Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the VIA 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, simply press star on your telephone keypad. Then, to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. And we respectfully request that you limit questions to one and one follow-up.

Thank you.

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Via. The floor is yours.

It's so important for a strong city to have an innovative transportation system. A lot of companies and individuals are looking at what public transit options are available before they make that decision on whether they're going to choose Fort Worth. So it is so important that we stay on top of that to remain competitive as an economy.

We're one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and so as we've grown to now almost 85 square miles as a city, transit is extremely important. And as we've looked at heat maps on some of our on-demand hotspots have been, Foundation Park has been one of them because we have thousands of jobs out there. Without this SAM reimagined system and program, those employers specifically would not be able to be reaching this workforce. So that's one of the first questions some of these large employees are asking us when they look at coming to Sioux Falls And said what's your transit system look like?

One of the things we wanted to accomplish was connecting people to work opportunities We have the newest plant Johnson & Johnson that's being built go to our community college Which is going to have a biotechnology a training facility You go through that program and you can get into that plant that has an average salary over a hundred thousand dollars a year Being able to do that, use Ride to get up there and get a $100,000 job really is going to be life-changing for families in our community.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to VIA's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Gabby McCaig, VIA's Chief Corporate Communications Officer and Head of Investor Relations. With me today are Daniel Remote, VIA's co-founder and CEO, and Clara Fain, VIA's Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, Daniel will review our third quarter 2025 business update before handing it off to Clara to discuss financial results and our guidance for the full year 2025. Daniel will end with some additional comments before opening it up to Q&A. In addition to prepared remarks on this call, additional information can be found on our investor presentation, press release, and SEC filings on our investor relations website at investors.ridewithvia.com. Before we get started today, we want to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement included in our press release and investor presentation. Items we discussed today will include forward-looking statements about topics including, but not limited to, our future financial performance, projections, and management's plans and objectives for future operations. Actual results may differ materially from those presented in the forward-looking statements and are subjects to risks and uncertainties described more fully in our SEC filings, including our S-1 and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our assumptions as of today, November 13, 2025. Unless required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements as a result of new information or future events. We would also like to point out that our discussion today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures in addition to, not as a substitute for, financial measures calculated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures, along with reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures, are provided in our press release and our investor presentation. And without further ado, I'll now hand it over to Daniel.

Thanks, Gabby, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We're delighted to host our first public company earnings call, and we're very pleased to report that VIA delivered another strong quarter, exceeding expectations on both top and bottom online performance. In Q3 2025, our revenue grew 32% year-over-year. Platform annual revenue run rate, which is our quarterly platform revenue multiplied by four, was $439 million. The number of customers on our platform grew to 713, a year-over-year increase of 11%. Our results demonstrate the durability of our growth as we transform a vital and under-penetrated market and customers increasingly embrace our cutting-edge platform. To provide additional insight into our performance, the increase in revenue in Q3 was driven by strong growth in our government business. Revenue from government customers increased by $26.5 million, or 34% year-over-year. We also saw outstanding results in the United States. Revenue from our U.S. customers increased by $23.1 million, or 42% year-over-year. Taking a step back, VIA provides the world's most advanced platform of software and services, transforming antiquated public transportation systems into efficient digital networks we've built a single unified platform that replaces fragmented legacy systems across multiple transit verticals our platform automates key workflows consolidates operations across verticals that have historically operated as distinct silos via's vertical stack is deployed globally it can be configured to support the broad and diverse local requirements of our customers without the need for software customization we are fundamentally transforming the way governments and cities operate through automation, advanced algorithms, data, and AI. Transit is a critical public service. In the United States alone, public transit systems provide 8 billion trips each year. And yet, 45% of Americans do not have access to transit. For anyone who cannot afford a car, this gap severely limits their ability to get to jobs, educational opportunities, and healthcare. We believe that after decades of underinvestment and technology, cities across the globe are poised to upgrade and digitize their transit infrastructure. This transformation is already in progress and will only accelerate in the coming years. In our core geographies of North America and Western Europe, our serviceable addressable market is estimated at $82 billion, based on a report commissioned by us from a major consulting firm. Today, we capture less than 1% of this market. We also estimate that there are approximately 63,000 potential VIA customers in North America and Europe. As of Q3 2025, we had 713 customers on our platform, representing approximately 1% of these potential customers. As the established category leader, we're extremely well positioned to capitalize on the digital transformation taking place within our core markets, and we are still in the early innings of capturing this very large opportunity. More than 90% of our revenue is derived from selling our solutions to cities, transit agencies, and similar government organizations. Public transit generally, and VIA services in particular, are in the unique position of enjoying broad bipartisan political support. One way to visualize this, in the U.S., 55% of VIA services are in red congressional districts, and 45% are in blue congressional districts. This bipartisan support has helped ensure that, as reported by the American Public Transportation Association, funding for public transit has grown an average of 4% per year since 2012. This trend appears to be continuing with the Trump administration's latest 2026 budget proposal, including a $310 million increase in federal funding for public transit. Bipartisan support for transit extends well beyond the federal government. This is critical since more than 80% of government funding for via services is provided at the state and local levels. We have consistently seen a broad consensus by voters in support of public transit in local elections. Earlier this month, 16 of 19 public transit ballot measures successfully passed, approving a total of $11.8 billion in transit funding. In addition, several major pieces of legislation in support of public transit have recently been passed by state and local legislatures, including in Illinois and Oregon, where billions of dollars in transit funding were approved. Importantly, we have not seen any impact from the federal government shutdown on via services at the federal transit administration it is our understanding that no employees were furloughed during the shutdown let's take a couple of minutes to deep dive into the via platform over the past 13 and a half years we have in a very deliberate way through organic investments and strategic acquisitions built a comprehensive end-to-end category defining platform of software and services for public transit our platform is highly modular and can support the transit needs of any size city or community, from rural to suburban to major metropolitan centers. We provide software that allows transportation planners to design more livable cities, a one-stop shop for planning and scheduling both fixed route and dynamically routed transit networks. Transit planners can leverage models trained on billions of data points to rapidly quantify the impact as they make changes to their network. Once a city or transit agency has planned its transit network, it can, with a click of a button, begin operating that network using our operating software. VIA's operating software supports multiple transit verticals, including microtransit, paratransit, school transport, and non-emergency medical transportation. Our software is powered by advanced algorithms and AI, which are used by customers to digitize and automate work streams across passenger reservations, dispatch, customer support, program eligibility, government reporting, and compliance. We also provide consumer-grade mobile apps and web-based interfaces for passengers to seamlessly plan, book, and pay for their transit journeys across multiple modes of transit. When customers adopt our platform, their ability to visualize their data and derive actionable insights from that data greatly expands. This improved access to data can be transformational. Our analytics tools include pre-built dashboards that allow customers to track their essential KPIs. Our customers can also easily build their own reports directly within our product to create bespoke analyses or to meet specific funding and compliance obligations. These tools are intuitive and easy to use even for those who may not be as data or tech savvy. In addition to software, our platform includes a suite of technology-enabled services which facilitate and accelerate adoption of our software. 100% of our customers buy our software. Approximately 20% elect to also procure services. These services are delivered to our customers by a curated ecosystem of third-party providers, or, in some cases, directly by VIA. Our ability to provide services alongside our software is a critical element of our customer-centric go-to-market strategy. Our services enable adoption of our software, allowing us to win customers who lack the staffing or expertise to use the software or leverage its full capabilities. Our services also increase the stickiness of our products and accelerate growth. And by broadening our platform and reach, they represent a strong point of differentiation in the marketplace. VS Platform is the product of an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars and over a decade of intensive efforts in research and development. Our data is derived from multiple sources, publicly available data sets, such as demographic information from the U.S. Census, and proprietary data produced by our hundreds of services across the globe. Over the years, we have collected billions of data points from over 150 million trips. As we expand our customer base, we also continue to scale our data advantage. We have leveraged this data to create the world's first LLM for Cities, an AI model trained on our proprietary data, which provides multiple capabilities that can meaningfully improve the way transit planners design their networks. From ridership modeling, to bus speed prediction, to proactive and conversational transit planning recommendations. A transit planning co-pilot, if you will. A recent and incredibly exciting example of VIA's platform in action comes from Springfield, Ohio. I love this case study, as it illustrates the power of our end-to-end platform. First, using our transit planning software, the city was able to rapidly analyze their existing transit system and model the impact of potential changes to their network. What became very clear very quickly was that, in Springfield, there simply isn't a sufficient population density to support buses. You can see the bus network on the left, with the circuitous routes typical of a trans system, trying to use buses to provide transportation in low-density areas where buses don't really work. The small black icon you see on the map, surrounded by a small blue area, is Jane. We've dropped Jane in East Springfield and asked, how far can she travel using public transit? With the original bus system, it's clear that she can't go very far at all. When the buses are replaced by VIA's microtransit system, the picture is very different. Now, on the right, Jane can access a much larger area of Springfield using transit, and a car is no longer a prerequisite to having a job or getting to school. Needless to say, this has real impact for Jane, and more importantly, since Jane is fictional, for the residents of Springfield. Based on this analysis, Springfield decided to fundamentally redesign their transit network, replacing all of their buses with a microchained system powered by VIA's platform. Now, for the same annual operating budget, the city is able to provide transit access to 40% more of the city and has dramatically improved the passenger headways, reducing them by a factor of four. For those of you who aren't transit nerds, passenger headway is the average time a passenger has to wait for a trip. This is a remarkable transformation for Springfield and its residents. Even more importantly, we know it is applicable to so many more cities in America. Our business is characterized by consistent and durable revenue growth. This growth is driven by landing new customers and by expanding within our existing customers. Expansion within existing customers is driven by both volume expansion, as customers add more vehicles or vehicle hours to the platform, and upsell, as customers increase the number of modules included in their solution. In Q3 2025, we continue to land multiple new and strategic customers. The launch of our microtransit service in Omaha is a great example of a partnership that goes well beyond the transit authority and extends into the local community. In this case, the service has received key support from a local nonprofit that is keen to expand access to jobs and other opportunities for Omaha residents. The early success of our Omaha service rapidly led to another opportunity in neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa, demonstrating the potential for strong regional network effects for our platform. Council Bluffs will launch a new and modern paratransit service, leveraging VIA's platform in Q4. We have also seen an exciting acceleration of our business in the UK, where a government initiative to bring transit networks under control of regional authorities is meaningfully expanding the pool of potential customers seeking VIA solutions. with Birmingham representing a key customer. In Q3, we also continued to grow rapidly within our existing customer base through both volume expansion and upsell. The city of Mobile, Alabama launched VIA's microtransit solution in March 2024. Building on that successful launch, the city adopted VIA's planning solution, which allowed it to critically analyze the performance of its transit network, unearthing that only 45% of residents and 55% of the city's jobs were accessible by bus. In Q3 2025, the city added VIA's fixed route scheduling and paratransit solutions and committed to implementing a full network redesign with a focus on streamlining bus service, expanding microtransit, and hugely increasing access to jobs. In a year and a half, we've grown revenue with this account by 17 times. Looking ahead, we believe VIA wins through innovation, and more specifically, by continuing to innovate across three key areas. One, broadening our platform, two, deepening our vertical stack, and three, being nimble and creative on our go-to-market strategy. Broadening our platform, both through organic product development and strategic acquisitions, allows us to increase our competitive advantage, grow our share of existing customers' wallets, and drive margin expansion through new, higher-margin software products. As we develop new product capabilities and features for our customers, this deepening of our vertical stack drives customer satisfaction and increases the stickiness of our platform. Investing in go-to-market innovation allows us to reach new government customers and reduce our customer acquisition costs. We believe this growth framework is key to our continued success, and we consistently evaluate opportunities and initiatives through this lens. One area where we have been investing and broadening our platform is our newest vertical, student transportation. Q3 was a very strong quarter for this vertical, which saw more than two times growth in the number of customers subscribing to our solutions. Our efforts in the school's vertical are still nascent, but we're very encouraged by the initial results and believe this can be an engine for growth in the future, as well as a template for expansion into other new verticals. In Q3, we added multiple new product capabilities and features to our platform. These new capabilities have been extremely well-received by customers. We are relentless about innovation and continue to invest in all parts of our product, even those that provide well-established functionality to our customers last quarter we rolled out major upgrades to our core dispatching interface allowing dispatchers to more intuitively visualize vehicle routes handle passenger queries and cope with delays and disruptions in real time whether they're a parent case manager or front desk staffer at an adult daycare center our caregiver app allows caregivers to manage trips and receive real-time trip updates for the individual in their care. In our agent AI suite, new features help our customers streamline tedious manual processes. Tools like the eligibility application scanner automate the processing of paper applications into digital files for assessment. Our agent chatbot is helping to automate how our customers handle passenger calls. We continue to roll out advanced self-service capabilities for our customers, shortening the loop between planning a new transit system and deploying it. We're also very pleased to announce the launch of our European Advisory Council. The goal of the Council is to bring together prominent leaders from the transit, technology, and academic worlds to generate thought leadership on how integrated digital networks will transform the modern European public transport landscape. The three-member board is chaired by Dr. Rolf Erfurt, CEO of Toll Collect, who previously served as his chief operating officer and board member for the BVG, the Public Transit Authority of Berlin. Additional founding members include Professor Andreas Herrmann, Director of the Institute for Mobility at the University of St. Gallen, and Professor Barbara Lentz, Senior Advisor and Former Director of the Institute of Transport Research at the German Aerospace Center. We believe this high-profile board can play a key role in advancing transit innovation and digitization in Europe, and ensure public budgets continue to be directed towards this important area. Last, but certainly not least, we were pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with Waymo to advance the use of autonomous vehicles in public transit. There is no question VIA has a key role to play in the introduction of autonomous vehicles into public transit, and our partnership with Waymo is a step in that direction. Through this partnership, government agencies using VIA software can now incorporate Waymo's AVs directly into their public transit networks. Chandler, Arizona is the first city to benefit from this framework, integrating Waymo's service into the city's Chandler Flex microtransit service. Public transit riders and the government agencies who serve them are too often the last to have access to cutting-edge technology. We're delighted that this partnership with Waymo paves the path for AVs to become accessible to millions of global public transit riders, enhancing mobility, lowering operating costs, and improving safety outcomes. And with that, I'll pass it over to Clara to review the financial highlights for the quarter.

Thank you, Daniel. We are very pleased with our performance in Q3, where we exceeded expectations across top and bottom line metrics. Now let's dive into our results. In Q3 2025, our platform annual run rate revenue, which was defined as our quarterly platform revenue multiplied by four, was $439 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 32%. As a reminder, we generate revenue primarily through recurring subscription fees for access to our platform. Our customers subscribe to one or more solutions, which consist of a combination of software and tech-enabled services tailored to each customer's needs. All of our customers subscribe to our software, and approximately 20% of our customers bundle tech-enabled services. Contracts with our customers are typically multi-year and structured with a committed budget and a volume-based component. Pricing is generally based on a number of factors, such as fleet size, minimum number of vehicles, or total vehicle hours. Each contract comprises one bundle price for the combination of software and any tech-enabled services selected by the customer. We are very pleased with our revenue growth of 32% this quarter. As you can see on our historical performance, our quarterly revenue growth can fluctuate quarter to quarter. Our business is mostly driven by public procurements, which have a certain cadence and happen when their existing contracts terminate, which is not always consistent throughout the year. Our revenue is highly predictable. The unique nature of our market, customers, combined with our leadership platform position, the contracting nature of our revenue, and mission criticality of our products, provide us with significant visibility into future revenue. At any given time, over 90% of our projected revenue for the next 12 months is contracted. This is a testament to the high quality and durability of our business model. Our rapid revenue growth is driven by lending new customers and expanding with existing customers. We delivered strong results on both fronts this quarter. In Q3 2025, the number of customers leveraging our platform was 713, representing a year-over-year increase of 11%. As you can see, our year-over-year growth in new customers has historically ranged between 8% and 12%, which aligns to the cadence of our unique market. We also continue to experience rapid growth with our existing customers, driven by a combination of volume and product worth, as well as continued stickiness of our platform. In Q3 2025, the majority of our 32% revenue growth was driven by growth with our existing customers, in line with our historical performance as a private company. In particular, I want to highlight our strong momentum in the United States and with our core government customers. In the long term, we expect that our business will generate consistent and durable revenue growth as we continue to digitize one of the last pen and paper industries and penetrate our $82 billion serviceable addressable market. Our sales and marketing efforts are highly efficient for a number of reasons. We're addressing a very large market which provides many opportunities for growth with both new and existing customers. The breadth of our platform and our position as the category leader provide VIA with a strong competitive advantage and drives meaningful expansion opportunities. The mission criticality of our platform and ability to generate meaningful ROI for our customers, combined with our ongoing investment in innovation, drive that stickiness of the platform. And last but not least, the particular nature of our customer base, governments and government agencies create a virtuous cycle of growth through word of mouth and referrals. In Michigan, you can see on the slide, we have begun to experience a flywheel effect while the success of existing customers in the state is driving new customer opportunities without the need to invest further in sales and marketing. As you can see, we have witnessed a 200% increase in revenue per head in that state and a 20% decrease in S&M as a percentage of revenue, highlighting the incredible efficiency of our team in this market. Let's dive into our operating expenses, which we're presenting on an adjusted basis. As of Q3 2025, we spent 14.1% of our revenue on sales and marketing, compared to 15% in Q3 2024. Over time, we expect to continue to invest efficiently in S&M to capture our market opportunity. As of Q3 2025, we spent 14.4% of revenue on G&A, compared to 16.7% in Q3 2024. Our research and development efforts have been our number one area of investment since the foundation of VIA 13 years ago. We have invested over $500 million in R&D, and as of Q3 2025, R&D expenses represented 19.1% of revenue, compared to 24.7% in Q3 2024. We are now harvesting a decade-long investment in R&D, and as we continue to adopt AI, automate our processes, and expand our product suite, there's a significant opportunity to increasingly drive efficiency in our R&D spend. As of Q3 2025, our adjusted gross margin was 39.6%, compared to 39.2% in Q3 2024. In the near term, we are focused on landing our market opportunity and penetrating our customer base further. In the medium to long term, we reiterate our commitment to an adjusted gross margin of 50%, driven by three levers. One, transitioning lower-margin services to third parties. Two, continuing to expand our platform with higher-margin products, notably our software offering through internal development. And three, continuing to explore strategic and accretive M&A. As a reminder, we have established a playbook to execute on M&A with the Remix and CityMapper acquisitions, which were both highly successful on all counts. Our industry is highly fragmented, and there are many point solutions which will not make it as standalone companies in the long term. and might be excellent additions to our platform. Our IPO was a powerful moment for brand awareness and has generated significant inbound interest for potential M&A targets. With mature customers, we have a proven track record of successfully being able to increase gross margins over time. In this example, from a customer in the Western US, the customer started with a software and services microtransit solution in 2019. In 2022, the customer had reached a maturity whereby they were able to contract for certain services directly rather than through via. We were also able to add additional product upsell to the partner for several higher margin SKUs. In the past three years, we have been able to double run rate revenue on this account while expanding gross margin from 40 to 50%. We believe that this is a formula we can successfully replicate with other customers as their accounts reach maturity. While generating rapid and durable revenue growth, we have benefited from significant operating leverage in the business. This operating leverage supported a continuous improvement in net loss margin and adjusted EBITDA margin. In the last year alone, between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, our adjusted EBITDA margin improved from negative 17% to negative 8%. We are pleased about our continued ability to deliver operating leverage as the business scales. Now turning to guidance. For the fourth quarter, we expect platform revenue to be between $114.6 million and $115.1 million, representing 25% to 25.5% year-over-year growth. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between negative $7.5 million and $8.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin to be between negative 6.5% and negative 7.4%. For the full year 2025, we expect platform revenue to be between $430 and $430.5 million, representing 30% to 30.2% year-over-year growth. We expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be between negative 8% and negative 7.8%, compared to negative 16.1% in 2024. Now, I'll pass it to Daniel for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Clara. I just want to reiterate again how pleased we are with this quarter's performance and to express my confidence in our ability to maintain strong performance as we continue to transform our massive and hugely important market. Our team remains incredibly passionate about building best-in-class technology for those that the tech industry has long neglected, local governments, and some of their most vulnerable citizens. We believe that our financial success is directly correlated to the meaningful impact that our solutions deliver. In the course of our IPO, I had the opportunity to discuss with some of you our views on the importance of making sure that governments are not left behind in the AI revolution. Our customer is not, by nature, an early adopter of new technology. And for good reason. The government agencies responsible for providing public transportation operate in complex and demanding environments where risk is rarely rewarded. The use of machine learning and AI has always been core to VIA, but given the complex environment in which our customers operate, we believe it is our responsibility to help them gain access to this new technology. As we continue to broaden our platform, AI will enable our customers to generate a virtuous cycle of planning, operating, and optimizing their entire networks, leading to smarter and more efficient transit. As the category leader, we believe we're very well positioned to capitalize on the AI and autonomous vehicle opportunities in our space. We're excited to continue to work hard to help our government customers adopt new technologies and meaningfully increase the value they deliver to their constituents. And with that, I want to thank you all again and turn it back to the operators so we can take some questions.

As a reminder to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. We respectfully request that you do limit questions to one and one follow-up. Our first question comes from the line of Adam Hotchkiss with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much for taking the questions. And it's great to speak with you all on a public forum. Daniel, you mentioned the 63,000 customer opportunity. How would you characterize both the catalyst, but also maybe the barriers you've experienced as you think about the next steps in converting more of that opportunity? And then Clara, just briefly, how do you balance growth and investment within that context? Thanks so much.

Adam, thanks so much. Great to speak with you here. You know, I think when we focus on the opportunity ahead of us, the barriers are similar to what we've experienced historically. Primarily, the customer that we're dealing with has an aversion to risk fundamentally and it's reluctant to change. And that is usually the highest barrier for us to overcome. I will say that over the years and certainly in this last quarter, we have seen that barrier start to come down. And we're able to accelerate our ability to convince our customers to adopt new technologies. And certainly when we look at regions in which we have established any presence and even more so when we've established a meaningful presence, that barrier can come down meaningfully and really help us accelerate through these regional network effects that we talk about.

So, you know, fundamentally the same. we need to keep doing a really good job explaining the value of the roi uh to our customer and showing them how it works in nearby cities uh that's always very helpful and uh that i think will help us continue to accelerate the progress yeah great to great to reconnect and thanks for the question uh when it comes to the investment you know we we are very focused on putting the dollars where the growth is and we have a very detailed framework of investment behind the new products that we're launching focused on our core geography of north america and europe and some of the products that we went through uh together including our obviously our microtransit product or paratransit product but also some fixed food products but also some new products uh notably around the school business and and some other um interesting opportunities that we've identified so definitely putting the dollars behind the customer opportunity.

Great. That's really helpful. And then just on the quarter itself, how would you frame the makeup of the 24 net new customer additions sequentially you had? It was the largest number I think we've had in recent company history. So was there anything notable about these customers, either from a product or geography perspective? Did student play more of a role? Or is it just where RFPs happen to fall on the calendar year? Any more detail on that makeup would be helpful.

Yeah, happy to break it down further for you. As you saw, we're very pleased with the performance in North America. It's continuing to see very strong demand there, and that is reflected in the customer growth. And we're also seeing some good traction around new products, including the school's product, which has driven some of that growth as well. So I would say both of these are definitely drivers of the customer growth.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Adam.

Thanks, Adam.

The next question comes from the line of Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Daniel, Clara, Gabby, the whole team, congrats on a strong quarter, and welcome to the public markets. I know you have great visibility on the pipeline. I was hoping you could share some of what you're seeing with us from an RFP perspective or customer decision and implementation timing perspective. Ultimately, what do we need to look out for from the customer ads, over the next several quarters. And then my follow-up, Clara mentioned the IPO as a branding moment, more from an M&A perspective, I think. I'm wondering if you've noticed a change in inbound conversations from customers as well. Has the IPO changed awareness and interest in the platform?

Hey, Josh. Thanks so much. We're happy to be a public company. It's exciting. You know, looking at the customers and looking forward, I think we'll continue to see very positive trends across all of our markets. We are seeing, and I think it ties to your follow-up question too, we are feeling that the IPO was a moment for us. It's hard to quantify, but the reception on the customer side, definitely feeling a sort of different timber to it, if you will. And I think that's helping us also develop the pipeline and continue to push in that direction. As Clara mentioned, the U.S. in particular, we've seen really strong dynamics, and that's been true for the quarterly results and looking ahead at pipeline. So we're very pleased with that. And we're seeing some good dynamics in Europe, too, as well, especially in the U.K. So looking ahead, I think that that's a market we're very, very interested in focusing on. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Josh.

Thanks, Josh. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Turin with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey, great. Thanks very much. Thanks for taking the questions. And my congrats as well on the first quarter as a public company for VIA. I want to go back to the customer metric. I think given you had some commentary, we've been fielding questions around central government shutdown impacts. It doesn't sound like there was any real impact there. but I'm just curious how much of the bigger sequential ads you're seeing is tied back to some of the commentary Daniel's making around just increasing referenceability and just your view on us assessing that as a good leading indicator for the durability of future revenue growth or maybe other indicators you would point investors towards as they're getting to know the company.

Hey, Michael, thanks for the question. I do think the referenceability is key, and I I know we've been talking about that quite a lot, but the way that we are approaching this market, those proof points that we can point to for customers, whether it's in new conversations and also when we're talking to existing customers about expanding, the fact that they can see what's happening nearby is extremely important. And I think we talked a lot about the Mobile example a bit earlier. I think the fact that in Mobile, they were able to see what we did in Sioux Falls, just as an example, and were able to visit, that is incredibly impactful when they're making what is, frankly, a huge decision from their perspective to pass on to us, basically, management and the design of their entire transit system. I think the influence that these types of conversations that they can have with peers, incredibly important. So that referenceability is really key. And our hope is that we can continue to build on that over the coming years to really drive rapid adoption.

And just on the Waymo partnership and Autonomous in general, I think that sounds exciting and maybe a bit more advanced than we tend to think about within public transit agencies. Can you just expand on how you're thinking about the evolution of that opportunity and what that does for BSTAM overall over time?

Thanks very much. yeah thanks uh um i i think autonomous is a huge opportunity for us i also think it's incumbent us to play this role on behalf of our customers and help them adopt this new technology so we're working very hard to build you know obviously the partnership with waymo is exciting uh channel arizona is a first step but i think with waymo expanding around the country and now into europe um lots of opportunity there to continue to to expand that partnership and we're looking to broaden our partnership base so that we can be that partner to our customers who enables them to adopt autonomous vehicles. We're seeing, interestingly, quite different dynamics in the U.S. versus Europe. U.S. very focused on robo-taxis, and we can bring the public sector in. Europe, we're seeing much more of a top-down sort of drive from the government to push autonomous vehicles in the public transit sector. So that may actually be an early adopter of autonomous vehicles and lots of funding going into that. So I think a lot of opportunity in Europe from the autonomous vehicle space. And overall, what we've seen is when we help our customers reduce their costs, they're willing to invest more and they see the ROI. So if autonomous vehicles can bring down costs, certainly improve safety, there's just a lot of opportunity there from our perspective.

Also, it's pretty encouraging. Thanks very much. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Brad Zilnick with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Echo, my congrats to you all as well. Exciting to finally be out and a great quarter to start. I've got two questions, and ironically, they piggyback on Michael's last question. First, on customer count, just given the very strong customer additions this quarter, how should we think about the cadence of customer count going forward? Please remind us of any seasonality here or anything else that we should keep in mind? And then I've got a follow up.

Hey, Brad, thanks. Thanks for the Cain Awards. We're very pleased with the results this quarter out of the gate. So thank you for the support. On the customer account, you know, you've seen the chart and we've discussed this quite a lot. There's some cadence to the market. We have certain quarters that are very strong on customer addition, some quarters that are strong, but may be a lower the general range for customer additions is 8 to 12 percent and when you look back at the last you know 10 quarters that's been fairly consistent uh so i would expect that we continue to remain in that range this quarter was very strong uh some of our new products could be seasonal uh but we are very early uh in the penetration of those markets so there's still a lot of white space overall across the platform um and i feel very good about that range okay Okay, that's very helpful.

And actually, I'm going to pivot. I was going to ask a Waymo question, but I'll save that for another time.

But maybe bigger picture for you, Daniel, not that you don't already have an enormous opportunity to pursue, but when you talk about leveraging billions of proprietary data points to bring AI to government and delivering LLMs for cities, what's the even broader potential over time, perhaps even in addressing needs that are that are adjacent to transit thanks very much yeah thanks very much but I think that's a great question you know we are very focused on our current market which as you mentioned you know talked about a lot is huge and we're not seeing that kind of opportunity for durable growth diminish anytime soon in our view I think the with AI and the ability to become much more efficient in developing products which you know I feel like in the last quarter we're starting to see we're to see an acceleration of our product roadmap. And in part, I attribute that to our ability to develop code more quickly using these tools. You could imagine that given the customer relationships we have and the opportunity ahead of us, we could more quickly expand into other areas in the government technology space. So, you know, I don't think that's necessarily an immediate thing that we would work on, but definitely something on our minds as far as the broader opportunity and how quickly we can move into it.

Excellent. Thanks again.

Thanks so much.

Our next question comes from John Duffucci with Guggenheim. Your line is open.

Thank you. And I'd like to offer my congrats to the team, too. These are really impressive results across all metrics. And Clara, thanks for that customer example going from 40 to 50%. It really helps with that bridge, a real life example there. But my question, my first question anyway, is more on the growth. And it has been brought up several times here. This is the greatest sequential increase in customer count we've seen. And our model goes back almost three years. But if I wanted to look for anything that may raise questions from investors, the ARR per customer actually declined a little bit sequentially for the first time in eight quarters. Is that simply because you added so many customers that didn't have a full quarter's worth of revenue in there since your ARR calc is just simply revenue times four? Or is there something else affecting that that we should be thinking about? Perhaps, you know, the new school product and maybe that's a lower ASP or how should we be thinking about that?

Absolutely. Thanks, John. This is a great question and happy to give you more color on ARR per customer. First of all, very quickly the customer adds this quarter a very strong demand across the board and the revenue growth as well, but your reply from AR per customer declines slightly quarter over quarter in Q3 versus Q4, some 1%, and that's generally driven by, one, normal seasonality patterns of our existing contracts. In Q3, we tend to have university, schools, corporate contracts that have lower volumes during the summer. So that slight seasonality drives lower AR per customer in Q3. And then the growth in our school's business, where we saw a significant increase in number of customers. And the school's product is relatively new. These customers launched their services in Q3, coinciding with the start of the academic year. and therefore contributed to more limited revenue in that quarter. So that drove the slight decline in AR per customer. Over time, we expect these customers to ramp up.

Okay, great. Thanks for that, Clara. And Daniel, you said there was no impact from the federal government shutdown in this quarter. But we've been just looking closely at all the government funding. And do you see any impact from, like, COVA-era funding that I think in some cases is going to start expiring over the next year or so? Perhaps maybe you can share your experience in similar situations when there are funding pressures. Where does mass transit sit as far as priorities among competing alternatives for funding?

Hey, John, thanks. It's a great question. um when you know maybe i'll try to answer that in a few different pieces so specifically to the government shutdown we haven't seen any impact at all so far and we don't expect to see any impact from that the way that funding for transit works it's long-term funding typically appropriated at the federal level appropriated every five years um you know this sort of it was a very long shutdown obviously but we don't believe that it will have any impact on on our business uh even as it ends and looking into this quarter and the next quarter. So that's specifically to the shutdown. I think more generally, you're asking a general question of what is happening with transit funding, especially some of those funding bills from the Peace Administration start to expire and longer term. You know, there's sort of, I'd say, some puts and takes there. There's some of this funding that's expiring. There's some other funding that we talked about, whether through ballot measures or other sort of state legislature approvals that is coming in that is growing the overall Overall, I think what's key for us and what we've seen consistently is that we just need to identify, and it's a little bit on a city-by-city and transit agency-by-transit agency basis, we need to identify where they are in their budget cycle. At any point there, you're going to look to see, you know, there may be an overall trend. We talk about it, you know, maybe in Germany, there was a period last year or so where the overall trend was downward. There's still some cities that have more budget, some cities that have fewer. The U.S., I don't think the overall trend is downward. I think it's actually continued to go up overall. But within that, there's still individual cities or transit agencies that may be in their budget cycles are up or down. And the key for us is to identify where they are in the budget cycle so we can honestly provide them with the right solution, adapt our pitch, if you will, if you're thinking of it from a sales perspective. But in reality, find the right solution for them. If they're in a downward trend, we need to help them save money. We need to help them become more efficient. And I think we're extremely well positioned. Sometimes, kind of counterintuitively, that's our biggest opportunity because they have to change something. they're under budget pressure and that's where we can come in with our solution and really help them avoid service cuts uh while they're reducing their budgets obviously in an expansion expansion kind of phase that's also a great opportunity we can launch new microtrend services you know we can do lots of stuff with them so it's really about identifying where they are versus uh you know being worried about the budget going up or down that does make sense daniel thank you got it and a nice job team. Thanks very much.

Pleasure.

Your next question is from the line of Patrick Walravens with Citizens. Your line is open.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

And let me add my congratulations. Terrific. Thank you. Can you guys comment on, and I know you'll guide next quarter, so we're not asking for that, but can you just comment on what the durability of the growth looks like in this model, and also what the pace of margin expansion looks like. You know, just sort of any broad points you can share with us would be super helpful.

Hey, Pat, thanks for the question. You know, we feel very good about the durability of the growth long term, just given the scale of the market, our very limited penetration, and the fact that it's not, you know, we don't see our current cohort of customers as being any different from the next cohort of customers, if you will. I think I talked about Springfield, Ohio and that opportunity. There are so many cities like Springfield. So it's not that there's something unique about our current customer that won't apply to the next 100, 200,000, 2000 customers.

We really believe that there's a tremendous opportunity to continue doing what we're doing today, just at a much larger scale now if you add on top of that all the product innovation that we're driving the new products other opportunities you know we're very optimistic about what's possible here that's fantastic and clara maybe pace of margin expansion yeah i'll link that to clara thank you thanks for the thanks for the kind words as well um so in the immediate term so we're focused on on organic operational improvements to enable modest gross margin uh expansion and and we achieved that successfully this quarter with a 0.4% margin expansion. In the medium to longer term, we are working to improve gross margin to three levers. One, transitioning our lower margin services to third parties. Two, continuing to expand our platform with higher margin products, notably our software offering, which we're investing heavily into. And three, continuing to explore strategic M&A. We, you know, we've established a playbook with Remix and CityMapper acquisitions, which were both highly successful on all counts. And the industry continues to be highly fragmented. So there's an opportunity to acquire point solutions, which may not make it as standalone companies, but have, you know, excellent products and teams and maybe, you know, very equitable additions to the platform. We reiterated on this goal, the commitment to the a long-term target of 50% and our commitment to margin expansion. And again, we'll take two phases, but the first phase where we continue to lend customers and with modest gross margin expansion, and then the second phase where we start to see the impact of the three levers and have more meaningful staff function expansion of the margin.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thanks, Ken.

Your next question comes from Scott Burke with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hi, everyone. Really nice quarter here on the gate. Pardon me. I wanted to probably take Brad's Waymo question here, but I think the partnership is super interesting, but knowing how those contracts are constructed within the microtransit area, how do your contracts change in that type of scenario? Are these contracts probably, my guess is they're more weighted on the software side of what that offering looks like than some of the peer services side, but just trying to understand how that may or may not shift in that scenario.

That's a great question, Scott. And that's absolutely right. So we think of Waymo as one of our potential fleet providers. We can have a human-driven vehicle with a fleet. We can have a Waymo vehicle. And those would be equivalent solutions for our customers. And we offer them both. And in that contract, basically, outsourcing to Waymo, the freedom of vehicle means outsourcing a large chunk of our cocks to a third party. So those contracts tend to be higher margin. Obviously, we have a small sample today, so there's some room to explore there, but they have very high margin and allow us to bring this incredible technology to our customers with our vertical software layer on top, so they can actually use it as part of their transit system.

Understood. Helpful. Thank you. And then many comments on strong customer additions in the quarter i guess as you think about the growth algorithm over the near term maybe two to four quarters out does that algorithm kind of shift towards more you know that new customer opportunity or more revenues coming from that new customers or you know the the you know really predictable cross-sell model is is that still the way we should think about uh you know maybe the next several quarters yeah great question you know from our point of view, the growth algorithm stays pretty much the same.

We're very focused on continuing to grow within our existing customers and also add new customers in the same way that we talked about. And if I'm looking forward a few quarters, the feeling is that it should stay about the same as what you've seen in our historical results as far as the distribution between the two.

Excellent.

Next quarter. Thanks again. Thanks so much.

The next question comes from Brian Swartz with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking my questions this morning. Echo great results out of the gate. Two questions. First for Danielle on AI. I know it's early, but how do you envision discussing pricing for AI functionality with your clients? Clearly it's a differentiator of the business, but is it all about stickiness of the platform? Can it help you take up price since you're giving clients more value? Just thinking about as you bring in more AI functionality into the product suite and your core offerings moving forward.

Hey, Brian, thanks so much. Great question. I think we can do so much with AI to continue to evolve and transform the product in something that's increasingly even more useful to our customers. So there's definitely a lot of value that we're delivering there. On price specifically, at least for now, we are trying to be extremely customer centric. Our customer is very sensitive to feeling that they're in any way being nickel and dimed. And so our approach has been for our entire history to say we deliver a solution and we will continuously upgrade that solution for you so that you're extremely happy with that product. that makes it very sticky. It builds real trust with our customer. And we've so much other opportunity to grow with them beyond simple price increases to our software. That's been our philosophy. I think that should apply to additional AI features that we're adding into the platform, despite the fact that I do agree they can contribute enormous amounts of value to the customer. Now that said, in parallel, we're able to use AI to launch what I think of as sort of new products. And those I think we can sell separately. as individual SKUs, increasing the revenue that we're able to generate from each one of our customers. These are also very high margin, to Clara's point earlier. So I would separate from taking existing functionality, upgrading it sometimes very significantly with AI, at least in the short to medium term, you know, that really isn't our philosophy to try to charge for that. And I think it's had to add a lot of value. Some new products, I think, are real opportunities.

Thank you, Daniel. And one question for Clara, following up on Pat's question, but maybe specifically about the gross margin line. We saw a nice lift to gross margin this quarter and over the past four quarters, too, for the business. Beyond scale, are there other drivers for greater gross margin efficiency that you can foresee taking hold for the business over the next 12 months or maybe over the medium term. Thanks again for taking my questions.

Thanks, Brian. A very thoughtful question, so happy to address it. I think there are several drivers that we're looking at to continue to drive gross margin beyond scale and beyond the three levers that we just discussed. One is obviously the mixed shift towards higher margin contracts we're seeing, and you saw this great case study of a customer that went from 40% to 50% and gross margin and it's continuously improving that customer's growth, revenue growth who drives further margin expansion to continuing to look at the next shift, which is a really nice driver of near-term margin expenses is quite interesting and focusing on those customers where we can drive an uptick in margin through changes in operational metrics. And second, we are continuing to work on on cost improvement uh on our you know cost to serve our customers ai has brought a lot of new opportunities to reduce costs uh in our cost to serve so while on the top line daniel just because we're just adding more value to our platform and you know bringing and continuing to penetrate our cam which will drive a lot of revenue growth going forward and hopefully durable growth strong durable growth on the cost line we're actually using ai to reduce our costs and that that is valid for obviously our costs and our OPEX and trying to continue to generate examples, you know, obviously the customer support, customer success, infrastructure costs, the ability to better manage and control those costs has increased substantially with AI tools. So we're definitely focused on that, and I think that will drive margin expansion.

Your next question is from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the really strong results here. So I wanted to double click on the school's opportunity. It's encouraging to hear the momentum there. Is there any way to help frame that opportunity relative to what you have today, either in terms of fleet size or spend?

And as we think about that go to market, is that more of a net new dynamic where you're selling to a new buyer or is there a cross sell potential relative to some of your existing public sector customers could you guys unpack that a bit yes thanks ryan happy to happy to give more color on that opportunity i would start by saying that you know we've been investing in and the product and the technology for that end market for a significant amount of time and let the go to market motion is still very nascent for schools so we're in the early stages of capturing this opportunities um and uh and to answer some of your questions and that opportunity is quite meaningful and it's part of our overall time um and and definitely very attractive across all fronts uh the the way we look at it is you know the buyer is uh you know can be different it depends uh we're looking at you know in in general we tend to go to you know school districts or or, you know, DOEs or head of schools. And they're definitely different than, you know, the mayor or the head of the transit agency in terms of who is actually buying the platform. So that is definitely a new customer and a different buyer in most cases. However, there is a high low effect and the referenceability of our platform within a city. So there's certain cities where these may be kind of living together in these various functions and these people may be sitting together and discussing their solutions there are other scenarios where they're quite separate so there is there's a bit of a wrench uh of of buyers but uh but i would say in most cases it's a slightly different buyer although once we have existing presence in that region or that that city would definitely benefit from the network effect and the referenceability of our platform more to come on that as we continue to grow that business no that's that's great to hear clara and maybe just sticking on the referenceability point, Daniel, I know you mentioned the European Customer Advisory Board.

You're very strong in Germany. The tone on the UK is not lost on us. But I'm just curious, as you think about those proof points in those markets, how do we think about a potential groundswell into other geographies? Thanks, guys, and congrats on the strong results.

Thanks so much, Ryan. I think specifically within Europe, maybe I'll just give an example on the school bus that's a that's a market where school bus operates quite differently you know they don't have yellow school buses while in the U.S. yellow school bus there are more buses if you just count number of buses than there are transit buses so it's a huge opportunity in in Europe typically school bus is much more integrated you know they don't have the yellow school bus much more integrated into their sort of traditional public transit system with a lot of special education school transport being provided so there there's an opportunity and that gets the referenceability to sell the school bus product to the same customer, to the customer that we already work with. So that's a much more direct sale. There's a lot of product work that's still complete there to make that opportunity accelerate. But I think that's an area that we can see some really good growth. And overall, I do think that while, yes, every place you go, they say, oh, no, no, here, we're different than we are in this other country. There's no question that when you know, we have success in one region, it influences the, you know, all the other regions as well.

Great to hear.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next question is from Jonathan Ho with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning, and let me echo my congratulations as well. Maybe just starting out with the strength you saw in the U.S. market this quarter, what maybe stood out or maybe surprised you in terms of win rates or utilization? Just want to understand the drivers for that geographic strength.

Thanks, Jonathan, and good to connect with us. Then we, from our perspective, Q3 was, you know, business as usual, we saw, you know, very strong demand for the platform across, you know, across all metrics and across all of our solutions. You can see, you know, historically, there's a cadence to the market. There's certain quarters that can be very strong. Certain quarters are a bit slower, and this quarter turned out to be very strong with lots of additions, and growth but you know the growth algorithm is the same and the opportunity continues to be very large uh supporting durable growth and and and we're you know we continue to be very excited and confident in this opportunity and i think q3 is you know no different than uh the prior quarters and and really a strong testament of that market opportunity got it and then you know in terms of the timing for ballot measures that you referenced like what is the time frame for that to translate into contracting and potentially RFP opportunities, it would just be helpful to understand

what that process typically looks like. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. Great to connect.

Great question. That's worth clarifying. That is a very long-term process. So it takes months, sometimes years, for that funding to sort of really become available. Then there's the procurement process and so forth. So we're looking at – and then the funding is often over many years that it's available, depending on the specific ballot measure. So we're looking at a very long term impact. Generally, in our business, everything we're doing is fairly long term. And we're always thinking ahead. And in many cases, we're increasingly finding ourselves involved in these ballot measures and helping to support them and maybe even initiate them in some cases. So I think that's something that we'll look to do more of and really thinking you know one two five ten years ahead in some cases as to when it will have a material impact on the business but that's just uh that's sort of the time scale that we need to think of in thank you and your final question comes from alexander zucan with wolf research your line is open yeah hey guys um thanks for taking the question and congrats i maybe uh daniel first one for you.

The Waymo partnership feels like a seminal moment, partially because it seems like it enables you to kind of even more maybe aggressively fulfill your vision for solving what seems to be an extraordinarily difficult kind of algorithmic and services challenge for your customer base. So maybe just elaborate, if you can, both the potential marketing and pipeline opportunity that that partnership is driving from, you know, awareness in terms of your customer base. And then from both an accretion perspective to the contract, which I think you guys mentioned earlier, how do we think about as more of potentially these autonomous contracts roll out across your customer base, how do we think about the revenue uplift opportunity? And I've got a quick follow-up.

Thanks, Alex. Really appreciate it. I agree with you. I think there's a real opportunity in autonomous. It's just starting, but I agree with everything you said. I think there can be a real impact, both in the way that our customers perceive this opportunity. I would say what I've seen from talking to customers, and that's true here and in Europe, as these autonomous vehicles become available, the demand for them from the public transit sector is very high. I think it's really just limited by the availability of these vehicles. And there are even some of our customers that have indicated that, and sometimes it's not even yet a budget matter, it's just a matter of, you know, wanting to be ahead on this technology, that they would be willing to launch certain surface autonomous vehicles that they're not, you know, it may take them a lot longer to agree to launch with human driven vehicles. So I feel that the opportunity is very large, totally agree with you, and it really is at the moment dependent on the availability of these autonomous vehicles. So as quickly as they can become available in the different geographies, I think we'll see an acceleration.

Maybe, Clara, the large upsell that you guys talked about for Mobile Alabama, it feels like that was also a competitive displacement of a larger or a large competitor. Maybe just talk through, as you continue to take share, when does that kind of click happen in the mind of a customer to really move and scale from a legacy operator to VIA in those situations?

Alexia, thanks for the question. And you're absolutely right. This was a takeover. I mean, some of the expansion was a takeover from a legacy player in the transit space. You know, it's a really interesting market that we're in where, you know, it's probably the last pen and paper industry in terms of technology. And you have a number of very large legacy players that are all obviously very large in scale that have been established in this market for a very long time. And so, you know, it is a process to displace them and displace them with this very large contract. I would say, you know, demand for these very large contracts is the strongest it's ever been. So we're starting to see a halo effect of some of the takeovers. We've taken over several of those contracts already, and the performance is extremely impressive in terms of both taking transit systems that actually do not work, that our ridership is declining, cost is increasing, consumers, residents are not aware of it and not happy with it, and turning that around within a year or two. So we're starting to see outstanding results for those very large takeovers. And as we get more data around that, we are seeing the referenceability kick in and the flywheel effect work. And so today we have probably the strongest pipeline in this type of opportunities we've ever had. And obviously it's on us to execute on that. And there's a sales cycle, so it will take some time. But we're very confident in our ability to continue to push on that front. and get very large contracts for the business over time.

This concludes the Q&A session for today. I will now hand the call back to Leah for closing remarks.

Thanks very much. So thank you all for listening and for the great questions. As we said, we're very pleased with our first quarter results as a public company, and we're excited for the road ahead. Look forward to doing many more of these calls with you. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you again for joining us today. This does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect.