Crexendo, Inc.

Thanks for holding. Your conference will begin in just a couple of minutes. As you may remember, your conference will begin very shortly. Thank you. Greetings and welcome to the Crescendo second quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the form of presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Jeff Korn, Chairman and CEO at Crescendo. Jeff, you may explain.

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Crescendo's second quarter 2025 earnings call. As Paul just said, I'm Jeff Korn, Chairman and CEO. With me in the room today are Doug Gaylor, our President and COO, Ron Vincent, our CFO, John Britton, our CRO, and Anand Bush, our Chief Strategy Officer. In a moment, John will read the State Harbor Statement. After that, I'll provide an overview of our performance and strategy. Ron will then dive into the financials, and Doug will close with an operational and business update before we open it up for questions. John, would you please read the State Harbor Statement?

Thank you, Jeff. I want to take this opportunity to remind listeners that this call... within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for such forward-looking statements. All statements made in this conference call, other than statements of historical facts, are either forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to words like believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, will, and other similar statements of expectation identifying forward-looking statements. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company's violence with the Security and Exchange Commission including the Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, and the Form MQS-5. Crescendo does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Jeff. Jeff?

Thank you, John. I'm pleased to report another exceptional quarter for Crescendo. We continue to deliver consistent and impressive profitable growth. This growth and our results underscore the scalability of our business model and the strength of our team. Q2 was highlighted by significant success in our software solution segment, combined with growth in our telecom service segment, as well as the achievement of key operational milestones. I'm pleased, as you know, we reported a 13% increase in total revenue to $16.6 million. driven by a remarkable 31% year-over-year organic growth in software solutions revenue. Our GAAP net income was $1.2 million and we delivered $2.8 million in adjusted EBITDA. This marks our 8th consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability and our 27th consecutive quarter of GAAP net income. This is clear evidence that our strategy is working and Crescendo is on a very solid trajectory. Our software platform continues to be a critical engine of our success. As you know, we surpassed 6 million users on our software platform and are marching towards 7 billion users. Our ability to scale efficiently was reflected in the continually strong margins we achieved. We are very encouraged by the momentum in our licensee and partner ecosystem, which continues to gain traction in the wake of disruption from legacy vendors like Metaswitch and Broadsoft. Our differentiated struct architecture with session-based pricing, open API, and flexible cloud or on-premise deployment continues to resonate with customers seeking control, scalability, and reliability. Simply put, we are building the platform of the future, and the market is responding. If you want the best products, services, people, and pricing, there really is no other choice. We continue to invest in the business and to expand our AI capabilities. And we are expecting to roll out over the next several quarters additional initiatives, including AI callbots and AI operator functions and messaging. This is in addition to the services already rolled out. On the telecom side, while the UCAS landscape remains competitive, we continue to take a disciplined approach. We are not chasing growth at the expense of profitability. Our award-winning VIP bundle and industry-leading customer satisfaction scores, as validated independently by G2, are helping us win in the right way, sustainably, and with long-term margin expansion in mind. With that said, we continue to look at aggressive promotions to compete with others in the space, but will only do that if it leads to profitable and scalable business. Importantly, we are executing well against our strategic priorities. We are in the final stages of sunsetting our classic platform, which will reduce operational drag and free up internal resources. At the same time, we are aggressively migrating to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OCI, a move we expect to yield significant cost savings and improve focus on innovation and customer success. These infrastructure initiatives will help us to continue to improve margins and drive long-term efficiencies in 2026. This is particularly impressive as we continue to invest in the business. We have no intention of resting on our laurels, and we are continuing to build the future of telecom, software, and services. We also remain focused on inorganic opportunities. We are actively reviewing several potential acquisitions, including smaller tuck-ins as well as larger opportunities. I and the team, however, remain disciplined and focused that any acquisition we pursue will be accretive and aligned with our vision of strategic profitable growth. With a strong tax position of $23.5 million and growing cash flow from operations, we are well positioned to support continued innovations, strategic M&A, and enhanced shareholder value. Finally, our ecosystem vendor partner program, EVP as we call it, continues to gain momentum. As we lean into AI, analytics, and automation, Our open architecture is enabling new integrations that drive real value for our partners, further differentiating our platforms from the market, and continuing to get us to lead with our open APIs, which is a strong strategic advantage for us. In closing, I've never been more optimistic about where we are and where we're going. Over the last two years, we've transformed Crescendo into a high-growth, consistently profitable software company with a clear vision and strong execution. We are building a flexible, scalable, and future-ready platform, one that puts customer success and long-term value creation at the center of everything we do. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ron to walk through the financial results in more detail. Ron?

Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Consolidated revenue for the quarter increased 13% to $16.6 million compared to $14.7 million for the second quarter of the prior year. Our service revenue for the quarter increased 4% to $8.4 million compared to $8.1 million for the second quarter of the prior year. Our software solutions revenue for the quarter increased 31% to $7 million compared to $5.3 million for the second quarter of the prior year. decreased 7% to $1.2 million compared to $1.3 million for the second quarter of the prior year. Our remaining performance obligation increased to $83.5 million at the end of the second quarter compared to $81.9 million at the end of the first quarter of this year and $71.2 million at June 30th of the prior year. Operating expenses for the quarter increased 10% to $15.4 million compared to $14.1 million for the second quarter of the prior year. The operating margin for the quarter increased to 7% compared to 4% for the same period of the prior year. Net income of $1.2 million for the quarter, that's $0.04 per basic and diluted common share compared to a net income of $600,000 or $0.02 for basic and diluted common share for the second quarter of the prior year. Non-GAAP net income of $2.9 million for the quarter, that's $0.10 for basic and $0.09 for diluted common share, compared to non-GAAP net income of $2.1 million, or $0.08 for basic and $0.07 per diluted common share for the second quarter of the prior year. EBITDA for the quarter was $200 compared to $1.4 million for the second quarter of the prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter Came in at $2.8 million. That's compared to $2.2 million for the second quarter of the prior year. At cash and cash equivalents, their June 30th, 2025, was $23.5 million, compared to $18.2 million at September 31st, 2024. Cash provided by operating activities for the six-month period of $2.5 million. That's compared to $2.5 million in cash provided by operating activities for the same period of the prior year. Cash provided by financing activities for the six-month period generated $2.7 million compared to cash provided by investing activities of $800,000 for the same period of the prior year. Primarily related to $3 million net cash received from the stock option exercises and RSUs offset by $3.3 million in notes payable repayments and finance repayments. With that, I'll turn it over to Doug Gale, our president and COO, for additional comments on sales and business operations.

Hey, Ron. We continue to execute well on our business plan and have a strong Q2 layered on top of a strong Q1 to start the year. We had a 13% year-over-year increase in revenue for the quarter and a 212% year-over-year increase in gap profitability, combined with strong positive cash flow. This was our eighth consecutive quarter of gap profitability and 27th consecutive quarter of non-gap net income, and the results were a direct result of our focus on growing organically and profitably. Our continued success earned us a coveted inclusion in the Russell 2000 Index that was announced during the quarter. Our GAAP net income of $1.23 million for the quarter and non-GAAP net income of $2.9 million for the quarter were reflective of our success in managing the fundamentals of the business and continuing to maximize and recognize synergies within the business. Our entire team is continually working to improve business processes and make our company more efficient, and we believe we will continue to see more efficiencies as we continue our growth. During the quarter, we successfully completed our international data center migration and to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OCI, and have closed down our international data centers, and we continue our U.S. data center migrations that should fill additional meaningful cost savings over the next 12 months. We continue to see tremendous organic growth from our software solutions segment of the business, which grew 31% over Q2, compared to Q2 of 2024. and has seen a 32% growth for the first half of the year for 2025 compared to the first half of the year of 2024. In addition to strong upgrade orders from our existing licensees, we won one new logo from Metaswitch for the quarter and one new logo from Cisco's Broadsoft in the quarter as we continue to see opportunities created by uncertainties created by our two largest software solutions competitors, Cisco's Broadsoft and Metaswitch. Our unique pricing and support model for our software solutions platform, combined with our robust feature set, allows us to differentiate ourselves from the rest of our competition at a much stronger price point than they might currently be paying. Our telecom services retail segment grew at 2% organically for the quarter. Our telecom service revenue was up 4% organically, offset by a reduction in product revenue of 7% to reach the blended 2% increase. As previously stated, we have proactively reduced selling from lower margin product opportunities to maintain margins, thus the decrease in product revenue and increase in segment gross margins. We continue to see strong demand for our offerings from our channel partners and our master agent technology service distributors, and expect retail segment revenue to continue to grow at a faster pace. The Master Agent Technology Service Distributors saw an 88% increase in sales bookings year over year, and we expect that momentum to continue. As Jeff previously mentioned, we are focused on profitably growing this segment, and we are not pursuing low-margin or unprofitable retail opportunities. Our remaining performance obligation, also referred to as backlog, is now at $83.5 million, an increase of 17% from Q2 of 2024. Our remaining performance obligation number is the sum of the remaining contract values for our telecom services and software solutions customers that will be recognized on a sliding scale over the next 60 months and is a strong indicator of our future revenue stream. Consolidated gross margin for Q2 was 63%, flat with Q2 of 2024. We continue to see strong gross margins in our software solution segment, where gross margins improved to 74% for the quarter compared to 73% in Q2 of 2024. For the first six months of the year, our software solutions gross margins were 76%, highlighting the scalability and operating leverage we have on the software segment of the business. Our telecom services segment growth margin was 56%, which was down from Q2 of 2024 and flat with Q1. Our telecom service growth margins are affected by product growth margins, which declined year over year as a result of the decline in product revenue. We are confident that we will continue to see growth margin improvements in both segments of the business in the future as we start to recognize cost savings from our planned consolidation of our data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Crescendo's engineering team continues to enhance and improve our award-winning technology and our platform. Our cloud-native platform with robust and advanced API integrations allows us to enhance offerings with both in-house and third-party developed solutions. Artificial Intelligence is leading the charge in these developments with many new and planned releases that will make small and mid-sized businesses more efficient and more productive. We currently have a variety of AI solutions already available for end users, including our voice AI studio, AI call recording, and contact center AI powered by ChatGPT, as well as new applications that are close to being released, like our AI assistant and our AI operator solutions that will help end user customers do more with less. Crescendo's performance for the quarter and first half of 2025 was very strong. and I couldn't be more excited about the future direction and opportunity for Crescendo. We continue to see strong double-digit organic growth combined with increasing gap profitability and strong positive cash flow. We are positioned perfectly with a combination of strong demand for our product offerings, along with great solutions, with a disruptive pricing model, and the best and most talented workforce in the industry to continue our strong growth and success. committed to delivering the best UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS offerings in the sector to our customers and our partners, and the best returns for our shareholders. We're proud to be the fastest-growing platform solution in the country and excited to see how future AI enhancements will spur our growth to 7 million end users and higher. We're laser-focused on enhancing our solutions, improving our efficiencies, and continuing to return strong results. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Jeff.

Thank you, John. Thank you, Ron. Paul, you may open the call to questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Once again, please press star 1 if you have a question. And one moment, please, while we pull for questions. First question today is coming from Joshua Reyes from Needham. Joshua, your line is live.

All right. Thanks for taking my questions. Nice job on the quarter here. Maybe just starting off in terms of the pipeline for the second half of the year, congrats on adding two licensees in the quarter. Just wanted to verify, does that bring the total active licensee count to 240? And I guess what are you just seeing overall in terms of the setup for the second half and in terms of ramping existing licensees to grow software solutions versus adding that new licensee to the mix?

Josh, I'm going to go in reverse order. We see we have a large number of sandboxes out and a large number of people interested, so we expect to see continued growth in new licensees while also seeing growth in upgrades. Both seem to be on a strong trajectory. So we're excited about that. And the number, Doug, what is the current number of licensees here?

Yeah, we always highlight, Doug, 235 plus, but I think that number is probably pretty accurate at 240 with the two additional licensees. We usually go with the licensee number when they actually go live. So when we sell an account, maybe, you know, a couple of weeks or a month before that actual account goes live. So we don't actually give an ongoing live number as of the moment, but... that number is in the right ballpark.

And we do, obviously, we do obviously promote when we get wins from Broadcroft and Cisco, from Broadcroft and Metaswitch.

Gotcha. Understood. And then, US Cellular, obviously, is a key reseller for you on the telecom service side of the business. I believe their acquisition by T-Mobile just closed yesterday. Do you think this could create some incremental opportunities for you or How are you going to manage this relationship now that they've been acquired by T-Mobile?

Yeah, I think there's a tremendous opportunity there. US Sailor has been a fantastic partner for us for over eight years now, one of our largest resellers out there. A lot of excitement going into the T-Mobile combination, and we anticipate getting to the table with T-Mobile and seeing if we can expand that great success we've had with US Sailor to their team as well. So I know that we've got a tremendous amount of support with the U.S. Taylor folks, and they're excited about the merger. Obviously, they're two or three days into the merger, so there's still a lot of things that they've got to get cleared up on their end. But, you know, we had a tremendously strong quarter in the first half of the year with U.S. Taylor, and we anticipate that excitement and momentum to continue with the T-Mobile acquisition. And we're hopeful that we get a really nice seat at the table with T-Mobile to expand that offering with them.

Awesome. Maybe I'll just sneak in one question on margins. Now that you've closed down the international data centers, what should we expect in terms of margin improvement for the second half of the year, or is it going to be more weighted to next year when you're able to close down the domestic data centers?

Josh, it's going to be – I'll have Ron give a little more detail, but it's going to be more weighted next year when we close more of the data centers in the United States. And as you understand, at the same time, we're continuing to invest back in the business, so that will also have some impact.

Yeah, that's right. As Jeff mentioned, you know, we're looking for the major savings to be when we're able to shut down our U.S. data centers. So that will be, you know, next year, the shutdown of the – The International Data Center, our original timeline is a major accomplishment for us, but the incremental savings is minimal. We reinvest that into the business as we add more resources. So international will not have immediate impact in margins, but we do expect the margins to improve when we are able to shut down the U.S. So stay tuned on that.

Awesome. Thank you. I'll pass it along.

Thanks, Josh. Thank you. The next question will be from Mike Lattimore from Northern Capital Markets. Mike, you're on the line. All right, great. Thanks.

Excellent results. Great EBITDA software growth. You touched on master agent growth being very strong. Anything in particular that sparked that kind of growth for that channel?

I'll start with my thoughts and then I'll let John add some color to it, but we've been working the telecom service distributors and brokers out there for quite some time and have some really strong relationships and And those relationships just take a lot of TLC to foster and grow. And so I think as we continue to gain more momentum with them, it's because we do a great job of implementing their sales. And so if an agent brings us an opportunity and we do a great job with it, they're likely to bring us more opportunities. We always highlight our G2 customer service and satisfaction results out there. And that's pretty evident with, you know, being able to gain traction with these master agents out there. You know, if you sub yourself with the master agents, you know, they can put you in the penalty box. And the fact of the matter is that we've been doing a great job with them. In fact, I think we're at one of the larger master agents conferences as we speak with our team and making great inroads there. But, you know, I think overall we're real pleased with the results we're seeing there. And we continue to spend a lot of time and resources to make sure that we grow that part of the business. John, any additional thoughts?

Yeah, I would just add to it, Mike. Our focus there has always been to not try to partner with all of the technology services distributors, but to focus on a small group and grow with them over time and Our team shifts then executing well with partners that we're aligned with. We're making investments in their program, their community, and we're getting good word of mouth and receive orders based on some of the factors that Doug talked about with our GT rankings for customer service and success and implementation ability. So it shifts, continues pull through of long-term investment with those partners.

Sounds good. And then, Doug, I just want to be clear that you did reiterate an expectation of growing at a double-digit rate. Is that what you said?

That's correct. Organically, you know, I think we're at 13% for the year, and we anticipate staying in that double-digit organic growth range.

Okay. And what kind of – how would you bracket software revenue growth in that sense?

Obviously, if you look at the organic growth, the 30% plus range that we've been in for software solutions for the last three or four quarters now has been pretty exceptional. And that's helped raise the bar for the whole organization. But we continue to see great success with our licensees out there. They continue to grow and expand. And as they do that, they expand with us. So as we look at where we are today, strong, strong software solutions growth combined with organic growth on the telecom services side. And as I highlighted in my comment, you know, continuing to grow the telecom services revenue is critical for us. We'd like to get that back to double digits. Right now we're seeing a lot more success keeping the high double digits with software solutions, but we continue to see great success on the telecom services side as well.

Okay. And just lastly, as you look at potential acquisitions,

How are the valuation expectations of the target at this point?

Eric, when I look at acquisitions, I'm sorry, Mike, when I look at acquisitions, I try to find something that we are convinced that we can find some savings and will be accreted in no more than three quarters. That's the benchmark we look at. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question will be from Eric Martinisi from Lake Street. Eric, your line is live.

I wanted to go a layer deeper on the RPO slash backlog color that you gave us. Impressive growth there. You're up 17% year-on-year to $83.5 million. Just curious to know if the mix of the contract terms in there is similar to what we had coming out of Q1. As far as, you know, how long, what's going to be recognized, say, in the remainder of 2025 or over the next 12 months compared to a quarter ago?

Yeah, so our RPOs, you know, just highly weighted to the first three years of the five-year run-out. If you look at our run-out, five-year run-out we have in our footnotes, there's $23 million and $25 remaining, $27 million. million in 26, and 18 million in 27, and it trails off to 9 million and 5 million. So it's heavily weighted to those first three years because we typically sell 36- to 60-month contracts heavily weighted in the three-year time.

Got it. And then hardware, it is a small number, but it was below what I was modeling. I was coming in at around 1.5 million or so, and you guys did a little bit less than that. You did mention, you called out that we're talking about, you know, product is not a focus, low margin product is not a focus for you guys anymore. But is there a kind of an annualized number that we should be thinking about? Or is it just, was there a one-off issue in Q2 where maybe we recognize some in Q1 and it will come back in Q3?

Yeah, as we said all along, we typically guide to the lower of our prior historical quarter averages because it's hard to determine when that one-time revenue comes in, whether it's a cabling job of a school district or it's a desktop phone or, you know, any other equipment we may sell on our MSP division as far as routers and switches. The timing on that is, you know, it's kind of bumpy, and it comes and goes from one quarter to the next, so it's hard for us to put a big number on products when we don't know what series or what quarter that revenue is going to come in.

And Eric, on top of that, as Doug had mentioned, we are strategically looking at product and trying to disassociate from some of the more labor-intensive, very low-margin business that just doesn't make sense to us.

I think one last thing, Eric, just to highlight is that, you know, as Ron said, it does – seems to ebb and flow, but in the last quarter, we did see a higher component of customers that brought their own devices. You know, it used to be where the high, high majority of customers that we were selling were legacy premise-based customers. And now we're starting to see more and more customers that are moving from Envoy provider over to Crescendo. So if they move from a RingCentral or an 8x8 and move over to Crescendo and they bring their existing instruments with them, you know, we can adapt them to our system. And so we don't have a hardware component in those particular sales.

Got it. Thanks for taking my question.

Thank you. The next question will be from George Sutton from Craig Holland. George, your line is live.

Thank you.

It was nice to see both a MediSwitch and a Broadsoft licensee come over. Could you just give us an update on the movement or activity that you're seeing within those licensee opportunities? So as I said previously, George, we do have a lot of sandboxes out. We do have a lot of excitement. But as you understand, it's a long sales process. So it's hard for us to give you an estimate of when we expect X number to close. But we are very excited by the interest we have seen and the discussions we're having with various potential customers.

And I will highlight that the two opportunities that we did close during the quarter were larger on the larger scale. And so, you know, when we look at, you know, the amount of revenue that we're seeing out of the new logos, the amount of revenue that we saw in the new logos in Q2 was considerably higher on average than we've seen in previous quarters because there were larger opportunities.

Great point. On your new innovations and as you add AI call bots, for example, can you just walk through as you're adding these in, I assume my existing customers see the benefits and my new customers are now more opportunistic with those add-ons. Is that how this will work from a pricing perspective?

You nailed it. Yeah, we see a lot of opportunity for upsell to our existing customers and In many cases, it might be the reason why a new customer comes on board is they see the technology advantages. So, you know, in some cases, customers have been with us for quite some time, you know, take for granted that, you know, the system is the system. But, you know, we're constantly coming out with new enhancements and letting our customer base know about new enhancements. So, you know, instead of them going out and looking on the market to see who can handle a particular application for them, in many cases, we already have that until their first call. is hopefully to us, and we can sell them an up-sale on a new AI capability or a new feature capability within the system.

Awesome. That's it for me. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you.

The next question will be from Josh Nichols from BYD Securities. Josh, your line is signed.

Hi, this is Matthew. I'm Josh Nichols. Thanks for taking my question. I guess to start off, I mean, product revenue and margin showed some nice sequential improvement. So do you think competitors are starting to pull back from the rational pricing or what do you think the status on that is?

Competitors have not started to pull back on the irrational pricing, and the market is just as competitive as it has been. We think we're winning more because of the value of our product services and customer service in particular. But as we said, we're going to continue to try and expand and continue to grow.

Got it. Great. And I guess it's one last one for me. I mean, just given the sales bank, let's see, finally back in March, is there an update on the size of that opportunity for you? Or has there been any benefits from that that you think you realized recently?

Yeah, this is John. I'll add that we continue to see, you know, my colleagues then kind of retracting themselves from their cloud business for some time. but we continue to see opportunity with partners who are my health partners overall in who are looking for a transition in our home for the future, as we do in a lot of the legacy providers. So it continues to be a source for us for potential new licensees and also partners in our retail business. And we recently made some new introductions around that portfolio that we think will be of benefit to us even more. So we continue to see in that legacy communications market partners that are finding us as the home for the next five to ten years for their customers.

Got it. Great. Thanks for the help. Thank you.

Paul, let's take one more question.

Okay. The final question today is coming from Jesse Silbison from Deep Royal Capital. Jesse, you're on the side.

Hey, guys. A lot of things have been hit on here. Thanks for taking one last question here. I guess just on international expansion, it's been clearly highlighted and strongly made in Europe. How has... How has the international market looked for you recently and is there any specific interest in many geographies in particular recently? Thank you.

Well, international continues to expand and we continue to do quite well there and The advantage of OCI is location is almost irrelevant to us because we can sell one instance in any one country and open up a data center there. So while we primarily rely on Europe and particularly Europe and Australia, we're willing to expand anywhere.

Thank you. Thank you. And this does conclude today's Q&A session.

I will now hand the call back to Jeff Cohen for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much, Paul, and thank all of you for your attention. We appreciate your support, and we hope to be delivering equally as exciting