Csquare, Inc. (CSQR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Csquare Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Announcement Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Bowen. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Csquare's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Spencer Mullee, Chief Executive Officer; and Steve Cook, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued our second quarter earnings release and supplemental materials, which are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements regarding our expectations for future operating performance, capital allocation, market demand, pricing trends, leverage and other future events. These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to today's earnings release and our SEC filings for additional information regarding these forward-looking statements and the risks associated with them as well as reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed today to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to Spencer.

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. The second quarter reflected the consistency of the business we've been discussing with investors over the past several months. Revenue increased 14.5% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 21%, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by more than 300 basis points and we delivered record annualized bookings of $64.7 million, marking our 13th consecutive quarter of sequential bookings growth. More importantly, the quarter unfolded largely as we expected. Commercial execution remained strong, our pipeline continued to build and the underlying trends across the business remained very constructive. Nothing we saw during the quarter changed our confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead. But rather than simply walk through the numbers, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing what we're seeing across the business today because that's ultimately what gives us confidence in the outlook. The first observation is that demand continues to grow. I've learned over the years that infrastructure customers rarely make decisions based solely on today's requirements. They're making long-term decisions about where critical applications will reside and how they will serve their own customers for years to come. What gives me confidence today isn't simply that activity levels remain strong. It's that customer conversations have become noticeably more strategic. Customers are planning further ahead. They're thinking differently about capacity and increasingly viewing digital infrastructure as long-term competitive advantage rather than simply a real estate decision. That's exactly the environment that Csquare has been preparing for. We entered the year expecting a constructive demand environment, but what stood out during the second quarter wasn't simply the level of customer activity. It was the breadth of that activity. Demand remained diversified across enterprise customers, cloud and network providers, health care, financial services, technology companies and larger infrastructure deployments. We also continued to see activity across both our largest metropolitan markets and several secondary markets. Many customers are beginning to think through how AI inference, increasing data intensity and low latency application requirements will influence where and how they will deploy infrastructure. That planning process is creating greater urgency around securing available capacity today, particularly in markets where power availability is becoming increasingly constrained. So while AI continues to receive significant attention across our industry, what we're seeing extends well beyond AI alone. Customers continued investing in resilient, highly connected infrastructure capable of supporting an increasingly distributed compute environment, and we believe those trends remain durable. That demand translated into another quarter of strong commercial execution. Annualized bookings reached nearly $65 million, representing our 13th consecutive quarter of record bookings. And while we're certainly pleased with the bookings result, what gave us the greatest confidence wasn't simply that record number. It was why we achieved it. The sales pipeline continued to strengthen through the quarter, customer conversations became more strategic and we continued to see demand across both smaller enterprise deployments and larger infrastructure opportunities. Customers continued choosing Csquare for a few straightforward reasons. They value reliable operations, highly connected facilities, responsive customer service and importantly, available capacity in many of the markets where they need to deploy infrastructure. In an environment where available power and capacity remain constrained across portions of the industry, our ability to support customer deployments today continues to differentiate us. Now of course, not every aspect of the quarter exceeded our expectations. One area that continues to require patience is the amount of time some larger customers need to complete basis of design work before their deployment begins. Those projects are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And while that can extend deployment time lines, we view this as a reflection of the complexity of the environments our customers are building and our own ability to meet the requirements of next-gen deployments rather than any change in underlying demand. One question we've received frequently over the past several months is what differentiates Csquare in an increasingly competitive market. And from my perspective, it comes down to execution. When customers evaluate providers, the conversation usually centers on 4 questions. Those are, can you deliver capacity when I need it? Can I rely on your operations? Can you support me as my deployments expand? And can you provide all of that at a competitive value? And we believe our platform is well positioned across each of these dimensions. Operationally, we continue delivering consistently high levels of uptime while maintaining world-class Net Promoter Scores, typically ranging from the 70s to the 80s. These metrics matter because they lead directly to customer retention, expansion activity and long-term relationships. Our portfolio also gives customers flexibility, whether they're deploying within a single metropolitan market across the region or nationally, we can often support those requirements through a single operating platform. As hybrid infrastructure strategies continue to evolve, we believe that flexibility becomes increasingly valuable. Finally, we continue to benefit from available capacity in many of the markets we serve. While power availability has become an increasingly important consideration throughout the industry, we've continued investing behind customer demand and expanding capacity where we see attractive long-term opportunities. Businesses like Csquare aren't built one quarter at a time. They're built through thousands of operating decisions made consistently over years. And over the past several years, we've become a stronger and more mature organization. We've refined our operating processes, strengthened our commercial organization, improved the way we allocate capital and built an experienced operating team that has successfully managed through periods of rapid growth as well as more challenging market environments. That experience gives me confidence in our ability to continue executing as the business grows. So looking ahead, I'm encouraged by what we're seeing across the business. Our commercial pipeline continues to strengthen, customer conversations continue to become more strategic, demand remains broad-based and we're continuing to execute against a clear long-term strategy. Like every infrastructure company, we also recognize the challenges that come with growth. One area we're watching closely is the availability of labor. Competition for experienced construction, commissioning and technical personnel continues to increase as investment across digital infrastructure accelerates. Successfully attracting, developing and retaining that talent will remain an important priority for Csquare. Stepping back, I believe we're exceptionally well positioned for the years ahead. Demand continues to grow across our customer base, commercial execution remains strong and we're continuing to invest behind attractive long-term opportunities with discipline. At the same time, we're benefiting from favorable industry fundamentals, including improved pricing, constrained supply in many markets and increasing customer demand for highly connected infrastructure. We believe those trends, combined with our operating platform, customer relationships and disciplined approach to capital allocation position us to create meaningful long-term value for our shareholders. So if I leave you with one thought for today's call, it's this: demand continues to accelerate, our commercial execution continues to deliver and we're well positioned to convert that demand into long-term recurring growth through disciplined execution and thoughtful capital investment. With that, let me turn the call over to Steve Cook, our CFO.

Thank you, Spencer. I'll begin with our second quarter financial results before discussing our balance sheet, capital allocation priorities and our outlook for the balance of the year. Revenue for the second quarter was $280.4 million, an increase of 14.5% compared to the second quarter of 2025. Excluding metered power revenue, which can fluctuate based on customer power consumption and generally has a little impact on profitability, revenue totaled approximately $260.2 million and performed in line with our expectations. Continued growth in our core colocation business remained the primary driver of our financial performance during the quarter. While reported revenue remains an important metric, we believe the composition of that revenue is equally important. Approximately 95% of our revenue during the quarter was recurring in nature, supported by long-term customer relationships, contractual pricing escalators and strong customer retention. That recurring revenue profile provides a high degree of visibility and creates a durable foundation for long-term growth. From a commercial perspective, we generated record annualized bookings of $64.7 million during the quarter, representing our 13th consecutive quarter of sequential bookings growth. As Spencer discussed, those results reflected broad-based customer demand across our markets and continue to provide good visibility into future recurring revenue growth. Because this is our first earnings call as a public company, I'd like to spend a minute discussing how we think about bookings and, more broadly, how we think about the financial model. Bookings represent future contracted recurring revenue rather than current period revenue. Once contracts are signed, customers begin designing, constructing and deploying their environments before revenue commences. While the timing of that varies depending on the complexity of each deployment, those bookings ultimately become long-term recurring revenue streams supported by contractual pricing escalators and ongoing customer expansions. For that reason, we continue to view bookings as one of the best leading indicators of future financial performance. While quarterly revenue can move modestly based on deployment timing or metered power usage, bookings provide a great indication of the long-term earnings power of the business. Pivoting to EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA increased 21% year-over-year to $120.3 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 46.2%, an increase of approximately 330 basis points from the prior year quarter. Operating income increased to $59.2 million from $33.5 million in the prior year, reflecting the operating leverage embedded within our business model as revenue growth outpaced expense growth. From our perspective, adjusted EBITDA remains one of the best indicators of the underlying operating performance of the business. This quarter's growth was driven primarily by 2 factors. First, we realized the benefit of acquisitions completed during 2025 as those assets contributed for a full reporting period. Second, our core colocation business continued to perform well, supported by customer demand, disciplined commercial execution and the inherent scalability of our platform. Another encouraging trend was the continued strength in our pricing environment. Renewal pricing improved, contractual escalators performed as expected and we achieved higher pricing on new customer deployments. Importantly, we expect those positive pricing dynamics to benefit the business over time in multiple ways. New growth investments are being deployed at current market pricing, improving the economics of those projects from day 1. At the same time, our installed customer base continues to reprice gradually through contractual escalators and lease renewals. While that process occurs over time, we believe it provides an additional tailwind to recurring revenue and EBITDA growth for years to come. Approximately 35% of our second quarter bookings came from existing customers expanding their deployments. Those customers continue adding power, cabinets and additional space within our facilities. And during the quarter, several customers expanded into new Csquare locations. We believe that's an important characteristic of our business because it demonstrates that a meaningful portion of our future growth comes from customers who already know our platform and continue choosing to grow with us. Our operating model also benefits from meaningful operating leverage dynamics. Once a facility has been developed and placed into service, incremental leasing activity generally requires relatively modest incremental operating expense. As utilization increases, a significant portion of incremental gross profit flows through to EBITDA. That's one of the reasons we've consistently delivered EBITDA growth that outpaces revenue growth and we expect that characteristic of the business to remain intact over the long term. Turning to our GAAP results. Net loss for the quarter was $48.8 million compared to a net loss of $13.9 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily driven by higher interest expense associated with debt issued during the second half of 2025 and debt assumed in connection with our 2025 portfolio acquisition. Importantly, those financing costs reflect the capital structure we carried prior to our IPO and are not indicative of the underlying operating performance or long-term earnings potential of the business. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with approximately $120.8 million of cash and cash equivalents, $209.5 million of restricted cash and approximately $4.9 billion of long-term debt. Following the quarter's end, we successfully completed our initial public offering and used all of the net proceeds to repay outstanding indebtedness. As a result, we've materially strengthened our balance sheet, improved our financial flexibility and expect annualized interest expense to decline by approximately $63 million on a go-forward basis. That reduction in interest expense meaningfully improves our future earnings profile while increasing the cash flow available to reduce debt and invest in attractive growth opportunities. On a pro forma basis for the IPO, net leverage improved to approximately 8.2x following the application of the IPO proceeds. We remain committed to steadily reducing leverage while continuing to invest behind attractive customer demand. We continue to believe we have a clear path toward our previously communicated year-end 2027 leverage objective, supported by EBITDA growth from projects already underway, disciplined capital deployment and the benefit of lower interest expense following the IPO. Our recurring revenue model also continues to generate strong operating cash flow, providing us with the flexibility to invest in growth while strengthening the balance sheet. Our approach to capital allocation has remained consistent over the years and begins with disciplined underwriting. We build capacity based on informed conviction, not speculation. Significant growth in capital investments generally require customer commitments before construction begins. Every major project is supported by a formal investment memorandum evaluating customer credit quality, construction costs, project time lines, expected returns, strategic fit within our portfolio and key execution risks. Only after completing that analysis do we commit capital. Historically, we've deployed growth capital at attractive EBITDA multiples, generally in the 4 to 5x range. As those projects are completed and begin contributing EBITDA, they expand earnings faster than they increase leverage. We believe that's an important characteristic of our capital allocation strategy and one of the reasons disciplined growth investment supports long-term deleveraging while also creating shareholder value. During the quarter, we invested approximately $128 million in growth capital expenditures and approximately $15 million in recurring capital expenditures. Those investments were directly aligned with customer demand and continue expanding capacity in markets where we see attractive long-term opportunities. Turning to our outlook. Our guidance reflects continued confidence in the underlying business. As we look toward the second half of the year, there are 3 areas we're watching particularly closely. First is continued commercial execution and leasing activity. Second is the timing of customer deployments as existing bookings convert into recurring revenue. And third is the continued execution of our development pipeline, including the large customer deployments signed near the end of the second quarter. Based on what we're seeing today, we remain comfortable with the assumptions underlying our outlook and are issuing full year guidance. We expect total revenue in the range of $1.13 billion to $1.17 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $460 million to $480 million, recurring capital expenditures of $55 million to $65 million and growth capital expenditures of $610 million to $660 million. As investors begin following Csquare as a public company, I'd encourage you to evaluate our performance through 3 primary lenses. First is commercial execution, reflected in bookings and customer demand. Second is operating performance, reflected in recurring revenue growth, EBITDA and margin expansion. Third is capital allocation, where our objective is to convert operating performance into long-term shareholder value through disciplined investment, prudent balance sheet management and consistent execution. Ultimately, our priorities remain straightforward: continue executing for our customers, continue allocating capital with discipline, continue strengthening the balance sheet and continue creating long-term value for shareholders. We believe our second quarter results demonstrate meaningful progress against each of those priorities and we remain confident in the long-term outlook of the business. With that, I'll turn the call back to Spencer.

Thanks, Steve. Operator, we're ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Michael Elias from TD Cowen.

And as part of that, congrats, guys, on another record quarter on the IPO. Looking forward to the road ahead. Two questions from me. First, I want to start on the enterprise side. We've seen 1-megawatt deals become 5-megawatt deals and 5-megawatt deals become 10 to 20-megawatt deals. I'm sure you're aware of some of the requirements on the market. As we think about the trajectory of bookings or what you can do, what is the largest deal size that you'd be willing to take on? And as part of that, what's a bridge too far, either in terms of financial commitment or just size? That's the first question. And then second, I want to double-click on your comments about constraints. You're talking about how labor is constrained. Since you're doing a lot of refresh of the existing sites, what labor are you specifically running into that, that you need that you're not able to get access to? That would be very helpful.

Thanks, Michael. I appreciate the call and it's good to hear from you. On the enterprise side, you're right, there are deals that are better left to the hyperscalers. And given the unique nature of the data centers and their infrastructure, we wouldn't want to do deals in the 30, 40, 50-megawatt range and in fact, probably not even in the 20-megawatt range. We have found a sweet spot for sure, in that 1 to 5-megawatt range, but those customers would like to grow. And we've recently allowed some customers to grow. We're comfortable in the 15-megawatt range. We've just recently signed a large deal in the 14-megawatt range. So I would say really that sub-20-megawatt range is where we're going to continue to play. That's been a very consistent story with us throughout the time period that I've been here and I see no reason to change it in any way. Your second question with regard to the labor constraints, this is something you hear really at all data center companies. And quite frankly, it's not new. It has been an issue in the data center industry for many years in terms of construction project managers. And it's a little bit unique at Csquare and some of our peers in that we're operating in live environments. So finding people that have operated in those live environments who know how to work within the MOPs and SOPs that are necessary in live environments, those are talented people that are in high demand. I wouldn't say that we're not able to find those people. I would just say it takes an effort. And then we work really, really hard to keep them happy, keep them motivated and keep them here. So I wouldn't overstate that we can't get the people. I would just say that it is a effort to keep them happy and keep them motivated.

Your next question comes from Cameron McVeigh from Morgan Stanley.

First, excluding dispositions organically, how many megawatts were you able to bring on in the quarter? And then secondly, just curious, any further commentary on current leasing trends or conversations with your tenants and how your visibility is looking into the potential expansion cadence on a megawatt basis over the remainder of the year.

Sure. I'm going to let Steve address your first question, and I'll address your second one. We're continuing to see a very constructive leasing environment. Demand still is very broad-based across enterprise, cloud, network and, importantly, I think it's becoming more strategic with customers planning further ahead, securing capacity earlier in the process. We're also seeing healthy expansion from existing customers, which accounted for about 35% of the bookings this past quarter, but higher percentages than previous quarters. From a pricing standpoint, renewal pricing remains strong. Contractual escalators are performing just as we've expected and new deployments continue to be signed at, what I would say is, very attractive market rates. So as we step back, I think we continue to see healthy demand, improved pricing and a very strong pipeline, which gives us confidence in that go-forward outlook.

Yes, I can address the comment. I would call this quarter a bit of a holding pattern quarter-over-quarter in terms of installed base. We added just over 1 megawatt in the quarter. We've got a number of large projects set to come online in the back half of the year in terms of our installed base.

This really was a focus quarter on installing what we have sold through the year. So there is a significant amount of capacity being installed this quarter.

Your next question comes from Eric Luebchow from Wells Fargo.

Just touching back on that, Spencer, a little bit. Maybe you could talk about pricing a little more. I don't know if you can quantify what the renewal environment looks like today. But I know that had been really strong last year and current -- I'm curious what you're seeing on renewals, given how strong pricing has been. And then secondly, just on the forward construction costs, obviously, with higher labor costs, higher equipment costs, are you still able to deliver at kind of a $4 million to $8 million per megawatt net CapEx cost? Or are you seeing any inflation on that front?

Yes. So as we talked about it, if you remember back to when we did Analyst Day and talked to all of you that day, we said $4 million to $8 million was the average. There are a few things that are a little bit more expensive. There's a lot of things that are a lot less expensive. Nothing today has changed our view from that. And in fact, we're finding pricing to be relatively stable since the last time we spoke. So I would say we haven't seen any material change in the pricing. And I'm so sorry, I forgot the other part of the question.

Pricing trends.

Pricing is strong. As you know, we don't like to discuss actual pricing here at Csquare publicly. But I would say this, I would say from a renewal standpoint, we're having what I would think is one of our best years ever in terms of mark-to-market. And while we did -- again, we talked at Analyst Day about the relative price increase this year. I would say in the third quarter, we've seen some additional pricing strength and we've done very well on new business. So pricing is still very strong and we continue to see good repricing through either escalators and through renewals.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank.

Congratulations on your public listing. I wanted to ask you the gain on lease modification, can you just help us to understand the economics and how that flows into your P&L? Is it a onetime event or could be more down the road?

Sure. Happy to answer that. The gain is a onetime event. It was related to a giveback of a nonstrategic facility that we elected not to renew a lease on. So you see the derecognition of the liability. It's onetime.