Telos Corporation 3Q26 Earnings Call - TELOS CORP

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to TELUS Corporation's third quarter 2026 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-2-1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today. Allison Phillips, please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss TELUS Corporation's third quarter 2026 financial results. With me today is Mark Griffin, President and CEO of TELOS, and Mark Benza, Executive Vice President and CFO of Telos. Let me quickly review the format of today's presentation. Mark Griffin will provide opening remarks on our operations and priorities, and Mark Benza will discuss our third quarter results and full-year outlook. We will then open the line for Q&A. The third quarter financial results were issued earlier today and are posted on the Telos Investor Relations website, where this call is being simultaneously webcast. Additionally, we have provided presentation slides on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, we want to emphasize that some of our statements on this call, including all of those relating to 2026 company performance, plans, and operations, are forward looking statements and are made under the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ for various reasons, including the factors described in today's financial results summary, in the comments made during this conference call, and in our SEC filings. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental and clarifying measures to help investors understand Telos's financial performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or an isolation from GAAP results. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAP measures including reconciliations with comparable GAAP result in our third quarter results summary and on the investor relations portion of our website. Please also note that financial comparisons are year over year unless otherwise specified. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company website under the investor relations link. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark Griffin. Thank you, Allison, and good morning, everyone. This is my first earnings call as CEO of Telos, and I'm honored by the board's confidence. I'm grateful to John Wood for his leadership and for the partnership we have built over the past 35 years. As Executive Chairman, John will continue to provide valuable guidance on our product roadmap, customer relationships, and long-term sales strategy. TELUS enters this next chapter with meaningful momentum. Since the beginning of the third quarter, we have announced new and expanded engagements across the Air Force Intelligence Community, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the National Archives and Record Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Commerce Inspector General, and the Department of State. These awards demonstrate that customers increasingly view TELOS as a strategic partner in managing cybersecurity risk, not simply as a provider of compliance software. Organizations need continuous visibility into their security posture, the ability to integrate data from multiple security tools, and practical automation that helps their teams make faster and better informed risk decisions. Our Exacta platform is well positioned for this environment. EXACTA 360 supports the governance and authorization lifecycle. EXACTI.io brings together enterprise security data and enables continuous monitoring. EXATTI.ai applies artificial intelligence to automate manual activities and generate actionable insights. Together, these capabilities provide a more complete approach to cyber governance, risk, and compliance. Importantly, we are seeing ADZACA adopted across defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies, often through expanded relationships with existing customers. That customer intimacy combined with our deep mission knowledge and FedRAMP high authorization gives Telos a differentiated foundation for growth. We also see an opportunity to sharpen how we bring these capabilities to market. AI is most valuable when it is embedded in solutions that address a clearly defined customer problem. For Telos, that problem is helping security teams understand risk, sustain compliance, and protect mission-critical systems in increasingly complex environments. As CEO, my priorities are straightforward. Execute well for our customers, expand our market opportunities, continue improving operational performance, and translate our technology investments into durable, profitable growth. We will remain focused on building a more integrated product portfolio across cyber risk, identity, and related security services. I'm confident in the strength of our people, our customer relationships, and our technology. I look forward to working with our employees and partners to build on TELUS's recent return to growth and deliver long-term value for shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark Benza to review our third quarter results. Thank you, Griff, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report another strong quarter, highlighted by results that exceeded the high end of our guidance range, continued strong cash flow generation to fund share repurchases, and an increase in our full-year guidance. Let's turn to slide three. Total company revenue grew 7% year-over-year to $55.2 million, exceeding our guidance range of $49.2 to $50.6 million, driven by stronger-than-forecasted performance in Pellos ID. Gap gross margin was 37.9%, and cash gross margin was 43.1%, both above our expectations, reflecting disciplined execution on fixed-price programs and revenue outperformance on higher-margin programs. Adjusted EBITDA exceeded the high end of our guidance range, reaching $10.6 million, compared to guidance of $6 to $6.8 million, and representing the highest quarterly adjusted EBIT DA since our IPO in 2020. Adjusted EBTDA margin was 19.2%. from operations with $9.4 million or a 17.1% margin. Free cash flow with $7.4 million or 13.4% margin and represented the seventh consecutive quarter above 12%. During the quarter we deployed $5.7 million to repurchase over 1.2 million shares at an average price of $4.59 per share. Let's turn to slide four to discuss fourth quarter guidance. For the fourth quarter, we forecast revenue in a range of $47.5 to $50 million, up 2% to 7% year over year. We expect cash gross margin to be approximately 43% to 44.5% up year-over-year due to favorable revenue mix. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $7 and $8.8 million, representing a margin of 14.7% to 17.6%. Let's turn to slide five to discuss our updated full year outlook. Based on our third quarter outperformance and fourth quarter guidance, we are raising our full year revenue guidance to a range of $198.2 to $200.7 million, which brackets the top end of our original revenue guidance range of $187 to $200 million. Our strong revenue performance compared to our original guidance is primarily the result of significant new business wins in our information assurance business and outperformance on TSA PreCheck transaction volumes. We are also raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $32.3 to $34.1 million, significantly above our original guidance of $20.6 to $28 million. The significant increase in adjusted EBITDA guidance is primarily the result of revenues at the top end of the range, higher cash gross margins on fixed-price programs, and better-than-expected revenue mix, partially offset by higher operating expenses. Turning to 2027, as previously discussed on our second quarter earnings call, starting in the fourth quarter, we expect the resale of low-margin third-party software to begin phasing out. While this revenue stream contributes meaningful revenue, it carries only a single-digit gross margin and is not consistent with the margin profile we're building across the company. The phase-out of this revenue stream is forecasted to create a $32 million year-over-year revenue headwind in 2027, with only a modest profit impact. The new business wins in our information assurance business that Griff discussed in his opening remarks represent $58 million of net new Xacta and professional services bookings in that business. We forecast those bookings will generate approximately $6 million of revenue in 2026 and $20 million of Revenue in 2027 with normalized margins. And lastly, together with our prime partners, we continue to make progress on the pending proposals that we've discussed on prior earnings calls. We still expect to hear award decisions in the coming months, which could contribute meaningfully to 2027 revenue and profit. Let's turn to slide six to wrap up. The third quarter reflects the continued execution of our strategy. We're pleased with our year-to-date performance, confident in our updated full-year outlook, and remain focused on executing our strategy to drive profitable growth, generate steady cash flow and create long-term value for our shareholders. With that, operator, please open the line for questions. Thank you, Mark. This is Mark Griffin, and before we open up the line for questions, I wanted to have John Wood, Telus Executive Chairman, who has joined us by phone, say a few words. John? Hey, Mark, thanks a lot. Hey, everybody. Hey, I just wanted to say thank you to all the shareholders for your participation today. I also wanted to spend just a couple minutes and reflect on the decision that was made by TELUS and me to move to an executive chairman function. You know, Mark and I have worked together for over 35 years. I've gotten to see him work in very difficult situations, very interesting situations, and really, really big opportunities. I personally believe we're at that stage where we have great big opportunities in front of us. And I asked Mark whether he'd be willing to take on the role of CEO because I was that sure he could do it for me. As many of you know, I've been CEO for many, many years, and I unfortunately made a decision with a little bit of heartburn because it meant that I had to go deal with some personal issues. And one of those personal issues was my health. I had go to the hospital and deal with my heart and some other things, and it's been a really big deal for me. so again I'm not going anywhere I plan on being a shareholder and continue to be a shareholders of size over the coming years so again thank you so much and what Mark is doing around you know identity as a service with TSA PreCheck and what we're doing around our you know our AI activity with The Xacta AI is nothing short of a miracle in terms of the time it takes to get these jobs done. So anyway, best of luck, guys. I have complete faith in Mark Benza and the rest of the team because I think they're really capable and they're really good. and they've gotten us through the hard part, now comes the fun part. Thanks, everybody, and I'll look forward to hearing from you in the future, and feel free to reach out any time. But as it relates to day-to-day activities and getting to those hills that we need to take, Mark's the man. See you guys. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 1-1 on your telephone. if your question has been answered you wish to move yourself from the queue please press star 1 1 again we will pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster our first question comes from Rudy Kessinger with DA Davidson your line is open hey guys great thanks for taking my questions um what a dive into these new business wins 58 million new business winds could you share a bit more color on these winds just with respect to you know how recurring they are in nature versus more one-time project oriented winds just trying to get a sense of you know that 20 million in revenue you expect for 27 is that a recurring 20 million we should expect well into the future or is there any you know one-term kind of contract stuff in there hey Rudy Mark Griffin these are definitely reoccurring type awards so we put out press releases as you know and you saw the size and number of these so these are customers who have exacta whether it be the base core product of exacta 360 or the IO in many cases they're adding the AI component to it so they see the value and the efficiency with which they're getting for these products so you'll see these reoccurring or renewals coming up for the foreseeable future so we're very proud of where the direction exact is going but these aren't one-time deals great that that's great to hear congrats on that is there any mark is there any I know you didn't give any preliminary outlook for 27 but just as we think about 27, we update our models here, you've got about a 30 million headwind from the wind down of the third-party software. You've got 20 million at least from new business wins. You have other potential new business ones you could win this quarter. How should we be thinking about 2027 revenue versus 26? Is it possible we could still see you grow the top line even with that 30 million headwind. Yeah, Rudy, I do think we have a really good shot of seeing growth even with that headwind, and the information assurance winds help to offset a good chunk of that head wind, and those new winds are coming in at, as you can imagine, significantly better margins than the $30 million of revenue that's going away. And then, as you referenced, we have significant additional opportunities to add revenue through ongoing strength in information assurance new wins next year, as well as the other submitted proposals that we've talked about on prior earnings calls. Okay. And the last one for me, just any updated color on maybe gross margins in the next year, and what those might look like on a four-year basis, and particularly in the second half, once you renew the TSA pre-check contracts. Yeah, so we'll guide more detail on the March earnings call, but just to reiterate a couple things that I said on the last earnings call. The elimination of the ITGEM's third-party software, that should give us about 600 basis points of gross margin lift on a full year run rate basis and then in addition TSA PreCheck in the second half of 2027 we're expecting about 400 basis points of sequential margin improvement from the first half of 27 to the second half of the 27th so by the time you get to the second half it could be as much as 10 percentage points of margin lift from those two items now between now and then of course there's gonna be a bunch of other quick to take but those are two notable items from a margin accretion perspective okay thanks for taking my questions guys congrats from the quarter and mark congrats on a congressional CD overall as well Thanks, Rudy. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Eric Safakari with B Raleigh Securities. Your line is open. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for taking the question. And to John, we wish you the very best and congratulations, Mark. And congrats on a great quarter for getting out of the box. First off, on On the $33 million, how much of that is falling into Q4 and then the rest all hit? Can you talk about how the trajectory is in 2027? Yeah, so in terms of the year-over-year headwind, in each of the first and second quarters, there's about seven and a half to eight and a half million of revenue headwind and then in the third quarter next year that steps up to closer to 10 million and then in the fourth quarter it's a little under six million. Okay. And Mark are there particular changes that you anticipate making in light of your position? Are there strengths that you bring, or are there any strategic changes in strategy that you plan to implement any different than what had already been underway? Hello, Eric. The current strategy and vision that we have in place is working for us currently. You've seen significant growth this year. The expansion as we continue to roll out sites and perform on TSA PreCheck. So the identity business is performing well. With the Xacta and the X Acta AI component and the adoption we're now seeing from multiple agencies in the GRC market are working well. So no, not immediate changes. what John and I have worked together for 35 years putting in place is showing progress. We'll continue to refine and continue to look at additional AI adoption throughout the company but right now the cornerstones are the Telos ID business area in the exact areas where we're seeing great pickup right now so we expect that growth momentum to continue into 27. it. Very good. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Matt Colitre with Needham & Company. Your line is open. Hey, guys. This is Matt Coletre over at Needham. Thank you for taking the questions, and I'd like to echo my congrats to Mark and best wishes to John. I want to make sure I'm clear here. So the exacto wins in the quarter, which was great to see, obviously, those are completely separate from the pipeline proposals we've talked about in past quarters? Hello, Matt. Mark Griffin. Yes, they are separate from what we had referenced in previous quarters. So they are generated in one, but they are different than the pipeline that we previously talked about. Okay. And so what does, well, I guess like you alluded to the FedRAMP approval and some of the differentiation there, but What exactly is driving that strength in Xacta, and what do you see in that pipeline continuing forward? Primarily what we're seeing in that timeline is efficiency, automation, and not just process improvement. So it's the proliferation of the product building upon the 360 and the IO platform. And when you introduce AI, you get further efficiencies and manpower savings. And so the customers are seeing the value for this area other than just pedestrian compliance software automation. And when use rack and stack our solution against the competitors, We're seeing customers themselves evaluate and think highly of the solution, which is signified by the recent contract wins, and the pipeline is still robust, and we'll see additional wins as we move forward. Awesome. Thank you so much. One moment for our next question. our next question comes from nihao chokshi with northland capital markets your line is open thank you congratulations on a astounding beat in ray's quarter and congratulations mark and best wishes john um guys it feels like every week you're putting out a press release announcing a new Xacta 360 IO or AI wind here. What's the catalyst here that appears to be driving this massive wave of winds? Hello, Nahal. Mark Griffin. The catalyst is when we launched the AI product last year in the September timeframe, we had to educate and let the customers kick the tires on the solution and start seeing firsthand the value of it. And once we started, it started gaining excitement in the community and the users of the solution. And so it took – it's taken a little bit of time to get these customers to embrace the solution, but once they did, they started issuing their RFPs and their quotes, and we started to respond to those, and the excitement around the product is continuing. So we have a few more opportunities that we hope land this year, and then the pipeline for 2027 is also full of opportunities. So initially, it's you go back to your current customer suite, and you show them the enhancements and the dashboards and the efficiencies they can gain by the tool. And once they start seeing that, and then the users start seeing how easy it is to adopt and implement, and how much better it is than our competitor's solution, it kind of sells itself at that point. All right. That's fantastic. Just to be clear, that net new revenue, does that include value from renewal, or is that just purely upsell? It's all new revenue. Okay. Got it. And then the implied incremental EBITDA margin that you're valuing for calendar 26 equates to a range of 78% to 96%. Can you help explain why it's so high? I mean, it's great, but we'd love to understand why it is so high. it's primarily driven by well it's a couple things it's the incremental revenue itself is high quality high margin revenue with really high incremental margins and our OPX is also down slightly year-over-year so as we think about how these wins layer into revenue for not just 27 but 28 and etc right is that the type of incremental bits of margins we should be thinking about from this incremental stream that's turning on I don't think I want to get into too much margin level detail in a specific revenue stream but I think what we've shown over the last couple of years is that we have a lot of operating leverage in our OpEx and as we bring on the higher margin revenue streams were able to book them a very attractive incremental adjusted EBITDA margins. So, yeah, I feel really good about that. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of puts and takes between, you know, now and the end of next year, so I don't know that I can really isolate the variable fully. But, yeah. I think we've been showing that we can grow the top line at a very attractive incremental margin. Great. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks, Dom. This will conclude the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mark Griffin for closing remarks. Thank You, Operator, and thank you to everyone who joined us today. We are pleased with the progress TELUS is making toward building a stronger, more profitable, and more cash-generative business. We're bringing together our capabilities across cybersecurity risk, identity, and related security services to address the evolving needs of our customers and we see meaningful opportunities ahead. We remain focused on serving our customers, executing well, and building long-term value. I want to thank our employees, customers, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.