Organization and Business

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2022

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

Organization and Business

Organization and Business

Company Overview

Inuvo is a technology company that develops and sells information technology solutions for marketing and advertising. These solutions predictively identify and message online audiences for any product or service across devices, formats, and channels including video, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, display, social, search and native. These solutions allow Inuvo’s clients to engage with their customers and prospects in a manner that drives responsiveness. Inuvo facilitates the delivery of hundreds of millions of marketing messages to consumers every single month and counts among its clients numerous world-renowned names across industries.

The Inuvo solution incorporates a proprietary form of artificial intelligence, or AI, branded the IntentKey. This patented machine learning technology uses interactions with Internet content as a source of information from which to predict consumer intent. The AI can identify and advertise to the reasons why consumers are purchasing products and services not who those consumers are. In this regard, the technology is designed for a privacy conscious future and is focused on the components of the advertising value chain most responsible for return on advertising spend, the intelligence behind the advertising decision.

Inuvo technology can be consumed both as a managed service and software-as-a-service. For clients, Inuvo has also developed a collection of proprietary websites collectively branded as Bonfire Publishing where content is created specifically to attract qualified consumer traffic for clients through the publication of information across a wide range of topics including health, finance, travel, careers, auto, education and lifestyle. These sites also provide the means to market test various Inuvo advertising technologies.

There are many barriers to entry associated with the Inuvo business model, including a proficiency in large scale information processing, predictive software development, marketing data products, analytics, artificial intelligence, integration to the internet of things ("IOT"), and the relationships required to execute within the IOT. Inuvo’s intellectual property is protected by 17 issued and eight pending patents.

Liquidity

As of March 31, 2022, we have approximately $9 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. Our net working capital was $11.2 million. We have encountered recurring losses and cash outflows from operations, which historically we have funded through equity offerings and debt facilities. In addition, our investment in internally developed software consists primarily of labor costs which are of a fixed nature. Through March 31, 2022, our accumulated deficit was $146.0 million.

Our principal sources of liquidity are the sale of our common stock and our credit facility with Hitachi described in Note 6 to our Consolidated Financial Statements. On January 19, 2021, we raised $8.0 million in gross proceeds in a registered direct offering, before expenses, through the sale of an aggregate of 13,333,334 shares of our common stock, and on January 22, 2021, we raised an additional $6.25 million in gross proceeds in a registered direct offering, before expenses, through the sale of an aggregate of 5,681,817 shares of our common stock. On January 7, 2021, we filed Articles of Amendment to our Articles of Incorporation in the State of Nevada increasing the number of authorized shares of our common stock from 100,000,000 to 150,000,000. On August 19, 2021, we filed Articles of Amendment to our Articles of Incorporation in the State of Nevada increasing the number of authorized shares of our common stock from 150,000,000 to 200,000,000.

In March 2021, we contracted with an investment management company to manage our cash in excess of current operating

needs. We placed $2 million in cash equivalent accounts and $10 million in an interest-bearing account. At March 31, 2022,

our funds with the investment management company were approximately $6 million and were invested in cash equivalent accounts and marketable debt and equity securities. A detail of the activity is described in Note 3 to our Consolidated Financial Statements.

On May 28, 2021, we entered into a Sales Agreement (the “Sales Agreement”) with A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners, as sales agent (the “Sales Agent”), pursuant to which we may offer and sell through or to the Sales Agent shares of our common stock (the “ATM Program”) up to an aggregate amount of gross proceeds of $35,000,000. During the year ended December 31, 2021 and through March 31, 2022, we did not issue any shares of common stock or receive any aggregate proceeds under the ATM Program, and we did not pay any commissions to the Sales Agent. Any shares of common stock offered and sold in the ATM Program will be issued pursuant to our universal shelf registration statement on Form S-3 (the “Shelf Registration Statement”). The ATM Program will terminate upon (a) the election of the Sales Agent upon the occurrence of certain adverse events, (b) 10

days’ advance notice from one party to the other, or (c) the sale of the balance available under our Shelf Registration Statement. Under the terms of the Sales Agreement, the Sales Agent is entitled to a commission at a fixed rate of 3.0% of the gross proceeds from each sale of shares under the Sales Agreement.

We have focused our resources behind a plan to grow our AI technology, the IntentKey, where we have a technology advantage

and higher margins. If we are successful in implementing our plan, we expect to return to a positive cash flow from operations.

However, there is no assurance that we will be able to achieve this objective.

Though we believe our current cash position and credit facility will be sufficient to sustain operations for the next twelve

months, if our plan to grow the IntentKey business is unsuccessful, we may need to fund operations through private or public

sales of securities, debt financings or partnering/licensing transactions.

Customer concentration

For the three month period ending March 31, 2022, our four largest customers by revenue accounted for 67.0% of our overall revenue at 22%, 18.2%, 14.5%, and 12.3%, respectively. Those same four customers accounted for 64.1% of our gross accounts receivable balance as of March 31, 2022. As of December 31, 2021, the same customers accounted for 45.6% of our gross accounts receivable balance.

We still source the majority of our ValidClick revenue through these relationships where we have access to advertiser budgets indirectly. While this strategy creates a concentration risk, we believe that it also provides upside opportunities including; access to hundreds of thousands of advertisers across geographies; the ability to scale our business across verticals; an avoidance of the sales costs associated with a large direct to advertisers’ sales force; access to innovation; overall media budget market insights; attractive payment terms; and low risk on receivables.

COVID-19

In April 2020, we experienced a significant reduction in advertiser marketing budgets across both the ValidClick and IntentKey platforms as a direct consequence of COVID-19. These reductions adversely impacted our overall revenue throughout 2020. In April 2020, we obtained the $1.1 million PPP Loan which we used primarily for payroll costs. The PPP Loan was fully forgiven by the SBA on November 2, 2020. Beginning mid-June 2020, we began to experience an improvement in overall daily revenue. Due to the unprecedented sustainability of COVID-19 on our business, we were unable to predict with any certainty how our clients would adapt their business strategies within the context of COVID-19 and therefore how our revenue run rate would change as a result. We, therefore, focused our resources on areas we believed could have more immediate revenue potential, attempting to reduce expenses and raising additional capital so as to mitigate operating disruptions while the impact of COVID-19 abates. Since the start of 2021 with the roll out of vaccinations, we have seen an increase in our client’s willingness to spend on advertising and thereby an improvement in our revenue run rates. Though we continue to monitor the pandemic and related government guidelines and regulations, we have returned to a hybrid working model where employees are working partially from the office and partially from home.