Daniel Chism
Analyst · Needham & Company
Thanks, Darryll. Appreciate it. This was another record quarter and full year for TSS as we continue to raise the bar of our financial and operational performance. We also have a few unique items affecting this quarter's results. So let's jump into the details. I'll focus my comments primarily on the full year with some specific highlights from Q4. If you look towards the bottom of the income statement, you'll see that we recorded an income tax benefit this period of $7.6 million, comprising about half of the net income for the full year. By the way, that's half of a net income figure that's up 153% over the prior year's net income. So still a strong double-digit growth in pretax income even without that. So why the big income tax benefit? Several years ago, we established a full valuation allowance on our DTA, or deferred tax asset, due to our history of net operating losses in past years. With a significant improvement in pretax income over the last 2 years, punctuated by the amendment to our long-term AI rack integration agreement that Darryll mentioned just a second ago signed in December, management now has a high degree of confidence in utilizing the DTA in future periods. Accordingly, we removed the valuation allowance on almost all of the DTA, essentially coming in as a onetime gain this period. Future income statements will show an income tax expense more in line with what you typically expect. This will vary some, but currently, we expect our 2026 effective tax rate to be approximately 21% to 22%. As part of reversing the valuation allowance on the DTA, you'll also see a $7.9 million DTA on our balance sheet, representing the future reduction in cash taxes we expect to realize as we utilize our accumulated net operating losses to offset future taxable income. Excluding the large income tax benefit, this quarter was still quite strong. In fact, the $7.9 million adjusted EBITDA this quarter was 50% higher than the prior record adjusted EBITDA we posted in the first quarter of 2025. And full year adjusted EBITDA of $18.6 million is 83% higher than last year's $10.2 million, topping the high end of our prior guidance as Darryll mentioned. Let's jump into the details of what drove the strong performance. Consolidated total revenue increased by 66% in 2025 to $245.7 million, up from just over $148 million last year. That increase was driven by significant year-over-year growth in our 2 largest service lines, Procurement and Systems Integration, with Facilities Management revenues very near the prior year level for the full year. Full year revenue from procurement services totaled $197.5 million, up 68% from the $117.5 million in 2024. With gross profit margins on procurement expanding 100 basis points from 6.7% in the prior year to 7.7% in the prior year -- in the current year, sorry, gross profit growth from procurement grew at a faster pace than revenues, up 94%. Even when viewed on a non-GAAP gross basis, regardless of whether procurement deals were accounted for as gross or net, total transaction values increased 65% to almost $280 million, and gross profit margins increased from 4.6% to 5.4%. To be clear, those margins and gross value transactions are non-GAAP, but we find them useful internally as they allow us to analyze the underlying economics of the Procurement business ignoring the U.S. GAAP requirement to record only our agent fee on net deals. Revenue from Facilities Management comprised of typically annual maintenance contracts and some discrete or onetime project work totaled $7.9 million, down 1% from $8 million last year. Our maintenance revenues in the segment were down 12% for the full year, driven primarily by year-over-year decreases in the first 2 quarters. Maintenance revenues in Q3 and Q4 were up 9% and 8%, respectively, over the prior year. In addition to the maintenance revenues, the Facilities Management segment also earns revenues from discrete or nonrecurring project work. I mentioned last quarter that through the first 3 quarters of the year, discrete project work was a bit behind the prior year and that we expected a reversal of that trend in the Q4. That's exactly what we experienced. Revenues from discrete projects in the fourth quarter were $2.5 million, up 263% from $700,000 in the fourth quarter of last year. Including those strong Q4 results, the full year discrete project revenues increased 12% from $3.6 million to $4 million. For the full year, revenue from the Systems Integration segment increased 78% year-over-year to $40.3 million. In the fourth quarter, revenues in this segment increased from $7.9 million last year to $14.2 million in the fourth quarter of this year. While a good portion of that increase relates to strong organic growth in rack integration volumes in the current year and more recent quarter, there are a couple of items included in that uptick that I want to point out for a more thorough understanding of the drivers of the lift. First, if you recall, I mentioned last quarter that in response to our customers' increasing needs, the Q3 results reflected incremental costs related primarily to depreciation of additional fixed assets we added beyond our initial plans and investments in securing and maintaining additional electrical power at the building now at 15 megawatts. But that our revenue stream would not likely reflect the benefit of those incremental investments until Q4. In December 2025, we signed an amendment to our long-term AI rack integration agreement with our largest customer, taking into account these incremental investments we've made as well as updating pricing for current rack configurations. As a result, Q4 results include approximately $1 million of additional revenue related to activities and expenses we incurred in Q2 to Q3 2025. The contract amendment also extended the agreement for an additional 2 years beyond the initial multiyear term, giving us enhanced visibility of expected revenue growth. Second, when we first began ramping our AI rack integration volumes in 2024, we received a reimbursement from one of our customers to enable our former integration facility in Round Rock, Texas to integrate AI racks. We were recognizing related revenues over a 36-month estimated useful life of those assets with roughly half of that recognized to date. With our integration operations now fully moved to our Georgetown facility, we determine it's no longer likely we'll use those assets to perform AI rack integration activities in our Round Rock facility. As a result, we accelerated recognition of the remaining $800,000 of the reimbursement in the fourth quarter of 2025, pulling forward most of the revenue we expected to be recorded in 2026. This has no impact on cash flows as the cash was all received in 2024. Related directly to this, you'll also see on the income statement a charge of $658,000 for a loss on disposal of assets in 2025. Just like the reimbursement from our customer was being amortized into revenues over a 36-month period, the related fixed assets we added with those funds in 2024 to enable us to integrate AI racks in our Round Rock facility were also being depreciated over that same 36-month period. Commensurate with the determination that we needed to accelerate recognition on the reimbursement, this loss on disposal represents the acceleration of depreciation we would have otherwise recognized mostly in 2026. As part of the amendment to our long-term rack integration agreement signed in December, we extended the agreement for an additional 2 years beyond the initial multiyear term, giving us enhanced revenue visibility even further into the future. Consolidated gross margin was 18.6% in the current quarter, up from 14.4% in the fourth quarter of last year, heavily influenced by the impact of significant -- sorry, the impact of signing the amendment to our long-term AI rack integration agreement. For the full year, consolidated gross margins were 13.2% compared to 15.1% in 2024. In '25, we first started allocating the operations-related depreciation of our Georgetown facility to cost of revenues, accounting for more than half of the difference in gross margin. With Procurement revenues bearing a smaller gross margin than our other revenue streams, the outsized growth in our procurement business in 2025 drove much of the remaining year-over-year consolidated blended margin decrease. Breaking our gross margin down by segment. Based on recorded GAAP revenues, Procurement gross margins improved to 7.7% in the current year, up 100 basis points from the prior year. When viewed using non-GAAP gross values of the transaction, which we see as more apples-to-apples comparison, gross margins improved 80 basis points to 5.4% in the current year. Facilities Management gross margins were down slightly at 60% compared to 62% in the prior year, reflecting a slight decrease in higher-margin maintenance revenues seen in the first and second quarters of the year. As a result, gross profit from the FM business was $4.8 million compared to $4.9 million in 2024. Systems Integration gross margins decreased from 42% in 2024 to 31% in the current year. As I mentioned a moment ago, we first started allocating operations-related depreciation to this segment in 2025, accounting for 7 percentage points or more than half of the overall decrease in SI margins. If you recall, I also mentioned last quarter that we spent more than we originally planned on capital expenditures in our new Georgetown facility and significantly increased the available power at the new building, both in response to changing needs from our customer. The higher cost per power included not only capital investments in equipment, but also higher period costs related to charges from the local power company. The revenues to which we were entitled under our long-term AI rack integration agreement we had in place did not yet reflect those additional investments and costs. The amendment to the agreement signed in December not only amended future pricing to incorporate those additional costs and those incurred in the December quarter, it also allowed us to recapture roughly $1 million of costs incurred earlier in the year. Lastly, as mentioned earlier, the current quarter and full year revenues for the Systems Integration segment reflect the accelerated recognition of approximately $800,000 of revenue. This represents revenue contemplated in our prior 2026 EBITDA guidance. Importantly, though, we are not lowering 2026 EBITDA guidance. The bar against 2025 EBITDA was just raised on impacts to 2025 results from the amended agreement. SG&A expenses of $20.7 million in 2025 increased 56% or $7.4 million over last year. Over 1/3 or $2.7 million of the increase relates to noncash stock compensation with the remainder related to higher head count and related compensation costs to strategically support the growing scale of the organization, combined with higher accruals for incentive compensation tied directly to the year's improvement in sales and earnings. Also included in the current year are incremental costs for the 2025 annual audit and SOX control work. Depreciation and amortization expenses not allocated to COGS were $1.1 million compared to $608,000 last year. That increase is related to amortization of our ERP implementation costs and depreciation of other assets related to the overall growth of the business. To provide greater transparency and ability to forecast future results, we've now broken out separately in our income statement, bank factoring fees, which were previously grouped with our interest expense. Bank factoring fees increased from $2.7 million in the prior year to $3.7 million in 2025, reflective of a higher level of billings on which those fees are charged. As a percentage of recorded revenues, those fees are 1.5% in the current year, down from 1.8% in the prior year. As a net result of the above factors for the full year, operating income increased 10% from $5.8 million in the prior year to $6.3 million. The change driven primarily by $10 million increase in gross profit, net of the $7.4 million increase in SG&A expenses and other items discussed. Now we've broken out separately the bank factoring fees, the $651,000 of interest expense represents exclusively interest on our outstanding bank loan net of amounts capitalized earlier this year, while we were building out our Georgetown integration facility through around May. Interest income this year increased from $562,000 last year to $1.7 million this year, primarily due to the higher average cash balance held this year. The net result of these items is a net income for the year of $15.1 million, up 153% from 2024's net income of $6 million. Our diluted EPS improved 133% from $0.24 per share to $0.56 per share. Adjusted EBITDA was $18.6 million, an increase of 83% compared to $10.2 million in the prior year. Excluding the $800,000 accelerated recognition of the customer's reimbursement, which we previously expected to recognize in 2026, adjusted EBITDA would have been $17.8 million, up 75% over the 2024 adjusted EBITDA. Now taking just a quick look at a couple of things from our balance sheet. We ended 2025 with $85.5 million of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, a $62.3 million increase from year-end 2024. In August, we raised $55.3 million of net proceeds in a secondary offering to fund future strategic growth opportunities. Cash flow from operations increased significantly from $15.3 million in 2024 to over $30 million in 2025. This, together with $9.8 million of net borrowings and $6.8 million received from our landlord in Q4 for tenant improvements, funded $32.7 million of CapEx and the repurchase of $4.9 million of treasury stock as employees net settled upon vesting in restricted stock and option exercises. Net working capital also improved from $1.3 million at year-end 2024 to $46.1 million at the end of 2025. In the fourth quarter alone, net working capital improved by $11.7 million. As you can see, there was a lot going on throughout 2025 and the fourth quarter in particular. After normalizing for the nonrecurring benefits and costs and the impact of the DTA valuation allowance reversal, this remains our strongest EBITDA quarter ever, and net income and EPS showed a nice increase. This, combined with significant increases in demand publicly announced by our largest customer, sets a great foundation for continued growth in 2026 and beyond. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Darryll for some closing comments.