Marchex (MCHX) Q1 2026 earnings call transcript

I will now hand the conference over to Francis Feeney, Chief Operating Officer. Francis, please go ahead. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to March X's Business Update and First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. Joining us today are Russ Horowitz, our Chairman of the Board, Troy Heartless, our President, and Byron Nagler, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include four looking statements, including references to our financial and operational performance.

It actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. With an uncertainty that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's earnings press release and in our most recent annual or quarterly report file 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 GAP and non-GAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAP to non-GAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. The earnings press release is available in the investor relations section of our website.

I will now turn the call over to Russ.

Thank you, Frank. I'm going to start with a few current thoughts and then hand the call over to Troy, Ryan, and then Frank again. The main item I'd like to share is that we believe the company is crossing a positive and flexing point both strategically and operationally. The first half of 2026 is marking an important step in showing how our execution is beginning to translate into improved business performance. With the indicators, we care about moving in the right direction.

We've come a long way in evolving our product and technology capabilities and we are beginning to increase penetration of our customer footprint, which is starting to create real sales momentum. With this progress in deeper strategic understanding, which is against the backdrop of the very real and massive AI revolution, we've gained proprietary insight into what we believe may be a much bigger market opportunity, one where we're now evolving beyond mainly providing strategic analytics to vertical market leading companies, to one where we accelerate delivering more comprehensive solutions that open up new revenue opportunities by addressing higher value impact needs across the entire customer acquisition and optimization journey.

If you zoom out and consider what our customers most fundamentally rely on, it's knowing how to leverage AI driven strategic solutions to more officially drive growth oriented customer acquisition and optimization. We believe that we are seeing initial signs of validation that there is 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 bundled solutions across this entire customer value chain can accelerate our business and make us more valuable within our vertical markets as AI opens up new product possibilities that can help businesses grow meaningfully while driving efficiencies.

At March X, 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 significant new company revenue opportunities. We see significant new business potential in addressing authentic workflows for customers who are integrated on our 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 first quarter.

Thank you, Russ. With our previously announced proposed acquisition of Arcania, March X and Arcania have been collaborating to jointly develop and sell initial products that reflect the combined capabilities of the two companies. Product examples of this collaboration which leverages March X's data and AI signal and Arcania's AI tool sets and user interface are AI verified outcomes which drive increased revenue on a pay per event basis and conversational AI agents which increase customer booking to an appointment rate. In the first quarter, our focus included continuing to define the initial key products that most leverage our strategic insight into AI based action and outcomes solutions that we could present to our install customer base. And so far, we have seen very encouraging initial adoption.

While we operate in a rapidly evolving and dynamic industry with uncertainty, these sales efforts and customer interactions so far continue to reinforce our belief that we are now in a strong position with our ability to leverage new AI capabilities across the customer acquisition and optimization journey with highly impactful insight action and outcome based solutions. In terms of customers for background, March X's top 100 customers represent about 90% of our revenue. And this customer set has been initial focus of presenting the products which leverage the combined capabilities of the companies. To date, we have made presentations to nearly a third of these customers and approximately half of them have already purchased one or more of these products on a recurring or paid pilot basis.

Of those remaining, we believe the majority are likely to also purchase one or more of these products on a recurring or paid pilot basis. Additionally, as the potential transaction closing approaches, we are focused on accelerating our efforts to present these products to the majority of our top customers. March X believes our ability to sell these and other combined solutions which reflect the bundling of insights, actions and outcomes to our install customer base will be a meaningful sales catalyst in 2026 and beyond. As a reminder, we have a core focus on selected 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 and advertising and media as well as other industries and suburbs. With that, I will turn the call over to Brian to provide an overview of the first quarter of 2026 financial results.

Thank you, Troy. Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was 10.6 million compared to 10.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2025. We saw a favorable impact of new sales and existing customer upsells benefit the company in the first quarter. We also saw offsets to that growth due to the previously completed migration activities from our legacy platforms onto our new March X Engage platform, which impacted revenue run rates entering 2026.

For operating expenditures, we saw efficiencies throughout the business as we benefited from the continued realignment of the organization and the completion of certain technology platform initiatives during 2025, which have lowered our overall recurring cost structure. 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 million from 9.9 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025. A decrease in cash was primarily due to annual payroll and severance payments associated with our organizational realignment and efficiency initiatives moving to guidance. Based on our evolved strategic approach with delivering bundled solutions across insights, actions and outcomes, as well as other positive factors for the second quarter of 2026, March X currently anticipates that revenue will see sequential increases from the first quarter, and that adjusted EBITDA is now anticipated to increase to a range of 1.6 to 1.8 million up from prior guidance of more than 1 million. Additionally, in terms of initial guidance for the third quarter of 2026, we currently anticipate that revenue will sequentially increase and potentially accelerate over second quarter of 2026 levels, and that on a standalone basis adjusted EBITDA can potentially be in the two million range or more.

To the extent the Arcadia transaction has been approved and closed by the third quarter of 2026, March X believes that the combined company can essentially see adjusted EBITDA in the 2.5 million range or more for the third quarter or an annualized run rate of 10 million or more. We currently anticipate that we can continue to see quarterly revenue increases during 2026, and that over the course of the year, we can potentially see revenue growth on a run rate basis in the 10 percent range from 20-25 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 potentially lead to adjusted EBITDA margins of 10 percent or more.

With that, I will hand the call to Frank.

Thank you, Brian. I would like to take a moment to provide an update on the Arcadia transaction. On May 8, 2026, March X entered into a stock purchase agreement, the SPA, to acquire 100 percent of the stock of Arcadia, Inc. , the transaction from the Arcadia stockholders, the sellers. A special committee of March X's Board of Directors consisting solely of independent directors, the special committee, has approved March X entering into the SPA because certain of the sellers are related parties.

In considering the SPA, the special committee retained Craig Hallam Capital Group LLC as financial advisor, which provided a fairness opinion with respect to the purchase price. DLA Piper LLPUS served as independent legal counsel to the special committee, subject to receiving approval of the transaction by majority of March X's disinterested stockholders, and satisfaction of other closing additions the company expects the transaction to close in July 2026. For your reference, Arcadia 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, Arcadia detects consumer intent and advertise their value in optimizing customer acquisition campaigns dynamically across channels. With machine learning models that continuously refine qualification accuracy and ROI, Arcadia 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 Arcadia is successfully consummated. We 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, and the buggling of solutions could create greater customer value, stickiness, and risk mitigation. We believe that the potential to buy a 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 expandable, 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 new large vertical markets.

Additionally, we believe we would have the ability to relatively quickly offer or bundle Arcadia's outcome-based solutions to many of MarchX's insights-based enterprise customers.

Second, greater potential revenues scale and growth. MarchX 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 percent range in the course of 2026.

Third, we see the potential for adjusted EBITDA expansion. We believe that our adjusted EBITDA margins are anticipated to trend up to 10 percent and more in 2026, and that our Canadian could contribute additional positive adjusted EBITDA beyond these levels. And finally, we will have 30 to 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-red rate growth in the 15 to 20 percent range, and combine this with improving adjusted EBITDA margins in double digits, the combined company could be positioned to potentially achieve these rule 30 to 40 metrics over time, which we believe helps highlight the unique opportunity of the combined company if consummated.

I will now hand the call back to Russ for closing remarks.

Thank you, Frank. I'd like to close up today's call by thanking all of our investors, partners, and other stakeholders for your ongoing support. I would also like to deeply thank our employees for their expertise, sense of urgency, and continued commitment while we execute on what we believe is an increasingly dynamic opportunity.

Yeah. It's driven by a combination of our expected sales acceleration in the sequential growth in the second quarter and then there's also a contribution from some of the operations efficiency. So if you're looking at Q1 revenue levels, I think you could see kind of a reduction in the 5% plus range on the OPEX side and on the other parts of it. We see the sell-through on products and upsells an expansion of the new revenue opportunities, you know, being drivers as well.

If you hit on the metrics as a way to, you know, call it the initial customer outreach, yeah, it's been very validating. When you look at, you know, some of the elements that I think we're most encouraged by, it's that the adoption of some of these new products, you know, are seeing opportunities to potentially double revenue on a per customer basis.

And the fact that we're seeing, you know, guesses pretty quickly and, you know, indications on, you know, the ones we met with is what, you know, gives us, I think, a kind of an encouraging lens in combination with the efficiency and just the acceleration of the whole business book with product development, customer and expansion.

So the intent is to sell bundles to everybody. We know that's going to allow them to maximize the value of our capabilities. And, you know, we're leveraging our vertical expertise and, you know, their data to illuminate where they have big opportunities to drive increased customer acquisition, as well as, you know, drive more customer bookings and appointments, you know, with the qualified leads they already have coming into their ecosystem. The bundled solution, we think, meaningfully expands per customer revenue opportunity and also is going to drive a lot of increased stickiness as well. So all the pulse metrics that we think translate to a more dynamic company that can support the kind of growth we foresee and expanding e-bodum margins that we're starting to message.

How do you go about targeting the other two thirds? Yeah, it's another good question. Yeah, as we got started pitching, you know, the new stuff, we decided to focus on, you know, specific customers and specific verticals like auto and home services. Who we believe had common problems and we're bundling with the logical next step, given what we knew to be their pain points in the value and text of our solutions against those pain points. Doing it this way was really first to try and have success with revenue expansion, but also to validate our approach, expose ourselves into the learnings we need to scale our sales efforts and then iterate. We feel like this approach has worked really well so far and what we've learned in terms of informing us on how to start expanding to our other verticals and also to more of the top customers.

Obviously, our intent is to get to all of the top hundred customers as soon as practical and then go beyond where we see strategic product fit in meaningful revenue opportunities. So this is happening like right now as we speak, we're at that inflection point. You know, the metrics we provided around initial uptake has kind of given us the line of sight on how we approach and scale those efforts to more the top hundred and beyond. So, you know, what we've also learned in this process is doing nothing but to continue to support or believe that on a combined basis, you know, the business has a hundred million dollar revenue opportunity and we're approaching all of our efforts in viewing this as a profitably focused sprint to that hundred million dollar revenue run right and beyond.

Yeah, look, the first and most important thing is we think we're at a really positive inflection point and obviously the updated guidance today with the increase the DA reflects that. You know, we're just getting started in this new up cycle and we're working toward the Arcadia transaction and approval and formalization. But in looking at increasing cash generation, and we'll assess the best and highest use of increasing cash as we go forward and we achieve these milestones. But it is worth noting, sorry, low capex business and we have meaningful tax shields and with the Arcadia transaction, this will help us optimize our free cash flow generation as we go forward. And as I've noted before in our history, we've had times where we've had stock buybacks, sell tender offers, declared special dividends and more.

And as a reminder, we do have an existing three million share buyback program authorized at this time. In terms of primary focus, we understand it's a simple concept. But if we can just keep driving increasing organic growth with expanding profitability, and we'll have a lot of flexibility and latitude with the business and with our cash.

Once again, just want to thank everybody for your ongoing support participation in today's call. And we're just energized with where we are. Look forward to executing on what we think is an increasingly dynamic opportunity and updating you as we move forward. Thanks again.