 doing today. I'm your host Rich and we have Rich T. Delilah with our very special guest, the CEO of APRU, Steve Levely. How you doing today Steve? I'm good Rich. Thanks for having me. Hey, thank you for joining us. Very excited to learn more about your company. Steve, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with APRU. Sure. I'm a born and raised here in Hamilton, Ontario. So that's where I grew up. I grew up. So I know I've aged down very well. Oh, cool. Yeah. And boomerang right back here over time, but grew up here and started off my whole life in sales. So sales was the kickoff of my business career and did well through my sales career and eventually landed into like a marketing agency and was doing some work from a sales perspective into marketing and actually came up with a concept about actually building a rewards program into, you know, to the sports entertainment space, pitched a VC in Ottawa. And instead of them funding and helping me build a business, they connected me to people in their network that had bought a gift card loyalty company. And so instead of funding, they said, you know what, instead of doing this with us and us funding, there's guys in our network that just bought a gift card loyalty company and they're looking for somebody like yourself that knows how to commercialize it. You should meet them. So I joined those guys in 2012 on the birth of an RTO. So they took this gift loyalty company and this mining company through it together to take the business public and and brought in a bunch of talent like myself to kind of commit and grow the business. Wow. Well, congratulations on all your success. I also come from the sales background. So I understand how that can lead to so many different things. And I always tell people, you know, I can give you a fish and you can eat for a day or I can teach you to fish and you can eat for a lifetime. That's the attitude of a salesperson. And you know, salespeople also have stickity because you have to learn how to take note. So I like the fact that you have that background. It shows me, it tells me a lot about you. Now, you've also recently announced your 5,400th customer. Congratulations. That's huge. That's a huge customer base. Can you tell us what are some of your milestones that actually hit in 2021 and what are some of the goals that you plan to hit by the end of this year? Sure. You know, understanding a crew, what we are as a company, we're a consolidator in the industry. So we're consolidating gift card and loyalty companies, so marketing companies, point of sale companies and payments companies. So that whole ecosystem, we're consolidating together. So really what we are as a company, we're a consolidator for that space. So we bought our 11th company this year. Right. So we bought our 11th company through the process since I've taken over. So I took over as CEO seven years ago. So a big milestone process buying our 11th acquisition and then later our 12th acquisition whenever. So we continue to sort of keep acquiring into the space. So that was kind of big for us. On our marketing business, we also saw a milestone with regards to even our digital gifting, things like COVID have happened. Now 20% of our customers are doing digital gift carding. So the digital thing is very real, where now 20% of our clients are actually embracing digital. So that was another big one. But with us being a consolidator and an inquire of multiple assets that are out there, so we're always buying in the space. A big thing for us organically is cross-sell upsell. So yes, we buy companies and we normalize them. We bring them to our environment, we reduce costs, we move to our single platform, but really where the growth is is when you cross-sell and upsell services. So we've had a record year on cross-selling and upselling this year because we've diversified our business beyond just marketing and payment and point of sale. So we've had a record year with regards to diversification across our products and the cross-sell upsell work. So that's the stuff that we're proud of, continuing to acquire, continuing to normalize swiftly, but seeing digital get embraced and seeing the cross-sell upsell working for us is what's driving a lot of our growth. Steve here at Rich TV Live, we love to understand the fundamentals of the company and we love to understand the management behind the deals. Can you talk a little bit about the management involved with ACRU, especially their past success in the public markets and merchant advertising? Sure. I mentioned a bit about the acquisition side of our business and what comes with acquisition comes talent sometimes. You're not just buying technology and customers, you're sometimes acquiring talent. Two of our directors are actually from acquisitions. So we bought companies in the marketing space and people from those businesses are now directors at our company here and we've got a team lead and a couple directors. Some of our leadership has come directly from acquisition, but then from a public market standpoint, there's myself that has been exposed over the last seven years since I've become CEO of the business, but also our new CFO. We made a change at the CFO level this year and our new CFO comes with a lot of background. He's pretty much been on every index that's out there and so he's got a world of knowledge and history with regards to the capital markets. So that becomes kind of this well-rounded experience in marketing and also experience in capital markets with the biggest thing being our board of directors. Our board of directors is made up of a lot of people that have a lot of capital markets and investment background that's sort of guiding and leading our capital allocation strategy. Fantastic. Now here at Rich DG Live, we believe that the biggest catalyst for any company is revenue. So people that one of the biggest things investors focus on these days is also revenue. You guys have built a pretty good customer base. We talked about it, 5,400 customers. Can you explain to our viewers your revenue model and how much of the market share you believe you can capture? Sure. Our business has kind of two revenue streams. We have what we call our one-time revenue or our product revenue in our financial statements, which is kind of those setup fees to use our software. It'd be like buying cards in collateral or email marketing. So those kind of one-time events and that makes up about 16% of our revenue. So a small percentage of it comes from those sort of setup fees and those one-time purchases, but 83, 84% of our revenue is monthly recurring revenue. So we have a fixed monthly recurring fee to use any of our multiple platforms. And we also have some variable recurring revenue through our payment integration. So we make payment residuals as well. So as a combination of both those fixed recurring fees and a bit of residual, 84% of our revenue becomes that repeatable, predictable revenue stream on that side of it. Your other question was, how much of the market share do you believe you can capture? So it's a really small market share that we have today. Our addressable market is quite large. We do really well in areas like automotive where we've got 700 automotive dealerships in Canada that use our products and there's only 3,000. So we've got something like 20% of the marketplace in Canada is using our software today, but we're barely scratching the surface in the US and that's just a vertical automotive. I'd argue the addressable market is in the billions for us. So there's a lot of runway for us. Our biggest competitors have, you know, they're 10, 20 times the size of us, some of them. And so for us, there's a lot of runway with regards to the addressable market for us. If Apple were to compare itself to its competitors in the sector, what would you say sets you guys apart? I think, you know, I've tried out the consolidation aspect, which is a bit more unique, right? But although a lot of our competitors are starting to consolidate there, I think it's two things. We've diversified and we've specialized. So we diversified our offerings. So we've went from just being a marketing company to now being a marketing, payment and POS companies. We've diversified our offerings. But we've gotten specialized into four different verticals into hospitality, retail, automotive and petroleum. In areas like automotive and petroleum, a lot of our direct competitors don't play there. So we found these niche markets that we've done really well in and we doubled down on them. So that niche focus into certain vertical markets have done well for us. Our first point of sale company we bought was for golf courses. So we've been finding these niches where we can kind of get deeper and wider within them, which is helping us differentiate where our traditional competitors are really playing heavily into hospitality. We play there, but we diversified into other areas that we've also doubled down on and specialized on. Now, we love to understand the share structure as fundamental investors. We like to know everything, like to rip apart the company and everything about it. Can you go through the capital structure of ACRU for our viewers and how do you plan to track more institutional investment alongside your retail investors? Sure. It's very tightly held. There's some large blocks. We've got our largest shareholder is one of our board members who has about a 20% equity position. We then have two shareholders that have between 10 and 15% that got their equity position because of acquisitions. So they took stock in a crew as opposed to cash. So we have two acquisitions that we've done that have taken capital. So you've got, again, between 10 and 15% with them. We have a fund in Montreal that has about 9% ownership. We have another board member that has 6% ownership. I have 5% ownership. And then there's a couple of family funds that have 3, 4, 5%. So it's pretty tightly held. It doesn't take a lot of phone calls for me to have a super majority kind of conversation. But we've been a very retail play. Outside of all those things that I've mentioned, it's been a very retail focused business. But as a microcap, which we are, and you're still validating and building your business, we haven't spent a lot of time on promotion. We haven't spent a lot of time out there creating awareness of what we're doing and how we're doing. Because we thought it was more important to kind of get the business sort of on good footing and in a good place before we start advocating. But we are doing well. And even through times like COVID that we're challenging for a lot of businesses, we've weathered that storm and we're beginning to thrive, that it's time to get a little bit more out there. So what we do, physical road shows, I don't know, but stuff like this is going to be the start. So this becomes like another kickoff for us to start getting more awareness out there. Being here on RichTV, we have an event that we're doing in December, virtual event. There'll be other things we'll do next year. So I think you'll hear and see a lot more about a crew over the next 12 to 24 months, more than we ever have. Because as we start to really scale our business, we're very proud of what we've done and where we're going, that it's all in an awareness game right now. And I think that's what'll change. I've got an analyst call tomorrow. And so we're starting to get more awareness happening about what we're up to and what we're doing while still focusing on the core business, the foundation of what we're doing, but putting a bit extra focus on awareness of what we're up to. Fantastic. We love when companies get an opportunity to come on our show and we can discover them first. And we love finding companies that are undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed, with growing revenue and a tight share structure. Sounds like you guys are fitting in perfectly with what we look for. If there was one thing you would want people and shareholders and investors to know about ACRU today, what would that be? I think what we become known as and what I want to continue to be known as is very strong and operational and financial excellence here. We take pride in our ability to operate both operationally and financially with great excellence. It plays into our whole acquisition model. Super important that we're very disciplined on how we operate and how we financially manage our business, delivering earnings and growth. We became cash flow positive a couple of years ago. We've had 15 consecutive quarters of earnings positive in our business. So we've shown good discipline there. So I think our operational and financial efficiency and excellence is like the thing. It's good for our customers to know that we're strong and capable and able to kind of manage the ship properly. But as an investor, it's what we take pride in. Is that excellence that we have and the disciplines that we're introducing to our business? We're going to have investors from all over the world that are going to see this interview. What is the best way for them to get in touch with the company if they had any questions? You can go to our website, www.acruh.com. It's spelt funny on purpose but pronounced accrue is in the word. We're accruing companies. We're accruing in the space. But ackrou.com. And then there's an investor side of it where you can see my email address and reach out to me even directly. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Steve. I must remind everyone that is watching that rich to be lively strictly for information and education purposes. Past performance is not always an indication of future results. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss here on Rich TV Live. In saying that, I do believe this is a company that is grossly undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed. Thank you for joining us today, Steve Levely, the CEO of Acrue. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Rich. Thank you for joining us. I'd love to invite you back if you ever have any big breaking news or anything you want to discuss. I'd love to invite you back on the show so you can talk to our community about Acrue. And for those of you guys that are watching, if you're not winning, you're probably not watching, you're bringing the winners and we bring them to you first. Thank you for watching everybody and have a great day.