Kevin Knopp
Analyst · William Blair
Thanks, Barbara. Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2026 earnings call. We entered 2026 from a position of strength with a streamlined cost structure, a solid balance sheet and an expanding recurring revenue opportunity. In the first quarter, we continued to build on that momentum, delivering $13.4 million in revenue, up 14% year-over-year. Sales to U.S. state and local customers remained a key driver, representing approximately 50% of our first quarter revenues. This marks the third consecutive quarter that orders from these customers have exceeded our internal targets. And based on our current pipeline visibility, we believe we can continue this trend in the second quarter. Importantly, this channel is delivering consistent high-quality run rate demand, helping to drive greater visibility and predictability while complementing larger international and U.S. federal enterprise opportunities. Over the past 24 months, we have made deliberate investments to scale this segment alongside the successful integration of our RedWave FTIR portfolio, and we are now seeing those efforts translate into sustained durable growth. FTIR products are becoming a meaningful contributor to [indiscernible] expanding their approach nationally, reinforcing a broader and accelerating demand environment. In parallel, we anticipate that the passage last week of the Department of Homeland Security funding bill will provide additional support for our second half objectives. And to kick things off here in Q2, we closed a $3 million order in April with another state Department of Corrections. We are continuing to drive momentum as we execute our law enforcement narcotic strategy. On our last earnings call, we outlined 3 focus areas for 2026, scaling our proven platforms, extending our handheld leadership through differentiated capabilities and disciplined innovation and strengthening revenue durability through recurring and program-based opportunities. This morning, we are excited to announce the acquisition of NIRLAB AG. We believe this acquisition is additive to each of our existing initiatives for the year and will be a very strong strategic fit over the short and long term. This acquisition brings together highly complementary drug detection capabilities, increases our international revenue mix and provides a high retention recurring software subscription model. Just as important as the strategic fit is the cultural alignment. NIRLAB is a founder-led, highly technical organization with deep expertise in spectroscopy, data science and cloud-based AI analytics. Their mission-driven focus on enabling safer, faster decision-making in the field closely aligns with our purpose of protecting frontline responders and addressing critical public health challenges. So prior to reviewing our first quarter financial results, I wanted to walk you through a handful of slides about this acquisition and how it aligns to our focus areas and with our broader law enforcement narcotic strategy. Very simply, this acquisition does 4 things for 908. First, it expands our handheld franchise into a high-volume, widely deployable sub-$40,000 segment, unlocking about a $200 million market. This is a solution purpose-built for frontline narcotics detection, increasing accessibility and driving unit volumes in markets we know well and already serve. And while not yet at scale, it's already validated with 100-plus active customers and approximately $2 million in law enforcement revenue. Second, it strengthens and extends our leadership in narcotics for law enforcement. It builds directly on the momentum we're seeing with MX908 and complements VipIR, expanding a market-leading portfolio that's driving growth at the state and local level. Just as importantly, it completes our end-to-end coverage. With nearIR-based optical spectroscopy, which we have core expertise, we now span from everyday screening to confirmatory analysis, driving higher customer value and deeper adoption. Third, it accelerates our software and recurring revenue strategy. This is a proven high-retention subscription model, about 50% recurring revenue with a demonstrated annual retention of greater than 99%. It fits directly into our connected services vision with Team leader and NIRALAB's live cloud-connected AI-driven analysis. This gives us a faster path to scaling recurring revenue, increasing lifetime customer value and improving visibility. And fourth, this is a highly levered growth opportunity. The business today is largely international, and we see a clear path to accelerate U.S. adoption using our commercial infrastructure while also benefiting from the technical know-how to further advance our platform. So taken together, we believe this deal expands our market, strengthens our portfolio, completes our workflow and accelerates our software strategy, all tightly aligned to where we're taking 908. From a financial standpoint, NIRALAB's growth and recurring revenue mix are accretive and support our long-term margin targets as high-margin software subscriptions scale. For the remaining 8 months of 2026, we expect approximately $2.5 million in revenue, growing under our model to more than $5 million in 2027. We do expect a modest roughly $1 million adjusted EBITDA headwind in 2026 with the business planned to be profitable and contributing positively in 2027. The upfront transaction value is $15 million, $13 million in cash and $2 million in equity with up to $8 million in additional equity tied to recurring revenue and customer capture performance milestones over the next 20 months. As we step back and look at what we're acquiring, it's important to recognize that this is not just a single product or point solution, but a fully integrated platform that is ready to scale. At its core, NIRLAB combines purpose-built hardware with a cloud-connected software ecosystem and a subscription model, enabling rapid field-based chemical analysis with a simple, scalable workflow. This platform approach is what drives both adoption and long-term customer value. A key component of that value is the underlying data, know-how and IP. NIRLAB has built what we believe is the world's largest nearIR spectral database for narcotics, supported by proprietary AI and machine learning models informed by tens of thousands of laboratory characterized seized drug samples. This creates a meaningful and defensible data moat that strengthens over time as more data is collected in the field. As part of the acquisition, we're also integrating a highly specialized and mission-driven team of 15 people based in Switzerland with deep expertise across spectroscopy, software, cloud infrastructure and machine learning. Their scientific foundation anchored through the relationship with the University of Lausanne brings both credibility and continued innovation to the platform. The NIRLAB experience is designed to be simple, fast and highly accessible for frontline users with a straightforward workflow of just downloading the app from the App Store, pairing the device, analyzing a sample and then receiving results in seconds, users can detect, identify and quantify the most common illicit drug directly in the field, approximately 400 substances, including THC and CBD in cannabis, which are important analytes not covered by our Mass Spec or other optical products. For reference, the initial device will be roughly $10,000 and its required subscription will be roughly half that again per year. Note, these are approximate as pricing varies by market and is still being established. We believe nearIR's ease of use on top of that, the platform leverages AI and advanced compute to continuously improve performance. As more data is collected, the system becomes more accurate, more robust and more valuable to the end user. This creates a powerful flywheel effect with increased usage driving more data, more data driving better insights and better insights driving further adoption. From a strategic perspective, this is also highly aligned with our broader team leader software vision. It strengthens our ability to deliver connected data-driven solutions, expands our recurring revenue opportunities and enhances the overall value of our ecosystem to customers. NIRLAB is embedded in the day-to-day workflows of customers with over 1 million analyses performed to date. This level of usage demonstrates both reliability of the technology and the value it delivers in operational settings. NIRLAB's customer base spans across continents from the Australian Federal Police and Oceania to state police forces in Switzerland and Germany, local police forces in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain and more broadly across Europe to a forensics laboratory in Malaysia, customs authorities in Mauritius and anti-narcotics units in Nigeria, among many others. These are not pilot programs or limited trials. This is an active recurring use by frontline personnel who rely on the platform to make fast informed decisions in the field. That consistency of use underpins the strong retention and subscription model we discussed earlier. At the same time, this platform is early in its broader market adoption. It has not yet been scaled globally, has not penetrated the U.S. and has not been fully leveraged through a larger commercial engine, which creates a significant opportunity ahead for us. From our perspective, this combination of proven validation and early-stage scale is particularly compelling. It reduces execution risk while preserving meaningful upside as we expand adoption, especially in the U.S. and connect this installed base into our broader ecosystem. Our combined platforms provide end-to-end coverage for narcotics detection supporting the law enforcement market broadly. This is timely for 2 reasons. One, global drug markets are expanding in both scale and complexity with cocaine seizures up 68% over the past 4 years and more than 55 tons of new psychoactive substances seized in Europe alone in 2024. At the same time, over 1,000 emerging compounds, including highly potent synthetic opioids like nitazenes are driving a growing need for traceable detection in complex and hazardous environments. And two, low-cost, widely deployable colorimetric field tests are increasingly falling out of favor and a growing number of U.S. states and jurisdictions are restricting their use for arrest decisions due to accuracy concerns and lack of an electronic record. This is expected to drive a shift towards scientifically validated field-ready alternatives such as our products. With NIRLAB, we now address the full spectrum of use cases from high-frequency in-field screening to advanced confirmatory analysis. NIRLAB enables rapid frontline awareness. Our flagship MX908 supports trace level detection for high-consequence scenarios, including fentanyl and the synthetic opioid crisis and our new product, VipIR, expands our capability in bulk and unknown substance identification with its ability to identify 39,000-plus chemicals, cutting agents and more in customs and clandestine lab response settings. These platforms are becoming increasingly connected through our software ecosystem, enabling data sharing and coordination and insight across users and environments. This transforms isolated measurements into a unified actionable workflow. Importantly, this drives pull-through across the portfolio where routine screening can lead to demand for more advanced capabilities or the opposite, increasing both utilization and customer lifetime value. Overall, this positions us with a differentiated full stack solution that spans everyday to specialist use cases and is difficult to replicate. The acquisition directly aligns with the 3 strategic priorities we outlined for 2026. First, it scales our proven handheld platforms by expanding to low-cost, widely deployable segment, enabling broader adoption across law enforcement and global frontline users. Second, it extends our handheld leadership by completing the end-to-end workflow from screening to confirmatory analysis, strengthening what we believe is the most comprehensive handheld detection portfolio in the market. And third, it strengthened the quarter and our updated outlook.