Evolv Technologies - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 revenue was $42.9M, up 57% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA was $5.1M (12% margin); ARR ended at $117.2M (+25% YoY), while GAAP net loss narrowed to $(1.8)M or $(0.01) per share.
• Results materially beat Wall Street: revenue beat by ~$9.2M vs consensus ($33.68M*) and Primary EPS beat by $0.05 (actual −$0.02 vs −$0.07*) [GetEstimates].
• 2025 guidance raised: revenue to $142–$145M (37–40% growth) from $132–$135M; adjusted EBITDA margin raised to high single digits; Q4 cash flow positive reiterated.
• Management signaled an inflection: ARR growth to outpace revenue in 2026; preliminary FY26 revenue $160–$165M and ARR growth ≥20%, supported by direct purchase fulfillment and pricing shifts that move $5–$10M from one-time to ARR/RPO.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong top-line beat with revenue +57% YoY to $42.9M and fourth consecutive positive adjusted EBITDA (12% margin), highlighting operating leverage.
• Strategic progress: direct purchase fulfillment capturing 100% ARPU, software repricing to emphasize ARR, and new contract manufacturing partnership with Plexus to scale and lower COGS over time.
• Product momentum: Expedite added 12 customers in Q3 and has screened 1M+ bags since launch; early deployments show ~2% alert rates in education, improving throughput and experience.
  “We reported our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 12% in Q3.”
  “We now capture 100% of the average revenue per unit, or ARPU.”

What Went Wrong

• Gross margin compression: GAAP gross margin fell to 49.7% (from 57.8% LY) and adjusted gross margin to 50.6% (from 64.1%), driven by fulfillment mix shift, subscale Expedite costs, and ~$3M one-time inventory/service adjustments.
• Heavy reliance on non-recurring items this quarter: ~$7.5M from product on largest education deal (~$3M), IP license/other (~$3M), and short-term rentals (~$1.5M), making normalized revenue ~$35–$36M (+~30% YoY).
• Net profit margin still negative at (4.2)%; while improved versus prior quarters, the model remains in transition with margins pressured near-term by fulfillment changes and new product scaling.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon and welcome to the Evolv Technology Third Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Brian Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for Evolv Technology. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Norris (Senior VP of Finance and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Megan, and good afternoon. Welcome to today's call. I'm joined by John Kedzierski, our President and CEO, and Chris Kutsor, our CFO. Earlier today, after market close, we issued a press release detailing our Third Quarter 2025 Results and full year outlook. The release is filed with the SEC and available on the Investor Relations section of our website, where you will also find a supplementary slide highlighting the benefits of our transition to our direct distribution model, which we'll reference during the call. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements relate to our current expectations and views of future events, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our future operations, growth and financial results, our potential for growth and ability to gain new customers, demand for our products and offerings, and our ability to meet our business outlook. All forward-looking statements are subject to material risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, some of which are beyond our control. Actual events or financial results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements because of a number of risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, the risk factors set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the SEC on April 28, 2025, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2025, filed with the SEC earlier today.

The forward-looking statements made today represent our views as of November 13, 2025. Although we believe the expectations reflected in these statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that future results, performance, or the events and circumstances reflected therein will be achieved or will occur. Except as may be required by applicable law, we disclaim any obligation to update them to reflect future events or circumstances. Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide additional insights for investors. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. These measures include adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted earnings, and adjusted earnings per diluted share.

Reconciliations between these non-GAAP measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our press release issued today. Please note that our definition of these measures may differ from similarly titled metrics presented by other companies. We will be discussing key operating metrics such as annual recurring revenue or ARR, remaining performance obligation or RPO, both of which we believe are helpful to investors in understanding the progress we are making as a business. One last item, we have an active IR schedule coming up, including the Craig-Hallum Alpha Select Conference next week in New York, and two events in December, the UBS Technology Conference in Scottsdale and the Northland Capital Conference, which is being held virtually. We will also be on the road this quarter at several financial centers across the country. For more information, please contact me at [email protected].

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Our results throughout the year demonstrate meaningful progress toward greater consistency and stability across the organization. We are moving closer to our goal of building a scalable, high-growth business with predictable performance. Our focus remains on disciplined execution and an unwavering commitment to our customer's success. Our Q3 results reflect the latest steps on that journey. Revenue was $42.9 million, up 57% year-over-year, driven by strong new customer acquisition and expanded deployments within existing customers, as well as higher one-time product revenue associated with certain customer wins, including the largest customer contract in the company's history. We have also benefited from the completion of certain short-term subscription contracts, including the Premier International Soccer Tournament we supported over the summer. Chris will get into more detail on revenue in a few minutes.

Our overall visibility continued to strengthen, with Q3 marking the strongest booked-to-deployed unit ratio in the company's history. Thanks to the changes we have been sharing with investors in our go-to-market model, we expect 2026 to be an inflection point where Evolv's ARR growth will outpace revenue growth. Let me explain that encouraging trend a bit further, which we introduced to investors on our prior call. While we are delighted with 57% year-over-year revenue growth, it is important to note that our deployed unit count grew by about 30% year-over-year, which we believe provides a more normalized view of the fundamentals of the business. The gap between revenue growth and unit growth is primarily based on two factors.

First, it reflects the trailing impact of our legacy distribution fulfillment model, which results in a higher proportion of the total contract value taken in the immediate period, lower ARR, and lower total contract revenue as compared to direct purchase fulfillment. The second factor driving the delta between revenue growth and unit growth is a higher proportion of purchase versus subscription sales, or our mix. Specifically, units purchased by our customers represented 57% of unit activity in Q3 compared to 41% in the year-ago period. By transitioning away from our legacy distribution model, we now capture 100% of the average revenue per unit, or ARPU. This shift increases recurring revenue over the four-year subscription term and delivers back to Evolv a higher level of cash per unit. To illustrate the differences between distribution and direct fulfillment, we've created a chart and posted it on our Investor Relations website.

While we have largely completed the move away from the distribution fulfillment model, and we have also repriced our solutions effective July 1 to emphasize software and ARR, it will take some time for our revenue recognition to match our new pricing. As a result, in Q3, we saw higher one-time product revenue related to the prior distribution model and associated revenue recognition treatment. Over time, our revenue recognition will more closely match our pricing, and the majority of our ARPU will be in ARR instead of one-time product revenue. In summary, the trailing effects of distribution fulfillment and a higher proportion of purchase units drove revenue to outpace unit and ARR growth, and why we believe 30% is a more meaningful measure of year-over-year growth. We finished the quarter with annual recurring revenue or ARR at $117.2 million, reflecting growth of 25% year-over-year.

While our ARR growth trailed revenue growth in Q3, we expect this ratio to begin to flip in 2026 with faster ARR growth relative to total revenue growth, as I mentioned. We reported our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 12% in Q3. We welcomed over 60 new customers in Q3 and are raising our year-end estimate for active subscriptions to between 8,000 and 8,100. This continues to represent a very small slice of the hundreds of thousands of entrances that advanced weapons detection can help protect. We continue to see a strong trend of customers proactively upgrading to our Gen2 Express platform. These upgrades typically reset the subscription churn with fresh four-year commitments. Gen2 upgrades also help drive a sequential 8% increase in RPO, which stood just shy of $300 million at the end of Q3.

Expedite, our new autonomous AI-powered bag screening solution, continued to gain strong traction since its Q4 2024 launch. In Q3 alone, we added 12 new customers, primarily in schools, where we are beginning to see one-for-one deployments of Expedite and Express to help streamline security by lowering alarm rates and enhancing the student experience. We believe the combination of Express plus Expedite provides an exceptional security experience in terms of threat detection capabilities and false alarm rates. Based on early deployment data across education customers, Evolv Expedite has shown an alert rate of approximately 2%, demonstrating strong promise in balancing detection with the goal of keeping false alarm rates low. Beyond the numbers, we are making a real difference in the communities we serve. Every day, we screen on average more than 3 million people, and since the launch of Evolv Express, we have screened over 3 billion visitors.

Evolv Expedite, introduced just a few quarters ago, has already been used to screen more than 1 million bags. On average, our technology helps customers detect and tag 500 firearms daily. What does that look like in real life? In August, at a high school in Nashville, our system identified and helped intercept a loaded handgun at the door. In October, Evolv Express detected a loaded firearm in a student's backpack at a high school in Georgia. Just two weeks ago, our solution identified a concealed firearm during morning arrival at a high school in Atlanta. These three examples provide a small glimpse into the impact we are having on education. In the third quarter, we added over a dozen new school districts across the U.S.

These included two new districts in New Jersey, two in Michigan, two in California, and one each in Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nevada, Montana, Louisiana, Iowa, and Connecticut. In healthcare, we are driving meaningful change by helping hospitals elevate safety standards while minimizing the impact on patient and visitor experience. Our solutions are enabling smoother and faster entry while enhancing threat detection at critical access points. With growing demand across the sector, we are now screening hundreds of thousands of visitors daily in medical facilities nationwide. A few recent wins in this market include WellSpan Health, UC Davis Health, and Seattle Children's Hospital. Shifting to sports and live entertainment, we expanded our presence in professional hockey with the Buffalo Sabres, who entered a multi-year subscription agreement to deploy nine Evolv Express Gen2 systems at T Bank Center.

This deployment is part of a broader 2025 arena upgrade initiative aimed at improving ingress and egress for fans. In collegiate athletics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is deploying Evolv Express to enhance safety and streamline entry at its athletic venues. In the world of professional football, Bank of America Stadium, home to the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Football Club, recently completed a long-term renewal, upgrading to Gen2 of Evolv Express. The venue now operates 19 systems and has added Evolv Expedite for enhanced bag screening and faster guest entry. Staying in professional football, our technology is now being deployed at nearly a dozen practice and training facilities leaguewide. This initiative includes both Evolv Express and Evolv Expedite.

We believe this is a strong endorsement of our ability to deliver a superior security experience for a variety of entry flows, covering fans, staff members, players, media, and VIP guests. These wins reinforce our ability to penetrate diverse markets and deliver trusted solutions that drive long-term growth. We welcome all our newest customers and take sacred the trust they have placed in us. We look forward to the challenge of earning their business every day. Shifting into business operations, we're excited to announce a new strategic partnership with Plexus, a collaboration that expands production capacity, global reach, and operational resiliency. Plexus is a global leader in design, manufacturing, and supply chain services that brings the infrastructure and expertise to support the next phase of our growth. With 26 facilities and more than 20,000 team members worldwide, they'll help deliver our technology to the places people gather every day.

I want to shift gears for a moment and share some exciting developments on the product development front. I'm pleased to share that we recently released the latest versions of our software: Evolv Express 9.0, Evolv Expedite 1.2, and MyEvolv Portal and Evolv Insights 6.0. These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to improving performance and user experience for our customers, now numbering over 1,000 globally. With this release, we've introduced several enhancements aimed at supporting security teams in their day-to-day operations. Among the highlights is a new integrated tablet interface, which brings together the workflows of Express and Expedite into a single, streamlined user interface. We also released the integration of Expedite into the MyEvolv Portal, enabling customers to see operational data or walk-through and now bag screening in a single location. With these enhancements, we have strengthened the bundled customer ownership experience for Express plus Expedite.

We've also expanded alert tagging and added sensitivity tuning, giving our customers more control in how they manage their security operation. These improvements are the results of listening closely to our customers and continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible in safety and efficiency. Through our subscription model, we're able to deliver these software capabilities seamlessly via the cloud, enabling innovation to reach the field without disruption. With each release, we aim to raise the bar not just for ourselves, but also for the entire industry. Before I hand things over to Chris, I want to take a moment to share a bit of context around our outlook. We're seeing strong momentum in the business. Our backlog continues to grow, and we've got a healthy pipeline. For those reasons, we are raising our 2025 outlook.

We now expect to grow revenue by about 37%-40% in 2025 compared to our previous guidance of 27%-30% growth. I would point out there are upwardly revised revenue forecasts for the year of between $142 million-$145 million, including certain one-time benefits, in particular related to one-time revenue recognition from our legacy fulfillment and pricing models that I mentioned earlier. Excluding these short-term revenue items, we will be forecasting total revenue growth in 2025 of about 30% year-over-year. We continue to expect to deliver positive full-year adjusted EBITDA, with full-year margins in the high single digits. We remain committed to generating positive cash flow in Q4. Looking ahead to 2026, let me start with this fundamental principle. We're planning to add more units in 2026 than we did in 2025, with ARPU trends remaining stable.

As a reminder, our 2025 results included the largest customer contract in the company's history, more than 250 units. We plan to grow on top of that order. The changes in our distribution fulfillment model and pricing structure will allow us to capture 100% of contract ARPU, shift more of that ARPU from one-time revenue into ARR and RPO, and create an opportunity to maximize leverage in the business over time. We estimate that these subtle but powerful shifts of emphasizing ARR over short-term product revenue will defer about $5 million-$10 million of revenue in 2026 that we would otherwise have captured had we not changed our distribution and pricing structure. We expect that $5 million-$10 million to convert into long-term recurring revenue streams that will benefit future years. We're currently modeling full-year 2026 revenue of between $160 million-$165 million.

Importantly, we expect ARR to grow by at least 20%, outpacing total revenue growth in 2026, which is an important pivot for Evolv. This management team continues to prioritize ARR growth and other long-term value drivers. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris, who will take you through our financial results and the details behind our outlook.

Chris Kutsor (CFO)

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to review our third quarter results in more detail and then walk through our updated guidance for the rest of the year, as well as context on our early thoughts for next year. As John mentioned, revenue was $42.9 million in Q3, an increase of 57% year-over-year. This was fueled by strong new customer growth and expanding deployments across our customer base.

It also includes a few items that, while positive, aren't expected to recur at the same scale every quarter, as John mentioned. Let me unpack those a bit further. First, our new contract with Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest in Evolv's history, contributed approximately $3 million in revenue in Q3, primarily as one-time product revenue. Second, Q3 included a very high proportion of direct purchase method deployments compared to our legacy distribution motion, which brings more immediate revenue recognition and less ARR, which John covered already. The nearly $3 million of product revenue recognized for Gwinnett County this past quarter is an example of that effect. We also recognized approximately $3 million in IP license and other one-time revenue in Q3, primarily tied to our legacy distribution subscription model. Finally, we had roughly $1.5 million in short-term subscription revenue for rentals.

These short-term subscriptions are valuable and remain part of our strategy, but they tend to be episodic in nature. When adjusting for these specific items, you get a more normalized view of Q3 revenue closer to $35-$36 million, which would reflect growth of about 30% year-over-year. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, at September 30th was $117.2 million, reflecting growth of 25% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. Remaining performance obligation, or RPO, was approximately $299 million at the end of the third quarter, compared to approximately $275 million at the end of the second quarter and $269 million at the end of Q3 last year. Adjusted gross margin was 51% in Q3, compared to 64% in the same period last year. There are three drivers here worth diving into a little bit deeper.

First, as discussed on our last call, the shift from distribution fulfillment to direct purchase fulfillment creates a near-term gross margin headwind, but it also brings higher gross profit dollars over the term of the contract, along with higher revenue, higher ARR, higher RPO, and cash compared to the legacy distribution model. With the business now delivering a consistent track record of positive adjusted EBITDA, that's an important long-term trade-off we are pleased to make. Second, we saw the impact of several large education contracts that included significant volumes of our newest product, Expedite. Expedite is still operating at subscale manufacturing cost. We expect Expedite cost to improve in 2026, which we expect to positively impact future gross margins. Finally, we recognized approximately $3 million of one-time costs related to inventory and service adjustments.

Moving down the P&L, adjusted operating expenses, which exclude stock-based compensation, loss on impairment of equipment, and certain other one-time expenses, were $24.8 million compared to $25.2 million in the third quarter of last year. This modest year-over-year decline, in contrast to strong year-over-year growth in units deployed, total revenue, and ARR growth, reflects the actions we have taken since the start of the year to reduce spend and improve the profitability of the business. We believe it is also an excellent indicator of the leverage we believe is central to our business model. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes stock-based compensation and other one-time items, was a positive $5.1 million in Q3 of 2025, compared to a loss of $3 million in the third quarter of last year. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12% in the third quarter of 2025.

Turning to the balance sheet, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities increased by $19 million sequentially to $56 million, up from $37 million at the end of Q2 2025. This primarily reflected proceeds from the new credit facility that we completed in July, along with tighter inventory management and stronger overall collection activity. I'm going to provide some additional details to our updated 2025 outlook that John mentioned a few minutes ago. We now expect total revenue to grow by 37%-40% in 2025 to be between $142 million and $145 million this year. This is up from our prior guidance, which called for revenue between $132 million and $135 million. A few things we'd encourage investors to consider for context in our 2025 revenue estimate.

First, as I mentioned in my earlier commentary, the largest deal in the company's history contributed about $3 million to Q3 revenue, and we expect it to contribute more than $5 million for the full year due to higher upfront revenue recognition related to the residual effects of our legacy distribution fulfillment model. Second, IP license and other revenue was about $3 million in Q3, and we're expecting that to be about $10 million for the full year. That one-time revenue stream is primarily tied to our legacy distribution fulfillment model, which has been phased out. Investors should assume that IP licenses are no longer a driver to revenue growth starting here in Q4. Third, short-term subscription contracts contributed about $1.5 million to revenue in Q3, and we are expecting that to be about $2 million for the full year.

Those opportunities are generally one-time in nature, so it is not something that we plan around. In light of these three factors, we estimate a more normalized revenue growth rate for 2025 would have been about 30% year-on-year growth compared to 2024. We expect 2025 adjusted gross margin to be in the range of 52%-54%, not due to ARPU compression or a change in competitive pressure, but because of the shift to direct purchase fulfillment. To reiterate my previous comment, the direct purchase fulfillment model is a headwind to gross margin in the first year of a new contract, but over the term of the subscription contract, it generates higher total gross profit dollars, higher revenue, higher cash, and ARR compared to the distribution fulfillment model, and also makes us easier to do business with.

With strong top-line growth and continued focus on expense management, we expect to deliver positive full-year adjusted EBITDA in 2025, with full-year adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits compared to our previous guidance, which called for margins in the mid-single digits. We expect to be cash flow positive in the fourth quarter of 2025. Turning now to 2026, as John mentioned, we remain encouraged by the changes we made this year, and we expect to see ARR growth begin to outpace revenue growth in the next year. While we are still developing our final plans, let me set some additional context to the 2026 outlook. The fundamentals of our business remain strong, with a robust customer demand and a stable pricing environment.

We expect to add more units in 2026 than we did in 2025, with ARPUs remaining relatively consistent and the trends that we've seen this year continuing. In other words, we expect continued unit growth and stable pricing. That said, we expect recent shifts in our distribution fulfillment and pricing model will result in less one-time revenue, but more ARR and RPO in 2026 compared to 2025. We encourage investors to refer to the presentation material posted on our IR website for a graphical view of the positive impact of pivoting to direct purchase. We also expect a higher percentage of new units in 2026 to be full subscription compared to 2025, which will also lower the 2026 growth rates, but drive faster ARR growth.

We expect the changes we've made to our direct purchase pricing model, changes that maximize ARR by making the upfront hardware price lower, commensurate with reduction in our manufacturing costs, will push at least $5 million-$10 million of revenue out of 2026 and into ARR and RPO. The higher ARR and associated recurring subscription value will also provide higher ARR rates when those contracts move to renewal discussions four years down the road. We believe all of these are smart changes for the business in the long term. We are currently modeling full-year revenues of about $160 million-$165 million in 2026. The important news here is that we expect to add more units in 2026 than we did in 2025, with ARPU trends remaining stable and ARR growing at a faster rate than total revenue.

Specifically, we expect ARR to grow by at least 20% year-over-year. To reiterate John's earlier comment, we believe 2026 will be an inflection point for the company as ARR begins to outpace revenue growth. While we haven't finalized our investment plans, we are committed to growing revenues faster than total expenses in 2026, and therefore are currently modeling modest expansion of adjusted EBITDA margins. We will share more thoughts on how we're thinking about 2026 during our Q4 call in March, and in the meantime, we're focused on finishing a strong 2025. Before we open the call for Q&A, let me turn the call back over to John for a few closing remarks.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thanks, Chris. We continue to be driven by our mission to make the world a safer place to live, learn, work, and play while building a leading IoT SaaS security business.

We believe security is a necessity, not a luxury. We remain highly confident in our market position. We continue to move forward with purpose guided by a clear strategy and an unwavering commitment to long-term value creation. We've been intentional and transparent about the adjustments we're making, whether refining our go-to-market and pricing model to maximize ARR and recurring revenue, forging new partnerships to enhance cost efficiency and reduce COGS, or evolving our organizational structure to ensure we optimize every investment across the business. Each of these steps underscores our focus on building a scalable, high-growth business with predictable performance. Our strong Q3 results and the momentum we see across the organization reflect meaningful progress in all of these areas. While we're proud of these results, as I remind our team often, we will not be complacent.

We are moving steadily toward our goal of creating a business that is both scalable and consistently high-performing. We deeply appreciate the partnership of both our customers and our investors in the continued confidence they place in us, and more importantly, in the mission we are pursuing.

Brian Norris (Senior VP of Finance and Investor Relations)

Thank you, John. At this time, we'd like to open the call up for Q&A. Again, we ask participants to limit themselves to one question and one follow-up.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin Q&A. For today's session, we'll be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you'd like to ask a question, simply click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once you've been called on, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Please limit to one question and one follow-up before jumping back in the queue. Thank you. We'll now pause a moment to assemble the queue.Our first question will come from Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you, and congratulations on the very strong results. Just want to come back to the kind of the callouts of some of the one-time items here. Understand certainly for the short-term contracts, the $1.5 million of why you would exclude that, and understand kind of the front revenue recognition of some of those deals that are going through a distributor. In terms of thinking about the build overall, you do have the largest increase you've seen in recurring revenues, as well as the largest increase you've had in RPO in a quarter. Just help me understand in terms of the large contract, how the revenue recognition overall on that will play out on a go-forward basis as an example.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thanks, Jeremy. I'll start, and Chris can address any other specifics you might have. As we communicated in the prepared remarks we just shared, one of the impacts of the legacy distribution model is more upfront revenue. We have largely moved away from that, and the majority of our purchase descriptions were executed through our direct fulfillment. There will be a tail effect about how we take revenue on those deals over time that will normalize and result in a new pricing that we have already put in place months ago on July 1st. As Chris mentioned, we will ultimately recognize about $5 million of that order. It is a very significant proportion of the total order that we will take in the first two quarters of a 48-month deal. Again, we expect that to adjust to the overall longer 48-month revenue recognition as we get into 2026.

Chris Kutsor (CFO)

Jeremy, just a bit more context to that. This effect is only relevant for purchase subscription orders and does not have the effect for full subscription orders. The effect is due to the hardware pricing that is part of the mix of the contract that we do in a purchase subscription order. For about half of our business, this is the effect. The impact, as John was talking about, ties back to GAAP accounting, ASC 606, that requires us to take that amount of upfront revenue in the way that is reflected in our remarks. Hopefully that gives you the perspective as to why it is happening and the proportion of our business that it happens to.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. That is helpful. Dovetails nicely, though, into I wanted to ask about the new strategic contract manufacturer agreement you have entered into. In terms of how you expect that to change what your baseline cost is for Gen2 or potentially Gen3 machines on a go-forward basis, can you give us a sense for whether or not you expect that to reduce the manufacturing cost for the Gen machines, I'm sorry, for the Express machines, and whether or not they're also going to be manufacturing Expedite and what that might do for the ramp of that business as well?

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thanks, Jeremy. We're pleased and looking forward to the partnership with Plexus. We just executed that agreement. We're focused on onboarding them and getting them to start manufacturing our product, which we'll be focused on through the first half of 2026. Over time, we look forward to the larger scale and the potential of cost synergies that will come and the ability to be able to leverage their entire footprint.

You should expect our full portfolio to eventually be available at Plexus as well. As you would expect, we're doing it thoughtfully and carefully.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. Just one more quick one before I hop out of the queue. In terms of the Expedite bag scanner product, what is the rough attachment rate that you're getting with that on sales of Express machines, and how does that vary? Are you getting more success with that, let's say, in the education vertical or in the stadium vertical versus a couple of your other verticals?

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

We're very pleased with the progress of Expedite. As we had shared in the prior quarter, a very significant portion of that large education order was Expedite. In Q3, we had 12 new additions of Expedite customers. To answer your question directly, 11 of those also acquired Express. That's a trend that we're really excited about.

We have seen deployments across education, sports, entertainment, and healthcare.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks so much for taking any questions. Best wishes.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thanks, Jeremy.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Eric Martinuzzi. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital Markets, your line is open. Please ask your question.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

Yep. You talked about the number of units growing in 2025 versus 2024. Are we talking aggregate units? Express plus Expedite in 2025 is greater than 2024, and the same thing 2026 versus 2025. Are we talking the Express units only? The aggregate units, the sum of Express and Expedite, which is consistent with how we've been discussing it this year. Okay. Can you remind me just the delta between the price of those two if someone were to purchase them outright? Maybe not the absolute delta.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

As you shared before, the unit economics are similar. As Chris commented, we expect the gross margins to be more similar over time. Today, Expedite is a new product. Hasn't benefited from the multi-year manufacturing scale that we built into Gen2. So right now, it's a bit of an admin on gross margin. And Eric, a reminder, that's also a four-year subscription go-to-market model for Expedite as well.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Yeah, for sure.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director, Communications, Security, and Infrastructure Software Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good afternoon. Congrats on results, and thanks for the color and transparency on the business and the outlook. As you guys shift away from distribution to direct fulfillment model, just curious, what was the reaction of some of those channel partners involved?

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

It's very positive because one thing I want to make sure we're very clear on. This had no impact on our channel. The majority of our business, as it has, continues to transact from a channel. What the change was is how our channel partners get the product from us. In the past, in the motion that we introduced in 2023, they would purchase it from a distributor. Now they purchase it directly from us, which means that we capture 100% of the RPO. We did not see the portion that went through distribution. For a direct channel partner reaction, we have simplified their buying process. They used to have to buy one solution to an end user by issuing two orders, one to our distributor contract manufacturer for the hardware and one to us for the subscription. Their process to do business with us is much simpler.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director, Communications, Security, and Infrastructure Software Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. This is great. I appreciate it. Maybe the biggest contract that you've discussed, those 250 units, we're becoming greedy here. How many of these contracts are currently in the pipeline? I know they don't come too often, but I think we're beginning to see where the business is heading as we start on thinking about 2026 and maybe even 2027 down the road. Just curious, how many of those, call it triple-digit transactions, are out there?

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

We haven't provided specific outlooks or details on our pipeline. What I'll reiterate is that in the preliminary 2026 guidance we just provided, we're planning to grow units over this year, which included that 250 unit work.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director, Communications, Security, and Infrastructure Software Research Analyst)

Thank you so much. Good luck. Great.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Thanks, Shaul. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your screen. Your next question will come from Michael Lattimore with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hey, hi. This is Aditya on behalf of Mike Lattimore. Could you tell me what percentage of your bookings came from existing customers?

Brian Norris (Senior VP of Finance and Investor Relations)

Yeah, for sure. This is Brian. It was well over 50%. A bit of that was slightly skewed in that one of the largest orders in the company's history was actually an order that started very briefly in Q2. If I exclude that, it would be right around 50% on the quarter. It was higher because of that. We are still seeing very significant expansions from existing customers to both Express and now Expedite as well.

Got it. Could you give some color among the new verticals? Are there any promising ones such as the warehouse or office?

Yeah. Our vertical mix overall has stayed consistent. As we shared in the past, sports and entertainment, education, and healthcare are our largest verticals. In Q2, we discussed a large Fortune 500 distribution customer that entered the fold, and we're thrilled for the potential in that area. We're focused on growing our vertical presence everywhere, and we like the diversity in the mix that we have, but we see opportunities to continue to expand.

All right. Got it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That was your last question. I'd now like to turn the call over to John for closing remarks.

John Kedzierski (CEO, President, and Director)

Actually, it's Brian. I'm just going to close it out by, again, thanking everybody for joining us today.

Again, we have a very active IR program here in the quarter, three conferences, multiple other visits to financial centers across the country. Look forward to meeting as many folks as we can in the outreach period. Thanks so much, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for joining. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.