A2Z Cust2Mate Solutions Corp. (AZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, everyone, and welcome to A2Z First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Brett Maas, with Hayden IR. The floor is yours.

Thank you, operator. Good day, everyone. Before we begin, please note that today's call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our earnings release as well as our filings with the SEC, including our 2025 Form 10-K for a discussion of these risks. A replay of this call will be available shortly after its conclusion. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Gadi Graus, Chief Executive Officer of A2Z.

Thank you, Brett, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Before we get started, I'd like to provide a brief overview of who we are and what we do. So A2Z Cust2Mate Solutions Corp is a global retail technology company focused on transforming the in-store shopping experience through our smart carts and connected retail platform. Our core solution digitizes the physical store by enabling self-scanning, personalized engagement and real-time retail intelligence at the point of purchase. Through our integrated platform, which combines Smart Cart infrastructure, AI-powered shopper engagement and emerging retail media capabilities, Cust2Mate helps retailers improve operational efficiency, enhance shopper experience and unlock new monetization opportunities within the physical retail environment. Over the last several quarters, we've been working to transition Cust2Mate from an early-stage pilot-driven deployment model into a scalable commercial platform designed for global rollout and mass deployment across leading retail partners. This shift has required building the operational, manufacturing and commercial infrastructure necessary to support large-scale deployments while simultaneously expanding our product capabilities beyond smart cart functionality into a fully integrated connected retail ecosystem. As a result, we are now increasingly positioned as a core in-store technology layer that sits at the center of the modern retail environment and enables entirely new sources of value creation for retailers through data and media-driven monetization. Q1 2026 was a breakout quarter as we continued our transition from pilot validation to scaled commercial deployment. We are no longer in the pilot phase of smart retail. We are entering the early stages of scaled infrastructure deployment across global physical retail. What we are building is advancing rapidly into real-world infrastructure. Retailers are transitioning from pilot programs into committed multiphase deployments and Cust2Mate is increasingly being integrated as part of the core operating layer of the physical retail landscape. Revenue growth in our first quarter was driven by delivery of our Smart Cart solution to retail stores. While we are early in the process of converting signed contracts to revenue at scale, the conversion curve is accelerating in a meaningful way. Importantly, we are gaining clear and measurable validation of the platform in live retail environments as deployments expand. Retailers are already capturing tangible economic impact from our solutions. Across deployments, retailers are experiencing an uptick in sales throughput with approximately 5 additional items per transaction and approximately 15% increase in basket value. Smart Cart baskets are reaching 165% of manned checkout basket and 275% of self-checkout baskets. Daily utilization rates are above 95% with smart card usage reaching 100% during peak hours, and we have now processed over 1 million transactions. While these metrics are certainly strong signals, there is a broader transformation in store operations and shopper engagement within the physical retail environment. These outcomes are showing up across a wider set of important ROI drivers, including customer engagement, reduced checkout friction, operational efficiency, labor optimization, loyalty activation and emerging retail media monetization. Together, these dimensions underscore that the platform is not just improving sales. It is fundamentally reshaping store performance across both the top line and operational layers. Importantly, our business model is increasingly driven by 3 reinforcing growth engines: first, recurring Smart Cart platform revenues; second, retail media monetization; and third, retail intelligence and data services. Together, these layers create a connected commerce ecosystem where each deployment expands both platform utility and long-term monetization potential. What makes the model particularly powerful is that these growth engines reinforce one another through a compounding flywheel effect. Better shopper engagement drives increased platform usage. Increased usage generates stronger retailer outcomes and ROI. Stronger retail outcomes support broader deployment expansion. Larger deployments create growing retail media inventory and improved platform economics, which further supports adoption and monetization. At the same time, expanded deployments and engagement generate increasingly valuable behavioral datasets, strengthening personalization, retail intelligence and future data monetization opportunities. As this flywheel scales, the platform becomes increasingly valuable to retailers, advertisers and ecosystem partners alike. This quarter also marked the commencement of revenues from Retail Media, which we believe represents one of the largest untapped opportunities in physical commerce today. We are not only digitizing the shopping cart. We are establishing a real-time engagement and media layer within physical retail positioned directly inside the highest intent moment in commerce, the in-store shopping journey. As deployed at scale, we believe this creates a highly valuable and increasingly monetizable media environment for retailers, brands and ecosystem partners. While still in the early stages, retail media introduces a significant new monetization layer to the platform and meaningfully expands the long-term economics of our connected retail ecosystem. All of this is occurring within a market that fundamentally remains under-digitized. Physical retail is one of the largest sectors of the global economy, yet the majority of it still operates without real-time intelligence, without visibility into shopper behavior and without integrated digital engagement layers. That structural gap between where the industry is today and what we are beginning to demonstrate in live deployments is what defines the scale of the opportunity ahead. We are already seeing increasing interest across multiple categories and geographies, including grocery, toys, home goods and international retail markets. This breadth of interest reinforces that the opportunity is not confined to a single format or use case, but is applicable across a wide range of retail environments. As retailers gain visibility into performance and ROI, we are seeing increased willingness to expand deployments across traditional stores, formats and regions, further validating the scalability of the platform globally. As this market evolves, we believe long-term leadership will not be determined by a single product capability, but by platform integration, deployment experience and operational scale, and this is where our competitive position continues to strengthen. Our competitive moat is not based solely on hardware. It is built through the combination of deep retailer integrations, real-world deployment experience, proprietary shopper engagement data, AI-driven personalization, retail media infrastructure, operational know-how and the growing installed base. As deployments scale, these advantages reinforce one another. Each additional deployment strengthens integration, enriches data, improves system intelligence and deepens our operational footprint within the retail environment. Over time, this creates a compounding advantage that becomes increasingly difficult to replicate. Within this context, AI is not a stand-alone initiative. It is a core enabler embedded directly into the platform. We deploy AI where it improves retailer economics and shopper outcomes in a meaningful way, integrating it into the operational fabric of the in-store experience. This includes personalization, contextual recommendations, fraud mitigation, operational optimization and shopper intelligence. As deployment scale and data richness increases, these capabilities become increasingly powerful, improving decision-making at the point of interaction and enhancing both shopper engagement and store efficiency. AI is a compounding force that strengthens our platform over time and reinforces the structural advantages of a digitized retail environment. I want to briefly touch on our financial performance, which continues to reflect both early-stage scaling and strengthening underlying momentum. We delivered $3.3 million in revenue in the first quarter, representing 114% year-over-year growth. This increase was driven primarily by the expansion of our smart card deployments across leading retail partners and reflects the early stages of conversion from our growing backlog into recurring commercial activity. We continue to expand our installed base during the quarter, reaching more than 2,500 Smart Carts delivered, including approximately 500 units delivered in Q1. Importantly, deployment activity is shifting in nature. We are transitioning from initial site level pilots to programmatic rollouts across retail networks. We have expanded our multiyear contracted backlog to more than $195 million, representing over 19,000 Smart Carts scheduled for deployment globally. This is a defining milestone for the company. We have transitioned beyond pilots and isolated deployments into structured, repeatable, multiphase rollout programs with leading retailers. What is emerging is not simply demand, but a large-scale infrastructure deployment pipeline spanning regions, formats and retail networks. This backlog now provides a high degree of visibility into future deployments, reinforces the scalability of the platform and reflects the strength of underlying demand. Importantly, this backlog does not include revenue from data or retail media, which we expect will add incremental revenue as those streams continue to ramp. While we remain early in the scaling curve, we are seeing increasing alignment between deployment activity, backlog conversion and revenue growth, reflecting improving visibility and a more scalable operating model. We have also strengthened our financial position. Total liquidity, working capital at quarter end was approximately $63.2 million, including cash and cash equivalents. In addition, we secured a firm proposal for a $30 million contract-backed non-dilutive bank credit facility. This facility is directly aligned with customer contracts and deployment schedules, meaning capital availability is structurally linked to contracted commercial activity. We view this as a strong external validation of our business model, backlog quality and execution trajectory. The facility further enhances financial flexibility and supports efficient non-dilutive funding of deployments while preserving balance sheet strength for other working capital needs as we scale. Including under the credit facility, our current total available liquidity is over $90 million, approximately $2 per share. We also initiated a share repurchase program earlier this year, reflecting our confidence in the long-term trajectory of the business and our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. The program authorizes us to repurchase up to $20 million of our common shares, and we have begun executing against it opportunistically in the open market. As of March 31, '26, we have repurchased 542,845 shares for a total of approximately $3.5 million, and those shares will be canceled. This program remains in place and gives us additional flexibility to return capital to shareholders while continuing to prioritize investments in growth and execution. Overall, we believe the financial results this quarter reflect a business that is still early in its scaling cycle, but increasingly supported by contracted visibility, growing deployment activity and a strengthening commercial foundation. As demand accelerates, we continue to scale our operational infrastructure in parallel. We expanded manufacturing readiness, increasing production capacity and strengthening supply chain execution to support large-scale global deployment. We also expanded our international operational footprint with the establishment of customer support centers in Panama and Bulgaria. These centers materially enhance our global service architecture, improve deployment execution capability and ensure we are positioned to support sustained multi-region expansion. Collectively, these investments represent the foundation of a global scale organization. In summary, what is unfolding at Cust2Mate is a clear transition into large-scale commercial deployment. We are moving from pilot programs to structured rollouts. We are transitioning from a smart card provider into a connected retail infrastructure platform. And we are beginning to unlock new revenue layers, including retail media that expand the long-term economics of the ecosystem. Physical retail remains one of the largest and least digitized sectors globally. We believe this sector is transforming into an intelligent, connected and measurable commerce environment in which A2Z Cust2Mate can play a significant role. What is most important is that this transformation is no longer theoretical. Our solutions are being deployed today and our contracted backlog is substantial. Thank you, and we will now open the call for questions.

At this time, we will now open the call to questions from our analysts and then the company will address pre-submitted questions by the investors.[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Dan Kurnos with StoneX.

Great. Gadi, let's just start with I appreciate all the color. Thank you for doing this, and taking our questions here. First, can we just talk about the Chinese manufacturing facility? You guys said that it would be fully up and running by before Q3. Can you just tell us where we are? In terms of product that's coming from there, talk about QA testing, what is and what does production look like at scale?

So Dan, thank you very much. So yes, we have a production facility in China, which is coming online as we speak. And we see this as a very important milestone in supporting our transition to scaled commercial deployment. The facility is designed to support mass production capabilities and very significantly expands our manufacturing capacity as deployment activity increases globally. We've been working closely with our manufacturing partners on production processes, QA protocols, operational readiness to ensure the platform can scale reliably and consistently. Very importantly, we believe the facility provides the manufacturing foundation needed to support our existing contracted backlog. But not only that, it also supports our additional global expansion opportunities going forward, no matter how large these maybe. And this expanded production capability is part of the broader operational infrastructure we have been building over the last several quarters to support larger multi-region rollout programs. As always, deployment cadence will continue to be coordinated alongside retailer rollout schedules and implementation timing. But from a manufacturing standpoint, we believe we are in a very strong position today to support scale as needed.

And to that point, Gadi, given the backlog that you have, the purchase order book, obviously, 19,000 carts right now. And we understand that deployment largely depends on store readiness and retrofitting. But how -- you kind of pointed to Q3 as sort of the big pivot quarter for deployments here. How should we think about cadence starting to begin in the back half of the year? I'm not looking necessarily for specific numbers, but just how should we think of that beginning to scale? And you've also talked about some new contract wins. So I'm just curious how the order book pipeline is also starting to shape up.

So as we've said, we continue to see our transition into large structured rollout programs with our partners. Our manufacturing facility is now online, and we have, starting from Q3 -- beginning of Q3, we will de facto have no real restriction on our manufacturing capability. So we exited Q1 with approximately 2,500 Smart Carts delivered and 19,000 carts scheduled for deployment through the end of 2027. As far as cadence, we can't expect it to be perfectly linear quarter-to-quarter. They depend on all sorts of operational factors, including store readiness and retailer implementation. But from a manufacturing level, we're totally ready. So we do expect activity levels to continue increasing as we move through the scaling phase of the business and as the year progresses, particularly as manufacturing readiness and deployment infrastructure continue to expand. And as I mentioned, we've also invested in expanding our operational infrastructure with our new support hubs in Panama and Bulgaria, specifically to support multi-region deployment execution and customer support as our rollout activity grows. So although we are still in the early stages of what can become a much broader deployment cycle across physical retail, the current backlog gives us a lot of visibility into that scaling process. And without providing specific deployment guidance, we expect deployments to pick up from quarter-to-quarter and from year-to-year.

Got it. Super helpful. One more for me, just on Retail Media. You guys announced several significant brand name contracts. Obviously, you're starting to get attention. We know that it's going to scale. I think in the filing, I think there was like [indiscernible] thousand of revenue or so, give or take, from services. I don't know if that's the retail media number in the quarter, but just can you help us think about how rapidly that can scale? I know this is a scale game, Gadi, but just what you're seeing and whether or not you expect those contracts that you announced with Under Armour and others to contribute and how quickly?

So first of all, you're quite right. The retail media is a very significant opportunity. We've just started generating revenues in Q1, and we believe that's a very important early validation point for the model as well as the extra top-class brands that we've signed on. Yes, we're in the early stages of building that business, but we're already seeing very meaningful interest from brands and ecosystem partners that are keen to engage shoppers directly at the point of purchase, which is always the strong point of in-store retail media. But similar to other retail media platforms, scale does matter. So as the installed base grows, shopper engagement increases across the network, the value of the media inventory and targeting capabilities become significantly more attractive. So larger deployments create more impressions, more shopper data, more engagement opportunities and ultimately, stronger monetization potential per retail partner. So as we've always said, the Smart Cart is uniquely positioned within the in-store journey because it sits directly at the highest intent moment in physical commerce, while shoppers are actively making purchasing decisions. As we scale, we expect our Retail Media revenues to be -- to increase not linearly but geometrically. So not only do the more carts you have, you have more retail media inventory to monetize, but we strongly believe that the more carts you have, the value of the retail media monetized and will increase, too. And once again, we can remind everyone that our contracted backlog of $195 million does not include retail media revenues. These are in addition. So the Retail Media, it's a digital revenue stream. It's a high-margin recurring revenue layer. And we hope that they will generate digital profits that can strengthen our economics of deployment going forward.

Congrats on your first earnings call and good luck.

Our next question is from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.

Congrats on the early progress as it relates to the strong contracting momentum. As it relates to maybe the timeframe on deployments on existing contracts, how we should think about average time it takes to fully deploy carts, you know, from when at the time a contract is signed and, perhaps what are some of the limiting factors or bottleneck factors that could affect timing?

Thank you. There always is a certain delay between announcing the contract and actually revenue recognition. So, revenue recognition is closely tied to deployment activity and delivery milestones. There's always gonna be a timing gap between commercial announcement, signed agreement, deployment execution, and revenue recognition. We've given guidance where we can, where we've contracted with our clients on when we're going to start deploying. We've already started deploying, with Yochananof, and that is going apace, and it's going to be increasing from quarter to quarter. We are starting soon with Super Sapir that's also increasing from quarter-to-quarter. Our expectation is that our entire contracted backlog at present will be deployed by the end of 2027. That gives, you know, visibility into our deployment activity. Remember that the revenue recognition of our contracts is staggered over the mostly 5-year contracts. So, the revenue recognition will take, you know, approximately 5 years to be reflected fully in our reports from the time of deployment.

Got it. Great. That's helpful. That's helpful. And wondering if you could maybe speak to the overall demand environment that you're seeing and as it relates to incremental contracting progress, activity, or discussions with prospective customers.

So the -- we're continuing to see strong commercial momentum in multiple markets and multiple retail verticals. So we're working diligently to further expand our commercial pipeline and convert the opportunities into additional agreements and contracted backlog. The retail sales cycles in this industry are long and operationally driven, especially with large-scale enterprise deployments. With that, as we're seeing, as retailers gain visibility into our performance metrics into the shopper engagement with our cards and into the ROI that we can show, we are seeing increasing willingness to move forward to broader rollout discussions. So we believe that our growing contracted backlog also provides visibility. At the same time, we remain disciplined in how we communicate externally, and we continue to announce material developments as appropriate and in line with our disclosure practices. But overall, we believe the pipeline environment remains active. It's very constructive, and it's supported by increasing retailer interest in digitizing the in-store shopping experience and adopting connected retail infrastructure solutions at scale.