Conference Transcript - MASS 2026-08-26

Operator

Thank you for our next Midwest Ideas Conference presentation. Presenting next is 908 Devices, which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol MASS. Representing the company today is their chief financial officer, Joe Griffith, and CEO and co-founder, Kevin Knopp.

Kevin Knopp, CEO

Thank you. Thanks so much for having us today. So I'm Kevin and here with Joe. So my colleagues and I founded 908 Devices about 14 years ago, and we've been public for six years this coming December. So over those last 18 months, we've really worked to purposely transform the company to be more fully focused on building a category-defining company in handheld detection space. So we just reported our second quarter 26 results on August 11th, and the numbers really we're pleased with. And we reported about 23% revenue growth, 50% improvement in adjusted EBITDA loss, and strong execution across our 2026 strategic priorities. So that's what I'd like to walk through in a bit more detail today. So just to take a moment here, review our forward-looking non-GAAP statement. So we are a focused, purpose-built company providing handheld chemical analysis tools for public health safety and sobering defense. So that focus and new cost structure that we've built around is starting to show up in our progress. So in the second quarter, we grew revenues 23% year over year to $16.1 million, with recurring revenues representing 31% of the mix. And our last 12-month revenue now stands at $61 million. Our adjusted gross margin for Q2 was 57%, and we ended the quarter with $101.5 million in cash and no debt. But just as importantly, our adjusted EBITDA loss was less than $2 million, and that's a 50% improvement year over year, and that's really a demonstration to our continued commitment to scale and efficiently invest in growth at the same time. So driving our business today are some of the most powerful and durable macro tailwinds we've seen out there, and those are related to the escalating opioid and illicit drug crisis, rising global defense budgets, and increased border security funding. Our installed base has grown to more than 4,000 devices across 700 accounts, and there's 70-plus countries that we have representation with our products in. So our technology stack isn't really a Me Too stack. It's a very differentiated approach. It's a full platform offering broad market flexibility ahead of us. We've got active OEM and funded partnership work in industrial QAQC and pharma and emerging integration potential with drones, UGVs, as the market develops for more autonomous chemical detection solutions. And we execute, too, with a pretty solid financial foundation, and we're pleased with the momentum that we're executing on. So 908 devices, what we do is really make handheld and portable products that take lab-grade technologies out to the field. So these are lab-grade instrument platforms in a handheld form factor. They're used at the point of need in public health, safety, and defense applications. Use cases are pretty wide ranging from detection and identification of illicit drugs and fentanyl to customs and postal inspection to air monitoring and the detection of toxic VOCs and advanced chemical agents. We also serve corrections and rehabilitation facilities and further serve industrial quality control and pharma as an OEM. The common thread, though, of all of this, it's in all of these settings, is that someone on the frontline needs an answer. They need to move faster. They need to move to that next step of their workflow. So we're working to make the invisible visible and the unknown known, and that's what our product set is designed to deliver.

Operator

Our customers are frontline responders.

Kevin Knopp, CEO

That's fire and hazmat teams, law enforcement, federal and military customers globally. The numbers we're proud of and it reflects the trust that they place in us and our technology. We've got more than 4,100 devices deployed across 700 accounts, more than 18,000 trained users, and presence in more than 70 countries. We shipped 198 devices in the second quarter. One of the most important commercial developments over the past couple of years is the diversification of our customer base. We've gone from the majority of sales concentrated in a handful of large U.S. federal accounts to a much more balanced base. In Q2, state and local customers represented over 50% of our revenue, continue to outperform our internal expectations for that channel. This channel is a great one for delivering consistency, it's high quality run rate demand, and it helps drive greater visibility and predictability across our business. You know, maybe it's worth sharing a quick example of a real world use of our products that highlights the impact. So in Virginia, leaders implemented a statewide program called Operation Free that uses our MX-908 device for trace narcotics detection in correctional facilities. The result of that was fatal overdoses in their correction system dropped from 24 in 2024 to 0 in 2025. And we were actually honored, the product was honored by having a flag flown above the statehouse there in Virginia in recognition of its role. And that continues across other correction departments. We saw adoption in this quarter from Texas Department of Criminal Justice ordering their first 15 devices. We see this continuing as in the third quarter. We announced in our July that we secured a $6 million order for protector devices for a correction agency in the Asia South Pacific. When our technology shows up, it's really working to save lives. Our responders are working to employ it to do just that, and that's a lot of value that we see to continue to expand. We're tackling what we think is some of the largest and most urgent and escalating threats to public health, safety, and demand for modern detection tools is really accelerating as a result. So first, the opioid crisis, it's no longer just fentanyl. Our MX-908 helps customers keep pace as the landscape evolves from fentanyl to nitazines on to orphans. Cocaine seizures were up 68% globally over the past four years. And fentanyl's designation as a weapon of mass destruction in December is opening new funding streams for frontline responders. Second, toxic industrial materials. A Wall Street Journal article this year found 131 serious chemical accidents in the U.S. in 2025. That's up 20% year over year. We saw that firsthand recently this spring when a chemical tank overheated in Garden Grove, California, and it forced the evacuation to more than 40,000 residents. Responders used our Explorer device on entry and throughout the cleanup. The compounds that they're measuring and the compounds that the Explorer can measure are leading causes of firefighter cancer deaths, with the HONOR Act as recently recognized in December 2025. So very important and critical to be able to measure and monitor. Third is rising global tensions and defense. So NATO allies agreed to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2020-35, and we're seeing signs that this is showing up in contract awards, like our win with the Danish Defense Acquisition and Logistics Organization for Explorer. And the funding tide is not just rising internationally. The funding backdrop in the U.S. is about as strong as we've ever seen it. Many of our customers use federal grants for purchases. And in June and July, we saw over a billion dollars allocated to such programs across DHS, DOJ, and ONDCP, all of which sets a multi-layer durable tailwind for us. The combined takeaway there is that the hazard and threat landscape is rapidly getting more complex and demanding adaptable mobile field-ready detection, and the funding is there to address That's exactly where we're focused. So if I take a look, this slide really captures what differentiates us. We're not just selling the hardware. We're delivering the people, the data, the expertise our customers need to detect more faster with confidence. Start with the device suite itself. our portfolio spans hundreds of trace analytes, the ability to detect thousands of VOC gases and 20,000 plus bulk compounds. So that's detection to identification from air and aerosols to surfaces, piles and puddles all from one company. That's MX908 for trace level mass spec, Explore for gas and vapor ID, and our optical products for bulk unknown ID. And now NearLab rounding out the family there with rapid frontline screening. But the hardware is only part of it. We have reachback operations, which gives our customers 24-7, 365 access to expert staff and on-site decision support. One number, real people, whole portfolio, a lot of subject expertise. We back that up with best practice and scenario training, delivering real-world workshops across customers, workflows, not just a manual or a how-to guide. So increasingly, it's about the data. We're expanding our team leader app for usage tracking, fleet management, AR-powered guidance, some customized enterprise reporting, and that's really where we're going, the aggregate, monitor, and managing of the data. It's the connective tissue that's turning that one-time hardware sale into a more recurring relationship that's ongoing, and it's a big part of where we believe the competing position is just hard to penetrate as we build that out. So that's our focus. So our recurring revenue base from these support, service, accessories, consumables, and softwares is currently about 30 percent of our business today, and we're looking to build that and further increase the stickiness and predictability. And that takes us to the next topic, NearLab. We acquired NearLab in May. We announced on our Q1 earnings call to do that, to have a platform to expand and focus on our recurring revenue. So NearLab is a purpose-built tool for frontline law enforcement patrol that combines near-infrared spectroscopy hardware with a cloud-connected software platform and a proven subscription model. So Neuralab has more than 100 active customers globally and performed more than 1 million analyses to date. About 50% of the Neuralab revenue is recurring with demonstrated high annual customer retention rates. The integration is going ahead of plan and we're running the same playbook that we did with RedWave in the past. So we're about 60 days in after the close of that transaction. Our U.S. commercial team really stepped up and ran in-person virtual demonstrations, secured field evaluations. They engaged over 30 different agencies, hundreds of prospects across that federal, state, and local level, including, importantly, seven HIDA task forces. These are multi-agency teams that set the procurement tone for particular regions. And then agencies evaluating and cite the same thing. They've really been enjoying the speed, the ease of use, and the intuitive interface and the accurate identification it provides. So that commercial motion is starting to convert. In the roughly two months since closed, we sold more than 35 NearLab devices, each with a multi-year software subscription, with shipments to law enforcement agencies in Colorado and California and customs agencies in Morocco and Iceland. There's also an additive tailwind developing. For decades, there's been presumptive drug identification in the field, has relied on colimetric test kits. These are cheap, single-use, but there's no data trail. There's expiration issues and real false positive problem that leads to wrongful arrests. So Colorado's legislator recently voted unanimously this year to ban custodial arrests based solely upon colimetric results, and reform efforts is now underway across at least seven other states right now. So that, we believe, also sets up a durable tailwind for the technology, not a one-time event, And it really points to where this category is headed, away from the disposable chemistry and towards the connected technology that produces a defensible, auditable result with the identification, the underlying data, and the chain of custody all captured and retained. So that's the model NeerLab's letting us build towards it, the same type of recurring software subscription-based model that's transformed other public safety hardware categories, you know, pairing that durable hardware with a cloud-connected software layer that agencies can rely on every day. So Neuralab is an example of what our entire business has the potential to become over time. Durable hardware paired with recurring connected software and that kind of real-time analytical reachback support that are consistently told from our customers that they value most from 9 to 8. So we believe that's the model going forward. Hardware, software, and that expert support can really guide how we build and monetize every product as we go forward. So we're very excited to have Neuralab as part of our journey. Neuralab acquisition also completes something we've been building towards, which is really that true end-to-end coverage for narcotics detection across the law enforcement market. That's taking our devices from fast and comprehensive toolkit that supports our customers' full-field workflow, all connected by data. So think about our coverage as these three concentric use cases for everyday patrol. Neuralab handles rapid frontline screening across approximately 400 substances, including THC and CBD. with a simple workflow, minimal training, and a roughly $10,000 device built for that broad deployment. For investigations and corrections, our MX908 handles trace detection for high consequence drugs, high toxicity targets, and low concentration mixtures where the gold standard of mass spec really matters. And there's no other handheld mass spec that's on the market. For For customs and specialist operations, Viper handles that broad identification across 39,000-plus chemicals, cutting agents, precursors, and more, with dual-orthogonal technologies providing field confirmation in complex unknown samples. And connecting all of this is our cloud platform, team leader, plus NearLab, delivering an AI-driven drug intelligence, fleet deployment, reporting dashboards, geospatial mapping. This all transforms these isolated measurements into a more unified, actionable workflow. It drives pull-through across the portfolio and increases both utilization and customer lifetime value. So we believe this is the most comprehensive and differentiated suite of handheld detection solutions in the market, and it'd be very difficult to break into that as we continue to build. You know, stepping back and looking at where our position in the context of the broader market. The analytical instrumentation companies you'd recognize are all participates in the advanced portion of the chemical detection market, and it's a large, growing, and critical space. But those are broad, diversified companies serving many industries, typically with laboratory-focused single technology point solutions. What we're building at 908 is differently. It's purposeful. We're the only company that spans the complete detection continuum from screening, identification, and confirmation all in one workflow, all with one full offering of handhelds. We bring together multiple complementary technologies in that portable field-ready instruments, near IR, FTR, Raman, and mass spec, rather than being limited to one or two of those technologies. So we cover really that full range from bulk unknown identification to high-fidelity trace detection across solids, liquids, vapors, and aerosols, where the legacy players typically have gaps, so either no aerosol capability or a trade-off with sensitivity and selectivity. And critically, we back all that up with that reachback, 24-7, 365 access to expert scientists and operators for real-time decisions in the field, which the legacy players simply don't offer to that level. We connect it with the data. We're connecting it through a growing set of applications and cloud platform for that fleet visibility, that trend information, that enterprise reporting. And our entire organization is focused on that. Our entire organization is focused on that one thing, the needs of the fire, hazmat, law enforcement, and defense customer base. So that focus we really do see as a competitive advantage to us. We've built our entire company and our entire support model around that with those front responders in mind. This slide captures a bit the architecture of the growth that we are building here. So there's multiple layers building on top of each other. And I want to walk you through from the bottom here into how it compounds. So at the foundation is a recurring revenue base. In 2025, recurring revenue represented about a third of our total revenue driven by consumables, accessories, service contracts, and software. With the addition of Neuralab, we have the opportunity to expand this further as approximately 50% of that business is high retention recurring software subscription. Building on that is the equipment modernization opportunity. There's an estimated 15,000 plus outdated FTIR units in the field globally that need to be replaced. That's a significant near-term opportunity. Roughly half of our device placements are now FTIR with Explorer and Viper contributing strong growth. Explorer placements grew nearly 70% over the 12 months ending June 30th, and we expect to ship more than 100 Viper devices this year. potentially approaching 150, doubling or tripling last year's level. On top of that sits our mass spec franchise. Our flagship MX908 continues to expand in enterprise accounts and extend greenfield placements. And the next generation mass spec platform we're developing will deliver a step change in performance and simplicity, smaller, lighter, simple to use, setting up a nice replacement cycle for the 3,000-plus MX908 devices already fielded. with lowering the barriers of entry through ease of use improvements for those new customers. Above that is the U.S. Army AVCAD program. That's a program of record we've pursued in partnership with Smith's deduction for over a decade. The current contract has run its course, and the government is now working through next steps against a broader department-wide procurement reform that's prioritizing speed and commercial solutions. So we've excluded AVCAT entirely from our 2026 guidance, and any contribution there is upside. And we believe we can win this opportunity either in partnership with Smiths or directly with our commercial MX908, given more than 3,000 units fielded, including over 1,200 across the U.S. government. So it's very extensively tested. And at the top of the stack are our emerging platform integrations, UGVs, UAVs, robotics, which we view as an important long-term growth vector as defense and security markets modernized. So zooming out, there's three external forces that are strengthening simultaneously the increased U.S. funding to combat the illicit drug crisis and narco-terrorism, rising harmful exposure from toxic industrial materials, and growing NATO defense budget. So the combination of a layered growth model with developing recurring revenue opportunity is multiple product catalysts and a program of record. So these all are coming together with those macro forces, and it's giving us conviction in that sustained multi-year growth profile. This chart highlights the core of our transformation, sustained revenue growth paired with improving profitability. We've grown from under $20 million at the time of our IPO in 2020 to $56.2 million in 2025, a 23 percent five-year CAGR. And it's just this month we raised the low end of our 2026 guidance to a range of 68 to 70 million. So that represents 21 to 25 percent growth. Gross margin expansion has been consistent and continuing. Adjusted growth margin was 57 percent in the first half of 2026. And for the full year, we continue to expect the mid to high 50 percent range. The adjusted EBITDA trajectory is compelling. Losses narrowed from $16 million in 2024 to $10 million in 2025 with a positive adjusted EBITDA quarter in Q4 2025 as a proof point to what that model can look like as we scale. And in the second quarter of 2026, our adjusted EBITDA loss was less than $2 million, a 50% improvement year a year. And for the full year, we continue to expect to get to the mid single-digit millions, roughly half of 2025's loss. Bottom line, we're really focused on driving outpaced revenue growth, more predictable and durable revenue, expanding margins, and improving cost leverage, all while maintaining a healthy balance sheet, which we had $101.5 million in cash as of June 30th with no debt, which supports our crossover trajectory to profitability without needing to raise additional capital for that. So to close, you know, I think it's now clear why we believe that we've really fortified our investment thesis over these last 18 months with our transformation of our company focused on these public health and safety and defense areas. We delivered some strong second quarter results, 23 percent revenue growth, 198 devices placed, and adjusted EBITDA loss cut by more than half. And continued integration of our strategic acquisition, all while continuing to invest in our growth initiatives. We're executing well against all three of our 2026 focus areas, that's scaling proven platforms, extending platform leadership, and strengthening revenue durability. And we're backed by some of the most powerful and durable macro tailwinds we've seen, the opioid crisis, rising defense budgets, border security, and the global imperative to modernize the chemical detection equipment. So our goal is clear within 908. We really want to be the number one provider of handheld detection solutions globally, and we believe we're on a good path to do exactly that. And, you know, thank you for your time here, and Joe and I would be happy to take any questions. Yeah, you know, lab technologies are important and incredibly kind of at the heart of these products. The talents, the technologies that are needed to miniaturize them, if you will, and make them into an automated push-button-get answer are different. there's a long lineage of many parallels out there where it's hard for organizations to make that switch i think what 908 has special about us is we've got a lot of ip around our mass spec flagship platform around what it takes to to make it small and we've got the right team in place that understands how to balance the engineering trade-off space and not to to build full horsepower our lab technology, but give a customer exactly what they need, battery life, size, and trading all these off, communications, algorithms, machine learning on the device to give real-time answers. So there is quite a barrier there, an organizational shift.

Joseph Griffith, CFO

So the question was about cash and utilization and thinking about that going forward. So about 18 months ago, we went through the transformation of divesting our desktop portfolio and put about $70 million on our balance sheet, really enabling us a clear path to profitability with the cash on hand. So we finished the quarter at about $100 million. Plenty of room, multiple years to drive based upon our supporting operations, which then gives us the opportunity to consider additional dry powder for small tuck-in acquisitions like NearLab that we just did in May. Has to check a lot of the boxes. You know, we're focused on those organic growth drivers that Kevin walked through in the slide, but having the flexibility to think through the opportunities inorganically is important And great to see, you know, as we think about, you know, two years ago where we were looking at, you know, burning $30 million a year in cash and a dwindling balance sheet. So I feel like we're in a good position to have flexibility moving forward.

Kevin Knopp, CEO

Yeah, happy to. I mean, there's a few dynamics there, essentially. So there's needs are growing across this space for different analytes, modern communication, connectivity, understanding treads. And we've been working to develop the best offerings, in our opinion, that are out there for these customers and continue to do so. So we're working to modernize the FTIR devices. There are devices out there from some of these analytical companies we spoke of that we're working to bring new upgraded products. And we're seeing that take place. FTIR sales for us was about 50% of our Q2. We're seeing good growth there. I think last year it was about 50% of the placements or so there. and then if you think of our mass spec so that's our flagship product there is no other handheld mass spec out there we put 3 000 units into the to the field and now with the next generation we think there's an opportunity to to upgrade that base as well as we go forward because we think it's a pretty good compelling new offering happy to take any other questions we also brought one our devices if anyone yes yeah please yeah yeah no 100 correct you know that getting out to these state and local customers um i think doing right by these customers really breeds awareness very quickly because these customers while being different towns or states local municipalities they're all pretty well connected uh and they share success stories they share which vendors support them and which don't. So we leave. We have that going for us. We attend major conferences, but we also do a lot of workshops, a lot of training sessions that help on pre-sales and post-sales. So we'll do a training event. We'll bring prospects. We'll bring maybe a customer that's already adopted of our technology. We'll bring them together, have an environment where they can share kind of best practices. So we see a lot of cross there. I do think as our portfolio has been growing, and our sales team in the U.S. is really becoming stride. I do think that's a core capability of Nine-O-A is being able to reach those customers. One area is also grant funding. So a lot of these customers, those state and local customers, use grants, and we've got a lot of resources where we help customers through the gauntlet of when is it coming up in your region, how do you use the industrial base in your region as a justification to plan ahead and prepare. Maybe you have FIFA World Cup we saw recently or the Olympics coming that you can use to help funding in a particular area and help reach. There's about a billion dollars of grant funding that came down in June and July, right? So helping them access. So, yeah, awareness, doing the right thing by the customer, running proactive workshops. You know, that's how it's getting on their radar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're very early innings in scratching the surface on all of that. So you can think of our devices as very differentiated from the hardware capability, being able to measure these things with accuracy in the field. We've been working over the last few years on something called Team Leader that allows connectivity of our FTIR devices to a cloud-based app that allows the customers to archive, share, monitor, track, see what's happening with their installed base. The United States Postal Inspection Service has about 200 of our FTIRs that they can see where they're located. They can use that to understand if they should move resources from one location. They use it to understand what are they measuring and seeing in a particular location and being able to do that from a central monitoring of the customer's facility. Now, if you flip to where Neuralab, Neuralab brings a much lower price offering that we believe can penetrate the market, the colimetric that you brought up, the number of states that's converting, now one going to seven very quickly here. So that is now the more nodes you get, the more you can actually see what the trends are. So that's the next layer for 908 is being able to take advantage of that networking effect there and then working with customers to be able to see trends of the underlying data. So with our mass spec, you can see small features that are particular to a particular batch of product and where it was maybe even made and where it's flowing through the country. We've seen examples of new synthetic opioids that our mass spec was the first to see in that field format. And we could then take that information and then we could develop a new target and then send that back out to the fleet of devices. So now everyone is protected by that and has that capability of detection. So there's many, many layers and dynamics to how that data can be used. And I think we're really just getting going there. So, again, 30 percent of our recurring revenue today. A lot of that's that expert software, support, services, break, fix. A lot of it's that, but we're looking for that to be more and more on the software as we go. And NeerLab is an example of a 50% software recurring opportunity that we're looking to leverage. Yeah, so we can triangulate it a few different ways. So we put usually a number that's around $1.5 to $2 billion on the TAM, roughly. You're right. The Neuralab acquisition adds to that low-end detection market. We think of it as the sub-$40,000 type of detection market. We triangulate that around $200 million. That may be low because we haven't factored in all the colimetric applications in there, and that's kind of just beginning, that regulatory shift, so that's not factored in there. We triangulate differently from, like, finding numbers of units that are out there. from placements. It's tens of thousands of these types of products that are in the field. At the same time, things like Explore is a new category or mass spec is a new category of technology. So they're really opening additional unit opportunities. So definitely don't wake up in sweats at night thinking about the number of sockets. It's more about how can we accelerate people through the funding process faster? How can we bring together all of these in that ecosystem that we have a vision for, but TAM, we feel, is very significant. Yeah, so today, so the team in Switzerland is quite versed on machine learning and AI models for around developing on our product to do the matching algorithms for the NIR lab. Team on Team Leader, the TOS software, is working to incorporate expert support and guidance So at your fingertips, a maintenance step or a particular procedure is available to them through the app. So we're kind of going in that direction. From the aggregation of the data and the trends analysis, not yet. We're really showing the raw data there and within the fleet of devices someone owns. And, you know, how can we work together and do that example of the floral fentanyl that was the first new synthetic opioid that we saw coming into our country that we could then push out? we're working through all that right now so the base business hardware sales and then these other aspects i think are exciting for our future roadmaps all right well thank you thank you very much for your time appreciate it