Earnings Call
Spire Global, Inc. (SPIR)
Earnings Call Transcript - SPIR Q1 2023
Ben Hackman, Head of Investor Relations
Thank you. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Our earnings press release and SEC filings can be found on our IR website at ir.spire.com. A replay of today’s call will also be made available. With me on the call today is Peter Platzer, CEO; and Tom Krywe, CFO. As a reminder, our commentary today will include non-GAAP items. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results, as well as our guidance can be found in our earnings press release. Some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. In particular, our expectations around our results of operations and financial conditions are uncertain and subject to change. Should any of these expectations fail to materialize or should our assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual company results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. A description of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and other factors that could affect our financial results is included in our SEC filings. With that, let me hand the call over to Peter.
Peter Platzer, CEO
The first quarter was yet another quarter of growth and progress towards profitability. Spire added another quarter to our unbroken record of quarter-over-quarter revenue growth since becoming public. Additionally, margins took another step forward, as we continue on our journey to profitability. In spite of the continuing macro headwinds, our diverse solutions are resonating with customers. We see broad-based demand for our solutions, which is reflected in our ARR, which has now increased to over $100 million. Even in a challenging business environment, the margin progression we are seeing is a direct result of the cost structure we put in place, prudently sharing infrastructure and resources across our four solutions. Demand for our solutions remained strong across a wide and varied customer base. We added 48 net new ARR solution customers in the first quarter, which is yet another proof point demonstrating how we are solving critical and challenging use cases for global, commercial, and government customers. This growth showcases the potential business opportunities in the large untapped markets that remain in front of us. We continue to see diversity in the use cases for our data and analytics. For example, as the world is looking for ways to combat climate change and governments are seeking energy security, offshore wind energy is being looked to as one of the main energy sources for a better future. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, installed capacity for offshore wind energy is expected to grow significantly to 260 gigawatts or more by 2030. This is up from the current installed capacity of 50 gigawatts. And the number of countries generating energy from offshore wind is expected to double over the next decade. This growth provides opportunities for Spire’s global weather forecast, which provides accurate ocean and wind conditions and is crucial for operational efficiency and crew safety when planning, constructing, and operating offshore wind farms. Just yesterday, we announced a Canadian space agency has awarded a contract to Spire and OroraTech to deliver preparatory work for a wildfire monitoring satellite. The contract is the initial step towards CSA’s planned WildFireSat mission, which aims to monitor all active wildfires in Canada from space on a daily basis. This is yet another example of a developing market where our more than 500 years of space heritage can have an impact on human life. According to Munich Re, global wildfire losses from 2018 to 2022 totaled $69 billion. Canada spends around $1 billion every year fighting wildfires, with indirect costs estimated to be several times higher, due to resulting property destruction, infrastructure damage, evacuations, and wider economic losses across business sectors such as forestry, energy, and tourism. As companies like Spire have brought new data and analytics to market, organizations that are entrusted with providing intelligence to keep the world a safer place are evaluating and purchasing our data. We have recently announced that the NRO will continue to use Spire’s data to evaluate how commercial radio frequency data will be integrated into its overhead architecture. The agency, a member of the U.S. intelligence community, has requested a budget increase of over 8% for FY24 and is looking at Spire’s data as it is expanding the acquisition and integration of commercial space-based data for situational awareness. With this announcement, the NRO exercised two options and extended the contract’s period of performance through February of 2025. Spire’s fully deployed constellation of over 100 satellites monitors radio frequency signals to provide data and analytics on global weather intelligence, ship and plane movements, and spoofing and jamming detection. Of those satellites, Spire operates over 40 that help detect and geo-locate signal interference, jamming, and spoofing. These satellites can identify the power, location, and directionality of such events in multiple frequency bands. Beyond applications for intelligence communities, knowledge of signal interference, jamming, and spoofing have applications within the commercial ecosystem. For instance, in navigation, spoofed GNSS signals can cause significant disruptions to transportation and logistics industries that utilize the signals to track and monitor vehicles, ships, and airplanes. Many businesses rely on GNSS for critical operations such as precision agriculture, surveying, and mining. And those responsible for managing our ocean fisheries seek to have critical insights on vessels operating within protected areas. By collecting data that is unseen, Spire can help to predict how patterns impact global securities, economies, and human life. Also within the quarter, Spire announced that we have been awarded an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for orders under a $59 million ceiling through March 2028. Spire can provide NOAA with new real-time radio occultation data that consists of vertical profiles of atmospheric measurements including pressure, humidity, and temperature across all points of the globe as well as ionospheric measurements. This data has been used successfully for NOAA’s operational weather forecast, space weather models, and climate research among other applications. Spire is the largest producer of radio occultation, a powerful form of weather data, gathered by our fully deployed constellation of more than 100 satellites and offers a vast portfolio of current weather, historical weather data, and weather forecast solutions. We are currently capable of providing 20,000 radio occultation profiles per day and could achieve up to 100,000 profiles per day in as little as 18 to 24 months. Additionally, we recently announced a deal with Enqlare. Enqlare is using Spire satellite data to offer up-to-date vessel information and AIS positions to support freight buyers, port agents, ship owners, and charterers with business planning and faster document creation. This enables clients to unlock time savings using automated document generation and reduce late-time processing by up to 40 minutes. Enqlare is part of over 1,000 small and medium enterprises in the maritime space, a number that has been growing steadily in the double digits as the maritime industry is embarking on a digital transformation journey. Turning to our aviation data analytics business, Spire announced a long-term agreement with ch-aviation to supply global flight analytics and insights that will enhance its airline intelligence database. The agreement includes access to Spire’s daily Flight Report, which aggregates hundreds of millions of satellite and terrestrial ADS-B positions to provide actionable flight aircraft and airline data. Spire’s Flight Report detects both scheduled and unscheduled flights occurring in near real-time across the globe, including in remote regions where it is not possible to track flights with terrestrial data services and traditional radar and radio systems. Ch-aviation is integrating Spire satellite data with its own data to derive insights on aircraft utilization, provide post-departure passenger capacity based on actual seat configurations flown, track wet-lease contracts and aircraft at maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) providers, automatically update an aircraft's status and location, and allow users to create flight reports using fleet data criteria. It will allow MRO providers to track aircraft maintained by competitors, lessors to monitor their assets, airlines to benchmark their operational performance relative to competitors, and charter brokers to see which contracts they missed out on. The aviation MRO market is roughly an $80 billion market and is expected to grow another $50 billion by 2030. To share a handful of examples of the use cases represented by the new logos signed this quarter, multiple customers are using our data for marine domain awareness. Marine domain awareness is a term for monitoring sea-related activities, and it is a fast-growing market. The global maritime surveillance market size is valued at around $20 billion and is expected to grow nearly double digits and reach approximately $40 billion by 2026. This data is being utilized to support both defense and commercial agencies such as intelligence agencies and agencies monitoring illegal fishing and dock shipping. Marine industry experts have noted that they see a future where all points on the planet are connected at all times. Low-cost tracking devices and continuous coverage are possible, where compliant vessels will be increasingly visible in maritime monitoring systems, causing non-compliant vessels to stand out. As the world becomes a more interconnected place, there is additional interest in monitoring and securing ocean borders and exclusive economic zones, which span approximately 137 million square kilometers across the world and require satellite data to effectively monitor. Beyond marine domain awareness, we are seeing our maritime data being utilized by the broader ecosystem with new customers and industries like trading firms, utility firms, and data intelligence firms with clients that include investors, operators, and government agencies. As we land these new customers and look to expand our business with them, we are encouraged by the continued broad-based demand, spanning younger growing companies taking advantage of the maritime digitalization trend, as well as established Fortune 100 companies. While we are pleased with our continued growth during the first quarter, we are even more proud of our progression to profitability in this very difficult macro environment. We exceeded our expectations on operating loss, adjusted EBITDA, and loss per share as we continued our pursuit of profitability. This strong execution came against the backdrop of challenging macro headwinds on multiple fronts. We saw near-term disruptions in the launch market with the bankruptcy of the launch provider, some high-profile bank failures, increasing interest rates, risk appetite sliding to 12-month lows, and tightening lending standards across financial institutions, to name just a few. Banking concerns are having an impact and slowing the economic pace. Initial jobless claims have been above expectations, layoffs in the tech industry are beginning to spread to other industries, and uncertainty over recession continues to be a topic of conversation. According to the Conference Board measure of CEO confidence, CEOs remain cautious at the start of 2023, and 93% of the CEOs surveyed are preparing for a U.S. recession over the next 12 to 18 months. Spire has not been completely immune from this uncertainty. This macro environment has hampered our ability to upsell and raise prices and has elongated the sales cycle. As a result, we could not raise our net retention rate during the quarter. But it still came in at a very healthy 108%, which is higher than the net retention rate in the first quarter of 2022. Even with these macro challenges, we were able to deliver better than expected revenue and bottom line results due to our portfolio of diversified solutions to sell and our operational leverage. Our constellation to support our maritime, aviation, and weather solutions has been fully deployed for a number of years and since then, only requires relatively small annual maintenance and replenishment CapEx. We utilize our manufacturing and operations team and all of our ground station assets across all four of our solutions. But beyond this built-in operational leverage, we’re continuing to find ways to drive further efficiencies into the business. One area where you can see those results is the improvement in our gross margins, which improved by 11 percentage points year-over-year and 5 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. For example, we’ve seen significant improvements in our satellite checkout and commissioning activities. These are processes we utilize each time we put a satellite in orbit. Once launched into space, the satellite separates from the launch vehicle, and we make contact with the satellite. We then proceed through a checkout procedure to ensure the capabilities tested on Earth survived the physical forces of the launch process. By analyzing the behavior of our systems over the past 100+ satellites, identifying bottlenecks in the checkout process, and being deliberate about execution efficiency, we have been able to take advantage of learnings, which resulted in process streamlining. Earlier this year, we successfully reduced the checkout time by 50% over the previous deployment. And with our most recent deployment, we have demonstrated the ability to move a satellite through the process 5 times faster than the previous deployment. We have plans to accelerate this process even more. This is particularly timely improvement, as we will be deploying more space services satellites later this year. Similarly, we have improved our supply chain. While external market forces are providing an uncertain outlook across all sectors, there are many adaptations that Spire has undertaken to mitigate the associated risks while simultaneously improving efficiency in our supply chain. To mitigate the tight capacity everyone is seeing in the market, we have sought out new suppliers and secured capacity with some key suppliers ahead of our manufacturing lead time to ensure that we can flex the supply chain to meet the needs of our customers. We have secured stocks of raw materials and electrical components, where we saw a risk of shortages, simultaneously reducing our lead times for these items in the future. We have collaborated extensively with our key suppliers to improve the process time for turning around quotes and orders as well as using the expertise in the supply base to help us better design our products for more streamlined manufacturing. This helps us get our products into and through the manufacturing process in a faster timeframe, allowing us to deliver products faster while maintaining reliable satellite build performance. Like the improvements we are seeing by leveraging our manufacturing and satellite operation process, we also see improvements in lowering our operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. As we continue to scale the business, we are investing in our employees and upskilling our in-house capabilities. We are leveraging our internal resources and systems and have lowered our use of outside consultants. We are seeing lower audit and legal fees. With our improving business results, we are obtaining lower insurance costs. Again, you can see this in our results as the first quarter 2023 non-GAAP G&A expenses were basically flat year-over-year while revenue grew 34% year-over-year. Continued improvements across the business like these give us confidence in our ability to reach and sustain profitability and become free cash flow positive. While a substantial achievement, becoming profitable is just the first step for us. As we look beyond the point in time, Spire begins to generate a profit, we have objectives based on our SaaS business model and unique data analytics offerings. It is our objective to achieve average SaaS gross margins above 70% in the next two years. Given continued demand for our unique data and analytics, we expect to be able to achieve these margins with substantially less sales and marketing costs compared to the average ratios seen from SaaS companies. We expect our operational leverage to continue fueling margin expansion across the board as we pass through breakeven and continue into profitability. Turning now to our technology. We continue to see rapid technology improvements along the curve that has now been in place for decades. Spire continues to benefit from and deliver those improvements. We have been able to demonstrate that geolocation of global navigation satellite system jammers or GNSS jammers with a single satellite, by devising a detection solution that utilizes our constellation scale and high revisit rate. Traditionally, these geolocation activities have been accomplished with a cluster of satellites at a higher cost. We are one of the only companies that can offer our GNSS detection solutions at scale for commercial entities like airports, civil agencies responsible for weather data, or the U.S. government and other sovereign defense entities, truly benefiting global security. Additionally, we have successfully completed the demonstration to detect and geolocate L-Band emitters, utilizing adapted existing three-year satellites. These L-Band frequencies are typically associated with handheld satellite phones well-known for use in various activities such as piracy. This demonstration is notable for using existing satellites, along with minimal non-recurring engineering activities, that only spend a few months in addition to utilizing only two satellites to geolocate, which makes it a very cost-effective method. The demonstration validates the ability to geolocate these objects without the need for much costlier clusters of satellites. Finally, we have been able to demonstrate that we can run ground-based geolocation algorithms in space on Spire hardware and achieve equivalent results for single satellites AISG location. This is another step in our continuing journey to process data on the satellites, which allows us to transmit less data to our ground station, in turn, providing faster insights. Before I hand it over to Tom, I want to recap a few of the metrics from the first quarter. This is our seventh quarter in a row reporting steady revenue growth as a public company. During those seven quarters, we demonstrated a strong trend towards profitability. The first quarter of 2023 was no exception and furthers those trends. With an outstanding and reliable team in place, Spire exceeded expectations and reported record revenue in the first quarter. We also exceeded expectations and reported our lowest loss from operations in those seven quarters. We reported the best operating margin of those seven quarters, and we exceeded expectations and reported our best adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margin in this timeframe. The first quarter was yet another quarter of relentless execution. I could not be more excited about Spire’s future as we continue penetrating our growing and global markets, converting our top-line growth into bottom-line profitability, and our growing impact on making the world a safer, sustainable, and prosperous place for all. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Tom.
Tom Krywe, CFO
Thanks, Peter. We had a strong first quarter of execution with revenue, non-GAAP operating loss, adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP loss per share, and ARR solution customers all coming in above the high end of our guidance. Our results also provided another successful quarter of methodically progressing on our trajectory towards profitability. Q1 revenue increased 34% year-over-year to $24.2 million, once again hitting a quarterly record and exceeding the high end of our guidance. ARR at quarter end was $104.8 million, up 28% year-over-year and within our guidance range. We finished the quarter above guidance with 781 ARR solution customers, a 25% increase year-over-year and a net add of 48 customers quarter-over-quarter. Our Q1 ARR net retention rate was 108%, up from 106% in the year-ago quarter. The rolling 12-month organic ARR net retention rate was 116%, essentially flat from last quarter’s rolling 12-month organic ARR net retention rate of 117%. These trends continue to represent a healthy mix of landing a large number of new customers while expanding with our existing customer base. Now, we’ll be discussing non-GAAP financial measures unless otherwise stated. We provided a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financials in our earnings release that should be reviewed in conjunction with this earnings call. Driven by exceeding our Q1 revenue expectations, our leverage business model across four solutions and high asset utilization, our Q1 operating loss came in better than guidance at $9.8 million, an improvement of $3 million year-over-year and an improvement of over $400,000 quarter-over-quarter. Total adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter came in better than guidance, a negative $6.7 million, a $3 million or 31% improvement from negative $9.7 million in the same period a year ago. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term marketable securities of $73 million, up $2.3 million quarter-over-quarter. We utilized $15.9 million of free cash flow in the quarter, which was a $3.3 million reduction year-over-year. As expected, this recent increase in cash usage was due to the timing of paying our annual compensation and a one-time transaction. Given the significant improvement in cash utilization over the past few quarters along with receiving nearly $20 million of cash from the existing credit facility in February, we feel comfortable with our balance sheet. We remain on track with our objective of generating positive free cash flow in 10 to 16 months and achieving adjusted EBITDA profitability right before that. Now, turning to our outlook for the second quarter and the full fiscal year 2023. For the second quarter, we expect revenue to range between $24 million and $25 million. We expect to finish Q2 with ARR ranging between $112.5 million and $113.5 million, which represents a 32% year-over-year growth rate at the midpoint, and our ARR solution customers to finish between 800 and 810. We anticipate Q2 non-GAAP operating loss to range between $9.8 million and $8.8 million, which is roughly an $800,000 improvement year-over-year at the midpoint and roughly a $500,000 improvement quarter-over-quarter at the midpoint. The improvement in projected non-GAAP operating loss reflects further leverage of our headcount and infrastructure across our four solutions on our path to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 is expected to range from negative $6.4 million to negative $5.4 million. We expect our non-GAAP loss per share for Q2 to range from negative $0.10 to negative $0.09, which assumes a basic weighted average share count of approximately 146.7 million shares. Our full year guidance remains unchanged from what we previously provided on March 8, 2023. As a reminder, we expect full fiscal year revenue to range from $104 million to $109 million, which represents a year-over-year growth of 33% at the midpoint. We expect to finish the year with ARR ranging from $129 million to $135 million, which also represents a year-over-year growth of 33% at the midpoint. We anticipate the full year ARR solution customers to end at 835 to 885. The non-GAAP operating loss for the fiscal year is projected to range between $34 million and $29 million, a $13 million year-over-year improvement at the midpoint. For the full fiscal year, we expect adjusted EBITDA to range from negative $19 million to negative $14 million and we expect our non-GAAP loss per share to range from negative $0.36 to negative $0.33, which assumes a basic weighted average share count of approximately 148 million shares. First quarter results exceeded our expectations and leave Spire well positioned to deliver on our full year financial projections. We remain focused on execution, delivering customer success, and improving margins with scale and leverage. Thanks for joining us today. Now, I’d like to open up the call for questions.
Austin Moeller, Analyst
Hi, Peter. Good afternoon.
Peter Platzer, CEO
Nice to see you.
Austin Moeller, Analyst
My first question is just around the RF geolocation business. As you stated earlier, the company currently has 40 LEMUR satellites that are capable of RF signal capability. Are you planning to add more satellites as you replenish the constellation over time that have that capability to get beyond the 40 or is 40 sufficient to provide global coverage?
Peter Platzer, CEO
So, yes and yes. We have at least 40 satellites I think is exactly what I said that are providing this capability. We are collecting data that based on some pricing information we have from customers is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, just with the existing capability that we have on orbit. Nonetheless, we continue to develop software capabilities to augment what existing satellites are capable of doing. I think we talked about the sat phone detection and geolocation that could be relevant for piracy and other things through software storage. But we do launch new assets as well that have the existing but also further capabilities adding bands to like their 5 or 6 bands that we currently collect over time and expanding it to other frequency ranges as well.
Austin Moeller, Analyst
Okay, great. That’s interesting. And then, just on the NOAA contract, under the terms of that contract being in IDIQ, if you do in the next 18 to 24 months get to the point where you can collect 100,000 RO vertical profiles per day, does that enable you to increase the amount that NOAA is paying you through that contract vehicle over the next several years?
Peter Platzer, CEO
That is correct. NOAA has the ability to increase the ceiling on that IDIQ. They also have received significantly more funding from Congress for commercial data purchases. Additionally, there are other options for accounting vehicles or more IDIQs that will allow them to continue procuring more data. They have publicly indicated, particularly through Dr. Morgan, the head of the weather service, that they need at least 20,000 data points. The international community of RO weather forecasting, known as IROWG, states that a minimum of 25,000 is required. Scientists from The Global Weather Enterprise have suggested that at least 100,000 is necessary to avoid diminishing returns in benefits and to improve the accuracy of forecasts, particularly for extreme weather events. There is a clear need expressed by the customers, namely the National Weather Service and NOAA, along with robust bipartisan support from Congress to enable NOAA to purchase this data. The U.S. government has a proven track record of utilizing commercial capabilities in areas such as satellite communication, satellite launch, and satellite imagery, with some estimates suggesting that over 60% of the government’s needs are fulfilled through commercial services. NOAA's annual budget for satellite data ranges from $1 billion to $2 billion. Satellite weather data is a natural extension of this established practice. The government understands this well, and it enjoys strong Congressional backing. We are confident in our ability to continue partnering with them to provide these capabilities and enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. government, similar to what other companies have accomplished in satellite communication, launch, and imagery.
Austin Moeller, Analyst
Awesome. Great to hear they can throttle up the utilization there. Thanks for all the great details.
Erik Rasmussen, Analyst
Yes. Thanks. Congratulations on the results and great job on the margin improvement. Maybe just starting there on margins and the outperformance. You mentioned leveraging headcounts and infrastructure costs and other things. As the year progresses, are there still levers you can pull for more leverage, and how should we think about further improvements and where it may come from?
Tom Krywe, CFO
Yes. Thanks, Erik. Yes, we definitely have room to continually improve there. We’re not where we want to be on the gross profits for the future and the margins, right, where you can see the continual progression we’re making there and there’s a lot more room to do that through a mix of things. Some of it’s with the top line growth as we’re doing, right? We exceeded our top end of the guidance on revenue with the 34% growth. It was over the top end about $500,000. So we got four solutions to sell. We have a huge TAM to go after in all the different areas. So, a lot of room to just grow on the top line. But then on the expense side, we continually just get the leverage, as you mentioned, across the four solutions that we’re selling, whether that’s in the satellites themselves, whether that’s reducing our BOM costs over the course of time, whether that’s leveraging our ground stations across the four solutions, or whether it’s continual leverage of our headcount within those operational areas. So, we have a lot more room to grow in that front, just like we’ve seen. Right? We had a 10% to 11% increase year-over-year in gross margins, whether you’re looking at GAAP or non-GAAP, and there was a 5% increase quarter-over-quarter. So, seeing that there, but we’re also seeing efficiencies in the operating expenses too, right? If you look at our GAAP expenses on a year-over-year base, and the operating expenses, we were flat year-over-year. We did not grow our expenses at all in that front, but yet we grew 34%. So not only are we seeing efficiencies in the gross margin area but we’re also seeing it down below there. And that’s why we exceeded our top end of the guidance by about $1 million, whether you look at lowering our operating loss or exceeding the adjusted EBITDA targets.
Erik Rasmussen, Analyst
Great. Could you elaborate on your guidance regarding the outperformance in Q1 revenue and the comments indicating the company is on a strong path to meet its 2023 goals? What factors could push you toward the higher end, or even above, that range? Additionally, what limitations are you currently facing? I know there have been discussions about the macro environment and Peter mentioned several areas, but could you provide more details? Thanks.
Tom Krywe, CFO
Yes. I believe one area to highlight is the customer count from this quarter. We welcomed 48 new customers. If we maintain that growth rate throughout the year by adding a significant number of customers, it will definitely contribute to reaching our revenue targets. As we progress later in the year, converting those new customers into revenue becomes slightly more challenging due to reduced time to achieve that. However, similar to our performance in the first quarter, acquiring this many new customers while maintaining a net retention rate well above 100% will significantly assist us in reaching the higher end of our revenue goals.
Erik Rasmussen, Analyst
Maybe just one quick clarification, I think Peter mentioned, talking about SaaS type gross margins of 70% in the next two years. Is that within two years, and then is that GAAP or non-GAAP?
Peter Platzer, CEO
It’s within and it is GAAP.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
Peter, you provided a clear picture of the conference, highlighting the concerns of many CEOs and their preparations for potential recessions over the next 12 to 18 months. Can you discuss the visibility you have regarding your guidance for 2023? Additionally, what level of comfort do you have in your gross margins based on your individual conversations with customers? How do you anticipate your businesses will be impacted by possible recessionary conditions in the global economy?
Peter Platzer, CEO
I believe I understand you, Ric. I'll begin, and perhaps Tom can provide additional clarification since there is some background noise that I apologize for, as it seems to be coming from our end.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
I’m sorry. No, it’s me. I’m at an airport traveling right now. It’s New Orleans jazz. Sorry.
Peter Platzer, CEO
Okay. So, I think the first thing that I want to say is, like we talk about ARR, we talk about SaaS, because we are a subscription business. And by the very nature of that, we have a lot of visibility between now and the end of the year. So I think that is a very, very positive element. Then our solutions are so crucially embedded into our customers that they’re really often absolutely inextricable from them running their business. Quite the opposite, what we see is that customers use more and more from our solutions, the more they use us. And that’s reflected, of course, in our NRR. So I would say like that is kind of like from the visibility perspective. It’s also the flexibility that we have in our infrastructure. I just talked about using software to change what satellites do to create a new product or a new service. That gives us a lot of flexibility to find the greatest use off the assets that we have deployed, be that selling a service going forward, which gets trickier toward the second half of the year, of course, to add revenue, as well as selling historical data, as we continue to collect hundreds and hundreds of millions of data points every single day, store them in our data vault. And with AI and machine learning being like this massive growth area that is generally bottlenecked by having access to data to train those models, those historical data vaults of Spire are getting more and more valuable by the day.
Tom Krywe, CFO
And Ric, I think I’ll just add, also getting into areas that there is really just no competition or very limited competition, right, where we come up with new solutions that solve new use cases, and those things could still sell during tough times, because we are selling things that people really need, is really valuable for them, that they can’t get their hands on from any other means. So, that’s another area. And then, obviously on the other side of the fence, no matter what, we’re making sure we’ve got all kinds of levers that we can take care of on the expense side. As you can see in our results on the margin improvements, we are always looking for efficiencies and scale. If there are any issues that come up on the top-line along the way throughout the year, we are always ready to go on the expense side so that we can guarantee to get to those margin targets that we put out there.
Peter Platzer, CEO
I think the best way to think about Spire is to channel Steve Ballmer and replace developers with profitability. I have the same hairstyle.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
Second question is, you kind of touched on it there a little bit. AI obviously is becoming a hot topic. Some revenue opportunities for you, maybe flush that out a little bit more. Are there cost potentials with AI into the model as well for you?
Peter Platzer, CEO
From a revenue perspective, it’s twofold. A, the value of our historical data increases as a product to sell to companies that need to train their models, number one. But number two, it also becomes something that is more valuable for us as our own AI and machine learning algorithms have more and more data to work with to develop products that are relevant for our customers. And that, of course, translates into new business opportunities for us to generate products that are more relevant, solving more unique use cases in a more scalable fashion.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
Anything on the cost side that AI could benefit you all?
Peter Platzer, CEO
I would say that, as I mentioned in our last call, we are utilizing AI not only in our product development but also in our operations. For instance, we are applying it in marketing, which definitely provides scalability advantages. By leveraging AI, especially with natural language processing capabilities, we can target a much broader customer base. This approach enhances our operational efficiency within the company, particularly in areas like business operations, marketing, and sales, rather than primarily focusing on technology and product leverage.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
Okay. Last one for me is more of a technicality. Obviously, you got the notice from the exchange, stock price, I think it's tied to probably your shareholder vote, but update us a little bit on the timing and thoughts on getting back into compliance and the potential and most likely a reverse split and what kind of zero targets on?
Tom Krywe, CFO
Yes. Recently, in some of our filings, now that we have the Annual Shareholder meeting scheduled, we included a reverse split on the agenda for the vote. There is a range for that since the price fluctuates at different times, but it has been incorporated into the shareholder meeting. It needs to pass the vote, but it is under consideration for approval.
Ric Prentiss, Analyst
Remind me of the shareholder vote date.
Tom Krywe, CFO
It’s June the 13th.
Jeff Meuler, Analyst
Thank you, Peter. It's interesting to see SaaS and GAAP used together. Regarding the ARR guidance, it's great to see that you had a strong quarter compared to what you expected. However, the guidance suggests an increase in the rate of sequential ARR growth for the remainder of the year. Based on the Q2 guidance, it seems this growth is expected to begin in Q2, and I'm comparing it to the past couple of quarters. Could you clarify the visibility into achieving greater ARR growth amid the uncertain macroeconomic conditions, and how we should interpret this as we approach Q2, especially since we're nearly halfway through the quarter?
Tom Krywe, CFO
Yes. Last year we were in the $7 million per quarter range. We anticipated that the first quarter would be somewhat challenging, as it typically is for us because many companies are engaged in their budgeting processes. By the time they complete that, we usually struggle to close deals in the first quarter. However, in the second quarter, we typically see an uptick as companies finalize their budgets and our teams can focus on sales. Therefore, we had improved visibility in the second quarter with some higher growth compared to the previous quarter. This is reflected in our guidance. We expect to see a similar increase in numbers from the second to the third quarter and from the third to the fourth to meet our annual guidance. We are mindful of our pipeline and our customer relationships, both with existing clients and new customers, and we've incorporated all of this into our guidance.
Jeff Meuler, Analyst
Got it. I have a different perspective on the AI topic. Could you provide an update on your progress with AI since your investor day two years ago? Back then, you discussed the evolution from clean data and smart data to more predictive solutions. I understand that AI has gained significant attention recently among society and investors, but this has been a focus for you for a while. Can you share where you are in developing those predictive solutions and how customers are embracing them? Thank you.
Peter Platzer, CEO
Yes, absolutely. As our individual solutions develop, each aiming for $100 million in revenue now that the company has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, our next objective is for each solution to generate $100 million. We achieve this by transitioning from clean data sales to smart data. The next step involves incorporating additional data sources, integrating them, and adding straightforward analytics. Then, we advance to predictive capabilities and ultimately to complete solutions. When moving from clean data to smart data, we typically see a three to fivefold expansion in our total addressable market, and similarly from smart data to predictive and from predictive to solutions. This reflects a classic expansion pattern that occurs across various data markets, which we are experiencing firsthand. Our strategy focuses on progressing deliberately from the left to the right, emphasizing strong performance in specific areas rather than spreading ourselves too thin across many. I am particularly fond of the GE philosophy of striving to be a top player in our field, with a clear plan in place to secure that position. As we navigate our growth, it's less about racing across the spectrum and more about a thoughtful strategy of establishing a foothold and then expanding, whether that relates to a customer use case, a geographical region, or a specific solution. This is our approach, which maximizes our existing capabilities before venturing into new innovations.
Caleb Henry, Analyst
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking questions. Some of mine have already been answered. So I think I’ll be brief. Can you shed some light on your solutions revenue mix, mix between AIS, ADS-B, weather, and Space Services?
Peter Platzer, CEO
We do not break them out. We are a pretty balanced company there. I think we talk about balances between commercial and government and between the regions. All of the four solutions that we have are very meaningful contributors to our top and bottom line. I think as we’ve said, in the past, the aviation industry was hit the hardest by the COVID situation. We still see that as a deficiency that has made that solution not quite as contributing to our overall results as the other three. But it’s not broken out, because it’s shared infrastructure in space. It’s shared infrastructure on the ground. So, it really doesn’t easily lend itself. The very core idea of Spire is shared infrastructure, amortized over multiple solutions. That creates an incredibly attractive business model of subscriptions with shared infrastructure that drives rapid margin expansion.
Caleb Henry, Analyst
And then, last week, Spire announced the new maritime weather service. I was just wondering if you could share what was the impetus for that and if you kind of see a big gap in the market that that can serve?
Peter Platzer, CEO
So, our modus operandi is always we build what we have definitive requests from by the market. So, the simple answer to your question is, yes, absolutely. We listen to our customers and what they want us to build. When enough of them are asking for something, then we build it. That product, the team rolled out is an exact outcome of that very active engagement with our hundreds and hundreds of customers that we have in that space.
Caleb Henry, Analyst
Okay. And then, my last question, just we’re continuing to see headlines about software companies laying off staff. I’m wondering if that has created an opportunity for Spire just because the space industry has historically struggled to win software engineers over from kind of bigger names like Google and Apple. So, has that been an opportunity for Spire or are you guys kind of just watching, more of a wait-and-see mode on that?
Peter Platzer, CEO
The change in that environment has certainly created tremendous opportunities. We certainly have seen some fantastic talent reach out to us. We have already taken advantage of some of those opportunities in bringing incredible talented and motivated people to enhance and strengthen the already fantastic team that Spire has.
Andre Madrid, Analyst
So looking around at the space in general, there are still a lot of satellite operators that don’t provide maritime surveillance. Have you considered at any point a partnership with a data integrator to maybe provide a more holistic surveillance solution, something partnering with somebody that has land-based surveillance and providing a more whole solution?
Peter Platzer, CEO
It would really need to be driven by clear customer demand. The only customers asking for that would likely come from the intelligence community. There are specific types of data fusion requests, and we do have some customers that engage in that. However, the idea of introducing a fifth solution that collects SAR data, imagery data, and other types of information to combine them doesn’t seem like something that Spire would significantly address a major gap or need in the market. Therefore, I currently don’t see that as part of our near-term future. In closing, I would like to thank our customers, employees, and numerous suppliers for partnering with us in bringing innovative solutions to solve the challenges people, communities, and countries face every day across the globe. As uncertainty and challenges in the world at large increase, we see ever-increasing demand for space-based solutions, be that supply chain, mobility, communication, remote internet, weather, climate change, global security, agriculture, energy, the list of areas which increasingly use and depend on space keeps growing. Just like computers and the internet driven by Moore’s Law, became inextricably linked with our lives and the global economy in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, we see the same thing happening today with space, driven by a similar law of constant improvement tenfold every five years for satellite capabilities that have been working for a quarter century now, and we see no sign of abating anytime soon. The mission-driven and incredibly motivated team at Spire is proud to be part of and indeed shape this transformational wave of change to create a safer, more prosperous, and sustainable future on earth. As McKinsey recently said to top fortune CEOs, if space is not yet part of your strategy, it needs to be.