Quotemedia Inc

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Quote Media Q2 Results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note this call is being recorded, and I'll be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Dave Schorn. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Before we begin, I have a brief safe harbor statement. Except for historical information contained herein, the statements made in this call include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. And with that, we're happy to go through our second quarter 2026 results. Overall, we're very pleased with the progress we made this quarter. Last quarter, I talked about Comedia entering a new phase of scalable growth, and I think what we're seeing now is some real evidence of that happening. One of the things that we're most excited about is the progress we're making with larger enterprise clients. We recently signed a significant multi-year agreement with a large enterprise customer for a comprehensive market data and research solutions. And we're also in the final stages of completing another multi-year enterprise agreement. What's particularly exciting about these opportunities is that in both cases, we were selected to replace much larger incumbent providers. We've talked before about competing with some of these biggest companies in our industry. and now we're increasingly seeing that when these customers really evaluate the alternatives, QuoteMedia can compete extremely well. We believe there's a few reasons for that. We've spent many years building a very comprehensive financial data set. This gives us tremendous flexibility in how we deliver and integrate our data for customers and we combine that with level of service that can be difficult for much larger organizations to match. We think those are some of the things that really differentiate QuoteMedia, and we're increasingly seeing that reflected in the size and quality of the opportunities we're winning. We're moving further upmarket. The opportunities we're competing for are getting larger, and the relationships we're building with customers are becoming broader and more strategic. Another area we're very excited about is artificial intelligence. Last quarter, I talked a little about how we're using AI internally and we're using it across data cleansing and monitoring, quality assurance, software development and a number of other areas. That work continues and we're seeing real productivity benefits from it. But I think the more exciting story going forward is what AI means for our products and for our customers. We've already released new AI related capabilities and we have quite a bit more coming throughout the year. We're working on AI-generated market intelligence, enhanced screening capabilities, trading ideas, portfolio analysis, education, and conversational tools that allow users to ask questions and interact more naturally with our financial data. We think AI is going to change how people consume and analyze financial information, and we want Colt Media to be at the forefront of that change. There's also another side to the AI opportunity, and I think it's very interesting for us. Every company developing AI applications around financial markets needs data, and not just a small amount of data. They need comprehensive, accurate, reliable, and well-structured financial data that their systems can actually use. That's something Quote Media has spent many years creating. We're already seeing companies come to us specifically because they need our data for their own AI initiatives. So we think we're in a very interesting position. We can build our own AI products and integrate AI throughout the Quo Media platform, but we can also provide the underlying financial data that these companies need to build their own AI products. We think both sides of that opportunity could become increasingly important for us. Turning briefly to the quarter itself, the financial results also continue to show scalability we've been talking about. Revenue increased 11% year over year, with particularly strong growth in interactive content and continued growth in our quote stream product line. At the same time, our gross margin improved to 50% compared to 46% in the prior year period. I think that's important. One of the advantages of our business is that as we add revenue, particularly from larger enterprise customers, our costs don't grow at the same rate. We are starting to see more of that operating leverage come through our numbers. Adjusted EBITDA also improved substantially compared to the same quarter last year. Keith will go through the financial results in more details, including the impact that development costs accounting, and amortization continue to have on our reported earnings. But when I look at the business overall, I think the direction is very encouraging. We're growing revenue at a double-digit rate, we're improving margins, we're winning larger enterprise customers and we're continuing to develop new products and capabilities that can create additional opportunities for us going forward. Our sales pipeline also remains very strong. The significant contracts that we're adding are growing multi-year relationships, which gives us additional visibility into future revenue. And based on the business we currently have under contract, we continue to expect double-digit revenue growth throughout the remainder of 2026. At the same time, I think there's a bigger story developing here. We have spent many years building out our data, our technology, and our infrastructure, and we're now at the point where we can compete for opportunities that historically would have gone almost and many more.

Thank you, Dave, and welcome, everyone. In reviewing the financial results for Q2, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis relative to the second quarter of 2025. Our momentum continued this quarter with revenue increasing 11%. This growth was primarily driven by a 14% increase in interactive content revenue and a 9% increase in corporate quote stream revenue. These results reflect success in both acquiring new customers and expanding our footprint with existing accounts, especially among our larger enterprise clients. Shifting to our retail segment, individual cool stream revenue remained relatively stable, decreasing slightly by 2% compared to the comparative period. Turning to our cost of revenue, total cost of revenue, which includes stock exchange fees, data costs and amortization of capitalized development increased by 2%. This modest increase was driven by higher data storage fees to support our growing customer base, which was partially offset by lower amortization expenses related to historical development costs. As a result of our revenue growth outpacing our cost structure, Gross margin improved significantly to 50% in the quarter, up from 46% in the prior period. Total operating expenses increased 4% during the quarter. This increase primarily reflects a lower capitalization rate of development costs, which resulted in higher near-term expense recognition. This is largely offset by cost reductions across sales, marketing, and DNA. Sales and marketing expenses decreased 4%. This is primarily due to a one-time stock-based compensation expense that occurred in Q2 of 2025, which did not repeat this quarter.

G&A expenses decreased 10%.

This improvement was driven by lower bad debt expenses, reduced office rent, and a decrease in professional fees. Following the expiration of our Vancouver office lease in July 2025, we downsized our physical footprint as the majority of our development team has transitioned to work remotely. Additionally, the transition to our new principal accounting firm in Q1 of 2026 resulted in lower professional fees expensed during the quarter. These structural savings were partially offset by and increased in investments related to AI tools. Software development expenses increased 17%. This increase reflects the shifting accounting dynamics I mentioned earlier. Specifically, we capitalized 8% of our development costs this quarter compared to 16% in the comparative period. Consequently, a higher proportion of our development costs was expensed immediately. At the same time, amortization expense remained elevated due to our prior period investments. Importantly, while these non-cash accounting dynamics impact our GAAP earnings and adjusted EBITDA, they had no impact on our underlying cash flow. Turning to net income and profitability metrics, our net loss for the quarter narrowed significantly to $362,000. compared to a net loss of $854,000 in Q2 of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $241,000, up from $99,000 in the comparative period. Our bottom line performance continues to be impacted by elevated non-cash amortization expenses stemming from historical development costs capitalized in the prior periods. For additional detail and a full reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to GAAP metrics, please refer to the financial tables in our press release issued this past Friday. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flows, we closed the quarter with a cash balance of $187,000, compared to $320,000 at the end of our fiscal year 2025. Deferred revenues stood at $1.6 million at quarter end, We expect the future delivery costs associated with this deferred revenue to be minimal as the majority relate to setup and development work that have already been completed. This revenue will be recognized systematically over the remaining contract terms. Looking at cash generation, net cash provided by operations was $257,000. Investing activities used $369,000. dedicated primarily to core infrastructure and product development investments. Note that we typically receive large recurring customer payments at the start of each quarter. As a result, our cash balance typically hits its lowest point at the end of each quarter before replenishing in the days following. Finally, I will discuss the outlook for the remainder of 2026. Following our 11% revenue growth this quarter, backed by revenue on our contract, including a significant enterprise agreement recently signed, we anticipate sustained double-digit revenue growth through the remainder of fiscal 2026. Furthermore, we expect ongoing improvements in gross margin and operational profitability as our revenue scales and the impact of prior period amortization declines. Thank you for your time. I'll now turn the call back over to Dave to open up the lines for questions.

Thanks, Keith. Sure, yeah. So we'll now open up the call for questions. Let us know if you have anything that you want us to answer.

And if you would like to ask a question, you may signal by pressing star and one on your telephone keypad. You'll be placed into the queue in the order received. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing pound and one. Once again, to ask a question, press star one now. And our first question will come from Michael Kupinski with Noble Capital Markets.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. So just a couple of quick ones here. You mentioned the $1.6 million in deferred revenue over the course of contracts. When does the majority of that deferred revenue come in? Is it the next year or is it over the next three years?

Well, the majority of the existing deferred revenue will be recognized over this year, but we have new contracts in the works that will replenish, if you will, our deferred revenue balance. So we expect a significant portion of that to be replaced by new deals that are currently pending.

Gotcha. So in Q2, we saw a deceleration in the rate of growth. from Q1, and it's been a while since we've actually seen where corporate quote stream is actually lower than the Q1. I was just wondering, can you kind of give us a sense of why we would see a deceleration in the rate of growth in Q2? It looks like the comparisons were very similar to last, you know, both Q1 and Q2 were relatively similar in terms of comps from a year earlier.

I can answer that. So essentially what we have, we have one really large customer that does cleanup of their user base, and they do this every so often. And so they clean up users that are inactive or they're spending too much on them, etc., and they go through these cleanup routines and then it climbs back up again. So it's a little bit of a wave that happens and it just so happened that they did their cleanup of their user base and that's why it's lower.

But they've already ramped up past that again.

So it's just the way, the flow of the ebbs and flows of this large customer managing their users. That's all it is.

I got you. And you mentioned last quarter and also this quarter that you, I guess, are replacing some large incumbent customers. Does that indicate to us that there will be some increased expenses related to that? Or can you just kind of give us a flavor of how you see that falling in the subsequent quarters?

Right. Yep. No, there's no increase in expenses. All of these are deals that we completely cover with our product lines and our people. So everything that we've built and created, these two large deals, are 100% covered by what we've got. So no increase in expenses for that. Everything goes well.

And no pass-through revenue is associated with them.

Yeah, Jeff. And then just in terms of the balance of the year, you know, how should we look at the cadence of revenue? You indicated that you're looking for double-digit growth, but would some of the growth be kind of lumpy in Q3 versus Q4, or is it just something that would be more of a straight-line type of cadence? I'm just kind of curious.

Well, I think probably, Keith, you know more about these because you have all the other numbers, but the – The customers that I've been dealing with, these bigger ones, there is a ramp up, right? So it does grow over time and then deep into 2027. So it's a constantly growing thing. So I think that what we're going to see is, you know, obviously you don't get the big enchilada when they go live because they're going piecemeal as they go live. So it's going to extend into 2027. So, you know, does that answer the question? It's kind of a ramp-up.

It's a ramp-up. So, like, we should look from here. We should look, like, more for an acceleration in the rate of growth towards the balance of the year.

That's right. Yeah, and into 2027. Some of these are rolling out piecemeal throughout even the next year.

Some of our revenue growth will be offset a little bit once we fully recognize some of our development costs that go back years. While the deferred revenue might be replaced by new contracts that are pending, that revenue will be recognized over future periods. So that will offset our revenue, but will have no impact on our cash flow. It's just that counting thing.

Gotcha. If I could slip another one in. I was just wondering, are the exchanges and your data vendors adapting their licensing terms for AI and agent-driven consumption at this point? And then also, obviously, you know, Google and others are going now, in terms of their search, AI search mechanisms, that they're going directly to... is a source. I'm just wondering if there is any risk that you see in terms of AI and maybe even sidestepping, you know, kind of like the middleman for some data sets.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not too worried about AI, but I'm worried. There are costs that are going to be associated, but it's actually not going to be really with us. It's going to be for our customers. So if a customer wants to use our data in AI systems, then If we're providing, say, quote data, which is coming from an exchange, then there's going to be AI fees probably as time progresses with the exchanges. But that's just flow through from us. But the rest of our data we own. So we own all the data. We collect all the data direct. We have direct connectivity to every single news provider, to every mutual fund, to every ETF, all these things. So we're pulling in all the data direct from the sources. and then providing it back out. So AI can't really do all of that. AI is good for then using that data and turning it into what people want. But I think the fees are going to come from exchanges and things like that to our clients over time. I think it's all very new at this point, but it's really allowing us to create really good product.

Gotcha. All right, that's all I have. Thank you. Yep.

And our next question will come from Daniel Wilson. Please go ahead.

Hey there. Thanks for taking my questions. It's really great to see the traction with the larger enterprise accounts and margins this quarter, so congrats on that. I'd love to see it. Dave, a couple questions for you on the new agreements that you signed this quarter. Could you give us a ballpark revenue run rate for the contracts?

I actually can't. I'm not allowed to. Unfortunately, I can't. So we're just going to have to see how it plays out in the numbers as we go forward.

Gotcha. Fair enough. Any way to maybe characterize it versus your current largest customers or deal with any other qualitative color?

Keith, what did we say, top ten?

Yeah, it'll be top ten. Awesome. Where it fits in that top ten, I'll have to work it out.

Yeah. Both are in the top ten.

Great.

Looking at the deferred revenue and coming down this past quarter, and Keith, you were mentioning maybe some of the dynamics with it rolling off, and it sounds like there's a lot of maybe a changing of the guard between some of the older contracts that are completing and the implementation schedules for the new ones, but I just wanted to maybe get a little bit more detail on that declining this quarter and whether you expect to hit a new high or just replenish it or partially replenish it. What's that going to look like this next quarter?

Are you talking about the deferred revenue recognized or the deferred revenue balance itself?

Sorry, the balance that's on the balance sheet this quarter.

Yeah, so there's going to be a significant amount dropping off, but the amount that's on there now should be replaced by the, you know, there's a contract pending and it'll be completed at some point. So it should pretty much offset that. But of course, it won't offset all the revenue from that because again, the revenue will be, we can't start recognizing revenue until the setup development works completed, right? So we won't see that revenue until future periods. But it should almost offset the deferred revenue that's dropping off for the remainder of this year. That won't happen until we'll start having until the fourth quarter. Yeah, for a fourth quarter.

Okay, got it. The press release also mentioned a strong pipeline of additional enterprise opportunities and Dave, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned a second multi-year enterprise agreement and increasingly moving up market and bidding on larger deals or negotiating larger deals. Are you able to provide any additional quantification of the changes to your pipeline, average contract size, anything that would just provide more detail on the shape of that pipeline itself?

Well, the pipeline is always growing, but it's in every area. So it's not just the big customers, it's the smaller ones as well. As we expand and grow and sign these bigger deals and get our name more and more out there, we're getting customers at every level. But the ones at the highest level are the ones that have the highest impact. Those are multi-year deals. They're multi-million dollar contracts and they you know they really change the way that we do things and and you know the last two have no have no flow-through costs it's a hundred percent revenue bought to the bottom line for cool media so you know that's that's where we're at today and and our our our targets and everything that we're working on are more and more of these because once the big ones see that other companies are going with Cold Media and not going with some of the other bigger incumbents, they're calling us and saying, you know, let's sit at the table and let's figure out what Cold Media can do. Why did that company choose you and why did that company choose you? And then that's where they start to learn. So the last one we just did, I just had a call with the guy last week and he said that his company Comedia has been incredibly impressive of the people and the service that we've been providing. We've blown away the incumbents as far as that goes. So, I mean, they're rolling out our data, they're incorporating everything, they're doing everything, and they're working with our team to make sure everything's perfect.

And they can't believe the white glove treatment that they're getting and how educated our people are.

they just don't get that from those large providers so that's that's good you know that's that's good to hear and you know first thing I asked for was a letter of reference of course and he said absolutely so there you go now it's it's we're just doing the right stuff and and everything's getting bigger which is good that's great it's good to see that flywheel starting to kick in

Keith, last one on the cash. You mentioned that subsequent to quarter end, as is usual, you received some payments. Could you maybe give us a read on what the cash balance looks like today versus quarter end?

Well, I don't have it exactly today, but to give you an idea, though, so, like, our largest customer pays quarterly, and they pay at the start of each quarter. So... and there's other customers like that. So that's why the kind of cyclical nature of our cash balances is always at the lowest at the end of each quarter. We're not concerned about our cash balances, the bottom line.

Good deal. Thank you for that and thanks for taking my questions today. Thank you.

And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you can signal by pressing star 1 at this time. and it appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Shorin, I'll turn the conference back to you.

Okay, thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support, of course, and interest in Quilt Media. As always, if you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to us at investors at quiltmedia.com. Thanks again, and we wish you the great rest of your day. Bye-bye.

And this does conclude today's Quilt Media Q2 Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.