Earnings Call Transcript - EVLV Q3 2025

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Evolv Technology Third Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Brian Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for Evolv Technology. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Norris, SVP of Finance and Investor Relations

Thank you, Megan, and good afternoon. Welcome to today's call. I'm joined by John Kedzierski, our President and CEO; and Chris Kutsor, our CFO. Earlier today, after market close, we issued a press release detailing our third quarter 2025 results and full-year outlook. The release is filed with the SEC and available on the Investor Relations section of our website, where you will also find a supplementary slide highlighting the benefits of our transition to our direct distribution model, which we'll reference during the call. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to our current expectations and views of future events, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our future operations, growth and financial results, our potential for growth and ability to gain new customers, demand for our products and offerings and our ability to meet our business outlook. All forward-looking statements are subject to material risks, uncertainties and assumptions, some of which are beyond our control. Actual events or financial results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements because of a number of risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, the risk factors set forth under the caption Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the SEC on April 28, 2025, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the 3 months ended September 30, 2025, filed with the SEC earlier today. The forward-looking statements made today represent our views as of November 13, 2025. Although we believe the expectations reflected in these statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that future results, performance or the events and circumstances reflected therein will be achieved or will occur. Except as may be required by applicable law, we disclaim any obligation to update them to reflect future events or circumstances. Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide additional insights for investors. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. These measures include adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per diluted share. Reconciliations between these non-GAAP measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our press release issued today. Please note that our definition of these measures may differ from similarly titled metrics presented by other companies. We will be discussing key operating metrics such as annual recurring revenue, or ARR, remaining performance obligation, or RPO, both of which we believe are helpful to investors in understanding the progress we are making in this business. One last item, we have an active IR schedule coming up, including the Craig-Hallum Alpha Select Conference next week in New York and 2 events in December, the UBS Technology Conference in Scottsdale and the Northland Capital Conference, which is being held virtually. We will also be on the road this quarter at several financial centers across the country. For more information, please contact me at bnorris@evolvtechnology.com. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John.

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

Thank you for joining us today. Our results throughout the year show significant progress towards achieving greater consistency and stability within the organization. We're getting closer to our goal of establishing a scalable, high-growth business with predictable performance. We remain focused on disciplined execution and a strong dedication to our customers' success. Our Q3 results illustrate the latest milestones in this journey. Revenue reached $42.9 million, reflecting a 57% increase year-over-year, driven by robust new customer acquisition and expanded deployments with existing clients, along with increased one-time product revenue linked to specific customer wins, including the largest contract in our company's history. We also benefited from completing some short-term subscription contracts, including one for a major international soccer tournament we supported over the summer. Chris will provide further details on revenue shortly. Overall visibility improved as Q3 marked the highest booked-to-deployed unit ratio we’ve ever seen. Thanks to the adjustments we've shared with investors in our go-to-market model, we anticipate 2026 to be a pivotal year where our annual recurring revenue growth will exceed revenue growth. While we are pleased with a 57% year-over-year revenue growth, it's essential to recognize that our deployed unit count increased by approximately 30% year-over-year, offering a more normalized perspective of our business fundamentals. The difference between revenue growth and unit growth is mainly due to two factors. First, it reflects the ongoing influence of our legacy distribution fulfillment model, which leads to a higher proportion of total contract value taken upfront, resulting in lower annual recurring revenue and total contract revenue compared to direct purchase fulfillment. The second factor is the increased ratio of purchase sales to subscription sales. Specifically, units purchased by customers accounted for 57% of unit activity in Q3, compared to 41% in the same period last year. By moving away from our legacy distribution model, we now capture 100% of the average revenue per unit. This transition boosts recurring revenue over the four-year subscription term and provides Evolv with increased cash per unit. To highlight the differences between distribution and direct fulfillment, we’ve created a chart available on our Investor Relations website. Although we've largely finished shifting away from the distribution fulfillment model, and we have also adjusted our pricing as of July 1 to prioritize software and annual recurring revenue, it will take time for our revenue recognition to align with our new pricing strategy. Consequently, in Q3, we observed higher one-time product revenue related to the previous distribution model and its associated revenue recognition treatment. Over time, our revenue recognition will align more closely with our pricing, leading to most of our average revenue per unit being reflected as annual recurring revenue rather than one-time product revenue. In conclusion, the lasting effects of distribution fulfillment and a higher proportion of purchase units caused revenue growth to surpass both unit and annual recurring revenue growth, making the 30% unit growth a more relevant measure of year-over-year progress. We ended the quarter with annual recurring revenue of $117.2 million, a 25% year-over-year increase. While our annual recurring revenue growth was lower than revenue growth in Q3, we expect this trend to reverse in 2026 as annual recurring revenue growth accelerates relative to total revenue growth. We reported our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, achieving adjusted EBITDA margins of 12% in Q3. We welcomed over 60 new customers during this quarter and are raising our year-end estimate for active subscriptions to between 8,000 and 8,100. This figure still represents a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of entrances that advanced weapons detection can safeguard. Customers are increasingly upgrading to our Gen2 Express platform, which typically resets subscription churn with new four-year commitments. Gen2 upgrades also contributed to an 8% sequential increase in remaining performance obligations, which at the end of Q3 was nearly $300 million. Our new autonomous AI-powered bag screening solution, eXpedite, continues to gain popularity following its Q4 2024 launch. In Q3 alone, we added 12 new customers, particularly in schools where we are initiating one-for-one deployments of eXpedite and Express to enhance security by reducing alarm rates and improving the student experience. We believe the combination of Express and eXpedite offers outstanding security in terms of threat detection capabilities and low false alarm rates. Early deployment data from education customers indicates that Evolv eXpedite has an alert rate of around 2%, demonstrating its effectiveness in balancing detection while minimizing false alarms. Beyond the metrics, we are making a meaningful impact in the communities we serve. Daily, we screen over 3 million individuals. Since the introduction of Evolv Express, we have screened over 3 billion visitors. Evolv eXpedite, which launched just a few quarters ago, has already been employed to screen more than 1 million bags. Our technology aids customers in detecting and identifying 500 firearms each day. For instance, in August, at a Nashville high school, our system detected and helped prevent a loaded handgun from entering the premises. In October, Evolv Express identified a loaded firearm in a student's backpack at a Georgia high school. Just two weeks ago, our solution flagged a concealed firearm during morning arrival at a high school in Atlanta. These examples highlight the impact we are making in education. In the third quarter, we added over a dozen new school districts across the U.S., including two each in New Jersey, Michigan, and California, as well as one each in Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nevada, Montana, Louisiana, Iowa, and Connecticut. In healthcare, we are facilitating significant changes by helping hospitals enhance safety standards while reducing the impact on patient and visitor experiences. Our solutions are streamlining and speeding up entry while improving threat detection at critical access points. With increasing demand in this sector, we are now screening hundreds of thousands of visitors daily in medical facilities nationwide. Recent wins in this market include WellSpan Health, UC Davis Health, and Seattle Children's Hospital. In the sports and live entertainment sector, we’ve expanded our footprint in professional hockey by partnering with the Buffalo Sabres, who have entered into a multiyear subscription agreement to implement nine Evolv Express Gen2 systems at KeyBank Center. This deployment is part of a larger upgrade initiative for the arena set for 2025, aimed at enhancing fan ingress and egress. In Collegiate Athletics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is integrating Evolv Express to improve safety and streamline entry at its athletic venues. In professional football, Bank of America Stadium, home to the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Football Club, has recently completed a long-term renewal, upgrading to Gen2 of Evolv Express. The venue now operates 19 systems and has incorporated Evolv eXpedite for enhanced bag screening and quicker guest entry. Furthermore, our technology is being implemented at nearly a dozen practice and training facilities across the league, including both Evolv Express and Evolv eXpedite. We view this as a strong endorsement of our capability to provide a superior security experience across various entry flows, covering fans, staff, players, media, and VIP guests. These achievements affirm our ability to penetrate diverse markets and deliver trusted solutions that foster long-term growth. We are glad to welcome our new customers and value the trust they place in us, committing ourselves to earn their business consistently. Moving into business operations, we’re thrilled to announce a new strategic partnership with Plexus. This collaboration enhances production capacity, global reach, and operational resilience. Plexus is a global leader in design, manufacturing, and supply chain services, equipped with the infrastructure and expertise to support our growth phase. With 26 facilities and over 20,000 team members worldwide, they will aid in delivering our technology to the places where people gather every day. Switching gears, I want to share some exciting news regarding our product development. I'm pleased to announce that we've recently launched the newest versions of our software: Evolv Express 9.0, Evolv eXpedite 1.2, MyEvolv Portal, and Evolv Insights 6.0. These updates represent our ongoing commitment to enhancing performance and user experience for our customers, which now number over 1,000 globally. These releases introduce a variety of enhancements tailored to support security teams in their daily responsibilities. Highlights include a new integrated tablet interface that consolidates the workflows of Express and eXpedite into a single streamlined user interface. We also integrated eXpedite into the MyEvolv Portal to allow customers to access operational data for walkthrough and bag screening in one location. These enhancements strengthen the bundled customer ownership experience for Express and eXpedite. We’ve also improved alert tagging and added sensitivity tuning, providing customers with greater control over their security operations. These upgrades result from our commitment to closely listening to our customers and continuously pushing the boundaries of safety and efficiency. Through our subscription model, we can deliver these software capabilities seamlessly via the cloud, allowing for innovation to reach the field without disruption. With each release, we strive to set new standards, not only for ourselves but for the entire industry. Before I hand over to Chris, I want to provide some context regarding our outlook. We are witnessing strong momentum in the business. Our backlog continues to grow, and we have a healthy pipeline. For these reasons, we are raising our revenue forecast for 2025. We now anticipate revenue growth of approximately 37% to 40% in 2025, compared to our previous guidance of 27% to 30% growth. It’s worth noting that this revised revenue forecast of between $142 million to $145 million includes certain one-time benefits, specifically regarding one-time revenue recognition from our legacy fulfillment and pricing models. Excluding these short-term revenue figures, we forecast total revenue growth in 2025 of approximately 30% year-over-year. We continue to expect to achieve positive full-year adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits. We are also dedicated to generating positive cash flow in Q4. Looking towards 2026, I want to begin by emphasizing a fundamental principle: we plan to add more units in 2026 than we did in 2025, with average revenue per unit trends remaining stable. As a reminder, our results for 2025 included the largest customer contract in our company’s history, which involved over 250 units. We plan on growing beyond that order. The changes we've made in our distribution fulfillment model and pricing structure will allow us to capture 100% of contract average revenue per unit, transition more of that revenue from one-time sources to annual recurring revenue and remaining performance obligations, and create opportunities for maximizing leverage in the business over time. We estimate that the subtle but impactful shifts towards emphasizing annual recurring revenue over one-time product revenue will defer approximately $5 million to $10 million of revenue in 2026 that we would otherwise have captured had we not modified our distribution and pricing structure. We expect that this deferred revenue will convert into long-term recurring revenue streams that will benefit us in subsequent years. We are currently forecasting full-year 2026 revenue to be between $160 million to $165 million. Crucially, we anticipate annual recurring revenue will increase by at least 20%, outpacing overall revenue growth in 2026, marking an important shift for Evolv. This management team remains focused on prioritizing annual recurring revenue growth and other long-term value drivers. Now, I’ll turn it over to Chris, who will discuss our financial results and provide more insights into our outlook.

Chris Kutsor, CFO

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to review our third quarter results in more detail and then walk through our updated guidance for the rest of the year as well as context on our early thoughts for next year. As John mentioned, revenue was $42.9 million in Q3, an increase of 57% year-over-year. This was fueled by strong new customer growth and expanding deployments across our customer base. It also includes a few items that, while positive, aren't expected to recur at the same scale every quarter, as John mentioned. Let me unpack those a bit further. First, our new contract with Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest in Evolv's history, contributed approximately $3 million in revenue in Q3, primarily as onetime product revenue. Second, Q3 included a very high proportion of direct purchase method deployments compared to our legacy distribution motion, which brings more immediate revenue recognition and less ARR, which John covered already. The nearly $3 million of product revenue recognized for Gwinnett County this past quarter is an example of that effect. We also recognized approximately $3 million in IP license and other onetime revenue in Q3, primarily tied to our legacy distribution subscription model. Finally, we had roughly $1.5 million in short-term subscription revenue or rentals. These short-term subscriptions are valuable and remain part of our strategy, but they tend to be episodic in nature. When adjusting for these specific items, you get a more normalized view of Q3 revenue closer to $35 million to $36 million, which would reflect growth of about 30% year-over-year. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, at September 30 was $117.2 million, reflecting growth of 25% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. Remaining performance obligation, or RPO, was approximately $299 million at the end of the third quarter compared to approximately $275 million at the end of the second quarter and $269 million at the end of Q3 last year. Adjusted gross margin was 51% in Q3 compared to 64% in the same period last year. There are 3 drivers here worth diving into a little bit deeper. First, as discussed on our last call, the shift from distribution fulfillment to direct purchase fulfillment creates a near-term gross margin headwind, but it also brings higher gross profit dollars over the term of the contract, along with higher revenue, higher ARR, higher RPO and cash compared to the legacy distribution model. With the business now delivering a consistent track record of positive adjusted EBITDA, that's an important long-term trade-off we are pleased to make. Second, we saw the impact of several large education contracts that included significant volumes of our newest product, eXpedite. eXpedite is still operating at subscale manufacturing cost. We expect eXpedite costs to improve in 2026, which we expect to positively impact future gross margins. And finally, we recognized approximately $3 million of onetime costs related to inventory and service adjustments. Moving down the P&L. Adjusted operating expenses, which excludes stock-based compensation, loss on impairment of equipment and certain other onetime expenses, were $24.8 million compared to $25.2 million in the third quarter of last year. This modest year-over-year decline in contrast to strong year-over-year growth in units deployed, total revenue and ARR growth reflects the actions we have taken since the start of the year to reduce spend and improve the profitability of the business. We believe it is also an excellent indicator of the leverage we believe is central to our business model. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes stock-based compensation and other onetime items, was a positive $5.1 million in Q3 of '25 compared to a loss of $3 million in the third quarter of last year. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12% in the third quarter of 2025. Turning to the balance sheet. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities increased $19 million sequentially to $56 million, up from $37 million at the end of Q2 2025. This primarily reflected proceeds from the new credit facility that we completed in July, along with tighter inventory management and stronger overall collection activity. I'm going to provide some additional details to our updated 2025 outlook that John mentioned a few minutes ago. We now expect total revenue to grow by 37% to 40% in 2025 to be between $142 million and $145 million this year. This is up from our prior guidance, which called for revenue between $132 million and $135 million. A few things we'd encourage investors to consider for context in our '25 revenue estimate. First, as I mentioned in my earlier commentary, the largest deal in the company's history contributed about $3 million to Q3 revenue, and we expect to contribute more than $5 million for the full year due to higher upfront revenue recognition related to the residual effects of our legacy distribution fulfillment model. Second, IP license and other revenue was about $3 million in Q3, and we're expecting that to be about $10 million for the full year. That onetime revenue stream is primarily tied to our legacy distribution fulfillment model, which has been phased out. Investors should assume that IP licenses are no longer a driver to revenue growth starting here in Q4. Third, short-term subscription contracts contributed about $1.5 million to revenue in Q3, and we are expecting that to be about $2 million for the full year. Those opportunities are generally onetime in nature, so it is not something that we plan around. In light of these 3 factors, we estimate a more normalized revenue growth rate for 2025 would have been about 30% year-on-year growth compared to 2024. We expect 2025 adjusted gross margin to be in the range of 52% to 54%, not due to ARPU compression or a change in competitive pressure, but because of the shift to direct purchase fulfillment. To reiterate my previous comment, the direct purchase fulfillment model is a headwind to gross margin in the first year of the new contract. But over the term of the subscription contract, it generates higher total gross profit dollars, higher revenue, higher cash and ARR compared to the distribution fulfillment model and also makes us easier to do business with. With strong top line growth and continued focus on expense management, we expect to deliver positive full-year adjusted EBITDA in 2025 with full-year adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits compared to our previous guidance, which called for margins in the mid-single digits. We expect to be cash flow positive in the fourth quarter of 2025. Turning now to 2026. As John mentioned, we remain encouraged by the changes we made this year, and we expect to see ARR growth begin to outpace revenue growth in the next year. While we are still developing our final plans, let me set some additional context to the 2026 outlook. The fundamentals of our business remain strong with robust customer demand and a stable pricing environment. We expect to add more units in 2026 than we did in 2025, with ARPUs remaining relatively consistent and the trends that we've seen this year continuing. In other words, we expect continued unit growth and stable pricing. That said, we expect recent shifts in our distribution fulfillment and pricing model will result in less onetime revenue, but more ARR and RPO in 2026 compared to 2025. We encourage investors to refer to the presentation material posted on our IR website for a graphical view of the positive impact of pivoting to direct purchase. We also expect a higher percentage of new units in '26 to be full subscription compared to 2025, which will also lower the '26 growth rates but drive faster ARR growth. We expect the changes we've made to our direct purchase pricing model, changes that maximize ARR by making the upfront hardware price lower, commensurate with reduction in our manufacturing costs will push at least $5 million to $10 million of revenue out of 2026 and into ARR and RPO. The higher ARR and associated recurring subscription value will also provide higher ARR rates when those contracts move to renewal discussions 4 years down the road. We believe all of these are smart changes for the business in the long term. We are currently modeling full-year revenues of about $160 million to $165 million in 2026. And again, the important news here is that we expect to add more units in '26 than we did in '25 with ARPU trends remaining stable and ARR growing at a faster rate than total revenue. Specifically, we expect ARR to grow by at least 20% year-over-year. And to reiterate John's earlier comment, we believe 2026 will be an inflection point for the company as ARR begins to outpace revenue growth. While we haven't finalized our investment plans, we are committed to growing revenues faster than total expenses in 2026 and therefore, are currently modeling modest expansion of adjusted EBITDA margins. We will share more thoughts on how we're thinking about 2026 during our Q4 call in March. And in the meantime, we're focused on finishing a strong 2025.

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

Thank you, Chris. We are committed to our mission of making the world a safer place to live, learn, work, and play while establishing a leading IoT SaaS security business. We view security as essential rather than optional. We are confident in our market position and continue to advance with purpose, guided by a clear strategy and a strong commitment to creating long-term value. We have been deliberate and open about the changes we are implementing, including refining our go-to-market and pricing strategy to enhance annual recurring revenue, forming new partnerships to improve cost efficiency and lower cost of goods sold, and adjusting our organizational structure to optimize every investment. Each of these actions highlights our goal of building a scalable, high-growth business with reliable performance. Our strong third-quarter results and the momentum across the organization demonstrate significant progress in these areas. While we take pride in these accomplishments, we remain vigilant and are steadily working towards a business model that is both scalable and consistently high performing. We truly value the support of our customers and investors and the trust they place in us and our mission.

Chris Kutsor, CFO

Thank you, John. At this time, we'd like to open the call up for Q&A. Again, we ask participants to limit themselves to one question and one follow up.

Operator, Operator

Our first question will come from Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst

Congratulations on the very strong results. I want to revisit some of the one-time items. I understand the reasoning behind excluding the $1.5 million related to short-term contracts and the revenue recognition for some deals going through distributors. However, regarding the overall growth, you have experienced the largest increase in recurring revenues and in RPO for a quarter. Could you clarify how the revenue recognition for the large contract will work moving forward?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

Jeremy, I'll start and Chris can address any other specifics you might have. So as we communicated in the prepared remarks, we just shared, one of the impacts of the legacy distribution model is more upfront revenue. We have largely moved away from that and the majority of our purchase subscriptions were executed through our direct fulfillment. But there'll be a tail of effect about how we take revenue on those deals over time, and that will normalize and result in a new pricing that we've already put in place months ago in July 1. As Chris mentioned, we'll ultimately recognize about $5 million of that order. It's a very significant proportion of the total order that we'll take in the first 2 quarters of a 48-month deal. Again, we expect that to adjust to the overall longer 48-month revenue recognition as we get into 2026.

Chris Kutsor, CFO

Jeremy, just a bit more context to that. This effect is only relevant for purchase subscription orders and doesn't have the effect for full subscription orders. And the effect is due to the hardware pricing that's part of the mix of the contract that we do in a purchase subscription order. So for about half of our business, this is the effect. And the impact, as John was talking about, ties back to GAAP accounting, ASC 606 that requires us to take that amount of upfront revenue in the way that's reflected in our remarks. So hopefully, that gives you the perspective as to why it's happening and the proportion of our business that it happens to.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst

That's helpful. I wanted to ask about the new strategic contract manufacturer agreement you've entered into. How do you expect this to affect your baseline costs for the Gen2 or possibly Gen3 machines going forward? Do you anticipate a reduction in manufacturing costs for the Express machines, and will they also be manufacturing eXpedite? What impact might that have on the growth of that business?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

Jeremy, we're pleased and looking forward to the partnership with Plexus. We just executed that agreement. We're focused on onboarding them and get them to start manufacturing our product, which we will be focused on through the first half of 2026. Over time, we look forward to a larger scale and the potential of cost synergies that will come and the ability to be able to leverage their entire footprint.

Chris Kutsor, CFO

You should expect our full portfolio to eventually be available at Plexus as well.

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

As you would expect, we're doing it thoughtfully and carefully.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst

Understood. And then just one more quick one before I hop out of the queue. In terms of the eXpedite bag scanner product, what is the rough attachment rate that you're getting with that on sales of Express machines? And how does that vary? Are you getting more success with that, let's say, in the education vertical or in the stadium vertical versus a couple of your other verticals?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

We're very pleased with the progress of eXpedite. As we mentioned in the previous quarter, a significant portion of that large education order was eXpedite. In Q3, we added 12 new eXpedite customers, and to answer your question directly, 11 of those also acquired Express. This is a trend that excites us. We have observed deployments across education, sports, entertainment, and health care.

Eric Martinuzzi, Analyst

Yes. You mentioned the number of units increasing in 2025 compared to 2024. Are we referring to the total units, which include both Express and eXpedite, being higher in 2025 than in 2024, and the same comparison for 2026 versus 2025? Or are we only discussing the Express units?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

The aggregate units, of Express and eXpedite, which is consistent with how we've been discussing this year.

Eric Martinuzzi, Analyst

Okay. And then can you remind me just the delta between the price of those 2 if someone were to purchase them outright, maybe not the absolute dollar.

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

We shared before, the unit economics are similar. As Chris commented, we expect the gross margins to be more similar over time. Today, eXpedite is a new product, hasn't benefited from the multiyear manufacturing scale that we built into Gen2. So right now, it's a bit of a headwind on gross margin.

Chris Kutsor, CFO

And Eric, remind you, that's also a 4-year subscription go-to-market model for eXpedite as well.

Shaul Eyal, Analyst

On results, and thanks for the color and transparency on the business and the outlook. As you guys shift away from distribution to direct fulfillment model, just curious, what was the reaction of some of those channel partners involved?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

It's very positive. There's one thing I want to make sure we're very clear on. This had no impact on our channel. But the majority of our business as it has, continues to transact from a channel. What the change was is how our channel partners get the product from us. In the past, in the motion that we introduced in 2023, they would purchase it from a distributor. Now they purchase it directly from us, which means that we capture 100% of the ARPU. We did not see the portion that went through distribution. So from a direct channel partner reaction, we have simplified their buying process. They used to have to buy one solution to an end user by issuing 2 orders, one to our distributor contract manufacturer for the hardware and one to us for the subscription. So their process to do business with us is much simpler.

Shaul Eyal, Analyst

Got it. This is great. I appreciate it. And maybe the biggest contract that you discussed, those 250 units, yes, we're becoming greedy here. How many of these contracts are currently in the pipeline? I know they don't come too often, but I think we're beginning to see where the business is heading as we start to think about '26 and maybe even '27 down the road. Just curious how many of those, call it, triple-digit transactions are out there?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

We haven't provided specific outlooks or details on our pipeline. But what I'll reiterate is that in the preliminary '26 guidance we just provided, we're planning to grow units over this year, which included that 250 units award.

Michael Latimore, Analyst

This is Aditya on behalf of Mike Latimore. Could you tell me what percentage of your bookings came from existing customers?

Brian Norris, SVP of Finance and Investor Relations

Yes, for sure. This is Brian. It was well over 50%. A bit of that was slightly skewed in that one of the largest orders in the company's history was actually an order that started very briefly in Q2. So if I exclude that, it would be right around 50% on the quarter, it was higher because of that. So we're certainly seeing very significant expansions from existing customers to both Express and now eXpedite as well.

Aditya, Analyst

Got it. And could you give some color among the new verticals? Are there any promising ones such as the warehouse or office?

John Kedzierski, President and CEO

Our vertical mix overall has stayed consistent. As we've shared in the past, sports and entertainment, education and health care are our largest verticals. In Q2, we discussed a large Fortune 500 distribution customer that entered the fold, and we're thrilled for the potential in that area. And we're focused on growing our vertical presence everywhere. And we like the diversity in the mix that we have, but we see opportunities to continue to expand.

Brian Norris, SVP of Finance and Investor Relations

Actually, it's Brian. I'm just going to close it out by, again, thanking everybody for joining us today. Again, we have a very active IR program here in the quarter, 3 conferences, multiple other visits to financial centers across the country. Look forward to meeting as many folks as we can each period. Thanks so much, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Operator, Operator

Thank you for joining. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.