Rekor Systems - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 revenue was $13.277M, up 20.0% year over year and up 25.9% sequentially; results modestly beat Wall Street consensus by ~2.8% on revenue and by ~$0.001 on EPS, while EBITDA missed consensus; adjusted EBITDA loss improved sharply to $4.728M from $9.215M in Q3. Revenue Consensus Mean: $12.913M*; EPS Consensus Mean: -$0.085*; EBITDA Consensus Mean: -$3.704M*; Q4 actual EPS: -$0.0837*; Q4 actual EBITDA (S&P): -$5.298M*.
• Management pivoted away from relying on uncertain government procurement timelines, realigned costs, and emphasized operating to breakeven on current recurring revenue base; they fully repaid the Yorkville $15M prepaid advance on 12/31 and set up a $25M ATM for flexibility.
• Product momentum: Florida DOT APL certification and deployments, New York progressed to procurement, and AI enhancements (Rekor Command Priority Ranking and Related Events) demonstrated meaningful traction; Texas reported 29% reduction in secondary crashes and 44 minutes faster incident resolution using Command.
• Preliminary guidance issued on 3/17 was exceeded by actuals (Q4 revenue “above $12.5M” prelim vs $13.277M actual; FY 2024 “above $45.5M” prelim vs $46.028M actual); management provided no 2025 numerical guidance on the Q4 call.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Q4 revenue hit a quarterly record at $13.277M (+20% YoY), with adjusted gross margin rebounding to 51.9% from 44.0% in Q3; adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $4.728M (vs $9.215M in Q3), reflecting cost optimization and higher-margin mix.
• Strategic wins and certifications: Florida DOT APL inclusion and deployments underway; New York moved to procurement; Texas showcased measurable safety outcomes (29% fewer secondary crashes, 44-minute faster restoration) with Command.
• Clear strategic realignment: Board formed Executive Committee, reduced workforce, refocused on Scout and Discover, shifted away from waiting on large, lumpy contracts to operating at a breakeven path on core revenue; CFO emphasized financial discipline and early repayment of Yorkville facility.
  Quote: “We’re aligning the company’s cost structure and strategic direction with what we can control rather than waiting on what we can’t”.

What Went Wrong

• EBITDA (S&P definition) missed consensus even as company-reported adjusted EBITDA improved; quarterly EBITDA was pressured by impairment and financing-related charges, highlighting non-GAAP vs GAAP divergence.
• Recurring revenue declined ~2% YoY to $5.8M in Q4, largely due to timing differences and prior hurricane impacts that also lowered Q3 recurring revenue, underscoring volatility from weather and government cycles.
• Operating losses remain significant and GAAP EBITDA was heavily impacted by impairment of intangible assets recorded in Q4, keeping net loss elevated; management reiterated no numeric 2025 guidance and dependence on procurement pacing, which may frustrate estimate visibility.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome today to Rekor Systems conference call. My name is Matt, and I will be your conference operator for today. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. Before we start, I want to read you the company's abbreviated Safe Harbor statement. I want to remind you that statements made in the conference call concerning future revenues, results of operations, financial position, markets, economic conditions, products and product releases, partnerships, and other statements that may be construed as predictive of future performance or events are forward-looking statements. Such statements can involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. We ask to refer to the full disclaimers in our earnings release.

You should review a description of the risk factors contained in our annual and quarterly filings with the SEC. Non-GAAP results will also be discussed on the call. The company believes the presentation of non-GAAP information provides useful supplementary data concerning the company's ongoing operations and is provided for informational purposes only. I would now turn the conference over to Mr. Robert Berman, Interim President and CEO of Rekor Systems. Thank you. You may begin.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Thank you, Matt. And good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your joining us today to discuss Rekor Systems' fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. I'm pleased to share that we ended 2024 with strong momentum, reflecting the deep commitment of our teams, the trust of our customers, and the continued innovation we bring to transforming roadway intelligence and public safety through AI-driven, data-driven solutions. In today's call, I'll begin reviewing our performance in the fourth quarter of 2024. Next, I'll highlight some of our strategic wins, product developments, and major partnerships from both Q4 and throughout the year. I'll also discuss the progress we made over the course of 2024, including the ways we refined our strategic focus and strengthened our financial processes. After that, I'll share our outlook for 2025 and beyond.

I will turn things over to our Chief Financial Officer, Eyal Hen, who will provide more details on our financial performance. Following our remarks, we will welcome your questions. Let's start with our performance in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter, we saw strong demand for our core platforms: Rekor Scout, Rekor Discover, and Rekor Command across both public sector agencies and commercial partners. From an operational standpoint, we maintained disciplined spending while strategically investing in growth and innovation. This approach resulted in an approximately 49% reduction in EBITDA loss in the fourth quarter of 2024 versus the third quarter of 2024, aligning with our plan to achieve stronger profitability while supporting the development of next-generation technology. While the fourth quarter capped off a solid finish, our progress throughout 2024 has enabled Rekor to enter 2025 on a strong footing.

We entered 2024 with growing customer momentum, supported by a pipeline developed through the second half of 2023, and we kept to our core mission of driving the digital transformation of roadway infrastructure. Throughout 2024, we continued to gain traction in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, and New Mexico, demonstrating the tangible value of our AI-driven platforms across urban mobility, transportation management, and public safety. In Florida, for instance, we achieved inclusion on the state's approved product list. This milestone allows us to roll out our solutions more broadly and provided a spotlight on how our devices and the data they collect are critical for not only traffic collection but also enabling emergency evacuation routes during challenging hurricane seasons. Speaking about Florida, Georgia, Texas, and other states, let me be clear about an important point for our shareholders.

After a thorough evaluation, the board has determined that continuing to wait on traditional government contracting timelines is no longer in the best interest of our shareholders. Relying on the uncertain timing of large externally driven contracts placed the company in a position where we risk unnecessary shareholder dilution, funding scale in anticipation of orders rather than in response to secured revenue. While we remain highly confident in our robust government contracting pipeline and believe it's a matter of when, not if, those orders come through, we're no longer willing to anchor our operational model to the uncertainty of government timelines. We are now taking control of our future. We're shifting to a strategy that is grounded in the company's current, healthy, and more predictable revenue base. Our goal is to operate the company at this level with a clear path to breakeven.

Any upside from new large government contracts will be additive but no longer essential to our baseline strategy. This is a proactive move to protect shareholder value. It reflects the board's commitment to financial discipline, operational focus, and reducing reliance on external variables beyond our control. Simply put, we're aligning the company's cost structure and strategic direction with what we can control rather than waiting on what we can't. Nationally, as everyone is aware, the new Trump administration is intently focused on addressing any waste by the federal government. This priority is evident at the highest levels of government and only recently has focus turned to the U.S. DOT, where the DOT and the new U.S. DOT leadership is actively targeting inefficiencies stemming from outdated technology.

This comprehensive overhaul at the federal level positions Rekor advantageously, and we are securing our seat at the table to offer practical solutions to address a number of deep-rooted inefficiencies. Partnerships remained a cornerstone of our strategy in 2024. We deepened relationships with global technology leaders such as Amazon Web Services and NVIDIA, both of which recognize the potential of our AI-driven transportation platforms. We also expanded our reach in public safety through collaborations with a distribution partner in New Mexico, a new distribution partner in Hawaii, SoundThinking, formerly ShotSpotter, SoundHound, and MS2, bolstering our channel presence and opening the door to new state departments of transportation and public safety agencies. During the year, we invested in broadening our global intellectual property portfolio, securing patents for detecting and quantifying regular traffic congestion, both in the United States and Europe, and fortifying our approach to protecting personally identifiable information.

This IP expansion positions us to maintain our leadership in AI-based solutions that addresses the increasing demands of transportation, safety, and data privacy worldwide. As many of you saw in our recent announcements, we have been very active recently with new deployments, technology breakthroughs, and partnerships that will help us accelerate our momentum in 2025. One example is our expanded relationship with the New Mexico Department of Transportation, where the second phase of implementing our Rekor Discover platform and non-intrusive video-based Edge Series systems is now underway. The initiative utilizes a 100% SaaS-like pay-for-data model installed through an authorized third party to demonstrate the scalability and flexibility of our platform in managing and analyzing traffic data. Pay-for-data is a business model that can be a game changer for DOTs and aligns our company's capabilities, and we continue to educate DOTs.

They are increasingly realizing that there is a better, safer, and real-time way to capture traffic data. Meanwhile, Rekor Scout secured a major certification for New Jersey's statewide network ALPR program, or New Jersey SNAP. This certification, backed by $13 million in state funding, positions us as a trusted go-to provider for agencies that require real-time, highly accurate vehicle recognition capabilities. We also introduced enhancements to our core solutions that emphasize advanced AI features. During the Transportation Research Board's 2025 annual meeting, we unveiled our new Incident Priority Ranking feature in Rekor Command, which harnesses AI and real-time data to help traffic and emergency operations centers respond faster to high-impact incidents. Early results from customer tests have shown reductions of up to 60% in the time from incident detection to resource allocation.

To support these innovations and our continued growth, we took steps in Q4 to further strengthen our financial position. By December 31, we had fully satisfied the remaining balance of our August 2024 prepaid advance agreement with an affiliate of Yorkville Advisors, totaling $15 million. This early repayment significantly enhanced our balance sheet and improved our flexibility to pursue strategic growth opportunities in 2025. Now I will turn the call over to our CFO, Eyal Hen, for a deeper look at our financial results for Q4 and the full year. Before passing it over to Eyal, allow me to take a moment to mention the departure of David Desharnais, our former CEO. David joined Rekor in January of 2022 as president and in 2024 became president and CEO. David submitted his resignation earlier this month, and the board accepted it with our thanks for his contributions.

We sincerely wish him success in his future endeavors. The board has begun a process to identify a new CEO. During the interim, I will assure continuity by continuing to lead the company. Eyal?

Eyal Hen (CFO)

Thank you, Robert. Thank you to all of you joining us today to discuss our results for the three months and 12 months that ended December 31, 2024. We are pleased to report fourth quarter 2024 revenue of $13.3 million, surpassing consensus estimates by 3% and marking significant reacceleration in our year-over-year growth rate, which has returned above 20%. Our urban mobility segment, driven by robust demand for our new roadway data aggregation solution, primarily contributed to our overall growth. Public safety, our second largest revenue source, also achieved solid mid-teens growth. This performance was bolstered by increased momentum from strategic licensing partnerships, notably with key partners. Recurring revenue for the quarter totaled $5.8 million, reflecting a modest 2% decline year-over-year. This decrease was largely attributable to timing differences.

However, for the full year, 2024, Rekor reported revenue of $46 million, representing a robust increase of 32% compared to $34.9 million in 2023. Product and services revenue grew significantly to $23.4 million, up 65% year-over-year. As a reminder, initial sales of our edge AI, fixed, and mobile site solutions are reflected in this line item and can serve as a leading indicator for future recurring data revenues. Adjusted gross margin rebounded strongly in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 52%, up from 44% in Q3 of 2024, driven by recent contract wins and the delivery of higher margin offerings. For the full year 2024, adjusted gross margin slightly decreased to 49.3% compared to 52.8% in 2023, reflecting a higher proportion of SaaS revenue in the overall mix.

Looking ahead, we expect to see steady gross margin improvement driven by enhanced SaaS revenue mix and increased contribution from our pay-for-data contracts. As indicated on our third quarter call in November, we proactively optimized our cost structure to sharpen our focus on near-term revenue generation. This decisive action began yielding tangible financial benefits in Q4, resulting in a reduction of our adjusted EBITDA loss to approximately $4.7 million, significantly improved from $9.2 million in Q3 2024. Full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA loss remained relatively flat year-over-year at $29.1 million. As most of our cost optimization efforts took effect toward the end of Q4 2024, moving forward, we will continue to work toward steady declines in adjusted EBITDA losses as revenue grows, supported by an improving gross margin.

On capital allocation, following the amendment of our prepaid advance agreement with Yorkville Advisors to eliminate the option for an additional $20 million advance, we fully satisfied the outstanding balance of $15 million on December 31, 2024, ahead of schedule. Clearing this outstanding balance underscores our commitment to prudent financial management and disciplined capital allocation. In February 2025, we established a $25 million at-the-market issuance sales agreement with Northland. This facility allows Rekor to opportunistically raise capital over the next 12 months as we continue executing our strategy and capitalizing on growing momentum with state DOT and public safety agency customers. In summary, we are very pleased with our solid fourth quarter results, which exceeded expectations across most key metrics. We remain confident in our technological advancement, increasing customer traction, and accelerating go-to-market momentum. We continue to be grateful for the ongoing support of our investors.

Now, I will turn the call back to Robert. Robert?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Eyal, thank you. Now I'd like to open the floor for any questions you may have. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull up for questions. First question here is from Louie DiPalma from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Good afternoon, David and Eyal. Flock Safety has experienced significant momentum with their license plate reader cameras, and you guys have a very similar solution. From a technical perspective, are you able to offer the same types of capabilities as Flock to take advantage of industry demand from the law enforcement side? Thanks.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

This is Robert Berman. I think that it's not a fair way to compare Flock and Rekor. Okay? They've had hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars' worth of funding from VCs. And we never went after the law enforcement market. We've gone after the commercial market. I think we've been very successful in doing that and OEMing our software, which is a much less expensive way to sell and more profitable margins at the end of the day. It's apples and oranges. As far as our tech compared to theirs, I think we have the best vehicle recognition LPR software in the business, right? If you look at our customers, I think that speaks to that.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, Robert. One for Eyal, how should we think about the timeline for free cash flow break-even?

Eyal Hen (CFO)

Thank you, Louis, for the question. As we mentioned in previous earnings call, our thought is that for the end of the year, we anticipate that. We still keep it.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Another one. You both, Robert and Eyal, you discussed your many partnerships. How has the partnership with SoundThinking progressed? Is that still ramping? Are there any early data points to indicate the traction that's receiving in the market?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

You'd have to speak to SoundThinking, but I think that they're out there selling. I think they're making progress. They're doing a number of pilots. To us, that's a good example of a channel partner to sell our tech. We expect that to pay off in 2025.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. One final one. Earlier, I think it was in the second quarter or the third quarter of last year, you identified Florida as the customer for the contract involving over 1,000 cameras. What has been the progress of that rollout? Should that lead to more contracts and awards within the state of Florida?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think I said it earlier in our prepared statements, but look, dealing with government is obviously much different than B2C. Government contracting requires a process. State government, like federal government, has a process. I can tell you that Florida, Texas, Georgia, and there are others are working through the process. We're very optimistic about where we stand with all those states. If you were to look into the government procurement process, a company is free to talk about these procurements when they're only in the early stages and you're in the capture stage. Once there's open RFPs and there have been proposals that have been submitted, we can't talk about those because it's a violation of their procurement laws.

I can say that things in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and other states are proceeding well. They are on the state's timeline, not ours. Those procurements are ongoing. They are actually in procurement stage, which means that there have been proposals submitted. The award timing is up to the state. We feel good about where we are, but we just cannot discuss it. I think that is what I meant earlier by saying align ourselves to what we can control and what we cannot control, right? We are positioning ourselves so that as these things happen, we can scale and scale quickly with the customer. We are not going to sit around and wait because if it takes another week or two or three or a month for the state to award a contract, we cannot sit around and wait for that.

We have to be able to marry our expenses and our revenues with what we have in our hand, right? That is the approach we're taking.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)

Sounds good. Thanks. That's it for me.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Thank you. Yep.

Operator (participant)

Next question is from Tim Moore from Clear Street. Please go ahead.

Tim Moore (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks. Robert, you mentioned clearly in your open remarks that maybe a pivot away, obviously, from waiting on the large lumpy DOT contracts that were tying up working capital and spending. Can you give us any kind of thoughts at this point in the year, maybe color on what you think organic growth could be this year without any acquisitions? Do you think it could be high teens growth?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

I'd like to put a number on it. The only thing I'll say is that we've put a lot of time and effort and money in developing these products to the point that we can sell. There's a difference between a product and a project. Rekor has completed over the past few years a lot of projects that are now products. We're out there selling those products. We believe that we're about to see the fruits of that labor and effort come to fruition, right? Again, it's outside of our control. It's not as if it's early stage discussion. We spend a lot of time, effort, and resources getting these governments familiar with this technology. It's new, right? It's AI. It's new. It's a different way of doing things. They've been doing it for many, many decades using legacy tech. It takes time.

We're through that piece of it. Now we're at the adoption stage and the scale stage. I think that that's the good news. We just have to wait for the outcome. I think it's coming. We're not going to put any dates on it. It's not as if we're not at the last couple of yards before we get to the end zone. It's government.

Tim Moore (Senior Research Analyst)

No, no. Understood. Understood. Another question I had. It seemed like you did some pretty good cost-cutting savings in that quarter despite really probably only starting in late November. I mean, the operating expenses ignoring the impairment charge, luckily they came in like $2.5 million less than I was expecting. How is that going? The implementation? Are you still pretty much on track for pretty substantial cost savings this year?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

I think that the company spent a lot of money over the last few years developing this technology and getting it ready for scale. Being B2G, once you get the technology ready, you have to decide do you want to focus on the here and now and not three years from now. A lot of our cost-cutting measures were focused on the here and now. We are flexible enough to be able to scale when it happens. We can focus on what's down the road when we're down the road. That's where we are. We expect when we see the results of all that we've done over the past couple of years come to fruition that it'll pay off our shareholders. We are being very careful about that with shareholders.

We want to make sure that we get this company to profitability as quickly as possible. Then we can scale with that based on the resources we have, the staff we have, the supply chain we have, and so forth. We can worry about other things later when we need to worry about those things.

Tim Moore (Senior Research Analyst)

No, no. That's good progress. It's really important. My last question might be a little bit more for Eyal. I saw the 10-K that came out. I think it said about 111 million shares as of Friday. I backed into the fourth quarter shares average was something like 93 million. I'm just trying to wrap my head around maybe obviously Yorkville affiliate got shares and the payoff. What is kind of the liquidity today? Or maybe how much of the ATM was tapped in the first quarter?

Eyal Hen (CFO)

We disclose, if you look on the subsequent event team, we disclose the usage of the ATM. Remember, as Robert mentioned, we have a lot of things with states for long-term contracts. We have the vehicles of the Revenue Sharing Notes to improve our liquidity once these contracts are coming rather than have dilutive funding of the company.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Yeah. Let me just add, can I just add to what Eyal said? Like everything else, things change. What we've seen with our government customers is they're more interested in data as a service than they are about buying technology that may or may not work and then they have to fix and replace every few years. That is why we put that prime Revenue Sharing Note mechanism in place a while ago. We believe that given the direction that we're headed in, that that will be our primary source of funding going forward because that seems to be the way the government customers want to acquire the technology, which makes sense for them, right, if you think about it. That makes sense for us and our shareholders, right? That is our plan.

Tim Moore (Senior Research Analyst)

No, that's a great mechanism, the Revenue Sharing. Thanks a lot. That's it for my questions.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Eyal Hen (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next question is from Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please go ahead.

Hey, hi. This is Aditi on behalf of Mike Latimore. Could you give some color on the first quarter of 2025? Should we expect similar business as what we saw in the fourth quarter?

Eyal Hen (CFO)

Sorry. We do not provide any guidance at this point for 2025. Whatever we discuss 2025, that's what we can disclose at this point.

Got it. How many cameras are deployed in Florida as of now?

Robert, do you want to take it?

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

Yeah. I don't think we can disclose that because that would be disclosing revenue for Q1, which is we're not through yet. Our relationship with Florida is good. We can continue to work with them. I think that's a Q1 question. I appreciate your ask, but I think we have to stick to the rules.

Got it. Which other states have the best potential to offer a contract for Discover this year?

We did more than 15 proof of concept installments back when as we were introducing this technology to the states. Almost all of them are at the deployment stage where we're either deploying en masse or we're responding to RFPs. The RFP process, just for shareholders that are listening to this, what the hell does that mean, right? There are very strict rules, right? Once there's an RFP that is issued, a company can be DQ'd, okay, for talking to either the agency or the procurement department, which in some states, most states, is separate from the agency, right? We have to be very careful about what we say other than that we're in a process, which is different than the capture or the discovery stage of trying to introduce new technology. Look, I feel comfortable saying this that we introduced new technology.

We worked with our state customers to say, "Hey, what do you think? How does this work for you? How can we make it better?" That took some time. It was well worth it, right? Government business is very sticky once you get there. We crossed that threshold with the majority of where we did those POCs and others that have reached out. The technology we now see adoption of. I will also say that we see inertia of what the technology does, which is that it is non-intrusive, meaning you're not putting people out in harm's way. You're not closing lanes. It makes sense because you're paying for the data as a service so that if you don't get the data, you're not paying for the service, right? Broken technology, you don't have that. It's a good model, right?

It takes a little bit of time for government to change the way they do things. That is consistent with what you see with the new administration, right? They are talking about using new technology, AI, and other things throughout government. It is good because we think we are in the right place at the right time. We are very happy with the response that we have gotten from our government customers. We just want to be careful because we have these open procurements.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Eyal Hen (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back to management for any closing comments.

Robert Berman (President and CEO)

All right. Look, thanks everybody for your patience, your support, and everything else. There's a lot going on out there. I am proud of where we are. I think that we're pleased with the progress the company's made. As I said, there's some inertia behind what we're doing. That should pay off for our shareholders in 2025 and beyond. Thank you, everyone, for your continued interest.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.