. “The acquisition of Deimos Imaging and the advancement of the OptiSAR Constellation were among the many highlights for the company. Our people are ready to show why we believe that our plans will change the Earth Observation and Geospatial Data Analytics markets for years to come. Our team is very much looking forward to providing an in-depth review of the Company, its key initiatives, strategy and vision during our first Capital Markets Day later today. I encourage everyone that cannot attend our event to watch the live stream, a link for which can be found on our website.”
Capital Markets Day
In lieu of holding a conference call discussing these financial results, the Company will be holding a Capital Markets Day. The event will be held today at the TMX Broadcast Centre Gallery from 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Live web stream details will be made available on the Company’s website (https://www.urthecast.com/), and a recorded version will be archived on the site following the event.
This event is expected to provide in-depth reviews of the Company’s strategy, its key technologies, the competitive and industry landscapes, and the expected future market opportunities. In addition to presentations from the executive, engineering, web and finance teams, participants can benefit from direct and informal access to the Company’s management throughout the event.
ABOUT URTHECAST CORP.
UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company currently operates four Earth Observation sensors in space, including two cameras aboard the International Space Station and two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. Imagery and video data captured by these sensors are downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on UrtheCast’s cloud-based web platform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast is also developing and anticipates launching the world’s first fully-integrated constellation of multispectral optical and SAR satellites, called OptiSARTM, which the Company believes will revolutionize monitoring of our planet with high quality, high resolution, and high revisit imagery in all weather conditions, any time of day. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker ‘UR’.
For more information, visit UrtheCast’s website at www.urthecast.com.
Non-IFRS Financial Measures
The Company prepares its financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”), as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. This release includes certain non-IFRS financial measures, such as non-IFRS revenues, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. The Company uses these non-IFRS financial measures as supplemental indicators of its operating performance and financial position. These measures do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and therefore are unlikely to be comparable to the calculation of similar measures used by other companies, and should not be viewed as alternatives to measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with IFRS or considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These non-IFRS financial measures should be read in conjunction with the Company’s financial statements and accompanying MD&A.
