CSP Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 14, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Third-quarter revenue declined to $14.4 million from $15.4 million year over year, while the net loss widened to $846,000, or $0.09 per share, from $264,000. Results were affected by hardware delivery delays, higher expenses, and costs related to the U.K. pension buyout.
  • Negative Sentiment: Technology Solutions backlog increased 65% year over year as hardware lead times extended from roughly 30–60 days to more than 200 days; management expects supply constraints could persist for at least another year, delaying revenue recognition.
  • Positive Sentiment: AZT PROTECT advanced through several large enterprise opportunities, including six-figure deals nearing the end of 18–24-month sales cycles. The company also reported a 100% renewal rate at customer sites reaching their one-year renewal period, a third South African telecom purchase order, and completed integration with Acronis ahead of a planned fall launch.
  • Positive Sentiment: Managed cloud and service operations continued to grow, including a six-year, seven-figure agreement with a professional sports team and a three-year agreement expected to generate mid-six-figure annual recurring revenue. Service gross margin improved by 1.3 percentage points year over year.
  • Positive Sentiment: CSPi ended the quarter with $24.7 million in cash and continued supporting customer financing, while maintaining its $0.03-per-share dividend and repurchasing approximately 13,000 shares.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
CSP Q3 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, everyone. Welcome to CSPi's third quarter fiscal year 2026 conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Michael Polyviou. The floor is yours.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Kelly. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review CSPi's financial results for the fiscal 2026 third quarter, which ended on June 30, 2026, as well as recent operating developments. Today with me on the call is Victor Dellovo, CSPi's Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Levine, CSPi's Chief Financial Officer. After Victor and Gary conclude their opening remarks, we will then open the call for questions. During the Q&A session, we ask participants to limit themselves to one question and one follow-up question, then to please re-queue if you have additional questions. In advance, thank you for your cooperation with this process. Statements made by CSPi's management on today's call regarding the company's business that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements as those identified in federal securities laws.

Speaker 1

The words may, will, expect, believe, anticipate, project, plan, intend, estimate, and continue, as well as similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements should not be meant as a guarantee of future performance or results. The company cautions you that these statements reflect the current expectations about the company's future performance or events and are subject to several uncertainties, risks, and other influences, many of which are beyond the company's control, that may influence the accuracy of the statements and the projections upon which the segment and the statements are based. Factors that may affect the company's results include but are not limited to the risks and uncertainties discussed in the risk factor section of the annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Speaker 1

Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time those statements are made and management's good faith belief as of the time with respect to future events. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and CSPi undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise after the date thereof. With that, I will turn the call over to Victor Dellovo, Chief Executive Officer. Victor, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. The Technology Solutions business performed near our expectations during the fiscal third quarter, reflecting solid growth in our cloud and managed service business. However, our third quarter financial performance was impacted by what we believe are two relatively short-term factors. First, while the Technology Solutions business continued to generate solid order growth during the quarter, our ability to convert those orders into revenue has been impacted by longer hardware vendor delivery times. In many cases, vendor deliveries that historically took 30 to 60 days are now extending well beyond 200 days. As a result, our Technology Solutions backlog is now 65% higher than it was a year ago. The second factor impacting our top-line performance is the continued ramp of our AZT PROTECT business and the longer sales cycles associated with larger enterprise opportunities. We made meaningful progress during the quarter.

Speaker 2

However, I believe we can and will do better. As we pursue larger accounts, we continue to add new land and expand customers while expanding relationships with existing customers as our customer base grows. We continue adapting to each customer's unique deployment timelines and procurement process for rolling out additional protected sites after the initial installation. We recognize that every customer has different priorities and often multiple competing projects that can delay expansion. Our ability to execute within this environment continues to improve. We believe several initiatives will position us to expand both the number and size of AZT PROTECT opportunities over the next six months. First, we are nearing the end of the 18 to 24-month sales cycle for several large six-figure opportunities and remain optimistic about converting a number of those into contracts.

Speaker 2

Second, we continue to see growing opportunities for AZT PROTECT to become part of an OEM customer solution. During the quarter, we completed the integration of our AZT PROTECT into several OEM products and are beginning to see a growing pipeline from this market segment. While OEM sales cycles are lengthy, they create attractive long-term recurring revenue opportunities once integrated. A good example is our relationship with Acronis software, where the integration has been completed, and we understand marketing materials and SKUs are on track for a fall launch. Another example is the work in South Africa, where our OEM partner, large telecommunication customer, is now working on a third purchase order with an AZT PROTECT embedded in the deployed solution. With the integration challenges and unpredictable timelines largely behind us, we are making meaningful progress in the South African telecommunication market.

Speaker 2

We are applying the lessons learned from this deployment to other OEM relationships currently under development and expect continued progress in this segment over the coming quarters. A third initiative implemented during the quarter was the continued evolution of our direct sales organization focused on Fortune 500 customers. Our experience with distributors, OEMs, and large direct customers has reinforced that our sales organization must effectively serve all three channels while addressing the unique requirements of each customer. We believe the changes made during the quarter better position our sales team to show in the sales cycle, broaden the sales funnel, and improve execution as we enter into the new fiscal year in October. We remain committed to the land and expand strategy.

Speaker 2

Our approach is to secure the initial deployment at one customer site, validate the AZT Protect performs as expected within the customer's existing cybersecurity infrastructure, then deployment across additional sites. This expansion phase has taken longer than anticipated, largely because of the evolving stakeholders alignment and internal review process. We believe our enhanced sales organization will help accelerate expansion by engaging higher decision-makers within customers' organization. Changes within the customer organization often require us to rebuild momentum. While some customers seek additional validation before approving broader deployment, in other cases, IT organizations initially believe their existing infrastructure adequately protects OT environments when expansion opportunities become larger enterprise projects. This creates an opportunity for us to educate customers on the unique security requirements of operational technology.

Speaker 2

The data we've collected from existing deployments, combined with strong customer references, has enabled us to build compelling business case demonstrating why AZT Protect is a better solution for OT environments. While these dynamics are a natural part of selling into complex and evolving markets, we believe we are becoming increasingly effective at influencing the customer's decision. We made solid progress with AZT Protect during the third quarter by signing new customers and expanding deployments within existing accounts. In addition, we achieved 100% renewal rate on all customer sites reaching their one-year renewal period. We have also advanced into final stages of the selection process within several major corporations, demanding continues to be supported by the growing number of cyberattacks disrupting operations worldwide, as well as increased awareness of AI-driven threats and so-called friendly fire incidents generated by internal systems.

Speaker 2

Traditionally, cybersecurity solutions rely heavily on continuous patching, which is often impractical in OT environments. Friendly fire incidents where IT inadvertently sends faulty updates into production environments can be just as disruptive as an external attack. AZT Protect prevents these production disruptions while eliminating the need for ongoing OT application security patching. To date, no AZT Protect customer has experienced a breach. We have also developed an extensive catalog of AI-driven exploits emerging through 2026 that AZT Protect is designed to stop. One highly publicized example was the OpenAI ChatGPT-related attack involving Hugging Face. Based on the publicly available information, we believe AZT would have prevented the attack, and we have publicly shared those findings. We continue to believe AZT Protect has little effective competition in defending against these emerging AI attacks while eliminating the need for code-level security patching in OT environments.

Speaker 2

We remain intensely focused on expanding our sales opportunities as we enter the new fiscal year. Turning to our technology solution business, it once again served as our primary revenue generator despite ongoing hardware shipment delays. Our offering continues to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our customers' IT investment across networking, wireless, mobility, unified communication, data center infrastructure, and advanced cybersecurity. A managed cloud and managed service practice continues to grow at a healthy pace. We continue to benefit from the ongoing migration to the cloud and the increasing demand for managed operational support after those migrations are complete. A key driver remains the growing complexity of cloud environments and the unique requirements of enterprise customers. During the quarter, we entered the professional sports market with the signing of a six-year, seven-figure managed service agreement with a nationally recognized sports team.

Speaker 2

We expect to issue a joint press release in the coming weeks. We also signed a 3-year managed service agreement with a food distribution customer, expecting to generate mid-six figures annual recurring revenue. Looking ahead, we believe our best-in-class service organization, exceptional high customer retention, and continued adoption of cloud-based service will drive further service growth and support continued gross margin expansion. During the quarter, our service gross margin increased 1.3% compared to a prior year period. While we recognize there is still work to do before fully realizing the value of our award-winning product and customer service, we have made significant organizational improvements that position us well for the continued growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Gary to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Victor. For the third quarter ended June 30, 2026, we generated $14.4 million in revenue compared to $15.4 million for the third quarter ended June 30, 2025. Product revenue was $9.9 million compared to $10.2 million for the prior fiscal year third quarter. Service revenue for the quarter was $4.5 million compared to $5.3 million in the prior year, reflecting the vendors delays issue mentioned earlier. Gross profit for the quarter was $4.3 million, compared to $4.5 million for the same prior year period. Gross margin for the third quarter grew by more than 100 basis points to 30.1% of sales compared to the year ago fiscal third quarter. Gross margin was 28.8% for the sales in the prior year's third quarter. Gross margin realized from product revenue for the quarter was 20.7%, compared to 15.7% for the third quarter of fiscal 2025.

Speaker 3

While gross margin realized per service was 51.2%, as compared to 53.9% for the year ago quarter. Research and development expenses increased 5% to $832,000 compared to $791,000 the same prior year quarter as we supported customization of the AZT PROTECT deployments and OEM embedding developments. Sales in general, administrative expenses for the fiscal third quarter increased 3% to $5 million from $4.9 million a year ago fiscal third quarter. The company grew other income during the quarter by 58.7% due to the increase in fiscal transactions with customers. During the third quarter, we recorded several expenses, including an increase in variable compensation to the TS division and costs related to the buyout sale of the U.K. pension, which increased our operating loss for the quarter to $1.5 million from $1.2 million in the prior fiscal third quarter.

Speaker 3

With the other income earned on our net, our net loss was $846,000, or $0.09 per share of common for the third fiscal quarter, compared to a net loss of $264,000 or $0.03 per share of common in the prior year's third quarter. Our strong balance sheet continues to provide us with resources to finance customer purchases, and as of June 30, 2026, we extended terms on over 20 transactions. We finished the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $24.7 million, and the balance sheet continues to provide us with the necessary resources to execute our growth strategies for the managed service business and the AZT PROTECT product offering, as well as paying a dividend of $0.03 per share, and we purchased approximately 13,000 shares of common stock during the quarter.

Speaker 3

Turning to our results for the nine months of fiscal 2026, revenue was $42.4 million, compared to $44.3 million in the same period the prior year. Gross profit for fiscal nine months ended June 30, 2026 was $13.5 million or 31.9% of sales, compared to $13.2 million and 29.9% of sales. The company generated $1.4 million on other income and realized a tax benefit of $654,000 during the first nine months of fiscal 2026. During the same period of fiscal 2025, the company generated $1.1 million in other income and realized a tax benefit of $1.5 million. The company's net loss for the nine months of fiscal 2026 was $491,000, or $0.05 per common share, as compared to a net income of $100,000, or $0.01 per diluted common share for the comparable period during fiscal 2025.

Speaker 3

Lastly, the board of directors approved a dividend of $0.03 per share of common to be paid on September 15, 2026 to shareholders of record on August 28, 2026. We will now take your questions.

Operator

Certainly. The floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on a speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold for just a few moments while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from Joseph Nerges with Segran Investments. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Speaker 4

Yeah, good morning, guys. How are you today?

Speaker 4

Good, Joe. Let me dive in on the OEM direction you're going. I'm assuming Acronis would be the one OEM you're talking about currently, right?

Speaker 4

And then-

Speaker 2

Yeah, there's other ones that we're in the process of working with also.

Speaker 4

Okay. Is there an OEM, were you referring to an OEM in the Internet of Things, IoT? We're dealing with an OEM in that respect, in that area, or planning to?

Speaker 2

Well, it's all in that area. There's a couple OEMs we're dealing with where they make boxes, and we're trying to get integrated on their platform. There's other OEMs in South Africa that they make other equipment, which I can't mention right at this second, but they make certain equipment which, again, we're trying to get embedded on their product. As soon as the product goes out the door, we're there, and then we just turn up the license and do a true-up every month or every quarter.

Speaker 4

Any additional OEMs in the U.S.?

Speaker 2

Yes. There's three other OEMs in the U.S. right now we're talking with, at different stages.

Speaker 4

Okay. One other question on that is, we announced the Acronis deal. That goes back, I looked at-

Speaker 2

A year

Speaker 4

the history, back September of last year.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Speaker 4

You mentioned it in the call about the length of it's taking to embed these things. Do we envision that same length on these other deals? I could see a year seems like a long time, almost a year. Are we hoping that we can shorten that process?

Speaker 2

It's not us, Joe. It's never us. It's always them, to be honest with you.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I bet.

Speaker 2

They're larger organizations that truly move at a slower pace.

Speaker 2

Just due to the fact, I guess, their pure size, sign-off into various things. It's never us. We're always there quickly. We're always waiting, let's put it that way. There's nothing else, I think, that we could possibly do to speed these large multi-billion dollar companies, to move faster. Because of our size-

Speaker 4

Yep

Speaker 2

it's hard to move these guys. I can promise you, we do stay on top of it constantly, every week, maybe multiple times a week to try to move things along as fast as possible. With the Acronis-

Speaker 4

No, I understand.

Speaker 2

Yeah

Speaker 4

is out of our control.

Speaker 2

95% of it's out of our control. Anything we can control, we have a plan, we have a timeline, and we try to meet it.

Speaker 4

Just one other thing, this goes to another point, the Hugging Face attack, the press release on Monday.

Speaker 4

I don't think some people realize, we do have a, how can I say it? We have a partnership that we have not announced, that I know of, with a very large partner that deals quite heavily with the federal government. This partner also, from my research, has an embedded cybersecurity lab in their thing. I'm just wondering, I'm sure the federal government is really high up on these hacks, I'll call it cyber attacks, by software, no less. I'm just wondering, have we talked to this partner as far as getting a test with the government somehow?

Speaker 2

Again, I know who you're talking about, which I can't mention. We do talk to them. We have standard calls every two weeks. Because of their size,

Speaker 4

I understand.

Speaker 2

we have to move at their pace. What they tell us is minimum of what goes on between them and the government directly. I have no idea, Joe, to be honest with you.

Speaker 4

I know, but finally, we have something that might appeal, let's put it that way, if nothing else, to somebody at the government level. That's all I'm saying. If you could finally get through their, the bureaucracy

Speaker 4

of these larger

Speaker 2

I think that's why we just put that out, just to let everyone know, compared to some of the other products that are out there that are not stopping these various viruses or attacks coming from different The way our technology is made, we're made to stop these things, right? So I think that was more of a educational press release just for either people looking at a product or the confidence of different customers already using the product.

Speaker 4

I'm going to extend one more question. Just recently, a lot of attacks for the last couple of weeks with the utilities, the water utilities

Speaker 4

wastewater utilities. Have we had, and we've got two partners, United Flow Technologies, and I see recently we signed another partner with CITGO

Speaker 4

in that. Have we gotten any feedback from those guys in the last couple of weeks? With what's happening in that area, as far as updating some of the customers looking to do some updates, security-wise?

Speaker 2

Yeah. We have a standard call with United Flow Technologies. CITGO's a newer company that we signed up, so that relationship is still working. But we have a good long-term relationship with United Flow Technologies because not only are they a cloud customer of ours, that's how the relationship started, probably back 4 or 5 years ago, because of Tesco, one of the companies they own, that concentrates on the water and waste and water plants. That's how they became a reseller for the product. Again, because of their size, they have a process, and the process is, A, get through legal 2, which takes forever. Second stage was get it into their lab, which took a while also. Then they wanted three customers of theirs to use the product for a period of time.

Speaker 2

So before they pushed it out or presented it to all their customers, that they had confidence that AZT PROTECT would work in different products, whether it was Siemens, Emerson, you name it, Honeywell, and different environments. So when they put their name on it, because their goal is to sell it as a product and service directly from their sales team, that they had confidence that it would represent them correctly. That has taken probably we're in about 9 months now. We will be announcing some new things that I won't tell you right now, but you'll see them in the next 2 or 3 weeks, some things that we'll be doing together.

Speaker 4

All right. Thanks. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Your next question is coming from Will Lauber with Visionary Wealth Advisors. Please push your question, your line is live.

Speaker 5

Yes. Victor, if you can kind of expand a little bit on it. I'm not quite sure I understand the Salesforce new strategy. I've noticed, I guess, from LinkedIn that a number of the salespeople that were there last year are no longer with you guys. If you can kind of explain just developments in the Salesforce and what the new strategy is in a little bit more detail.

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's not a new strategy. Because of the sales cycle, due to individual financial issue, everyone has their own financial capacity of how long they can wait for a sale to close. We needed to get into some salespeople that were used to a longer sales cycle that came from the marketplace, and that's where we just ended up replacing 3 out of the 4 salespeople already that left the organization. Yeah, and one of them is already up and running. One started this week. One starts next week. Yeah, and we're still focused on the OEM. It's a specific business. We're working through all the resellers as we normally have. But we're also putting a heavy emphasis of us, as in ARIA, talking to the customers directly to try to move this along as fast as possible.

Speaker 2

It's not always easy for the resellers to give us the contact info, but as time goes on, the trust builds, so they know that we're going to treat that customer with white glove service.

Speaker 5

Okay. So would it be safe to say that, I guess, the Salesforce is going to be more compensated on commission rather than salary, or how is that?

Speaker 2

I'd rather not.

Speaker 5

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2

If we want to have a sidebar on that, we can talk.

Speaker 5

Okay.

Speaker 2

I would rather not talk about that in this audience.

Speaker 5

Okay. If I could just get a little bit, when you had mentioned the 18-24 month sales cycle, is that because the customers are in current contracts with other cybersecurity contracts and that is when it expires? Or is it something that with the big companies, it just takes that long for them to kind of test it and go through everything? Or what is kind of the driver of that long sales cycle?

Speaker 2

It's a combination of both, I would say. It could be one or the other. One is coming up for renewal or sometimes the Windows 10 is, that's a big push where some of our competing products are not supporting any longer, so that would drive them to look. A lot of it's political, to be honest with you. You got the OT guys who love it, want to move fast, and then you got IT folks who have to go because it's their budget. They bring it into the lab. They take their time. They got to go through. There's no rhyme or reason. We do know now for sure that if it comes from IT, we have to engage with them immediately because if they have the purse strings, they are making the ultimate decision.

Speaker 2

Even if the OT guys love it, if they don't control the budget, they're not making. They can influence the sale, but they won't make the ultimate decision on that. Some lessons learned over the last year or so on how these larger organizations and the political piece of it kind of rolls out. Yeah, I just kind of gave an 18 to 24. We have closed some other business that took a lot shorter. Wastewater, we closed some businesses that took six weeks, right? But the large $700,000, million dollar deals, I would say could take 12 months to 24, somewhere in that range. If I can do anything to shorten that, you can believe that I'm trying.

Speaker 5

Okay. With Acronis, I know that they had held at least two joint webinars with you all. I guess that was even before the product was integrated into their system.

Speaker 5

Have you gotten any indication as to what kind of interest that they're seeing from their customers?

Speaker 2

Yeah, we kind of had to put everything on hold, to be honest with you, just because there was no way for their sales team to sell it, right. Getting products integrated into their system takes quite a bit of time. It's just a process they have because it touches multiple systems, and it's a process. Not only they did significant testing with it, they also had to get it integrated so they will be able to sell it, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. What that's going to look like, we're going to have to reengage with the sales team, the renewal team.

Speaker 2

We're going to have to kickstart it up again, but the VPs of sales said until this is fully integrated and all the SKUs are available, you need to kind of slow your roll, and that's kind of where we're at right now. Promises by October 1st, everything should be integrated, and then we'll go full steam ahead trying to educate the sales team, get the renewal team on board, and push it out.

Speaker 5

Okay. All right. I'll go back on the queue. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is coming from Mike Price. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Speaker 6

Good morning. Can you give us an idea of what the completed product integration with Acronis software means when it is totally rolled out in terms of revenue? What are we going to see from that?

Speaker 2

I have no idea yet.

Speaker 6

Okay. Can you tell us how much of the I have not seen the 10-Q. How much of the receivables are being financed, both short and long term?

Speaker 2

The, probably, well, I have broken out on them. It is probably about 30% or 40% is the longer term.

Speaker 6

The dollar amount? I mean, last quarter it was 7.7 and 8.6 over a year.

Speaker 2

Yep. Right now, it is 8.3.

Speaker 6

On the longer over year?

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 6

Effectively, the receivables that are financed are going to become cash. Is that correct? So you have cash-

Speaker 2

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 6

and receivables that are being financed equivalent to about $40 million?

Speaker 2

40 million. Cash in the Yeah.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Oh, even if you add those together. Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 6

Okay. I mean, just trying to get an idea of the company where you have cash and receivables that are being financed at GBP 40 million, and we are looking at less than an GBP 80 million market cap.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 6

Can you tell us how many shares were repurchased last quarter?

Speaker 2

13,000.

Speaker 6

13,000?

Speaker 2

Yep.

Speaker 6

Okay. Is the intent still to buy shares, especially at this price?

Speaker 2

Absolutely.

Speaker 6

Okay. My final question is, we appreciate the press releases about OpenAI's attack on Hugging Face could have been prevented, and going back a year and a half, what happened with CrowdStrike, and the fact that the old Microsoft operating systems, anybody using it can be protected. These are great talking points, and you said it is hard to move the needle on billion-dollar or multi-billion dollar companies. The market has to be aware of AZT and what it can do, and having 100% retention is really saying something for the product. Is there not somebody out there that CSPi can partner with that can move the needle on these multi-billion dollar companies faster than what we have seen? I mean, Victor, it was-

Speaker 2

That's what we're trying to do, Mike.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 2

We're trying to do that, Mike. That's why we're working with the Rexel Datacomms of the world, the CEDs, the Sonepars. Because of the relationship they have, that's why we're leveraging those resellers to try to get them to walk us in as one of their premier partners. That trust, when talking to the salespeople, Mike, they're like, "Okay, well, I know ARIA. I know you guys are set up. I know you checked all the boxes, but this is my best customer." Right? "I'm a little nervous that if I walk you in." So you have to build trust with that salesperson. That doesn't take one drink on a Friday night. It takes time. They only have four or five customers each, so it's getting them to walk us into the large enterprise hand in hand. That takes some time.

Speaker 2

That's kind of why we're working with these folks, is so we can use their reputation because they've been doing business with these companies. It's still a process because they're like, "Okay, we get to the table," and I don't want to share who we're talking to right now, but there's a lot of large org. Our pipeline has grown tremendously from quarter to quarter with real companies, with real budgets. So, I think the team did a great job, even turning the sales team over. They did a really good job. This gentleman, George, has been with us now for six months. He did a really good job picking it up and keeping the ball moving on some of these large opportunities. The South African stuff, I was on a call with them, too.

Speaker 2

There's probably 15 really, really good opportunities that we've been working with for six, seven months now. So when I started into this side of it, Mike, I had no idea it was going to take this long, because the world of IT does not take this long. But the OT world, it just does. So we're trying to leverage every partner we have, every resource we have, to try to build that rapport with the end user, but there is a process that they go through. It goes in multiple labs. It has to be working for 90 days, and then it goes through a purchasing process, potentially. When they look at AZT PROTECT, they look at other products along with it, five or six or seven other products. There's one I mentioned in the script that we're down to two.

Speaker 2

There was 15 different options they were looking at. When I want to say this is 18 months in the making, it is 18 months and we are down to two. Hopefully, at the end of the day, we are the ones that they choose, and it is a big opportunity.

Speaker 6

Well, it just seems like ARIA and AZT should be household names. The expectation is, if it catches fire, it will catch fire, and we will see exponential growth, and then everybody is happy. But, like you said, it just seems to be taking forever, so it is very frustrating from an investor standpoint. But I appreciate your diligence.

Speaker 6

Yep.

Speaker 6

Appreciate your diligence.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Your next question is coming from Brett Davidson with Invest Letter. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Speaker 7

Good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Brett.

Speaker 7

I just got a couple quick questions here. The router ban by the U.S. government, the foreign-made routers, is that impacting the delivery of product?

Speaker 2

Not for us, no. These are just the name brands that are all U.S.-based companies. It is just with all the AI build-out, it is every memory hard drives, processors, everything is just taking a long time. It is on the average around 200 days right now.

Speaker 7

Yeah

Speaker 2

compared to 30 to 60. We just keep closing the business, the funnel will just keep going, and when it gets released, we will just keep processing it. That is all we can do. We do not make the product, so I have no control of when we get it.

Speaker 7

Is this going to resolve and again, I realize you are talking about third parties, but what do you anticipate the resolution of this looking like? Are you going to get caught up over the next six months, or is this just going to dribble in, the delay is just going to be extended continuously, maybe not expanding, but it is going to be a constant struggle for the next six months, a year, to get your hands on this material? Any insight at all?

Speaker 2

I would say it is probably at least a year of this. I do not have a crystal ball, and they may have better, but they are not giving us any. As long as the big boys keep buying all the product out there, this is not going to go away anytime soon. I do not want to guarantee that, but that is the feeling right now. It is going to take some time for this to flush out.

Speaker 7

I'm sure you've seen the spend numbers, but trying to remember which one it was, spent GBP 800 billion this past quarter, GBP 200 billion from Google. Those numbers aren't sustainable, so I'm thinking maybe in the next year, this is going to start to resolve itself.

Speaker 2

Someday this will wash out. I don't know exactly when. My goal is to keep building the recurring revenue business on the MSP, the cloud business, and AZT. Those three things that I can kind of control, and that's what we're focused on. The hardware, software side of it is definitely a significant part of the business, and it pays a lot of bills, but that's the part that I don't have any control of.

Speaker 7

This impacted the gross margin, the hold back on you getting hold of inventory?

Speaker 2

It held back the gross profit. We weren't able to recognize revenue, which that's kind of why a big piece of why I think we were off on the quarter is just our

Speaker 7

Yeah

Speaker 2

our backlog increased by, what was it, 63% or something like that?

Speaker 3

65, yeah.

Speaker 2

65%, yeah.

Speaker 7

All right. Well, thanks so much.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Brett.

Operator

Once again, if there are any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Please hold a moment while we pull for any additional questions. You do have a follow-up question from Joseph Nerges with Segran Investments. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Speaker 4

Yeah, just one more question. Gary, you mentioned that we're out of that with the U.K. now with their

Speaker 3

Pension?

Speaker 4

pension system. Is that it?

Speaker 3

Yep.

Speaker 4

We bought out the

Speaker 3

No, we sold it to a

Speaker 2

We sold it

Speaker 3

insurance company.

Speaker 2

We sold it. Yeah.

Speaker 4

Okay. What did that hit on? How much did that cost us in the quarter? A couple hundred thousand? Or what was the

Speaker 3

Yeah, it was the actuarial and legal costs came through, and yeah, it was a couple of hundred thousand.

Speaker 4

Okay. We have no more problem with. We are finished with that long-term pension because obviously the German operation

Speaker 3

Right

Speaker 4

was sold a long time ago, and the U.S. operation doesn't have that same We don't have that

Speaker 3

No

Speaker 4

with our employees.

Speaker 3

No, we have the life insurance that funds that indirectly. It's not part of the But our pensions that we have in the company are funded through that.

Speaker 4

Okay.

Speaker 3

That's what the cash surrender value on the balance sheet is.

Speaker 4

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Joe.

Operator

There are no additional questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Victor Dellovo for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are continuing to work towards maximizing our opportunities for the remainder of fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027, both on the service side of our business as well as with AZT PROTECT, and we look forward to reporting our progress with you. In the meantime, thank you to our shareholders for their support, to our team for their dedication and effort, and we wish everyone a good remainder of their day. Goodbye for now.

Operator

Thank you, everyone. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

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