Vik Vijayvergiya; Vice President, Investor Relations; KORE Group Holdings Inc
Ronald Totton; Interim President and Chief Executive Officer; KORE Group Holdings Inc
Paul Holtz; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer; KORE Wireless Group Inc
Greetings and welcome to the KORE Group Holdings Inc. third quarter, 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Vik Vijayvergiya, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Vik. Please go ahead.
Vik Vijayvergiya
Thank you operator on today's call. We will refer to the third quarter, 2024 earnings presentation which will be helpful to follow along with as well as the press release file this afternoon. The details of the company's third quarter 2024 results. Both of these can be found on our investor relations page at ir.korewireless.com. Finally, a recording of the call will be available in the investor section of the company's website later today.
The company encourages you to review the safe harbor statements, risk factors and other disclaimers contained on this slide in today's press release, as well as the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission which identify specific risk factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements.
The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after this webcast. The company also notes that it will be discussing non-GAAP financial information on this call. The company is providing that information as a supplement to information prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States are US, GAAP.
You can find a reconciliation of these metrics to the company's reported. GAAP results in the reconciliation tables provided in today's earnings release and presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Ron Totton, the Company's President and Chief Executive Officer.
Ronald Totton
Thank you, Vik and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter, 2024 earnings call with me today is Paul Holtz, KORE's Chief Financial Officer.
The overall takeaway is in this year of transition. We have stabilized our financial performance completed our restructuring and are showing growth in recurring IoT connectivity revenue based on our third quarter results and fourth quarter outlook. We are reaffirming and tightening our previous issued guidance.
Looking at our third quarter results, our revenue was $68.9 million which was slightly higher than the same period last year, showing growth in IoT connectivity while there were planned reductions in our less profitable IoT Solutions business adjusted EBITDA was $13 million which was down from $14.2 million in the same quarter last year.
Largely the result of a $1.5 million reversal of performance based compensation. In the third quarter of 2023 I will go into more detail on our IoT connectivity performance later in the business update. But we are focused on generating cash flow in our business. And while free cash flow was flat in Q3 year over year, year-to-date, free cash flow improved $6 million from the same period last year.
This included onetime severance payments of $1.5 million in Q3 of this year as part of our restructuring plan which has since been completed. This improvement is a result of our fiscal discipline and improvement in cash management. Cash flow generation remains a key priority for me and the rest of the leadership team on slide 4. As we look at the big picture, I can confidently say that we are on the right track with our strategic focus on IoT connectivity.
Our focus is yielding positive results as demonstrated by growth in revenue margin and total contract value otherwise known as TCV. In Q3, we are pleased to report strong TCV growth in Q3 driven primarily by winds in our IoT connectivity offerings led by both wins and new logos and Upsell with existing customers converting TCV to revenue is a top priority for us which is best demonstrated by an increase in connected devices or otherwise known as IoT connections.
We experienced growth in connections on a sequential quarter, over quarter basis of over 300,000 as well as strong orders for new connections which bodes-well for continued growth and IoT connectivity. Looking ahead last quarter, I talked about operational excellence and our renewed focus on giving our customers an intimate and improved user experience.
Our focus in that area is already paying dividends. As we are seeing improvements in key metrics, we continue to invest heavily in this area. As mentioned earlier, we completed our restructuring plan and this was crucial for us to streamline operations, enhance our efficiency and improve our financial performance. We had no operational impact with our customers and our operational metrics in fact improved during this period.
These are never easy situations, but our people performed exceptionally well. Overall, our business is on a solid path and we are confident in our ability to continue delivering value to our customers and shareholders. As we move to slide 5, let's dive into our IoT connectivity highlights for the third quarter of 2024. Our IoT connections number has now moved well past 19 million and at an ARPU of $1 a month represents a solid foundation of recurring earnings power.
We delivered 3% organic growth in Q3 2024 as compared to the same period. In the prior year. While the 16% growth for the year-to-date revenue over the same period in the previous year reflects effects of the Twilio IoT acquisition.
IoT connectivity margin contribution increased 2% for the quarter as compared to the same period last year and 10% in the year-to-date period compared to the prior year indicating the positive impact of our increasing economies of scale. This is a key metric for us as we focus on profitable growth on Slide 6. Let's move on to our sales momentum in the third quarter of 2024 which is largely occurring in IoT connectivity.
We are pleased to report that we closed $32 million in TCV in Q3 2024 with 91% related to IoT connectivity. This quarter's performance builds on the prior quarters showing year-to-date closed TCV of $128 million up from $87 million in the same period in the prior year and $91 million of that coming from IoT connectivity as I meet with customers, they are focusing on growing their market share or improving profitability by investing in connected devices, both of which are fueling our growth in IoT connectivity.
These results highlight our strong market position and the effectiveness of our sales strategies. Our focus on IoT connectivity is paying off and we are confident that this momentum will continue to drive our revenue growth in the coming quarters.
We have also enhanced our discipline in our IoT solutions business with a focus on improving our margins and the strategic linkage to connectivity. By its very nature, this business is choppy in terms of growth but represents a key part of our global IoT offerings.
The best way to think of it is IoT solutions fuels connectivity growth and competitive differentiation for some customer cohorts as seen in connected health, for example, where they see KORE as a one stop shop for all their connectivity needs as we have done in our previous earnings calls. Slide 7, highlights some of the key customer wins from this quarter which underscores the breadth and impact of KORE solutions across multiple industries.
First in the global high value asset monitoring space KORE secured another agreement to provide global IoT connectivity and device management solutions to a large European company in support of its industrial equipment into over 70 countries including markets like the US, China, and Brazil.
This will enhance customer service and enable predictive maintenance and unlock new revenue streams. TCV for this contract is $3.7 million. I'm especially proud of our team in this highly competitive win in which co was selected after a thorough global RFP process. Next, we had a large health care win where we've been selected to support a major health care provider with IoT connectivity for failover systems in urgent care facilities and hospitals.
This also includes remote patient kiosk systems. KORE was able to secure this business against several competitors in the market with a TCV of $3.3 million in smart agriculture. We secured a significant agreement helping our customers reduce infrastructure and manpower required to manage livestock while improving overall yields and cutting costs.
KORE is providing global IoT connectivity with a single pane of blast to improve the customer experience including self service capabilities. The TCV for this contract is $6 million. Lastly, we had a win in remote patient monitoring partnering with a leading company in this space to provide IoT connectivity across the US.
The customer specifically chose KORE for our ability to provide full network redundancy security and ensuring a reliable patient experience. The TCV for this win is $1 million. These wins demonstrate our ability to execute globally across a variety of industries and they reflect the growing demand for KORE's IoT connectivity.
On Slide 8, I would like to share with you more details on the results from our restructuring and cost rationalization programs which are now completed and contributed to our $20 million target gross run rate, cash savings. We initiated a restructuring and cost rationalization program to sharpen our focus on the customer, reduce operating expenses and streamline our processes across the organization. This program which began in Q3 of 2024 has been concluded and involved one-time costs of approximately $4 million which will all be expensed in 2024.
A major aspect of this initiative is a workforce realignment where we made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by 25% across the company. This reorganization flattened our structure, improved efficiency, and introduced better alignment around our customer and connectivity offerings. We are also undergoing product rationalization, evaluating our portfolio to gain synergies, eliminate redundancies and stop projects that do not align to our profitable growth focus and realign our resources to areas where we are strongest, particularly in next-gen, eSIM, and IoT connectivity.
Throughout this process, customer intimacy remains a top priority. Our goal is to further strengthen customer relationships by improving key areas such as response time, resolution time, and automating processes. The completion of the plan marks a significant milestone for KORE. It not only enhances our operational efficiency but also positions us better to capitalize on market opportunities and invest in high growth areas and accelerate our product development road map. The net results of these actions will lead to a $20 million in gross annual run rate cash savings with approximately $5 million in cash savings for 2024.
And now let me hand it over to Paul to go through our financial performance in more detail.