Intelligent Protection Management Corp. (IPM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Q2 2026 Financial Results Conference Call for Intelligent Protection Management Corp. better known as IPM for the quarter ended on June 30, 2026. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. Let me turn the floor over to Joe Diaz 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 second quarter ended June 30, 2026. And -- as the operator indicated, my name is Joe Diaz. I'm with Lytham Partners. We are the Investor Relations representative for IP. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings results press release, which was issued after the close of 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, IPMs relationship with its customers as well as market and potential growth opportunities. In addition, management may make additional 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, 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 IPMs 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 and required by applicable 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 measure in the earnings press release, which was posted on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.ipm.com. I am joined today by Jason Katz, IPM's Chief Executive Officer; Jared Mills, IPM's President; and Kara Jenny, IPM CFO. After Jason's remarks, we will hear from Kara, 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.

The second quarter of 2026 reinforced what we believe is becoming increasingly clear. IPM is evolving into a higher-value enterprise infrastructure-focused company built around recurring managed services enterprise cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure. While this quarter's results reflected temporary supply chain disruptions that delayed revenue recognition and compressed margins on 1 large customer order, the underlying fundamentals of the business continue to improve. During the quarter, demand remained healthy. New customer additions remained robust. Our recurring revenue base continued to expand, our customer pipeline continue to grow. And perhaps most importantly, the secular trends driving our business have never been stronger. Today, organizations are facing 3 transformational technology priorities simultaneously. First, cybersecurity has become mission-critical. Second, enterprises continue migrating workloads into secure cloud environments. And third, artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the enterprise computing landscape. We operate at the intersection of all 3. As a result, we believe our position in the enterprise infrastructure landscape creates a compelling long-term growth opportunity. During the second quarter, revenue increased nearly 13% to $6.5 million, while revenue in the first half of 2026 increased 14% to $12.8 million. This increase reflects sustained demand for secure, scalable managed technology solutions across highly regulated industries. Top line growth itself is extremely important and the quality of growth continues to be driven by new customer additions and expanded services sold to existing clients. It's important to remember that bookings, billings and GAAP revenue each measure different aspects of our business. Bookings reflect customer commitments and billings reflect amounts invoiced to customers. Under GAAP, however, revenue is recognized only when we satisfy our performance obligations and transfer control of the promised goods or services to the customer. As a result, there can be a timing difference between when we book or bill a customer and when that activity is recognized as revenue. Those amounts are recorded as deferred revenue on our balance sheet and are recognized as GAAP revenue over time as the related services are delivered or contractual obligations are fulfilled. As of June 30, 2026, deferred revenue was $4.5 million compared to $3.9 million at December 31, 2025. Our managed information technology business, the foundation of our company grew more than 8% year-over-year. We believe this recurring revenue business generates long-term customer relationships, predictable cash flows and multiple opportunities to expand wallet share over time. At this point, let me turn the call over to Kara Jenny, our Chief Financial Officer, for a review of the 3- and 6-month financial results. Kara?

Thank you, Jason. For the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, total revenue increased by approximately 13% to $6.5 million from $5.7 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. This increase was driven by increased management information technology revenue attributed to both new customers as well as the expansion of services sold to existing customers. and an increase in procurement revenue related to the sale of AI-related equipment to customers, partially offset by decreases in professional services revenue and subscription revenue. . Total revenue by revenue component for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, was as follows: managed IT technology revenue, which consists of revenue from our managed IT security services and managed IT backup and disaster solutions as well as web hosting, was $3.8 million, an increase of $8.4 million from Q2 2025. The procurement revenue was $2 million, an increase of 64% from Q2 2025. Professional services revenue was $363,000 a decrease of 47.3% from Q2 2025. And subscription revenue was $249,000, a decrease of 10.5% from Q2 2025. Revenue from NewtekOne, a related party and a large customer was impacted by its ongoing initiatives to reduce information technology spending. We partially offset this decline in revenue through growth in recurring revenue from customers who are not related parties, including the addition of new customer relationships and expanding service contracts during the period. During the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, we experienced supply chain constraints affecting the availability of memory, CPU and GPU components. These constraints extended product lead times compared to historical levels, resulting in delays between customer bookings and product shipments. As a result, a portion of booked orders during the quarter remained unrecognized as revenue pending fulfillment and delivery for which we expect to recognize in future quarters as the underlying products and services are shipped and installed. In addition, during the quarter, a significant customer order was delayed and fulfilled across 2 reporting periods due to supply chain constraints affecting both our vendor and distribution channel. These constraints alter the cost structure associated with fulfilling the order. The initial shipment completed in the first quarter of 2026 was recognized at expected margins while the subsequent shipment completed during the second quarter incurred a higher component in freight costs, resulting in a loss on that portion of the order. As a consequence, the combined order resulted in a loss, which contributed to the increase in cost of revenue described below and negatively impacted our results of operations for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026. Net loss for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, totaled $1.4 million compared to net loss of $1.1 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026 and totaled negative $0.6 million compared to negative $0.4 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. Cash used in operations of $0.6 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, compared to cash used in operations of $0.9 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, primarily related to our sourcing of inventory in connection with the increase in procurement revenue. Deferred revenue was $4.5 million as of June 30, which will be recognized as revenue in future quarters as product and/or services are installed. And at June 30, we had $7.5 million of cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet and no long-term debt. For the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, total revenue increased by 14% to $12.8 million from $11.2 million for the comparable 6-month period in 2025. The increase was driven by increased management information technology revenue attributed to both new customers as well as the expansion of services sold to existing customers and an increase in procurement revenue related to the sale of AI equipment to customers, partially offset by decreases in professional services revenue and subscription revenue. For the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, revenue totaled $12.8 million compared to $11.2 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025, an increase of 14%. The primarily attributed to an increase in our managed IT services of 9% compared to the prior period as well as an increase in procurement revenue of 70% compared to the prior year period. Net loss for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, totaled $2 million compared to a net loss of $0.2 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, totaled negative $0.8 million compared to negative $0.9 million, respectively, for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025. Cash used by operations of $0.8 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026 compared to cash provided by operations of $0.9 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025, primarily related to our sourcing of inventory in connection with the increased procurement revenue. That concludes my review. I will turn the call back to Jason.

Our objective has never been simply to sell technology. The objective is to become a strategic technology partner that manages increasingly larger portions of our customers' IT environments. That creates recurring revenue, higher customer retention, stronger operating leverage and greater lifetime customer value. Those are the characteristics that build durable enterprise value. Another major growth driver is infrastructure. We continue to see customers accelerate investments in compute infrastructure required to deploy applications. Procurement revenue increased 64% during the quarter compared to the prior year period, driven primarily by customers investing in service, storage and infrastructure supporting business and AI applications. Although procurement revenue is inherently project-based, it often serves as the entry point into long-term managed service relationships. As customers expand their technology footprint, they increasingly require ongoing cybersecurity, cloud management, monitoring, disaster recovery and managed IT support. In other words, today's infrastructure deployment frequently becomes tomorrow's recurring revenue customer. That is exactly the type of customer life cycle we are building. As Kara noted, 1 issue that impacted the industry during the quarter with supply chain availability, demand significantly exceeded component availability from memory, CPUs and GPUs. Important point is that the customer demand did not weaken, orders were booked. Customers remain committed. Revenue recognition was simply delayed because products could not be delivered and installed before the end of the quarter. Those revenues remain in our pipeline and will be recognized as fulfillment occurs in the coming quarters. We've already responded by broadening our supplier ecosystem, expanding relationships with distributors and manufacturers and improving procurement flexibility. These actions should reduce execution risk while improving our ability to respond as AI infrastructure demand continues to accelerate. The quarter also included an unusual margin impact associated with 1 large customer order fulfilled across 2 reporting periods. Changes in component pricing and freight costs resulted in a lower-than-expected gross margin on that project. We view this as an isolated operational event, not a structural change in our pricing model or competitive positioning. Our balance sheet remains another important differentiator. We ended the quarter with approximately $7.5 million in cash and no long-term debt. In today's environment, financial flexibility is a competitive advantage. It enables us to invest organically, while simultaneously evaluating strategic acquisitions that can accelerate our growth strategy. Capital allocation remains disciplined and focused on maximizing long-term stockholder returns. Our priorities are straightforward. First, invest in initiatives that expand recurring revenue and increase customer lifetime value. Second, pursue strategic acquisitions that strengthen our technology platform expand geographic reach or add complementary capabilities; and third, maintain a conservative balance sheet that preserves financial flexibility. We believe this disciplined approach positions us to create stockholder value over time. As we've discussed previously, consolidation opportunities continue to emerge throughout the managed services, cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure markets. Many smaller providers possess attractive customer relationships, but lack the scale, infrastructure and capital necessary to compete effectively. With our strong balance sheet, proven operating platform and integration experience, we believe IPM is well positioned to act as a consolidator when attractive opportunities arise. We are interested in businesses that increase recurring revenue, enhance our technology capabilities and generate attractive long-term returns on invested capital. Our objective with acquisitions is not simply to become larger, but to become a higher-quality business. Ultimately, we believe investors should evaluate IPM based on the long-term trajectory of the business rather than quarterly fluctuations. We believe IPM is positioned to generate sustainable growth, expand profitability over time and create meaningful long-term value for our stockholders. Based on our current outlook and the execution plan we laid out at the start of the year, our goal remains to be positive adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter. I'd like to thank our employees for their outstanding execution our customers for their continued confidence and our stockholders for their ongoing support. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and remain confident in our ability to build a significantly larger and more valuable company.

We will now answer a number of questions that have been submitted via e-mail by investors. The first question is demand remains healthy and new customer additions were robust. Can you provide more detail on the types of customers driving that growth? Can you talk about your traction in developing new accounts in the highly regulated industries, including legal, health care and others. I'll send that to Jared.

Thank you, Joe. We are continuing our successful efforts of leveraging a customer we have to acquire customers. With our strength in highly regulated industries and our current reporter of customers, we've leveraged customer case studies and referrals to go after additional accounts in each vertical area. During the reporting period, we had specific success in legal and finance and a strong pipeline in health care, energy, private equity and manufacturing and retail.

Question number two, revenue continues to grow, but it looks like there was a decrease in revenue from a related party. How should we think about that going forward? And what does that mean for the business? Again, I'll send it to Jason.

Well, revenue from NewtekOne, a related party decreased for the quarter in connection with their ongoing initiatives to reduce their information technology spend. While they are a very important customer, they are just 1 piece of the business, and we demonstrated this quarter, we remain dedicated to not just meeting their evolving needs, but growing the overall business.