Acorn Energy, Inc. (ACFN) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Acorn Energy's fourth quarter and full-year 2025 conference call. All participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. As a reminder, today's event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference call over to Tracy Clifford, CFO of Acorn Energy and COO of its Omnimetrics subsidiary.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining our call today. First, I'd like to remind you that today's remarks, including responses to questions, contain forward-looking statements. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Factors that may impact our future operating results and financial performance include general risks, such as potential disruptions to business operations or changes in consumer or customer demand, as well as specific risks related to our ability to execute our operating plan, maintain strong customer renewal rates, and expand our customer base. Additional risks that may arise from changes in technology, competition, or shifts in the macroeconomic or financial environment. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are based on management's current beliefs, assumptions, and information that is available as of today. There can be no assurances that the company will meet its growth targets or other strategic goals and objectives. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise such forward-looking statements to reflect future events or specific circumstances that may occur after today. For a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties that may affect our business, please refer to the Risk Factor section of our Form 10-K, which is available online at www.scc.gov or on our own website at acornenergy.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Jan Lowe, CEO of Acorn and On The Metrics, for further comments. Jan?

Thank you, Tracy, and thank you all for your interest. In 2025, Acorn achieved record revenue, improved operating income, higher cash flow, and our third straight year of profitability. Our performance benefited from a 22% increase in high-margin monitoring revenue, driven by continued growth in our installed base of remote monitoring endpoints. Our year-over-year Q4 and full-year comparisons reflect the benefit of a national cell phone provider contract, the largest in our history. The bulk of hardware revenue for this contract was recorded between Q3 of 2024 and Q2 of 2025, contributing to lower year-over-year hardware revenues in the second half of 2025. The contract also includes one year of monitoring services, erratably over 12 months, following each hardware unit's commissioning. Importantly, we earned very favorable feedback from this customer regarding our technology, monitoring capabilities, and customer service, resulting in what we believe is a solid relationship with future potential. Our 2025 hardware revenue was also tempered by an $885,000 decrease in non-cash deferred revenue amortization from units sold prior to September of 2023 when the majority of our hardware sales were deferred and amortized over three years. Acorn's 2025 results reflected 956,000 revenue from amortization of deferred hardware revenue, a 48% decrease from the $1.84 million recorded in 2024, but with no impact on cash generation. This revenue impact will end this year as we expect the balance of deferred hardware revenue of $168,000 to be fully amortized by August of 2026. Lastly, our 2025 revenues were also impacted by an industry-wide slowdown in residential generated deployments, which we and other industry participants attribute to high interest rates, fewer major power hotages related to hurricanes and other weather events in 2025, as well as inflation and economic uncertainty that impacted consumers' ability or willingness to invest in backup-generated security at a cost of approximately $15,000 for inflation. Our belief is that consumer-generated demand is likely returned to more stark levels as intending factors modeling. Turning to our strategies for growth, we reviewed five complementary core initiatives in today's press release on which I'd like to provide a little more color. One is larger commercial industrial opportunities, which our internal sales teams continue to pursue, of course, various sectors that include healthcare, telecom, real estate, retail grocery, hospitality, government, and financial institutions. We have a range of ongoing discussions. However, the most significant opportunities are with more large organizations that require budget compliance and also longer, more complex sales cycles. Two is the pursuit of strategic relationships to integrate our technology, the OEMs, or other strategic partners, for example, through white labeling our products for the OEMs. We have ongoing dialogues with a few industry OEMs to bundle omnimetric solutions with their product offerings. Currently, our monitors are installed by the dealers in the aftermarket. However, our technology, service leadership, and support for all generated brands puts us in a strong position to partner with one or more OEMs. Their core business isn't providing monitoring services, and by working with us, they can offer a superior solution that offers greater value to their customers, while also providing the potential to reduce or eliminate their overhead and investment in an in-house solution. We believe this is the direction our industry is going, and we continue to work to advance OEM discussions. However, it's difficult to predict the potential or timing of these efforts. Three is expanding our penetration of the residential and small business markets to our network of 600-plus generator dealers. While the retail market was slow in 2025, as I mentioned, we are optimistic for a rebound in 2026 given the potential stimulus to secure backup power provided by recent winter storms as well as moderating interest rates. One of the larger generator manufacturers has publicly stated they expect a 10% increase in residential generator sales in 2026, so we expect a benefit if this does indeed occur. Four is our ongoing investment in research, development, and engineering to enhance existing omnimistics products and develop new products. These investments are essential to maintain competitive our competitive position and expand our value proposition and addressable market. Tracy will review our recent product launches momentarily. Five is our ongoing pursuit of accretive opportunities to expand our product offerings, market reach, and customer base with a focus on businesses that have a meaningful monitoring components to their businesses the nature of the m&a process is that it takes a lot of work research and negotiation to get to the point where you have a solid opportunity and acceptable price we are highly motivated to identify and execute on mexican on an acquisition to enhance our growth operating leverage and monetization of our nol but balance this with a disciplined approach to managing deal terms and risk for our shareholders our recent strategic partnership with AIO, which stands for All-in-One, emerged through our M&A dialogue. AIO is the global leader in remote monitoring and control solutions for critical infrastructure that had no business operations in the U.S. They provide best-in-class technology and cloud-based business intelligence platforms that have successfully deployed at over 110,000 sites in 15 countries. In this case, we found the best path was to secure exclusive North American rights to their proven product suite for what amounts to a amount of commitment to invest in building out the business. AIO solutions target the full cell phone tower campus, as well as solutions for data centers and utility operations. Their monitoring control solutions deliver actionable insights to advanced analytics, machine learning, and comprehensive monitoring of environmental conditions, battery health, security features, processes, energy optimization, microgrids, and more. This technology reduces downtime, 3-hours maintenance, and provides measurable cost savings and ROI, meaning it's a logical choice for smarter, safer, and more profitable operations. The partnership is the perfect fit for Acorn and our Omnometrics brand, as it substantially expands our product offerings and a direct world market by integrating AIO solutions with our industry-leading remote monitoring and control technology. Our 20-plus year of reputation and established U.S. customer base. We see exciting growth potential starting with our existing telecommunication customers and then expanding to data center and utilities to strengthen our ability to serve rising demand for data-driven infrastructure management with solutions that protect against power issues, theft, and environmental and other risks while maximizing energy utilization. We anticipate that the average sale of Omnometrics-labeled AIO plots will be approximately five to six times the average current Omni sale. As we will be sharing SaaS revenue with AIOs, it is too early to project what our margins will be. We will be selling AIO technology solutions under the Omnometrics brand, and from our market research, there are no better existing technologies in the industries they serve. This partnership has the potential to transform our company by expanding the respected on-the-message brand into new end markets with a product that would take us many years and significant R&D dollars to develop. We expect to have our first demo unit installed by the end of the month with a large existing Pelcom client. AIO has been in existence for 18 years. As we have stated, we do not expect any revenues from this partnership until the second half of 2026. We see secular tailwinds that should support our growth in the coming years as business and consumers take action to ensure uninterrupted access and support for their energy, infrastructure management, and regulatory compliance needs. Energy demands for AI, data centers, electric vehicles, electrification of buildings, and reshoring of industry are all straining the aging U.S. electrical grid, which is also being disrupted by extreme weather events, forest fires, and other natural disasters. Despite a relatively benign year in 2025, we've already seen a rebound in power outages from winter storms so far this year, including severe high storms across 12 states and the south of Appalachian in late January, resulting in over 1 million customers without power, many of them for days and some for weeks amidst winter weather. Even if the nation changed course and started nationally investing in energy resources and infrastructure today, we are so far behind. It would take many years, if not decades, to meet our rapidly growing energy and reliability needs. Given the substantial unmet needs of the markets we now serve, we continue to believe 20% average annual revenue growth over the coming three to five years is an achievable target. Further, given the efficiency and scalability of our model, we believe approximately 50% of each incremental revenue dollars from our existing business should flow through to operating income. As a small company, peaks and valleys in purchasing cycles for major hardware orders will persist, but we believe that our high-margin, capital-like business model positions us very well for the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tracy for financial and operational insights. Tracy?

Thank you, Dan. The key takeaway from our 2025 results is the solid growth we are achieving in our annual recurring monitoring revenue stream, which achieved a 95% gross margin in 2025 and was driven by the ongoing expansion of our installed basic monitor endpoint. We view this steadily growing base of annually recurring high-margin revenue as the core value driver for our business, fueled by new hardware deployments, which could continue to be more regular in nature, leading to some variation in year-over-year comparison. We've provided a fair amount of detail in today's news release, so I'll just touch on a few key highlights. Revenue rose 4.5% to $11,478,000 thanks to the diligent efforts of the entire Omnitrix team. Monitoring revenues grew 22% due to the expansion of monitored endpoints. Total hardware revenues declined 8% due to the timing of deliveries for our large cell phone customer and an $885,000 decrease in the amortization of deferred hardware revenue. Excluding the impact of declining amortization of deferred hardware revenue, new hardware revenues rose approximately 8% in 2025 compared to prior years. Gross margin improved to 76.8% versus 72.8% and increased to 400 basis points, reflecting an increase in higher margin monitoring fees as a percentage of revenue and hardware margin improvements related to the cost efficiency of the next generation products that deliver more value. Diluted earnings per share was $0.99 in 2025, including an $0.18 per share deferred income tax benefit, compared to diluted EPS of $2.51 in 2024, which included $1.77 per share of deferred income tax benefits. Cash flow from operations more than doubled to $2,090,000 in 2025, or an increase of 131% year-over-year. Consequently, our year-end cash position improved by $2.1 million to $4,454,000, and we've maintained a strong cash position of $4,131,000 as of March 3rd, 2026, following our investment of $250,000 since December for the AIO Omnometric Partnership and North American product launch. He also remains debt-proof. I think it's important to note that ACORN was able to release an additional $464,000 of its valuation allowance against our deferred tax assets in 2025 as a result of the big, beautiful bill, which allowed us to treat certain R&D expenses in a more favorable way for tax purposes. This compares to $4.4 million released in 2024, both of which were reflected in our bottom-line results. We now maintain a $10.3 million or greater than 70% valuation allowance against $14.4 million in NOL and capital loss carry forward. Most of our NOLs expire in 2031 or later, so we still have plenty of time to utilize them through growth in our existing operations via potential NMA initiatives.

In late 2025, we launched our next generation of generator monitors, the Omni for the residential market and the Omni Pro for commercial and industrial applications.

In addition to significant upgrades and new features, design innovations have reduced installation time and service costs while enhancing its reliability. We also launched RAD-EX, an enhanced version of our RAD Remote Alternating Current Mitigation Disconnect products for the pipeline segment. The enhanced-end product launches enhance our value proposition, expand our technology leadership, and will contribute to our growth in 2026 and beyond. We're very excited about the potential AIO opportunities ahead, as well as the other great opportunities that Dan discussed in his remarks, and we look forward to updating you on our progress. Operator, you may now prepare the lines for questions. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin that question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one using a touch and a telephone. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask you to please pick up the hand step prior to pressing the key to ensure the best sound quality. Once again, that is star and then one to join the question key.

We'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And our first question today comes from Jason Mullencamp.

Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning, Dan, Tracy. I have a few questions. I wanted to follow up a few things from the AGM, if you don't mind. The first one I wanted to hit was you guys had mentioned that you're talking to three OEMs, and you don't think you'll get three OEMs. It's a very long sales cycle, and you kind of mentioned that you certainly would get one. Is that kind of still the status on that front?

I believe that is still true.

Okay. And then the next follow-up from the AGM would be, in terms of acquisitions, you had said that you had three acquisitions in mind and three term sheets out. It seems like the AIO is one of those. Can you give an update? Is there still two outstanding, or where does that stand today?

We've had discussions with the other two. First of all, you're right, AIO is one of them. We've had discussions with two others. As of right now, they're still available, but the price, we have not come to any agreement on price. Too far apart on price.

Thanks for that. And then my final question is a bit more open-ended. I'm curious if you could kind of discuss the bottlenecks for each of the growers, each of the growth drivers. So, you know, for instance, is there, you know, lack of personnel or is it sales? You know, what's kind of like the bottlenecks and what are you guys doing to try to relieve those bottlenecks?

So I think the number one bottleneck is the customer base that we are trying to bring in-house. So, you know, on the residential side and small commercial side, you know, usually it's one decision maker is making the decision to get monitoring or not monitoring, the head of the household or the owner of the small business, the doctor's office, et cetera. You know, in going after bigger customers, you know, we're just finding that the sales cycle, you know, is much longer. And there are other extraneous factors that come into play, the economy, tariffs, layoffs, et cetera, that impact bigger customers. So, to me, our internal team is excellent, and I don't think adding more personnel is an answer. It's just staying on top of these customers, and hopefully we reel them in because, you know, we feel very confident about our product and how we can help them. So, I think that, to me, is the number one bottleneck that we have.

Thank you for the answers, and thank you for your guys' stewardship of the business.

Thank you for your continuing interest, Jason.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Our next question comes from Richard Sosa. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, Jack and Tracy. Good morning. Great to see the results this year. I'm excited about the AIO partnership and looking forward to hearing more about it. But just a really quick question. I joined late, so you might have addressed it on the call. But just in terms of the monitoring revenue in the fourth quarter, and I thought it was slightly below what it was in the third quarter. Was it a timing issue or was it something else?

Hey, Richard, thanks for the question. No, the decrease in monitoring revenue in 4Q25 compared to 3Q25 was actually due to the positive impact of the non-recurring revenue recognition related to a policy that was made effective in 3Q25 of recognizing first-year monitoring revenue on any units that had been shipped and for which the first-year monitoring had already been paid, but the unit had been outstanding for 24 months or longer and had not yet been installed. So there was an impact that would be non-recurring in the third quarter of 2025.

Okay, but the third quarter was much higher than it should have been, really, I guess.

I guess it was a one-time benefit in the third quarter.

Correct. That's correct. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much.

And on an ongoing basis, Richard, the fourth quarter was above the third quarter in monitoring revenue.

That's perfect.

That's great to know. That helps a lot.

And our next question comes from Joel Sklar. Please go ahead with your question.

Yes. Good morning, Jan. Good morning, Tracy. Excited about the future for Acorn. A couple of questions. One, Jan, can you give us a little bit more flavor for the market receptivity to AOI? Obviously, you have one telecom customer who is the least interested in getting a model in there and seeing how it works out. but can you give us a more, you know, I know it's still in the very early stages, but a more general flavor for the market receptivity to the product. And then the second one was anything new on demand response.

Okay. Good morning, Joel. So on AIO, it's just too early to tell about market receptivity because we haven't really gone out and shopped it or sold it. Obviously, you're right. One of our Telecom customers has agreed to put up everything on the demo site, and so we've obviously talked to them about it, and so they're firmly interested in it. But I would think, and this was kind of a little bit beyond your question, But I would think any telecom power company would be interested in the product. I'm not saying that they would buy it, but they would certainly be very interested in it. You have to recognize, and then this also kind of goes to why we were interested in AIO and where we see the future going. And remember, AIO has put in over 110,000 sites with their equipment. So, and they know what they're doing and their equipment really works. But what's interesting about their equipment is, besides monitoring everything in a cell tower site, for example, whether it be locks, cameras, battery, HVAC, a lot of the stuff that are monitored that we don't monitor, we just monitor the generator. so obviously it's a very good fit for us but their products because it's so AI based for example depending on which is the cheapest form of energy at any particular time whether it's solar, battery fuel they can switch they have the technology to switch the uses depending on the cheapest source of power at that particular time. So we think it could turn into a big cost savings for the tower operators. Another thing we know is that security of a cell phone tower is pretty lackadaisical. I mean, they're in remote sites. Because with the price of copper where it is today, we think that security has to be hardened at cell tower sites. And so they have the number one, at least what we believe to be the number one security system in place. And then just if you think about it, because it's the way we think about it, you know, the industry is spending billions and hundreds of billions of dollars on AI based on reports that we've seen today. Roughly 40% of AI is delivered through mobile apparatuses, which obviously need cell towers. So, you know, we think self-towers are going to be an important site and will continue to be a growing part of the infrastructure that's needed. And we think we have, with AIO products, the best solutions for towers. And so we think there will be great receptivity once we have a proof of concept. We have one up and showing. We have the software that we can show people. So we think it will be a very big item. But, again, we're saying nothing for right now. Let's see what happens towards the second half of the year. Have I answered your question, Joel?

Yes. Thank you. I remember I also had on demand.

Okay, on demand response, there's nothing new. We continue to have discussions with utilities that, as a matter of fact, we have one coming up in a week on their interest in demand response. The issue is how it gets structured. For example, this particular utility can only give demand response payment to their end customer by law. So how do we work that ACORN gets the money that they deserve? So the concept continues to be an important concept. The actual operations, you know, is unclear yet because it's too new as to how the money all flows. But there's certainly a lot of interest, and we are in the midst of it.

Okay, great. Can I have one quick follow-up on AOI, Jim? Sure. Okay, thanks. Yes, so the decision to – you're going to be – you have terms to share the monitoring revenue, and, of course, we value that a lot more. It's ongoing. You know, recurring revenue is a great thing, like the razor blade model. But from my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we're not going to get any revenue from the hardware sales, even though it's going to be branded omnimetrics. And I assume there's going to be some costs associated with the hardware, including maybe commissions. So do you tell us a little bit more what went behind the thought that we would be sharing in the monitoring but not directly in the hardware sales?

So let me correct you on that. No, we are definitely getting the hardware sale. So we are getting the hardware sale, and what we're doing is we're sharing in the monitoring. So the way I look at it, you know, it's like a semi-acquisition of the North American rights for AIO's product line. So, you know, we were given a relatively small upfront fee, which requires them to do a bunch of things. for example, putting up a demo site and providing personnel, et cetera. And then we're sharing in the ongoing monitoring. So I view that as kind of like an earn out. So it's more upfront acquisition fee, and then an earn out in terms of the ongoing monitoring fee is how I look at it and why I think it's such an interesting structure and, again, takes out a significant amount of risk for shareholders and leaves us with a significant amount of upside. You know, we're going to go to market with a product in two different ways. You know, we'll have a CapEx model. We'll have an OpEx model. But in all situations, we are getting paid for hardware. We're not in the freebie business.

Okay, great. Wonderful. And then at the risk of being greedy, I'll pose one more question. So I thought part of the announcement with AOI is the right to get what technically is called, not right of first refusal, to their South America, Central America, you know, to business there. And, you know, you may wonder why am I asking about that when you're just getting your toe in the door with North America. But the reason I asked there is I saw that AOI has some important existing customers, I think maybe even a South Power company, that has expansive operations in South America. and if you could, so that may be some low-hanging fruit if that was something that you could execute and, you know, get the rights to their South America business. So I was just curious about that.

Yes, so we built that into a contract because, as you say, there's some interesting opportunities in South America, But also we wanted, so to speak, we didn't want to have our flanks with somebody else. So, you know, growing up, I played a lot of risk. So I figured if we're having North America, I want to have South America as well. It's a growing area, and it's easier for us to service South America than AIO from where they're located. So it made sense, and, you know, we negotiated for it, and we got it. So we'll see what happens. But, again, as you said, let's get North America going the way we expect it to happen, and then we can see what happens with South and Latin America.

Okay, great. Thank you, Jan.

And at this time, and showing no additional questions, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Jan Lowe for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining today's call. We appreciate the continued support from our shareholders. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to myself or our IR team, whose contact information is provided in today's fresh release. We look forward to updating you again on our Q1 call upcoming. All the best.

And with that, everyone, we'll be concluding today's conference call-in presentation. We do thank you for joining.

You may now disconnect your lines.