Data Storage Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Data Storage Corporation first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow a formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce David Walden, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Data Storage Corporation's 2026 First Quarter Business Update Conference Call. On the call with us this morning are Chuck Piluso, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Panagiotakos, Chief Financial Officer. The company issued a press release this morning containing its 2026 First Quarter financial results, which is also posted on the company's website. If you have any questions after the call or would like any additional information about the company, Please contact Crescendo Communications at 212-671-1020. Before we begin, please note that today's call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially due to various risks and uncertainties described in the company's filings with the SEC. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements. I'd now like to turn the call over to Chuck Paluso. Please go ahead, Chuck.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone joining us today. The first quarter of 2026 marked another important milestone in the strategic transformation of Data Storage Corporation. Over the past year, we have repositioned the company following a successful sale of our cloud solution business in 2025. And today, we are operating from a position of financial strength, strategic flexibility, and operational focus. As many of you know, the sale of the Cloud First business was transformational for Data Storage Corporation. That transaction not only validated the value we created over more than two decades, but also provided us with the capital foundation necessary to reposition the company towards what we believe are significantly larger long-term market opportunities. Following the transaction, we completed a substantial tender offer that reduced our outstanding shares count by approximately 72% while still maintaining debt-free balance sheet and substantial liquidity. Importantly, the period following the sale was not a pause in activity. It was a period of evaluation, of analysis, of strategic development. We spent considerable time assessing emerging infrastructure trends, regulatory developments, competitive positioning, and areas where we believe meaningful structural market gap existed. What became increasingly clear Experimentation into mission-critical software deployment environments. Across industries such as healthcare, financial service, insurance, organizations are beginning to deploy sovereign AI in AI factory environments. On-site equipment designed to run proprietary AI models on highly sensitive data sets. These are not public AI cloud environments. These are private enterprise grade AI infrastructures that organizations increasingly rely upon for core operating workflows, security, decision making, compliance functions, and customer facing processes. As we started this market, we identified what we believe is a critical infrastructure gap As these systems are deployed, today we believe there are no widely adopted purpose-built platforms designed specifically addressing recovery, resilience, behavior validation, and regulatory compliance to these AI factory environments. After two successful decades, Operating Cloud First, we understand the client's requirements as it relates to meeting their expectations surrounding business continuity. Additional data storage systems focus primarily on restoring hardware or infrastructure uptime, but AI introduces an entirely different challenge set. Enterprises will require a business continuity service. and will increasingly need to validate those models of behaving correctly when a situation occurs. That output remains compliant, that inference consistency is maintained and that recovery procedures themselves satisfy the client and regulatory standards. We believe this creates a significantly new category of infrastructure need. To address this opportunity, we plan to establish sovereign AI Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary focused on developing what we describe as an AI continuity control plane for regulated enterprises. Our intention is to create a platform capable of serving as a resiliency, recovery, validation, and compliance lane for sovereign AI infrastructure environments. The platform we envision is designed to detect behavioral anomalies, execute validated recovery sequences, and generated audit-ready documentation that regulated industries may interestingly require as AI becomes embedded into critical business operations. Importantly, we believe our approach is differentiated because it focuses not only on infrastructure restoration, but also on preserving operational integrity, compliance posture at the model and behavioral levels. We also believe the market timing is compelling. Earlier this month, several leading AI developers announced multi-billion dollar initiatives designed to integrate AI deeply into the enterprise-wide workflows, further validating large-scale AI deployment across mission-critical environments is accelerating rapidly. While this market remains early stage and rapidly evolving, we believe long-term opportunity could be substantial. Based on our preliminary analysis, regulatory-driven enterprise AI infrastructure spending could ultimately represent a multi-billion dollar annual market opportunity. At the same time, we are not currently aware of any other purposely built platform targeting compliance-driven AI recovery for regulated enterprises in the matter we are pursuing. Our focus throughout 2026 will be advancing the platform architecture, redefining our go to market strategy, continuing industry engagement discussions, and progressing towards potential initial customer opportunities. We expect to provide additional commercial and operational updates as these initiatives advance throughout the year. At the same time, our Nexus business continues to provide an important operational and financial foundation for DTSC. Nexus remains a stable, recurring revenue business delivering VoIP, dedicated Internet access, SD-WAN, and data transport services. During the first quarter of 2026, Nexus sales increased 10.9% year-over-year, while gross profit increased 32.1% and gross margins expanded to 53.7 compared to 45% in the prior period. We believe these results demonstrate both the continued demand for our connectivity services and operational discipline within the business. Just as importantly, Nexus provides us with a recurring revenue base and operating infrastructure that supports our broader strategic initiatives. Financially, we believe DTSP is well-positioned relative to many companies pursuing emerging technology opportunities. We ended the year with no long-term debt, substantial working capital, significant market securities, and a highly flexible balance sheet. That strength gives us the ability to remain patient, strategic, disciplined on how we allocate capital while SAIS remains our primary strategic initiative. We are also continuing to evaluate complementary opportunities. including partnerships, strategic investments, mergers and acquisitions, and other transactions that could strengthen our competitive position and enhance long-term shareholder value. Ultimately, our goal is to position DTSC at the intersection of enterprise AI infrastructure, resiliency, compliance, and mission-critical continuity areas where we believe demand will continue to expand significantly over the coming years. We appreciate the continued support and confidence of our shareholders, and we look forward to updating everyone on our progress as we move throughout 2026. I'd like to turn it over to Chris Panagiotakos for a review of the financial results. Chris?