IC Group Holdings Inc.

everyone, and thank you for joining us today. And welcome to IC Group Holdings financial webinar covering our first quarter of 2026. This is for the period ended March 31, 2026. And we do appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. Joining me today, we have Duncan McCready, our Chief Executive Officer, and John Penhale, the Chief Financial Officer. After markets closed yesterday, we issued our press release outlining our first quarter financial results. And I'll remind you that you can find those on our website under the investor relations section or as well on CDAR+. A replay of today's webinar will be available on our website shortly after the event concludes. As we move through the presentation, we'll discuss our financial performance for the quarter and provide you with an update on our operating divisions and review key developments that continue to support our growth strategy. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain comments today include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current expectation as of today and are subjective to a number of risks and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information on these risks, again, you can check out our filings on CDAR. We may also refer to non-IFRS measures during the discussion. Reconciliations are in our filings. And following the prepared remarks, we'll open the floor for some questions. If you'd like to submit a question at any point during the webinar, please use the Q&A or chat feature located in the Zoom menu at the bottom of your screen. We encourage you to submit questions as they come. to your mind and we'll do our best to address any as time allows here. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Duncan McCready. Good morning, Duncan.

Good morning. Thanks for the introduction, Glenn. Nice to see everyone. Nice to be back on the call for our quarterly results release. I'll just give you, as Glenn mentioned, our performance across our different business segments, give you a sense of changes within the business and also what we're looking at over the next three quarters. Just to remind everyone, ISEE Group is a consumer engagement platform that helps enterprise brands and sports organizations really connect with their consumer audiences at scale. We execute campaigns globally. We're in over 30 jurisdictions now, and we support 90 sports teams along with enterprise brand customers in various jurisdictions around the world. Our platform is designed to help clients drive commerce, capture first-party data, enable repeat engagement, particularly in regulated and complex operating environments. At the end of the day, our value proposition to our customers is really centered on simplifying the complexities of consumer engagement across those different channels, across different geographies, regulatory frameworks, all to reach consumers and develop owned audiences and relationships that drive measurable value now and into the future. Operationally, the business is organized into three segments. IC Engage, which formerly was known as Digital Promotions, IC Mobile, formerly known as Mobile Messaging, and IC Insurance, formerly known as Insurance Solutions. At the end of the day, the core of our business, we're really focused on building durable, repeatable engagement solutions that support recurring revenue, scalability, and building towards positive operating leverage as the business grows. As the business does experience some seasonality in Q1, we were really pleased with the strength and consistency of the results we delivered to start 2026. For the quarter, revenue increased 29% year over year to 7.8 million, driven primarily by a continued organic growth across IC Engage and IC Mobile. Gross profit increased 22% to $3.3 million, while adjusted EBITDA improved 300% to $0.67 million, reflecting improving operating leverage across the platform and reduced one-time costs. Importantly, approximately 86% of our growth during the quarter was organic. demonstrating continued momentum with our existing customer base, strong product market fit, and the effectiveness of our land and expand strategies. Looking at the last 12 months, revenue reached approximately 29 million with gross profit of 13 million and gross margins of 45%. We believe this reflects the scale and diversification we have been building across the three different business units. Annual recurring remains strong at 68%, really providing greater visibility and stability as the business continues to scale. John, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Duncan. IC Group's Q1 financial results marked another quarter of significantly higher earnings from a year ago. And the fourth quarter in a row of increasing earnings in terms of adjusted EBITDA since going public a year ago. Versus the prior quarter, overall company revenue grew 8% vastly organic and adjusted EBITDA increased 3%. The company also continued to improve its financial strength during the quarter and following its $3.75 million equity raise in the prior quarter by deleveraging the balance sheet by $565,000, including the conversion of $175,000 of shareholder advances into common equity. This growth trajectory validates the investments the company is making in its systems and technology from which we believe positive operating leverage will be generated in future quarters. The company saw growth in Q1 across all three of its business segments. IC Engage saw quarterly revenues grow 7% from continued customer demand for its reward program solutions. and consistent profitability after absorbing costs related to investments in our technology for future benefit. IC Mobile saw quarterly revenues increase 8% from higher customer traffic flows. This was tempered by margin compression from changes in mix between wholesale and enterprise traffic flows, resulting in a similar level of adjusted operating income to the prior quarter. and the business continues to invest in its core messaging system, from which margins are expected to benefit in the future. IC Insurance quarterly revenues grew 20% from Q4, and gross profit was up 8%, resulting in a 9% smaller operating loss from the prior quarter. This was a good result for this segment given the industry backdrop of insurance premium compression and as the business repositions itself for more balance between its contingency and liability portfolios. And lastly, the company finished the quarter with $3.4 million of cash on hand due to drawing down its deferred revenue balance in the quarter and the deleveraging mentioned previously. Due to seasonality of certain cash flows, management anticipates its cash position to be lower again at the end of Q2 before being replenished in Q3. And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Duncan.

Great. Thank you, John. As you know, we've got three proven revenue streams that are identified as business segments, which are IC Engage, which we talked about before, IC Mobile, and IC Insurance. Together, they power consumer engagement and commerce at scale and form a unique platform that few, if any, competitors can match. IC Engage powers audience engagement and commerce across digital and live experiences through our proprietary platforms, often combining gamification, rewards, social, data, and loyalty. Our solutions are deeply integrated, driving long-term client value and retention. We're an ISO 2701 certified enterprise-ready provider, and we're trusted by global brands. We generate revenue through our long-term service contracts, our SaaS revenue, activation fees, and scalable commissions on our rewards. I see Engage delivered another strong quarter and continues to be one of the primary growth drivers of the company. Q1, 2026 revenue increased 36% year over year to 3.7 million. Gross profit increased 32% to approximately 2.4 million. Gross margins remain strong at 66% reflecting the quality of the revenue mix and the platform scalability. Over the last 12 months, I see Engage generated approximately 13.5 million in revenue and 9.1 million in gross profit, while gross margins remain strong at 68%. Looking ahead, our focus is on expanding customer reach across enterprise and live event ecosystems, increasing repeat program activity, and commercializing data and brand activations across the IC Engage platform. Mobile communications is a core channel for large scale customer engagement and commerce. IC Mobile is one of only three tier one aggregators in Canada with direct carrier connections. We are the only messaging platform fully hosted and processing data in Canada, positioning the business to service regulated Canadian industries. In 2025, the platform delivered over a billion mission critical messages across security, operations and logistics, finance and commerce, and marketing use cases, generating recurring revenue on every message that's sent. As you can see, the messaging gateway is utilized and trusted by a broad base of Canadian and international enterprise customers seeking to reach Canadian consumers. The business model really prioritized secure high volume SMS traffic to establish our scale while expanding into higher margin messaging solutions over time. I see mobile continue to scale during Q1 driven by increased enterprise and wholesale messaging traffic across the platform. Revenue for the quarter increased 27% year over year to approximately 3.5 million. Gross profit increased to approximately 6.1 million during the quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was approximately 17%, which reflected higher carrier pass-through costs and continued growth in wholesale traffic volumes. Over the last 12 months, IC Mobile generated approximately 14.6 million in revenue and 2.7 million in gross profit. Trailing 12-month growth margin was approximately 18%. The business continues to maintain a high recurring revenue profile with more than 95% of revenue generated from reoccurring customer activity. Our near-term focus is continuing to expand high volume traffic, improving the margin profile, and converting platform scale into operating leverage. Excuse me. IC Insurance provides specialty insurance solutions that enable consumer and fan engagement at live events, promotions, and sponsored programs. We focus on niche high value coverages, including event cancellation, crisis management, event liability, and prize-based promotion solutions, where underwriting complexity and regulatory requirements create barriers to entries. The business operates as a Lloyds-backed MGA with binding authority across multiple jurisdictions and no balance sheet risk, allowing us to scale without deploying capital to risk. Revenue is generated through a combination of transactional premiums, service and professional fees and profit commissions where applicable, creating multiple paths to monetization as the portfolio grows. ICA Insurance delivered stable performance during Q1 while continuing to expand its specialty insurance capabilities across sports, entertainment, and live events. Revenue for the quarter remained consistent year over year at approximately $0.5 million. Gross profit for Q1 was approximately $0.26 million. Gross margins for the quarter were approximately 52%. Over the last 12 months, IC Insurance generated approximately $2 million in revenue and $1.3 million in gross profit. Trailing 12-month gross margin remains strong at approximately 65%. During the quarter, the business continued to expand underwriting capabilities and delegated authority relationships to support a broader range of specialty insurance products. The acquisition of Players Health Cover Canada in the fall of last year continues to strengthen IC's insurance position within the sports and live event ecosystem and supports future recurring revenue opportunities. Our focus continues to scale a reoccurring high VAT quality revenue base through disciplined underwriting, expansion of our product suite, and embedding insurance into clients' programs, growing broker distribution, and increasing US international activity through our delegated authorities. Looking into the next three quarters, the focus is on scaling the business and building towards positive operating leverage as scale increases. In IC mobile, this means continuing to scale messaging volume and SMS, expanding more profitable messaging channels, and evolving message distribution across channels to improve margin. In IC Engage, we're focused on expanding our customer reach and improving monetization of data and activations in live events. We also continue to develop and expand our enterprise level customer relationships with new innovations and expanding expertise into new consumer markets. Over the past 12 to 18 months, we've transitioned to a a public company completed the acquisitions of IC Engage and really positioned us for future growth. Overall, our goal is to improve revenue quality, free cashflow visibility, and overall business durability while creating value and long-term strategic optionality across the business segments. Why invest in IC Group? We work with enterprise grade customers, including large brands and professional sports organizations, which really reflects the trust and expertise required to operate at scale in complex operating environments, like we do in a 40,000 seat stadium. The business has delivered strong and consistent revenue growth, driven primarily by organic expansion across the platform and supported by diversified end markets and use cases. Approximately 68% of our revenue is recurring, providing improved visibility into future performance and supporting a more predictable revenue base as the company scales. IC Group operates a diversified and scalable platform, combining digital engagement, mobile messaging, and specialty insurance, which allows us to participate across multiple touch points during the customer engagement lifecycle. Finally, We believe the company is trading at an attractive entry valuation relative to peers, reflecting an early stage in the public company life cycle. I appreciate the time you've taken to review our results and to learn more about the business. If you have any follow-up questions, we welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation.

Thank you, Duncan. And that kind of concludes our prepared remarks. I'd like to remind everyone you can ask questions by using the Q&A button on the bottom of your screens there. And we'll just give it a moment and we'll open that up. Okay, Duncan, here's a question. Revenue growth remains strong. Which business unit do you expect to be the largest contributor to the growth over the next 12 months?

In terms of revenue growth, Our mobile division will continue to scale, particularly in the back half of the year. And you'll see consistent growth as we have been across our IC Engage platform as well during the course of the year.

Thank you. And how are current economic conditions affecting customer spending? Are you seeing any changes in the business segments?

In IC Mobile and IC Engage, we haven't. We see continued investment in the space. Definitely in IC Insurance, It's definitely a soft market. There's a lot of capital in the insurance space right now. If anyone's renewing policies, you'll typically see decreases in your policy rates. So that's, as I say, that is definitely a headwind in the insurance space for us.

Great. Okay. And how do you view the strength of the balance sheet today as compared to a year ago? John, do you want to take that one?

Or I can take that one, Glenn. Yeah, so we improve the strength of the balance sheet every quarter. We're amortizing down our bank debt. And clearly a year ago, the company was over leveraged and that was a risk. we probably deleverage the balance sheet by about a million and a half a year, just based on bank debt amortization. So we continue at that pace. And we also deleverage the business by increasing our earnings because that builds debt capacity. So I see the two of them merging later in the year, such that... our balance sheet would look to be fairly conservatively or more mainstream financed. But I'm pleased with the strength of the balance sheet today. I think the cash position gives us flexibility to continue to amortize down our debt and also to invest in the business. We did successfully complete an equity raise. You'll recall in Q4 of $3.75 million, we converted some shareholder advances subsequent to year end. into equity. So in total, we've raised about $4 million in the last few months. That's a good amount of cash for us to be holding and to kind of weather some seasonality. As I mentioned, we'll see our cash balance continue to deplete as we invest in the business. in Q2 and then we expect that in Q3 it will be somewhat replenished.

Awesome. Okay. I'll remind anyone if there's any more questions to add them to the Q&A. One question for you, Duncan, can you discuss any seasonal trends investors should keep in mind for the remainder of the year?

Great question. So historically we'll see different parts of the business segments have, you know, some seasonality into it. Typically, for example, in our mobile space, Q1 is typically a softer quarter coming. It's just come off a heavy commerce season the last half of the year. It's typically a lot of holidays, a lot of finance happening, activities, people are buying, retailers are selling. So you got a lot of activity in the last quarter of the year. So Q1 tends to be a little softer in the mobile space. We also in our live engaged space, our FanX, which is our live event platform. It is when we first acquired it back in 2017. February of 2025, it was heavily weighted in this hockey sports space. So you tend to get seasonality in the summer months. So just because they don't have a lot of, not a lot of hockey playing in the summer months, but, you know, we're working hard to start to balance that out with deeper penetration into, you know, a broader base of sports activities that carry on throughout the year. So, you know, you'll see a bit of seasonality there. And then typically in the back half of the year, you'll start to see businesses pick up, you know, in promotions, in messaging and in sports activations. On our insurance side, typically, you know, the first quarter and the back last quarter are a little softer simply because we are very focused on live sports and entertainment. You get a lot of, and conferences and exhibitions and festivals are happening during the summer months. So certainly in Canada, so you get a bit of seasonality there, but that's starting to balance out over the course of the year with some of the new product solutions that we're bringing into market as well, so.

Fantastic. Thank you. And I think that is the end of our questions here. Maybe we'll leave you on one last and let you close it out. If you could leave investors with one kind of key message about IC Group, what would that be?

Great. Thanks, Glenn. I think when I kind of reflect on it, you know, we're really pleased with the progress we're making on scaling the business. particularly through strong organic growth and continued expansion of our core platforms. Although, you know, we're still seeing, we're still investing, you know, and we're kind of in that phase still of optimizing our investments and our revenue mix. But ultimately, we believe we're building a really durable, recurring, scalable business model. As we continue to execute, our focus remains on converting that scale into improved margins and ultimately delivering long-term value for our customers and for our shareholders. So that's, you know, as I say, we're making really good progress and that'll continue throughout the year.

Awesome, thank you.

Well, folks.

Yes, and with that, we will conclude our Q1 webinar. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you.