Rekor Systems, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's ReCore Systems Inc. conference call. My name is Kevin, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. Before we start, I must remind you that statements made in this conference call concerning future revenues, results of operations, financial position, markets, economic conditions, product and product releases, partnerships, and any other statements that may be construed as a prediction of future performance or events or forward-looking statements. Such statements can involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. We ask that you refer to the full disclaimers in our earnings release. You should also review a description of the risk factors contained in our annual and quarterly filings with the SEC. Non-GAAP results will also be discussed on the call. The company believes the presentation of non-GAAP information provides useful supplementary data concerning the company's ongoing operations and is provided for informational purposes only. I will now turn the presentation over to ReCore CFO, Mr. Joseph Filippa.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by thanking all of our investors and stakeholders who have joined us on today's call. Today I'll walk through our financial results for the year ended December 31st, 2025. We've been focusing on execution and operational efficiency and are encouraged by the progress we continue to make. During 2025, we continued to deliver top line revenue growth while also finding efficiencies within our operations. For the year ended December 31st, 2025, we recognized revenue of $48.5 million, an increase of 5% compared to revenue of $46 million in 2024. This increase represents continued growth across our public safety and urban mobility businesses. Throughout 2025, we continued to see growth in our sales pipeline and active deployments. As of December 31, 2025, our remaining performance obligations increased to $25.9 million. a nearly 80% increase from December 31, 2024, which highlights strong momentum, giving us confidence in our ability to drive growth into 2026. For the year ended December 31, 2025, reoccurring revenue was $23.9 million, up 6% year-over-year. This reflects our long-term strategy of expanding our reoccurring revenue base through software and data-as-a-service subscription contracts. Adjusted margin for 2025 was 56% versus 49% in 2024. This improvement was largely driven by a greater portion of high margin software sales relative to our service and hardware-based contracts, as well as operational efficiencies within our deployments. As we continue to grow, we expect margins to fluctuate over time, but to gradually stabilize as our software and data-as-a-service businesses become a larger share of total revenue. As mentioned in a recent press release, we made the decision to onshore our engineering efforts to optimize our engineering operations and cost containment efforts. As a result of this decision, we recognize the non-cash asset impairment charge of $3.8 million in 2025. A key highlight this year was our continued focus on optimizing our operations. Total operating expenses excluding depreciation, amortization, and asset impairment charges declined 20% year-over-year, representing an $11.4 million reduction. These reductions were achieved across all major areas of the business and reflect continuing disciplined cost containment and a deliberate realignment of resources to support our strategy. The combination of revenue growth and improved operational efficiency resulted in significant profitability improvements. Adjusted EBITDA loss for 2025 was $18.1 million, an improvement of $11 million or 38% compared to 2024. A meaningful indicator of our progress in 2025 is the trajectory of our adjusted EBITDA loss throughout the year. Our adjusted EBITDA loss in the first half of 2025 was $13.1 million compared to a loss of $5 million in the second half of 2025. demonstrating that the operational improvements and cost discipline we've implemented throughout the year are taking hold and moving us in the right direction. We are encouraged by this trend and believe it reflects the early results of our strategic realignment. As we continue to evaluate our operations and identify further efficiencies heading into 2026, we do anticipate incurring one-time charges in the first and second quarters. primarily related to the cancellation and restructuring of existing agreements. While these charges are near-term in nature, we view them as necessary steps in building a leaner, more scalable operating structure that positions the company for improved performance and long-term value creation. We entered 2026 with strong momentum and remain committed to driving sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value. I'm grateful for your continued support and partnership. Thank you for your attention. Robert, over to you.

Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a defining year for the company. We made a deliberate shift away from building the company of the future and refocused the organization on executing a pragmatic, profitable business model. That shift is now clearly reflected in our results. We are a more disciplined, efficient, and resilient company, having transitioned from a development-heavy, R&D-driven organization to a customer-focused business with fully productized solutions. As our right-sizing actions conclude towards the end of Q2 and the bulk of our efficiency work moves behind us, we are entering a new phase of the company, one focused on scaling. In the back half of 2026, we expect to aggressively ramp sales execution and drive accelerated growth supported by strong and expanding demand environment and a platform now built for scale. From a financial standpoint, we delivered solid progress. Revenue grew year over year despite a significant focus on efficiency. More importantly, our mix towards higher value recurring revenue and tighter cost controls drove gross margins to 56%. We reduced net loss by 49% and importantly achieved operating cash flow positivity in the fourth quarter of 2025. Combined with meaningful improvement in adjusted EBITDA, this makes a critical inflection point and demonstrates that our model is both viable and scalable. We have already captured substantial efficiencies through our rightsizing efforts and expect additional gains as we continue to align the cost structure with the current scale of the business. That said, we want to be clear. There may be some quarter-to-quarter variability as we complete this process. The long-term trajectory, however, remains firmly intact. We are also taking a disciplined approach to innovation spend, we are reducing and normalizing R&D to a run rate of 7% to 10% of gross revenue by the back half of 2026, aligning investment levels with a company of our size. At the same time, we are improving development efficiency through the use of modern tooling and focusing resources on near-term, customer-driven priorities. Operationally, the decision to onshore our engineering team is already delivering results. We are seeing faster development cycles, improved responsiveness, and stronger customer engagement. This is not only a cost and efficiency improvement, it enhances our competitive positioning. Between late 21 and late 2023, we completed three acquisitions, each with distinct technologies, teams, and operating models, making integration a complex undertaking. after which we navigated a period of leadership transition across both the board and executive teams, which added another layer of complexity. That work is now largely behind us. Integration is substantially complete, and we are operating on a unified platform, and the organization is now aligned, stable, and focused. Importantly, we continue to execute and make meaningful progress throughout this period. positioning us to fully leverage these assets as we enter a growth phase in 2026. We also launched ReCore Labs in 2025, focused on identifying synthetically created and modified media known as deep fakes. This initiative builds on technology we have been developing internally for years. Professor Sanjay Sarma has agreed to chair ReCore Labs and step down from the parent company board to do so. In closing, we have materially strengthened the foundation of the business. We now have a more efficient cost structure, higher quality revenue base, and a clear path to sustain profitability. With the heavy lifting behind us and a platform built to scale, we are entering our next phase focused on execution, growth, and value creation. We believe we are well positioned to drive meaningful, scalable, long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you for your continued support. And operator, we can now turn the call and open it up for questions.

Thank you, and I'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to move your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star 1. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is coming from Michael Lattimore from Northern Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

All right, great. Yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, and congrats on getting cash flow positive here in the fourth quarter. I guess, as you look to 26 here, do you expect the year to be cash flow positive, maybe, you know, excluding maybe one-time items?

Joe? Yeah, so without, you know, I don't want to provide specific profitability guidance, but, you know, we are encouraged by the progress we made at the end of 2025. And we hope to continue to, you know, build on that momentum as we enter 2026. I think you'll see some additional cost savings related to the onshoring of engineering efforts, as well as some other things that we're working on to kind of help reduce our expense base while also maintaining top line revenue growth. You know, I do want to be conscious that there are going to be those one-time charges that come in as we look to restructure the business. But, you know, I think it all gets back to ensuring that we're running a lean operation and working towards that goal of becoming profitable.

Yeah, great. Okay. Sounds good. And then maybe an update on the Georgia deployment. You know, that was a big contract you guys won last year. You know, maybe talk a little bit about that. any deployments in the fourth quarter? How does that kind of play out through 26?

Yeah. So Mike, typically the state agencies or DOTs usually shut down between Thanksgiving and New Year's. They don't let you do a lot of work. And then obviously around the country, depending on the weather, it may be impossible. So we just started to crank things up there probably, you know, towards the, second half of the first quarter. And we're working down there right now at a pace that's more than we've ever done in Georgia before, and hopefully it'll continue.

Great, great. And you highlighted for 25, you highlighted, you know, the public safety sector growing. Can you just describe a few of the more important customers you had in 25 for public safety? At least that's what it says in the press release.

Yeah. We have a couple of large OEM customers. Unfortunately, where we cannot use their name, but they've been using our engine and software for years. And the LPR business is growing. It's picking up. And we're seeing that. We still have probably one of the best engines there is, given that it operates not only in the U.S., but in 90 other countries. So we're seeing more licensing of our software, which is where our focus is. And we're going to continue those efforts going into 26 because it's just a better business model, right? Less overhead, boots on the ground. sales churn and so forth. So we're focused more on the software side of it now, which is good.

Yeah. Last time for me, you know, there's been some talk about just political and I guess regulatory resistance to ALPR technologies. How do you view that? I mean, is that elongating sales cycles? Is that creating obstacles or accelerating opportunities since you have some solutions there?

You know, the majority of our software license sales are not in the law enforcement arena. You know, there are theme parks, parking companies, and others, so we don't have that issue there. In law enforcement, you know, it's always been an issue, Mike. It's not going away, but we don't operate like others. We don't have data lakes. We don't sell the data to third parties. That's where you see a lot of issues. So, you know, we kind of stay in the background and let others battle that out, you know.

I guess I'll sneak one, Warren, if that's all right. In Texas, you know, there's a, you know, good kind of, I guess, master contract there and you have Austin and you're trying to sell other big cities. Maybe update on kind of the receptivity of other big cities to command in Texas?

Only that it's moving forward. It's a very slow grind. You know, these agencies do not move quickly, although we would like them to and it Sometimes we're naive to think that it was a much faster process. I do think the good news is that we're in front of them. I know we have a couple meetings coming up later in April with a number of the districts, so there is interest. We are in the process of working on a couple of new contracts and a couple of renewals of existing contracts. I think onshoring command was a good thing for us to do because it brought us closer to the customer. And frankly, it fixed a lot of bugs that the system had that, you know, where attention wasn't being paid to it. So we'll be able to, you know, get that to scale a lot faster now and tweak it.

Sounds good. Good luck this year.

All right. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. Our next question is coming from Louie DePalma from William Blair. Your line is now live.

Robert and Joe, good afternoon.

Hey.

For Robert and Joe, for both of you, you referenced the Georgia DOT $50 million contract. In another During the summer of 2024, you won the 1,000-plus camera contract with the Florida DOT. What has been the progress of the Florida rollout, and do you expect that program to generate further growth in 2026? And what are the other prospects in Florida besides that particular contract? Thanks.

Yeah, so Florida, it wasn't 1,000. It was 150 systems in District 7, and it was a pilot as the state is looking to move to a data-as-a-service model for the entire state, and it's gone well, and we're in discussions with them now, and the program is expanding. It's not public. I can't talk about it yet, but we're making good progress down there. You know, the growth of the model and data as a service is clearly, you know, starting to scale. So that's, you know, that's a good thing. And we're seeing that across a number of states, right?

Yeah. And maybe the opportunity was 1,000 and your deployment was in the 100. Thanks for that clarification.

Yeah, we deployed 150 systems in District 7. We have more cameras in Florida than 150. We deployed at least, I think, another 50, maybe a little bit more, and we're deploying now. But if you look at what the apparatus that we deploy does, and you look at what it can replace, yeah, there's thousands of systems that this technology can replace just in Florida alone.

And for the year that just concluded, 2025, did you disclose what percentage of the $49 million in revenue came from recurring revenue versus equipment revenue, and what was the growth of your recurring revenue?

Yeah, Joe, you want to?

Yeah, so it was about a 50-50 split, and we had about a 6% growth in our reoccurring revenue year over year.

Great. And should we think of, you know, that trend continuing in 2026?

I think so. You know, I think as part of our strategy, we're working to push customers more to a reoccurring revenue model, and then that aligns well with data as a service, software as a service. It's a little dependent on the buying power of the certain DOTs, but we do expect, as part of our strategy, to continue to push that into a reoccurring model.

Thanks, Robert and Jim.

You know, one way to think about it is that the – Look, when we first went to the LPR business way back when, law enforcement agencies, PDs, large and small, were not doing subscription-based procurement. They were buying hardware and software with maintenance packages. And that's traditionally how DOTs have operated. And we were the pioneers. The company we acquired, SCS, was the pioneer of the concept of data as a service. So the idea that you get what you need to be able to have the data to manage your roadways, both for planning and public safety, but you don't have to buy anything. You just pay, you know, pay a company for the data and they're responsible for the hardware, the software and the maintenance is a very appealing model. It's just that it takes government a little bit of time to catch on to that, but it is catching on and, You know, we've got multiple states doing that now. So, you know, that's going to continue to expand because they get, you know, they can stretch the dollars that they spend much further.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. One moment, please, while we pull for further questions. If you're on a speakerphone, it may be necessary to take yourself off before pressing star one. One moment, please, while we poll for further questions. And we reach the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

Look, everybody, thanks for your support. If you recall back during the call, You know, it was just a few years ago that we, you know, completed the acquisitions of, you know, these three disparate companies. And, you know, we've gone through a lot and Rome isn't built in the night, right, or a day. And I think, you know, we've got the company stable. We're focused on profitability. I would encourage you to look at the back half of 2025 with regard to the EBITDA loss compared to the first half of 2025. And I would remind you that, you know, a lot of the right sizing and cost savings and efficiencies that we're doing have taken place here in the first quarter of this year, which, you know, will probably be, you know, equal or two, if not greater than what we did last year. So you can look at the balance sheet and you can do the math and you can see that the company's headed in the right direction. And the back half of 26, we're going to focus on scale, and then you'll see the company grow, but grow profitably and smartly. So it's growing anyway, but growing a lot faster. Anyway, thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.

Take care. Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast. We'll disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your patience.