Acorn Energy, Inc. Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Thank you, operator. Thank you all for joining our call. I will remind everyone first that today's remarks, including responses to questions, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Factors that may impact our future operating results and financial performance include general risks such as potential disruptions to business operations or changes in consumer or customer demand, as well as specific risks related to our ability to execute our operating plan, maintain strong customer renewal rates, and expand our customer base. Additional risks may arise from changes in technology, competition, or shifts in macroeconomic or financial markets. Forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are based on management's beliefs, assumptions, and information that is available as of today.

There can be no assurances that the company will meet its growth targets or its other strategic goals and objectives. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect future events or specific circumstances that may occur after today. For a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties that may affect our business, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our most recently filed Form 10-K and our Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2026, both of which are available at www.sec.gov and on our website. Now I will turn the call over to Jan Loeb, CEO of Acorn and OmniMetrix, for further comment.

Jan? Thank you, Tracy. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for participating on today's call. Our second quarter results demonstrate the underlying strength of our business model, centered on high-margin recurring monitoring revenue driven by a growing base of hardware deployments, which can be variable in their size and timing. As expected, our year-over-year revenue comparison was impacted by strong year-ago hardware deployments related to the material cell phone contract. Total second quarter revenue of $2.49 million reflected 8% growth in monitoring revenue, which is our highest margin and most predictable revenue stream. Hardware revenue was $1.06 million in the second quarter versus $2.21 million in Q2 last year.

The year-ago period reflected over $1.3 million in hardware revenue related to the last significant shipments and the fulfillment of the initial purchase orders under the material contract, as compared to follow-on purchase orders for hardware, which resulted in revenue from the cell phone provider totaling $263,000 in this Q2 2026. Our Q2 gross margin improved by 750 basis points to over 82%, principally driven by the increase in monitoring revenue as a percentage of total revenue. Monitoring generated a gross margin of over 90% in the quarter, though moving forward, I would expect our blended gross margin to average more in the 75% range as we make progress in expanding hardware deployments. On the bottom line, we reported second quarter net income of $294,000 or $0.12 per diluted share.

For the first six months, our net income was $217,000, or $0.09 per diluted share. These results reinforce our ability to maintain solid profitability and cash generation while investing in future growth. For example, in the residential market, we are advancing our growth potential through a new partnership with Champion Power Equipment. The collaboration makes our monitoring and control solution the standard monitoring option on their popular aXis and fleX lines of home standby generators. Champion has a strong reputation for reliable, high-quality, and competitively priced portable generators, which have sold millions of units over the years. Recently, Champion has developed whole home solutions featuring advanced technologies such as fleX for better load management and fuel efficiency, durable all-aluminum enclosures for weather resistance with extended warranties.

By integrating our monitoring capabilities as the standard option, Champion customers can gain real-time visibility into generator status, fuel levels, battery condition, maintenance alerts, and remote control options through our OmniView interface. Given Champion's accelerating growth in the residential standby generator market, we believe this partnership provides significant long-term growth potential that should begin contributing to our results in the current quarter. Pricing under the agreement is based on an assumed annual purchase volume of 3,000 units, but the agreement does not obligate Champion to purchase a minimum quantity. Champion is planning to issue a press release today regarding this partnership. Turning to another exciting initiative that could have a transformative impact on our business. We are particularly thrilled about the formal launch of OMNI360, our comprehensive remote monitoring and control platform for cell tower campus security and other critical infrastructure.

After investing several months in customization, product enhancements, and integration, OMNI360 is now available in 3 tiers, Nova, Horizon, and Zenith, offering different capability levels and each backed by a 24/7 network operating center, a sophisticated AI-supported software suite and mobile asset access. OMNI360 delivers a much broader suite of capabilities that builds on our industry-leading generator-focused solutions to provide unified turnkey management of an entire site. Capabilities include advanced environmental monitoring control, temperature, humidity, HVAC, smoke detection, and flood sensors, robust campus security with AI-powered cameras, site access control, intrusion sensing, two-way audio, and live incident response. It includes comprehensive power management solutions such as fuel level sensing and usage prediction, commercial power automatic, transfer switch monitoring, battery health, transformer temperature and voltage, current balance, imbalance detection, along with smart energy and cooling optimization tools.

OMNI360's all-in-one approach delivers real-time visibility, automated controls, and actionable insights that help operators cut energy costs, reduce unnecessary truck rolls, prevent theft, and ensure compliance. What makes OMNI360 particularly exciting is that it is the only solution that brings together all of these functions into one platform and provides 24/7 monitoring and support. While there are a range of hardware solutions already in the market, they are typically limited to just a few functions, and they do not include a monitoring capability. We believe these limitations create very exciting opportunities for a more robust solution that also delivers mission-critical real-time data and controls to cell tower owners and tenants. We are actively introducing OMNI360 across the industry. For example, we'll showcase it at this year's ISE EXPO, a gathering of telecom sector leaders taking place in Nashville later this month.

While the breadth of the solution and typical enterprise sales processes suggest a longer sales cycle, early feedback has been very positive, and we see substantial potential in this market. In addition to these efforts, we remain active in seeking and reviewing complementary accretive M&A opportunities using a very disciplined financial and operational framework. Once we've identified an appropriate target that meets our operational criteria, the challenge is in negotiating appropriate terms that create value for shareholders. We have lost out in several situations where another bidder was willing to pay substantially more than we thought the assets could justify, and we are unwilling to take such risks. By their nature, discussions of this type can take many months, and the outcomes are impossible to predict until the very end. As a result, there's little we can say while discussions progress.

The same is true for our efforts to secure OEM bundling opportunities, which we continue to pursue as we believe these are worthwhile efforts to continue to increase our number of monitoring connections. The secular tailwinds supporting our business remain in place. Increasing frequency of severe weather events, combined with growing power demand from AI data centers, electrification, and reshoring, continue to highlight the critical need for resilient infrastructure. In just the past few weeks, extreme heat and thunderstorms have strained the U.S. power grid, causing hundreds of thousands of outages across multiple regions. These events underscore both the vulnerability of the grid and the value of reliable backup systems and remote monitoring. Additionally, attacks on critical communications infrastructure reached record levels in 2025, and we estimate that cell tower theft losses will reach approximately $500 million industry-wide in 2026, including copper and equipment theft.

OMNI360 is purpose-built to help operators combat these exact challenges, increasing reliability, security, and operational efficiency. Also today, one year in, AI already represents 4% of all cell network traffic. Imagine what it'll be in three years. This points to the critical importance of protecting cell towers and related infrastructure. Looking ahead, we remain very optimistic about our long-term growth potential. With the significant hardware revenue contributions from our large national cell phone provider now cycled through our year-ago comparison periods, we expect more favorable revenue and earnings comparisons moving forward. Combined with the momentum in our monitoring base, the launch of OMNI360, the Champion partnership, our internal sales strategies, and our ongoing M&A and OEM efforts, we believe we have the pieces in place to achieve growth that more than exceeds and aligns with our three to five-year target of approximately 20% average annual revenue growth.

Further, our capital-light, high margin, recurring revenue model and significant NOLs give us strong operating leverage, allowing us to drive meaningful incremental profitability as we scale. We are very enthusiastic about the progress across all fronts and the opportunities that lie ahead for Acorn and OmniMetrix. I will turn to Tracy for her financial and operational insights.