Spok Holdings, Inc.SPOKNASDAQ
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Operator: Greetings. Welcome to Spok Holdings Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Al Galgano, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Al Galgano: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Spok Holdings' Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. I am joined by Vince Kelly, Chief Executive Officer; Mike Wallace, Chief Operating Officer; and Calvin Rice, Chief Financial Officer. I want to remind everyone that today's conference call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to Spok's future financial and business performance. Such statements may include estimates of revenue, expenses and income as well as other predictive statements or plans, which are dependent upon future events or conditions. These statements represent the company's estimates only on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Spok's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Although these statements are based upon assumptions that the company believes to be reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please review the Risk Factors section relating to our operations and the business environment, which are contained in our third quarter 2025 Form 10-Q and related documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note that Spok assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements from past or present filings and conference calls. With that, I'll turn the call over to Vince.
Vincent Kelly: Thank you, Al. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm proud of the performance our team was able to deliver in the third quarter, especially after the exceptional performance in the second quarter, where we saw several new customer contracts get accelerated into that period and despite the seasonal headwinds we typically face in the slower summer months. On a year-to-date basis, we continue to make progress in key performance areas, including net income, adjusted EBITDA and cash generation, wireless ARPU trends, software revenue growth and gross backlog levels. Based on our solid performance through the first 9 months of the year and our visibility into our very robust product sales pipeline, we are reaffirming our guidance. We have advantages over the competition in our core healthcare software contact center space, including long-term and deep relationships with the top healthcare systems in the nation who continue to purchase from us on a regular basis, offering customers an integrated platform as opposed to multiple point solutions and continuing to invest in and enhance our platforms consistent with what our customers are requesting. Spok is viewed as an indispensable partner by many of our customers. In other words, they need Spok to efficiently carry out their day-to-day operations. Later in the call, Mike Wallace, our Chief Operating Officer, will lay out for you the product offerings that we have built that we believe will allow us to create significant shareholder value into the future. Let me also take this opportunity right upfront to remind everyone that our mission remains solidly unchanged. That is, to generate cash and return capital to our stockholders over the long term while responsibly investing in and growing our business. As we've demonstrated through our performance since our strategic pivot more than 3 years ago, we believe we are on a sustainable path to achieving that goal. So today, we'll share with you an update on how our strategic business plan is progressing in support of this goal as well as our financial results for the quarter. I'll start by reviewing the agenda for today's call. The order will be as follows: we'll begin by providing a review of our company performance for the quarter. I will then turn the call over to Mike Wallace to review some of our quarterly sales and operational highlights as well as give you an overview of our product offering. Then our Chief Financial Officer, Calvin Rice, will review our third quarter financial highlights and financial guidance for 2025. I'll then wrap the call, and we'll take your questions as time allows. As I said upfront, we're proud of what the Spok team has been able to accomplish through the first 9 months of the year. Year-to-date highlights include strong levels of adjusted EBITDA, which covered our quarterly dividend and capital expenditure requirements; continued sales pipeline growth, providing confidence in our outlook; an increase in cash balances, which we believe hit a low point in the first quarter and will continue to build through the remainder of the year, consistent with past year trends; a 5.2% increase in software revenue that includes triple-digit growth in managed services revenue on a year-over-year basis; improved wireless trends as net unit churn dropped by 20 basis points from the prior quarter; continued expansion of our wireless average revenue per unit, further reflecting the impact of prior pricing actions and sales of our encrypted HIPAA-compliant alphanumeric GenA pager; and continued discipline in expense management as we saw flat year-over-year adjusted operating expense levels while supporting the increase in software sales and making the necessary investments in product research and development to fuel future growth. In short, we're very pleased with our performance in the first 3 quarters of the year and believe that these results provide a solid springboard for the remainder of the year and for 2026. In the third quarter of 2025, we generated more than $6.6 million of adjusted EBITDA, which more than covered the $6.4 million we returned to our stockholders in the form of dividend distributions. At the same time, we maintained our third quarter research and development investment and believe we are on track to invest approximately $12 million in product research and development in 2025. We believe this investment will fuel future software revenue growth and that our extensive experience selling and operating our established communication solutions will continue to create significant value for stockholders by maximizing revenue and cash flow generation. As I mentioned, Spok has a proud legacy of creating stockholder value through free cash flow generation, and we intend to continue this track record. In fact, over the last 20 years, Spok has returned a total of more than $720 million to our stockholders either through our regular quarterly dividend, special dividends or share repurchases. More recently, since we announced our strategic pivot back in early 2022, Spok has returned nearly $100 million to our stockholders. When you take into consideration our current cash balance, distribution to stockholders, share repurchases, debt repayments and acquisitions since our inception, Spok has generated nearly $1.1 billion of free cash flow. Maximizing cash flow over the long term supports the 3 major tenets of our strategy, which include: number one, continued investment in our wireless and software solutions; number two, continued disciplined expense management; and number three, a stockholder-friendly capital allocation plan. Before I turn the call over to Mike, let me take a moment to review Spok's significant positive attributes. As a leader in healthcare communications, we maintain the largest paging network in the United States, we control significant and valuable narrowband personal communication spectrum, we have a blue-chip customer base of more than 2,200 hospitals, we have created a large portfolio of intellectual property via strategic R&D investments, and we continue to generate significant cash flow and return to our investors on a quarterly basis. Spok delivers the critical communication solutions hospitals rely on every day. Our Spok Care Connect suite of solutions integrates with existing workflows in the hospital and enables them to deliver information quickly and securely into the hands of clinicians who need to act on it wherever they are and on whatever device they're using. From the contact center to the patient's bedside, Spok Care Connect provides directory details, on-call schedules, staff preferences, secure texting and a lot more. We have over 2,200 healthcare facilities as customers, representing the who's who of hospitals in the United States. We have built our solutions over many years and have long-standing valuable customer relationships. And as you probably saw earlier this month, we announced that 9 of the 10 children's hospitals named to the 2025 and 2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Children's Hospitals on a roll, rely on Spok industry-leading secure healthcare communication solutions to support care collaboration and deliver outstanding patient experiences. For over a decade, nearly every hospital named to the Children's Best Hospitals on a roll has relied on Spok solutions. And this news comes on the heels of our announcement that 18 of the top 20 adult hospitals on the U.S. News & World Report listed also rely on Spok. This industry-leading reputation is coupled with the financial strength that nearly 80% of our revenue is reoccurring in nature, and we are a company with no debt, which provides us with significant flexibility. We're a pioneer in healthcare communications with a best-in-class product offering and have built an industry-leading reputation over the years. So at this point, I'd like to hand the call over to Mike to outline our sales performance and give you a brief overview of our product offerings. Mike?
Michael Wallace: Thanks, Vince, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. As Vince pointed out, timing issues impacted bookings levels during the third quarter after an exceptionally strong second quarter. However, on a year-to-date basis, we continue to make great progress in a number of key areas. As we discuss each quarter, we continue to build a solid financial platform and stockholder-friendly capital allocation strategy, and we remain true to our mission of being a global leader in healthcare communications. Today, I'd like to briefly provide you with a little more visibility into Spok's industry-leading product platform and what gives us confidence as we move forward. The cornerstone of that platform is Spok Console, which streamlines operator workflows and ensures rapid emergency response; Spok Messenger, which integrates with clinical systems to deliver alerts and notifications to the right person on the right device; and Spok Mobile, which empowers care teams with secure HIPAA-compliant messaging at their fingertips. Let's begin with Spok Console, being a secure healthcare contact center solution that serves as the central hub for hospital operator workflows. It gives operators the tools they need to respond promptly to every call and process priority communications. By uniting disparate data systems into a centralized digital directory, Spok Console ensures operators have fast access to physicians, patients and staff and that the right message reaches the right person at the right time. With a modern user-friendly interface, it integrates with the organization's PBX and leading UCaaS systems. Call center agents manage calls directly through the Console software, guided by intuitive screens and color-coded directories that simplify lookups and streamline communication. Spok Messenger is an FDA 510(k) cleared clinical alerting management solution that delivers critical information and updates from nurse call systems, patient monitors, clinical systems and other sources directly to the right care team members on their preferred devices, including pagers, smartphones and voice over IP devices. It intelligently routes, prioritizes and escalates alerts based on roles, schedules and rules, helping to reduce delays and improve response time. Integrating with existing hospital systems, Spok Messenger enables seamless, secure communication across departments and devices. It also delivers near real-time visibility, empowering teams with the transparency they need to track alert delivery and respond with confidence. Designed for reliability and HIPAA compliance, Spok Messenger supports better workflow efficiency, reduces alert fatigue and enhances patient safety. And lastly, Spok Mobile is a secure HIPAA-compliant messaging app that enables clinicians and staff to collaborate quickly and reliably. It integrates with hospital directory information, clinical monitoring systems and on-call schedules to ensure messages and alerts reach the right person on the right device. Spok Mobile supports message escalation based on established priorities and allows users to send notifications directly to providers' mobile devices as an alarm management option. It also maintains a detailed message history to ensure information is readily available for auditing purposes. With role-based messaging, group communication and delivery confirmation, Spok Mobile streamlines workflows and helps care teams stay focused on patient care. In short, we are proud of the product platform that the Spok team has built and believe that these offerings will create significant sales opportunities and drive shareholder value into the future. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Calvin to review the financials. Calvin?
Calvin Rice: Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. I would now like to take a few minutes and provide a recap of our third quarter 2025 financial performance, which we reported today. I encourage you to review our 10-Q when filed as it includes significantly more information about our business operations and financial performance than we will cover on this call. Turning to our income statement. In the third quarter of 2025, GAAP net income totaled $3.2 million or $0.15 per diluted share, down from net income of $3.7 million or $0.18 per diluted share in 2024. In the third quarter of 2025, total GAAP revenue was $33.9 million, down from total revenue of $34.9 million in the prior year. Revenue in the current year quarter consisted of wireless revenue of $17.8 million and software revenue of $16.1 million compared to $18.3 million and $16.6 million in the prior year, respectively. With respect to wireless revenue, we saw a 20 basis point sequential improvement in quarterly net unit churn in the third quarter at 1.4%, down from 1.6% in the prior quarter. ARPU increased $0.24 or 3% from the prior year, primarily driven by the continued impact from pricing actions and to a lesser extent, continued sales of our GenA pager. As a reminder, we implemented a 3.5% price increase in September that impacts roughly 50% to 60% of units in service, and that will be fully reflected in fourth quarter revenue. While we believe the demand for our wireless services will continue to decline on a secular basis, as reflected in declining pager units in service, we are hopeful that our focus on pricing and other initiatives like the GenA pager will continue to further offset revenue lost through pager unit decline. Also, we closely manage the expense base for the wireless infrastructure to limit the impact of revenue loss. Turning to third quarter software revenue. License and hardware revenue totaled $1.5 million compared to $2.4 million in the same period of 2024 as a result of lower software license bookings. Total professional services revenue in the third quarter was $5.5 million versus $4.8 million in the third quarter of 2024, up nearly 13% from the prior year period and more than 26% for the first 9 months of 2025. Our outperformance in professional services has been primarily driven by the triple-digit year-over-year growth of our managed services. This service offering provides customers with all necessary implementation and upgrade services for any Spok software products they own over their multiyear term, which is typically 3 years. While managed services are likely to be cost prohibitive to our smaller customers, we continue to see great traction with enterprise-focused customers. Adjusted operating expenses, which excludes depreciation, accretion and severance and restructuring costs, totaled $28.5 million in the third quarter, largely unchanged from the prior year period. During the quarter, increases in research and development expenses, selling and marketing expenses and the cost of product were offset by declines in technology operations expense and G&A costs. Technology operations expense continues to decline as we manage costs in relation to our declining wireless unit totals. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter totaled $6.6 million as compared to $7.5 million in the prior year period. Despite the year-over-year decline, adjusted EBITDA levels were sufficient to cover our quarterly dividend. We ended the third quarter with $21.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, which grew from the prior quarter as anticipated. Based on our current outlook, we anticipate cash balances to continue to grow through the end of the year. Moving on to guidance for 2025. Based on performance in the 3 quarters of 2025, we are reaffirming our financial outlook in the year for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. As a reminder, the figures I'm going to discuss today are included in our guidance table in the earnings release. For the year, we expect total revenue to range from $138 million to $143.5 million. Included in this financial guidance is wireless revenue ranging between $71.5 million and $73.5 million and software revenue range between $66.5 million and $70 million. Lastly, adjusted EBITDA is expected to range from $28.5 million to $32.5 million. With that said, I will now turn the call back over to Vince.
Vincent Kelly: Thank you, Calvin, and thank you, Mike. On a final note, I'd like to again point out that I'm proud of the performance our team was able to deliver in the third quarter, especially after the exceptional performance in the second quarter and despite the seasonal headwinds we typically face in the slower summer months. We believe we can continue to grow our franchise value while returning capital to stockholders. We have a long-term organic growth engine in our software solutions through Spok Care Connect. We also maintain a source of strong recurring revenue in our wireless service line, which remains relevant and important to health care customers and supports critical communications even during network events when cell phones and other technology fail. We run the largest paging offering in the world and have integrated it with our software operations. We believe that the strong combination of these 2 product lines will take us into the future and create significant shareholder value. Before I open the call up to your questions, I'd like to thank our stockholders for their continued support. We appreciate your interest in Spok, and we look forward to updating everyone again when we report fourth quarter and full year results in February of 2026. Thank you for joining us this afternoon, and have a great day. Operator, you may now open the line to questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Anderson Schock with B. Riley Securities.
Anderson Schock: So could you talk about the 55% year-over-year decline in licensing revenue? I guess, what drove this and whether we should expect to see similar license revenue going forward?
Calvin Rice: Anderson, it's Calvin. I mean, I think we've mentioned this before on calls, license revenue is going to be lumpy because the vast majority of it is directly related to sales. And from a quarter-to-quarter basis, given the enterprise nature of a lot of these sales, those can push and pull. Obviously, we pulled a lot of that into the second quarter. We had some big deals from the third quarter push into the fourth quarter. And so from that regard, no, I don't think it's an expectation that should be set that we're going to see a decline. I do think the expectation should be that there is variability in the license revenue from one quarter to the next.
Anderson Schock: Okay. Got it. And then you had a really strong second quarter for new software contracts and software operations bookings. I guess what led to the weaker third quarter? And how should we think about the fourth quarter? Is there any seasonality we should be thinking about that impacts the timing of these contracts?
Vincent Kelly: Yes. We've looked at this closely, and we're very bullish on our outlook. That's why we reiterated our guidance. We're expecting to have a strong fourth quarter. We went back and looked at since the pivot, which was starting in the second quarter of 2022, we haven't missed a quarterly forecast until this quarter. We did miss our internal operations bookings forecast. Embedded in that was license. We're still forecasting license revenue grows on a year-over-year basis. Our company total revenue will grow on a year-over-year basis. And so we're looking for a strong fourth quarter here. We've got a very robust pipeline. We've got some very large deals in the hopper right now that we're working. We get a couple of those, and we're going to turn in another very strong quarter. We turned in $8.3 million in operations bookings in the first quarter, $11.6 million in the second quarter. We hit that air pocket, which was odd because July started off pretty well in the third quarter, but August and September were very slow. Some deals slipped. Like I said, we've got some large deals in the pipeline. We're very bullish, and we expect to close them this quarter and report a good fourth quarter when we report at the end of February.
Anderson Schock: Okay. Got it. And then do you still anticipate a 6% to 8% increase in R&D for 2026? And then could you just detail the focus of this investment? And when should we expect to see revenue contribution or margin improvement from these investments?
Vincent Kelly: So R&D this year is going to be a little bit over $12 million. We've given the team more money to invest this year than they had last year, about $1 million more. Next year, it will be a little over $13 million. So about $2 million more a year on a run rate over what our baseline was in 2024 and prior. And a lot of that's going to the consolidation of our Care Connect suite, upgrading it, adding enhancement, adding functionality. And you'll see going forward in each quarter of 2026, some benefits from that. It will result in more new logo. It will result in increased upgrades and multiyear engagements. We're not doing this without the anticipation that we're going to get good benefits from that.
Operator: With no further questions, I would like to turn the floor back over to Vince Kelly for closing comments.
Vincent Kelly: Okay. Folks, thanks for joining us this afternoon in our third quarter earnings call. We look forward to talking to you in a quarter at the end of February with much better results. Everyone, have a great day.
Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time, and thank you for your participation.