AudioEye Inc (AEYE) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon and welcome to AudioEye, third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's call for audio CEO Mr. David Moradi and CFO Ms. Kelly Georgevich. Following their remarks, we will open the call for questions from the company's publishing analysts. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.auudioi.com.

Before I turn the call over to AudioEye Chief Executive Officer, the company would like to remind all participants that statements made by AudioEye management during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe Harbor for such forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, confident, will, and other similar statements of expectation identify forward-looking statements.

These statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's press release, in the comments made during this conference call, and in the risk factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10k, its quarterly reports on Form 10, and its other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participants on this call are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which reflect management's beliefs only as of the date hereof.

AudioEye does not undertake any duty to update or correct any forward-looking statements. Further, management remarks today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to these non-GAAP financial measures is available in the company's earnings release or otherwise posted in the investor relations section of its website at www.auuddiioi.com.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to AudioEye Chief Executive Officer Mr. David Moradi. Sir, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. I want to begin by highlighting our record third quarter results. We have achieved 39 straight quarters of record revenue with $10.2 million in revenue. In the third quarter of 2025, we also achieved a record $2.5 million in adjusted EBITDA, up from $1.9 million sequentially. The adjusted EBITDA margin was a record 24%.

We expect a significant increase in fourth quarter ARR revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. As you may recall, we have made significant R&D and go to market investments in our enterprise channel, and we are now seeing the rewards.

In the third quarter, we had one of the best quarters in new business in our history, including contributions from the EU. This momentum has continued into the fourth quarter with many deals already closed in the EU and US.

We currently have several late stage deals with ARR over 100,000 in the EU and the US, which would imply a record quarter in new business ARR based on historical close rates. Our partner and marketplace channel also continues to ramp in anticipation of the DOJ Title II rule which begins to take effect in May 2026. Our biggest partners in the government and government adjacent spaces contributed significantly to partner ARR growth this quarter. We believe there is significant additional runway for these partners to further expand in 2026.

As discussed last quarter, we opted to migrate customers acquired from small acquisitions to eliminate duplicate systems and processes which should further improve margins in the fourth quarter and into next year. The integration of these customers into the AudioEye core platform is on track to be completed this quarter.

As we finalize attrition from customer integrations this quarter, we expect our reported results to reflect AR acceleration in our core direct business and growth in our reseller revenue. There have been significant recent advancements in AI which we are very excited about. One recent advancement is the combination of the open-source playwright framework with the Model context protocol or MCP. Using Playwright MCP enables large language models to integrate with websites and for AI agents to perform tasks like humans. Things like interacting with buttons, filling in forms, scrolling, etc.

Instead of analysing code statically, an AI agent using Playwright MCP would navigate using the accessibility tree, the same structured data that screen readers for people with disabilities use. The key change is that it uses a site accessibility tree rather than the document object model, or DOM.

Since Playwright MCP uses the accessibility tree, an AI agent using this framework should be more efficient when factoring in compute and LLM token usage, especially at scale. We also see significant potential for playwright NCP in our product and expect to further improve our industry leading detection and accuracy. Based on an analysis of 1,500 legal claims, our solution is already 300% to 400% more effective than competitors.

We are excited to further improve the detection, accuracy, and scale of our software with Playwright MCP. These product advancements should drive further margin expansion and cash flow as we head into next year. As we generate more cash, we believe that in addition to M&A, stock buybacks can be an attractive way to deploy cash.

In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 154,000 shares, bringing our total to roughly 300,000 shares in 2025. Moving on to guidance. For the fourth quarter we are guiding revenue between $10.45 and $10.6 million. For the fourth quarter, we also expect to generate a record adjusted EBITDA of $2.7 to $2.8 million and adjusted EPS of $0.21 to $0.23.

We are narrowing our 2025 full year revenue guidance to $40.3 million to $40.4 million and refining our profitability guidance toward the top end of the range with adjusted EBITDA of $9 million to 9.1 million and adjusted EPS of $0.72 to $0.73 per share.

Based on our expectation of adjusted EBITDA margins in the upper 20s in the fourth quarter, we expect to generate an annualized adjusted EPS of nearly $0.90. We're very excited about ARR growing significantly and the operating leverage in our model. We continue to have an aspirational goal of increasing adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS by 30% to 40% annually for the next 3 years.

I'll now turn the call over to audio CFO Kelly.

Thank you, David. As David discussed, revenue again hit record levels with Q3 2025 revenue at $10.2 million, of 15% over the comparable period of prior year and an increase of $370,000 over the second quarter of 2025.

The third quarter marked our 39th quarter of record revenue. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR at the end of the third quarter of 2025 was $38.7 million at $2.5 million increase over the end of the third quarter of the prior year and a $500,000 increase from the end of the second quarter of 2025.

Our two revenue channels are continuing to generate strong results with high year over year in annualized sequential growth. Overall, the enterprise channel grew around 26% over the comparable period for the prior year. And the partner marketplace channel grew around 7% over the same period.

In the third quarter, the enterprise channel contributed around 45% of revenue and 42% of ARR, and the partner and Marketplace channel contributed around 55% of revenue and 58% of ARR. The partner and Marketplace channel includes all revenue from our SMB-focused marketplace products, as well as revenue from partners to deploy those products for their SMB customers.

We saw solid ARR growth in this channel in the third quarter of 2025, driven by additional partner penetration, which will soon be affected by the DOJ Title II rule. We continue to see strong retention rates in this channel. We opted to migrate customers acquired some small acquisitions to eliminate duplicate systems and processes. While the ongoing integration will impact the fourth quarter, we expect ARR growth to reaccelerate. Customer integration will be substantially complete in the fourth quarter.

On September 30th, 2025, our customer count was approximately 123,000, a sequential increase of 3,000 from June 30, 2025. Customer accounts decreased approximately 3,000 from September 30th, 2024 due to one partner renegotiation in 1 2025. Gross profit for the third quarter was $7.9 million or around 77% of revenue, compared to $7.1 million or 80% of revenue in the third quarter of last year.

As we highlighted on the last earnings call, with customer migration to the upgraded platform, we expected margins in the second and third quarter of 2025 to temporarily decrease. We are pleased to see margins remain in the high 70s in the third quarter, and we expect gross margin to be up approximately 1% sequentially in Q4 as the migration to the upgraded platform completes. While revenue increased 15% over the comparable period of prior year, on a GAAP basis, operating expenses increased only 2% or around $150,000 to $8.2 million, with additional investments in sales and marketing offset by savings in other departments.

Our total R&D spending Q3 2025 with approximately $1.6 million, with approximately $450,000 reflected the software development costs in the investing section of the cash flow statement. This was consistent with Q3 2024 R&D investment. The total R&D spend was about 15% of our revenue this quarter versus 18% in the comparable period of prior year and 17% in the second quarter of 2025. We see increased efficiency with AI tools in our product development team.

Net loss in the third quarter of 2025 was $600,000 or $0.04 per share compared to a net loss of $1.2 million or $0.10 per share in the same year ago period. The decrease was primarily driven by additional revenue partially offset by increases in sales and marketing expenses.

Our Q3 2025 adjusted EBITDA with a record $2.5 million and our adjusted EPS was $0.19 per share. The primary adjustments to GAAP earnings and EPS for Q3 2025 were non-cash share-based compensation, depreciation, amortization, interest expense, and litigation expense.

In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately $1.8 million of shares at an average price of $11.86. During 2025 and through September 30th, 2025, we have repurchased approximately $3.6 million worth of shares at an average price of $12.05.

Our balance sheet remains well capitalized with $4.6 million in cash as of September 30, 2025, and an additional $6.6 million in debt facilities available.

As of September 30th, our net debt defined as total debt plus cash with 8.9 million, and our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 0.9 times. Free cash flow, defined as $2.5 million of adjusted EBITDA plus $450,000 of software development costs, with $2 million in the third quarter. We expect this to continue increasing in the fourth quarter.

We will now open the call up for questions. Operator, please give instructions.

(Operator Instructions) Zach Cummins, B. Riley Securities Holdings Inc - Analyst

Hi there, this is Ean Weddell calling in for Zach Cummins. Thanks for checking my questions. To start, it sounds like you're getting some nice traction in the EU, and you've highlighted your partnerships with Creo and Motability. Can you maybe speak a little bit more to the momentum that you're seeing there?

Yeah, I think we have some deals closed in the third quarter. We have some large deals active in the late stage pipeline today, and this is before any real enforcement. We expect a substantial pickup once the fines are issued, similar to what happened with GDP.

Got it. Thank you. And then it sounds like you're on track for your platform migration. Can you maybe speak to where you're at as of right now with that?

Sure, yeah, the migration is going well. Most customers are going to be on the new platform this quarter. So we're happy to see that it's going really well. Yeah.

Great, thank you. And then maybe if I can squeeze the third one in, just with regard to Title 2 of the ADA, have you seen any impact to the rate of compliance adoption there from the government shutdown?

No, we're not seeing anything there.

Super. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) George Sutton Craig-Hallum Holdings LLC - Analyst

Hey guys, afternoon. You have Logan on here for George. It obviously sounds like Europe is contributing nicely here. I'm just curious if you can give us anything on how the pipeline has developed over the past quarter and and kind of beyond that, is there anything you can say about close rates or conversion rates kind of relative to expectations or maybe the business historically?

It's too early to tell on the close rates. It's going very well in the EU at the moment. Kelly, anything to add on that?

No, I think just the pipeline is also growing in the EU and we're seeing some, good opportunities come up.

Okay, got it. Kind of staying on the same note, one of the things that we've picked up is that potentially in Europe under the EAA there's a bit more emphasis on documentation of accessibility and usability statements, things of that nature. Just curious if you're seeing that also and does that change anything competitively or how does that play into your product offering?

That's true. We've adapted accordingly with that. We have all the statements for each member state.

Okay, got it. I, I'll leave it there. Thanks guys.

(Operator Instructions) Scott Buck, HC Wainwright - Analyst

Hi, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for the time. David, could you remind us of at average deal size looks like in Europe versus the US?

It's a bit higher. It's running, I would say about 50% higher than the average deal in the US. It's more enterprise deals that we're seeing there in upper midmarket.

And what percentage of total revenue in the quarter is coming out of Europe versus the US?

In the third quarter or fourth quarter?

third quarter, but if you want to get fourth quarter, that's fine too.

Decent contributions still mostly US and it's picking up into the third quarter or a fourth quarter.

Okay, perfect. I appreciate that. And now I want to ask about the aspirational goal you laid out in the release and the early comments in the call. How do we. Think of that in terms of what's coming from revenue growth versus gross margin expansion versus, ongoing cost discipline? I mean, how do we kind of piece that out? To get to, that 30% to 40% on the online.

Yeah, I think they're all coming into play to reach that aspiration goal, we do need revenue to continue to increase. We see good opportunities with EU resellers, US business demand. So that is obviously a factor, but there is also the gross margin opportunity, and then what we've proven is with revenue scaling, we can still be efficient with costs. So all three of those things are contributing to that aspirational goal.

Okay, cool. Well that's all I had guys. I appreciate the time thank you.

At this time this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Miratti for his closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us today. As always, I want to thank our employees, partners, and investors for their continued support. We look forward to updating you on our next call.

Before we conclude today's call, I would like to remind everyone that a recording of today's call will be available for replay via a link available in the investors section of the company website. Thank you for joining us today for Audio Eye's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful rest of your day.