Conference Transcript - ALAR 2025-11-26

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Alarm Technologies 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Results Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following management's presentation, the conference will be open to questions. If you have a question, please press star followed by the number 1 on your touchtone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by the number 2. If you're using speaker equipment, please lift the handset before making your selections. This conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Kenny Green, Investor Relations at Alarm. Kenny, please go ahead.

Kenny Green, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you. Good day to all of you and welcome to Alarm's conference call to discuss the results of the third quarter of 2025. I would like to thank management for hosting this call. Today, we are joined by Shaha Daniel, Alarm CEO, and Shai Avni, CFO. Shahar will begin the call with an overview of the third quarter, followed by Shahi, who will review key elements of the financials. Finally, we will open the call to our question and answer session. Before we get started, I want to highlight the forward-looking statements disclaimer. This conference call may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Security Solicitation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal security laws. For the two statements include statements about plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events of performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are different than historical facts. For example, when we discuss our strategy of prioritizing long-term relationships and market share capture over short-term margins and profitability, expected trends in market demand and AI-driven growth, our business momentum and pipeline are expectations regarding future revenue patterns and margin improvements. The anticipated impact of our strategic investments and product mix and our estimates regarding fourth quarter 2025 revenues and adjusted EBITDA, we are using forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may result in expectations not being realized and may cause actual outcomes of different materiality from expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include those discussed under the heading Risk Factors in Alarm's Annual Report and Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 20, 2025, and in any subsequent filings with the SEC. All such forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, made on behalf of the company are especially qualified by these cautionary statements, and as such, forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainties, and we caution you not to place undue reliance on these. On the call, the company will also present non-IFRS key business metrics. The non-IFRS key business metrics the company uses are EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, non-IFRS gross margin, non-IFRS net profit or loss, and non-IFRS basic earnings or loss per share or ADS. The exact definitions and reconciliations of these non-IFRS key business metrics are described in the company's financial results practice, which is available in the investor lobbies of Adoram's website. These measures may differ materially from similarly title measures used by other companies and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Shachar Daniel, Alarm's CEO. Alarm, Shachar, please, go ahead.

Shachar Daniel, CEO

Thank you, Kenny, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Let me start with the headline. Q3 was a breakout quarter, $13 million in revenues, up 81% year-over-year and 48% sequentially. This is one of the strongest quarters ever in allowance history and clear evidence that our platform has become critical infrastructure for some of the world's leading and most exciting AI labs and global technology companies. This significant jump was driven by increased consumption from major AI customers, continued expansion within existing enterprise accounts, and strong adoption of our newer AI-centric products. During the quarter, we saw 26% more paying customers, 17% higher average revenue per customer, and 48% sequential revenue growth. While our largest customers contributed just over a quarter of our revenues, and our top two contributed just over 40% growth, was growth-based. We also continue to see significant traction for major global e-commerce platforms in Asia, which face repeat and expanding orders. Despite the natural volatility this early hyper-growth phase of the AI market, we are confident that demand is broadening and growing sharply, and AI will be a core long-term and significant growth engine for us. Profitability. As we noted last quarter, our gross margin will see a short-term impact by the mix of our two very large customers, both globally recognized brands operating at extraordinary scale. Their significant consumption at the start of significant work with them naturally comes with lower unit pricing and, for us, higher initial infrastructure costs. Part of our delivery for these customers only at the early and initial stages of delivery relies on third-party partners and those costs flew directly into cost of revenue. That said, these customers validate the strength of our technology, reinforce our ability to deliver data at massive scale and represent significant long-term strategic upside. Earlier this year, given the strong potential we saw, we made the deliberate decision to aggressively expand capacity, add premium residential infrastructure, and build dedicated high-throughput pipeline ahead of revenue. And these front-loaded investments are the primary reason for the temporary pressure on margins. And importantly, I strongly believe that this is exactly the right long-term strategy. While remaining profitable overall, we are sanctifying some near-term profitability to strongly capture market share and secure multi-year relationship in a segment growing several hundred percent year over year. Looking ahead, margin improvement. This margin pressure is short-term planned and fully addressable. addressable. Several initiatives are already underway and are part of our strategy. One, in-house solutions. Our goal is to serve as the customer's leading and most reliable provider. To achieve this, we leverage our deep market expertise and long-standing relationship with numerous vendors. And sometimes when needed, we select a partner to collaborate with, And once we validate continued demand for the specific product, we will either develop it in our alternative or consider acquiring the solution. This approach will allow us to enhance our capabilities at lower risk and ensuring demand while significantly improving our gross margins over time. Two, network optimization. We're identifying large optimization opportunities across our servers and network architecture. Improved efficiencies have already begun and will continue to improve over time. Three, shift toward higher-value products. As data sets, scrapers, and website unblockers grew at the percentage of the revenue, unit economics and margins will improve also. We remain confident in our ability to expand both growth and operating margins as our product mix continues to shift and our infrastructure becomes more efficient. AI Market Dynamics We are operating at the frontier of the largest AI model training runs on the planet. At this stage of the AI build-out, demand from leading labs can move sharply quarter to quarter as they, One, refresh massive data sets. Two, test new architectures or shift compute priorities. This volatility is normal in a market that is still in a land-grab phase. As models move from research to more structured production and fine-tuning cycles, revenue patterns will naturally become smoother and more predictable. Until then, our major KPIs are year-over-year trends, penetration, and quality of relationships. Across all these three, we have never been stronger. Product Suite Expansion Our AI-stranding product suite is scaling rapidly. Dataset, a material and threshold growing revenue contributor. Website Unblocker delivers triple-digit sequential growth. Custom scrapers deliver high double-digit sequential growth. IP proxy network, stable to growing in absolute terms and continues to support massive AI workloads. Our revenue mix is evolving from a single product proxy business into a diversified multi-product data infrastructure platform. This shift is expected to drive stronger long-term margins and healthier unit economics. Outlook and Summary We remain confident that we are in the right position at the early stages of a massive and long-lasting transformation in the data industry. Looking ahead to Q4, and SHI will beat them shortly, we expect revenues approximately of $12 million, plus minus 7%, which is up a very significant 62% year-over-year and will allow us to end the year at around $41 million in revenues, up almost 30% year-over-year and well ahead of our internal expectations earlier in 2025. From global tech leaders to fast-growing startups, all are increasing their reliance on high-quality, real-time public web data at an unprecedented scale, and Alarm is uniquely positioned to serve this market. Our vision was and remained clear. Alarm will become one of the foundational data infrastructure companies powering the AI area. I will now hand it over to Shai for the financial details, and our Q4 Outlook.

Shai Avnit, CFO

Thank you, Shaha, and hello, everyone. I will start by reviewing our key financial results for the third quarter of 2025, comparing them to the same period last year, unless otherwise noted. Following that, I will provide our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2025. Detailed definitions and conciliations of our non-IFRS key business metrics can be found in our Q3 2025 financial results press release. And one final note before I begin. The figures I will be discussing are rounded for clarity and ease of reference. Turning now to our financial performance and first revenues. Revenues in the third quarter of 2025 reached $13 million compared to with $7.2 million in the third quarter of 2024 an increase of approximately 84% year-over-year. As Shahar mentioned, the increase was driven mainly by artificial intelligence customers with a significant contribution from one large-scale AI customer, which accounted for about $3.5 million in revenue in the quarter. At the same time, we continue to see a shift in customer segments with strong growth in the AI vertical of setting declines in other segments. Gross margins. As a result of our increased investments into our business to capture opportunities ahead, and due to the higher share of large-scale projects with AI customers, our non-IFRS gross margins for the third quarter of 2025 was 56%, compared to 74% in the third quarter of 2024. As Shahar mentioned, the lower margin reflects the work we are doing with large customers, mainly AI companies, which require data gathering at significantly higher scales, necessitating upfront costs, including a larger volume of servers and stronger, higher quality infrastructure, as well as lower unit price charges. In addition, the first material product sales in 2025 triggered related third-party costs. Overall, this is consistent with our strategy to engage in large-scale, high-strategic opportunities that we believe can drive meaningful long-term growth and profitability, even at the cost of lower-short-term margins that we expect to improve in the future. Expenses Operating expenses in the third quarter of 2025 were $7.4 million compared to $4.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase was driven mainly by planned operating expenses investments that we discussed last quarter. These include higher employee-related costs, particularly in R&D and sales-related compensation, as we continue to grow the team to accelerate product development, expand our capabilities, as well as by the overall increase in the scale of operations. Net profit in the third quarter of 2025 was $0.1 million compared to a net profit of $4.2 million in the third quarter of 2024. As a reminder, the Q3 2024 profit was particular high due to a sharp fair value decreases of investors' warrants related to the share price decreases in the quarter. Those decreases resulted in high financial income of $3.5 million. The vast majority of the warrants expired in 2025, and hence they do not impact our bottom line anymore. Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2025 was $1.2 million compared to $1.4 million in the third quarter of 2024. Basic earnings per ADS in the third quarter of 2025 were $0.01 compared to $0.60 in the third quarter of 2024. The high Q3 2024 figure was a result of the one-time financial income I just mentioned. On a non-FRS basis, basic earnings per ADS were $0.18 in the third quarter of 2025, compared to $0.20 in the third quarter of 2024. Our current share count is approximately 71.2 million ordinary shares, or 7.1 million U.S.-listed ADSs. As of September 30, 2025, the company's shareholder equity increased to $31.1 million, up from $26.4 million on December 31, 2024. Our cash, cash equivalents, and debt investment balance, including accrued interest, as of September 30, 2025, was approximately $24.6 million, compared with $25 million at the end of 2024. 4. Allowance solid cash position supports our ability to continue investing strategically while maintaining a focus on sustainable value creation. Guidance. Moving on to our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2025, our guidance reflects what we see today based on customers' orders, backlog, and current consumption trends and is given as of today's date. We currently expect that in the fourth quarter of 2025, revenue will be around $12 million, with an up and down range of approximately 7%, representing about 63% year-over-year growth. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 is expected to be around $1 million, with a range of plus minus half a million dollars. To summarize, 2025 continues to be a year of strong momentum, a solid balance sheet, and growing market interest. We remain focused on our commitment to generating long-term, sustainable value for all our stakeholders. With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Please press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. And for a participant choosing speaker equipment, please pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Brian Kinslinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

Great, thanks. Can you talk about the large project for data set delivery? How is the program going? What's customer satisfaction like? And how should we think about the consistency from this customer in terms of revenue contribution, you know, over the next 12 to 18 months?

Shachar Daniel, CEO

Hi, Brian.

Shachar Daniel, CEO

So, first of all, a smaller correction. It's not a project, yeah? It's a demand for one of our products, which is, in this specific case, it's a combination between a scraper and a data set. And this demand is a natural demand in our space, you know, like many other customers that have their own needs of some of our products. This specific, let's call it the customer consumption is huge from the volume aspect, and of course, it's taking a significant portion of our revenue, so that's why we can talk about him specifically. Now, regarding your question for the future. So, as I mentioned, I think, a few times in the last period and periods in plural, and also in my pitch that few minutes ago, you know, we can divide the world of data needs and data collection at this stage to, let's say, we can classify it into two groups. One is the group of customers that are using the data and their data needs in the production stages. They are selling their products. They are selling their analytics to customers. And they are working more or less. They are stable more or less. And we know the need. We know the need for the coming period. And we can predict the future. The second is customers or our customers that are basically in the, let's call it in the R&D stage, which are developing their LLM and their AI models. In this stage, their needs basically can change often. They can change from month to month or can change sometimes from week to week because they are in that stage of developing their model. and as you know in many other spaces when you are in this stage you don't have you as the company, as the customer you don't have a real prediction what is the amount of data that you will need from this or that source what is the duration things are changing often websites are changing the way they are acting very often and according to this their needs and their demand can be changed sometimes on a weekly basis, sometimes on a monthly basis, and sometimes it can work for a long time. But to be very honest and transparent, we don't have, and I think our customers basically don't have reliable information that they can share or I can share with you regarding the future of this or that use case, product need, et cetera. The third question is, for this point of time, the level of satisfaction is high. We are providing a huge amount of data for these customers and others. The retention is good, and we're in a very good position from this aspect with this customer and some others.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

Do you see once R&D customers have developed their models that usage is higher or lower or just more predictable?

Shachar Daniel, CEO

Okay, so I think that, you know, we can divide the thing maybe to two phases. One phase is in the education stage when they are educating the model, they need a huge amount of data in a very short time. And then when it comes to the stage of production, let's call it the production stage, then they will use maybe the same amount of data, but it will not be on a short time. They will divide it over the quarters and over the time. The second thing, which is even more important, is that the data sources, even if you finish to educate your model from one data source and you go to production stage then you know the next big thing is coming and now you want to train him about this specific vertical or this specific area and then again you will get into the cycle of downloading a massive, a huge amount of data and then go to something that is more sustainable So I cannot say now it will be higher or lower, but I think that it will be more sustainable. And in this way, we can predict and we can be more accurate in our predictions for the long future.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

And then as you've had this announcement and success here, can you talk about what the pipeline to sell this new data set delivery solution is to other customers?

Shachar Daniel, CEO

So, Jass, what was the first part of your question?

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

Well, you've got this customer that you're delivering large data sets to. It's a new solution for you. What's the pipeline to sell this solution to other customers?

Shachar Daniel, CEO

Ah, okay. So, it's not a pipeline. We already have some other customers that we are leveraging this product and this capability to other customers, which are smaller. It doesn't have to be smaller customers. Their need is at this point of time, it's smaller. Again, because it's in the R&D stage, so basically they are in a different stage, so now they need a lower amount of data, but it doesn't say, it says nothing about the future because they can ramp up very fast and increase the demand. So first of all, we have current, other current customers that are using this data. And second, we have a few others in the pipeline for this specific data set or for other data sets or for the scraper, the unblocker, and other products that we started to see a great ROI from them in this quarter.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

And then as revenue scales, and maybe you have less reliance on partners for data set delivery, how should we think about the gross margin recovering, as you've used the word temporary pressure on gross margins, and as part of that, what volume would you need maybe that would trigger more investments in infrastructure and capacity, and how do you think about the recovery long-term in pricing or unit economics? Okay, let's start from the first

Shachar Daniel, CEO

part of your question so basically if we simulate a situation at this quarter and that we wouldn't use any any third-party vendors and all of the solutions were in-house so basically you could see the gross margin something between almost a 70% gross margin, okay? If we simulate exactly the same situation in this quarter. Now, but let's say I want to emphasize something that is very important. You know, the world of data collection and data scraping and the data sets has huge variety of products, capabilities and needs. And for us, I think it's too risky to start and develop everything internally before we see the real demand, unless we can predict a real demand coming very soon. So in this way, because we have hundreds of customers that basically are by themselves, are scraping companies, data sets companies. We are leveraging the fact that we have the approach and the door to these customers. And if something is coming in, let's say a current customer, an existing customer that is asking from us a capability or a need that we don't have it right now, so we will use this third-party or white-label solution, then we will stay the major vendor we will have the control in our end and if we see that the demand is sustainable is here to stay and some more other customers have this need we can very fast develop it internally or vice versa or to buy even as a kind of acquisition to acquire this vendor or this solution. In this way we mitigate risks because we mitigate expenses of R&D and solutions that maybe will not have a demand. We are leveraging the fact that we have basically an approach to all the markets. And the downside is that you will see, you can see sometimes if we use this approach again, for example, you can see the impact on the gross margin and of course on the EBITDA. So, this is, I think, my answer for the first part of your question. Can you repeat what was the other part, Brian?

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst — Alliance Global Partners

Yeah, I'm wondering when, yeah, it sounds like pricing is a little low. So, when will, when and how do you think about the unit economics, which is what I assume pricing is, when is that improving? And are you using, to your response of the other answer, are you going to be using a heavy load of third party in the fourth quarter a lower first of all lower and even we are we are

Shachar Daniel, CEO

with now at this date you know we are and we have our own for example own internal solution that we are testing it even in production stage so it will be lower and so it might it might even in In this quarter, we can see the improvement, and hopefully if everything goes well and the demand is here in the next quarter, it will be a material improvement. And second thing, regarding the unit price, so I think that as time is running, it looks like that, we talked about it in your previous question, the need or the demand from this kind of customers maybe will go down from the size and volume, and of course, directly the unit price will go up. Second thing, it looks like that for these amounts, we will see a lot of small players that are basically competing, are kind of competitors now, will not be able to stay in the game. because what stands behind this huge amount of data is an infrastructure with global coverage and millions and millions of endpoints that need to be changed and replaced all the time in order to be preventing from blocking by the websites. So at this point, I think that we will stay only the leaders, And then, naturally, it might make the price per unit go up a little bit. But still, in this amount, which is not bad, by the way, it's not bad. It's not a bad thing. But the more important thing is to make our infrastructure, as we're talking about third parties, our servers, all the DevOps behind our company to make it more and more efficient and by this, by the way, to decrease the cost of goods and to improve the gross margins because naturally when volumes are going up, unit price is going down. It's okay. It's good. It's a good thing. And if you know how to adapt the cost of goods behind,

Shachar Daniel, CEO

then you can be in a very good situation okay thank you thank you very much as a reminder to

Operator

star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question we will just pause for a brief moment to see if there's any final questions with no further questions i would like to turn the conference back over to mr daniel for closing comments okay so uh thank you very

Shachar Daniel, CEO

much for joining us for this third quarter investor's call. It was a pleasure and hope to see you next quarter and hope Alarm will keep the delivery and the amazing achievements

Operator

to achieve till now. Thank you very much. Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time and thank you for your participation.