Intelligent Protection Management Corp. ($IPM)

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Q1 2026 Financial Results Conference Call for Intelligent Protection Management Corporation, better known as IPM for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. [Operator Instructions] Let me turn the floor over to Joe Dorame of Lytham Partners. Joe, please proceed.

Good afternoon, and welcome to all participating on today's call to review the financial and operating results of IPM for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. As the operator indicated, my name is Joe Dorame. I'm with Lytham Partners. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings results press release, which was issued after the close of the market today. This call is being webcast and will be available for replay. During the course of this call, management will include statements that are considered forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including forward-looking statements about future results of operations, business strategies and plans, IPM's relationships with its customers as well as market and potential growth opportunities. In addition, management will make forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current knowledge and expectations as of today and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and assumptions related to factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. These expectations and beliefs may not ultimately prove to be correct. A detailed discussion of such risks and uncertainties is contained in IPM's filings with the SEC, including its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. You should refer to and consider these factors when relying on such forward-looking information. The company does not undertake and expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. On this call, management will refer to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure that when used in combination with GAAP results, provides investors with additional analytical tools to understand the company's operations. For adjusted EBITDA, management has provided a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in the earnings press release. which has been posted on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.ipm.com. I'm joined today by Jason Katz, IPM's Chief Executive Officer; Jared Mills, IPM's President; and Kara Jenny, IPM's Chief Financial Officer. After Jason's remarks, we will hear from Kara, and then we will conclude with investor questions that were sent in advance of today's call. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jason Katz. Jason, take it away.

Thanks, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to join us on today's call. We are off to a good start in 2026 with solid top line growth as total revenue increased by over 15%. The increase in revenue was fueled by a 19% increase in our core managed information technology services and a 78.4% increase in procurement revenue in the first quarter of 2026. Managed IT revenue for the quarter was driven by a mix of new customers and the expansion of services sold to existing customers. Procurement revenue can be uneven throughout the year as it is the result of our customers both replacing existing hardware as well as purchasing new hardware in connection with new projects, with projects are generally tied to customer budgets that are often higher early in the calendar year. We are gaining traction in our business development efforts as our team takes steps to become more efficient and effective in marketing our services in highly regulated businesses, particularly in the health care, legal, finance and banking markets, where we believe we have competitive advantages over our peers. Loss from operations decreased by over 42% compared to the prior year period. The year-over-year change from net income to net loss of 182% was primarily driven by the absence of a nonrecurring tax benefit recognized in the prior year period. Management believes that adjusted EBITDA is another useful measure in assessing our performance, which improved year-over-year by over 65% due to stronger revenue and continued operational efficiencies. We remain focused on advancing the integration of our comprehensive portfolio of IT solutions for managed IT security services, secure private cloud hosting, managed backup and disaster recovery, professional services, web hosting and other managed services. Additionally, we are expanding functionality through strategic partnerships that we believe accelerate our customers' AI capabilities and strengthening our long-term growth profile. We are collaborating with third parties to integrate artificial intelligence and predictive analytics capabilities into our platform, enabling IPM customers to leverage AI-driven insights within existing data environments. In addition, our partnership with MASORI Therapeutics is designed to support advanced AI in order to provide accelerated results that enhance automation and system integration capabilities, improving workflow efficiency and scalability. These partnerships are intended to strengthen our technology offerings, accelerate scalable growth, strengthen customer retention and enhance the long-term value we deliver across our platform for our client base. We are highly focused on being a trusted adviser, delivering successful outcomes and creating value for our customers. In addition to growing our business organically, we will continue to explore strategic opportunities, including potential mergers or acquisitions of other entities or assets that are synergistic to our businesses. We believe we are well positioned to integrate operations that are synergistic with our core operations that can be acquired at reasonable valuations to provide greater returns for our loyal stockholders. We look forward to building on our solid first quarter results throughout the rest of calendar 2026. In other developments during Q1 2026, we executed an extension of our existing Phoenix data center colocation license agreement with an industry-leading data center provider through August of 2032. We entered into a strategic partnership with MASORI Therapeutics, an advanced AI platform that accelerates results by reducing cost, complexity and time for small and medium AI models, allowing organizations to save significantly by decreasing necessary code development and providing AI-related benefits. We successfully achieved SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, a key milestone in our commitment to safeguard customer data and deliver trusted cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure solutions. I will now turn the call over to Kara Jenny, our Chief Financial Officer, for a review of the numbers. Kara?

Thank you, Jason. For the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, revenue totaled $6.4 million compared to $5.5 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025, an increase of 15.2%. This is attributed to an increase in core managed IT services of 19% compared to the prior year period as well as an increase in procurement of 78.4% compared to the prior year period. Total revenue by revenue component for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026, were as follows: Core managed information technology revenue, which includes revenue from our managed IT security services and managed backup and disaster recovery solutions was $3.4 million, an increase of 19% from Q1 2025. Procurement revenue was $1.7 million, an increase of 78.4% from Q1 2025. Professional services revenue was $483,000, a decrease of 33.5% from Q1 2025, and subscription revenue was $254,000, a decrease of 9.7% from Q1 2025. Loss from operations for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, was $0.8 million compared to $1.3 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Loss from operations for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, included $0.5 million of noncash expense consisting primarily of amortization and depreciation compared to $0.9 million of noncash expense for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Net loss for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, totaled $0.7 million compared to net income of $0.8 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Net income in 2025 was attributed to recording an income tax benefit during the first quarter of 2025 of approximately $2.1 million in connection with the transactions. Adjusted EBITDA for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, totaled negative $0.2 million compared to negative $0.5 million at March 31, 2025. As of March 31, 2026, the company had $8.1 million of cash and cash equivalents, including $1.0 million of restricted cash on its balance sheet and no long-term debt. We had cash used by operations of $0.2 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, compared to cash provided by operations of $1.7 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Deferred revenue was $4.7 million as of March 31, 2026, which will be recognized as revenue in future quarters as products and/or services are installed. During the first quarter of 2026, the final 50,000 shares designated under the stock repurchase plan dated May 8, 2025, were repurchased for $83,491. As of March 31, 2026, all shares of common stock available for repurchase under the plan have been repurchased. That concludes my remarks. At this time, we will open the call for investor submitted questions. Joe, please commence the Q&A.

Thanks, Kara. The first question, what differentiates your services offering in regulated markets such as health care, legal, finance and banking?

Joe, our DNA comes from having been the technology division of a bank, which means we were purpose-built to operate in highly regulated industries. Through our MSSP and vCISO offerings, we provide comprehensive 24/7 security coverage with oversight from teams that have deep experience operating in these environments. In addition, our secure managed private hosting capabilities give customers great control and peace of mind around data privacy at a time when those concerns are top of mind. To add to that, we announced in January of this year that we achieved SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, a key milestone in our ongoing commitment to safeguard customer data and delivering trusted cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure solutions.

Thanks, Jared. Next question. Where do you see the most compelling opportunities to accelerate growth in the back half of the year?

In the first half of the year, we focused on laying the groundwork by evaluating AI technologies and partners that can help our customers realize value from these tools. In the back half, our focus shifts to execution, expanding our range of AI solutions through further strategic partnerships and working with customers to adopt these solutions and leveraging our AI data readiness service to give them a strong foundation for successful AI initiatives. We're also continuing to enhance our core managed services and hosting platforms to support customers as their technology needs to grow and become more complex.

Thanks, Jason. Last question. Can you break down the contribution from new customers versus existing customers and how that mix is trending?

Sure. Our focus on adding new logos in highly regulated industries like legal, finance, health care, manufacturing and energy continues to be a strong push to this growing the MSSP and private cloud business lines. In addition, we're putting a lot of energy into penetrating our existing customer base with offers for additional managed service and security-related solutions. Strong customer response to these efforts during the first quarter turned into managed services revenue growth for IPM.

Great. That completes our investor submitted questions. I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Jason Katz, for closing remarks. Jason?

I'd like to thank everyone for your support and for joining us today. We're very grateful for your interest in our business. We look forward to updating the market on our progress as we continue to execute on our business plan. We will talk with you again to review our second quarter 2026 results. Have a great day.

Thank you. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.