SideChannel - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 FY2025 revenue was $1.894M, down 1.7% YoY, but gross margin expanded 470 bps to 49.7% and operating loss narrowed to $61K; net loss improved to $54K as OpEx fell 11.2% YoY.
• Management cited disciplined cost control and early Enclave contributions for margin improvement, while YoY revenue softness stemmed from last year’s loss of a few high-value vCISO clients, which has now cycled through results.
• Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments were ~$1.3M at quarter-end; CFO highlighted a fifth consecutive quarter of growth in cash and positive operating cash flow, aided by seasonal renewal timing in Q2–Q3.
• No formal financial guidance provided; Board has authorization for a reverse split but no action planned until restrictive warrants expire, which currently constrains capital markets actions (potential future raise would target Enclave sales/marketing).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Gross margin expansion to 49.7% (+470 bps YoY) on cost control, improved service delivery margins, and early Enclave sales contribution.
  • Operating discipline: OpEx down 11.2% YoY, driving operating loss improvement to $61K and net loss to $54K.
  • Product traction: Focus on accelerating Enclave adoption; management confident in long-term growth potential with differentiators (ease of deployment, no cloud reliance, lower cost) vs. large competitors.

• What Went Wrong

  • Revenue down 1.7% YoY to $1.894M due to prior loss of a small number of high-value vCISO clients (impact has now rolled through TTM metrics).
  • TTM revenue retention fell to 62.4% (from 66.1% in Q1), reflecting the lingering effect of those client departures.
  • Sales ramp headwinds: need to further enable and scale the sales team for Enclave and work through normal product launch cycles in a competitive landscape (Illumio, Zscaler, etc.).

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the SideChannel Fiscal Year 2025 Second Quarter Financial Results Update Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and a question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Brian Haugli. Sir, the floor is yours.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining SideChannel's Fiscal Q2 2025 Investor Call. I'm pleased to report continued progress in our financial performance, operational execution, and strategic focus this quarter. Despite a modest 1.7% decrease in year-over-year revenue, we delivered meaningful improvements in profitability and operational efficiency. Our gross margin rose to 49.7%, up nearly five percentage points from the same quarter last year. This improvement reflects disciplined cost control, better service delivery margins, and early contribution from Enclave sales. We also reduced operating expenses by 11.2%, narrowing our net loss to just $54,000. This is a significant step forward compared to the $253,000 loss reported in Q2 of last year. Year to date, we've generated $3.7 million in revenue, a 3.8% increase over the first half of FY 2024.

These results demonstrate resilience and execution across our core offerings, even as we reposition parts of the business for long-term growth. We acknowledge the challenges in our vCISO services segment. As previously mentioned, we've experienced the loss of a handful of larger contracts in the back half of last fiscal year, which has impacted our trailing 12-month revenue retention. That said, we've built a more scalable, targeted go-to-market strategy and enhanced our sales capabilities, which are beginning to show traction. We believe these investments will yield strong results as the market demand for cybersecurity leadership continues to rise, particularly among mid-sized and regulated organizations. Looking ahead, we're highly focused on accelerating adoption of Enclave, our zero-trust network solution. Enclave continues to gain attention from both public and private sector organizations seeking secure, segmented communication in increasingly complex environments, and we're confident in its role as a long-term growth driver.

We also improved our cash position this quarter, ending March with $1.3 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. Our ability to improve margin, reduce losses, and maintain a lean operational footprint, all while continuing to fund product development and go-to-market activities, is a testament to our disciplined approach. In summary, we remain confident in our strategy. One, we're executing on our vision to be the leading cybersecurity partner for the mid-market. Two, we're expanding relationships and acquiring new clients across our advisory and our product lines. Three, we're investing where it matters to drive future growth, improve client outcomes, and enhance shareholder value. Thank you for your continued support and belief in SideChannel's mission. We look forward to updating you again next quarter. I'll now turn it over to our CFO, Ryan Polk, for a more detailed review of the financials.

Operator (participant)

Mr. Polk, sir, I believe you may be on mute.

Ryan Polk (CFO)

Appreciate that, Brian. For the fifth quarter in a row, we've had a growth in our cash balance, with cash flow from operations being positive. I do note that this is the time of year when we have a fair amount of our annual contracts renewing, annual software contracts, and annual service contracts, where we use third parties to deliver those services. A lot of that invoicing helps us with cash flow during quarters two and three, which is one of the reasons why we're seeing this uptick in cash this quarter. The rest of our financial statements, I think, are pretty straightforward. Growth in gross margin, as Brian highlighted, a decrease in operating expenses, and a narrowing gap on our net losses, just a few thousand dollars, $50-some thousand dollars below—excuse me, a net loss of just under $50,000.

Getting close to having a positive net income line as well. That concludes my comments. Nothing really more to add to this summary from Brian. Now we'll go to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. At this time, we'll be conducting our question-and-answer session. If you would 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 if you would like to remove your question 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 poll for questions. Thank you. We have a question from Luke Wheatley, who is a private investor. Sir, your line is live.

Hey, guys. Congratulations on a good quarter. How are you all doing today?

Ryan Polk (CFO)

Doing well.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

I'm on mute. Good. Good.

Okay. Good deal. I was wondering if you all could update us a little bit about the Global Force Symposium, just how that went, and then talk a little bit about what are your biggest headwinds that you see with the Enclave market, and what are you all trying to do to overcome those and really accelerate growth. Thank you.

Yeah. No, good question. Yeah. Global Force was a good event. We had a full team down there, Booth, and a key partner of ours, Koniag, which is an Alaskan native-owned perpetual small business that does a lot of work within the Department of Defense and the federal government. They are one of our key partners to sell into the federal space. They are a great vehicle to be able to get into that space with very little friction and overhead for us, while also being just phenomenal partners and really understanding our business and respecting and appreciating the caliber of both of our professional services and the product that we have. Yeah, I think overall went really well. We had some really great meetings while we were there.

Obviously, General Brown, who is on our board, also is the CEO of AUSA, the organization that throws and puts on the event that was in Huntsville for Global Force. Obviously, having him in our corner, making introductions kind of validates what we're doing and why we're in the space. I think overall, the team is really pleased with that. Obviously, the sales team is working the leads that came from that event, and we're pursuing other opportunities through our partner, Koniag. I totally concentrated on that part of the question. Oh, headwinds for Enclave, right?

Yeah.

That was the second.

Ryan Polk (CFO)

That's right.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Okay. Yeah. I mean, look, with any technology, right, you've got competition in the space. We've got to stand out as a brand against the likes of Illumio, what was Perimeter 81. They got bought up by CyberArk or somebody else to go die. I think it was Check Point, Zscaler, and the other likes, some large behemoths. I think what bodes well for us is we know what their weaknesses are. We know why clients aren't buying them, and those are our strengths, right? We're easier to deploy. We don't have a cloud infrastructure as overhead or as a reliance to actually have our product work, and we're lower cost. The barrier to entry for us is better, in my opinion, than the competition.

Where the headwinds are, obviously, getting a sales team rallied around that, getting them spun up on it, educated, knowing how to sell it, where to sell it, where the right markets are, where the right thing—that is with any sales team, with any product. I think we are just going through the regular, normal kind of process of launching and getting a software product out to market. We are doing that while also developing new features and capabilities for that product. You will see the new certificate management functionality to be able to handle non-person identity or machine identity management. I mean, that is a huge, huge ask. You will see Venafi was just bought by CyberArk because that is all they did, and that left a huge space and opening in the market for another player to step in.

That is exactly why we built out that functionality, because we were already doing everything else that was so close and ancillary to it. For us to go enable that type of a feature was almost zero lift. We have already got our second largest DoD client now, which is really the genesis and reason for why we are pushing that feature, because they asked for it, and we have the ability to deliver it through Enclave. For me, I do not see a solid wall. Headwind is probably right, because you can fight through a headwind, but it is not going to keep us and hold us back. I am still very confident in what we are doing from just a sales standpoint, getting that into direct sales and into channel sales as well.

Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. Is it okay if I ask one more question just while I've got you?

Sure. Go ahead. Yeah, please.

I know on previous earnings calls, you all talked about the restrictive warrants that SideChannel has, and I think those are due to expire in about a year. What sort of plans do you all have for the business after those expire?

I think we have the ability to act more like a public company and kind of raise capital if we needed to, although right now, we do not have a force that is requiring us to do that, right? We do not have any liquidity problems. We do not have any issues on solvency. We do not need to raise capital like a lot of other OTC companies do just to stay afloat. If we were going to raise capital, it would be to obviously kind of double or triple down on sales and marketing around Enclave. That would be the investment in there. Right now, I do not think—I think we have purposely kind of held back from trying to think about what to do specifically. Once those warrants expire, I feel like we actually have quite a bit of time.

I know it's a year away, but we have some time to kind of think about that. Yeah, definitely a plan for what can we now go do post-warrants. That's really all those warrants are holding us back on, is really the ability to raise. Really, all other facets of our public company structure, our business as a whole, those are not really holding us back in any regard. I'll be honest, that is the one thing that we can do once those expire. Again, I don't think we're really pressured to go do that, because we got to balance that with shareholder dilution, and we got to find the right banks, the right terms, the right banker. There's a lot of options out there, and they're not all good when it comes to banking.

We have to find the right partner that's going to understand our business, respect what we want to go do with a raise and potential uplift should we go that path, and what we want to go do with it, and what's our overall plan. We're going to be diligent about that, and we're going to kind of continue to kind of see what the market's doing.

Awesome. Thanks for the information. Appreciate it, guys.

Sure. Yeah. No, thanks for jumping on again. Good to hear from you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As we have no further questions on the lines at this time, I would like to hand the call back over to Mr. Haugli for any closing remarks.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Sure. Ryan, did you have any online that you captured, or?

Ryan Polk (CFO)

Yeah. We've got one question, Brian. The question is, what is the outcome of the large reverse split? What are the next steps going to the next level index? This question is referring to a proposal that was in our most recent annual meeting in which our shareholders authorized our board to execute a 1-to-200 reverse stock split. We haven't taken any action on that. We just asked the shareholders for that authorization, and we received it. We're grateful for that. At this point, we don't have any plans to—any specific timing in mind of when we might use that opportunity. We are considering how we can use that and when we might use that, but nothing specific at this time.

Of course, for the reason Brian just mentioned, these warrants kind of put us off from doing anything that relates to a move to another exchange. Oftentimes, the people that would help us do that want us to raise some capital at the same time. As Brian mentioned, we're not really in the market for that, and we're really precluded from doing that because of these warrants. On the reverse stock split, no actions have been taken other than the shareholders granting us the right or granting our board the right to take that. We would time that probably something like an uplift if we were preparing to do that.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Polk (CFO)

No, I think.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Any questions online?

I think it's good to point out, Ryan, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is our second or third year in a row where we have asked the shareholders to give us this option. It is something that we've been asking for in previous years to be able to have so that we can use it if we need to. I think we're going to continue to ask that so that we have that tool available to us should we need it. That way, we can use it when we need to and not have to go out to the shareholders in some type of an emergency vote situation.

Ryan Polk (CFO)

Yep.

Brian Haugli (CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. I do not see it as—it is not indicative of anything right now. It is just a tool that we want to be able to have available to us should we use it, so. All right. No other questions. I want to thank you all for joining us today and for continued interest in SideChannel. As we move forward, our focus remains on execution, delivering value to our clients, innovating through our solutions like Enclave, and driving sustainable growth for our shareholders. We appreciate your time, your questions, and your support, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Everybody stay safe, and thank you again.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.