Surgepays - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 5

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the SurgePays 2025 second quarter financial results conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Valter Pinto, Investor Relations at SurgePays. Sir, the floor is yours.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the SurgePays 2025 second quarter financial results conference call. Today's date is August 13, 2025, and on the call today from the company are Brian Cox, President and CEO, and Tony Evers, CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements as they are defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see SurgePays' most recent filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statement to reflect the events that occur after this call.

Copies of today's press release are accessible on SurgePays' investor relations website, ir.surgepays.com. In addition, SurgePays' Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2025, will also be available on SurgePays' investor relations website. I'd now like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Brian Cox. Brian.

Speaker 2

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Our second quarter 2025 revenue increased approximately 8.9% sequentially, bringing total revenue for the first half of 2025 to approximately $22.1 million. Subsequent to the second quarter, we saw strong accelerating momentum across all of our business verticals: our MVNO operations through LinkUp Mobile and our government-subsidized brand, Torch Wireless, as well as our MVNE wholesale platform, which offers a full suite of nationwide wireless solutions to third-party wireless providers. Our SurgePays point-of-sale prepaid top-ups revenue has spiked upwards as well. Today is less about the past and more about what's happening now and what's ahead. We have visibility on our growth and full confidence in providing revenue guidance of $75 million to $90 million for 2025 and $225 million to $240 million for 2026. Let me start with the subsidized Lifeline program through our Torch Wireless brand, which has scaled significantly.

The Lifeline program is a government-subsidized benefit program that provides essential wireless connectivity to those who qualify. While the ramp-in activations took about 60 days longer than we anticipated due to regulatory approvals and software platform adjustments, we are now 100% live, and activations are steadily increasing daily. After activating 20,000 Lifeline subscribers in June, we activated 57,000 in July and are now projecting to activate 80,000 to 90,000 subscribers, approximately 3,000 per day by September. To put this into perspective, at our highest peak during ACP, we were activating roughly 3,000 per day. With Lifeline, we are approaching that level and have reached it in a significantly shorter period of time. What's even more exciting is that we're still operating well below our full capacity. Many sales channels are still being opened, so we expect continued sales growth.

This positions us exceptionally well for the continued growth in the months ahead. During ACP, we made significant investments in infrastructure and operational efficiencies to support the growth we experienced. When ACP funding ended in June of last year, we immediately repurposed that infrastructure to support Lifeline and our other platforms. We successfully built upon that foundation by adding an exceptionally seasoned team, new technology, additional distribution, and most notably, a direct strategic partnership with AT&T. We signed a multi-year agreement with AT&T in November 2024 and completed full integration, including a network migration and SIM activation rollout on April 1. This partnership gives us direct access to one of the most reliable networks in the country and positions us to provide backend telecom infrastructure to MVNOs that don't have a direct carrier relationship.

Another key differentiating factor from the ACP days is that we are now uniquely diversified, not only through Lifeline, but also our MVNO prepaid LinkUp platform. We fully launched LinkUp in April, activating approximately 10,000 users. In July, we more than doubled that, surpassing 20,500 activations, driven primarily by expanded retail distribution, targeted marketing, and competitive pricing. The grind of market adoption takes longer on the prepaid side of the wireless business, but we are seeing the expected traction. These drivers are sustainable as we continue opening new doors and building customer loyalty. The heart of this model is our proprietary point-of-sale software, which not only facilitates transactions but also drives recurring revenue from activations and replenishments right at the convenience store register. It's not just a tool, it's the backbone of our ecosystem and a true competitive advantage.

Third-party prepaid wireless top-up revenue is a key indicator of future revenue growth in our other products. In July alone, we generated $4.3 million in top-up revenue and are projecting nearly $5 million in August, putting us at a run rate of over $60 million, assuming no growth. Last year at this time, we were generating approximately $1 million in monthly top-up revenue. This same channel's revenue in July 2025 is now almost four times higher. Our strategic initiatives, including the recent signing of several key new accounts, are expected to drive sustained recurring revenue growth. The model is working, and the investments are paying off. On the wholesale side, our MVNE platform is a growing revenue engine with a robust pipeline. As an MVNE, we provide billing, provisioning, SIMs, and eSIMs to other wireless companies. A high-margin model with minimal incremental costs and low overhead.

Many MVNOs in the market today are actually sub-MVNOs. We're one of the few with direct carrier access, putting us in a rare and powerful position. To date, we've onboarded three MVNO partners. Collectively, these partners serve thousands of subscribers, and they're looking to grow quickly, providing us with a path to scale our platform and recurring revenue base. We are also in advanced talks with national convenience store distributors, each with footprints in tens of thousands of community retail store locations. Last quarter, we discussed HT Hackney, which services over 40,000 stores. HT Hackney is carrying our phone-in-a-box product, which continues to perform well. Phone-in-a-Box is our retail-ready grab-and-go solution that enables stores to sell and instantly activate wireless service by scanning it at the register.

As rollout progresses, each HT Hackney location becomes part of our extended ecosystem and begins to accept top-up payments for our monthly wireless plans. That means each store transforms into a new activation point for our entire product suite. Our near-term goal is to ramp to 100,000 locations operating on the SurgePays platform, driven by a combination of organic growth and distribution agreements with HT Hackney and other partners. Before I turn the call over to Tony to discuss our results in more detail, I could not be more excited about the future. July was the turning point. We have built a powerful engine that blends technology, innovation, and distribution. Today, we have the products, partnerships, and infrastructure to enter the next phase of high growth. Thank you for your support and belief in our mission.

I'll now turn it over to Tony for a detailed review of our Q2 financials. Tony.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. Second quarter 2025 revenue totaled $11.5 million, an increase of 8.9% sequentially as compared to $10.6 million for the first quarter of 2025. 2024 marked the end of the federally funded ACP, and as expected, year-over-year financials have been impacted. Our platform service revenue growth was robust, generating $9.2 million in the second quarter of 2025 as compared to $2.5 million in the second quarter of 2024. We have achieved strong prepaid top-up revenue growth over the past two quarters, reflecting the execution and leadership of our new Vice President of Sales. Our strategic initiatives, including the signing of several key new accounts, are expected to drive sustained recurring revenue growth. Gross profit was a loss of $2.7 million for the second quarter of 2025, compared to a gross profit loss of $3.4 million for the second quarter of 2024.

As indicated, we continue the transition of our business model from ACP to LinkUp Mobile and Lifeline verticals. SG&A expenses decreased 45% year-over-year to $4.1 million during the second quarter of 2025, as compared to $7.4 million for the second quarter of 2024. The decrease was primarily due to a reduction in non-cash compensation to various employees, along with a reduction in contractors and consultants in professional services, partly offset by an increase in computer and internet, advertising and marketing, and other expenses. Loss from operations was $6.8 million in the second quarter of 2025, compared to $10.9 million in operating loss in the second quarter of 2024. Our reported net loss and loss per share for the second quarter of 2025 were $7.1 million and negative $0.35 per share. Our loss and loss per share continue to be impacted by this transition from ACP.

Turning to the balance sheet, our cash and cash equivalents and investment balances as of June 30, 2025, were $4.4 million compared to $11.8 million as of December 31, 2024. As Brian mentioned, we are providing revenue guidance of $75 million to $90 million for 2025 and $225 million to $240 million for 2026. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Brian for closing comments.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Tony. To summarize, Q2 was about building and positioning. Post-quarter, we fit the acceleration phase we've been talking about, and the numbers already reflect it. Our activation growth, expanding distribution, and scalable technology platforms give us confidence that we're on the right path to create significant shareholder value. We've addressed the challenges, proven the model, and are now focused on executing at scale. I would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support and our team for their tireless efforts in making this growth possible. Now, before we take questions, I have a note here to clarify that when I refer to revenue growth being up across every vertical, I'm referencing growth trajectory quarter over quarter and after Q2. Operator, we will now open it to questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to join the queue to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We do ask if listening on speakerphone today that you pick up your handset while asking your question to provide optimal sound quality. Once again, please press star one on your keypad at this time if you wish to join the queue to ask a question. Please hold a moment while we poll for questions. Your first question today is coming from John Marc Andre Roy from Water Tower Research. John, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thanks. It looks like you've got quite an acceleration coming up in Lifeline activations. I kind of wondered, what are really the key drivers that are driving that growth?

Speaker 6

Great, thanks for the question, John. The drivers right now are in states with the higher margin ACP, similar growth margins. Obviously, we blend those in across to all states, but that's really our focus for obvious reasons, the profitability of the customer and the return. When you're starting, you know, we touched on this a little last quarter, but we didn't have the visibility into it happening where we could literally stick our head out the window and look down and see the asphalt flying by. We were just looking ahead. We had the platform geared up for ACP, retooling it for Lifeline, and then retooling it for some of these state-specific programs that give the extra money.

What you see is a lot of the experience, a lot of the wisdom, a lot of the things we've learned across the last, let's see, what, since 2006, being a part of the Lifeline program. As a reminder to everyone, Lifeline's been around since Reagan. He instituted the program. It basically switched over to wireless around 2010, 2011, but it's been around a long, long time. Part of the budget, you know, some of the things that are not similar to ACP, that was a separate non-budgeted item. We've learned, we've added a lot of inventory controls. We've added a lot of compliance components, which were some of the actual reasons why the delayed start, things that help facilitate faster, quicker enrollments, things that used to be manual workarounds are now all built into the system.

We reference as well, it's a little frustrating and exciting at the same time because we're still not, you know, I see all these sales channels yet to come, and obviously we want to go now, now, now, more, and more, and more. We're methodically rolling this out, hitting our numbers that are in our projections for those sweet spots of growth. We've made a lot of connections over the past 10 years. Those folks are excited to come back to work for us, and a lot of the same similarities with the ACP program, including tents out in front of convenience stores or in front of DHS offices around the country. It's very similar to those that watched our growth during ACP.

Speaker 3

Great. As a follow-up, you've got Lifeline and LinkUp. How do you really balance the priorities between those two different businesses? It's really kind of a dollar allocation question. Are you really going to push growth here? Are you really going to push growth there? Push growth everywhere? You can't really realistically do everything. How are you balancing those two different businesses?

Speaker 6

You know, it's even a broader question than that. You've got your top-ups, you've got your opportunities over here with ClearLine, which we are excited to talk about in some of the upcoming quarters. You've got all these things hitting, and how do you allocate your resources? I think that goes back to our management team's experience. Bluntly, what the upper management of our company has been able to accomplish over their careers. In telecom, it's just, it's almost like looking at different plans. If you have different plans that are more profitable, which ones do you incentivize in the field? That's the way I look at subsidiaries. Right now, it's even more, and let's make a step back.

Those who have been entrepreneurs or have started their own businesses probably relate to me a little bit right now because when you're not in the black, basically what you look for is how do I, number one, cancel out my expenses with income? Number two, get numbers.

Speaker 3

Black.

Speaker 6

How do I get there as quick as possible? The path of least resistance. You have knowns and you have unknowns. The market adoption for LinkUp Mobile, you know, that's a grind. We talked about that in the script. You put incentives out there, you shake hands, those masters go out, set up doors, you hope that your plans are better, you hope that customers choose you. Lifeline, it's almost known revenue. If we put out so many people with so many phones, we know there's going to be a direct return, which is why we are so confident in our numbers. We're watching it. We've watched those numbers align the last 90 days. To answer your question, just to kind of give you the methodology behind it, we go after what's known. We go after the sure thing.

We go after one of the industries that a couple of us helped build, the Lifeline industry. Right now, we have a set number that we know when we get this many customers in these certain states, we are cash flow positive. When we get this many here over here, we're profitable. Those are the knowns. Those are where we're spending our most time. That's where I'm spending a lot of my time just from the historical legacy that I've got in the Lifeline program. That is where the focus and where we're putting most of our resources right now.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks for the clarification there.

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Michael Diana from Maxim Group. Michael, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

All right. Hey, Brian. I have some more specific questions about Lifeline. You just mentioned temps and stuff, but is most of this through your retail network or temps? The other part of that is what sort of commission, if any, are you paying to get each account?

Speaker 2

Yes. The temps right now are allocated to the states with extra money. I don't want to bore people to death on a granular level, but there's two components of the Lifeline program. One of them is federal. It's $9.25. The other is any additional state, you know, primarily some of the blue states that give extra money. The states that have extra money, we have temps. Like I said, it's very similar to ACP margins, ACP distribution. In the other states, we're doing online. There is a blend there. There's modeling that goes into that. There's not enough profit in the $9.25 to justify paying people to man enrollment temps, but there is in the other states. We still have not, because of the response, which is, I'm not going to say it's overwhelming. It's a little more than what we anticipated.

It was definitely more friendly than what we thought it would be. I thought it'd be a little tougher. We still have the retail network component that we haven't even opened yet. We've tested it. We have a little here and there, but we haven't allocated a lot of time and resource to it because we're getting such a great return from the temps. It's like fishing. If there's no reason to switch over from worms to crickets if you're, you know, you're crushing it with worms. That's kind of what we're doing right now. We do look to scale as we grow, but right now, we're almost running out of phones. Things are going so fast.

I can't run out of phones because if you, I think we talked about this back in the days of ACP when it comes to inventory, you can't fill out of inventory because then people have nothing that day. They always have to have backup inventories. Then you lose your salespeople, your enrollment agents. You always got to stay ahead of the game inventory-wise. That has been where we've been really, really hands-on, navigating this, scaling up and ramping up.

Speaker 0

Okay. For your $9.25 states, it's virtually all online, no commissions. For the higher revenue states, you're doing temps and you have to pay, what, one time upfront or?

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's usually one time, and that varies.

Speaker 0

What is the additional revenue in some of these states?

Speaker 2

You're looking at anywhere, you know, some states give upfront of an additional $19 plus ongoing, let's just say ballpark $18. You've got some states that have tribal deposits.

Speaker 0

You mean not $0.925 and $18, just $18? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2

I apologize. That's the additional. For clarity, I thought you asked for additional. There's an additional 18 ongoing. Okay, let's take a step back. Let's go net what we would get from states with additional money, the ones we're targeting. You're looking at a net of about $27 ballpark. What's unique about that, Mike, is that you could look at it and go, it's close to ACP. It's $3 less. It is $3 less, but we have a better contract now from AT&T, so my cost is about $3 less. Magically in the universe, it's almost the identical spread of margin.

Speaker 0

Okay. What is your monthly cost?

Speaker 2

You're asking me to give out my wholesale numbers. I can't give out my wholesale numbers because I have found, unfortunately, we have people who don't wish us greatness on these calls. I don't want to give away any of the things. I also have people who sell for us, and rather than them use my own words to negotiate against me for higher commissions, let's just say that our margins are very similar to ACP. Our cost of acquisition is very similar to ACP. In those regions, that's specifically what we're focusing on because if you look at our numbers, we know, for example, ballpark 90,000 higher margin ACP-like customers, we're sitting cash flow positive. If you want to really drill it down, the hair-on-fire focus laser of all the management team is getting to that number first, then everything else is gravy after that.

Speaker 0

Are any devices involved in any of these?

Speaker 2

Smartphones.

Speaker 0

Yeah. I mean, do you have to give a smartphone? Do they buy a smartphone? What's the deal?

Speaker 2

We have found that we've tried it SIM-only, and you can go that route, and you could also do a blend of SIM for some, smartphone for others. If you can get a smartphone for ballpark $30, and you run the math on the stickiness or longevity of the customer, you're going to have them a whole lot longer with a phone, and you're actually going to increase your customer acquisition with a phone. It just makes sense. A lot of people use that phone for, you know, 8, 9, 10 months. Some use it merely as a vessel until they are able to go buy an iPhone or a Galaxy, usually in the spring with tax credits. That's normally what we see.

Speaker 0

Are you saying you give them a $30 smartphone, or they pay you $30 for a smartphone?

Speaker 2

We give them a $30 smartphone.

Speaker 0

Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2

Your model's probably going to look very similar to what your ACP model was.

Speaker 0

Yeah, you don't get reimbursed for the phone, right?

Speaker 2

There is a connection credit in some states that is almost the cost of the phone.

Speaker 0

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2

We're pretty excited. We're pretty excited.

Speaker 0

You are getting reimbursed for the phone for the most part. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2

Ballpark two-thirds of it.

Speaker 0

Two-thirds. Wow. Okay. All right. Very exciting. Thanks a lot, Brian.

Speaker 2

Sure. Thank you for the questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Ed Woo from Ascendiant Capital. Ed, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Congratulations on all the progress and definitely for the guidance. Really appreciate it and excited for you guys. My question is, how is the competitive marketplace? It seems like you're wrapping up a lot of these new customers. Are you taking them from someone else, and is there any risk of price competition going forward?

Speaker 2

Insightful question. Always a risk of competition. We are the, you know, it's not necessarily the new kid on the block, but our style of how we compensate salespeople, for example, who we brought to the table, and the way that our platform enrolls people so quickly and easily is very enticing for the field enrollment agents. Keep in mind, you know, those field enrollment agents, keeping them happy is really how you grow your subscriber number because they're going to be constantly pelted with solicitations from other companies. Incentivizing them, doing them right, a few things that we've learned over the years of really taking care of our distributors in the field is really how we've grown it this fast. You know, look, everybody kind of wants to be a part of the new thing, the exciting thing, and that's what we are right now.

It's, you know, but there's definitely other companies out there. There's companies who've been doing this for a long time. I think right now, we're, while we don't pay as much commission, we are hands-on. A lot of the things we do, you know, we definitely utilize our team in El Salvador. You know, for those of you out there, remember we have 125 specialists down there who assist in onboarding. One of the other components that's a differentiator for us is we own our own platform. That enrollment platform that a field agent is using, that's our platform. We don't have to put in special requests and beg for a third party and then hope somebody around the world gets around to doing the development for us. I'll give you a little example on that.

One of the delays, you know, it was really frustrating, in Q2 because we kept having these little pilly delays that kept us from full rollout. One of them was, one of the states that we were really heavy in wanted the pictures where you upload a picture to show proof of ID. They wanted it to be under a certain megabyte. One of the problems with devices now is they take better, nicer pictures, which means a whole lot more megabytes. It's impossible to ask a field rep to, "Oh, hey, take this, come up with your own way to cut it down and compress it so that it's acceptable to the regulatory approval compliance folks." We had to take two and a half weeks and develop a system in our software that would compress pictures.

Things like that, us being able to prioritize and us being able to facilitate things, and then also show our sales reps, "Hey, you asked, we took care of it. Boom, let's go. What else can we do to help you guys do better, make you more efficient, to help you be more compliant, to help you get more sales?" That's really what is the niche that we see and that we have in the market, maybe compared to some of our other competitors.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks for answering my questions, and I wish you guys all good luck. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Ed.

Speaker 5

Thank you. There are no further questions in queue at this time, and this does conclude today's question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to pass the floor back to management for closing remarks. We do thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you once again for your.