MCHX - NASDAQ

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's Q4 and Full Year 2025 Marchex Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tamia, and I will be your moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Frank Feeney, Chief Operating Officer at Marchex.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Marchex's business update and fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Joining us today are Russ Horowitz, our Chairman of the Board; Troy Hartless, our President, and Brian Nagle, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements, including references to our financial and operational performance, and actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's earnings press release and our most recent annual or quarterly report filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements for subsequent events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. The earnings press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. At this time, I want to turn the call over to Russ.

Thank you, Frank. I'm going to start off with a few thoughts and then hand the call over to Troy, Brian and then Frank again. The main item I'd like to reiterate is that we feel the company is at a very positive inflection point, both strategically and operationally. We've come a long way in expanding our customer footprint, evolving our product and technology capabilities and starting to create real sales momentum. With this progress and deeper strategic understanding, which is against the backdrop of the very real and very massive AI revolution, we've gained proprietary insight into what we believe may be a much bigger market opportunity, one where we evolve beyond mainly providing strategic analytics to vertical market-leading companies, to one where we accelerate delivering more comprehensive solutions that address high-value impact needs across the entire customer acquisition and optimization journey. At the end of the day, our customers fundamentally rely on our AI-driven strategic insights to more efficiently drive growth-oriented customer acquisition. We believe there is a significant opportunity for us to rapidly expand into highly measurable AI-powered bundled solutions, which provide the strategic insights our customers need, the automated actions those insights inform and the outcomes those actions achieve. We believe that there are significant untapped opportunities within our existing customer base and within each of our current verticals. We believe selling such bundled solutions across this entire customer value chain can accelerate our business and make us much more valuable within our vertical markets, as AI opens new product possibilities that can help businesses grow meaningfully while driving efficiencies. At Marchex, we view ourselves as a meaningful AI beneficiary, based on how rapidly we are now able to leverage AI to develop and deploy new products into our customer base that can deliver high customer value as well as new company revenue opportunities. In fact, we're being relied on to help many customers navigate the rapidly evolving and complex world of introducing AI and evaluating agentic possibilities to impact customer acquisition and retention. We see significant new business potential in introducing agentic workflows for customers who are integrated on the new Engage platform. Additionally, AI is making our business more agile and efficient to operate. The combination of these factors, including our vast amount of first-party data and vertical expertise are key elements in our improving outlook for meaningful business acceleration as we move through the year. With that, I'll hand the call to Troy to briefly discuss the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Russ. In the fourth quarter, we achieved our goal of the primary completion of our technology platform migration by the end of the year. While this involved our migrating approximately 1,000 customers to the new platform and some resulting revenue dilution and offsets, we believe that we are now in a strong position with our ability to leverage new AI capabilities and more rapidly deliver innovative solutions to our customers. With this significant infrastructure project finally behind us, in 2026, we believe that we are well positioned to focus on accelerating our revenue growth and delivering margin expansion during 2026. Over the course of the past year, Marchex has significantly expanded our product platform capabilities for customers and prospects. Over this time, we have launched our new unified user interface across Marchex's product suite, new vertical AI capabilities and various other new products and features, and there is much more to come over the course of 2026 and beyond. In addition, with the previously announced proposed acquisition of Archenia. Marchex and Archenia have created a collaboration framework, and we have been jointly developing and selling initial products that reflect the combined capabilities of the two companies. Product examples of this collaboration, which leverage Marchex's data and AI signals and Archenia's AI tool sets and user interface, include conversational AI agents, which increase customer bookings and appointment rate and AI-verified outcomes, which drive increased revenue on a pay-per-event basis. We are currently in trials with a handful of customers and expect to launch more next month and beyond. While these combined selling efforts are early, we have had initial positive indications of adoption of the combined solutions for Marchex's existing customers in the Home Services and Auto Services verticals. We believe our ability to sell these and other combined solutions, which reflect the bundling of AI-driven insights, actions and outcomes to our installed customer base, will be a meaningful revenue growth catalyst in 2026 and beyond. As a reminder, we have a core focus on select very large vertical markets where the combination of our expanding AI capabilities, built on years of operating with first-party data across these verticals, give us the ability to deliver unique solutions for world-class market-leading companies. To that end, we deliver industry-specific AI solutions for automotive, auto services, home services, health care, advertising and media as well as other industries and sub-verticals. With that, I will turn the call over to Brian to provide an overview of the fourth quarter financial results.

Thank you, Troy. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $10.8 million, which is down from $11.5 million for the third quarter of 2025. We saw favorable impact of new sales and existing customer up-sells benefit the company in the quarter. We also saw some offsets to that growth due to migration activities from our legacy platforms onto our new Marchex Engage platform. For operating expenditures, we saw efficiencies throughout the business as we benefited from the realignment of the organization and the completion of certain technology platform initiatives during 2025. We anticipate that our gross profit margins can continue to improve over time as we are carrying an overall lower cost structure going forward, which could enable meaningful future operating and financial leverage for the business as new products and features sell through. On the balance sheet, cash decreased to $9.9 million from $10.3 million at the end of the third quarter of 2025. The decrease in cash was primarily due to the timing of customer payments at the end of the quarter. Moving to guidance. Revenue in the first quarter of 2026 reflects the migration revenue dilution from the final platform switchover in December 2025, which impacted revenue run rates entering 2026. With this noted, in the first quarter of 2026, we currently anticipate that revenue will be in the range of fourth quarter 2025 levels and that adjusted EBITDA will be $500,000 or more. Based on the growth initiatives previously noted by Troy and other positive factors, we currently anticipate that for the second quarter of 2026, revenue will sequentially increase as compared to the first quarter of 2026, with adjusted EBITDA potentially increasing to more than $1 million. In addition, with our ongoing product and feature launches on the new technology platform, we currently anticipate that we can see sequential quarterly revenue increases during 2026 and that over the course of the year, we can see revenue growth on a run rate basis in the 10% range from 2025 year-end levels. We also currently anticipate that in the course of 2026, the combination of anticipated increasing revenue growth, combined with lower overall operating expenses can lead to adjusted EBITDA margins of 10% or more. With that, I will hand the call over to Frank.

Thank you, Brian. I would like to take a moment to provide an update on the Archenia transaction. In November 2025, Marchex announced that we had entered into an Agreement In Principle or AIP, to acquire 100% of the stock of Archenia from its stockholders. A special committee of Marchex's Board of Directors consisting solely of independent directors approved Marchex entering into the AIP because certain of the sellers are related parties. The AIP contemplates the parties entering into a definitive purchase agreement relating to the transaction. Conditions to entering into the definitive agreement include receipt of audited financial statements of Archenia for such periods as required by SEC rules and receipt of a customary fairness opinion by a financial adviser selected by the special committee. Archenia has engaged RSM US LLP to audit the Archenia financial statements and the special committee has engaged Craig-Hallum Capital Group, LLC as its financial adviser. Conditions to closing the transaction shall include approval of the transaction by a majority of Marchex's disinterested stockholders. The closing date, in the event a definitive agreement is entered into and the transaction is approved by disinterested stockholders, is anticipated to occur in June 2026. For your reference, Archenia is a performance-based customer qualification and acquisition company, which transforms consumer intent into AI-verified outcome-based results. Leveraging advanced AI signals, natural language analytics and automated decisioning, Archenia detects consumer intent and advertiser value in real time, optimizing customer acquisition campaigns dynamically across channels. With machine learning models that continuously refine qualification accuracy and ROI, Archenia enables its customers to pay for verified AI-validated outcomes such as appointments, sales and high-intent conversations. We believe that our potential combination with Archenia, if successfully consummated, would create a vertically-focused AI-driven customer acquisition and outcome optimization platform, integrating deep insights, automated actions and verifiable outcomes. Additionally, we believe that the expanded AI-driven product offerings across insights, actions and outcomes, could create more ways to win new business with the bundling of solutions could create customer value, stickiness and risk mitigation. We believe that the potential combined company could have the opportunity to achieve greater revenue scale and growth, higher margins, expanded market reach and enhanced strategic flexibility, which could include, first, a potentially expanded addressable market with opportunity to cross-sell and bundle. We believe the combined ability to sell insights, actions and outcomes would meaningfully expand our addressable market into a new large vertical markets. Additionally, we believe we could have the ability to relatively quickly offer or bundle Archenia's outcome-based solutions to many of Marchex's insights-based enterprise customers. Second, greater potential revenue, scale and growth. Marchex believes that revenue run rates for the potential combined company are approximately $15 million quarterly or approximately $60 million annualized, which could grow in the 15% to 20% range in the course of '26. Third, we see the potential for adjusted EBITDA expansion. We believe that our adjusted EBITDA margins are anticipated to trend up to 10% or more in 2026 and that Archenia could contribute additional positive adjusted EBITDA beyond these levels. And finally, Rule of 30 to Rule of 40 trajectory. For reference, the Rule of 30 to 40 metric represents the combination of annual revenue growth rates plus adjusted EBITDA margins. If we're able to achieve the anticipated revenue run rate growth in the 15% to 20% range and combine this with improving adjusted EBITDA margins of double digits, the combined company could be positioned to potentially achieve these Rule of 30 to 40 metrics over time, which we believe helps highlight the unique opportunity of the combined company if consummated. With that, I will hand the call back to Russ for closing remarks.

Thank you, Frank. I want to close out today's call by thanking all of our investors, partners and other stakeholders for your ongoing support. Additionally, I want to deeply thank our employees for their unique expertise, sense of urgency and continued commitment while we execute on what we believe is an increasingly dynamic opportunity. And with that, I'll hand the call back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Ross Koller with Koller Capital.

I have a few on the go-forward business. First, Russ, can you provide any color on how the selling efforts for the combined capabilities are going so far? What kind of feedback are you getting?

Yes. Look, so far, the joint sales calls have been very positive and very much strategically operational. We've so far prioritized creating and selling the products that bring together the best of the combined capabilities of both Marchex and Archenia and where the customer data clearly highlights how the customer problem, our unique solution to it and the value impact that we can deliver. And we've had just a short amount of time to get this started, we actually already have multiple orders in hand from the installed customer base for these new products. We're now focused on launching and scaling these opportunities, and we think as we grow the list of customers adopting these products and then start stacking the wins together, we're going to see a very positive cumulative revenue effect. In today's release, we specifically referenced that we're out there selling conversational AI agents and AI-verified outcomes on a pay-per-event basis into the auto services and home services verticals. This is going to be continuing expanding with additional customers and also move into other verticals as well.

Awesome. Russ, can you talk about the opportunity set inside the installed base? I mean, what percentage of the base could be targeted to the new capabilities? And how large can the company grow just inside that base?

It's a really good question, and it's one we spend a lot of time assessing. If you think about our business overall, our top 50 customers represent about 80% of our revenue. And when we look at the new product capabilities, we believe that they are very relevant and very applicable to the vast majority of those top 50 as well as other customers beyond the top 50. In the past, Marchex has stated our belief that we have a $100 million revenue opportunity overtime. On a combined basis, we believe that the $100 million revenue run rate is much more tangible and achievable much sooner even with just the existing customer base. The joint sales efforts so far are validating that these are the right initial revenue goals and the right prioritized approach. So with everything we've learned so far, we just view this all as a profitably focused sprint to $100 million in revenue run rate.

Awesome. And Russ, lastly, can you walk us through the IR strategy going forward and how you'll be reintroducing the story to investors? And how are you thinking about the current stock valuation?

Well, yes, I'll start with the second question first. Look, clearly, we don't -- we feel the current stock price doesn't reflect our value or even the incremental value we believe we're in the process of both creating and validating. But we understand it's up to us to deliver the financial results and provide the customer and product stories for people to understand our value impact and to start seeing us the way we're really now seeing ourselves, which is a dynamic and unique company. And specifically, we're an exciting emerging AI growth story. So we think we're at an inflection point. We know the burden is on us to prove it with our results. But getting to the first part of your story, kind of with all this in mind, we just recently hired a new IR firm, PondelWilkinson, to help us get a lot more active in reaching out to new investors and helping us tell our story and make sure that we're really landing this, in a way we think is differential and unique. So we're going to be much more active, particularly with the Archenia transaction potentially closing shortly. Beyond that, when we think about our stock, throughout our history, we've had times where we've done stock buybacks. We've done self-tender offers. We've declared regular and special dividends, and as a reminder, right now, we do have an existing $3 million share buyback program authorized. So we're going to continue to assess all of our options. But again, first and foremost, under any scenario, we know the best way to get our value recognized is to outperform and communicate well. So that's what we're focused on right now, particularly since our May reporting cycle is only 6-weeks away. And we're excited for May to come because we think we're in a position to hopefully reinforce with some of those stories and some of those points of progress and pointing to how the results can unfold through the course of the year. Appreciate those questions.

The next question comes from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

This is Vijay Devar for Mike Latimore. A couple of questions. The first one, did bookings grow sequentially and year-on-year?

Yes. On the first one, bookings were similar to the prior quarter. And when you look at the seasonal impact, we view that as a favorable result. And when you look at the trajectory kind of beyond the quarter, but month-to-month, particularly as we're getting out there with new solutions, we see accelerations of bookings as we're ending Q1 and going into Q2 in a way that we think can potentially meaningfully move the math.

Okay. And how about call volumes following normal seasonal patterns?

Yes. Right now, call volumes have been relatively consistent in the past at times, we've spoken about those as being a bit of a drag that we need to overcome as part of our growth. But right now, not as much the case as it has been historically. Right now, the primary variables are customer expansion, up-selling the new products and getting the benefits or stacking effect of what we're starting to see unfold based on the joint efforts to go sell the combined capabilities. Beyond that, we are having success with some up-sells, and I do believe that we are in a position to win more new customers on the traditional products. But the real catalyst that we see is with these products that really unlock the strategic insights into action and outcome-based products, and we're getting a lot of validation with the early sales efforts, and we see the opportunity to significantly expand within the existing base, which is the quickest way, again, for us to really favorably move the math on our financial results.

There are currently no more questions remaining at this time. So I'll pass it back over to the team for closing remarks.

Look, I just want to thank everybody for participation in the call, the very thoughtful questions, and again, reiterate with our investors and stakeholders the appreciation for your ongoing support, and we look forward to seeing and hearing you again very shortly with our forthcoming May announcement as well. Thank you, everybody.