zSpace Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 14, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Second quarter revenues were flat at $7.5 M, with first-half revenues down 7% year-on-year, driven by a 13% decline in hardware despite a 2% gain in software and services.
  • Negative Sentiment: Bookings plunged 54% year-over-year in Q2 (down 31% on a normalized basis), reflecting elongated sales cycles and funding delays in the K-12 segment.
  • Positive Sentiment: Gross margins expanded to 44.9% for the first half (42.6% in Q2), propelled by a favorable hardware-to-software mix, new product launches, and in-house software content replacing third-party offerings.
  • Positive Sentiment: The integration of the Second Avenue acquisition is complete, and the new Career Explorer application is now in market, targeting growth in career exploration and CTE software revenue.
  • Positive Sentiment: zSpace accelerated investment in its AI assistant and machine-learning stylus technology to deliver personalized, immersive learning experiences and support long-term differentiation.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
zSpace Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss zSpace's financial results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2025. Joining us today are zSpace CEO Paul Kellenberger, CFO Erick DeOliveira, and Greg Robles from investor relations. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for analyst questions. Before we go any further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robles as he reads the company's safe harbor statement. Greg, please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 3

Thanks, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss our second quarter 2025 financial results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call may be considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, we may discuss certain key business metrics, which are non-GAAP financial measures. A description of these non-GAAP measures and any comparison to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release on the investor relations section of our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of zSpace, Paul Kellenberger. Paul?

Speaker 2

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. I am Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace, and with me is Erick DeOliveira, our Chief Financial Officer. We're both excited to be here with you to discuss zSpace, our Q2 performance, and our plan to drive growth. To begin, we're operating in a challenging and evolving macroeconomic environment. Global trade dynamics remain unpredictable, and ongoing changes in U.S. education policy continue to cause funding uncertainty and delays for our school district customers, a trend that began in Q1. Despite these headwinds, zSpace remains well-positioned to navigate and capitalize on this shifting landscape. We're particularly focused on four key policy trends that directly impact our business. Number one, decentralization of federal funding.

Speaker 2

The continued redirection of education dollars from the federal to state level is creating a more localized decision-making environment, opening doors for zSpace to align with state-specific priorities and build deeper partnerships. Number two, expansion of school choice. The increased emphasis on charter schools and voucher programs is accelerating demand for flexible, high-impact instructional solutions across a growing diversity of educational models. Number three, focus on flexibility and innovation. States now have greater autonomy to invest in emerging technologies and instructional approaches. zSpace's immersive learning platform is well-suited to meet this call for innovation. The fourth item, implementation of block grants, a central feature of the Department of Education's current approach. Block grants consolidate categorical programs into broader funding pools, giving states greater freedom to allocate resources.

Speaker 2

We believe this shift will become a significant growth catalyst for zSpace, particularly as funding becomes more predictable and is directed towards workforce development, PPE, and STEM education. While we continue to closely monitor these external policy developments, we've also made meaningful internal progress across product integration and innovation. Most notably, this past quarter, we successfully completed the integration of our Second Avenue acquisition, culminating in the launch of our Career Explorer App, which is now in the market. We believe this product will drive meaningful growth in our software business and strengthen our leadership in career exploration and CTE. In parallel, we've accelerated investment in the zSpace AI Assistant, which is central to our long-term vision of improving student outcomes through intelligent personalized learning.

Speaker 2

This strategic focus positions zSpace at the forefront of AI-driven education, delivering real-time support and guidance to learners while empowering educators with actionable insights to enhance instruction. In the areas of industry recognition and customer momentum, I would like to illustrate our momentum and success with a few examples. In June, zSpace was honored with the Tech in Learning Award at ISTE, the largest annual K-12 education conference in the U.S., further validating our innovation and impact. We also achieved several key strategic customer wins across both new and existing markets, reinforcing our value proposition in the competitive and rapidly evolving education sector. The first example is Northwell School of Health Sciences, which is a collaboration with New York City Public Schools, funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies organization.

Speaker 2

As part of a flagship health sciences campus launch in New York City, Northwell School of Health Sciences selected zSpace as a cornerstone technology in its state-of-the-art simulation labs. This deployment included zSpace Inspire systems across multiple labs with a broad spectrum of healthcare applications. The second example I would like to highlight is the Mendoza Unified School District here in California. They implemented zSpace Imagine systems at three elementary schools as part of an early STEM and career exploration initiative, marking a major investment in immersive learning at the K-5 level. Overall, we remain confident in the long-term potential growth of zSpace and our ability to deliver on our vision. That said, we are approaching the second half of the year with measured caution, given the continued uncertainty in the broader macroeconomic and education funding environment. Importantly, this caution is not a reflection of customer demand.

Speaker 2

In fact, as evidenced by recent wins and ongoing engagement, both existing customers and prospects continue to express interest in our solutions and a desire to expand usage. The challenge lies not in demand, but in the persistent delays and constraints around funding. We believe that as the federal education policy continues to take shape and funding mechanisms become more predictable, the longer-term outlook for zSpace will strengthen. With that, I will turn the call over to Erick to walk through our financial results in more detail. Erick? Thank you, Paul. As you consider our results, a reminder that our revenues are substantially recognized upon shipment of laptop units or fulfillment of software license keys. This includes recognizing the full value of multi-year software licenses in the period in which they are fulfilled. Only a small portion of our revenue is rapidly recognized.

Speaker 2

As a result of this revenue recognition treatment, our financial results can exhibit quarter-to-quarter variability that exaggerates the underlying seasonality of the business. Now, diving into our first half performance. First half revenues were $14.2 million, down 7% year-on-year. As noted in our Q1 results, we've been enjoying outperformance in software and services, which were up 2% versus a comparable six-month period of the prior year. Hardware revenues for the same six-month period were down 13%. This dynamic continues to be an important driver of gross margin expansion. As previously discussed, our P&L reflects multi-year software license revenue in period. To help better characterize the run-rate health of the business, we offer two non-GAAP software operating metrics. As of June 30, 2025, the annualized contract value of renewable software was $10.9 million, up 11% compared with 12 months ago.

Speaker 2

Also, as of June 30, 2025, the net dollar revenue retention of customers with at least $50,000 of ACV was 131% for those customers present as of June 30, 2024. We're very pleased that our efforts to focus on the importance of our software content in driving student outcomes have generated continued growth in the ACV metric and high retention rates, amid such a challenging environment for our end users. Bookings for the six-month period ending June 30 were $15.5 million, down 34% year-on-year. Excluding the unusual $5 million deal closed in the prior period, bookings performance would have been down 16% year-on-year. This normalized performance reflects a 21% decline in the U.S. and rest of the world markets outside of China, and an 88% increase in bookings from China. K-12 customers accounted for 68% of bookings value, down from 70% in the prior year comparable period.

Speaker 2

PPE customers drove 32% of value, up from 30% in the prior year. Gross profit was $6.4 million, up 11% year-on-year against the same period last year. This includes a one-time charge in the second quarter for discontinued software license inventory, which is related to our continued efforts to bring previously resold third-party titles in-house through both acquisition of applications and internal development. Gross profit was also affected by applicable tariffs and duties. Although we have largely treated these as pass-through on a dollar basis, we incur some margin compression from doing so. Gross margins for the six-month period were 44.9%, up 7.5 points versus the prior year period.

Speaker 2

Improvements in profitability continue to be driven by the same three factors identified earlier in the year: favorable revenue mix of hardware versus software and services, new hardware products with better price and performance profiles, and an increased amount of zSpace-owned software content. Operating expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 11% for the first half. People-related costs, which make up the bulk of our expenses, were up 2% year-on-year for the same comparable period. For the second quarter, Q2 revenues of $7.5 million were flat year-on-year, with hardware performance of 3% growth versus the prior year Q2, slightly ahead of software and services, which declined 5%. This difference in performance is attributable to turbulence in the educational market, created by the combination of tariff policies and uncertainty in educational funding, which has resulted in unpredictable purchasing patterns in school districts across the country.

Speaker 2

Bookings for the three-month period ending June 30 were $7.1 million, down 54% year-on-year. Excluding the unusual $5 million deal closed in the prior year period, bookings performance would have been down 31% year-on-year. This normalized performance reflects a 31% decline in the U.S. and rest of the world markets outside China, and a 100% decrease in bookings from China. K-12 bookings accounted for 65% of bookings value in the quarter, down from 72% in the prior year comparable period. PPE customers drove 35% of bookings value, up from 28% in the prior year. Gross profit was $3.2 million, up 5% year-on-year against the same period last year, and extending the margin expansion trend, which began in the second half of last year. This includes the one-time write-off for retired third-party software licenses of $174,000, as we replaced third-party content with our own.

Speaker 2

Gross margins for the quarter were 42.6%, up 2.1 percentage points versus the prior year period. Normalizing for the impact of software license write-offs and the impact of tariffs, gross margin would have been 46%, or 6% of expansion compared with Q2 of 2024. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 10% year-on-year. People-related costs, excluding stock-based compensation, which make up the bulk of costs, were up 7% year-on-year for the same comparable period. Our reported results include $1.9 million in stock-based compensation expense, attributable to restricted stock units granted in Q1 as part of our employee equity incentive program. Relative to the 22.8 million shares issued and outstanding at the start of the year, we continue to manage the issuance of RSUs as part of the employee equity incentive program to a target burn rate of less than 7% for the full year.

Speaker 2

Now, moving on to our outlook for the rest of the year. We expect the uncertainty and turbulence present through the first six months of 2025 to persist, particularly in the K-12 segment in the U.S. Education customers continue to take longer to identify funding sources for zSpace's K-12 AR/VR classroom solutions, even as some accelerate their purchases to lock in pricing and availability for the remainder of the year. The overall impact for zSpace remains unclear at this time. As discussed in the past two quarters, we remain comfortable in our ability to improve the quality of both our hardware and software revenues and renew business across the K-12 and CTE content segments, but cannot credibly project business volume under current circumstances. Given this landscape, we are going to refrain from formal financial guidance.

Speaker 2

Regarding our capital allocation and management of operating expenses in particular, we continue to control spending strictly. On an ongoing basis, we will evaluate levels of spend in order to maintain business flexibility, as well as to position the company for sustained profitability in the quarters to come. Now, I will turn the time back to the operator for Q&A.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while I compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Yolanda Rohit Kulkarni with Wealth Capital Partners. Yolanda, it's open.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you. I guess the first question is just any three key trends that you can highlight, specifically since we have seen headlines around the funding, federal funding, $6 billion or so being released at the federal level. Perhaps maybe talk about how or if you've seen any changes in behavior and how that has kind of impacted some of the early 3Q trends.

Speaker 2

I'll take that one, Rohit. Thanks. This is Paul. As I discussed in my opening comments, I would say we're cautiously optimistic. Clearly, the unfreezing, if you will, or the completion of the review in July that the administration put on the $6.8 billion, unfreezing it certainly helps. I think it factors into the decision-making that our customers make. I think it's still a little bit early to say, and I'd say we're cautiously optimistic. We'll certainly have more to say in the next earnings release, and that's really it.

Speaker 1

Okay. I guess, and then a couple of questions kind of related to the CTE and the AI-driven education product offerings that you've had recently. Maybe talk through how you're incorporating AI in these new offerings, and maybe what is the value prop in the Career Explorer App for CTE now that it's out in the market?

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's a great question, Rohit. You know, we announced our Career Explorer App at ISTE last month. Let me talk a little bit about AI. By the way, we will have another announcement forthcoming. Let me talk about it generally. We are using machine learning, or ML, in our next-generation stylus offering. That is something that will improve the user experience and enhance our cost profile. That's more on the stylus and next generation that is coming. On the software side of it, our zSpace AI Assistant, which, again, there will be something in the public domain in the next week or so here on this, along with and within our Career Explorer App, are really unique in that they combine zSpace's immersive technology with our AI-driven personalization.

Speaker 2

This is something we've been working on for quite a while that ultimately delivers educational experiences that are impossible via traditional methods or 2D platforms. You'll be seeing more about that in the coming months. Our vision is really to empower learners, and whether it's young students or adults in the CTE world, with immersive AR/AI experiences to unlock their potential and prepare them for future careers. Stay tuned. You will be seeing more and more about that or on that in the coming weeks and coming months.

Speaker 1

Okay. Maybe one last quick one for Erick. In terms of the gross margins, I guess the question there is, to what extent is the, maybe if you can feel out the makeshift from hardware to software and within hardware as well as you do more of the new products, shift towards new products like Inspire 2 and Imagine? As in a more direct way to ask, what part of this gross margin uplift you're seeing is more or less permanent as you go through more software sales versus just the hardware cycle that we are seeing right now?

Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely, Rohit. I think I heard both a retrospective question and then sort of a prospective question there. Let me take the retrospective and give you some color on the year-to-date gross margin improvement. For the first half, we saw 7.5 percentage points of margin expansion from 37.4% to 44.9% in our reported figures for the first six months of this year compared to the comparable period last year. The composition of that improvement, of the 7.5 points, was approximately 1.4 percentage points of favorability from revenue mix shift. Software and services collectively made up 4 percentage points more of the revenue portfolio than in the comparable period last year. The rate factors, so this is more structural and internal execution, drove the remaining 6.1 percentage points of margin expansion.

Speaker 2

That 6.1 points of margin expansion is in approximately equal measures driven by gains from the new hardware product launches, so Inspire 2 replacing its flagship predecessor Inspire and the new Imagine-based 14-inch form factor. On the software side, the contributions there are being driven by improvements in adding more of our own content to the software portfolio as opposed to third-party sellers where we incur a rev share that we record as costs. What I would add to that is in the quarter just closed, those reported results include almost 2 percentage points of idiosyncratic adversity, about 1.2 percentage points tied to a one-time write-off of software licenses that's related to us no longer offering those third-party titles in our library, and approximately another half percentage point of unfavorable impact from tariffs and duties paid.

Speaker 2

Those last factors combining for 6 percentage points of margin improvement are structural. It is the new hardware recently launched that replaces three-year-old hardware in our software catalogs and the software that we are currently offering first-party. That is going to continue to be the case. We see both of those as structural factors. As we look to future expansion, we anticipate continued improvements in the hardware ecosystem that will, again, structurally and permanently improve the hardware margins once those are rolled out. We also continue to evaluate opportunities to bring more first-party content to market that zSpace owns and will not require us to pay rev share on those revenues. Is that helpful?

Speaker 1

Yeah, very helpful. Thanks, Erick. I'll go back to the queue. Thank you both.

Speaker 2

Okay, thanks, Rohit.

Speaker 4

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Yolanda Palux-Perth with Barrington Research. Yolanda's open.

Speaker 5

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple of questions here. First one just off the top of my head since you kind of finished on it. The tariff impact was certainly less than I would have expected in the second quarter. There was virtually no impact in the first quarter, about $100,000 or so you said in the second quarter. What are your thoughts regarding tariffs on the second half?

Speaker 2

The tariff picture continues to be volatile. Our intention is, for the most part, to pass through the cost of tariffs on a dollar basis. It is both volatile and unpredictable in terms of the customer mix of shipments that we will be shipping to. Obviously, tariffs have a significant geographic impact or a geographic component to their magnitudes. Going forward, our intention is to continue to pass through the cost of tariffs on a dollar basis to the extent that the market continues to support that. When we do that on a dollar basis, we nonetheless see some % based compression of margins because we're not marking up tariff costs with a profit margin on top of that to our customers. Hey.

Operator

Alex, this is Paul. Maybe just to add to what you said, it certainly wasn't as impactful as we worried about back in, say, March. I think it's 20% we're roughly running right now, and there's, you know, "threats," quote-unquote, to go up to 30%. That assumes that it's coming out of China. As you well know, things are a bit of a moving target when it comes to tariffs.

Speaker 5

No doubt about it. Didn't you say on the first quarter call that your OEM supplier was looking to move some of their production out of China to another lower tariff market?

Operator

Yeah. In fact, we actually talked to them this week about it. The core product within zSpace Inspire is actually now being manufactured in Thailand. That actually manages their way through the tariff component of it. We'll see that benefit probably later this quarter and next quarter.

Speaker 5

Okay. Just a couple of others. You talked about bookings being down 54% year-over-year, macro uncertainty in the U.S. for sure, elongated sales cycles, that sort of thing. I didn't hear you mention anything about the backlog, which I think stood at $9.7 million at the end of the first quarter.

Operator

Correct. Backlog at the end of Q2 was $7.3 million for confirmed orders, but not yet fulfilled.

Speaker 5

Gotcha. All these things kind of come together for us to try to make some estimates for the second half in the absence of formal guidance. I thought I'd ask you for some more. You said those bookings were split between K-12 and CTE. I forget what you said, 70/30, something like that. Maybe you can refresh my memory there. While we're on the topic, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about CTE. I realized the new product, the new product from Second Avenue, Career Explorer App, is in that CTE space. That's really grades 5 through 8, I think you had said. CTE is a much bigger potential market for you, largely community colleges today, I assume, but also potentially adult learning and worker retraining. Just a little color there.

Operator

Correct. I think I'll speak to your quantitative questions, and then I think Paul has some color commentary on CTE. The tailwind from CTE can be seen in the mix. When the three months ended 6/30, we delivered $7.2 million in bookings. You'll recall the prior year comparable period had one anomalously large deal in there. That drove the 54% year-on-year decline. If you're looking at the mix, the CTE content of bookings for the three months ended this past June was 35%. That is actually up 7 percentage points over the prior year quarter. The reason for that is the prior year quarter did include that very large deal that had a preponderance of K-12s.

Speaker 5

Gotcha. Okay, the color?

Operator

By the way, seeing an acceleration in the CTE content year over year.

Speaker 2

Erick, let me give you a little more color on CTE. Our CTE sales are both in the K-12 environment, predominantly high school, as well as community colleges. The Career Explorer App, which, by the way, we traditionally sold, you know, hardware, software as a solution applications. We've got a pretty strong focus on four different areas with complete learning solutions, including our AI, zSpace AI Assistant that you'll hear more about in the coming weeks. The areas of focus are career exploration, which, by the way, starts as early as grades 5 and 6. We originally thought it was going to be kind of more high school, but the demand has really started in grades 5 and 6. Career exploration is one area. The other three are healthcare, and that's the largest pathway, as you well know, manufacturing and automotive. We have solutions in those areas today.

Speaker 2

I mean complete packaged solutions with our AI Assistant that goes along with it. We traditionally have worked with outside third parties on the certifications, groups like NOCTI. More and more, we're working with others to go even further in the certifications area.

Speaker 5

Community colleges, in terms of revenue or bookings today, is that a majority of CTE or not? You know.

Speaker 2

I'm going to give you the subjective answer off the top of Paul's head, and Erick may come up with some other data that we can share with you at the right time. I would say today, the bulk of our CTE business is in K-12, as in within those high schools. I think we're in something like 1,000 of the community colleges, which is a relatively low number. A lot of that just has to do with scale and focus. More and more, we are looking at continuing to expand in those community colleges.

Speaker 5

Great. That'll do me for now. I'll get back into the queue. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2

Okay, thanks, Alex.

Speaker 4

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Yolanda Nihal Chokshy with Northland Capital Markets. Yolanda's open.

Speaker 1

Thank you. A few questions. First one is your net dollar revenue retention rate for the quarter is 131%. That's a big jump up from the March quarter of 97%. I guess, in general, it's been kind of volatile. A couple of questions with respect to net dollar revenue retention. A, given the volatility of this metric, is it really a relevant metric? B, provided that it is, what's the driver of the significant improvement here?

Speaker 2

Hi, Nihal. Excellent questions. The way I'd characterize this is you'll recall that our net dollar revenue retention firstly requires that we have fulfilled the underlying renewable software in a given period. Because of that, it does carry many of the attributes of our recognized P&L revenue, which can exhibit a lot of variability quarter to quarter. Put another way, in a period in which we ship a significant volume of licenses, you'll see that impact show up in both the ACV and the MDRR metrics at a particular point in time. There can be some artifacts where if a large order is completed right before or right after a quarter-end break point, you'll see that discontinuity show up in the metric. For MDRR, we absolutely believe that this is an important measure of our ability to retain customers and extend their footprint.

Speaker 2

The driver in this case is a customer that had been with us prior to the prior year endpoint here, so prior to 6/30/2024, placed significant orders in the subsequent period, and you're now seeing that show up in this current year-end, current quarter-end measurement point. We had a couple of significant customers that were with us prior to 6/30/2024. In the last 12 months, now showing up in this quarter's comparison, you're seeing the jump between their summer purchases from a year ago and purchases made between that period and this current summer.

Speaker 1

Okay. If I may summarize, the driver of it was that a customer that hadn't renewed on time eventually renewed, and that basically drove that retention rate up.

Speaker 2

That is one dynamic. In this case, it was a customer that had relatively, or actually a handful of customers that had relatively modest ACV footprint, still in excess of $50,000 of annual contract value, made significant subsequent investments to expand their footprint. The MDRR metric starts with all of the software licenses that were active a year prior. For that subset of customers, it's looking at the net impact of any churn or attrition there, but also expansion in the footprint of those prior existing customers. On a net basis, you're seeing the decision of a number of customers to double, triple, quintuple down on their zSpace content and footprint. That's creating a significant step up in the net dollar revenue retention.

Speaker 1

Okay. You mentioned that excluding the large order from the year-ago period, bookings were down 16% year-over-year. On that basis, can you divvy up the year-over-year bookings performance between CTE and K-12? This is an effective normalized basis.

Speaker 2

Yeah. If we're looking at the six-month period ending 6/30, bookings normalized for that $5 million deal last year, in total, we're down 16% year-on-year. The U.S., on that same normalized basis, we saw U.S. down 17% for the first six months of the year. Rest of the world, excluding China, down 75%. China for the first six months of the year actually up 88% year-on-year.

Speaker 1

Within that U.S. down 17%, can you split that up between the CTE and the K-12 performance?

Speaker 2

Yes. I don't have that for just the U.S., but U.S. and rest of the world together, K-12 6% points of expansion from 62% last year to 68% this year. CTE from 38% for six months of last year to 32% for six months of this year.

Speaker 1

K-12 exposure up and CTE exposure down. Is that right?

Speaker 2

On the first six months, yes.

Speaker 1

On the first six months. Okay. Do you find that surprising given what appears to be a shift in spend towards CTE?

Speaker 2

Not so much because, again, we see a certain amount of volatility in the makeup of customers in any of the particular periods. The question you're asking really gets at that. If you look at the business inclusive of that large deal from last year, that was precisely the kind of deal that skews things heavily towards K-12 in the prior year period. When you pull that out, particularly on the three-month period where that deal sat, you then see the acceleration in CTE for the past three months.

Speaker 1

Okay. I think you've done multiple different types of capital raises since the March quarter close. Can you recap those capital raises and the impact on shares outstanding?

Speaker 2

The main capital raise that we concluded was in the second quarter. We closed on a convertible offering that was a $20 million facility, of which we drew down $13 million. Those proceeds, approximately half of those proceeds, went to retire cost-player venture debt that was retired in full and balances about $6.5 million. We subsequently indicated an announcement to close on an equity line of credit that will be part of Q3 reported results when we conclude the current quarter.

Speaker 1

What's the capacity of the equity line of credit?

Speaker 2

The ELOC has a contemplated maximum capacity of $30 million.

Speaker 1

Okay. All right.

Speaker 2

To say $30 million.

Speaker 1

Is that still standing there?

Speaker 2

Yeah, there were 6.5 million shares registered as part of that offering.

Speaker 1

Great. Okay. Thank you for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Nihal.

Speaker 4

Please stand by for our next question. We have a follow-up question from Yolanda Rohit Kulkarni with Wealth Capital. Yolanda's open.

Speaker 1

Hey, guys. Just on this discussion on MDRR, maybe the why behind this jump in terms of our existing customers buying more units, or are they buying that leading to more software, or is that existing units, existing classrooms, and they're going in new kind of categories of content? That's first. Just maybe the why on China and what is going on over there. I would love to understand if there is something proactive change in go-to-market or new salespeople or anything in China and just the rest of the world. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yeah, on MDRR, we can see the expansion there happening either because an individual customer elects to add new software licenses to their existing footprint. When that customer decides to expand their actual, you know, table footprint, seat footprint, how many laptops they have, we only count the addition of renewable software licenses on their expanded footprint. If they decide to kit out a secondary third classroom, the impact of renewable software in those extra classrooms rolls into MDRR through the annualized contract value that that customer has expanded. Does that math make sense?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Just to clarify that, Erick, if I had just one classroom with 20 laptops, and instead of adding a module of biology, I go and add one more module of another category of content, would that show up in MDRR, or would that count?

Speaker 2

Yes. Only if, and this only applies for customers who've had at least $50,000 in ACV in the prior period. Yes.

Speaker 1

Okay. Just this overall go-to-market and sales hiring, specifically like resellers in China and the rest of the world.

Operator

Yeah, let me answer your China question first, Rohit. I think your question came about because we have been previously communicating, and quite frankly, in all of our filings, that we were not investing in China. That remains the situation. What has happened, and the reason for the uptick, is more because some of the business, which again, it's government business, has long sales cycles with RFP that have to be responded to. Our partner over there has quite frankly been winning some business. We haven't been investing, as in zSpace, but our partner has. That's the reason for the China uptick, if you will. I think there's a second part to your go-to-market question relative to the U.S.

Operator

We have made and did make in the latter part of last year significant investments in the U.S., both in terms of additional salespeople, focus, products, and as you know, both of the BloxCad and Second Avenue acquisitions. Like every company in the kind of April, May, June timeframe, we made a few tweaks here and there. We have that team intact, and that team is continuing to build our pipeline. As I said at the outset, we're cautiously optimistic here, particularly with funds starting to flow to kind of go back to whatever the new normal is, to use that phrase.

Speaker 1

Okay. One last thing. Any color on how many quota-carrying reps you had in 2024, and how many do you have today? Like if you are willing to disclose that.

Operator

I think it was 11. Sorry, it's 11 today and it was 8 last year.

Speaker 1

Okay. Cool.

Operator

That doesn't include anybody who's supporting any of our reseller partners. That is literally quota-carrying salespeople.

Speaker 1

Okay. Awesome. Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Okay, thank you, Rohit.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I will now like to turn the call back over to Paul for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Yolanda. I'd like to thank everybody again for listening in today and for the folks that asked the questions. Much appreciated. Look forward to doing this again in a few months. We'll go from there. Have a great evening.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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