Olo Announces Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results

Third-Quarter Revenue Grew 36% Year-over-Year on Continued Active Location and Transaction Volume Growth

Celebrated the Milestone of Welcoming its 500th Restaurant Brand

Olo Inc. (NYSE:OLO), a leading on-demand commerce platform powering the restaurant industry’s digital transformation, today announced financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021.

“In the third quarter, Olo’s strong revenue growth and profitability momentum continued as Olo took meaningful strides toward our vision of digital entirety: touching, adding value to, and deriving revenue from every restaurant transaction,” said Noah Glass, Founder and CEO.

“We drove digital transactions across every service model: takeout, delivery, drive-thru, and on-premise, while announcing new tools to enable brands to both realize the promise of digital hospitality and improve key facets of their businesses as truly customer-centric and data-informed enterprises through the recent acquisition of Wisely,” concluded Mr. Glass.

Third-Quarter Financial and Other Highlights

• Total revenue increased 36% year-over-year to $37.4 million.
• Platform revenue increased 38% year-over-year to $36.1 million.
• Gross profit increased 29% year-over-year to $29.2 million, or 78% of total revenue.
• Non-GAAP gross profit increased 32% year-over-year to $30.2 million, or 81% of total revenue.
• Operating income decreased $18.6 million year-over-year to an operating loss of $(11.3) million, or (30)% of total revenue.
• Non-GAAP operating income decreased $3.8 million year-over-year to $5.1 million, or 14% of total revenue.
• Net loss was $(11.3) million or $(0.08) per share, compared to net income of $5.1 million or $0.00 per share a year ago.
• Non-GAAP net income was $5.0 million or $0.03 per share, compared to a non-GAAP net income of $8.8 million or $0.06 per share a year ago.
• Cash and cash equivalents were $597.7 million.
• Ending active locations increased 26% year-over-year to approximately 76,000.
• Average revenue per unit (ARPU) increased 8% year-over-year to approximately $484.
• Dollar-based net revenue retention (NRR) remained over 120%. 

Third-Quarter and Recent Business Highlights

• Olo completed the acquisition of Wisely Inc., a leading customer intelligence and engagement platform for restaurants, accelerating Olo’s vision to enable restaurant brands to deepen guest relationships, drive more transactions, and increase customer lifetime value.
• Olo celebrated the milestone of welcoming its 500th restaurant brand to the platform. New customers included CKE Restaurant Holdings, Inc., parent company to leading QSR brands Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, and Dave’s Hot Chicken, a growing fast-casual brand. CKE replatformed from a fragmented technology stack, leveraging the Olo Ordering module. Dave’s Hot Chicken adopted the Olo Ordering, Dispatch, Rails, and Network modules, making Olo the brand’s on-demand commerce solution of choice.
• Olo expanded relationships with existing restaurant brands, including Bojangles and Denny’s. Bojangles, a leading QSR brand, previously deployed the Olo Rails module, and recently launched the Olo Ordering module with a custom website and app. Denny’s, a top family dining brand, added the Olo Network module after previously implementing all three of Olo’s core modules: Ordering, Dispatch, and Rails.
• Olo is proud to have expanded its relationships with existing technology partners Uber and Waitr, adding both partners to the Olo Dispatch network. As a result, restaurant brands on Dispatch will have an expanded network of delivery partners, more competitive pricing, differentiated service hours, and more driver availability on the Dispatch network.
• Olo enhanced its Rails platform, providing brands with additional tools and capabilities to control capacity across their integrated third-party channels. This powerful feature allows restaurant brands to prioritize their most profitable orders by channel, by location, or by time of day and/or day of week.
• Olo recommended nine non-profits to its independent donor advised fund sponsor, Tides Foundation, to receive grants in connection with the Olo for Good initiative. Tides Foundation subsequently donated a total of $4.9 million in grants to Black Girls Code, Clean Air Task Force, Emma’s Torch, Feeding America, FoodCorps, Girls Who Code, Giving Kitchen, the Let’s Empower Employment Initiative, and Natural Resources Defense Council. Grant recipients are non-profits focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, increasing access to food, supporting the restaurant industry’s frontline workers, and advancing environmental sustainability. Olo intends to recommend Tides Foundation to make annual grants going forward for the next nine years.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided at the end of this press release. An explanation of these measures is also included below under the heading “Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Other Metrics.”

Financial Outlook

As of November 9, 2021, Olo is issuing the following outlook for the fourth quarter of 2021 and fiscal year 2021:

For the fourth quarter of 2021, Olo expects to report:

• Revenue in the range of $38.8 million to $39.3 million; and
• Non-GAAP operating income in the range of $2.8 million to $3.2 million.

For the fiscal year 2021, Olo expects to report:

• Revenue in the range of $148.2 million to $148.7 million; and
• Non-GAAP operating income in the range of $19.8 million to $20.2 million.

The outlook provided above constitutes forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws and is based on a number of assumptions and subject to a number of risks. Actual results could vary materially as a result of numerous factors, including certain risk factors, many of which are beyond Olo’s control. See the cautionary note regarding “Forward-Looking Statements” below. Fluctuations in Olo’s operating results may be particularly pronounced in the current economic environment due to the uncertainty caused by, and the unprecedented nature of, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the severity, duration, and ultimate impact of which is difficult to predict at this time. While Olo has benefited from the acceleration of demand for off-premise dining during the COVID-19 pandemic, Olo’s business and financial results could be materially adversely affected in the future if these trends do not continue. The situation regarding COVID-19 remains uncertain and could change rapidly, and Olo will continue to evaluate its potential impact on its business.

Reconciliation of non-GAAP operating income guidance to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is not available without unreasonable efforts on a forward-looking basis due to the high variability, complexity and low visibility with respect to the charges excluded from these non-GAAP measures; in particular, the measures and effects of stock-based compensation expense specific to equity compensation awards that are directly impacted by unpredictable fluctuations in our stock price. We expect the variability of the above charges to have a significant, and potentially unpredictable, impact on our future GAAP financial results.

Webcast and Conference Call Information

Olo will host a conference call today, November 9, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss the Company’s financial results and financial outlook. A live webcast of this conference call will be available on the “Investor Relations'' page of the Company’s website (www.olo.com), and a replay will be available on the website as well.

About Olo

Olo is a leading on-demand commerce platform powering the restaurant industry’s digital transformation. Millions of orders per day run on Olo’s enterprise SaaS engine, enabling brands to maximize the convergence of digital and brick-and-mortar operations. The Olo platform provides the infrastructure to capture demand and manage consumer orders from every channel. With integrations to over 100 technology partners, Olo customers can build digital experiences with the largest and most flexible restaurant commerce ecosystem on the market. Over 500 restaurant brands use Olo to grow digital sales, maximize profitability, and preserve direct consumer relationships. Learn more at olo.com.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Other Metrics

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we present non-GAAP gross profit/margin (and as a percentage of revenue), non-GAAP operating expenses (total and each line item, and total and each non-GAAP operating expense item as a percentage of revenue), non-GAAP operating income (and as a percentage of revenue), and non-GAAP net income (loss) (and as a percentage of revenue and on a per share basis) in this press release. Our use of non-GAAP financial measures has limitations as an analytical tool, and these measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of financial results as reported under GAAP.

We use non-GAAP financial measures in conjunction with financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP for planning purposes, including in the preparation of our annual operating budget, as a measure of our core operating results and the effectiveness of our business strategy, and in evaluating our financial performance. These measures provide consistency and comparability with past financial performance, facilitate period-to-period comparisons of core operating results, and also facilitate comparisons with other peer companies, many of which use similar non-GAAP financial measures to supplement their GAAP results. We exclude the following items from one or more of our non-GAAP financial measures: stock-based compensation expense (non-cash expense calculated by companies using a variety of valuation methodologies and subjective assumptions), equity expense related to charitable contributions, internally developed software amortization (non-cash expense), change in fair value of warrants, related acquisition transaction costs, and, if applicable, other non-cash transactions.

Free cash flow represents net cash used in operating activities, reduced by purchases of property and equipment, and capitalization of internally developed software. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate our liquidity and to generate future operating plans. The reduction of capital expenditures facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. We believe that free cash flow is a measure of liquidity that provides useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business in the same manner as our management and Board of Directors. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited.

Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as an analytical tool. In particular, (1) stock-based compensation expense has recently been, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a significant recurring expense for our business and an important part of our compensation strategy and (2) although depreciation and amortization expense are non-cash charges, the assets subject to depreciation and amortization may have to be replaced in the future. The non-GAAP measures we use may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies, limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes. Such non-GAAP financial measures should be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, the corresponding measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP items excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures has been provided in the financial statement tables included in this press release and investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation.

Other Metrics

We calculate ARPU by dividing the total platform revenue in a given period by the average active locations in that same period. We believe this demonstrates our ability to grow within our customer base through the development of our products that our customers value.

We define active locations as a unique restaurant location that is utilizing one or more modules in a given quarterly period. We believe there is a substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base within the U.S. restaurant industry. We intend to continue to drive new customer growth by leveraging our brand and experience within the industry, and expanding our sales and marketing efforts. We have also historically pursued and will continue to target the most well-capitalized, fastest growing restaurant brands in the industry. As our restaurant brand customers open new locations, we are well-positioned to organically grow our revenue with little to no incremental sales and marketing costs to target additional locations.

We calculate NRR as of a period-end by starting with the revenue, defined as platform revenue, from the cohort of all active customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the prior period revenue. We then calculate the platform revenue from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the current period revenue. Current period revenue includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes platform revenue from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total current period revenue by the total prior period revenue to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based NRR.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements we make in this press release may include statements which are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act, which are usually identified by the use of words such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “projects,” "outlook", “seeks,” “should,” “will,” and variations of such words or similar expressions.

We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act and are making this statement for purposes of complying with those safe harbor provisions. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the ongoing importance of digital experiences to the restaurant industry, the future performance of Olo and its market opportunity, including expected financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021, our business strategy, our ability to sustain our profitability, customer adoption of our products and expectations for capturing market share and our delivery of new products or product features, the integration and benefits of our acquisition of Wisely Inc., and expectations regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and industry. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially or such uncertainties could cause adverse effects on our results.

Forward-looking statements are based upon various estimates and assumptions, as well as information known to Olo as of the date of this press release, and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to: the impact and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and economic conditions; the impact, severity and duration of safety measures put in place to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; our focus on the long-term and our investments in sustainable, profitable growth; our ability to develop and release new products and services, and develop and release successful enhancements, features, and modifications to our existing products and services; the impact of new and existing laws and regulations; our strategic relationships with third parties; our reliance on a limited number of delivery service providers and aggregators; our ability to generate revenue from our product offerings and the effects of fluctuations in our level of client spend retention; competition; changes in the amount and mix of transactions facilitated through our platform in a period; changes in our level of investment in sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative expenses, and our hiring plans; future changes to our pricing model; changes in management; and other general market, political, economic, and business conditions. Actual results could differ materially from those predicted or implied, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Additionally, these forward-looking statements, particularly our guidance, involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those related to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our customers’ spending decisions and consumer ordering behavior as COVID-19 associated restrictions and the impact of federal fiscal stimulus abates. Significant variation from the assumptions underlying our forward-looking statements could cause our actual results to vary, and the impact could be significant.

Additional risks and uncertainties that could affect our financial results are included under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2021 filed with the SEC on August 10, 2021, and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for quarterly period ended September 30, 2021 that will be filed following this earnings release, and our subsequent SEC filings, which are available on the Investor Relations page of our website at investors.olo.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this press release. All forward-looking statements contained herein are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

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