STEM (STEM) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to STEM's second quarter 2026 earnings call. This is Erin Reed, Head of Investor Relations. Before we begin, please note that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. For more information, we refer you to our latest 10Q, 10K, and other SEC filings and supplemental presentation, which can be found on the company's Investor Relations website. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial measures.

Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our second quarter 2026 earnings release and supplemental materials, which are available on our investor relations website. Arun Narayanan, CEO, and Brian Musalt, CFO, will start the call today with prepared remarks, and then we will conduct a question and answer session. And now I'll turn the call over to Arun.

Thank you, Erin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. On our Q1 call, I told you that we would demonstrate what our software-centric transformation was designed to deliver. Our phase through 2026, I am pleased to see evidence of this transformation in the results. The second quarter marked our fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. our non-GAAP gross margin remains at record levels, and we saw meaningful commercial momentum across the PowerTrack platform.

We made a new market entry in Latin America, received industry recognition for PowerTrack EMS, and continued the expansion of our product capabilities. Given this progress, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 guidance today, which Brian will walk through in detail later in the call.

Let me turn now to an update on our three key priorities for 2026. Our first priority is to drive operational leverage and ensure that the structural improvements we made in 2025 continue. We achieved record non-GAAP gross margins in the second quarter. As in Q1, this was driven by a revenue mix weighted meaningfully towards software services and edge hardware, with battery hardware resales remaining relatively low in the quarter as expected.

Because we have had minimal revenue from battery hardware resales in the first half of the year, we are trending above the high end of our guidance range for non-GAAP gross margin. We expect to track within the high end of our guidance range of 40 to 50 percent as we see more battery hardware resale revenue during the second half of the year.

On the operating expense side, we continue to manage costs with discipline and drive efficiency through the use of AI. Cash operating expenses remain sequentially flat and were down versus the second quarter of 2025. They are proving that these OPEX levels are sustainable. The improved gross margins and low operating expenses drove adjusted EBITDA of $6 million in the second quarter, up 63% from the second quarter of 2025, and more than double that of the first quarter of 2026. For the first half of 2026, adjusted EBITDA was $8 million compared to negative $1 million for the first half of 2025. This is clear evidence of the inflection point they've been building towards.

Operating cash flow reached breakeven this quarter at $0.3 million, a $9 million sequential improvement, and a $22 million improvement versus the second quarter of 2025. Because we expect billings and revenue to continue to build throughout the second half of the year, we expect this metric to continue improving.

Second priority is strengthening the core PowerPract platform. In the second quarter, we added approximately 0.8 gigawatts of solar assets under management, which in turn drove 3% sequential growth in PowerPract ARR. During the second quarter, we also shipped a handful of product improvements, including an updated UX with dark mode, in-app feedback tools, and keyboard shortcuts. These are changes that our operators and asset managers value in their daily workflows and would set the stage for further product enhancements.

Customer adoption of PowerTrack Sage, our AI assistant within PowerTrack, remains strong, reflected in consistent day-to-day usage across a range of organizations. As we discussed last quarter, a key part of our platform investment strategy is a disciplined build-or-buy approach. On the buy side, we continue to advance the integration of Rikoon, the automated fault detection and event management technology we acquired in April.

That integration into PowerTrack is progressing well, and our development and sales teams are now working through how best to package and release this new capability to customers. We expect to share a more substantive update during our third quarter call.

A third and final strategic priority is building the foundation for accelerated growth in 2027 and beyond. That means expanding into utility-scale deployments, advancing our international footprint, and unlocking new market opportunities. Starting with utility scale expansion, bookings grew nearly 15% sequentially in the quarter. We brought PowerTrack EMS to Latin America through the Grand Haas Solar Project in Chile, where it will serve as the primary control system for a 420-megawatt-hour battery storage system being added to an existing 135 megawatt solar facility.

This is exactly the kind of hydrate utility scale project that validates the commercial prospects of our EMS offering. We see real potential to extend this delivery model across additional projects in Latin America.

We added another new booking in Hungary where Solar Marked Group along with EPC partner Pan and Watt selected PowerTrack EMS as the integrated energy management power plant control and SCADA platform for two 80 battery systems being added to two existing 60-megawatt solar sites. There is a PowerTrack PPC already in place for these existing solar assets, but this This is another proof point for our growth ambitions around hybridization, where we deepen our controls and software offerings over time as plans evolve. Commercial operation of the fully hybridized assets is expected in fall 2026. Altogether, PowerTrack EMS now has bookings across six countries and three continents. The first initial bookings have begun to come live and our everyday project in Germany, announced in March, is now live.

Alongside the commercial progress, we also earned external recognition for the PowerTrack EMS product. I am proud to share that PowerTrack EMS won the Smarter E Award 2026 in the Smart Integrated energy category, recognized by Solar Promotion International and Freiburg Management and Marketing International at the Smarter E-Europe conference. The smart integrated energy category specifically highlights technologies innovating and advancing the integration, management, and performance of clean energy systems. This is a meaningful external validation of the innovative platform that we have built.

A co-marketing agreement and partnership with Nuvation Energy also continues to build optionality around projects that require domestic control. We are working closely with Nuvation's technical and sales team, and in late July, we co-presented at the IEEE Power and Energy Society general meeting in Montreal.

Finally, on new market opportunities, we officially launched Iona, our AI services offering, in June. We are currently in conversations with potential customers and running workshops to help them identify where AI can have the greatest impact on their day-to-day operations, focusing first on our existing customer base.

We will share a substantive update on INS customer traction as these engagements progress. We are also continuing to explore how our strength in energy optimization software and deep energy market expertise can support data center developers and operators. Development on this offering is ongoing.

Two quarters into 2026, we are executing with discipline and delivering the results we committed to at the start of the year. And I'm confident in our team's ability to keep building on this momentum.

With that, I will turn the call over to Brian.

Brian G. : Thanks, Rune, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's walk through the results. Total revenue for the second quarter was $34 million, down 12% year-over-year from $38 million. Nearly all of that decline came from lower battery hardware resale revenue, which was $300,000 in the second quarter versus $5 million in the second quarter of 2025. Excluding battery hardware resales, revenue from software, services, and edge hardware was $33 million, up 1% versus the second quarter of 2025. Within that, the revenue mix shifted meaningfully. PowerTrack software revenue grew 11% year-over-year to $11 million, reflecting continued strength in our core commercial and industrial solar monitoring business. Managed hardware grew 22% year-over-year to $15 million, and project and professional services revenue was $2 million, down 6% year-over-year.

Managed service revenue was $6 million, down 34% year-over-year, against an unusually strong second quarter in 2025, where we brought roughly 100 megawatt hours online in a single quarter. gross margin was 41% in the second quarter compared to 33% in the second quarter of 2025. Non-gap gross margin reached a record 55% up from 49% in the second quarter of 2025, driven by the continued shift of our product mix toward higher margin software, services, and edge hardware, and less from lower margin battery hardware resale.

Given the revenue mix in the first half, non-gap gross margin has been tracking above our 40 to 50 percent guidance range. Because we expect more battery hardware resale revenue during the second half of the year, we expect the full year margins to move back toward the upper end of that range. Gap operating expenses were down both year over year and sequentially. Cash operating expenses were sequentially flat and down 11 percent year over year as we continue to manage costs with discipline, even as we invest deliberately in target growth areas.

The second quarter of 2026 marked our fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA at $6 million, representing an 18% adjusted EBITDA margin. Adjusted EBITDA was up 63% from $4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Operating cash flow was positive $300,000 in the second quarter compared to negative $21 million in the second quarter of 2025 and negative $8 million in the first quarter of 2026, representing a sequential improvement of nearly $9 million from the first quarter of 2026.

The improvement reflects the benefit of increased high-margin billings and revenue flowing through the business, and we expect continued improvement through the balance of the year. We ended the second quarter with $38.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, up from $36.6 million at the end of the first quarter. We remained very focused on our capital structure. During the quarter, we opportunistically used our at-the-market, or ATM, equity sales program, raising approximately $6 million at an average stock price of roughly $9.75 for general corporate purposes.

Now turning to our operating metrics. Bookings were $37 million in the second quarter, up from 39% from $27 million in the first quarter of 2026, and up approximately 7% from $34 million in the second quarter of 2025.

Contracted backlog was $27 million at the end of the second quarter, up 18% from $23 million at the end of the first quarter. CAR was million up 3 from million at the end of the first quarter ARR increased 2 to million from million at the end of the first quarter Within that PowerTrack ARR grew 3 sequentially and 13 year-over-year to $42.8 million, and Managed Services ARR was roughly flat sequentially at $19.6 million. Solar operating AUM grew 2% sequentially to 38.3 gigawatts, and storage operating AUM grew 6% sequentially to 1.8 gigawatt hours, driven by PowerTrack EMS projects coming online.

Now turning to guidance. As Arun mentioned, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 guidance across all metrics. Total revenue of $140 to $190 million with software, services, and edge hardware expected in the range of $130 to $150 million. We provided guidance on battery hardware resales of up to $40 million, which we still anticipate to be weighted to the second half of the year, and we expect a trend toward the lower end of that range. We expect non-GAAP gross margin of 40 to 50 percent with the range driven by timing and volume of battery hardware resales. Given that we expect to trend toward the lower end of the battery hardware resale revenue range, we expect to trend toward the higher end of our non-GAAP gross margin range.

Adjusted EBITDA remains at 10 to 15 million dollars and we are tracking toward the high end of the range. We expect operating cash flow of zero to $10 million and year-end ARR of 65 to $70 million. And now I will pass the call back over to Arun for closing remarks.

Thank you, Brian. I'd like to leave you all with three key takeaways from this quarter. First, our operating leverage story continues to build. Five straight quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA, a second consecutive quarter of record non-GAAP margins, and operating cash flow at break-even, all without pulling back on investment. This is the kind of durable structural improvement we told you we were building.

Second, our core platform continues to strengthen. PowerTrack software revenue grew 11% year over year, and we took disciplined steps to extend our platform capabilities and make PowerTrack a more complete solution for our customers.

Third, we are making tangible progress on the growth initiatives that will carry us into 2027 and beyond. PowerTrack EMS is now booked across three continents. We entered a new region in Latin America with COPEX Granja Solar Project in Chile, alongside a new hybridization booking with Solar Marked Group in Hungary. And we earned industry recognition with the Smarter E Award. Off the way through 2026, I'm very pleased with the progress we are making against our we set out at the beginning of the year. I want to thank our customers for their continued partnership, our team for their exceptional execution, and all of you for your support and engagement.

With that, I will ask the operator to open the line for questions.

Hey, John, this is Aaron. Good to hear from you. Yeah, look, we had a good quarter, and as we grow into the utility scale space, this kind of shift in the mix is natural. to see these projects come as a configuration with a greater percentage of edge hardware deployment just because of the nature and the size of these projects. So I think that's consistent with how the revenue mix is shifting and our growth patterns.

Yeah, thanks for that too. Listen, I think we are seeing, first of all, our projects are spread across, as we said, in multiple countries, different continents. So some of these policy changes are U. S. only. and the particular policy that you're raising, we've not seen any impact from that on our projects, be it within the CNI space or even in the utility scale space.

We continue to navigate this space by staying on top of it and working with our customers and partners to deliver effective solutions for our customers.

Yeah, hey, Justin, this is Brian. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think if you look at the numbers, we did state that we think we're trending toward the higher end of that guidance. You're correct that we had a really strong first quarter or second quarter, really, which brings our year to date a little over $8 million, so a bit over halfway there.

Remember, we had a very low percentage of our revenue coming from battery hardware resale this quarter or this first half, so that will increase as a percentage of the revenue, which will bring our margins down a little bit more in line It will also put a little pressure on the EBITDA margins So I think the answer there is we don see any real weakness in that space It's just a matter of timing and our battery hardware resale.

Yeah, thanks, Joseph. No, I think you're right. The reason we're saying it's going to pull back a little bit is if you look at our slide 12 in our appendix of the supplement, you'll see, you know, battery hardware is expected to be around 10% to 11% margins. So when we bring that in, it just naturally lowers our margin percentage, and, you know, those deals are generally a little bit bigger in size with that lower margin. So it will help gross margin dollars, but it will bring down the margin percentage a little bit. As far as our other products, no. I think if you look at that slide, I think we expect to see that continued margin, you know, PowerTrack running around 75%, Edge Hardware at 45% to 47%.

So nothing indicating that we should see a slip in any of those margins.

I don't think we are disclosing it at contract level.

Yeah, this is Erin. I can take that question. So when we have like a hybrid deployment, for example, with the Hungry deal, you saw that that was previously a PowerTrack PPC customer of ours. So there is a software contract already in place. And as they hybridize, we're adding another software contract in place with PowerTrack EMS. So, yes, there is two sources of ARR there, but there are also the services and the Ed Hardware deployments on those sites.

Absolutely.

Thank you, operator. We have a few questions here. First question is on guidance. Full year 2026 revenue guidance is still at a fairly wide range with two quarters left to go. What are the key swing factors that would move you toward the higher or the lower end of that range?

This is Arun. I'm going to take the answer. Battery hardware retail revenue is the potential source of this swing. We are expecting to come in at the lower end of our $40 million range. Software services edge hardware revenue has a smaller range of $130 to $150 million. The pace of deployments would determine how we swing within that range. And as we said before, we are on track and we remain within the range, and we are very pleased to reaffirm guidance across all metrics today.

Thanks, Arun. The next question I have for you is on international expansion. Today in the call, we talked a lot about our new deal in Latin America with PowerTrack EMS and the one in Hungary. Is there a region you're most excited about beyond those or one where you see a next real opportunity opening up?

Again, this is Aaron. For me, if you just take a step back and you look at what we are saying in this quarter, the smarter e-award win and the feedback from customers in these recent transactions show that we have really built an innovative product that is really a key solution for our customers in this marketplace. What's happening is that PowerTrack EMS is becoming this solution for solar asset owners who are trying to add storage and hybridizing their plants, as well as PowerTrack EMS is a really good compatible product for those international deployments.

So this is how we are ending up in this situation. We are seeing PowerTrack EMS entering into Latin America this quarter. This sets us up for expansion in Latin America with key markets like Chile and Colombia in our radar. And as we have also shown in the past few quarters, we can see that using our office in Berlin, we are able to make expansion within the European market.

So maybe the broader answer is this is a really fit for product solution that we built, fit for market product solution that we built, and we want to be there where our customers are.

Great. Now looking into 2027. As we look past 2026, what's one of the things that you're most focused on getting right in 2027 to keep this momentum going?

We've reiterated many times in the earnings call that growth in 2027 is where we are focused on. And we're going to achieve this by continuing to focus on the utility scale market. This is both within the United States as well as internationally. The products that are in this solution are PowerTrack EMS, PowerTrack SCADA, as well as the PowerTrack PPC product. The examples we have listed today and in other recent press releases show how our customers are configuring their solution with these different products.

And expanding into these markets successfully gives us the best opportunity for revenue growth.

Great. Thank you. My last question here is for Brian. A key metric investors are focused on is operating cash flow. What gives you the confidence in reaching positive operating cash flow for the full year of 2026?

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, if you remember, you know, our first quarter is traditionally our lowest billing and revenue quarter. So we had a negative $8 million of negative OCF in the first quarter, which was really, you know, driven by those low billings and a combination of some expected working capital outflows. You can see in the second quarter there was already significant improvement in that space. We came in the quarter about 0.3 million positive OCF, which was sequentially about a 9% improvement.

So we do expect that trend to continue to the second half of the year as our billings and our revenue continue to grow with our seasonality. So that's what gives us the confidence to reaffirm the guidance we've given for the year.

Great. Thanks, Brian. This concludes the retail investor questions.

I want to thank everyone for joining our second quarter earnings call, and we look forward to speaking with you next during our third quarter 2026 earnings call this fall. Thanks, everyone.