ITEM 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis
The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. We caution readers regarding certain forward looking statements in the following discussion, elsewhere in this report, and in any other statements, made by, or on behalf of our company, whether or not in future filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements are statements not based on historical information and which relate to future operations, strategies, financial results, or other developments. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to significant business, economic, and competitive uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control and many of which, with respect to future business decisions, are subject to change. These uncertainties and contingencies can affect actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward looking statements made by, or on behalf of, our company. Uncertainties and contingencies that might cause such differences include those risk factors disclosed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 and other reports filed from time to time with the SEC.
We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements. All references to “we”, “our”, “us”, or “QuoteMedia” refer to QuoteMedia, Inc., and its predecessors, operating divisions, and subsidiaries.
This report should be read in conjunction with our Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Overview
We are a developer of financial software and a distributor of market data and research information to online brokerages, clearing firms, banks, media properties, public companies and financial service corporations worldwide. Through the aggregation of information from many direct data, news, and research sources; we offer a comprehensive range of solutions for all market-related information provisioning requirements.
We have three general product lines: Interactive Content and Data APIs, Data Feed Services, and Portfolio Management Systems. For financial reporting purposes, our product categories share similar economic characteristics and share costs; therefore, they are combined into one reporting segment.
Our Interactive Content and Data APIs consist of a suite of software applications that provide publicly traded company and market information to corporate clients via the Internet. Products include stock market quotes, fundamentals, historical and interactive charts, company news, filings, option chains, insider transactions, corporate financials, corporate profiles, screeners, market research information, investor relations provisions, level II, watch lists, and real-time quotes. All of our content solutions are completely customizable and embed directly into client Web pages for seamless integration with existing content. We are continuing to develop and launch new modules of QModTM, our new proprietary Web delivery system. QMod was created for secure market data provisioning as well as ease of integration and unlimited customization. Additionally, QMod delivers search engine optimized (SEO) ready responsive content designed to adapt on the fly when rendered on mobile devices or standard Web pages – automatically resizing and reformatting to fit the device on which it is displayed.
Our Data Feed Services consist of raw streaming real-time market data delivered over the Internet or via dedicated telecommunication lines, and supplemental fundamental, historical, and analytical data, keyed to the same symbology, which provides a complete market data solution offered to our customers. Currently, QuoteMedia’s Data Feed services include complete coverage of North American exchanges and over 70 exchanges worldwide. For financial reporting purposes, Data Feed Services revenue is included in the Interactive Content and Data APIs revenue totals.
Our Portfolio Management Systems consist of QuotestreamTM, Quotestream Mobile, Quotestream Professional, and our Web Portfolio Management systems. Quotestream Desktop is an Internet-based streaming online portfolio management system that delivers real-time and delayed market data to both consumer and corporate markets. Quotestream has been designed for syndication and private branding by brokerage, banking, and Web portal companies. Quotestream’s enhanced features and functionality – most notably tick-by-tick true streaming data, significantly enhanced charting features, and a broad range of additional research and analytical content and functionality – offer a professional-level experience to nonprofessional users.
Quotestream Professional is specifically designed for use by financial services professionals, offering exceptional coverage and functionality at extremely aggressive pricing. Quotestream Professional features broad market coverage, reliability, complete flexibility, ultra-low-latency tick-by-tick data, as well as completely customizable screens, advanced charting, comprehensive technical analysis, news and research data.
Quotestream Mobile is a true companion product to the Quotestream desktop products (Quotestream and Quotestream Professional) – any changes made to portfolios in either the desktop or mobile application are automatically reflected in the other.
A key feature of QuoteMedia’s business model is that all of our product lines generate recurring monthly licensing revenue from each client. Contracts to license Quotestream to our corporate clients, for example, typically have a term of one to three years and are automatically renewed unless notice is given at least 90 days prior to the expiration of the current license term. We also generate Quotestream revenue through individual end-user licenses on a monthly or annual subscription fee basis. Interactive Content and Data APIs and Market Data Feeds are licensed for a monthly, quarterly, annual, or semi-annual subscription fee. Contracts to license our Financial Data Products and Data Feeds typically have a term of one to three years and are automatically renewed unless notice is given 90 days prior to the expiration of the contract term.
Business Environment and Trends
The global financial markets experienced extreme volatility and disruption over the past couple years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While global financial markets are recovering, risk still exists; therefore, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all aspects of our business, including how it will impact team members, customers, suppliers, and global markets. Most of our employees, particularly in Canada, continue to work remotely. While our licensed-based revenue is generally more recurring in nature, the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 led some clients to delay purchasing decisions, product and service implementations or cancel or reduce spending with us in the early stages of the pandemic. While the impact of COVID-19 appears to be diminishing, we are focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet and liquidity position and will continue to closely monitor the potential impact of COVID-19 and adjust our response going forward as circumstances dictate.
Recent events in the Ukraine and Russia have also caused disruptions in the global financial markets. While we do not have any operations or customers in the Ukraine or Russia, we will continue to monitor the situation as a prolonged conflict could impact our business.
In 2022 we finalized a contract with a large multinational financial institution that is retroactively effective January 1, 2022, and signed a statement of work with another large multinational financial institution to start services while their contract is being finalized. We expect this contract to be effective April 1, 2022 once finalized. The contracts are for a wide range of services that will be included in both portfolio management and interactive content and data API revenue. Based on those new contracts and our other clients currently under contract, we expect comparable revenue growth in fiscal 2022 to the 22% revenue growth we achieved in fiscal 2021. We also expect to significantly improve upon the $212,372 net income figure reported for fiscal 2021 mainly due to new contracts mentioned above as they have higher gross margins than our typical customer contracts have on average.
Plan of Operation
For the remainder of 2022 we plan to continue to expand our product lines and improve our infrastructure. We plan to continue to add more features and data to our existing products and release newer versions with improved performance and flexibility for client integration. This expansion is expected to result in both increased revenue and costs for fiscal 2022.
We will maintain our focus on marketing Quotestream for deployments by brokerage firms to their retail clients and continue our expansion into the investment professional market with Quotestream Professional. We also plan to continue the growth of our Data Feed Services client base, particularly through the addition of major new international data feed coverage, as well as new data delivery products.
QuoteMedia will continue to focus on increasing the sales of its Interactive Content and Data APIs, particularly in the context of large-scale enterprise deployments encompassing solutions ranging across several product lines. QMod is a major component of this strategy, given the broad demand for mobile-ready, SEO-friendly Web content.
Important development projects for the remainder of 2022 include broad expansion of data and news coverage, including the addition of a wide array of international exchange data and news and video feeds, expansion of fixed-income coverage, and the introduction of several new and upgraded market information products.
New deployments of our trade integration capabilities, which allow our Quotestream applications to interact with our brokerage clients’ back-end trade execution and reporting platforms (enabling on-the-fly trade execution and tracking of holdings) are underway and will continue to be a priority in the coming year.
We are also creating new proprietary data sets, analytics, and scoring mechanisms. We are now aggregating data direct from the sources to produce data sets that are proprietary to QuoteMedia. This allows us to offer our clients new data products and lower our product costs structure as we replace some of our existing data providers with our own lower cost data.
Opportunistically, efforts will be made to evaluate and pursue the development of additional new products that may eventually be commercialized by our company. Although not currently anticipated, we may require additional capital to execute our proposed plan of operation. There can be no assurance that such additional capital will be available to our company on commercially reasonable terms or at all.
Our future performance will be subject to a number of business factors, including those beyond our control, such as a continuation of market uncertainty and evolving industry needs and preferences, as well as the level of competition and our ability to continue to successfully market our products and technology. There can be no assurance that we will be able to successfully implement our marketing strategy, continue our revenue growth, or maintain profitable operations.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
In the 2021 Annual Report, we disclose our critical accounting policies and estimates upon which our financial statements are derived. There have been no material changes to these policies since December 31,2021. Readers are encouraged to read the 2021 Annual Report in conjunction.
Results of Operations
Revenue
Three months ended March 31, | | 2022 | | | 2021 | | | Change ($) | | | Change (%) | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
Corporate Quotestream | | $ | 1,716,097 | | | $ | 1,454,072 | | | $ | 262,025 | | | | 18 | % |
Individual Quotestream | | | 553,461 | | | | 562,787 | | | | (9,326 | ) | | | (2 | %) |
Total portfolio management systems | | | 2,269,558 | | | | 2,016,859 | | | | 252,699 | | | | 13 | % |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Interactive Content and Data APIs | | | 1,994,238 | | | | 1,589,359 | | | | 404,879 | | | | 25 | % |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Total subscription revenue | | $ | 4,263,796 | | | $ | 3,606,218 | | | $ | 657,578 | | | | 18 | % |
Total subscription revenue increased 18% when comparing the three months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021. The increase is a result of a 13% increase in revenue from licensing our Portfolio Management Systems and 25% increase in revenue from our Interactive Content and Data APIs.
Corporate Quotestream revenue increased 18% the three months ended March 31, 2022 from the comparative period in 2021 due to new contracts signed since the comparative period. In particular, the increase was due to the new contract we recently finalized with the large multinational financial institution discussed above in the “Business Environment and Trends” section. The increase was also due to an increase in the number of subscribers for existing clients. We have added new products over the past couple years that are continuing to gain traction in the market and we have made improvements and upgrades to our existing Portfolio Management products as we continue to improve functionality and add new data offerings. These improvements have allowed us to attract larger customers and increase the average revenue for our existing customers. Finally, we believe there has been an increase in the need for our services for customers working remotely during the pandemic, a trend we expect to continue for the foreseeable future.
Individual Quotestream revenue decreased 2% for the three months ended March 31, 2022 from the comparative period in 2021. There was an increase in total users which can be attributed to new marketing efforts initiated since the comparative period and more customers working remotely due to COVID-19, but this increase was more than offset by a decrease in average revenue per subscriber which can fluctuate depending on exchange data selected by our subscribers.
Interactive Content and Data APIs revenue increased 25% when comparing the three-months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021, attributable to an increase in the number of clients and an increase in the average revenue per client. The launch of new products and the expansion of our data coverage have allowed us to attract new, larger clients to replace some of our smaller clients lost due to the economic hardship related to COVID-19. In particular, the increase was due to the new contract we recently finalized with the large multinational financial institution as discussed above in the “Business Environment and Trends” section.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Profit Summary
Three months ended March 31, | | 2022 | | | 2021 | | | Change ($) | | | Change (%) | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
Cost of revenue | | $ | 2,240,116 | | | $ | 2,063,640 | | | $ | 176,476 | | | | 9 | % |
Gross profit | | $ | 2,023,680 | | | $ | 1,542,578 | | | $ | 481,102 | | | | 31 | % |
Gross margin % | | | 47 | % | | | 43 | % | | | | | | | | |
Our cost of revenue consists of fixed and variable stock exchange fees and data feed provisioning costs. Cost of revenue also includes amortization of capitalized internal-use software costs. We capitalize the costs associated with developing new products during the application development stage.
As a result of a major growth initiative, which included investing in infrastructure, new product development, data collection, and the expansion of our global market coverage, our cost of revenue increased 9% for the three months ended March 31, 2022 from the comparative period in 2021. We incurred increased stock exchange fees related to increased usage and new market data added since the comparative period, and increased amortization expenses associated with internally developed application software.
Overall, the cost of revenue decreased as a percentage of sales, as evidenced by our gross margin percentage that increased to 47% for the three months ended March 31, 2022 from 43% in the comparative period. As discussed above in the “Business Environment and Trends” section, we finalized a new contract with a large multinational financial institution. This contract has higher gross margins than our other customer contracts typically have on average, resulting in a significant increase to our gross margin percentage.
Operating Expenses Summary
Three months ended March 31, | | 2022 | | | 2021 | | | Change ($) | | | Change (%) | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
Sales and marketing | | $ | 692,643 | | | $ | 638,864 | | | $ | 53,779 | | | | 8 | % |
General and administrative | | | 671,891 | | | | 607,240 | | | | 64,651 | | | | 11 | % |
Software development | | | 470,056 | | | | 407,288 | | | | 62,768 | | | | 15 | % |
Total operating expenses | | $ | 1,834,590 | | | $ | 1,653,392 | | | $ | 181,198 | | | | 11 | % |
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing consist primarily of sales and customer service salaries, investor relations, travel and advertising expenses. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 8% when comparing the three months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021. The increase is a result of additional sales personnel hired to support our product growth initiatives.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries expense, office rent, insurance premiums, and professional fees. General and administrative expenses increased 11% when comparing the three months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021. The increase is a result of additional personnel and other costs incurred to support our growth initiatives, and in particular the costs associated with obtaining SOC2 Type II certification. SOC2 certification provides independent assurance that an organization maintains a high level of information security, data integrity and business resiliency. We expect to achieve SOC2 Type II certification in late 2022.
Software Development
Software development expenses consist primarily of costs associated with the design, programming, and testing of our software applications during the preliminary project stage. Software development expenses also include costs incurred to maintain our software applications.
Software development expenses increased 15% for the three months ended March 31, 2022 when compared to the same period in 2021, primarily due to new personnel hired since the comparative period to improve our infrastructure, security, and business continuity management.
We capitalized $606,152 of development costs for the three months ended March 31, 2022 compared to $489,306 in the same period in 2021. These costs relate to the development of application software used by subscribers to access, manage, and analyze information in our databases. Capitalized costs associated with application software are amortized over their estimated economic life of three years.
Other Income and (Expense) Summary
Three months ended March 31, | | 2022 | | | 2021 | |
| | | | | | |
Foreign exchange gain | | $ | 17,590 | | | $ | 2,448 | |
Interest expense | | | (1,224 | ) | | | (1,008 | ) |
Other income | | | - | | | | 133,257 | |
Total other income and (expenses), net | | $ | 16,366 | | | $ | 134,697 | |
Foreign Exchange Gain
We incurred foreign exchange gains of $17,590 and $2,448 for the three months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively. Foreign exchange gains and losses arise from the re-measurement of Canadian dollar monetary assets and liabilities into U.S. dollars and from exchange rate fluctuations between transaction and settlement dates for foreign currency denominated transactions.
Interest Expense
Interest expense relates primarily to the interest expense associated with our finance leases and was relatively unchanged from the comparative period. Interest expense of $1,224 was incurred for the three months ended March 31, 2022, compared to $1,008 incurred in the same 2021 period.
Other Income
There was no other income for the three months ended March 31, 2022. On May 4, 2020, the Company received a $133,257 loan under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”). The PPP loan was forgiven in its entirety on February 19, 2021 and was recognized as other income in the 2021 comparative period. See Financial Statement Note 8 “Paycheck Protection Program”.
Provision for Income Taxes
For the three months ended March 31, 2022, the Company recorded Canadian income tax expense of $790 compared to $796 in the comparative period in 2021.
Net Income for the Period
As a result of the foregoing, our net income for the three months ended March 31, 2022 was $204,666 compared to $23,087 for the three months ended March 31, 2021. Basic and diluted earnings per share were $0.00 for the three months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our cash totaled $395,542 at March 31, 2022, as compared with $258,705 at December 31, 2021, an increase of $136,837. Net cash of $757,053 was provided by operations for the three months ended March 31, 2022, primarily due to the net income during the period adjusted for non-cash charges and the increase in deferred revenue, offset by an increase in accounts receivable and a decrease in accounts payable. Net cash used in investing activities for the three months ended March 31, 2022 was $619,526 resulting primarily from capitalized application software costs. Cash used in financing activities for the three months ended March 31, 2022 was $690 related to the repayment of finance leases.
We typically operate with a working capital deficit. As of March 31, 2022, our working capital deficit is $2,049,647, however current liabilities include $953,168 in deferred revenue and the expected costs necessary to realize the deferred revenue are minimal. If circumstances dictate, we have the flexibility to reduce development spending to maintain a strong liquidity position.
Based on the factors discussed above, we believe that our cash on hand and cash generated from operations will be sufficient to fund our current operations for at least the next 12 months through May 2023. However, to implement our business plan may require additional financing. Additional financings may come from future equity or debt offerings that could result in dilution to our stockholders. Further, current adverse capital and credit market conditions could limit our access to capital. We may be unable to raise capital or bear an unattractive cost of capital that could reduce our financial flexibility.
Our long-term liquidity requirements will depend on many factors, including the rate at which we expand our business and whether we do so internally or through acquisitions. To the extent that the funds generated from operations are insufficient to fund our activities in the long term, we may be required to raise additional funds through public or private financing. No assurance can be given that additional financing will be available or that, if it is available, it will be on terms acceptable to us.
Preferred Stock Redemption Rights
At March 31, 2022, 123,685 shares of Series A Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock were outstanding and 1,000 shares may be redeemed at the holder’s option at the liquidation value of $25 per share if the cash balance of the Company as reported at the end of each fiscal quarter exceeds $400,000. See Financial Statement Note 6 a) “Preferred shares”.
Foreign Exchange Risk
Approximately 32% of our consolidated revenue and 34% percent of our consolidated expenses are denominated in Canadian dollars; therefore, our consolidated cashflow may be impacted by foreign exchange fluctuations.
Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
At March 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021, we did not have any unconsolidated entities or financial partnerships, or other off-balance sheet arrangements.