Q4 2025 NowVertical Group Inc Earnings Call
Speaker #1: You have joined the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting.
Speaker #2: Thank you for joining us for this webcast this morning. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone to read the company disclaimer and forward-looking statements, which you can find on pages 2 and 3 of today's presentation.
Speaker #2: And on the presentation materials related to today's earnings press release and financial statements, these are available on the company's website in the investor relations section at www.nowvertical.com.
Speaker #2: And on the cedar.com website, cedar.com. All figures discussed in today's call are in US dollars and will be on an IFRS basis unless otherwise noted.
Speaker #2: And we will refer to specific non-IFRS measures, such as adjusted EBITDA. Please refer to the cautionary note in our presentation and to the non-IFRS and other financial measures section of our MD&A for more detail.
Speaker #2: Today's presentation will be led by Sandeep Mendurada, the company Chief Executive Officer, who's also joined on the call on Zoom by Christine Nelson, the Chief Financial Officer, and Andre Garber, the Chief Company Development Officer.
Speaker #2: We will break for questions at the end of management's formal remarks. During the question-and-answer session, we'll take questions from our covering analysts over the Zoom audio.
Speaker #2: And all other questions from our listeners through the webinar portal Q&A chat box. Thank you for joining us. And now I'll turn the call over to Sandeep to begin this earnings call.
Speaker #3: Thank you very much, Glenn. And thanks, everyone, for joining. Welcome to this Q4 2025 webinar. The way we will run the agenda is I will briefly do a refresher of NowVertical—what exactly we do for our clients and how we win in the business, what kind of transformation work we have done in 2025—before I then call Christine, our CFO, who will walk through the financials and all the comparisons year over year.
Speaker #3: And then I will return to close with our strategic outlook for 2026 before we take your questions. Before I get into the details, I just wanted to address the headline numbers directly.
Speaker #3: Our reported results this year reflect a combination of external and transitional factors, including the foreign exchange impacts in Argentina, lower reseller revenue in certain markets, as well as some of the restructuring we have done specifically in the Latin market, which has affected our year-over-year comparisons.
Speaker #3: We will take you through more details of those factors and the comparisons when Christine takes you through the financials. At the same time, I just want to mention that these factors do not reflect the underlying direction of the business.
Speaker #3: Let me start with a simple headline statement. What we have been able to achieve in the business is: we have strengthened our foundation; we have shown improved momentum; and our enterprise growth engine is becoming increasingly visible.
Speaker #3: That's what this underlying business is doing. But before we go into the financials, just a refresher for everybody on this call about what we do.
Speaker #3: At the core of NowVertical, we transform data into business value with AI—fast. When I say fast, I mean measurable outcomes, short time to value, and repeatable delivery.
Speaker #3: Not experimentation. We operate in two markets, as you know: North America and India, and LatAm. We serve enterprise-grade clients across sectors, including financial services, technology, media, retail, energy, and some others.
Speaker #3: We operate—the whole foundation is built on six technology pillars: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Snowflake, and some specific niche technologies like Anaplan and Qlik.
Speaker #3: That diversity of geography, sectors, and technology matters to us. It gives us the resilience and multiple growth vectors that we are seeking. That foundation translates into a clear revenue and operating model for us.
Speaker #3: Eighty-three percent of our revenue comes from solutions and services, with balance in products and reselling. Geographically, of the solutions and services—which make up 83% of our revenue—65% of that comes from LatAm and 35% is coming from North America and India.
Speaker #3: More importantly, the quality of the revenue continues to improve. Within North America and India, 97% of the revenue is now tied to strategic accounts.
Speaker #3: And that’s almost all of our revenue in North America and India—that is really high value and highly profitable. And approximately 90% of licensed revenue is anchored in Qlik.
Speaker #3: That's completely—100% of that is in LatAm. This shows up clearly in our operating model. We are operating at 50%+ gross margins very consistently.
Speaker #3: And we are delivering almost a 20% EBITDA margin, which is best in class in our industry. And we have been doing it very consistently. We have delivered almost 70% of our revenue from strategic accounts.
Speaker #3: And that's also, at the same time, bringing us very long-term relationships and converting into $5.2 million of lifetime value from our top 30 strategic accounts.
Speaker #3: The management remains closely aligned with the shareholders, with 27% equity in the business. This is a model built for durability. And this is how this model translates into the real outcomes, as we say, for our clients.
Speaker #3: There are three clear reasons how we win in the market. The first one is we connect customers and finance data directly to the revenue outcomes for our clients.
Speaker #3: And that's quite significant for our clients because that's the most critical assets majority of these enterprises have. Just to give you an example from the real world, one of our clients, that's a $3 billion-plus retailer, they lack a trusted view of the customers, products, and digital behavior.
Speaker #3: What we did was, we brought all of that data together on Google Cloud, enabling more targeted engagement with their customers. The result? They saw a 15% uplift in marketing ROI.
Speaker #3: That's what we call the tangible outcomes, measurable outcomes for our clients. The second is the way we do this consistently across all of our engagements and our clients is by starting small, proving it fast, and scaling.
Speaker #3: Typically, our pilots—the initial engagement with our clients, which we call the initial pilots—are roughly $50,000 to $150,000, where we prove the ROI to our clients with our solutions and services within six to eight weeks.
Speaker #3: And that enables us to then expand that company-wide within these accounts. A real-world example of that is one of our clients that's an events and media company.
Speaker #3: Doing $1.5 billion in revenue. We have identified an additional $750,000 of revenue for them using our AI models, just for one event.
Speaker #3: And now they are scaling that across 500 events that they do across the globe. That's how we start small, prove it fast, and then scale.
Speaker #3: All of this is then supported by how we leverage the AI and how we enhance this with AI-driven delivery. Interestingly, our AI agents can automate up to 60% of the data engineering work in the majority of cases.
Speaker #3: And one of the examples of that is one of our clients, which is a $4.5 billion-plus banking client. They had all the legacy data landscape, with lots of on-premise technologies, data sitting in data centers and various different places.
Speaker #3: We modernized their analytics platform at 50% lower cost and 60% faster, achieving value in half the time. That's how we are enabling our solutions and services, and the outcomes for our clients, with AI.
Speaker #3: All of this is quite nicely supported with the platform that we have built with all the transformational work we have done in the last two years in the business.
Speaker #3: The very first thing is we completed our one run and one business strategy, which we had launched in early 2024 when we brought in this operator-first model and I came into the chief exec role.
Speaker #3: All of the brands that we had acquired—they are all now completely consolidated within one NowVertical brand. All the teams are completely aligned to the new structure and the vision of the business.
Speaker #3: We have consolidated all of our propositions across our portfolio, and all the systems are now integrated. I would say the integration and consolidation is never 100% complete, but we are not too far away now.
Speaker #3: And that's just a BAU type of work that will keep happening through 2026 as well. We also simplified and reduced the cost of capital by bringing in HSBC as a financial partner. Not only have we simplified the overall balance sheet and the capital structure, but also how our lenders were operating with us.
Speaker #3: We have also reduced the cost of capital quite significantly, and Christine will give you some more numbers when she walks you through. We launched and grew the strategic account program—that was one of the key KPIs we launched with the one brand, one business strategy—and our belief is that the strategic accounts that we have, the enterprise-grade strategic accounts we have in our portfolio, have got a lot of headroom to grow.
Speaker #3: And one of the key KPIs there we have been able to achieve is $836,000, which is our current average revenue per annum in these top 30 strategic accounts.
Speaker #3: Like I said, 67% of our revenue is now coming from these strategic accounts. We are deepening our relationship with the technology partners, and specifically with Google Cloud, because that's where we see a lot of tailwinds in the market.
Speaker #3: We were Partner of the Year last year in Latin America. We are Premier Partners now across both markets—North America and EMEA, as well as LATAM.
Speaker #3: And the three specializations we have within the GenAI, machine learning, and data analytics—it positions us as one of only 17 global partners GCP has with those specializations.
Speaker #3: Fourteen percent of our revenue is now influenced by GCP. So that's the concentrated, focused effort that we have been able to put into this and achieve this KPI.
Speaker #3: As I talked—we talked about this in the press release—we have now launched this Now Unlock AI, where we have codified how we deliver the outcomes with AI technology for our clients that are measurable, and they are not just proof of concepts.
Speaker #3: They can scale and be productionized. We will talk about this a little bit more, but today we are now operating as a way more unified and scalable business.
Speaker #3: And I, first of all, want to thank our management and operational teams for this—being relentless in getting us here. What are the key revenue drivers, post-integration, and all of this one business, one brand strategy that we brought in place?
Speaker #3: Top 30 strategic accounts have grown by 14% year over year, so it's going in the right direction, and it's really making that revenue stream very robust in our business.
Speaker #3: The Google Cloud revenue grew 36%, as I said. It's now 14% of our overall revenue, but it's showing strong tailwinds as well, especially with our now-unlocked AI methodology that we have launched.
Speaker #3: We are leveraging a lot of the Google Cloud services in that. Integration revenue grew 69%. Now, this is where we cross-sell across our platform and expand the margins.
Speaker #3: And that's grown 69% year over year. There's a limit to how much integration you can bring about depending on the nuances that you have in both the markets, but we are really in a good place to have the level of revenue that's coming out of the integration activities, which are cross-sell and expansion of our margins.
Speaker #3: With that, I will hand it over to Christine so that she can walk us through the financials. Christine? Thanks, Sandeep. Okay, we'll start off by looking at the revenue picture for the year.
Speaker #3: So we delivered $37.4 million of revenue in 2025, with $9.7 million in Q4, showing sequential growth over the past three quarters. The biggest contributing factors to that sequential growth over the past few quarters, and our strengths going forward, are, as Sandeep mentioned, our strategic accounts, which grew 14% year over year and now make up 67% of our revenue.
Speaker #3: This revenue is with enterprise clients. It's high value, recurring, sticky, and we believe it has even more potential for growth, as these clients have the budget to work with and we can grow with them.
Speaker #3: Our GCP revenue increased by 36% this year to $5.3 million. GCP is not just a revenue line; it represents our deepening partnership with one of the world's largest leading hyperscalers.
Speaker #3: And it validates our position as a trusted delivery partner in the ecosystem. And our 69% growth in integration revenue shows that we are increasingly able to organically grow our existing clients through cross-selling and upselling.
Speaker #3: Now, as stated in prior quarters, there were some headwinds, which resulted in a decrease in revenue from 2024. This year was impacted by the Argentine peso devaluation, which deflated solutions and services revenue by $2.1 million this year.
Speaker #3: As well as a decrease in Brazil reseller revenue, which includes the impact from the timing of the multi-year deals, and as well as the Chile restructuring.
Speaker #3: Now turning to profitability. We delivered $1.8 million of EBITDA in Q4, with a 19% EBITDA margin, and $7.2 million in EBITDA for the full year, consistent with 2024’s $7.2 million excluding the divested businesses.
Speaker #3: 2025 also came in with a 19% EBITDA margin, exceeding last year's 18%. And once again, meeting our target of that 15 to 20 percent range.
Speaker #3: I just want to highlight some of the big contributors to our strong EBITDA margins. Our gross profit margin came in at 50% for the year, which is best in class for a professional services and solutions business.
Speaker #3: This reflects the quality of our delivery centers and the operating leverage that we've built. We had a 29% EBITDA margin in our core Solutions and Services line, and an impressive 34% EBITDA margin in our North American EMEA market, demonstrating that the operating model is highly profitable.
Speaker #3: And we saw a reduction in our corporate costs as a result of moving to an operator-first model. The bottom line is that we continue to demonstrate high profitability in the business with strong EBITDA performance, which now enables us to invest in our commercial engine for sustainable growth in the future.
Speaker #3: This also means that we are self-sustaining. Now to the balance sheet. And this is part of the story I'm particularly proud of, because it reflects the financial discipline we've applied over the past two years, as well as the success of the debt recapitalization we did with HSBC in 2025.
Speaker #3: First, our cash obligations. For 2025, our acquisition and long-term debt obligations were $8.9 million. For 2026, we brought that down to $2.8 million, a 69% reduction.
Speaker #3: This is a huge improvement in our debt burden in a single year, and it significantly de-risked the balance sheet heading into 2026. Second, the cost of capital.
Speaker #3: We reduced our cost of capital from 10.4% to 7.3%, thanks in part to our debt recap we did with HSBC UK. That reduction is not a small number.
Speaker #3: It represents a meaningful decrease in our annual financing costs and is a direct reflection of improved lender confidence in the business. And third, liquidity.
Speaker #3: We ended 2025 with $4.1 million cash in the bank and positive working capital for the first time since the company was operational.
Speaker #3: At the end of the year, we had a positive working capital of $500,000, or $1.7 million if you exclude deferred revenue and warrants liability.
Speaker #3: This is a dramatic improvement over a $9.7 million working capital deficit last year. This improved working capital position gives us the operational flexibility and the financial cushion to invest in growth going forward.
Speaker #3: Altogether, this balance sheet is genuinely in better shape than it was 12 months ago. We've got lower debt obligations, a lower cost of capital, and we're more liquid.
Speaker #3: And that's the foundation we're building from as we head into 2026, setting us up to invest in our commercial engine and growth. Now, looking at 2025 as a whole and in comparison to 2024.
Speaker #3: So, revenue did decrease from $39.4 million to $37.3 million, mainly due to the factors that we've mentioned throughout the year: the Argentine peso devaluation, reseller contract timing, and the Chile restructuring.
Speaker #3: EBITDA remains stable at $7.2 million, despite the decline in revenue, which speaks to both our operational and our corporate cost efficiencies. Our core solutions and services also remain stable at $31.1 million, despite the Argentine peso devaluation impact of $2.1 million, as 100% of that impact hit the solutions and services revenue line.
Speaker #3: The other lines weren't actually impacted by the deflation, so incredibly strong performance there. Product and reselling decreased from $8.3 million to $6.2 million, mainly due to the same factors I spoke about before.
Speaker #3: Brazil reselling, Chile restructuring. And the top 30 strategic accounts grew 14%, from $21.9 million to $25 million, and now make up 67% of our total revenue, up from 55% last year.
Speaker #3: So, when you look at this all together, although overall revenue was down, profitability was not. We were able to maintain the same profitability, actually increasing our EBITDA margin.
Speaker #3: Also, our core solutions and services showed consistency, and we saw growth in our top 30 strategic accounts. Thanks, and back to you, Sandy.
Speaker #1: Thanks very much, Christine. Okay, now let me take you through where exactly we are seeing the opportunity for the future, and how we are leveraging and capitalizing on this market that we are in.
Speaker #1: And how we are structured in certain ways that's really helping us leverage this positioning. We are operating in a large, and this growing, AI services market.
Speaker #1: And importantly, we are already embedded within it through our enterprise relationships. Everything we do for our clients today falls into two categories. We are either enabling AI for our clients or applying AI for them.
Speaker #1: What enabling AI really means is it's about building the data foundations. So, think about how we are bringing together the customer and finance data that we specialize in, how we are modernizing the platforms that are old legacy data centers, on-premise, and how we are creating the infrastructure that is required for AI to work at scale.
Speaker #1: Applying AI, on the other hand, is where, once the foundation of AI is there and we have enabled AI, this is where we drive the outcomes.
Speaker #1: So think about it as improving revenue through better targeting—as I gave one of the examples—optimizing the operations, or accelerating the decision-making with many of our clients.
Speaker #1: Within these strategic accounts, how we really operate with this is we typically start with focus initiatives and expand across multiple use cases. This is not about one large AI deal.
Speaker #1: It's about building a portfolio of high-value, repeatable use cases within each client. For example, in one of our enterprise strategic accounts, we started with a foundation project and then expanded into an AI-driven recommendation model and performance optimization.
Speaker #1: Creating a multi-stream revenue relationship, and at the same time delivering massive value for them. In another case, we combined cloud migration, data engineering, and AI automation, delivering both cost efficiencies and faster time-to-value across the business.
Speaker #1: And this is what is giving us the confidence in the long-term pipeline. We are not just delivering these high-value solutions and outcomes to our clients.
Speaker #1: We are also winning against some of the very large—either Big Fours, Tier 1 IT services providers, or some of the niche digital-native engineering firms.
Speaker #1: And that's where it's giving us that confidence that we have created the right kind of portfolio, the right kind of capabilities, and the right kind of delivery model to really work with our clients.
Speaker #1: We are seeing that sustained demand for AI in the market, both in driving the efficiency—which, there is a lot of work happening in driving the efficiency for our clients—but at the same time, enabling growth, which are more on the applying AI scenario.
Speaker #1: These are all repeatable patterns across the markets, across the enterprise clients. And what's changing now for us, for NowVertical, is that we are standardizing this approach.
Speaker #1: We're now on lock. We are codifying how we deliver these outcomes so that clients can move from experimentation to measurable value really fast. This is a shift from projects to the platform mindset.
Speaker #1: And this is where the market is moving also. Nobody wants only the traditional hourly-based fee structure; people are moving towards more and more of the outcome-based structure, which is what we do very well.
Speaker #1: Now, if you look at our 2026 outlook and how we are structured and primed, our growth is driven by a clear flywheel. On one side, strategic accounts continue to expand.
Speaker #1: We have demonstrated that with the KPIs. We now have multiple $1 million-plus relationships, and they are growing. And on the other side, the Google Cloud partnership is generating those high-quality, enterprise-grade opportunities for us, which we are then converting into more of the emerging and strategic accounts for us.
Speaker #1: At the center, we have now done all the foundation work, which was driven by integration that now enables us to cross-sell and expand our margins across the platform and across all of our strategic accounts.
Speaker #1: We are now making this model repeatable through Now Unlock, as we show you. As we move forward, we remain very disciplined on our operating model that we have created with high profitability.
Speaker #1: We are definitely focused on scaling the organic growth that we have, again, baked into the business. The framework is there now, and we are selectively also looking at any acquisitions that are accretive for us, and we are evaluating those.
Speaker #1: We are going to be very opportunistic around that. We believe we are now primed very, very well to bring in the acquisitions that we can integrate quite nicely, as we have done with all the 12 acquisitions that we had done earlier, with that playbook and that template, and then gain a much higher value out of that acquisition very fast.
Speaker #1: As this flywheel turns, the growth is going to compound for us, for sure. With that, I will hand it over to you, Glenn, and we can open it up for questions.
Speaker #2: Super. Thank you, Sandeep. Again, to our covering analysts, please raise your hand to ask a question, and we will let you into the call.
Speaker #2: Our first question comes from the line of Essay Testafe with Stifel. Let me just let you in. Okay, I see you're live. You may be muted.
Speaker #2: Yes, now. Go ahead.
Speaker #3: Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys. Yeah, this is Essay speaking on behalf of Suzanne. A couple of questions for me here. First question, it's going to be on deal sizes and pricing.
Speaker #3: How have average deal sizes changed, and how are you seeing pricing evolve? Is that whether it be time-and-materials pricing or fixed pricing?
Speaker #3: And we're seeing the emergence of outcome-based pricing as well. So just curious on that.
Speaker #4: Very good question, Essay. And this is what we are also transforming ourselves into. We asked from our clients—it's shifting from the traditional, either the fixed fee model or the time and material model, or capacity-based model, managed services style model.
Speaker #4: It's turning more and more towards, okay, how can you give me the outcomes with AI as a technology? And if you are saying that you can bring in lots of efficiency with AI tools, I want to be focused more on the outcomes and the timelines.
Speaker #4: So the ask is shifting there. However, our clients are not completely ready. This is new for them also, so we are working with them right now.
Speaker #4: And moving this model towards more and more of the outcome-based. We have done some of the models where they were not purely outcome-based, but they showed the efficiency. If you do this without the AI solution, for example, it will take you a $1 million effort.
Speaker #4: But if you do it with our solutions, we can immediately give you 40% efficiency on that or more—30% efficiency or more. And what that does is shifts the focus onto, okay, if you can demonstrate that efficiency, how can I make that into a cost model?
Speaker #4: And then they shift the onus on us to say, okay, how can you fix-price this using this AI? And if this is proven successful, then we will go more into the outcome-based model.
Speaker #4: So, it's a shift that's happening in the world right now. We are not yet on the right side where everything is completely outcome-based. There are still some traditional models happening, traditional models coming into some hybrid models, and then we will be shifting, maybe in times to come, into the more outcome-based, pure outcome-based models.
Speaker #3: Okay, perfect. Thank you. Next question is on the North American market. Could you speak to the North American market expansion progress and contribution of partners like Google?
Speaker #3: And maybe any updates on the Google partnership?
Speaker #4: Yeah, we started winning. I mean, Google partnership is a classic thing. This is one of the things in our GTMS I have been describing in the previous, on the previous webinars too.
Speaker #4: This is key to our growth with the technology partners. And Google has got all the right ingredients and the tailwinds for us to be partnering properly with them.
Speaker #4: We already had this partnership initiated in LATAM, which we brought into North America and EMEA. So, we are premier partners with Google in North America and EMEA as well.
Speaker #4: What that means is we can leverage all the benefits of being the premier partners with them in the UK. That's where our base is right now with them.
Speaker #4: So, all of that is happening. We have also hired some of the commercial team within North America and EMEA. That's focused on driving that growth and incentivized on driving our relationship and growth with GCP.
Speaker #4: So that's one of the things which is happening. Apart from that, I think there are, like I showed, the now unlocked AI as a proposition is now—every proposal, every demo, every conversation we are having in the market is driven by AI efficiencies or AI growth.
Speaker #4: Like I said, enabling AI or applying AI—so every conversation is now going in that direction. And we are seeing a lot of interest.
Speaker #4: We are seeing a lot of curiosity. We are seeing a lot of reaction, which is, 'Oh, didn't know we can do it this way as well.'
Speaker #4: And we are turning a lot of our solutions that we used to deliver in the traditional way into agents, so that they are becoming more and more repeatable.
Speaker #4: So on one side, we are doing that along with GCP, but we are also going direct within the North America and EMEA market to the clients and certain sectors that we have got a lot of gravity in.
Speaker #2: Okay, good. Next question. Second-to-last question from me. Could you talk about the outlook for growth investments for this coming year, and any changes to investment priorities?
Speaker #4: Growth investments is the key priority for us in 2026. This business, as you know, we have gone through certain changes and transformation in the business.
Speaker #4: And we did not have the flexibility to invest the capital at a certain point. And what Christine showed with the numbers and the balance sheet—we now have that ability to invest in the business, which we are really excited about.
Speaker #4: But in our situation, in our business, in our industry, it takes a while for the investments to really start reaping the results. And I've said this multiple times: three to four quarters is what it takes for us to see tangible, meaningful results of the investments in the commercial engine.
Speaker #4: But those investments have already started happening. We are making those investments both in North America as well as the LATAM market. But the concentration and the acceleration are more in North America and EMEA for that growth.
Speaker #3: Got it. And lastly from me, on the new Now Unlock, I was curious to know how Now Unlock monetization is looking. How do you expect it to play out over time?
Speaker #3: And potential investments in additional products?
Speaker #4: If you look at the—if I talk about the longer-term vision with Now Unlock AI, we want to see that becoming an independent P&L on its own.
Speaker #4: And it has the potential. That's how we are viewing it. If we are converting our solutions into a large framework, which has got all the ingredients to help our clients to experiment with AI, prove the value, and then go through the scaling process—the production line process, productionizing process, and the scaling process—that's a very difficult journey for the majority of these enterprise clients. As you may know, not many of these enterprises have really cracked the code of this.
Speaker #4: And that's why we are saying we have to codify all of these experiences that we have now gathered across multiple enterprise clients, across both the markets, across the globe, into now unlock AI.
Speaker #4: And that's why it's codified into that—so that we can bring those repeatable success stories to all of our clients. The beauty of this Now unlock is, there are many of these situations where sometimes you would go and say, we have this 60% of the out-of-the-box solution for a particular industry.
Speaker #4: This could become 80 to 90 percent, which is already codified into an agent, for example, with Now Unlock AI. And think about the repeatability then—how easy that repeatability is going to be over a period of time.
Speaker #4: Of course, what we need to first of all see is the success story in the initial years is really scaling with the belief that we have got.
Speaker #4: And 2026 is going to be that year for us to really see that repeatability across many clients, different enterprises, GCP as technology, other technologies incorporated, and how we can turn that into the agents that we can repeat across many clients, across the industries, across the geographies too.
Speaker #4: But overall, we see that Now Unlock AI should become, over a period of time— I mean, it's not 2026— but over a period of time, it should become its own P&L.
Speaker #3: Okay, perfect. Thank you. And I'll pass the line.
Speaker #2: Thank you. If you want to come back, just raise your hand once again. Our next question comes from the line of Rob Goth with Ventum.
Speaker #2: Rob, you're on the line.
Speaker #5: Thank you. Thank you very much. My question would be on how the RFP backlog or the pipeline is looking when you look across North America and EMEA, or the strategic accounts?
Speaker #4: It’s growing for sure. We are in a better state. We have secured a lot of revenue already, and that’s better than where we were in the beginning of 2025.
Speaker #4: So our secured backlog already is in a better place. We have got very strong visibility of the pipeline as well. And of course, as it happens every year, you have some of your revenue which is not yet visible or, as we call it, unidentified for us.
Speaker #4: That part is there too. But we are really confident of really demonstrating that growth with the investments in the commercial engine that we are baking in.
Speaker #4: And towards the end of the year, we should start to begin to see that turning into revenue and becoming that sustainable growth engine for us.
Speaker #4: We know these solutions we have got, how we have codified things into now, unlock AI—all of this has got repeatability, and it has that gravity which we can just take to the market, put it into our GTM, and scale.
Speaker #4: And that’s what we are expecting to see by the end of this year.
Speaker #5: Okay. And I know you have a core of data analytics, but in terms of adding the AI capabilities, is that a matter of upgrading the skills of your engineers, bringing in new engineers, or some balance of both?
Speaker #4: A balance of both, I would say, Rob. I think I've been asked this question about how AI will kind of impact your own business model.
Speaker #4: And we believe this is, for the very first time, businesses like NowVertical have got the opportunity to transform their business model and evolve it further.
Speaker #4: And that's the exciting part, in my opinion. With this whole AI technology, we can really leverage the technology that can do the job of scaling quite nicely.
Speaker #4: Without really having to put brute force behind it every time. Where the skills are going to be required is at the early stages of really what we call codifying all of these outcomes to now unlock AI.
Speaker #4: And that's where we will require skill sets that look different than what we carry today. Now, that will come from both hiring new talent that has that more modern mindset, and upskilling our existing talent that is really ready to embrace this technology.
Speaker #4: So yeah, it's going to be a balance of both. And we are already doing that. It has already started with all the investments that have to go into the commercial engine.
Speaker #4: This is another level of investment, which is essential and critical, in our opinion, to really change the business model—like I said—of businesses like NowVertical, the solution and services doing businesses.
Speaker #4: We'll have to want to go.
Speaker #5: And is it fair to characterize your strategic accounts or your North American and EMEA business as a double-digit revenue growth profile?
Speaker #4: Within North America and EMEA? Yes.
Speaker #5: Yeah.
Speaker #4: Yes.
Speaker #5: Cool. And would it also be fair to suggest that your M&A focus would be in North America?
Speaker #4: Yes. So, North America and EMEA, I would say. So yes, definitely, the focus is on the high-value growth and high-value engines that we can create, and we can convert that into a much more scalable, valuable addition to us.
Speaker #4: So yes.
Speaker #5: And beyond geographies, are you looking for contracts, sales capabilities, or skills?
Speaker #4: Sorry, can you expand on that question, Rob, please?
Speaker #5: So, beyond just the geographic focus, are you prioritizing clients or skill sets? What types of things are you looking for?
Speaker #4: Oh, so from the acquisition perspective, you mean? Yeah. So what we would love to see is, first of all, enterprise-grade clients. We'll focus on enterprise-grade clients.
Speaker #4: That's definitely one. We are a premier partner with GCP. What kind of other capabilities can this new acquisition bring to us? What kind of skill capabilities do they have, both on the commercial side as well as the technology side?
Speaker #4: That's really going to be complementary to what we already do within NowVertical. Those are going to be the key factors for us to look for in the acquisitions.
Speaker #4: Enterprise-grade clients—that's our top priority. We don't want to dilute what we have built in the last two years and the focus that we have created.
Speaker #4: So, we just do not want to dilute that—making sure that it is technology-driven, that the underlying capability is technology-driven. Either one of the hyperscalers or that niche technology that adds real value to us.
Speaker #4: And then, from the team and the capability structure—the human resources, or the talent, if you like—do they have the commercial capability and the mindset, and how much can they add immediately after the acquisition to us?
Speaker #4: As well as the technology capability, specifically on data and AI.
Speaker #5: Okay, thank you very much. Good luck. Thanks, Rob. Andre, we're ready to go to questions from the Q&A chat box.
Speaker #6: Great, thanks so much. Just a few questions on the balance sheet have come in, and the cash flows. So I'll probably just turn this to Christine.
Speaker #6: There are a few questions about the strong cash flow performance in Q4. Can you confirm if you had $2.9 million U.S. of cash operating inflows in Q4?
Speaker #6: And can you comment on the 2025 performance and what we can expect going forward?
Speaker #2: Sure, thank you. Yes, we did have operational cash flows of $2.9 million in Q4. Q4 is always a really strong quarter for us. If you look back in history, Q4 is always a really strong inflow quarter.
Speaker #2: Mainly due to there's no big corporate tax payments, the timing of some of the reseller contracts. There's a lot of cash flows from there.
Speaker #2: So historically, it is our best cash flow quarter. But also, if you're kind of looking at it from an overall performance for 2025, we did have some really one-time kind of cash outflows that caused there to be negative cash outflows for the whole year, which was we settled a bunch of aged AP from 2024 and prior.
Speaker #2: We used some of the HSBC proceeds to do that. And so we did that mainly in Q2 and Q3. And also, we had some severance payments as well.
Speaker #2: So, some one-time cash payments came out that pushed that down. Otherwise, the results would have been a lot better overall. We do expect positive cash flows going forward into the future.
Speaker #2: Q4 is usually really, really high. So would it be at that run rate? Normally, the big corporate tax payments are due in Q1 and Q2, which usually tends to bring the first half down.
Speaker #2: But we don't foresee any big working capital swings going forward—2026. Thanks.
Speaker #6: Great. So for Sandeep, it's great to see the existing strategic accounts generating 67% of the revenue. But looking at growth, how are the efforts being executed for new client acquisition?
Speaker #4: That's where we are investing in the commercial engine. So, what we have been able to produce in the last two years was with very limited bandwidth, with no investment in the commercial engine.
Speaker #4: Because we were transforming the business, simplifying the balance sheet, making sure that we can, we are able to invest into the commercial engine. So now we are at that point, as Christine showed in the balance sheet and the cash and the liquidity.
Speaker #4: So that's where now we have started investing into that commercial engine. And that investment has already begun, by the way. There are some roles that we have already got on board.
Speaker #4: But there is a lot more work to be done in really commercializing this engine properly, so that it can confidently deliver that sustained growth over a period of time.
Speaker #4: We have the profitability now to do this. We have the profitabilities that we can really leverage to invest into this commercial engine and still stand at a very good profitability level over time.
Speaker #6: Great, question on the broader macro pressure on discretionary IT spending, and how that's affecting any current sales cycles. Are you seeing any delays, or is this affecting timing?
Speaker #4: There is definitely a lot going on in the industry at this point in time. And there is more of the confusion and chaos, in certain ways if you like, in terms of the understanding of how the technology can—the AI technology specifically—can help the businesses.
Speaker #4: But what has definitely changed is all the enterprises, or the majority of the enterprises, have been getting some capabilities and teams or roles that are going to be focused on delivering the change with AI technology in their business.
Speaker #4: This is going to be a long journey for everybody. And we are seeing that demand that's coming in from various segments and places of the enterprises.
Speaker #4: The biggest area where we can—it's almost a no-brainer—is, how do you really do something that you are doing today much faster and cheaper by leveraging AI technology?
Speaker #4: And this is where the majority of the demand is coming from. But like I was saying, the growth drivers are also there in the business, which is where the disruption in the business model within the industries is going to be seen over—
Speaker #1: With a bit of time, and that's where you will see the market shifting. The industry is shifting, and new players may be emerging or existing players completely changing their business model.
Speaker #1: So that part , although it's a bit more sensitive , it has to be driven with care and caution However , the efficiency part there is so much to be done .
Speaker #1: There, within every enterprise and every data operation, you can give them efficiencies and save money and do things much faster. So the demand is definitely there.
Speaker #1: It's for NowVertical . It's about how quickly we can scale
Speaker #2: That's where we're eliminating a position . We essentially accrued the entire amount at one point in time . So what you're seeing there is even if you know , severance costs are amortized over a time period , everything's getting accrued into that one point in time , which is why you're seeing a spike in Q4 So not necessarily everything was paid out then , but everything's getting accrued in that period
Speaker #3: Okay, great. I'll turn it back to you, Glen.
Speaker #4: Okay . I guess there are no more questions . Sandeep . Maybe you want to give some closing remarks , and then we'll end the presentation .
Speaker #1: All right . Wonderful All I would say is , you know , we will continue to scale the organic growth . Through these strategic accounts and the partnerships like GCP and we are investing into our commercial model We are going to be very disciplined in maintaining our operating model .
Speaker #1: And the profitability . And at the same time , we are trying quite nicely to selectively evaluate the acquisitions where they strengthen our position and our platform with integrating that by integrating that acquisition So essentially , we are building this business step by step with a stronger foundation and a clearer path forward .
Speaker #1: And I would just thank you for—thank you all for your patience and bearing with us while we transform this business and really structure a very strong foundation, a robust foundation, for the further growth. Thank you.
