Creative Realities Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 14, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: The CDM acquisition (closed Nov.) more than doubled CRI’s size, helped Q4 revenue jump to $23.9M (including $13.6M from CDM), lifted ARR to $20.1M, and management reiterates 2026 revenue > $100 million with mid‑teens adjusted EBITDA margin guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management expects at least $10M of annualized synergies in 2026 (already >60% realized) and reported a much stronger adjusted EBITDA of $5.2M in Q4 versus $0.5M a year ago, indicating early margin improvement and cash‑flow potential.
  • Negative Sentiment: The acquisition materially increased leverage—gross/net debt rose to about $43.3M/$41.7M (financed by a $36M term loan and $30M convertible preferred), while cash was only about $1.6M at year‑end, raising near‑term interest and balance‑sheet risk.
  • Positive Sentiment: Commercial momentum and scale gains include a secured $8M stadium project, a $6M AMC lobby media rollout (1,200+ screens with revenue share), the 10‑year $54M North Carolina Lottery deployment, and an expanded 40+ person salesforce to pursue large enterprise and retail‑media opportunities.
  • Negative Sentiment: Severe Jan–Feb weather delayed roughly $4M of Q1 revenue into Q2/Q3 (construction suspensions), creating near‑term timing volatility for quarterly results despite management saying the revenue is not lost.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Creative Realities Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Good morning. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Creative Realities 2025 fourth quarter earnings conference call. This call will be recorded and a copy will be available on the company's website at cri.com following its completion. Creative Realities has prepared remarks summarizing the interim results for the quarter, along with additional industry and company updates. Joining the call today is Rick Mills, Chief Executive Officer, Tamra Koshewa, Chief Financial Officer, and George Sautter, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Corporate Development, Mrs. Koshewa, you may proceed.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our earnings call for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2025. I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that remarks today will include forward-looking statements. The words anticipated, will, believes, expects, intends, plans, estimates, projects, should, may, propose, and similar expressions, or the negative versions of such words or expressions as they relate to us or our management are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such statements. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in our Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. We believe the use of certain non-GAAP measures, such as Adjusted EBITDA and several important KPIs, represent meaningful ways to track our performance. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our public filings and in our earnings release that was issued this morning. It is now my pleasure to introduce Rick Mills, CEO of Creative Realities.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Thanks, Tamra. Good morning, everybody. We appreciate everyone joining today's call. I'd like to start by giving some highlights of our Q4 financials and other recent developments, including our integration of the CDM business which we acquired in November. Given the sizable nature of this transaction and the transformative impact it brings to CRI, it should come as no surprise that it took longer than normal to close our books for the fourth quarter. First, I'd like to take a moment to introduce our new CFO, Tamra Koshewa. Tamra joined our team on December 1st. I know the date because it happens to be my birthday. Tamra, welcome aboard. She brings tremendous experience to the organization, 30 years of executing financial strategies across diverse industries, including Manufacturing, Technology, and Services.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Her expertise and leadership credentials include a strong dedication to achieving a high level of performance and orchestrating operational turnarounds. We believe Tamra is uniquely qualified to take on the challenges of integrating CDM into CRI, finding synergies across the enterprise, ensuring margin expansion, and ultimately delevering the balance sheet, while this should improve returns for our shareholders. She brings tremendous energy. She is driving organizational change. She is implementing value-enhancing process improvements and is working to increase our cash flow. She's off to a great start, and Tamra, we're excited to have you on board. More recently, we've also added a couple other key executives. On March 30th, we added Jackie Walker as our Chief Experience Officer.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Jackie is a veteran digital transformation leader with more than 15 years experience designing, operating, and scaling enterprise digital platforms, really at the intersection of customer experience, product vision, and commercial outcomes. She brings a combination of technical execution and business acumen, having authored the digital menu board and drive-through strategies for seven of the top 10 restaurant brands and two of the largest in-store retail media networks in the U.S. Her appointment marks an important shift for CRI as the company continues its transition into a software-first platform powered by data analytics and artificial intelligence. Jackie will be instrumental for our next era of growth. She possesses a unique ability to bridge the gap between complex engineering and the strategic needs of the world's largest brands, and we're very pleased to have her here as well.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yet Jackie's addition with the prior addition of Dan McAllister as our CRO, this rounds out our management team with industry-leading veterans who have track records of accomplishment at a pivotal time in our history as we relaunch ourselves as a much bigger, more technology-focused, service-oriented leader in the digital signage space. We believe we now have the talent at the top to accelerate growth, enhance our margin, and deliver improved bottom-line results going forward. A couple other facts of the business. This past February, we completed the repurchase of all of Slipstream's 1.7 million outstanding warrants for $200,000. The repurchase of these warrants provides greater visibility for the future and our total shares outstanding, which we believe benefits the company as well as our shareholders, alleviating potential overhang on the stock. We want to thank Slipstream for their support in finalizing this transaction.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Now, let's review a few details of our current results. Tamra will go over the financials in greater detail, but some of the highlights, we posted revenue of $23.9 million in Q4 versus $11 million in the prior year period, including $13.6 million of that revenue from CDM. Our fourth quarter gross profit was $11.5 million as compared to $4.9 million in fiscal 2024, and our consolidated gross margin was 47.9% versus 44.2% in the prior year period. This reflects both improved mix and the positive impact from CDM joining the company. In addition, as of December 31st, 2025, we had an Annual Recurring Revenue run rate, or ARR, of $20.1 million versus $12.3 million at the end of the third quarter.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

In addition, we have $4.1 million of SaaS under contract that will come online through the balance of this year and be added to the January 2027 SaaS total. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 versus $0.5 million last year and $0.8 million in the third quarter. Just as a reminder to everybody, we closed the transaction on November 7th, so our Q4 includes two months of the CDM performance, not the full quarter. We anticipate both Adjusted EBITDA and our ARR will increase going forward due to the synergies and additional opportunities in our pipeline. We have substantially integrated CDM operations into CRI, and we are making significant progress towards our integration goals this year. As you may recall, acquiring CDM more than doubled the size of our company and significantly increased our market penetration in Canada.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

CDM serves thousands of quick-serve restaurants, financial institutions, and retail establishments across North America, and the acquisition strengthened our ability to address the growth in retail media networks, literally coast to coast, all throughout North America. In addition, we now own Canada's largest mall retail media network. This Digital Out-of-Home, or DOOH, if you will, media network, has over 750 screens with exclusive representation and revenue sharing across 95 shopping destinations. These locations include 76 of the 100 most productive Canadian shopping centers and nine of the 10 busiest malls in Canada, serving approximately 750 million shopper visits annually. As previously announced, we expect synergies of at least $10 million U.S. across North America on an annualized basis by the end of this year, reflecting the operating efficiencies, margin enhancement opportunities, and the cross-pollination of our CMS and AdTech platforms.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

At present, we are currently north of 60% of the goal, and we continue to anticipate total company revenue to exceed $100 million in 2026, with Adjusted EBITDA margin percentage in the mid-teens. Once all synergies are realized, Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be above 20%, and free cash flow generation should be significant, allowing us to pay down debt and de-lever the balance sheet once again, as we have done in the past after acquisitions. With all our advancements, unique applications, strong customer relationships, and proprietary technology, we've built a strong foundation for a bright future at CRI. We expect revenue to accelerate, our backlog to grow, and margins to improve as the year plays out, putting us on track for a record performance in fiscal 2026.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

I'll come back in a minute to talk about specific product and customer trends, but will now turn it over to Tamra to share some additional comments on our financials.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Thanks, Rick. I'm really excited to be part of the team during such an exciting time in our company's growth trajectory. An overview of our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2025 was provided in our earnings release and will be provided in our Form 10-K, which includes the condensed consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2025, the statement of operations and cash flows for the three and 12 months ended December 31, 2025, and a detailed reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, as well as the preceding four quarters. While Rick reviewed our operating results briefly, let me provide more context related to our performance and outlook.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

In terms of the income statement, fourth quarter revenue more than doubled year-over-year to $23.9 million, as compared to $11 million in the same period in fiscal 2024, with approximately $13.6 million from CDM. Revenue from our legacy CRI business decreased approximately 6% year-over-year, primarily as a result of project timing and decreased staff. Hardware revenue rose to $6.6 million versus $3.9 million in the prior year period, while service revenue increased to $17.3 million from $7.2 million in fiscal 2024, largely reflecting the CDM acquisition as well as deployment timing. Consolidated gross profit was $11.5 million for the fiscal 2025 fourth quarter versus $4.9 million in the prior year period, and consolidated gross margin was 47.9% versus 44.2% in the fiscal 2024 fourth quarter.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Gross margin on hardware revenue was 28% in Q4 of fiscal 2025 as compared to 26.3% in the prior year period, while gross margin on service amounted to 55.7% versus 53.9% in the fiscal 2024 fourth quarter, primarily due to improved mix of services profit as a result of the CDM acquisition. Sales and Marketing expenses in the fourth quarter rose to $2 million versus $1.4 million in the prior year period, while General and Administrative expenses increased to $8.9 million versus $4.2 million in fiscal 2024, again reflecting the acquisition of CDM, which contributed approximately $3.2 million in expense. Approximately $1.2 million of G&A costs were one-time in nature, including legal, accounting, and consulting fees, as well as closing costs related to the transaction. As Rick indicated, we are well on our way to achieving the $10 million of synergies previously announced for fiscal 2026.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Although, we are also investing in the Canadian media business and other technology initiatives meant to drive increased growth across the enterprise. The company posted operating income of approximately a $0.5 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, compared to an operating loss of approximately $700,000 in fiscal 2024. CRI reported a net loss of $1.9 million, or $0.19 per diluted share in the quarter ended December 31, 2025, versus a net loss of $2.8 million or $0.27 per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 as compared to a half a million dollars in the prior year period.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

We anticipate Adjusted EBITDA and cash flow to improve going forward as synergies are realized and, at the appropriate time, intend to reduce debt to decrease interest expense and strengthen our financial flexibility as the Company has done in the past. In terms of the Balance Sheet, as of December 31, 2025, the Company had cash on hand of approximately $1.6 million versus $1 million at the start of 2025. As mentioned on prior earnings calls, we keep a minimum amount of cash in the bank as the Company has set up a sweep instrument to apply funds against our Revolving Debt Facility to better manage interest expense. Our Gross and Net Debt stood at approximately $43.3 million and $41.7 million, respectively, at the end of the fourth quarter as compared to $13 million and $12 million, respectively, at the start of 2025.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

The increase of our indebtedness is largely a result of financing the acquisition of CDM, as previously discussed. As a reminder, we financed the transaction through a combination of debt and preferred equity, including a three-year $36 million senior syndicated term loan and $30 million of convertible preferred equity with a $3 conversion price provided by affiliates of North Run Capital. Going forward, as I just mentioned, we remain dedicated to using cash generation when possible to lower our debt and migrate to an optimized capital structure in support of financial flexibility. However, in the near term, we are investing in the business to drive growth and improve technology applications across the organization. I will now turn it back to Rick for additional comments on the Senior Executive Additions to the Management team, reorganization of our Sales team, some customer activities, and the CDM integration.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Thanks, Tamra. I've already discussed Tamra's background and unique fit for our business earlier on the call, but I do want to spend a few more moments to introduce Dan McAllister as our CRO and Jackie Walker as our Chief Experience Officer. Dan has been a Chief Revenue Officer at a SaaS company before. He has a history of accelerating go-to-market strategy and reengineering the revenue systems for sustainable growth. His proven track record in aligning sales, marketing, and customer service teams, along with enforcing team structure and process discipline, all lead to revenue growth. His sales organization here has been structured into vertical teams, each led by a senior executive and focused on a vertical market. By the way, this is a team of 42 folks. That's really a Sales team that has effectively tripled in size.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

These vertical teams fall into the following markets, Sports and Entertainment, also known as IPTV, QSR and Fast Casual Restaurants, Retail and Financial, Retail Media Networks, including AdTech, Lottery, and finally, Malls and Real Estate, known internally as MRE. We are now better focused and prepared to go after new customers across the board. More recently, Jackie Walker has joined as our new Chief Experience Officer. She will serve as the internal and external authority on how digital and physical environments converge. She brings and will leverage an outsider's perspective to really disrupt the legacy thinking, overseeing the strategic what and why of our software evolution, while scaling our consulting practice into a high-growth, high-margin engine of the business. Jackie, welcome aboard. Now, there's a lot of activity and news to discuss across our various business vertical markets. Let's start with the IPTV division.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

We have been awarded a new stadium project, which will be completed in the second half of this year. This is a new stadium build from the ground up. This is an $8 million project involving thousands of displays and IPTV throughout the entire venue. In addition, we are in the process of refreshing the entire IPTV system for a Major League Baseball team and several other stadium projects. This division, which is headed by Lee Summers, is expected to double revenue this year to over $17 million. Our QSR and fast casual restaurant division is managed by Natalee Minds, a 15-year veteran of CRI. Our next-gen modular Drive-Thru digital menu board system, which we introduced in January of this year, is continuing to increase revenue in this division.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

This Drive-Thru, as we call it, Version 2.0, is engineered to help operators streamline installation, simplify maintenance, and scale the drive-through environment over time. This new system allows brands to expand from single digital screen setups to multi-screen configurations without replacing the entire structure. We're currently deploying this product for multiple customers and typically are installing 10 new locations on a weekly basis, or over 500 a year. The Retail, Financial, Retail Media Network, and AdTech team, headed up by Jessica Creces, has been extremely busy since the acquisition. We had a nice jumpstart on the year by renewing the SaaS contracts of two of the top 10 largest financial institutions in North America. Congrats to the team for getting that done. Our AdTech solutions are now in test by a number of large customers who are evaluating the monetization capabilities of their installed signage network.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

We would expect to see three or four deployments in the second half of this year. Today, we're also announcing a $6 million media network project that CRI is deploying across the lobbies of AMC Theatres in the U.S. Our partner, National CineMedia, or NCM, is the leading cinema platform in the U.S. and the media representative for this new innovative network. We will install this network of 1,200+ screens and large format LEDs through the rest of 2026. By the way, this media network utilizes the Reflect CMS and our AdLogic AdTech software solutions. One other customer-specific update I'd like to mention, North Carolina Lottery. The previously announced 10-year, $54 million contract is in the process of deployment, excuse me, and has been migrated to the ReflectView CMS platform.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

The deployment of all 1,550+ locations is expected to be completed in Q2, with a few remaining locations in Q3. Finally, let's talk about the start of 2026. We had a significant revenue impact in Q1 from the disruptive weather across the Midwest and Southeast. As many of you know, a major cold wave gripped much of North America from mid-January through mid-February, bringing incredibly low temperatures, snow, sleet, freezing rain to the eastern 2/3 of the country. In addition, a very rare storm brought historic snowfalls to the Carolinas, specifically North Carolina. This caused $4 million or more of revenue to push to Q2. I want to remind everybody, this is not lost revenue, however, just delayed. Construction on many of our customers' new QSR facilities was frankly suspended for 30-45 days as the weather passed through.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

As a result, the February and March new location openings for these QSR customers were delayed until April, May, some in June, including the installation of 500 locations for our lottery customer. This will shift revenue from Q1 into Q2 and maybe even some into Q3. Excuse me again. With that said, I want to be very clear. We continue to be bullish on our revenue and stand behind our earlier statements that our revenue in 2026 will exceed $100 million, and our Adjusted EBITDA will reach a run rate of 20% by year-end. Our pipeline remains robust. We expect to continue to land many new opportunities. We're in excellent position to post higher growth and improve operating results going forward, and we remain on track for our best year ever. With that, we'll now move to the Q&A portion of the call. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

Jason Kreyer
Jason Kreyer
Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Wonderful. Thank you, gentlemen. Rick, can you just talk maybe about scale gains, how that's changed the go-to-market over the last several months since the acquisition, or just maybe the tone of customer conversations and how that's changed?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Great question, Jason. The tone of conversations is totally different. Number one, most customers would recognize, particularly in some of our verticals, QSR specifically, we're absolutely at the top of the food chain, and so we are now in conversations that we would have never been in before. That's number one. Number two, those conversations are very serious because they understand we are now a true leader in the QSR and drive-through space and approach us with a very different message than we've experienced in the past.

Jason Kreyer
Jason Kreyer
Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Great, good to hear. Thank you. Rick, we've talked for the last few quarters about deals that are kind of sitting at the one-yard line, or I think you've even talked about the one-inch line. Just any updates on that? I'm also curious how you see the pipeline building with your AdTech capabilities. I know the last several wins that we've discussed have been more slanted to the QSR side. I'm curious how deal flow or how that pipeline looks on deals that have advertising embedded in them.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Deal flow continues to be strong. Let's go back to the one-inch line comment. First thing I'd tell you is, obviously, we pulled one across the one-inch line with an $8 million stadium project. Finally got that done. Number two, we announced on a prior call, a large QSR had gone through an entire RFP, over 4,000 locations in North America, and they had selected us, and we've been negotiating the contract, and we finally expect to actually sign that contract here in the next couple of weeks. It's been a long time coming, but the contract is getting ready to get executed. That will result in additional Drive-Thru, etc., moving along. Retail media networks, primarily, we've had a couple C-store customers, one specific large C-store customer that has been in test for probably five, six months at least now, and is now moving to deployment.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Number one. Number two, we are in conversations with three or four other customers who are interested in retail media network. One is a large grocer, one of the largest grocery chains in the U.S., so we're in significant conversations. Another significant C-store chain. Again, I would say two or three, what you would call traditional retailers tend to be more in luxury beauty area, but we are having substantive conversations with a number of them. Last but not least, I'd also add our sales force has literally tripled in size. We have 40+ folks who are on the sales team who are out talking to customers every day. The number of folks we are actively engaged with has certainly increased significantly. Part of that's due to our new position and stature in the industry as one of the big guys.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Number two, it's just also the fact that I've now got 40+ experienced folks out beating the streets, contacting customers every day across North America. A combination of all those things is really coming into play, and we feel very bullish about the next 12-18 months.

Jason Kreyer
Jason Kreyer
Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

That was a solid recap there, Rick. Thank you for that. Last one for me, just want to touch on the lottery sector. I think the last time we talked, you've got the big deployment happening right now in North Carolina, but I thought there was some potential momentum with other RFPs that were coming to market. If you could just give us a recap of what you think that RFP landscape looks like today?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

That's a solid question, Jason. Unfortunately, I don't have a solid answer other than we expect in 2026, seven to eight large RFPs coming out. We have yet to see that happen. We have one that we are actively participating in. We have a couple large West Coast opportunities that were in discussion, but I would not call them active RFPs. Again, well-positioned, and we are certainly talking to everybody, every lottery that's interested. The one thing I would tell you about the lottery market and what we've done with our current lottery customer is we are showing significant lift, and so we have results of that to show other lottery customers, potential customers, that we can achieve substantial lift, which results in significantly increased lottery ticket sales.

Jason Kreyer
Jason Kreyer
Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay. I lied about the last question. Just curious on that point, your ability to take that lottery, go into C-stores, and almost create kind of a cross-sell opportunity. Just curious if the rollout of lottery kind of helps build out a greater rollout of C-stores. You kind of see a network effect there.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Still unproven yet. Today, when we've rolled out lottery, that's been dedicated to lottery. We have not done a mix of in-store promotion type stuff and then layered in lottery, like a 50/50 mix. Have not done that. It has today been 100% lottery. We are talking to some of our C-store customers who have networks already deployed about improving their schedule and adding lottery on those screens to just increase lift, but no results yet to even talk about.

Jason Kreyer
Jason Kreyer
Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yep, thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners. Your line is now open.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Great. Thanks so much. Solid fourth quarter results. Prior to the announced partnership, had AMC been a customer of Creative or even CDM? If so, how much revenue did AMC generate last year? The second part of that question is, I'm not sure I heard, what was the installation revenue on this contract versus the potential recurring revenue based on your AdTech and media solution?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Great question, Brian. How are you, sir?

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Great, thanks.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Good, couple things. Yes, AMC has been a long-time customer of CDM's. Today, I would tell you it's a seven-figure customer in terms of deploying our software, managing all of the screens throughout every AMC Theatre in the U.S. today, number one. Number two, they are actually not a hardware customer. They have always procured hardware internally. They are a software and content customer. When the opportunity came to build out a network, it seemed to make sense that CRI was already deployed throughout their locations. We were doing a great job, so it was a natural fit for us. In terms of the hardware and installation revenue on this particular network, I'm assuming it's going to be in the typical 70/30 range of hardware and installation. However, that's out of the $6 million bucket. There's ongoing.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

It is our software AdTech that will be running it, our CMS, our AdTech, and there is a revenue share for the next five years on those screens.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Great. That's helpful and a great deal. This week, I think it was, and I could be wrong, 7-Eleven announced a store restructuring where it's going to close something like 600 stores, don't quote me, I'm sure you know better, and open something like almost 300 stores over the course of maybe two years. Again, I'm not sure I got the timeframe right. Is there any impact on your business from the store closings? I know you've been a preferred vendor there. Is there going to be a new RFP or is that under your existing contract? Just maybe talk about 7-Eleven and what's going on there?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

No. Great question. Number one, if there is an effect on CRI, it would be de minimis or minimal. The closing of the 600 stores, if those stores had digital, which we don't know, they may have us uninstall digital and reinstall it in some other stores. In the 300 new locations, those typically are going to be full-sized 7-Eleven that are typically going to include at least one, if not two, food concepts. Yes, we would do a number of screens through that. Number three, our contract with 7-Eleven is in the process of renewal. It has not been signed, but we're at the end game for another three-year renewal with 7-Eleven. We do not anticipate any change in that customer. They just continue to grow.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Great. You mentioned, and it was helpful, that the first quarter was impacted by weather. Clearly, that's going to be the worst quarter of the four. Is there any other thoughts on which are the strongest, maybe the second or the third quarter, based on known installs at places like AMC in North Carolina?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

I would tell you Q3 is setting up to be a significant quarter because, with stadium install, a bunch of hardware will ship in Q3. A bunch of drive-throughs will all go in in Q3 because that's kind of the end of the construction timeframe across the eastern half of the U.S., so they want to get those restaurants open September, October timeframe, right before it gets into bad weather. Generally speaking, that's what we expect to be significant. We have this QSR customer that has not rolled out drive-through. We're going to sign the new contract. We do expect Drive-Thru expansion out of their 4,000 locations across North America.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

The other thing that I will add is that Q4 has the largest percentage of our media revenue with the CDM acquisition, so that automatically will increase the value in Q4. So we do expect Q4 to be the largest quarter of revenue.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Great call-out. [crosstalk] I forgot that little portion about a bunch of media revenue in Q4. Thank you, Tamra.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Already adding value. Last question from me. Remind us the expectations for interest expense and how much is a cash obligation this year?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

That's a great question. George or Tamra, any input on what that would look like?

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

I think, again, it's going to depend on, obviously, the debt levels of the revolver. Generally, you're going to have the term loan that's going to drive the lion's share of the interest expense that we would expect to see. That generally is somewhere between a half a million and three-quarters of a million dollars a quarter.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Okay. Thank you.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Hey, Brian, I am happy to go through that. I think we have a little one-on-one time scheduled.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Perfect.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Happy to articulate that in detail on that call.

Brian Kinstlinger
Brian Kinstlinger
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst at Alliance Global Partners

Great. Thank you, guys.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yep, thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jon Hickman with Ladenburg Thalmann. Your line is now open.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Hey, Jon.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Hello?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yeah.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Hi. Can you hear me okay?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yeah, I can hear you just fine, Jon.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. Most of my questions have been asked and answered. I wanted to drill down a little bit on this restaurant chain that you landed last year, and then there were some issues with installation because of the size of the screens and stuff. Where are you with those guys? Did you do business with them in the fourth quarter? What's going on?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

No.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Can you elaborate?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

The answer is there was some SaaS revenue because we had some of their locations on our SaaS platforms, okay?

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

They have halted all hardware procurement and installs till the new contract was executed. The new contract, we all had, including the customer and ourselves, we had internal dates. We were going to get it done by March 15th. Well, here we are April 14th, and we still don't have it signed. We do expect it.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Right.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Signed in the next couple of weeks.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Why did there have to be a new contract? You said this was a brand-new win last year.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yeah. They did an RFP. It was a brand-new win. It's a contract that we had to write, create from the ground up.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Oh, okay. You won the RFP, okay.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yeah.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

There's a lot of franchisees in this particular customer.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Yeah.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Has that been an issue?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Again, it has not been an issue as we've started to deploy the SaaS across the franchisees. Now, the franchisees are responsible for hardware updates, and should they desire to upgrade to a Digital Drive-Thru, they would be responsible for that. Now, Jon, I can tell you, we attended the franchisee show in January. The verbal indication we received from the folks who came by our booth, I was there, talked to our people, indicated significant interest. I've talked to two or three franchisees that owned 30-50 locations each that indicated they wanted to pull the trigger and put Digital Drive-Thru in all locations. Now, Jon, as you know, we have to take that with a little bit of grain of salt, because now when it's time to start to write the check, who knows?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

We do expect to see some growth in Q3, because even if they turned it on today, we wouldn't be installing Drive-Thru in the next 60 days. It would be Q3 or Q4 revenue that would get an impact once we sign this contract. Right, Tamra?

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Yes.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

I mean, that's realistically the impact.

Tamra Koshewa
Tamra Koshewa
CFO at Creative Realities

Yes.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay, maybe like the math and stuff, but out of the total addressable market here, not including the AdTech side, what do you think? Do you have any estimate at all of your market share right now?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Boy, really hard number to pin down. I would tell you in North America today, we are not 2%. If we were 1%, I would be surprised.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

At $100 million. George, any input? I've got George sitting here, who is certainly the math guy on all those things. George, any comments?

George Sautter
George Sautter
Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Corporate Development at Creative Realities

Jon, just to clarify, are we talking about market share or market penetration?

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Well, maybe, when we talk later today, we can talk about both of those. Just let me ask a different question.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Now that you are combined with CDM and you say that you can get into just a different level of contracts and opportunities, have you changed your competitor outlook or the individuals or the entities you're competing with? Are they different now?

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

No. We have always competed against the same three or four or five competitors. Only, some were larger than us. Today, they're not larger than us. We occupy a different, unique position, and some of them, I am significantly larger than they are. I represent a real strategic advantage for the end-user customer to align with CRI as a supplier.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. That makes sense. Well, I'll talk to you later then. Thank you.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Great. Thanks, Jon. Good to catch up.

Jon Hickman
Jon Hickman
Managing Director of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann

Sure. Okay. Bye.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Sheldon, Private Investor. Your line is now open.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Kevin, how are you?

Operator

Kevin, please check your mute button. All right. I'm currently showing no further questions from the phone lines. Mr. Sautter, are there any email questions?

George Sautter
George Sautter
Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Corporate Development at Creative Realities

No, there are not. Thank you.

Operator

Alrighty. I would like to turn the call back over to Rick Mills for any closing remarks.

Rick Mills
Rick Mills
CEO at Creative Realities

Okay. Let me conclude the call, number one, by thanking all our shareholders, clients, partners, and specifically the CRI and CDM employees for their continuing efforts, commitment and support. We continue to work to transform CRI into the leading brand in digital signage solution. For many of you who've been on these calls for the last couple of years, you've seen us really execute in the market and continue to grow. Thanks for joining the call. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • George Sautter
      George Sautter
      Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Corporate Development
    • Rick Mills
      Rick Mills
      CEO
    • Tamra Koshewa
      Tamra Koshewa
      CFO
Analysts
Powered by Quartr