Thank you for joining us today to discuss PARTS iD's 1st quarter 2021 financial results. On today's call are Nino Ciappina, Chief Executive Officer, and Kailas Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to point out that certain statements made during this presentation are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect management's judgment and analysis only as of today, and actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on a number of factors affecting PARTS iD's business. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements to be made in this conference call and webcast, we refer you to our 1st quarter 2021 earnings release, which was furnished to the SEC today on Form 8-K, as well as the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and its other filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The company plans to refer to certain adjusted non-GAAP metrics on this call. Explanation of those metrics and reconciliations of GAAP metrics to those non-GAAP metrics can be found in the earnings release issued earlier today, which is also posted on the press release page of our website at www.partsidinc.com. I'll now turn the call over to Nino Ciappina, Chief Executive Officer of PARTS iD. Nino? Thank you, thanks, everyone, for joining us for our 1st quarter earnings call. 2021 is off to a great start. We entered the year with a lot of momentum in our business and sound strategies in place to continue driving strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. Our 1st quarter results demonstrate that our strategies are working as we grew net revenue 54% year-over-year and increased adjusted EBITDA by 83% year-over-year, even as we faced some cost and expense headwinds. Given PARTS iD is a relatively new company, I'd like to spend some time discussing our business, the technology platform, and operating model before getting into the key drivers of our recent performance. Kailas will take you through the financials. After that, we'll open the call to your questions. PARTS iD is a technology-driven digital commerce company focused on creating custom infrastructure and unique user experiences within niche markets. Our technology is a data and information platform that enables and facilitates a differentiated digital commerce experience for complex product categories as opposed to a pure e-commerce retailer. The platform integrates software engineering with catalog management, data intelligence, mining and analytics, along with user interface development, which utilizes distinctive rules-based parts fitment software capabilities. To handle the ever-growing need for accurate product and parts data, we utilize cutting-edge computational and software engineering techniques, including Bayesian classification, to enhance and improve data records and product information, and ultimately, to contribute to the overall development of an engaging user experience. The technology platform is fungible, which we've demonstrated by launching seven new verticals in August 2018, including motorcycleid.com, boatid.com, and camperid.com, which all leverage the same proprietary technology platform and data architecture with a unified shopping cart, enabling customers to shop across verticals and seamlessly check out using one cart. Through the journey of building an end-to-end digital commerce technology platform for complex product parts and accessories, we developed a product portfolio with over 17 million SKUs, a just-in-time fulfillment network comprising over 1,000 vendor partners, over 5,500 active product brands, over 14 billion data points related to vehicle parts, and proprietary machine learning algorithms for complex fitment industries such as vehicle parts and accessories. There are several key points that highlight the attractiveness of our platform, our operating model, and underscore how PARTS iD is distinguished from the competition. 1st, our distinctive technology provides accurate fitment data, which enables a successful experience for the auto parts consumer and supplier. Unlike any other consumer product category, the success or failure of selling parts comes down to fitment data that sellers like us add to our product offerings. Fitment is the compatibility of each part and accessory to each specific vehicle year, make, model, engine type, trim, and more. Having fitment data that is accurate, complete, and in the right format for each channel is crucial to a superior user experience and a successful customer transaction. Furthermore, our proprietary technology enables us to test and add new product lines and brands rapidly. 2nd, our product catalog of over 17 million SKUs and 5,500 brands is unrivaled. Our comprehensive catalog is enriched with nearly 14 billion data points related to vehicle parts, advanced 3D imagery, in-depth product descriptions, customer reviews, installation and fitment guides, as well as other rich custom content created in our in-house studio, specifically catering to the needs of the automotive aftermarket industry, and is further complemented by specialized customer service. 3rd, our proprietary and capital-efficient fulfillment model allows us to grow rapidly without the need for additional capital. Our network of over 1,000 product vendors has enabled us to scale our catalog size quickly and add new verticals, unlike traditional players that have more capital-intensive businesses. We can test and add new product lines and brands quickly without tying up capital and without worrying about inventory obsolescence. Our geo-optimized fulfillment algorithm determines which product vendors to buy from while the sale is being made and incorporates factors such as real-time inventory from our fulfillment network, customer proximity, shipping cost, and profitability. This decentralized, data-driven approach allows us to increase fill rate and delivery speed. Fourth, superior customer experience is a result of rich content, wide product range with ease of selection, proprietary fitment data, and highly trained customer service, providing a data-driven engagement platform for discovery and inspiration. This is evident by the number of repeat customers defined as customers in the 1st Quarter of 2021 who had made a prior purchase between 2011 and 2020, represented 26.9% of total customers in the 1st Quarter of 2021. Our overall product return rate continues to be approximately just 5% versus an industry average of more than 20%, and our Net Promoter Score of approximately 67. We have invested over 10 years building our platform, and it's not easy to replicate. In fact, our investment in technology and data is arguably the deepest competitive moat around our business, and it has allowed us to expand into new verticals, leveraging a capital-efficient, just-in-time inventory model to offer the consumer an extensive selection and experience. With that background, I'll walk through the key highlights from the 1st quarter, and then I'll discuss our long-term growth plans before turning it over to Kailas for a review of the financials. As I outlined during our fourth quarter earnings call in March, we have been concentrating our efforts on underdeveloped product lines to expand our catalog. This includes original equipment and repair parts in our core automotive business, as well as our newer verticals such as motorcycle, boating, camper, and powersports. In addition to product expansion, we are also broadening the services available through our platform as we push deeper into the Do-I t-F or-M e segment of the market to advance carid.com's position as a one-stop shop and seamless solution for all vehicle enthusiast needs. We have successfully partnered with over 2,000 tire installation locations, and we're on track to have over 9,000 tire installation locations by the end of this year. This tire installation service allows customers to visit carid.com, research and choose from a wide variety of tires, and in the same transaction, select a tire installation center near them to schedule an appointment. Shifting to our newer verticals, we experienced exceptional growth in motorcycle powersports, boating and marine, and RV camper during the 1st quarter. With the total value of orders received within each growing by 80% or more over the 1st quarter of 2020. While we are very pleased with our recent results, we believe we have only just begun to unlock the potential of our unique technology-led, capital-efficient, inventory-light business model. As we shared on our last call, we are working on several strategic initiatives, including category expansion, developing the new verticals, pricing optimization, online-to-offline initiatives, brand building, and marketing diversification. Starting 1st with category expansion and developing the new verticals. Within our core automotive product lines, we are working on developing additional vendor relationships in large, relatively underdeveloped categories such as original equipment and repair parts. We are also pursuing similar strategies in our new verticals, and we're making good headway increasing SKU counts for these fast-growing businesses by onboarding a wide selection of products and brands. Moving next to pricing optimization. We launched several price elasticity tests on additional brands. We have seen continued improvement in sales volume as well as in site conversion rate in many brands where these tests have been launched. We have also recently carried over this methodology to the 1st batch of brands in some of the new verticals. Next, I'll move to our initiatives in online to offline. As I shared in my earlier remarks, we have successfully partnered with over 2,000 tire installation locations and we're on track to have over 9,000 tire installation locations by the end of this year. We believe tire installation is just the 1st of many other services we can integrate partners with and offer in the future. Finally, I'll move to brand building and marketing diversification. We are increasing our investment in Connected TV, video, and social media advertising to build on the work we started in 2020. In addition, there is work underway to grow email subscribers to facilitate building more personalized customer communication and relationships. In conclusion, we are very encouraged by the growth in customer acquisition and retention in the 1st quarter. This, combined with improvements in our conversion rate, drove net revenue growth of 54% versus the 1st quarter of 2020. In addition, we're excited about the continued momentum in our new verticals, which experienced exceptional growth, all many growing in excess of over 80% versus same period last year. We believe the key drivers of our success is rooted in product and category expansion, pricing optimization, connecting online to offline with value-added services, growing brands awareness, increasing average order value, and conversion rate. We are confident that PARTS iD is positioned for continued growth given our superior customer experience, strategic initiatives, differentiated technology, comprehensive product catalog, and experienced management team. Our focus continues to be long-term profitable growth. We look forward to updating you on our progress as we continue to execute our long-term vision for the company. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kailas to review our financials. Kailas? Thanks, Nino. With Nino covering the drivers of our top line and our earnings release, and 10Q, continuing a review of our full 1st quarter financials, I'm going to limit my comments to gross margins, expenses, and our balance sheets. Starting with gross margins, gross margin was 20.9% in the three months ended March 31, 2021, which was slightly lower than the gross margin of 21.4% in three months ended March 31, 2020. We, like many businesses, are experiencing higher shipping costs due to continuation of surcharges by shipping carriers. With respect to operating expenses, advertising expenses increased to $4.4 million, or 72.3%, for the three months ended March 31, 2021, compared to the three months ended March 31, 2020. This increase in advertising cost was primarily attributable to an increase in paid traffic in the three months ended March 31, 2021, a change in mix of advertising channels used, and testing of new advertising campaigns and content development. SG&A expenses increased $2.7 million, or 31%, for the three months ended March 31, 2021, compared to three months ended March 31, 2020. This increase was primarily attributable to an increase of $1.1 million in merchant service provider processing fees, in line with the increase in revenue, and to $1.2 million of a public company operating expenses. It is important to understand that these are ongoing expenses that will be headwind to year-over-year comparisons until we lap the completion of our business combination later this year. Turning to our balance sheet. As of March 31, 2021, we had a cash of $37.4 million, compared to $22.2 million at the December 31, 2020. The increase in cash was primarily driven by net cash provided by operating activities of $17 million, partly offset by cash used in investing activities, $1.8 million, primarily related to website and software development expenditures. With our capital efficient, inventory light business model, our cash balances puts us in a strong position to continue investing in our growth initiatives and our long-term profit objectives. With that, operator, we are now ready to take the questions. Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our 1st question today is from Maria Ripps of Canaccord. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the very strong revenue in the quarter. Can you maybe talk about key drivers behind this sort of revenue growth accelerating in Q1, and did you see any benefit from the latest round of stimulus checks in the quarter? Sort of related to that, are you able to share any color on whether this strength is continuing into Q2? Hi, Maria. Thank you for joining the call. Can you unpack your questions just one at a time? The 1st one just being about revenue growth in the quarter, the key drivers? Yeah. I just wanted to ask about sort of key drivers behind sort of revenue acceleration in Q1 relative to what you reported in Q4. Just wanted to see if you saw any benefit from the stimulus checks in the quarter. The last part of the question is whether you're able to comment on what you're seeing in Q2. Okay. We had very strong underlying trends in our core business, exceptional growth in our newer verticals. As I mentioned, many of the new verticals grew in excess of 80%. Conversion rate was very strong, as was average order value. Really firing across all cylinders. This is in addition to the momentum coming into the year. In terms of the pandemic, or rather the government stimulus check, the 1st quarter was aided by some degree of benefit from government stimulus. Absolutely, especially in January or March when those checks were released. It's difficult to isolate the impact from the stimulus of several of these strategic initiatives. The great example is net revenue increased 54% versus last year total, but as I just articulated earlier, the new verticals, many of them exceeded 80% growth. Difficult to isolate, we definitely believe there was some, at least mild impact from the government stimulus. In terms of Q2, we don't comment on the current month. Otherwise, I would just say we're pleased with what we saw so far. We certainly know we have a tough quarter in front of us given the year-over-year stimulus that was released in the 2nd quarter of last year. Got it. That's very helpful, Nino. Just a quick follow-up around newer verticals, and you mentioned that you're seeing exceptional growth there. As you expand your catalog of products with the addition of original equipment parts and, again, newer verticals, does that change the type of customer that you attract to the platform? Do you need to adjust your marketing messaging to educate consumers about the expanding breadth of your catalog? Yes. What you're referring to, I believe, is kind of the difference between the DIY, the Do-It-For-Me consumer, and even the professional consumer. Call it the mechanic or body shops. What we expect is as we continue to expand into new categories such as original equipment and repair parts, we believe organically that will bring the professional consumer to our business who's looking for parts. Today, we don't have a volume-based business for the professional consumer. That's certainly something we're discussing internally, potentially for the future, to help accelerate the adoption of carid.com by these professionals. We believe we're going to penetrate that consumer segment strongly just given the expansion into those key product categories they typically shop for. Got it. That's very helpful. Maybe one last question, if I could. It seems like you had a pretty healthy level of advertising spend in Q1. Can you maybe talk about your marketing efforts both in Q1 and for the balance of the year? How are you thinking about the timing and depth of TV campaigns this year compared to last year? Can you maybe talk about whether you're seeing any CPM inflation on social media and if that's impacting your marketing strategy at all? Yes. Your observations are correct. Our advertising rate, we de-leveraged by about 100 basis points. There is a couple key reasons for that is whenever there's strong demand in the marketplace as we experienced in the 1st quarter, we're going to be aggressive to capture that demand, especially knowing that the new customer acquisition we can pull in helps facilitate repeat business in the future given our superior experience. We're going to balance it. We're not going to invest in advertising for the sake of growth if it's not profitable. We're going to balance the top-line opportunities of capturing that demand with continuing to monitor the bottom line in terms of profitability. We do have a number of experiments on the marketing side going on. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we're going to continue leaning into television and other video testing this year. We have a couple tests lined up coming up soon. We're going to be increasing our investment in social media, which we kicked off last year. I think this segues into the other part of your question just regarding are we experiencing any kind of increase, I think you said in CPMs or cost per paid session on the Facebook side or just in general. In general, yes. We're seeing a rise in cost per paid session. That's really primarily due to how competitive some of the search engine advertising auctions have been during this quarter. On the social media side, the CPMs are increasing. I think there's really two reasons for that. The 1st reason is we've significantly increased our investment in social media advertising year-over-year. The 2nd part of that is most likely due, although we can't exactly determine that with 100% perfection, is that Apple's implementation of iOS 14, which is blocking cookies on devices or enabling consumers to opt out. That, we believe, is probably impacting some degree of CPM rates, but it's unclear how much so far. Got it. That's very helpful, Nino. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from Mike Baker of D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question. Hey, thanks guys. Just on the top line, is there anything you can tell us about maybe different markets that have opened up earlier than others during the 1st quarter or now that many local economies are opening up? What kind of trends you're seeing? I guess what I'm getting at is as people go back to work and maybe have less time for hobbies at home, how does that impact your business? Hi, Mike. Nice to hear from you, and thank you for the question. This is a tough question. Miles driven are still down versus prior years. I was looking earlier, it looks like they're up slightly to April of last year, but still significantly down. It doesn't necessarily impact our business too much given that we're primarily in the accessories business, which is not really dependent on miles driven. I think at the core of your question, you're getting at, are the lockdown restrictions, have we observed any difference across the country based on the lockdown restrictions? Again, a difficult question, especially given that a big part of the country, specifically the Midwest and South, are already open and have softened mask mandates. Really in looking at the data in the 1st quarter, we didn't observe any material differences by state due to lockdown measures. What I would say is, in February, given the extreme temperatures and snowstorms across a large part of the country, and even with regard to some of the southern states like Texas, we certainly observed some changes for a very brief period in the middle of February. Related to the lockdown, difficult to say, but I would say we haven't really observed anything there. Okay. Thanks. Maybe, I don't know if this can help illuminate the situation, but you talk about repeat customers. I think you said anyone who purchased between 2011 and last year and then bought again is a repeat customer. Is there any way to know maybe new customers who joined you guys last year during the pandemic, as people did take on more hobbies, are you seeing those customers be any more sticky or come back and repeat? If so, can you quantify that? Thanks. It's a leading indicator. We did a brief analysis to understand the customers who purchased in the prior year, how much of them contribute to the repeat customer rate in any given quarter. I won't disclose the exact figures, but we know it's a leading indicator and certainly a predictive attribute we can use going forward. Well, great. It's great that it's a leading indicator and predictive. Is it moving in the right direction, I guess is the key question? Yes. Okay. Thanks for that. One more, if I could, just on the gross margin, Kailas. Shipping impacted you, as you said. I think it's impacting a lot of companies. Any quantification or maybe can you at least tell us would gross margins have been up if not for the shipping costs? Hey, Mike. Kailas here. Absolutely, this 0.5% total impact is because of the shipping, and this is due to the continuation of the holiday surcharge by the big shipping carriers. They did not take away the surcharges, which they generally levy at the time of holidays. We are negotiating with them. Hopefully, with the volumes, we may have better results, but too early to comment on that. A couple follow-ups there. 5% surcharge, not a 500 basis point impact, I presume. No, it's a 0.5% impact, sorry. Okay, I got you. Is that something that typically you're able to pass on to customers or do you see pushback or maybe cart abandonment or something like that if you try to raise your shipping prices? We do pass on majority, here we decided not to pass on this extra surcharge, and we ate those surcharge just to keep our volumes up. That's a decision we make from time to time. As you know, majority of cases, we do pass on the shipping costs to the customers. We have APIs from our common carrier. We know the shipping is with us upfront, and we charge back to the customers. In appropriate cases, we do offer concessional or free shipping. Okay, one more follow-up, and then I'll turn it over. Should we expect that kind of gross margin pressure to continue? Shipping costs are still high. I guess what I'm asking is there any plan to pass it through in the coming quarters, or should we continue to expect pressure? Thanks. I would say immediate quarter, yes, but we are still negotiating with the carriers, and if our negotiations are successful, then that pressure will be off. Okay. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no additional questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to Nino Ciappina for closing remarks. Yes. Thank you, operator. I'd like to say thank you to the entire PARTS iD team here domestically and across the globe for helping drive this great 1st quarter performance by the company. Thank you to the analysts and investors for joining the call today, and we look forward to updating everyone on Q2 results in August. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Loading workspace