Felizmente não vendi.
Mais um trimestre positivo, deixo a conf call de apresentação de resultados:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4389425-cerence-inc-crnc-ceo-sanjay-dhawan-on-q4-2020-results-earnings-call-transcriptE a abertura do CEO:
The majority of my comments will be on the achievements of our exciting first fiscal year as a stand-alone public company, but I would be remiss by not first reviewing the great results of our fourth fiscal quarter. By all accounts, our fiscal fourth quarter was the best quarter in the company's history.
We had record revenue, record gross margin, record EBITDA and record cash collections. The financial performance of the company was amazing with 10% revenue growth year-over-year, and 22% revenue growth sequentially. In particular, non-GAAP earnings per share at $0.61 per share was 88% above the midpoint of our guidance of $0.33 per share. The outperformance was primarily driven by great adoption of our products and services by the auto OEMs, the strong recovery in the auto market, coupled with the prudent financial controls we have implemented in recent quarters.
As you can see in the guidance that we provided in the press release,
we expect our first quarter revenue to be up approximately 10% to 16% compared to the same period in the prior year. For the full year, we expect revenue to grow between 9% to 15% over fiscal '20. We recently celebrated our 1-year anniversary as an independent company. And despite the challenges from the onset of COVID-19, we are extremely pleased with the progress the company made during its first year. We separated from nuance with minimal disruption, delivered a steady stream of new products and technologies had record bookings, including two of the company's largest contracts in its history and delivered fiscal year results on track or better than the guidance that we provided at the beginning of the fiscal year before the arrival of the pandemic.
Most importantly, we established Cerence as a leading company in the very important conversational AI space for transportation and mobility, buying a lead role in a consumer's experience inside the car and with other forms of mobility. Our participation as an independent company at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier in the year resulted in over 500 meetings with customers, investors and the press. By all accounts, the show placed us among the leaders for auto technology and innovation in the car.
We also opened the NASDAQ market and hosted an Analyst Day to help introduce the company to investors and other stakeholders. Among the key accomplishments
during Cerence's first year, we saw bookings increase by more than 70% compared to fiscal year '19, resulting in an ending backlog of over $1.8 billion. These bookings included
several highly strategic competitive wins with both our traditional OEMs and also including a number of electric vehicle manufacturers, including NEO, a company many consider to be the Tesla of China. We maintained our strong position in the embedded voice-assistant market and expanded our portfolio of connected car customers.
As CEO, my strategy is to drive the business with three priorities. The priorities are to drive product innovation, speed of execution and cost control. Product innovation is the most critical element of a leading technology company, and I drive the team very hard on this. The steady stream of amazing technology and products we have introduced during the first year is very exciting. We enhanced our core technologies and leverage our embedded position inside the infotainment system to gain access to all the sensors, cameras and microphones. This allows us to deliver new capabilities such as gaze detection, emergency vehicle detection and many others.
We also introduced Cerence Reader, which can read articles with near human like inflection and sound that even at just how it voices an article depending on if it is news, sports or something else. One of the other key products introduced during the year was Cerence ARK, developed and first introduced in the China market, but now available in other geographic regions as a faster time to market, lower cost solution for providing leading edge voice assistant capability in a car. Cerence ARK comes pre-integrated with cloud-based connected services and provides a turnkey solution for our customers.
We have introduced two new source applications, Car Life and Cerence Pay. Car Life, a new suite of AI-powered software as a service or SaaS offerings that provide drivers with the best and most up-to-date information about their cars, helping them learn about the car's capabilities or even scheduling service appointments when needed. Cerence Pay uses voice biometrics to allow in-car purchases using your voice to initiate the transaction and will generate revenue on a transaction basis.
I've only mentioned a few of the key products and technologies that we brought to market this year, which leads me to my number two priority, speed of execution. It is critically important to not only innovate, but to quickly translate that innovation into quality products and get them to market. One of the most important functions within the company is our product management group chartered with turning ideas into products. They have been extremely effective this first year. And as we look to fiscal year '21 and beyond, the new product momentum will continue to race ahead. The third priority to which drive is cost control. We have to innovate, efficiently convert that innovation into new products but also do so while keeping cost controls in mind. How successful we are at these three priorities is what ultimately leads to our financial performance as a company. And while Mark will review the details with you shortly I want to point out some key financial achievements for the year.
In February, we announced our first quarter results and updated our fiscal year guidance to reflect better profit performance on key metrics while keeping the revenue range the same. Shortly thereafter, we hosted our first Analyst Day event and introduced a midterm target model for fiscal year '24, showing a 15% CAGR from fiscal '19. Then the pandemic reach shows with the resulting impact on the auto industry becoming quite severe stay-at-home orders were implemented throughout the world.
We quickly made adjustments to our business saving approximately $12 million of cost in the second half of our fiscal year. With the business holding up better than expected in our third quarter, and the excellent results in our fourth, we were able to deliver better results than the guidance that we had provided pre COVID. Another accomplishment during the year was our successful refinancing of the expensive debt that we received as part of the spin out. This restructuring of debt is saving the company over $10 million in annual cash interest expense.
Last quarter, we first presented to use series of KPIs, which we think provide additional insight into our business. We have updated those KPIs to reflect our fourth quarter results and have also added additional ones. The new KPIs are to provide insight into the trends of using connected services by drivers of cars with our technology. Overall, our KPIs continue to indicate strong business momentum. Well-connected cars shipped in fiscal '20 declined 16% when compared to fiscal '19. Overall car production declined 19%. Certainly, COVID had an impact on both our connected car shipments and car shipments as a whole. The 14% growth in our billings per car is primarily driven by the expansion of connected services into more and more car makes and models.
This is consistent with the secular trend of increasing penetration of this technology. The new KPIs we are providing are related to the use of connected services in the car. The chart on this page shows the number of active monthly users and the number of monthly transactions. You can see the consistent growth trend over time, then interrupted by the impact of COVID and then the recovery. Overall, we would expect that as more and more cars become connected that this chart will show acceleration in both the number of active users and monthly transactions.
As we look to fiscal year '21, we expect to keep the business momentum going. In a recent study published by Adobe, 92% of people that use voice technology in a car say that it makes them feel safer while driving. Providing enhanced safety in a car is a core part of our mission. The same study also reports that 86% of respondents feel that using voice technology outside the car makes them feel safer in the age of COVID. This has created additional opportunities for the application of Cerence technology to mobility solutions, such as elevators. We will continue to aggressively pursue innovation in our core technology, launch new products and applications and expand further into adjacent markets such as two wheel vehicles, building mobility and others.
