Aeries Technology, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the ARIES Technology Business Update Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations. Ryan, you may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, good morning, and welcome to ARIES Technology's Business Update Call. Joining us from the company is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Aries, who's here with Anne Cassery, Chief Financial Officer, Rajiv Nair, and Chief Investment Officer, Daniel Webb. Today's call will consist of commentary around the company's fiscal 2024 and first fiscal quarter 2025 results. As a reminder, this conference call contains statements about future events and expectations, which are forward-looking in nature. Statements on this call may be deemed as forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. Words such as believe, estimate, and expect, as well as similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. For a full list of risks inherent to the business and the company, please refer to the company's SEC filings and earnings press release. ARIES undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect the financial circumstances that occur after the call. Today's call and webcast will include non-GAAP financial measures from the meeting of SEC Regulation G. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, GAAP measures. When required, reconciliations called non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in the company's earnings releases, filings, or other materials available on the company's website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Sudhir. Sudhir?

Hi. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Today, I will start by walking through some high-level first fiscal quarter results and the actions we are taking to better position Aries for the long-term success. I will then go over some highlights from our fiscal year 2024 results before handing it over to Daniel for a discussion of our new client wins and additional color on our operational initiatives. For the first fiscal quarter of 2025, our revenues were U.S. dollars $16.7 million, up 2% from the year prior period. where our gross profit was US$4 million, resulting in a gross margin of 24%. Our adjusted EBITDA for the first fiscal quarter was US$400,000 versus US$2.9 billion in the year prior. Our results in the first fiscal quarter reflect the impact of investments we are making in ongoing growth, which we believe will benefit Aries in the long term. While we expect the next few quarters to reflect the focus on our strategies, we are confident regarding the resultant business growth and the cost realigning to an optimum level required for sustaining a growth-oriented business. We are in parallel focused on accelerating our return to high profitability with a number of operational initiatives completed and underway that will achieve that goal. On the revenue side, we saw the completion of certain projects ahead of schedule and the start of several new projects pushed out slightly, which also contributed to our lower gross margins due to the nature and profile of those projects. However, our revenue base is robust and consistent, and we have great confidence in our new business pipeline for the remainder of the fiscal year and beyond. We believe that this year-over-year comparison will be our weakest of the fiscal year. We have also been aggressively pursuing the portfolio companies of private equity firms we have a relationship with, as well as the clients of several consulting companies. As a reminder, our primary growth vector remains expanding into the portfolio companies of private equity firms, and we already count some of the largest firms in the United States as clients. Moving on to our operating expenses, as I said earlier, We will realign costs to an optimum level that enhances profitability by laying the foundations for positioning the company for sustained growth in the future. This will be an ongoing effort, properly calibrated, to ensure that in a planned manner we will achieve profitability as we advance further in our growth strategies, both organically and inorganically, as opportunities start converting. The effect of these savings will be seen in the coming quarters in a progressive manner. Turning to our fiscal year 2024 financial results, I'm pleased with our end to the fiscal year, including revenue of $72.5 million, representing 37% growth year over year, and driven primarily by new clients on the Aries outsourcing platform, as well as additional spend from existing clients. Adjusted EBITDA was $9.2 million, which was in line with our expectations. As I said, we are now and for the next few quarters in our next stage of execution of growth strategies and corresponding investments in time, efforts, and costs to achieve our objectives. North America remains our strongest and target market, representing approximately 79% of our revenue in the fiscal year and 93% in the first fiscal quarter. This is a purposeful shift of focus towards the United States and away from APAC to drive majority of our future growth. As I noted on our last call, Mexico has been a particular area of focus for ARIES, and in September we announced the opening of our second office in Mexico, located in La Colonia Americana area of Guadalajara. This new office will support a diverse range of roles for our clients, including customer service representatives, implementation specialists, training specialists, and other technology positions aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and adding business value to our clients. Nearshoring remains a powerful trend in the IT services space as companies aim to balance cost efficiency with operational agility, proximity, and cultural alignment. We are proud to continue investing in Mexico. support our North American clients and believe this will give ARIES a distinct advantage over our competitors. Expansion of our Latin American operations also supports the increasingly popular dual-shoring strategy, which combines near-shoring in locations like Mexico with maintaining centers of excellence in India, enabling us to provide 24x7 coverage while significantly reducing costs. Our expansion in Mexico has already been incredible, going from 10 staff members in the country to over 150 within 18 months. We similarly continue to explore other geographies with focus on sustainable pools of talent and business expansion opportunities. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Daniel Webb, Chief Investment Officer, to discuss some details of new client deployments, as well as some more details on our strategic initiatives. Daniel?