Tribe Property Technologies Inc. ($TRBE)

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. My name is Nitin Saini, and I'll be the operator for today's call. Welcome to Tribe Property Technologies Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded. We will also be having a question-and-answer session at the end of the call. On our call today, we have Tribe's CEO, Joseph Nakhla; and the company's CFO, Scott Ullrich. I trust that everyone has received a copy of our financial results press release that was issued earlier today. Listeners are also encouraged to download a copy of our financial statements and management discussion and analysis on SEDAR+. Please note, portions of today's call, other than historical performance, include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current views and assumptions. Please review our press release and Tribe's reports filed on SEDAR+ for various risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. We use terms such as gross profit, gross margin, adjusted EBITDA and recurring revenue on this conference call, which are non-IFRS and non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definition set out in our management discussion and analysis. In addition, reconciliations between any adjusted EBITDA and net income is included in the press release this morning. Please note that all financial information is provided in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. With that, I will turn the call over to Tribe's CEO, Joseph Nakhla.

Good morning and afternoon, everyone. It's an absolute pleasure to be with you. As you will have seen in our financials, Tribe is proud to have announced that 2025 was as expected, an EBITDA positive year. It was a year that really was highlighted with revenue growth, national expansion from a foot point of view, expansion of both our condo and rental management. We're officially now the third largest national condo player in Canada and the second largest national player in the rental management. So despite the different economic constraints, we've been able to forge along with our plans. We were able to, as you'll have seen that, also expand significantly our single-unit rental management business, more on that in a second about why culturally and economically, this has been a great move for us, continues to grow and it keeps expanding. We obviously completed a $5.75 million public offering with an additional $1.1 million private placement. The $1.1 million was completely done by our insiders, including our management team and the $5.7 million we also participated in. We obviously expanded our presence greatly in the GTA market with a Greater Toronto area. We actually -- through '25, we're able to actually diversify our income from both rental versus condo and geographically as well, where almost half of our revenue now comes from Ontario, which is a big milestone for us. And as you'll hear later, we've also were able to secure a large replacement senior loan facility. More of that will be coming from Scott to give you more insight on, but it's fantastic terms, really, really help the company, enable the company both in conserving cash due to the lower cost of borrowing, but also given us a lot more utility to be able to go out there and be more aggressive and active in the market. So '25 really just a big banner year when it comes to the fact that we turned significantly, and Scott will walk you through the financials in details, but that we've turned that corner that we anticipated. We made a massive investment to become a national player, made a massive investment to also build a back office that supports all the different rental and condo needs in Canada. And obviously, that took quite a bit of capital. We placed it. We got it in place, and we did say that '25 was going to be the turning point. And obviously, our big push now '26 is to get to you by the end of it, hopefully, within this year, we'll get to this point of being a cash flow positive company. We're almost there, and we're working very, very hard on that and expanding our gross margin, expanding our footprint and organic growth as well. And I'll be talking about that in a second. But with this good news, I'll hand it over to Scott, who and his team have done a fantastic job mining the shop. Go ahead, Scott.

Thank you, Joseph. On the revenue front, as Joseph had mentioned, our revenue was up to $32.7 million in 2025. This is a 15.6% year-over-year improvement, driven obviously by organic growth, but as well from having a full year's worth of revenue from our DMS group of companies and a partial year from Ace Agencies, which was an acquisition we did in June of 2025. Both of our segments grew. Software and services were up 17.2% with our transactional revenue up 8.8%. And again, as Joseph mentioned, our margin has improved significantly. Our gross profit grew 26% to $14.4 million, which was faster than our top line growth, as I mentioned, 15.6%, again, showing positive operating leverage and our cost of services grew by only 8.7%, while, as I mentioned, our revenue was 15.6%. So our cost structure is scaling very well. On the profitability side, our gross margin actually expanded 350 basis points to 44%, further evidence of our operating leverage as revenue for us is scaling. And our adjusted EBITDA this year, $200,000 has a positive EBITDA for the first time. It's a 110% improvement from last year's negative $1.9 million in EBITDA. The 110% improvement, again, was driven by our gross margin expansion and our SG&A discipline and efficiencies. On the debt side, our total debt in 2025 -- pardon me, our total debt in 2025 was reduced by 24% with our vendor take-back debt being reduced 65% from $4.3 million to $1.5 million. And of that $1.5 million remaining, $1 million of that will be paid in 2026 and the remainder will be paid off in 2027. Our credit facility was reduced 7%, down to $10.2 million. With our new banking facility, we actually have a facility up to $15 million, $3 million for operating and $12 million for M&A. And the amortization of that M&A portion in this facility has been increased from 5 years to 10 years, so significantly assisting the improvement in our cash flow. And our lease obligations were down 30% due primarily to the downsizing of a number of our offices, in particular, our Victoria, Kamloops and our Cambridge offices. And we have 2 leases coming up in the GTA in 2026, and we anticipate further efficiencies there. I can do the next slide. Yes. Here, a little bit of repetition here, but I just wanted to highlight all the positive things that have happened with Tribe in 2025. Our total revenue, as I mentioned, $32.7 million, up from $28.3 million last year, a 15.6% improvement. Gross profit, again, up from -- up to $14.4 million from $11.4 million, a 26% improvement. Adjusted EBITDA, actually 110% improvement up to $218,000 positive. Our net loss is still -- we had a net loss of $4.5 million, but that was a significant improvement of 40% over last year's $7.5 million. Of that $4.5 million, approximately $2.8 million of that was depreciation and amortization, so a noncash item and approximately $1.3 million of that net loss was interest expense. Vendor takeback, as I mentioned, $1.5 million, a 65% improvement from $4.3 million last year. And our net debt is $12.5 million, down from $16.1 million last year. Working capital, we're still in a deficit position, $12.5 million, but an improvement from $14.8 million. And part of that working capital deficit is due to our entire debt facility being classified as current, even though approximately $10 million of that is going to be amortized over 10 years. And then finally, our book value per share, $0.10, up from $0.07 last year, so a 55% improvement there. And I guess with that, I will turn it back to you, Joseph.

Thanks, Scott. Great job again. So just to kind of reposition the company in terms of people's minds, as you know, we are essentially a tech-backed services platform that goes out and satisfies all the needs from all the different strata and condo service providers or people that need the service on the rental management, institutional rental heavily, including single-unit rental. Obviously, we do some commercial, and we do a lot of new construction projects. So we call that the software and service revenue. We actually lease our software, and we actually have a recurring revenue coming in. And last year, it was up about 81.5% of our total revenue, very steady, very heavily dependent on that. And then we have additional revenue streams that we've always talked about, whereby due to the amount of data and the position we have between the operation of the community and the people that live in the community, we can actually connect the dots, lower operating expenses for them and actually sell further products and services that makes sense. They tend to be higher gross margin products, slightly seasonal depending on the activities going on, rental geography. There's multitude of reasons why this could fluctuate up and down. However, it is an increase of about 8.8% from last year. And that's about, like I said, about 19% of our revenue. And we keep adding more and more of those services and some work really well. Some, obviously, we pilot them to see the market. You'll see more of that in the next couple of quarters here, whereby there actually a couple of pilots that actually worked out quite well and we'll be going a little bit more aggressive in taking them out to our national footprint. We have done quite a bit. Scott had just shared with the group the fact that our operating expenses are actually scaling up nicely as it pertains to allowing our revenue to outrun it, which is exactly what we want to do with our cost of goods. And one of the big things we wanted to do this year is obviously add to our leadership and bring in more muscle essentially in the operations to help take in historically what was almost 12 companies operating under 1 umbrella down to 2 operating companies now with the third being a public company. So we've added Jerome Samuels, a significant amount of experience with Rogers Communications as an executive overseeing a lot of operations, M&A integrations and digital transformation. And he's taken over all of our operations here. He's been with us now for 3 months and going really well. He's brought in quite a bit of discipline around, not only the integration process that we do, but also standardizing our product offering across the country for both rental and condos. With that, obviously, comes a significant amount of improvement to the cost of goods, which you're starting to see now. We're getting to that mid-40s gross margin, which we anticipate will be well on its way to 50% as we continue to improve some of these projects that we're working on. We are making a big push in AI. I know everybody is talking about AI right now. We see it mostly impacting our gross margin by way of helping us from a cost of goods, onboarding buildings quicker, providing really, really good tools to connect the different service providers within our ecosystem in the marketplace to our customers and actually driving a lot of transactions that help our homeowners and obviously generate revenue for us. So we're working across our platform right now to really continue to make that big push with AI being the backbone of our back office. The big advantage in case you're wondering that we have is, a, we have arguably the largest platform of condo management and rental management now in the country. Nobody has a platform like ours that serves both types of customers, but the amount of data that we're sitting on is incredible. And as everybody would know, having one operating system with all the data stack on it and having AI now to have developed and gone as far as it has in the past 2 years is just a massive advantage for us to really put product and service in front of our customers. And we're starting to see the improvement of that from our view, which really means more revenue and more gross margin improvement without having to staff up to the size that we did before. Next slide, please. So a quick high level. I mean, we have been -- we've joined the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. They wanted to add someone within our knowledge base and our data stack to their affordable housing committee, which is a large policy committee that actually makes recommendations to the different politicians and obviously, all of the housing initiatives. So we've been added to that. And our goal there and our really role there is to bring in the data that speaks to, not only affordability through construction, which obviously a lot of developers can add a lot of -- shed a lot of light to, but really it's post when people live in these communities, post completion. That is -- we are the only member of that committee that actually can shed light on that. And our goal there is to really explain the affordability isn't just a function of construction only and how much per square foot house is available or a condo available rental or ownership. But our goal is to really shed light on the operating expenses post completion. And I just wanted to -- for those that don't follow the stuff really closely, I want you to know that Build Canada or BCH, Build Canada Homes, is an initiative that was announced like everybody else, I was very skeptical of going in, learning about these initiatives. Are they going to be where the rotor hits the road? And I'm actually quite impressed with their -- with the activities. They're really to build affordable homes is obviously a massive step that they've taken, finance affordable homes, so work through mechanics that allow these homes to be more financeable and then catalyze the housing industry by introducing programs and products that really can help connect the demand with the supply. And that includes things like even improving the building code or at least taking some of the red tape that doesn't make sense on the building code that's just adding more costs. But what's really interesting about these initiatives that affect us is because now, a, we're a place thankfully to be able to influence this, but also haven't looked at what they're proposing and what they're actually putting in place. There's a number of activities, including waiving HST and GST on single -- on condos that are for single -- for first-time buyers that are $1 million or less. That's up to $130,000 discount essentially if you were to make a move. Some of the stuff we haven't seen the impact of because they're just going to the market and they're contemplating putting that at the national footprint. They're also making some really interesting moves in terms of what really impacts us. And I think that's a really good move just overall for the health of the market is allowing developers to defer payment of HST and GST depending on where they are on units that can actually -- they can take to the market on rent. So just to be very direct and specific from an example point of view, there are a lot of inventory sitting close empty brand-new, where developers actually would like to rent it out. But the moment they take it up to the market to rent, there's actually an GST and HST liability. So what we're speaking with the government on and the government is actually going to be piloting that actually, it's well on its way now is to actually defer that for 2 years. And what that allows a company like us to do is work with these developers who already have 105-plus relationships with those developers to actually be able to convert that into rental inventory, take it to the market without them having to have that liability. It's deferred for 2 years. So after 2 years, they can actually sell that inventory back into the condo market, which I think is a really, really good move. That's going to add a significant amount of single unit availability in the market and a company like us, with the acquisition that we've made and the fact that we have that as a national footprint now, will really benefit from that fit to the market and will translate into transactional revenue for us and recurring revenue as well. So a lot of good policy changes that are occurring. I am hopeful that, that's going to be the case. As you would probably know, in case you don't, we're not dependent on new construction. We have a significant amount of revenue that comes from existing buildings. We do manage buildings in a healthier way. These buildings operating expenses are much better than peers in the market. We usually speak a little bit about that. But today, we're just staying high level from a financial point of view. But the buildings that we manage are better suited operationally in terms of lowering their CapEx and being ready for a rainy day. And that help is just generating more organic leads for us to actually convert into customers for us. So that's all driving in the right direction, even though it looks like there's friction in the sales transactions, it really doesn't impact us directly every day. Next slide, please. And that's really our competitive advantage is this monster relationships that we have with a long list of real estate developers building nationwide. We obviously have a significant number of -- we've announced even a really big platform that we developed in '25 for our rental -- institutional rental buildings, which expanded the number of types of verticals that we play in when it comes to housing and even commercial management. So we keep expanding and growing all of our footprint and all those different types of services that we offer. And then we have just basically depth of experience. We keep accumulating great, great talent that comes in there. And Scott was dealt as a legend of real estate in Canada, something that he's obviously earned over decades of great service to the industry, but also accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge that helps us guide us as an operator in our organization. So we're very fortunate to be in a really well-positioned place to continue to grow our revenue, improve our profitability and actually take advantage of what I still think is an absolute greenfield of a market. So '26, head down, continue to execute, focus on profitable operations. That's all we speak about in the organization is to ensure that we have a healthy operating cost structure and bring in organic revenue, get to positive cash generation from operations in 2026. I've always signaled that from a long time ago that we will eventually get there late '26. Continue to obviously leverage our fact that we're full out Canadian brand now across all of the different service assets that we support and then continue to invest in our AI and products, and that really is focused on the cost of goods improvement. We do see that 45% moving to 50% and higher. I do think a fully baked well-oiled machine can get to mid-50s and higher in terms of margin in our business, which I think is a very, very healthy unparallel to anybody else in the industry. Everybody else is operating at about 35%. So for us to get to the 50s and higher would be a big goal for us. And we are focused on organic growth. We've got a number of marketing campaigns that we're expanding now. Now that we've taken all the brands that we've acquired over the years and consolidated them and now Tribe is a brand that's going to be very visible in all the markets we're operating in and taking advantage of all the content that we generate and have generated over the years. Okay. With that being said, I'll open it up for any questions, if there's any.

Our first question comes from Suthan Sukumar of Stifel.

Sorry, this is Essey speaking on behalf of Suthan. Great. I guess, firstly, a question here with regards to new build deliveries. I was wondering what the incremental changes were versus your update last quarter for new build deliveries? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Any color on that would be good there.

Good question. Thank you. We are still very active in new build. We are the go-to company as it pertains to anybody building complex large developments. And what people need to understand, and it's a fair question, is things that broke ground 5 years ago, 6 years ago, 4 years ago are actually completing now. They're not really impacted by interest rates or any of the policy changes. So we're actually seeing activity in that space. It's still their buildings have to come up. We have a number of contracts. I'm talking 7 figures of recurring revenue of contracts that are actually on the docket that are just -- we're just onboarding basically that this build is complete. So that's looking still the same in terms of our expectation that they will complete. Once a developer has borrowed money to start construction, probably sold in many cases, especially in the West, more than 70% of the inventory, that developer has to deliver these communities and these communities have to be managed. And it's almost irrelevant to what else is going on. I think the doom and gloom that sometimes we hear in the media is very specific to starting a brand-new project, which we do recognize the stuff that would have completed 3, 4, 5 years from now have actually stalled due to the lack of -- well, the interest rates and obviously, lack of comfort from a direction point of view for the government, which I think is actually settling. So the takeaways are stuff that was started 3 years ago, 2 years ago, 4 years ago, are all going to complete, which is still a part of our business. There's still big large development projects that have to be completed. The new construction that's being converted to rental with some of the initiatives, policy initiatives I spoke about earlier are actually happening. So that rental inventory is going to come to the market, and we're set up a multitude of projects to drive that. So new construction is still there. It's not at the level that it was maybe 10 years ago or 8 years ago.

Got it. No, that's perfect. Second question is with regards to the displacement market. Similar to last question, can we get an update on just how that is progressing? I know you mentioned last quarter that win rates were sustaining, I think, at around 30%. And should we expect the displacement opportunity to drive organic growth in the year? And if I could just add on top of that in terms of organic revenue contribution for the year, is that going to be low- to mid-double digits or closer to single digits, if you can add...

Yes. We're still aiming for a double-digit organic growth year-over-year. The activity there is the displacement for those that don't understand it or may not be clear is what we call basically a community leaving its current service provider and coming to us due to multitude of reasons, mostly the fact that we offer them all of our software and technology plus all the insights that they get in terms of how the building health is. We are seeing more activity on that. And what I was speaking to when I said we've integrated all of our organizations and actually [ quad ] them into 3 operating companies. Our goal there specifically is to leverage and get the company ready to do big marketing campaigns in the markets that we're operating under one brand, and that's actually starting to yield some results for us. And -- but you'll see a lot more activity on that in the second and third quarter of this year. So organic growth is going to come from mostly displacement and some new construction that's completed that was contracted previously.

Okay. Perfect. And then just lastly, as it pertains to the rental side of the business, maybe more generally, what are some targets? And what phase are you in with regards to its rollout? And maybe as well, perhaps more importantly, what's the broader revenue opportunity for this part of the business? And is monetization going to look similar to traditional condo communities or maybe something else?

Our rental business is more profitable than our condo business. The challenges with rental businesses usually come from -- on the institutional side, usually come from the fact that it's relationship heads. So you got to go out there and have an enterprise or institutional relationship with a big enterprise provider, a big REIT or what have you. And we sit as good as any in the country, and that's why we've grown to become the second largest now, especially due to acquisitions, including DMS, which was a big acquisition we've made out of Ontario. So we're really well positioned there. On the single-unit rental, which is even arguably more -- arguably, it is more profitable even than the institutional rental, that's actually when we take over a building, let's say, brand-new or existing and the owners of specific single-unit condos actually are seeking our services now. They didn't know about the fact that we offer it now they can read about it. And they actually move away from either self-managing or managing with a third-party company and giving it to us as a big machine that can manage that for them. That's even arguably more profitable than any other line of business that we do. And that's becoming more and more difficult for single unit owners to actually operate. So they're actually looking for companies like us. And then there's this world of condo completion developers that are sitting on inventory that hasn't sold to be converted. So monetization strategy, we like that business. We like the gross margin profile of it quite a bit. We're very good at it. We've got tools that are -- that give us an edge over anybody else in the space. It is fragmented. So you'll see us be more active. The big milestone I can tell you in '25 is single unit rental grew almost 300%. That's organic and nonorganic year-over-year, but the revenue-generating from our rental business overall grew to almost -- become almost 50% of our total revenue. And that's a monster of a diversification for the business. So it's my long-winded way of saying, we like rental. We do -- we see the monetization opportunities there as very, very high gross margin. We think the transactional part of this business is not as -- the upside is not as big as condo because condo people that live in a condo, they live there, they're going to be there for a long time, and they spend a lot more money on the condo. So there's a lot more transactional opportunities. However, overall, we love the rental business, and it goes hand-in-hand with everything we're offering. We think the right play, and I think we're seeing it more and more in the conversations I'm having, we think big property management, national players will need to be in all these businesses to be able to leverage the scale that exists. Others haven't done it because the expertise is different, and it requires a big investment to make, which we've already made. And we just like the fact that we're the first to leap into that space, and we think we can see why it's difficult for others, but it's taken us a little bit, but we're here now in terms of profitability.

We now have a few questions sent in from analysts. Our first set of questions come from Gianluca Tucci of Haywood Securities. His first question asked, how should we think about depreciation and amortization over the next few years? When do you expect the business to become cash flow positive?

Maybe I'll hand that over to you, Scott.

Yes, let me take that one. So depreciation amortization, well, I would say we expect that to be in line with previous quarters. It's somewhat dependent on future acquisitions. But apart from acquisitions, we're not anticipating any major fixed asset additions in 2026. So there should be a slight decline in depreciation and amortization. And you're asking about -- I believe you said about cash flow. We forecast to be cash flow positive late 2026, early 2027.

Thank you, Scott. Gianluca's second question asked, with the new CIBC facility in place, how are you balancing new acquisitions versus focusing on integration? What type of acquisitions are you targeting? And how do you plan to allocate the capital this year?

Well, we've got some dry powder. We obviously want to leverage and allow our operating team to continue to improve the gross margin as they have done a really good job the last couple of quarters. So we're cautious and selective in what we jump on from an M&A point of view. We're always open for business. We're always looking at deals. There's a very specific profile that we think satisfies our investment thesis. There's less and less of those. This is the truth. And the fact that we're experiencing growth and having a very strong hold in the markets we're operating in, it doesn't necessarily mean that's how it is for everybody else. So we think that will yield and squeeze opportunities for us to make moves when there is opportunities. But I would say our focus right now is to get the -- that growth engine -- organic growth engine really humming across the country. It's very strong in specific markets, but we want to make that a national play. And I think that's our biggest focus. And then -- but we are open for business from an M&A point of view, always talking.

Our next set of questions come from Daniel Rosenberg of Paradigm Capital. His first question asked, last quarter, you mentioned trading up to some higher-margin contracts. Can you expand on the growth expectations and the target margin profile for 2026?

Thank you, Daniel, for paying attention. Yes, a big part of what we do is because of the data stack that we have, we can trade up. We can see and project challenging accounts that do deliver lower gross margin. And if they're not necessarily want to play by the playbook that we have, we do trade up. So we will fire some customers and acquire others to replace them. And that will always be the case, especially as the market becomes a little bit more requiring discipline from those people that are staying in the driving seat of these buildings, buildings just like everything else, assets, you have to take care of them, and you have to listen to experts like us that are telling you how these buildings should be managed. So organic growth is well on its way this year. We're quite pleased with it. There will be some trade ups as well, especially when you rebrand and have a thesis around how you want buildings to be, whether it's on the rental side or the condo side across the country. But we're quite pleased with that. There's still a high level of demand on our service, a lot of inbound leads coming our way and the conversion rate is still very similar to what we had before. We always have the price lever to pull. We are not the cheapest. We are -- we do provide amazing service for the value that we deliver, but we do have that lever available to us, and we reserve the right to use that at any point we want to win the bigger chunks of business, but we're very selective at that point.

Daniel's second question asked, with the condo market where it stands, how is the company looking to balance revenue from new builds compared to growth in existing buildings?

Thank you, Daniel. I kind of touched on that a little bit before. Our majority of new revenue is likely coming to -- especially the last couple of quarters has come from existing communities that are converted to us. There's still, as I mentioned earlier, a good number of contracted ready-to-go buildings that are coming through every quarter. They're constructed, they're ready to go. So -- and we have the agreement. So we just essentially start adding the MRR to -- and onboard them and add the MRR to our revenue. So that will continue to be there. And please refer to my comments earlier about the nuances of that. And then from a new policy point of view, as I mentioned earlier, I am very hopeful. I'm very bullish on this government's genuine attempt to really kick -- fix the supply and demand issue that we've struggled with because it's thinking of it for a change in a very, very, very constructive way. They actually are looking to partner with developers and give genuine tools to operators like us and people that are building and even people that are constructing, giving them the tools to lower their -- genuinely lower their operating expenses and actually deliver a profitable phase of project that wasn't there maybe even 6 or 12 months ago. So I'm very, very buoyant on that. And I think we're very well positioned to not only influence this policy, but take advantage by helping Canada essentially deliver affordable housing and manage it for them. So I think overall, the country is doing the right moves. There's no doubt there's uncertainty up in there. We're not really affected by it. I've always said it, and I'll continue to say it, we're pandemic-proof, interest rate proof, recession-proof. That's the business we chose. It's difficult, but we like the fact that we can just incrementally keep improving our gross margin, our revenue and obviously, our profitability profile. So we've never been healthier and '26 is another inflection point for the company.

Thank you, Joseph. There are now no further questions. I will now pass the call back to Joseph for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for taking interest. I recognize there's a lot of uncertainty up in the market. All we've done is just continue to do what we said we were going to do. 2025 was an inflection point in terms of turning the company from a national decentralized company to a national footprint from a size point of view and getting to the EBITDA positive, now that our focus is to get to cash generation while we've made a monster dent in our debt and getting even a healthier place. This is the way people are going to live for decades to come. That is the new norm, and we're positioned to be the most advanced, arguably the most, not only technologically advanced, but also from a footprint and service delivery in the verticals that we service. We're a unique company in the space, and that's always echoed to us by those that are looking at us. So watch us to be very active in the market in terms of our brand showing up all across the country, continuing to grow and a big push towards cash flow -- being cash flow positive. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you soon.