Cloudastructure Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Revenue grew 271% to $5.1 million in 2025, with year-end ARR above $2 million and total contract value up 342%, driven by larger multi-site deployments and deeper platform adoption.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company has ~150 active locations and contracts with six of the top 10 U.S. property managers, reporting strong customer metrics—NPS 100+, ~99% retention, ~98% real-time deterrence, and ~96% AI detection accuracy.
  • Positive Sentiment: Product expansion (Mobile Surveillance Trailer, Solar-Powered and Powered Enclosures) is enabling entry into new verticals such as construction, logistics, transportation and commercial properties.
  • Negative Sentiment: Operating expenses rose to $9.7 million and the company reported a net loss of $8.5 million (EPS corrected to $0.55) with EBITDA of -$5.5 million, showing continued unprofitability despite revenue growth.
  • Positive Sentiment: Cloudastructure ended the year with ~ $8.5 million in cash, $8.6 million in working capital and a debt-free balance sheet, and management says cash runway exceeds one year with expected declining cash burn as recurring revenue scales.
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Earnings Conference Call
Cloudastructure Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, David Waldman, Investor Relations. You may begin.

David Waldman
President and CEO at Crescendo Communications

Thank you, Holly. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Cloudastructure's fourth quarter year-end 2025 earnings conference call and business update. On the call with us today are James McCormick, Chief Executive Officer of Cloudastructure, and Greg Smitherman, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, the company issued a press release announcing its operating results for the three months and year ended December 31st, 2025. The release is available on our website at www.cloudastructure.com, and our Form 10-K can be found both there and at www.sec.gov. If you have any questions after today's call, please contact Crescendo Communications at 212-671-1020. Before Mr. McCormick reviews the company's operating results for the quarter and year ended December 31st, 2025 and provides a business update, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements.

David Waldman
President and CEO at Crescendo Communications

All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this conference call, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial position, strategy and plans, and our expectations for future operations are forward-looking statements. The words aim, anticipate, believe, could, expect, may, plan, project, strategy, will, and the negatives of such terms and other words and terms of similar meaning are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the company's current expectations and projections about future events and trends that it believes may affect its financial condition, results of operations, strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to several risks, uncertainties and assumptions as described in the company's filings with the SEC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025.

David Waldman
President and CEO at Crescendo Communications

Because of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this conference call may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance, or achievements. In addition, neither the company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements except as required by law. All forward-looking statements attributable to the company are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements as well as others made on this conference call.

David Waldman
President and CEO at Crescendo Communications

You should evaluate all forward-looking statements made by the company in the context of these risks and uncertainties. I would now like to turn the call over to James McCormick, Chief Executive Officer of Cloudastructure. James, please go ahead.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Okay, thanks so much, David. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Cloudastructure's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call and business update. We would like to apologize for shifting the call out one day, but we're glad that we could be with you here today. 2025 was a very important year for Cloudastructure, not just because of the growth we delivered, but because of what that growth tells us about where the market is going and how we're positioned within it. We grew revenue 271% to just over $5 million, driven by broad-based growth across our business. Customers are adopting more of our platform, expanding deployments across additional locations, and increasingly standardizing on Cloudastructure as their long-term solution.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

This is reflected in a 342% increase in total contract value year-over-year, highlighting a clear shift towards larger multi-site deployments and deeper customer adoption. This momentum is being driven by a fundamental shift in how organizations approach security. Traditional models are reactive. They record incidents after they happen. While customers today are looking for something much more proactive. They want to detect issues earlier, respond in real time, and ultimately prevent incidents altogether. That's exactly what our platform is designed to do. By combining AI-driven video analytics, cloud-based infrastructure, and remote guarding, we are able to identify potential threats and intervene before they escalate. We're seeing that translate directly into measurable outcomes, including a 98% real-time deterrence rate across deployments. Also as a reference point. Excuse me.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Estimates are out that say that there are 1 billion security cameras deployed on a worldwide basis now, and those 1 billion cameras capture 1.44 trillion minutes of video each day. A substantial portion of that 1.44 trillion minutes is not proactive. Just think of the opportunity that's available at that scale. The demand is showing up very clearly in multi-family housing, which continues to be one of our strongest verticals, where property owners are dealing with rising crime rates, increasing liability exposure, and higher insurance costs, and they're actively looking for more effective solutions. As a result, we've now secured contracts with six of the 10 largest property management companies in the U.S. according to the NMHC 50 rankings. What's particularly encouraging is how those relationships develop over time.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Customers typically begin with a single site deployment, and once they see the results, including measurable reductions in incidents such as car break-ins, vandalism, and unauthorized access, along with faster response times and lower overall security costs, they expand across additional properties. We also saw a significant increase in total contract value during the year, driven by larger multi-site deployments and deeper customer commitments as organizations move to standardize security across their portfolios. In 2025, we saw multiple customers transition from initial deployments to broader portfolio rollouts, in some cases, moving from a single property to multi-site implementations within the same ownership group. That transition from single site to portfolio-wide deployments is a key driver of our growth and supports long-term recurring revenue expansion.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Building on that momentum in multifamily, we're also expanding into different verticals, including construction, logistics, and distributed infrastructure environments where security challenges tend to be more complex. These are areas where traditional approaches often fall short and where our ability to monitor, detect, and respond in real time provides a clear advantage. At the same time, we've continued to invest in expanding the capabilities of the platform itself. During the year, we introduced Mobile Surveillance Trailers, rapidly deployment security enclosures, and solar-powered monitoring systems designed for off-grid environments. These solutions allow us to bring our technology into locations where traditional infrastructure may not be practical, such as construction sites or remote facilities.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

More broadly, we're focused on building a unified hardware-agnostic platform that allows customers to integrate multiple camera systems and security devices into a single environment that can be monitored and analyzed centrally, which becomes increasingly valuable as they scale. As adoption grows, we're also seeing our platform scale operationally. Over the course of the year, our system reviewed approximately 11.2 million alerts and supported more than 112,000 live verbal interventions, which gives you a sense of both the volume we're managing and the level of real-time engagement across customer deployments. At the same time, our AI detection accuracy has reached approximately 96%, helping us minimize false alerts and focus on meaningful events. As a result, less than 1% of incidents require escalation to emergency services, meaning the vast majority of situations are resolved proactively before they become more serious issues.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

All of this is reflected in how customers are responding. We are seeing very strong satisfaction in retention metrics, including a 100% customer satisfaction score, a Net Promoter Score of 100+, and approximately 99% customer retention. These metrics reflect not just adoption, but long-term value as customers continue to see improvements in safety, operational efficiency, and cost management. That performance has also been recognized externally through multiple industry awards, reinforcing our positioning as a leader in AI-driven security. When we step back and look at 2025 as a whole, what stands out is that the model is working. We are seeing strong demand, continued expansion within existing customers, entry into new verticals, and clear validation from both customers and the broader industry. At the same time, we believe we're still in the early stages of a much larger shift towards AI-driven security.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

As organizations continue moving towards more proactive solutions, we continue to see a significant opportunity ahead. As we move into 2026, our focus remains on scaling the platform, expanding enterprise adoption, and continuing to build on the momentum we have established. With that, I'll turn it over to Greg to walk through the financials in more detail. Greg?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Thanks, James, and good afternoon, everyone. As James mentioned, revenue for the full year 2025 was $5.1 million, representing a 271% growth compared to 2024. This was driven by expansion across all areas of the business as adoption of our AI-powered video surveillance and remote guarding platform accelerated. We saw strong performance across each of our revenue streams, with cloud video surveillance revenue increasing 137%, remote guarding was up 150%, hardware revenue up 329%, and other revenue, including installation and additional subscription-based services, increasing 410%. This growth was supported by continued expansion in customer commitments and larger contract sizes, reflecting increased adoption of the platform across customer portfolios.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Cost of goods sold for the year was $3.6 million, compared to $1 million in 2024, reflecting higher hosting costs, increased hardware sales, increased installation activity, and the operational support required to scale the platform alongside this growth. From a profitability standpoint, gross profit increased to $1.5 million, up approximately 304% year-over-year, which highlights the scalability of the model as revenue continues to grow and contributions from our various products and service offerings expand. At the same time, we continue to invest in the business to support that growth. Operating expenses for the year totaled $9.7 million, compared to $6.6 million in 2024, reflecting increased investments in product development, sales and marketing, and corporate infrastructure as we continue expanding and scaling the platform.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

General and administrative expenses were $2.4 million compared to $1.2 million in the prior year, driven primarily by higher payroll and consulting expenses as we scaled the organization as a public company. Net loss for the year was $8.5 million or $0.48 per share, compared to a net loss of $6.5 million or $0.45 per share in 2024. These results reflect the company's continued expansion of the platform and investments to support long-term growth and scalability. EBITDA was -$5.5 million in 2025 compared to -$4.4 million in 2024, with the change primarily driven by higher stock-based compensation and non-cash interest expense. From a balance sheet perspective, we ended the year with approximately $8.5 million in cash and $8.6 million in working capital, supported by a debt-free balance sheet.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

We believe this positions us with strong financial foundation to continue investing in growth initiatives while maintaining flexibility as we scale the business. Overall, we're encouraged by the combination of strong revenue growth, expanding gross profit, and continued progress in building a more efficient and scalable business model. That concludes our financial review. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a 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. Your first question for today is from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. Good afternoon, James, Greg. I appreciate the solid update. Thanks for taking my questions.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Of course. How are you, Jack?

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

I'm doing well, guys. James, maybe I'll start with, you know, clearly the property management vertical that you guys are targeting is rapidly expanding. You have active relationships with six of the largest property managers in the U.S. Can you maybe just, I guess, touch on your overall install base and just the number of your active locations today? Just how has that ramped, I guess, in the last year? It sounds like quite aggressively. Then just based on your discussions recently and looking forward, like how does this play out? Are we gonna see these kind of growth rates and expansion going forward? Just circling around this number of active locations, if you could.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Sure. Sure. Good question. We have over, I think the number is, and Greg can correct me if I'm wrong, 150 active locations right now. If you think about it, just the six of the top 10 that we work with have something like over 1.2 million units under management. That's not properties, that's units. Still, these are just really big, really strong numbers. I think, what we are seeing right now, as we, you know, as we mentioned in our comments, is that, you know, in the past couple years, we would get into a particular property and then hope to pick off another one from that same management group and then another one.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

What we're starting to see, like in the Denver area, we put a press release out in this, you know, people are now going and saying, "Hey, we want you to take over our, you know, our entire complex of five buildings right from the start." We're just seeing a number of shifts like that.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

We consider or we believe that multifamily will continue to be an important vertical for us in 2026 and beyond, but we're also really enthused about some of the work that we're doing and some of the pilots that are going on in some of the additional verticals as well. There's a lot to look forward to.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. No, it sounds like it. I'm just trying to get a grasp the overall opportunity and relative to where you are today. There's plenty of blue sky and untapped low-hanging fruit.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Great way to put it.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Can you maybe just, you know, part of the other side of the equation then is also, you know, with all this blue sky and room to run. The other side of it is what's your existing capacity and bandwidth to actually, you know, how fast and quickly can you actually activate these properties and deploy these properties?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Yeah.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

I think in the past, you guys were able to support maybe 20 new locations per month. Is that still the case? Where is that side of the equation today?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Sure. I think there's two pieces to that answer, right? There's the physical installation piece, which is what you're referring to, and then there's the back-end systems. From a back-end system standpoint, we're very confident of our capacity and the ability to deal with the growth that we have projected for 2026 and beyond. Just as a reference point, we are now processing approximately 9 million videos a day, okay? That's on the back-end piece. As far as installations go, we are expanding our pre-sales capabilities that supports installations. We are expanding our network of third-party installation partners to help us with getting these projects implemented and up and running.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

I think, the easiest way to put it would be, yes, in the past, we would deal with something like 20 deployments a month. I would say that you could anticipate that we will see that increase by 50% or so as we start to get into the second half of 2026.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. Okay, great. I appreciate that. Maybe a question for Greg on some of the nuts and bolts of the numbers here. Greg, if I'm trying to get a sense of the annual recurring revenue run rate or the ARR, just based on the fourth quarter results here, it looks like things have been picking up on that end quite rapidly as well. If I were to add the cloud video surveillance and the remote guarding revenue streams, that's more than $500,000 in the fourth quarter alone. It seems like this implies that ARR is now well above $2 million. Is that a fair way to assess that? Just what is the general trends with ARR going forward? Thanks.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah. Jack, great question. 100%, that is spot on analysis. Our current ARR or year-ending ARR was over $2 million. So we had kinda $2 million in the bank just to start off. Just like with any other SaaS company, right, that is a relentless driving force, really pushing the company forward. We see that continuing. We are quite bullish on where the company is going. We expect, and we've got very strong growth targets for this year. We're not putting out specific guidance, but we'll just say we've got some pretty strong growth, internal growth targets that just like you saw where, you know, recurring revenue at the end of 2024 was substantially smaller, under $1 million kinda coming into 2025.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

We're over $2 million coming into 2026. I think that kind of progression is what you would typically see out of any SaaS company, and we are certainly shooting and driving for that, towards that. Before we go to your next question, I just wanna. I misspoke earlier when I was giving our financial reports, and I had said a loss of $0.48 a share for the year. I meant to say $0.55. Just glanced at the wrong number. My apologies for that. Everything else was correct in that, but I just wanted to make sure I got that correction in, before we moved on.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Got it. No worries there. No worries there at all. I guess it sounds like, though, that the ARR trend, though, is definitely ramping up quite aggressively.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

This is higher margin. This is high margin software revenues as well. Can you maybe just touch on the two are kind of interconnected, that cloud surveillance service, the base core offering, and then remote guarding. Can you just touch on the attach rates and just the overall ASP, I guess, of that offering? You know, if you're selling both together combined at more properties, I'm assuming that lifts the ASP as well. Can you maybe just touch on the trends of attach rates and ASPs?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Sure. You know, right now our sort of ASP for surveillance is about $35 per camera per month. For remote guarding, about $79 per camera per month. Depending on the size and the length of a contract that someone wants to sign and a variety of things, there might be some discounts offered off of that. That's sort of the starting point. The remote guarding, one of the great things about the remote guarding is that the core surveillance product has the bulk of the features. It's got all the AI, right? We process that. It's got alerts, 'cause customers can get their own alerts in addition to going to our guards. It's got all the storage, it's got the review capability.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

It's an incredibly robust platform, and the remote guarding really just seamlessly layers on top of that. The only incremental cost for us, for the most part, is the addition of the humans in the loop, which we feel is an incredibly important component. Especially if you are going to have to call emergency services. You wanna make sure that someone has eyes on what the issue is, can direct the issues and motivate people to get there like, "I'm seeing this happening right now." It's much more important than, "Oh, an alarm went off, and we think something might be going wrong." We think humans in the loop are incredibly powerful. That really layers on top. That's a very nice addition.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

As customers see the performance, you know, they initially don't start with all of their cameras guarded. As they see the performance and they see the value and they see the prevention of problems, they come back and say, "You know what? We'd like to add a couple more cameras. We'd like to increase the value that we're seeing there." It's great. While it's very good margin, and we do anticipate margins to continue to expand, we still expect and want all that other revenue because that's saying we're getting new customers, and we continue to expand, and we continue to grow. I don't see any of that slowing down in the foreseeable future, which is a good thing for the company.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

It sounds like it. I appreciate the color there. Maybe just one more question, then I'll hop back in the queue for James. James, just based on all the discussions you've had recently and the tone of discussions, what are some of these new verticals maybe that you're getting excited about, most excited about? And also just what's the level of urgency and just kind of awareness now from your end customers, regardless of vertical? Just, do they know what you guys bring to the table now? Are you feeling like they're coming to your door? Just what are some of the things you're getting excited about outside the multifamily property space, and then also just the tone of your overall customer discussions and the level of urgency and awareness?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Yeah. Another good question. No clunkers so far, Jack. Here's what we would say. There's a couple verticals. All the verticals that we mentioned, right? You know, remote infrastructure, construction, that kind of stuff, we're really excited about. There's two that I think we have made additional progress in, you know, so far in 2026 that we think holds just really, really large potential for us. One is, let's just call it transportation and logistics. That's one. And the other one is commercial properties. You know, is it people are coming to us? I would say it's kind of 50/50 right now.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Because of the success we've had in the past in demonstrating what our solutions can do, what they offer, it's becoming easier for us to get people to understand how we can support them in their particular vertical. For instance, I'll give you a couple generic thoughts. One would be in transportation and logistics, think a couple things. Think secure truck yards, right? Cargo theft is just out of control. You know, someone driving a big rig now has to worry not just about, you know, being on the road and following those kinds of rules and regulations, but if they go somewhere to, you know, nap or rest or whatever, they have to worry about someone breaking into their trailer, right?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Thieves don't generally know what's in there, but they know it's valuable. We are finding now that, you know, with certain customers that have secure parking facilities, our solution is a perfect answer to provide safety and security for those folks. Another is, you know, think of any larger package delivery company, right? Just, you know, companies that are delivering millions and millions of packages a day. We think there's a lot of opportunity there as well from a standpoint of, again, external threats, but also just keeping the internal employees honest as well, if you will, right? There's all sorts of interesting opportunities there. Commercial properties, not. You know, think malls, shopping malls.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Not necessarily protecting the interior of the facility, but the exterior to keep things, you know, safe at night from people having or trying to get ingress into the building. Maybe as importantly, the human factor. Think about employees, you know, that are, you know, locking up the storefronts, going to their cars where it's dark out. We have solutions, you know, like the mobile trailers and other things where we can provide a protected environment for those people so they feel safe when they're going back to their cars at the end of the day. That's, there’s a couple of the verticals we're very excited about in addition to multifamily, which, right, continues to be a centerpiece for us as well.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. Well, hey, I appreciate the time, gentlemen, and wish you best of luck and continued growth momentum. Wish you the best, and I'll hop back in the queue until next time. Thanks.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

All right. Sounds great, Jack. Thanks so much.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question for today is from James Kisner with Water Tower Research.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Hi, guys. Congrats on a nice year. Thanks for taking my questions.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Of course.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Just first on. Yeah. I guess you guys have done so much innovation in the last year. I know these things are all kinda new, but maybe this kinda ties to your answer on verticals. I'm just kinda curious, are there any of these new offerings that are kinda getting more traction than others or perhaps driving more sales or maybe just have more interest, you know, amongst the four or five different kinda new things?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

That are percolating. Yeah, James. I think both the, we’re very optimistic and we're seeing some initial traction with both the powered enclosure and the solar-powered enclosure. It's more useful in remote locations where there's essentially no infrastructure, right, as construction goes on. You know, what's an enclosure? Well, it's basically taking the brains of our fixed systems that we would put into a commercial property or a multifamily property and just incorporating and encapsulating it into a smaller form factor that can be mounted, you know, on a pole, on a building, those sorts of things.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

It makes it easier to deploy our solution, and we're seeing some very good early successes with that. I think we'll also continue to see some good growth in the mobile security trailer offerings, particularly as you know, we mentioned a little bit with helping to protect commercial properties, construction sites, those sorts of things.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Good. This is James. Can you hear me?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Yeah, I can hear you.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Yeah. As soon as I finished my question, the phone hung up. Whatever you just said, I'm sure it was great, but I think you were [audio distortion].

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Oh my God.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

It was spectacular.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Yeah, it was spectacular.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

I assume that it wasn't Greg just slamming the phone down on me. That's never happened to me before. We'll blame my phone.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Okay.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Anyway, I will go back to the transcript to get the full answer. I think I caught the end of that.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Okay. Yeah.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Just to maybe talk about too with all the momentum, you know, I think I know I'm modeling Q1 down. I don't think you're guiding by quarter, but maybe you can talk about seasonality and, you know, whether or not we should, you know, Q1 should be kind of a light quarter or, you know, it makes sense to keep doing that. Or just in general if there's any kind of seasonality business through the year?

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Yeah. Greg, I could answer that, but do you wanna answer that one?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah, sure. Well, I think it's an excellent point. If you look historically, Q1 is always the smallest quarter of the year for us. We really build momentum towards the end. You know, if you look at last year, Q4, we had a spectacular Q4. But oftentimes Q3 is our largest quarter. But certainly the second half of the year has always historically been stronger for us than the first half. Right, new budgets, people are trying to figure out their plans for the year. Yeah, there is a little bit of seasonality and ramp-up over the year. Absolutely.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Okay. Yeah, James, I think just maybe to put a little bit more of a point on that. I think what we find is that in Q4, a number of customers are you know, it's the end of their fiscal year. They're trying to get you know, decisions completed and contracts executed before the end of the year. There's you know, there's that Q4 momentum that seems to take away as well a little bit from Q1. Yeah, again, we're very optimistic about 2026 in general.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Okay. That's helpful. I'm gonna kind of drill into Q4 a little bit, and I don't wanna embarrass myself 'cause I have to do some math. Did installation revenue up quite a bit in Q4? You know, and if that's the case, I don't know if that's a leading indicator of additional revenue down the road, or you can comment at all on kind of like if the quarter was kind of how you thought it might end up, you know, in terms of mix and, you know, how that might progress kinda going forward?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Again, right? Yeah.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah. I'll start with that. Installation revenue was up pretty significantly, which is, as I had referenced earlier in the call, that's what we want, right? That means new customers, new sites getting installed, more growth, which will end up driving more recurring revenue. Obviously, we recognize revenue as we provide the service, so while someone may sign up for a year contract, that revenue doesn't get recognized right away. It gets recognized over the twelve months that it's provided. With a big installation, yeah, that's gonna. We get the installation revenue in Q4, and then that adds to this relentless nature of the recurring revenue that just keeps building and building, and driving momentum, and driving profitability as we continue to build the business.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Is it fair to say there's kind of like a quarter or so of kind of lag between installation revenue and, you know, say, you know, cloud services or other revenue?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

No, I wouldn't say it's quite a full quarter 'cause once the install's done, right, the recurring revenue starts. We start generating that revenue. As with anything, right, we had some pretty good-sized contracts. It's also for service over the year. That revenue continues to slowly build month by month going forward. Yeah, as soon as that installation is done, we start providing the service. There's not a lag in that continued increase.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

The cost kind of disappears too, right? It's kind of one-,

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

It's a gentle workflow.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

The cost is kind of one-time an issue too, as it kinda hits those installation COGS.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Right. Yep. That's a one-time, one-time cost. Yep.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

The COGS hit in the period that we recognize the revenue.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Perfect. Just sort of in the opposite direction on cost, it seems like at least if I backed into it, right, sales and marketing looks like it might have been down sequentially. Just wondering kind of your, if that's right and if how to kinda think about your investments in sales and marketing, you know, given how what a high growth company you are, kind of expecting to continue to go up generally. Any kind of sort of any seasonalities in Q4 on that, on that front, just perhaps it's a quieter quarter, sales guys going home for vacation during Christmas or what have you, less conferences, you know. What are your thoughts?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Certainly less conferences, and those can be.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Mm-hmm.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Right, with a lot of travel and everything else that can drive it. Yeah, I didn't really think of it as, you know, significantly down. Yes, there are some. We're focused on closing those deals and driving towards the end of the year, so yes. I think the conference with travel is where you see it most.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

And then last.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Well, hold on, James. I would also add, though, right? As we look at 2026 and beyond, but specifically 2026, I think, you will see that we are making additional investments in sales and marketing, specifically sales from a, let's just call it a sales infrastructure standpoint. We continue to beef up and add to our sales reps. And we're finding, you know, we now have an ability to land very experienced people with, you know, knowledge of the AI security space, which is incredibly helpful. And, you know, as you would expect, as we continue to grow in 2026, we'll continue to invest in sales and marketing.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

Okay. Last one for me, just kinda being a little modeling clunker. Just in terms of you know how you think about cash from operations, I think you've talked about kinda that gradually improving, like less burn over time. Like any updated thoughts on that? Actually came in a little better on cash usage this quarter than I expected.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Greg?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

I, can you say that question again? I wasn't quite sure what you were asking.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

How are you thinking about cash usage kind of through the year? I think that you previously said that you thought you'd kinda like use a little less on a quarterly basis, maybe not, you know, monotonically or, you know, consistently, but directionally, that your cash burn would be reduced. I'm just kinda curious how you're thinking about that in the coming quarters.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah. We continue to grow the business. Right. As we grow, there will be additional cash use for CapEx, although we are a very CapEx-like model, but we will have periods where we continue to beef up our core servers and core infrastructure. While our overall expenses will continue to decrease because we are, as James said, investing heavily in sales and marketing, growing the team, expanding the business, revenues are also coming in. We anticipate cash burn to continue to decrease over the year. We feel we're in a good. You know, we ended the year with a very strong cash position. Certainly we feel, you know, we have cash for more than a year. How much more will depend on how fast we achieve our growth and continue to drive our profitability.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

We feel very good about our cash position and our ability to keep costs under control. Really, we're spending focused on hitting that growth and servicing our customers. Cash will continue to be invested in the business, but overall cash burn will continue to decrease as the year goes on.

James Kisner
Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research

All right. Very good. Thanks, guys, and congrats.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Thanks a lot, James. Glad your phone stayed on.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question for today is from Ellen Liczak with Force Capital.

Ellen Liczak
Analyst at Force Capital

Thank you guys so much for taking my question. I really appreciate it. Thankfully, Jack and James actually did a lot of work for me, and that's a lot of the questions that I want to ask, which makes my job a little bit easier. I just have one question for you, and you actually touched on this a little bit already, but maybe you could expand on margin expansion and the path to profitability as revenue scales.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Sure. Greg, again, right, I am happy to start off, but do you wanna take it?

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Sure. We saw a significant increase from 2024 to 2025 on our margin. We expect that to continue this year. That is tempered somewhat, I will say. We do have, as I said earlier, you know, internal strong growth plans, and part of that strong growth plan will continue to be new installations, which is our lowest margin business. I don't look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as an exceptionally positive thing. Over time, as the recurring revenue just continues to build, margin expansion will continue. We absolutely expect you will see that in a slowly widening margin throughout the year.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

I wouldn't want that to be too fast, frankly, because I want to have as many new customers, as many new installations, 'cause that just will grow everything, the whole pie faster. We are focused on building a much larger, sustainable business, doing it profitably, making sure we are good stewards of the cash, and making sure that everything that we are doing has positive margins. For the nit of the margin, I'm less worried about how fast it expands. I'm more concerned that it just continues to expand. As that happens, we continue to drive towards profitability.

Ellen Liczak
Analyst at Force Capital

No, I totally get that. I mean, you guys have done such a great job so far, but thank you again for taking my question.

Greg Smitherman
Greg Smitherman
CFO at Cloudastructure

Yeah, absolutely.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Of course. Thank you.

Operator

We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I will now turn the call over to management for closing remarks.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

Okay. Thank you. Thanks everyone for listening and for digging in a little bit from a question standpoint. Well, as we look back on 2025, we are very pleased with what the company has accomplished during its first full year as a public company. We delivered significant revenue growth, expanded our customer base, advanced our technology, and demonstrated the real-world impact of our platform across multiple industries. What's most encouraging is the momentum that we've built. We're seeing customers expand deployments, increase their commitment to the platform, and standardize Cloudastructure more broadly across their portfolios, while continuing to enter new verticals and enhance our platform in ways that drive meaningful results. Looking ahead, we believe Cloudastructure is well-positioned to continue building on that momentum.

James McCormick
James McCormick
CEO at Cloudastructure

With a scalable platform, growing enterprise adoption, and increasing demand for more proactive security solutions, we're focused on executing and driving continued growth. We have a management team, a board of directors, and a dedicated group of employees that are passionate about our mission and our business objectives. As we continue to grow and scale our operations, we will all work even harder to identify opportunities and eliminate obstacles. All of this means that we're very excited about the direction of the business and the opportunities in front of us, and we remain committed to building long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you again for your time and your continued support, and have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Executives
    • Greg Smitherman
      Greg Smitherman
      CFO
    • James McCormick
      James McCormick
      CEO
Analysts
    • David Waldman
      President and CEO at Crescendo Communications
    • Ellen Liczak
      Analyst at Force Capital
    • Jack Vander Aarde
      SVP and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group
    • James Kisner
      Managing Director of Technology Research at Water Tower Research