FirstWave Cloud Technology Limited ($FCT)
Earnings Call Transcript · May 27, 2026
Highlights from the call
In the Q3 2026 earnings call for FirstWave Cloud Technology Limited, management reported a significant increase in cash flow and revenue, driven primarily by the successful contracts with Services Australia and Banobras. Revenue for the quarter reached approximately $2.7 million, a notable increase from $1.45 million in Q3, indicating a positive trajectory for the company. Management also highlighted a reduction in operational costs by $500,000 annually and a cash balance of $2.4 million, suggesting improved financial stability. Looking ahead, management signaled optimism for continued revenue growth and potential for doubling annual recurring revenue (ARR) through ongoing deals in the pipeline.
Main topics
- Revenue Growth Acceleration: FirstWave reported revenues of approximately $2.7 million from April 1 to May 25, 2026, significantly higher than the $1.45 million in Q3. Management stated, "we're already way higher than last quarter and higher than the quarter before," indicating strong momentum.
- Successful Contracts: The company secured two major contracts: $1.85 million with Services Australia and approximately AUD 350,000 with Banobras. These contracts are expected to enhance the company's revenue base and validate its compliance management solutions.
- Cost Savings Initiatives: Management announced annual cost savings of approximately $500,000, achieved during the previous quarter and subsequent to the quarter end. This reduction in costs is expected to improve profitability moving forward.
- AI Integration and Product Development: FirstWave is leveraging AI to enhance its product offerings, particularly in compliance management. Sharon Hunneybell noted, "we're building out the governance layer that sits around AI agents," which positions the company favorably in the market.
- Cash Flow Improvement: The company reported net operating cash inflows of $1.4 million, with cash on hand increasing to $2.4 million as of May 25, 2026. This improvement in cash flow is critical for operational stability.
Key metrics mentioned
- Revenue: $2.7 million (vs $1.45 million in Q3, +86% QoQ)
- Net Operating Cash Flow: $1.4 million (positive cash flow quarter)
- Cash Balance: $2.4 million (up from $1.3 million at the end of Q3)
- Cost Savings: $500,000 (annual cost savings achieved)
- Services Australia Contract Value: $1.85 million (includes recurring revenue of $380,000)
- Banobras Contract Value: AUD 350,000 (for a 2-year deal)
Overall, FirstWave Cloud Technology Limited is showing strong signs of recovery and growth, driven by new contracts and improved cash flow. The integration of AI into their offerings presents a significant opportunity for future revenue growth. However, the company must address sales conversion challenges to fully capitalize on its potential. Investors should monitor the execution of upcoming deals and the effectiveness of AI-driven product enhancements as key catalysts for growth.
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
OperatorGood morning, everybody, and welcome to the FirstWave webinar. I'll now hand over to your Chair, Roger Buckeridge.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesGood morning, and welcome to all attending. We'll proceed straight to some presentations from Danny Maher and from Sharon Hunneybell, which I'm sure you'll find very interesting. Danny, over to you.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesRight. Thanks, Roger. So we've had the introduction -- just a quick introduction from Roger. He'll be back for some Q&A at the end. I'll just run through a bit of an update with the financials, and then Sharon is going to run us through a product update as well as a couple of customer case studies. Okay. So we're already 2 months into the new quarter and nearly a month after the 4C was lodged. So we'll just go through a bit of a summary, but I don't need to repeat everything that was released in the 4C. But in summary, Q3 was a cash flow positive quarter, which was great. We had net operating cash flows of -- inflows of $1.4 million, customer receipts of around $2 million, which is up over 100% quarter-on-quarter. Again, whenever we talk about our cash, I do note that it is cyclical, okay? So Q3 is a good cash quarter for us because we receive all the cash from our renewals which we have in Q2, especially December, and that's our strongest renewal period. So -- but it's always great to get through that period and get this cash in, in Q3. We're getting some momentum with Open-AudIT 6. Sharon will talk a little bit about that. We're getting traction on commercial trials. We're not getting the conversion that we want to sales. Sharon is going to touch on that. We've started the collaboration with the CSIRO and the Uni of Sunshine Coast, which comes with some cash that they pay us. Sharon will touch on that as well, but that's pretty cool to get going. And certainly, the customers that we are engaging on that are quite excited as well. So that's all around developing some AI for predictive compliance and management, leveraging the data and our software. Sharon will touch more on that. We received our $1.2 million from our R&D, which, again, is always great to get that. I do note that we do leverage a R&D advanced facility, which many Australian companies do. So we actually access the funds through a third-party provider before we get them from the ATO or we access around 85% of the funds. So a part of that already in Q4, not in Q3, went in and out with a new facility, if that makes sense. So some of it goes back out to them, but then we receive the new advance. So it kind of goes in and out. 85% of it just goes in and out, and the rest, we keep. Hopefully, that makes sense. North America, strong sales push. The majority of our revenues remain in North America, so that being Mexico and U.S.A. in particular. And there's also some other revenues in Latin America. So I'm still stuck here, if you like, in this region while we finish off some other things, but it's certainly going very well. At the end of the quarter, our cash on hand was $1.3 million. But given we're 2 months in, I'm going to give you a bit of an update on events subsequent to the quarter. So bringing us up to date, subsequent to the end of the quarter. So we won Banobras, which we announced. That's around AUD 350,000, so USD 250,000. That's for a 2-year deal. There's a little more in year 1 because of a small amount of professional services. So -- but it's a 2-year AI-powered compliance management agreement with one of Mexico's leading banks. Sharon will touch on that. Services Australia was another great win. So it's $1.85 million, again, for AI-powered compliance management, a little bit more of a network management tilt with them. Banobras was pure compliance. Around -- we announced -- some of that Services Australia agreement is also recurring revenue, ARR. I think it's -- we announced how much it was. I think it's about $380,000 is recurring. We've actually now received payments from both of those clients. So we received payment from Banobras for year 1 and a little bit of professional services. So we've got USD 150,000 from that. And we've received the full $1.85 million for the Services Australia agreement as well. So that's fantastic. It's amazing for us, right? So our cash balance as of 25th of May was AUD 2.4 million. And significantly, our revenues from the 1st of April to the 25th of May are around $2.7 million in this quarter. And to put that in perspective, our revenues in Q3 were $1.45 million. So that's on an accrual basis, and obviously boosted significantly by Services Australia. But we can already see we're going to have pretty good results for this quarter. As I mentioned, I'm remaining here in Latin America. We're also having a transition of leadership from Omar, who has retired to his son, actually, Hector, who's been with the company for quite a while. So that's going very well. And I also wanted to let you know through this update that we have further annual cost savings of approximately $500,000 per annum. And this has been achieved during the previous quarter and subsequent to the quarter end. So that's $500,000 per annum of cost savings as well. So it's quite a remarkable -- it's been a remarkable last month really, and a period of time. So we're producing further operational savings and revenue growth and I think we're really starting to hit our strides. I'll leave it there. That's kind of the summary of that. I'll come back after Sharon's update with a fuller summary, and then we can have some Q&A. So Sharon is going to run us through a couple of case studies and a product update. There's a little bit of messaging there around our AI story. AI is very interesting for us, and Sharon will explain why it's interesting for us in terms of our revenue growth. It's also an important tool in terms of our output. We're a small company competing with some very, very large companies, and the developments in AI will really allow us to compete a lot better than we've been able to previously because we've always been operating at the larger end of the market and been doing things that were well beyond our weight. And these are great tools for us, both in the way we operate and the way our customers can leverage them with our technologies. So I'll hand over to Sharon.
Sharon Hunneybell
ExecutivesThank you, Danny, and good morning, everyone. So I picked this image to start off my presentation. It was taken on day 6 of NASA's Artemis II mission with humans further from the Earth than anyone who's been for 50 years. Our software is actually part of how NASA monitors the systems that make a mission like this possible, so seeing these mission images shared in April was a pretty awesome moment for our team. And I urge you to check them out on the NASA website because they're pretty remarkable. And for us, it's a reminder of the trust that organizations globally are placing in our software. Let's move on to what I want to share today. I've got 3 key items. So first, I'm going to give you a quick update on the momentum that's building behind Open-AudIT. It is now starting to anchor our compliance suite, and so that commercial strategy is starting to play out well. Second, I'm going to run you through 2 customer case studies from the last month that we're obviously very proud of, the Banobras in Mexico and Services Australia, just so you can get a better understanding of how our software is actually solving problems in their environments. And then third, I'm going to talk you through a little bit of our product horizon for the next 18 months, specifically around our AI compliance strategy. So Open-AudIT has had a strong start to the year. Both of those major deals that I'll come to in a moment licensed Open-AudIT as part of a broader package. And that is exactly the deal shape we've been working towards. Commercially, though, we're not exactly where we want to be. We do still have that large global base of free users downloading very, very consistently and rapidly, and we've successfully converted some of those into enterprise accounts. We still have a really strong pipeline, but the commercial conversion isn't really where we want it to be yet, and we are actively working on that. This week, we shipped a new release of Open-AudIT, which is specifically designed to make Open-AudIT easier to install, easier to run initial discoveries and easier to trial the first enterprise license. So removing -- we're trying to remove the friction points that we're seeing is slowing the pipeline down. We're also building some significant partner activity around Open-AudIT. And this is opening some doors to customers that we wouldn't be able to reach on our own and expanding out that pipeline further. So let's move on to these case studies. The first is Banobras, which is one of Mexico's largest financial institutions. It is a state-owned development bank that funds roads, hospitals, water systems and public infrastructure that millions of Mexicans rely on every day. They have some really clear requirements. They needed complete visibility and control over their IT environment with certainty that nothing is changing without their knowledge. So what our software does for them is gives them exactly that. So Open-AudIT continuously discovers every device, every piece of software, every configuration across their network. NMIS watches it all in real time. opConfig, with its new file integrity monitoring, tracks and controls all changes. And together, those products give Banobras a complete live picture of their estate and an immediate alert if anything shifts. An exciting thing about this deal is that it came through OmniPrinter. They're our channel partner that's connected to Grupo Salinas, which is a premium account relationship for us. It's the first significant contract in Latin America through OmniPrinter and Grupo Salinas. And it gives a really strong reference point for financial institutions, critical infrastructure and the public sector across the region. Moving on to Services Australia. Most of the people on this call will be very familiar with what they do. But if you're not, they are the -- they deliver the welfare payments, health benefits and essential services to millions of Australians, including the myGov platform. So in this instance, we were actually already there. We've actually been monitoring the myGov application and delivering really great value to their team. So what happened in this instance was that they decided to extend our software across their entire department, giving them a single consolidated view of a much larger and more complex environment with the ability to separate the monitoring and discovery across different business units while keeping leadership visibility intact. Their existing monitoring solution was foreign-owned and no longer meeting the standards which they required under their compliance framework. So deploying our platform provided two key benefits: broader visibility and control over their whole environment; and a sovereign solution that aligns to the procurement policies that many government agencies are now applying. So the contract is AUD 1.85 million. It covers a perpetual license, professional services, and there is ongoing annual support. We're really, really proud of this deal because it also shows that when you can build a trusted foothold with the customer and deliver, how much the relationship can grow from there. And we'd love -- we see this as a really great example of a government department, and we expect more government departments to also be moving forward and looking at sovereign solutions. And we obviously are going to be right there when they're looking for them. So from those two examples, you can see that compliance played a huge role in both scenarios. And I wanted to give you a bit of context before I go into the broader ongoing road map. So a lot of vendors can tell you what your network is doing right now. But what regulated industries like banks, government agencies and critical infrastructure increasingly need is continuous compliance, so proof at any moment the systems meet the required standards. Across the world, there are many different standards and regulatory frameworks to adhere to, and our platforms can adapt to each of them. And so that's the layer that we've shifted to operate in and why we are winning the customers we're winning. Looking ahead to the road map, I'm going to deep dive into two themes around AI compliance that we're currently building out through our product suite. So I will note, the development team, we do work on an annual calendar basis. So the dates you can see here are a little different from our financial reportings. But the first area is the road map that I wanted to focus on is the theme of AI-ready operations. And I did want to touch on something that's really important for you to understand as shareholders. So the data that our software collects lives inside our customers' systems. It's on their premises. It's not through a public cloud, so no one else has access to it. Only our software touches it, which means we're uniquely positioned to be able to apply AI to this data. No other competitor can replicate that because they simply don't have it. So what we're building is predictive monitoring. Instead of telling you something that's broken, our software learns the patents in your network and warns you when something goes wrong. We have the machine learning prediction and anomaly detection project, which is backed by a research collaboration with the University of Sunshine Coast, CSIRO and the Queensland government. So that's giving us some really strong academic scientific credibility behind the methodology. Then we've got a lot of work going on behind dependency mapping and visualization, improving the time series database, so the way that we report on our data and creating adaptive baselines and streaming telemetry. So for customers, what this will mean is fewer outages and a network that essentially manages itself. For us, it supports higher pricing and the kind of retention that comes when workflows become indispensable. The second area that we're focused on is safe AI in the enterprise. So we're building out active directory auditing and ownership reporting, agent access profiles and command classification and AI risk advice and human in the loop approval workflows. So every CIO I speak to right now is trying to figure out how to bring AI into their operations safely. The challenge is that AI agents can make changes to systems. And without the right controls, there's no audit trail, no approval process and no way to know what happened. For a bank or a government agency, that's not acceptable. So what we're building is the governance layer that sits around AI agents. So every action is tracked, every configuration and change goes through an approval workflow. And every agent operates only within the boundaries that's been given. For customers, it means they can actually start adopting AI without taking on unacceptable risk. And for us, it positions FirstWave as a trusted control layer for AI-driven infrastructure and opens up a new tier of premium product opportunities. So what does that mean to you as shareholders? I think about it as 4 things. First of all, pricing power. The AI differentiation lets us hold a higher price point than traditional monitoring tools. Second, larger deals. As you've just seen, as we move into application intelligence, identity and compliance, the contract value per customer grows. Third, stickier revenue. So continuous compliance and predictive automation workflows that customers won't want to turn off, which means better retention and longer lifetime value. And fourth, it makes it easier to buy. So our improvements for deployment remove procurement friction for enterprise customers and shorten our sales cycle. So everything that we're working on, on our road map ties back to one of these 4 things. That's it for me, but I did want to mention before I pass back to Danny that for our shareholders, we've also put together a product update that we're going to be sending out to you on a fairly regular basis. The first one will go out next week. So even though I've touched on some of the initiatives that we're working on, we actually roll out software releases very frequently. We're always making changes, and there's always new opportunities with our customer base. A lot of you have asked me over time if you can get some more regular updates, so this will be a way that we can share with you a little bit more about what's going on in between these shareholder updates because everything moves very fast in the product team. Over to you, Danny.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesNot fast enough. Yes. We're a little sweatshop here in the product team, that's for sure. And amazing output, working against some global competitors. So thanks, Sharon. Big global competitors. So let's do a quick summary before we get into some Q&A. But things are looking much better. When I say looking, I'm obviously looking to the future. But there are facts within that forecast, and it's really nice to be having an update where we're talking from a lot of facts rather than a lot of futures. So the facts that we already know for this quarter, our customer receipts are higher. Our revenues -- so that's not a forecast. It's -- and we're disclosing that now in this update, okay, for the first time. Our revenues from 1st of April to the 25th of May are circa $2.7 million. Right? So we're already way higher than last quarter and higher than the quarter before. Yes, it's driven by the Services Australia deal, but it's a fact that we can look to this quarter's results being significantly higher. Our cash balances at 25th of May are higher. There's $2.4 million in the bank that satisfies our working capital requirement. There's a couple of great wins already this quarter. So both Services Australia and Banobras were material wins that we announced. They are both led with our compliance management suite, which is a big focus, which we announced in November of last year, I believe, certainly the second quarter. So it's great to see that bearing some fruit. I'm staying here in Latin America for the moment, so you can read into that there's reasons for that. We've got further annual cost savings, as I mentioned. So our costs are down as well. And again, that's a recurring saving, that's not a one-off thing. And as you just heard from Sharon, we're adapting our products. We're leveraging AI both in the way that we work, but also in the way that our customers use AI to monetize the data within our products. So AI is in our products. We were -- we had machine learning and AI before people were talking about AI. The company has AI patents, right? So we've been doing it for a long time, but the recent developments in AI are enabling us to leverage some of these AI technologies and tools that have been put out there and leverage them against the data that's in our software. So we're getting a real boost from this stuff, and we look to be a winner from AI where a lot of software companies, of course, are under threat. We've got the reverse. So in full, our Q4 revenues are already higher than Q3 and Q2 for that matter. The cash is better, operational costs are lower, and there's a highly strategic deal in the late stage of closing here in Latin America. So all those things are facts, not forecasts. So I think it's fair to say we're looking a hell of a lot better. So I'm talking fairly plainly, but it's a very exciting update to get to. And we'll go to some questions, and we already have some questions. So Roger, if you can join me and chime in on any of these? Roger, did you have any other comments before the Q&A?
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesNo, that's -- as a nonexecutive director, I'm proud of what the team is achieving. I think they're delivering on what they said their task was back in -- back when we did our last capital raising back in September. And it's very pleasing to see execution against that. I think that builds credibility for the company as a whole and certainly for our executive team and the tech team that supports it. Again, to back up what Danny said earlier, the reality is that this is a company that sells globally and is particularly strong in the Americas. It's why I can see our office in Mexico City as a regional office just growing in scale and depth and confidence on the ground because that's where some of the biggest market opportunities are for the company. Our history, of course, is a long history of developing software. Danny educated me during the quarter. I think some of our software products started 27 years ago from open source. That's a heck of a history. And we have a very senior group of developers who have been shepherding that product evolution through the years. And some of them are almost as old as me, not quite. They're about 20 years short of that. But basically -- and they're still extremely productive. But we are energetically thinking about continuous renewal of our talent. I'm one of those who -- as an old guy, I believe that the greatest innovation comes from people in their 20s, and we're certainly seeing that in the software industry globally now. And we -- so we're continually sort of thinking about how we can refresh and regenerate our team but stay within roughly 50 headcount. And so I think we've got a lot of revenue and profit potential with the headcount that we've got, and these tools are really delivering that already. And that's something that's most important as many software companies around are sort of in a panicky way, in my view, they're dropping headcount left, right and center, and it's a very turbulent time for them. That's not the case for us. We're a small and perfectly formed team in my view. So over to Q&A.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesNo, that's right. AI is an opportunity to increase our output. But with the amount of data that's in our software, if you look at Telmex, they're collecting something like 6 million data points every 5 minutes. There's no way a human can analyze that. So there's a huge AI play for us to plug in the CSIRO and Uni of Sunshine Coast with a massive global client like that and start doing some really cool things with AI and the data. So I've got a first question from Paul. He says, do you expect the ASX to continue investigation to a large volume transaction that happened before the sales announcement? You can never predict what the ASX will want answered. But no, we don't expect that. So we are now aware that the large volume seems to be tied to Fenja Capital, who is a lender to us. So Fenja were given -- Fenja were entitled to and given a bunch of shares at final settlement of their loan. They were trading them out on market. And what happened with the large volume was there was some shareholders which took them out on market in full, and that's what that large volume appears to be about. It wasn't related to -- I'm sure there have been a bit of noise that a day or 2 later, we had the Services Australia announcement come out, and that's why the ASX put their query, but it seems to be completely unrelated. It was just a group of shareholders cleaning out their Fenja stock. So no, we don't. We've answered that, and we don't expect any further inquiry on that, and that seems to be what it was. We have another question. It seems like a turnaround story is unfolding. Absolutely. Yes, we've been waiting for this for a little while. What revenue growth ARR can we expect and aim for in the upcoming quarters, in the next 12 months? I don't know if you want to chime in here, Roger, but it's very difficult for us to put out forward forecasts because we're still quite binary. There's some deals in the pipeline, which -- I guess I can say there's deals in the pipeline which can double our ARR. So it's -- I think that's fair to say. But we're quite binary on if we do these deals and then how those deals happen. Because quite often, when they're larger deals, they get broken up into pieces, and that's fully what we expect. But we're kind of getting into areas where we're speculating and forecasting. But -- so I'm sorry, I can't give you that forecast of growth, but I can say that there are deals in the pipeline that can double our ARR on their own.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesDanny, if I may chime in. I think we have big name clients, large organizations around the world who have been buying from us for years and years. But the big transformation, in my view, is now we're talking to a wider audience within those companies. Some of it will get up to executive C-suite type level people for the first time who have probably never heard of our software. This has been buried down in the IT infrastructure. But the compliance and governance features of what we bring as an integrated solution is new. And so we've got established accounts which can be focused on and upgraded. And I think, therefore, the probability of conversion of those to a much higher revenue rate for some of those key accounts is something that we will be very focused on in fiscal '27. And as that comes out, then more people know what we're doing. And so we'll have some new accounts as well. But I agree with Danny, it's a long sales cycle. But to the points that Sharon has made, these are very sticky accounts when you win them. I mean, ARR isn't just a 2-year annuity. These things can go for a decade if we just continue producing these solutions. And that, we've got to deliver on that because that will transform into the way in which outside investors and analysts look at this company and what its true value is. And again, we're here today to say to our shareholders we're optimistic, and we think we will be able to deliver increased shareholder value for their investment during the next 12 months. That's our sole focus. Apart from looking after our people, that's my second focus.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesBecause they'll deliver you that return. Yes, okay. Okay. So we got any updates on -- so from Kim, any updates on Microsoft and Telstra? There are some things underway there, a mixture of positive and negative with those two, but it would be too early to talk about those at the moment. But we'll have some updates on that at the next quarterly update. But yes, there's a few things in change there, good and bad, as you'd expect with major accounts. From P.Y., worried about Mythos' impact? Oh, geez. Look, worried about it as a person? Yes. Worried about it as a company? No. It's only going to push compliance a lot harder. One of the things when Sharon was going through the presentation, she had listed a whole bunch of compliance standards. The point with our compliance software -- the point is we know every piece of software, every piece of hardware, firmware, everything installed on a network, we monitor it and manage it in real time. And we now have compliance software driven by AI which tells you to comply with standards. Now those standards can be internal standards, external standards. So Sharon listed some acronyms that some were European standards, some Americans, some Australian. Some were financial standards, and some were technical standards. But it doesn't matter what the standard is, it's configurable in our software. And for sure, there's going to be a whole bunch of compliance requirements because of things like Mythos. And it's going to make our software more important that you have it running and you know what's going on in your environment, right? If you look what then have -- Mythos can change things dynamically, right? And if you look at what Banobras has implemented with our software, they are going to know in their environment if any file changes without their permission, right? So if any piece of software or if any file changes, our software is going to alert them. So this type of solution is going to become very important. So probably a negative impact for the world, but could be positive for our business. Next expected capital raise date? We don't have any expected capital raise date. We're getting money from our clients at the moment. We'll be -- it's wonderful to be working in a situation where you're generating cash. So if we go and raise capital, it will be for growth, not for survival. That's the expectation at the moment. But we don't have any plans to raise capital at the moment. We've got all the working capital we need from our clients and the raise that was from our clients. Our debt provider partners for growth have been fantastic and our capital raise back in October, but we've got sufficient working capital. Will all the Services Australia revenue be attributed to this year or amortized over the life of contract? So the 300 -- chime in, Tony, or anyone who remembers the exact number, but it was in the announcement, I think $378,000, if I'm right. So around $378,000 is annual. So that will be amortized and recognized each month, and the rest will be recognized in this year. So rough numbers, about $1.4 million of it will be recognized this year, and the rest will come monthly. Sharon and Tony and Roger, jump in. If I'm just going through all these questions, if you've got anything, jump in. Probably should have given you Mythos, Sharon. Justin, some great news has been coming out of FCT, which is exciting. How do you plan to amplify on social media, et cetera, LinkedIn with fund managers to assist to drive share price up? With the expectation of further good news, we -- and Sharon and I have been having a few meetings, I've been discussing with the Board. We are actively looking at some new investment relationship -- new investor relations initiatives right now. We expect to -- we want to make some decisions on those in the next couple of months because we do expect to have further good news, and we do want to amplify it. We do have someone managing our social media from an investment perspective to help amplify that. But if you don't have the news, there's not much to amplify. But we do feel that we are going to have more news like we have seen in the last couple of months. And we are looking at investment relationship initiatives now. If anyone has any ideas, you can flick them to me, but please don't flood me with introductions to different IR firms, et cetera. But any specific ideas are great. But yes, we are actively looking to amplify the good news that we're having now in the interest of the company and all shareholders. Any further details on the strategic deal? If you go back to the capital raise in November, there's a document there, and we talked about a significant deal with a Mexican telco. It's commercially sensitive right now, so I can't give out too much more about where we're up to. And it has changed actually from the -- what's in the investment deck, but it's under negotiation, and it has progressed. I expect it to be -- I expect that -- the Services deal, the Banobras deal and some other things that have happened, the reduction in costs, the new partnership with PFG as a lender and the capital raise from before, I think all those things have -- I look at it as they've all set us fine now for working capital. And then this next one is the one which is going to provide us the foundation for growth for years. So let's keep our fingers crossed on that, I'm working hard on it. But these things are very wriggly. We're a small company dealing with big telcos in difficult economies. I'm not sure if many of you have done business in Mexico and Latin America, but a lot of you would have in Asia, and it's reasonably similar. If you imagine dealing with a large Asian telco, it's quite similar. I mean, dealing with an Australian telco is not easy either, mind you. But they're big companies, and we're small, and it's hard. But if we get it done, it makes it very hard for us to get out as well. Like operationally, we're embedded in all their systems. And if we're in there commercially with these types of deals, it's very difficult for the competitors to unsee this. Geez, there's a lot of Q&A. That's great. This might be you. I'm looking to hand one off to Roger or Sharon here.
Sharon Hunneybell
ExecutivesYou can hand this over to me if you want.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesYes, go on then. So the question is, how are you utilizing AI to assist increasing your close rate to commercial customers? Yes, go on, Sharon.
Sharon Hunneybell
ExecutivesSo I don't know if we mentioned this earlier in the update, but we are adopting AI tools across the business as well. And that includes training all of our salespeople. Obviously, our marketing team, everyone is using AI tools. We've trained our AI tools to be able to operate within our brand guidelines and things like that. So I guess there's a few points on this. First of all, our sales team are able to produce like customized documentations and things like that much quicker using their tools. From a marketing perspective and from like Open-AudIT and looking at that conversion, we now pick up a whole bunch of new metadata about what -- how people are actually using our products. And we're actually using AI to analyze that metadata to be able to determine where are some of the roadblocks in the customer journey. And that's why we released this latest version of Open-AudIT is that we could actually see the friction points where people were pausing where they weren't moving forward, where they weren't activating a trial, and we've made a bunch of changes around that. So we love AI. It's definitely like -- it's -- pretty much every person in our company has feels like they have a teammate now that they are able to work with. And so that's a couple of the ways that we're, I guess, practically using it. Then, of course, there's obviously just the sales point, the features that we're building into our products that are AI-driven that basically help our customers to deploy AI without having to come up with the concepts and policies themselves. They can just roll things out within our solutions.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesIf I could just say something there. If I could just make a comment. I thought it was remarkable. We had -- a couple of our team members really took an initiative to make everybody who had heard about using AI but was not quite sure how they could enter it. And then particularly, it was built around Claude. And this was an outstanding training effort. I've shown it to a couple of people who work for very large global software companies. They say to me, "We didn't have anything like this. We could use this." So all power to people who aren't celebrated enough in our team for actually getting down and practical and making it relevant to everybody in the company. In all roles, sales, administration, technical, it's just pervasive. And I think that shows this company has got a very, very strong spine. It will do well. It will do well.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesOkay. Thanks, guys. So trying to get through these questions. Looking ahead, do you expect that the company will -- so from Dean, looking ahead, do you expect that the company will see more revenue from overseas or domestically? Absolutely, overseas, but notwithstanding that we are an Australian company. So particularly off the back of the Services Australia deal, it's an important market for us as well, and the relationship with Telstra. But absolutely, the majority of our revenues will be from overseas, 100%.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesCan I add to that, too? I mean, Sharon talked about the follow-on with governments in Australia, and that would be both federal and state and the sovereign capacity for Australian clients. But I would argue that we are also a sovereign company in Mexico.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesWell, we are...
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesAnd we're really thinking about that because basically, this happens in every country these days. I mean, the globalization is being moderated by -- in every industry, I see it in my daily business life. And so I think building our position in those core countries and being seen as a sovereign actor there is a key part of the intrinsic worth of this company, which I think will be reflected in its financial results in the coming couple of years.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesYes. The -- so I was going to comment on that because -- like with CyberCision, for example, it's a cloud service. So to be sovereign, you need the cloud service running in the country. Whereas for our on-premise software, we may not be a sovereign -- well, in Mexico, we have a company. We may not be a sovereign supplier in terms of being a company from that country, but we are always a sovereign technology solution because it's on-premise. And so the problem with some of these other providers that are processing thing in the cloud is they're not sovereign solutions, whereas when you take our -- all of our products other than CyberCision, when you implement it on site, it's a sovereign technology solution. So -- and that's becoming more and more a concern, particularly the political climate in the U.S. Even allies of -- I know I've got friends in certain government departments, having grown up in Canberra, and they see risk in the U.S. supply chain which they never used to. So yes, it's interesting, but it's a double-edged sword. There's two parts to that sovereign coin. So one is the company, which we are in Australia, a sovereign company, and then there's the technology. Does the data -- people don't want -- like when we're collecting data, enormous amounts of data, sensitive data, they don't want it going offshore. And with our software, it doesn't. It stays within our software on their premise as a sovereign tech solution. I think you can see the next question there, Roger?
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesI can't see the question. Sorry, I'm not -- can you tell me what the question is about?
Danny Maher
ExecutivesAnonymous. Okay. Is there a partner program in Australia to assist scale, using Mexico as an example? From Justin. Is there a partner program in Australia?
Sharon Hunneybell
ExecutivesDo you want me to talk a little bit too?
Danny Maher
ExecutivesI see what you're getting at. Yes. And in fact, the Services deal was done with [ data 3 ]. Go on, Sharon.
Sharon Hunneybell
ExecutivesYes. So we do have -- we have been building out a partner program. At the moment, we're pretty targeted on the public sector and critical infrastructure. We have got a partnership with a company in Turkey that's looking out towards the European market and have quite a large pipeline of activity, specifically around Open-AudIT. And then we also have recently signed some agreements through AWS through the partner network, again, targeting the public sector. So we're sort of in the early stages. And yes, you're right, like the Banobras deal, for example, has been a great foundational partnership that we can use. And we are building out sort of partnership assets and things to actually kind of solidify what the program will look like. At the moment, it's mostly -- like it's services and sort of referral fees. But yes, so that is -- we're actively working on our partner program. We have got partners engaged, and they're also working with us while we build out a more formal structure. But it's definitely a great opportunity to be able to sell more software.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesYes. Particularly, the AWS and Ingram relationships driving some partners. And we're definitely working on that, Eric and Sharon in Australia in particular. But we -- I don't know what's going on with my video, guys. It keeps moving my head around. I keep changing my laptop and it keeps moving me. It's weird. Anyway, apologies for that. But yes, we have a bit of a focus on these partners because over time, we have built connections with organizations like OmniPrinter where we've done a deal here and there with different partners. And so we've got a bit of a focus at the moment of looking at who the partners we have that are in the bag already and who are the new ones with Ingram and AWS in particular and working through them. And that's showing -- that part of the business is showing early signs of success. We've got some great new deals that have been dug up in the U.S. in particular, through looking at partners. Like we might have partners using CyberCision or partners selling NMIS or STM, whatever it is, but how do we move them across, how do we get them to sell more of what they've already sold and more of other things that we have. So that's actually going -- that's got -- there's some green shoots there. There's some nice deals in the pipeline from that. I think we better wrap up. Any closing remarks, Roger?
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesNo, I think I've said my piece. And on behalf of a very hard-working team and talented team, I'm optimistic. And I think fiscal '27 will be a good year. But we can't -- but there's no point in us giving numbers and forecasts because that's speculative. These things have to be won one by one. But the recurring revenue basis of some of these key accounts, I think, is ripe for acceleration. I mean, there's plenty of named customers we've had for many years who may be yielding USD 100,000, USD 200,000 a year or so of revenues. And I think there's a lot of scope for working in those accounts to get them up to USD 500,000, USD 600,000 a year. And you don't need a bigger company to be able to do that. So that's within our grasp.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesThat's right.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesAnd I think we've got the tools emerging in the product suite. And we're getting up with compliance and governance. We're getting right up there with the CFOs and the chief -- the risk management function in these big corporations. And they're all worried about their PI insurance and a whole lot of other things, and this becomes relevant. And so it will be a much more sophisticated senior level sell in some of these organizations without us needing to do much more in terms of our technology road map. So that's why Danny's got a big future in this company. That's it for me.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesYes. It'd be nice if everything sold itself and customers didn't [indiscernible] automated e-mails with software licenses and you never had to fix the software or enhance the software. But definitely, we're all hard at work. It's -- we're in a good spot, and I expect to be in a better spot at the next update and by quarter end.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesMaybe I can make one final remark. Basically, I joined this Board last July. So I had no history. I've known Danny from a prior for I think for many years. But what I've learned in the year is that basically, the 3 years prior to me joining this Board basically was years of reduced revenues, but dramatically reducing costs to get the company to be something that had extraordinary losses over many years, getting to the point where it could become self-sufficient and self-financing. And I think that -- and Danny has had -- Danny with Sharon and others have had to go through that journey. I'm glad I wasn't there for it because it has been so painful. But basically, I think they've knocked it off. So it's a pretty -- it's certainly lean and it's probably mean, but I think it's execution-oriented now and poised to actually be quite a changed company in the next couple of years.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesYes, or months.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesNo, it won't come that easy. It never comes that easy, but...
Danny Maher
ExecutivesWe'll never stop, but I expect some decent steps in the next couple of months. It will be nice to be in a position where every quarter, we're reporting great things every quarter, and that's where I hope we're heading. Let's see, fingers crossed. But yes, we'll close off. In line with Roger's comments, I was going to say thanks to the long-suffering shareholders. Hopefully, your suffering is about to be rewarded. And for those that got in recently, hopefully, you appear to be very lucky. But we've got to deliver some more things. So for all of us in the company, it heads down and tails up. And hopefully, that produces the results we're after, fingers crossed. Okay.
Roger Buckeridge
ExecutivesThanks very much, folks.
Danny Maher
ExecutivesSee you all. Bye.
For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to FirstWave Cloud Technology Limited earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the
EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments,
full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.