Smith Micro Software, Inc. (SMSI) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Smith Micro Second Quarter of 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also, please be aware that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Charles Messman, Vice President. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. We appreciate you joining us today to discuss Smith Micro Software financial results for the second quarter of 2026. By now you should have received a copy of the press release with the financial results. If you do not have a copy and would like one, please visit the Investor Relations section of our website at www.smithmicro.com. On today's call, we have Bill Smith, Executive Chairman of the Board; Tim Huffmyer, our President and CEO; and Bethany Braund, our Chief Financial Officer. Please note that some of the information you will hear during today's discussion consists of forward-looking statements, including without limitation those regarding the company's future revenue and profitability; our plans and expectation; new products, development and availability; new and expanded market opportunities; future product deployments; growth by new and existing customers; operating expenses; and the company's cash reserve. Forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty, which could cause actual results or trends to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our most recently filed Form 10-K. Smith Micro assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak to the management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date they are made. I want to point out that in our forthcoming prepared remarks, we will refer to specific non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our press release disseminated earlier today for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Tim. Tim?

Thanks, Charlie, and thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2026 conference call. I see our second quarter performance as a significant step forward on our journey of returning Smith Micro to growth and future profitability. We delivered sequential revenue growth in the second quarter, consistent with the guidance provided on our last call. In fact, we have now delivered sequential revenue growth over 2 consecutive quarters for the first time in approximately 5 years. We expect to announce the launch of 2 new customers by the end of this month. Contracts with both customers are fully executed, and launch plans and products are ready to go. Additionally, we are within days of signing a significant multi-year contract extension with an existing Tier 1 customer. We believe this contract extension will generate significant revenue growth beginning in the third quarter. Both the new customer launches and the contract extension were planned to happen in the second quarter, and their delay has resulted in some of our forecasted second quarter revenue being pushed to the third quarter. We continue to execute on our strategic priorities, and we are encouraged with all of the positive pipeline activity of the last few quarters, which is the strongest we've seen in years. This robust pipeline, along with the new revenue opportunities, is driven by expanded interest from current and prospective new customers and aligns with our strategy to expand our SafePath platform. We are offering more flexibility to the market with our new deployment options, including our new SafePath SDKs and APIs, which are opening new channels, aligning Smith Micro with current market trends and increasing the overall addressable market. We believe this activity will drive new revenue streams in the coming quarters as we are in meaningful deployment discussions with multiple parties, both current and new customers and prospects. As we look to the second half of the year, we do so with a high level of confidence. We believe we are building on significant upside potential for a new and exciting phase of financial growth. We will discuss more later in the call, but for now, let's hear from Bethany to review our second quarter financial performance. Bethany?

Thanks, Tim, and good afternoon, everyone. Initially, I'll note that all of my comments today regarding per share metrics reflect the impact of the 1-for-5 reverse stock split that was approved by our shareholders at our annual meeting in May and was effectuated in June 2026. I'd also like to cover the transaction we completed during the quarter. In June 2026, to help fund working capital requirements, we completed a warrant inducement transaction with certain holders of existing common stock purchase warrants whereby warrants for 487,349 shares were exercised at $3.35 per share, with proceeds to the company totaling $1.6 million. As part of that transaction, we issued new 5-year warrants for the same number of shares. As I stated on our last earnings call, we are continuing to see benefits from the strategic cost reductions we announced last October. We are still executing on these changes and will see their longer-term benefits as certain remaining costs will end after the third quarter. Our focus now is to ensure that we have the resources necessary to meet the revenue growth we are targeting. Now let's cover the financial results of the second quarter of 2026. For this second quarter, we achieved our second consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth. The last time that was achieved was back in 2021. For the second quarter of 2026, we recognized revenue of $4.3 million compared to $4.4 million for the same quarter of 2025, a decrease of 2%. When compared to the first quarter of 2026, revenue increased by $120,000 or 3%. Year-to-date revenue through June 30, 2026, was $8.6 million versus $9.0 million through the second quarter of last year, a decrease of 5%. During the second quarter of 2026, family safety revenue was $3.5 million, which decreased by $111,000 or 3% compared to the second quarter of last year. Family safety revenue increased by $94,000 or 3% compared to the first quarter of 2026. During the second quarter of 2026, CommSuite revenue was $826,000, which increased by $49,000 compared to the second quarter of 2025. Revenue from CommSuite grew by $26,000 or 3% as compared to the first quarter of 2026. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect to build on our second quarter revenue, and given our near-term view of additional opportunities in progress, we expect total revenue of $5.0 million to $5.4 million for the third quarter. For the second quarter of 2026, gross profit was $3.5 million compared to $3.2 million during the same period of the prior year, an increase of $281,000 or 9% due to the period-over-period increase in revenue and the decline in cost of revenues resulting from the strategic cost reduction efforts undertaken. Further, gross margin was at 81.3% for the quarter, in line with prior quarter guidance and at a significant improvement as compared to the 73.5% realized in the second quarter of 2025. We are pleased to see our gross margin back over 80% for the first time in 5 years. Our gross profit of $3.5 million in the second quarter of 2026 increased by $219,000 compared to the gross profit realized in the first quarter of 2026. In the third quarter of 2026, we expect gross margin to be in the range of 81% to 83%. We believe we are making our way toward our longer-term goal for gross margin at 85%. For the year-to-date period ended June 30, 2026, gross profit was $6.8 million compared to $6.6 million during the corresponding period last year. Gross margin was 80% for the June 30, 2026, year-to-date period. GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were $5.9 million, a decrease of $12.3 million or a 68% decline as compared to the second quarter of 2025. Excluding the second quarter 2025 onetime events, including goodwill impairment of $11.1 million and the gain on sale of ViewSpot of $1.3 million, GAAP operating expenses quarter-over-quarter decreased by $2.5 million or 30%. This reduction was a result of our cost optimization activities that we have executed and continue to see the impacts thereof. GAAP operating expenses for the year-to-date period ended June 30, 2026, were $12.6 million compared to $26.8 million in the prior year-to-date period, a decrease of $14.2 million. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were $4.4 million compared to $5.9 million in the second quarter of 2025, a decrease of approximately $1.6 million or 26%. Sequentially, non-GAAP operating expenses declined by approximately $377,000 or 8% compared to the first quarter of 2026. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the year-to-date period through June 30, 2026, were $9.1 million compared to the $12.1 million for the year-to-date period ended June 30, 2025, a decrease of approximately $3 million, or 25% compared to last year. Although we anticipate a further decline in our core non-GAAP operating expenses, we are planning to add some additional resource capacity to support the pipeline, and therefore you can expect a non-GAAP operating expense increase of up to 6% in the third quarter of 2026 as compared to the second quarter of 2026. The GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the second quarter of 2026 was $2.7 million or $0.52 loss per share compared to the net loss attributable to common stockholders of $15.1 million or $3.88 loss per share in the first quarter of 2026. GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, was $6.6 million or $1.28 loss per share compared to GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders of $20.2 million or $5.38 loss per share for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025. The non-GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the second quarter of 2026 was $989,000 or a $0.19 loss per share compared to the non-GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders of $2.8 million or a $0.71 loss per share in the first quarter of 2026. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, was $2.5 million or a $0.48 loss per share compared to non-GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders of $5.6 million or $1.49 loss per share for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025. Within today's press release, we have provided a reconciliation of our non-GAAP metrics to the closest and most comparable GAAP metric. For the second quarter of 2026, the reconciliation primarily includes adjustments for intangible asset amortization of $1.2 million, stock compensation expense of $171,000, depreciation expense of $120,000, amortization of debt discount and financing issuance cost of $95,000, deemed dividend of $86,000, and cost of approximately $84,000 associated with the shareholder-approved reverse stock split. Due to our cumulative net losses over the past few years, our GAAP tax expense is primarily due to certain state and foreign income taxes. For non-GAAP purposes, we utilized a 0% tax rate for 2026 and 2025. The resulting non-GAAP tax expense reflects the actual income taxes expensed during each period. On the balance sheet, we reported $2.8 million of cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2026. This concludes my financial review. Now I'll pass it back over to Tim.

Thanks, Bethany. As we have discussed on past calls, there are new activities and changes happening in the market today that are helping to drive new demand, which aligns well with the go-to-market strategy we have been implementing. This has resulted in several exciting, planned deployments, all to take place in the third quarter and all included in our revenue guidance. First, we are in the final stages to increase our feature set with one of the existing family safety applications in the market today with one of our Tier 1 carriers. This new feature set will increase the overall product offering to all current subscribers and increase our realized revenue share once deployed in the next month. Next, as I mentioned earlier, we are in the final contract phase to expand our SafePath platform capabilities with a Tier 1 carrier, including the introduction of new deployment options, which we believe will result in the delivery over time of our solutions to a significantly larger segment of their overall customer base. Last, we are in the advanced development stages of producing an application with additional functionality to be deployed in the European market with an existing customer. This will enable a larger reach into their addressable market, specifically by allowing kids to use iOS phones in addition to the Android phones currently offered. Once deployed, we believe this will significantly accelerate our revenue growth with this European customer. This same momentum is building with other current partners, and we believe reinforcing Smith Micro as the go-to strategic partner for family safety features and devices, leveraging our new deployment capabilities and resulting in new initiatives that we expect will drive new revenue opportunities. During our last conference call, we discussed the signing of a new agreement for SafePath OS with a U.S. carrier. That launch is ready to go and is one of the 2 new customers I mentioned earlier. This will be our first SafePath OS deployment, and we believe the use case is so powerful it will attract and accelerate additional customer activity for SafePath OS. We are also making solid progress on our strategic effort to expand our reach beyond the carrier market. We're engaging with organizations in other markets that serve large customer bases and want to differentiate themselves by delivering family safety solutions for their customers. Our conversations with prospective new partners have reinforced our belief that the market for family safety services is growing and extends beyond the traditional carrier market. We expect this new initiative to contribute to the company's revenue growth in the coming quarters. Another new growth driver for Smith Micro is the launch of SafePath Connect, announced earlier today, which represents an important expansion of our family safety strategy. For many years, our family safety solutions have been delivered as white-label solutions through wireless carriers. This distribution model takes months of effort to launch and typically requires meaningful investment by the carrier. As we've discussed previously, organizations worldwide are looking for trusted digital experiences that strengthen customer engagement and create long-term value. SafePath Connect extends the same trusted family safety capabilities to carrier audiences in a fraction of the time when compared to the white-label approach. SafePath Connect is distributed as a Smith Micro-branded product promoted and paid for by the carrier or other partners. By leveraging Smith Micro App Store distribution, a broader range of partners can have the flexibility to quickly and easily offer a family safety solution to their customers. Since our last conference call, we have signed a new agreement with the second new customer I mentioned earlier to provide SafePath Connect to their customer base, which is located in Europe. Before month end, we will be releasing more information about this relationship, all in coordination with our customers' marketing activity. We are encouraged by the level of interest we're seeing from our new partner. More importantly, SafePath Connect reflects the strategic market expansion underway at Smith Micro. We are evolving from serving a defined carrier market to participating in a much larger family safety opportunity across multiple channels, customer segments and business models. We believe this positions us to drive sustainable growth while creating additional value for both our partners and shareholders. We look forward to launching SafePath Connect in the U.S. in the coming months. We see significant potential across the business, and our objective is clear: execute efficiently, support customer successes and position Smith Micro to capitalize on the opportunities we've worked hard to create. As I look ahead, I believe we are better positioned than we have been in quite some time. We have expanded our platform capabilities, strengthened relationships with existing customers, opened new channels to market and built a pipeline that continues to grow. The opportunity in front of us is substantial. Our focus now is on execution, delivering for our customers, bringing new opportunities to market and converting the momentum we are seeing today into sustained revenue growth. We are committed to accelerate deliveries to meet customer timelines, so we can maximize our revenue opportunities going forward. We believe the foundation we've built over the past several quarters positions us well for a strong second half of 2026 and will carry us well into 2027 and beyond. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are excited about where we are, confident in our direction and optimistic about what Smith Micro can achieve as we continue to execute on our strategy. With all that, operator, let's open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question here will come from Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Nice job on starting to see sequential growth following through into the second half of this year. Tim, maybe to start on that front, I just want to clarify, with the 2 new customers, I'm wondering if you could rearticulate again the timing of those 2 new customers and the specific applications that they're going to be deploying. Is this kid phones? Or is this elder phones? And then with the existing Tier 1, the expansion of that relationship, when do we start to see the impact of that from a pricing or other standpoint start to kick in?

Yes. Hey, Scott, thanks for the questions. First off, the 2 new customers, one, both of them are expected to launch in the coming month or so. One of them is a SafePath OS device, and we're refraining from disclosing if it's senior or kids related. We're waiting for the marketing activity to kick in from our customer. But once that launches, we'll put a release out with that, and you'll see that in the market. Secondly, the other one is the SafePath Connect platform in Europe, and we're also aligning up marketing activities with that, and that's also scheduled to go within the next month or so. So very near-term launch, one, SafePath OS. One is the new product, the SafePath Connect. Really excited about both of those and getting those products in market. And we think both of those products in market is going to drive some nice positive activity from a customer perspective and drive our pipeline even larger. The second part -- or the second question, Scott, was around the Tier 1. So the Tier 1 that we're working with, we are expanding our product offering, trying to leverage the broader categories of features and functionalities that we provide. And we do expect the revenue from that to start in the third quarter, Scott, so pretty near-term type activity.

Got you. Very helpful. And if I could, just to follow up on that, you've given guidance for the third quarter with OPEX up kicking a little bit. It looks like your breakeven is $5.5 million to $6 million. Should we expect to see continued sequential growth then into the fourth quarter given the timing of these launches? And are you looking for break-even results by the end of the year? And then just to follow up as well, the SDK seems like a very intriguing opportunity. I'm wondering if you could address that in a little bit more detail in terms of opportunity, magnitude, what kind of interest you're seeing, or SDK downloads or otherwise. Give us some idea of where that's going.

Yes, so from a P&L perspective, we've been consistently calling out sequential revenue growth, and we would expect that to continue here into the third quarter and even into the fourth quarter. So very positive pipeline buildup. We believe we have deliveries tied down from a date standpoint, and we believe that our new deliveries will drive and our new launches will drive that sequential growth. So we're real pleased about that, and the team is doing an excellent job around that. From a cost perspective, we are looking at increasing those non-GAAP operating expenses, just adding some headcount there, shoring up after our strategic changes last October. We're just making some changes with that, all positive and all related to supporting that pipeline at the end of the day. The SDKs and the API activity, yes, we're seeing great traction with that in the marketplace, so that opens up outside of the carrier market greatly. So anybody that has a membership organization that wants to provide additional value-added services to them, that they are interested in retention around those customers, providing a family safety-type feature and functionality, we're seeing great traction in the marketplace around that. That started a couple months ago, us starting to market that, and the pipeline buildup is exciting. It's something that we haven't seen in a number of years, we believe.

Tim, maybe I can add to what you just said. When we think about the SDK opportunity, we're really looking at the super apps that are being built by the large Tier 1s, and now even larger MVNOs are also expressing interest in building their own app. What's really important here is that this is their app. And instead of having a multitude of different offerings, they're collecting all their service within their core marketed offering. They are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to market these super apps, and they are reaching tens of millions of subscribers. This is an opportunity that we could have only wished for on the direct -- on the over-the-top offerings that we have historically done. This is an opportunity that is -- really has a multiplier effect. And the number of opportunities we're currently focused on is really impressive. And so you have this one contract that's next -- near to signing, and there's plenty more right behind it with extreme interest and excitement around them. So we think this opportunity with the SDKs is a future growth driver that really we've not been able to talk about for a number of years. It's very exciting.

Hey, Bill, just to follow up on that, from a pricing standpoint, in the past, it was rev share with the carriers. Is this a similar type model where you'd be paid per subscriber given that they've got more control over it? So I mean, how are you thinking about on a pricing per sub, onetime fixed fee? How does that work?

Yes, that's a great question. It's still a SaaS model. Obviously, because the volumes are higher, the carriers have the ability to earn better pricing as they reach the multimillions of sub-levels. But because the number of subscribers is so huge, the net effect is it just generates enormous revenue with very high margin. It's just, I think, the most exciting thing we've seen in a number of years. You add to what we're doing there with the phones. We even now have an offering for smaller carriers and operators that is branded to us, but it still gives them a strong answer for their customer base in the area of family safety. After all, carriers are really interested in attracting the family sub. Family subs are the highest quality sub a carrier can sign up, and offering family safety is one of the best ways to get them over to their side. It's a great time.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Matthew Harrigan with StoneX.

You already addressed a number of the points I was going to query about. But when you look at the super app domain, if you will, it feels like there's just a clear default now to your new SDK and APIs. I know you had one large carrier that tried to do everything or is doing everything in-house. Are you seeing any new competition? Or do you -- it feels like everyone's pretty much -- you talked about the pipeline, so it sounds like most of the MNOs and even other logical customers are pretty much rallying to use your kit that you have in place or about to have in place. And I have one follow-up.

Thanks for the question. From a competition standpoint, there's definitely competition out there, but for years, we have been the premier provider of these services. And the SDK and API type activity allows access to those services in a lightweight type way. And so we believe that we're still a premier provider of that. So that's how we're competitively separating ourselves from our competition. We may not be the cheapest out there. We don't expect to be the cheapest. We don't necessarily want to be the cheapest. We want to provide a high-quality service. Carrier grade is something that's embedded in the company for decades, and we're going to continue down that path and help to separate ourselves from that -- from our competition in doing that.

And you've maintained on earlier calls that the senior opportunity's commensurate or larger with the youth opportunity. Are you still seeing that? And is that partly a -- part of the function of why you're seeing so much interest coming in almost over the transom even from non-MNOs?

Yes. Yes, the senior side of things is very active. We're absolutely seeing a lot of interest in that. And when you start thinking about the capabilities that we can provide in our different deployment, including our OS platform, we do continue to see a strong pipeline related to seniors. I'd say it's stronger than the kids OS side of things right now.

So after that massive deployment, no more...

Matthew, maybe I can add something on top of that. When you think about our SDK offering, it's built on the same code base as all SafePath products. And that code base has been built over a number of years through internal development as well as external acquisitions, where we acquired some of our major competitors in the past. As a result, the feature set and breadth of offering that is provided by SafePath is fairly unparalleled. Even when you look at some of the major players that market direct to consumer, our feature set is broader. So when you start talking about an SDK offering, we're providing a vehicle for a carrier to build family safety into their branded app that they are going to invest heavily in as far as from a marketing standpoint to attract a large percentage of their possible user base. So yes, there may be competition, but when you're way out in front, it's really hard for the competition to catch up on a feature-by-feature basis.

And I think you mentioned a fairly nominal sequential up to 6% increase in operating expenses. Is that really pretty much entirely on the sales side? Or are you wiggling around a few technical things as well given all the enhancements that you've introduced? I know you've got a really nice bedrock, but I mean, the market's moving so fast that I felt like you might want to do some new things on the engineering side as well.

Yes, it's mostly focused on the engineering side, Matthew. Between people and maybe AI, at the end of the day, that's what's going to take care of those -- that's what we have identified for those costs, so just trying to enhance the team and making sure we're prepared to handle the pipeline ahead of us.

And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Charles Messman for any closing remarks.

I want to thank everyone for joining us today. As always, please feel free to reach out to us directly, and we look forward to talking to you on our next call. Thanks and have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you again for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.