Elauwit Connection (ELWT) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Investor Relations - Matthew Kreps
• Executive Chairman - Daniel McDonough
• Chief Executive Officer - Barry Rubens
• Chief Financial Officer - James Di Bartolo

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $2.9 million, a decrease of 46% year over year reflecting the timing of construction and installation projects that are periodic and variable in nature.
• Contracted Units -- 42,687, representing 33% annual growth and 16% sequential growth compared to the previous quarter.
• Activated Units -- 27,134, an increase of 94% year over year as the company scales its network presence.
• Billed Units -- 22,967, rising 163% year over year and driving the growth of long-term recurring services revenue.
• Net Loss -- $3.1 million, compared to a net loss of $0.9 million in the prior year period, driven by investments in sales, marketing, and public company expenses.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- A loss of $3 million, compared to a loss of $0.7 million in the same quarter last year.
• Backlog -- $38.9 million, consisting of new property installations and recurring service revenue, up from $35.9 million in the prior year.
• Year-End Unit Target -- Management expects to exceed 50,000 contracted units by the end of 2026, representing a potential 46% annualized increase.
• Cost Reduction Target -- $1.9 million in annualized run rate operating cost benefits identified through streamlining headcount and implementing new software tools.
• Construction Gross Margin Target -- 20%, supported by cost reduction actions intended to restore margins to this range.
• Recurring Services Margin Target -- 10% to 15%, depending on the specific product mix of managed services and Network as a Service.
• Cash and Cash Equivalents -- $1.2 million as of June 30, 2026.
• Accounts Receivable -- $3.6 million, representing current client obligations.
• Inventories -- $2.9 million, reflecting equipment held for upcoming network deployments.
• Deferred Revenue -- $5.3 million as of the end of the second quarter.
• New Unit Signings -- Almost 5,900 new units across 21 properties in 10 states and the District of Columbia were contracted during the second quarter.
• Year-to-Date Signed Units -- More than 10,000 units signed during the first six months of 2026.
• Real Estate Investment Trust Wins -- 4,100 units across 14 properties recently contracted from two large national REIT owners.
• Sales Pipeline -- More than 500 properties and 98,000 units are currently being tracked in the sales system.
• Total Debt -- $2.2 million, including $1.6 million in related party debt.

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RISKS

• McDonough stated, "We have almost no control over the construction side of this business because, of course, we're sequenced in with the general contractor on these new developments," indicating that construction revenue timing is dependent on third-party project schedules.

SUMMARY

Management for Elauwit Connection, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELWT) reported significant growth in unit-based key performance indicators, despite a short-term decrease in total revenue attributed to the timing of network construction projects. The company transitioned its sales strategy to prioritize higher-density markets and large portfolio owners, including recent contract awards from two national real estate investment trusts. To support this scaling, the company implemented a series of operational efficiency initiatives involving new enterprise resource planning systems and artificial intelligence tools. Management expects these investments and the shift toward higher-margin recurring service revenue to improve operating results in the second half of 2026.

• Executive Chairman McDonough noted that the company expects "to exceed 50,000 units under contract before year end," which would represent a 46% annualized increase in that metric.
• CEO Rubens described a "land and expand" strategy for large property owners, where existing successful deployments lead to incremental awards across total portfolios.
• Management is focusing on high-density markets to improve installation efficiency and target middle-tier owners managing 2,000 to 5,000 units.
• The company is implementing artificial intelligence and large language model tools to "integrate vendor platforms into a single pane of glass" for accelerated root cause analysis and service resolution.
• CFO Di Bartolo indicated that construction activity is weighted toward the second half of 2026, which is expected to drive an uptick in both construction and recurring revenue.
• CEO Rubens stated that the company identified approximately "$1.9 million in operating cost benefits on an annualized run rate basis" through headcount streamlining and software implementation.
• Management reported that 16,000 units have been committed either in writing or verbally through June 30, 2026, across 57 properties and 21 ownership groups.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Activated Units: Individual units where the network is fully installed and operational, though the company may not yet be collecting full recurring revenue due to the onboarding process.
• Billed Units: Individual units currently generating recurring service revenue under managed services or Network as a Service contracts.
• Contracted Units: The total number of units either waiting to be built, in the process of installation, or currently being served.
• Managed Service Provider (MSP): A company that remotely manages a customer's IT infrastructure and end-user systems, typically on a proactive basis and under a subscription model.
• Network as a Service (NaaS): A service model where customers rent networking services from a provider rather than building and managing their own infrastructure.
• WiFi 6: The latest generation of WiFi technology offering increased speed, capacity, and efficiency for connected devices.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Elauwit Second Quarter 2026 Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matt Kreps of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Matthew Kreps: Thank you, and good morning to all. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Elauwit's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Business Update. The earnings release covering our 2Q 2026 results is now available on the Investors page of our website at investors.elauwit.com. We plan to file our Form 10-Q in the next few days. I would encourage you to review the full text of the release and the accompanying financial tables in conjunction with today's discussion. This conference call is being webcast live and will be available for replay on our Investors page. Speaking on the call today are Executive Chairman, Dan McDonough; Chief Executive Officer, Barry Rubens; and Chief Financial Officer, James Di Bartolo.

We will cover our prepared remarks on the business and financial results, then open the call for questions from our analysts and institutional investors. Please note that during this call, management will make projections and other forward-looking statements regarding our future performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those noted in the earnings release, as well as other risks that are more fully described in Elauwit's filings with the SEC. Our actual results may vary materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ from our current expectations.

Elauwit specifically disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. We'll also reference adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. A description of adjusted EBITDA, along with a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to the most comparable GAAP financial measure, can be found in our earnings release. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Dan. Please go ahead.

Daniel McDonough: Thank you, Matt, and thank you to everyone who has joined today's call. I'll begin today with an overview of the business trends. Barry will have a discussion around our operations, and James will provide a few highlights from the financial results. Then we'll open to questions from our analysts. The second quarter showed continued strong progress on the key metrics that will drive our growth in long-term recurring service revenue. We remain fully focused on execution, and the sales activity shows the traction in those efforts. In fact, we achieved record year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter increases in contracted units, with almost 5,900 new units across 21 properties contracted in the second quarter alone.

For those tracking, that represents a 16% quarterly increase in contracted units and 33% annual. Year to date, we have signed more than 10,000 units, and the momentum continues into the third quarter. Our activated units also grew substantially, rising 94% year-over-year, and billed units increased 163% year-over-year, supporting growth in our long-term recurring services revenue. While revenue declined in the short term, this was due to the timing of our construction contracts for new networks, which can occasionally have an outsized short-term effect on our quarters at the moment. They are lumpy and not evenly distributed throughout the year, as this quarter demonstrated.

Even so, we believe we are still on track to our full-year goals, with more construction activity weighted to the second half this year versus the first half. As we scale, we expect to smooth out the quarters more as construction projects will likely become more evenly distributed through the year, and recurring services revenue will become a larger component of our overall revenue composition. At that point, all of our key customer metrics that measure the overall pace of our business long term, new contracted units, activated units, and billed units increased significantly year-over-year as they did last quarter, and our contracted backlog for long-term services continued to grow.

We also have good line of sight to potential new contract awards in our pipeline and contracts that have been verbally awarded ahead to us of formal contracting. The key takeaway here is that contracted units is the most important KPI we track. And with now almost 43,000 units under contract through June 30th and a robust start to the third quarter, I fully expect to exceed 50,000 units under contract before year end. Doing so would achieve a more than 46% annualized increase in contracted units for 2026. These wins will drive both construction revenue and long-term recurring revenue as we seek to build a robust and durable business at Elauwit.

Before I hand the call over, I'll do a quick recap of our business for those still new to the story. At its core, the Elauwit model provides simplicity, service, and profit through differentiated broadband infrastructure services provided to multifamily properties in a nearly $26 billion market opportunity. Instead of residents choosing the service provider for just their unit through an inconvenient, expensive, and outdated process, we install and activate ubiquitous carrier-grade gigabit service via fiber and WiFi 6 access throughout an entire property. The internet fee is then included in every new lease on the property as a standard cost, but usually at a savings compared to other market offerings.

The resident signs their lease, gets their keys, and the property-wide WiFi passcode at the same time and is online before they even walk into their unit. Once installed, we generate long-lived recurring service revenue from these properties under a managed service or Network as a Service contract. That alone is a compelling case but we take it one step further by integrating the property owner into the monthly recurring revenue stream, which provides a source of profit, increased recurring cash flow, and higher value for their property. We call this the win-win-win model because it creates a compelling case for Elauwit across all three constituents in the transaction, the resident, the property owner, and our business.

This is a proven model with a large number of units already under contract, plus a rapidly growing pipeline of new installations ahead as more and more properties seek to expand revenue through added services. We are now moving ahead quickly to expand our service base and sales pipeline of targeted managed services and Network as-a-Service opportunities. In addition to the growth I noted at the start of my comments, our sales team has secured verbal commitments on additional properties, giving insight to our continued selling activity as we work a pipeline of hundreds of thousands of potential units.

We also have increasing expected revenue visibility as we scale, with backlog of more than $38 million in construction and recurring service revenue. The first half of this year has also included a heavy focus on creating a more efficient operating structure. Barry can speak to this more in a moment. We have invested in enhanced business intelligence such as next generation ERP and advanced inventory platforms to provide real-time visibility into business health and rigorous cost controls. We are also partnering with software development experts to bridge disparate systems, reducing duplicative data entry and reclaiming valuable leadership time. We are scaling our network operation center and account management teams to provide a consistent customer experience.

We are implementing AI and LLM tools to integrate vendor platforms into a single pane of glass, accelerating root cause analysis and proactive service level resolution. We have structured our project management office into pods, specializing in new construction and conversions that pair senior project managers with on-site construction managers for seamless stakeholder reporting. We are also prioritizing automation through custom and off-the-shelf tools to allow our network engineering team to provision and activate properties with unprecedented efficiency. With that, I will turn the call over to Barry.

Barry Rubens: Thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. We are excited to be here and share the exciting progress as the vision for growth that continues to drive our business forward. As Dan said, we track our revenue-generating business across 3 nested metrics once a property is under contract. The first contracted units, those waiting to be built or in the process of installation. Then activated units that are fully installed and turned on for service, but may not be fully billing yet due to onboarding. And lastly, billed units that are fully generating recurring service revenue under our managed services or NaaS contracts.

As a reminder, activated units represent the rollover period throughout the 12 months following installation, and we onboard their costs pro rata to align with property lease renewals. In short, when we complete an installation, we know that we have 12 months of growth ahead, then long-term, stable, and sticky recurring revenue for years to follow. Giving some numbers to these categories based on June 30, 2026, counts. Contracted units, those waiting to be built or in the process of installation, along with units we currently serve, increased 33% to 42,687 from 32,094 at the end of the prior year period.

Activated units, units that are fully installed and on, but may not be fully billing yet due to onboarding, increased 94% to 27,134 from 13,960 at the end of the prior year period. Billed units that are fully generating revenue under our managed services or NaaS contracts, increased 163% to 22,967 from 8,733 at the end of the prior year period. These numbers are the metrics we track in terms of leading indicators for long-term performance. They indicate our overall scale and the expected growth already built into our system over the next 6 to 24 months as contract units are installed, activated, and converted to billing.

It is a steady, relatively predictable arc as we scale and will ultimately lead to a better ability to forecast the core of our business on both an annual and multi-year outlook. A second set of key metrics is the sales and contracts pipeline, which has also grown considerably over the past few quarters. As the announcement today indicated, our awarded contracts number is moving rapidly north with 16,000 units committed in writing or verbally through June 30. It is interesting to note that our business often gets verbal awards first, and then these paper pretty reliable over a few weeks or months following.

These awards to date represent units across 57 properties and 21 different ownership groups for installation over the rest of 2026 and 2027. Our pipeline is robust with more than 500 properties and 98,000 units in our tracking system and a much larger addressable market beyond that. Digging into our sales activity a bit more, we have been engaged in an exciting sales effort this year, testing a number of new strategies and approaches throughout the first half. We expanded the sales team, deployed a number of in-person and AI-driven strategies, and tested different targeting and approach vectors to determine what worked best for us. Now we have sharpened our efforts based on feedback that we have seen to date.

That includes, right now we are targeting higher density markets, which we often have properties located in, which will give us greater selling and installation efficiency as we win accounts. We're also working closely with large property owners to onboard even larger portions of their total portfolios through incremental property additions. This land and expand strategy has been working well and simplifies the sales process since they can simply refer to the already excellent service and economic benefit they are seeing at properties they have already awarded to us.

The press release of wins at two large national multifamily property REITs is a great example, having won thousands of units, but with hundreds of thousands of units of incremental opportunities still available for future wins. The increased focus on higher density markets is also benefiting us in targeting the middle tier of owners, often managing 2,000 to 5,000 units in total. This is a big part of our total addressable market, and we believe we are better able to address sales into that segment of the markets under our organization. I should note, and James will elaborate more, that we have undertaken a number of cost efficiency efforts this year to streamline and focus our business practices.

This includes new software tools Dan referenced to help us manage resources and sales more effectively, engage in better planning, in inventory control, and other corporate functions. We have also streamlined our headcount and implemented efficiencies in our construction functions to improve operating results. The first and second quarter largely saw the cost of implementing those solutions, driving costs a bit higher, while the second half will show the benefits. All in, we have identified about $1.9 million in operating cost benefits on an annualized run rate basis, net of a few hires and other add backs.

As such, and coupled with increased construction and steadily growing billing unit counts, we expect our operating results and net loss should improve over the second half of this year and continue to do so into 2027. And with that, I will hand it over to James to briefly recap some of our business highlights from the quarter and year to date. James?

James Di Bartolo: Thank you, Barry. Today, I'll walk through a few of the financial highlights of our second quarter 2026. Revenue for the second quarter decreased 46%, or $2.5 million to $2.9 million year-over-year, reflecting the timing of client construction and installation project revenues, which are periodic and variable in nature. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, total revenue decreased 32.4%, or $3.5 million to $7.3 million compared to the 6 months ended June 30 in 2025, also due to the timing on new construction projects.

New construction in 2026 is weighted to the second half, and the company anticipates an uptick in both construction revenue and recurring services revenue from its growing base of billed units in the balance of the year. Cost of revenue decreased to $2.4 million for the second quarter, compared to $4.5 million for the prior year period. Gross profit was $0.4 million for the second quarter, decreased from $0.8 million for the prior year period, reflecting the short-term decline in construction revenue. Gross margin increased to 15.5% in the second quarter, compared to 15.1% in the prior year quarter.

We have also implemented cost reduction actions intended to further improve our network construction gross margin back into our expected range of approximately 20%, and hold our recurring services margins in a range of 10%-15%, depending on MSP, NaaS, and other factors. Operating expenses were $3.5 million for the second quarter, compared to $1.5 million for the prior year period. The increase reflects our overall increased scale and new listing as a public company on NASDAQ in November 2025, as well as the added investment in our sales and marketing organization and costs associated with our long-term cost reduction initiatives, as Barry just described. We anticipate an annualized run rate of about $1.9 million in total OpEx reductions going forward.

We reported an operating loss of $3.1 million for the second quarter, compared to an operating loss of $0.7 million for the prior year period. Net loss was $3.1 million, compared to $0.9 million for the second quarter last year, driven by our investment in our sales and marketing teams, as well as public company related expenses. Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was a loss of $3 million, compared to a loss of $0.7 million in the prior year quarter. The balance sheet remains strong, with cash and cash equivalents at $1.2 million, plus accounts receivable of $3.6 million, and inventories of $2.9 million.

Deferred revenue was $5.3 million, and we have contracted backlog of new installations and long-lived recurring service revenues of more than $38.9 million, compared to $35.9 million as of June 30, 2025. With that, I'll turn it back to Dan.

Daniel McDonough: Thanks, James. A few final comments before moving into Q&A. 2026 has been a year of investing in growth and the future of our business. We've made substantial gains in unit counts, which will generate long-term recurring service revenue and continue to win more awards to further our growth activity. The most important metric is contracted units, which has grown 33% year-over-year and has us on track to exceed 50,000 units by year-end. We believe this metric drives all of our other KPIs and is a key leading indicator of our continued performance.

We've tested and refined our sales strategy, focusing on key high-density markets and broadening our reach within large property managers who can award dozens of properties and thousands of units in incremental growth over the years to come. We're also making investments into our organization to create a more efficient organization with better tools and resources to support this growth. These bring the short-term costs, but we believe the gains are already beginning to materialize in the second half of this year and we'll have an even larger benefit as we continue to scale the business.

We are excited for the second half and our continued execution to build Elauwit's leading position in our industry and sharing our progress on additional property awards and progress in these efforts. With that, I'd like to ask the operator to open the call for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Derek Greenberg with Maxim Group.

Derek Greenberg: My first question is just on the sales team and the ramping of that. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about their progress year-to-date, if you think they're kind of fully ramped and ready to sell or if you think there's still some lag time there? And then two, if you expect any incremental investments in the sales team for the second half?

Daniel McDonough: Yes. Thanks for that question, Derek. Thanks for joining the call, too. I think the broadest way I could say is we talked about this quite a bit in our roadshow that we wanted to really make a big investment coming out of the gates into sales to figure out what works, what doesn't work and really test the market. I think even in certain times, I've referenced it as like almost an R&D kind of approach to sales. And we gained a lot of insight. We stood up systems and processes and gained a lot of insight.

And over the last 30, 45 days, we've really refined the process going from a shotgun approach to more of a rifle approach in the areas that we see -- we think we can really win. So I see our sales expense actually going down because in the beginning, we spent a lot to try to figure out what's the best approach to scale this. And now we're sort of in Phase 2 of the sales process. So I would see us pulling back the expense in sales over the short term, but still getting a lot of velocity. And then as we scale that velocity, adding more sales expense back in.

Derek Greenberg: Okay. Great. That's really helpful. And then I was wondering on both just the contracted units coming in as well as the pipeline. I was wondering maybe if you could talk a little bit about the mix between existing customer portfolios you're converting versus new logos?

Daniel McDonough: Yes. We are seeing an uptick in conversions. It's as opposed to new construction. The good part about that is it speeds up our process from the time of contracting to seeing revenue and seeing profits from it. On the NaaS, in terms of like what part of that is Network as a Service versus managed WiFi side, we're also seeing an uptick, not quite as big uptick in getting into existing properties, but still we're seeing a small increase in that piece of our market share.

Derek Greenberg: Okay. Got it. And then last one for me. I was wondering if there is any commentary on like supply chain or tariff impacts, if there's any issues there, if you're pretty resilient on that front?

Daniel McDonough: I'm certain we're pretty resilient on that front. But James, I don't know if you have anything to add there?

James Di Bartolo: We have not encountered any significant supply chain disruptions over the quarter as a result of tariffs.

Operator: The next question will come from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum.

George Sutton: Dan, I wondered if you can give us a little more of a view on the slow construction in Q2 and then the ramp that you expect. I know a lot more of this is managed services sometimes out of your ability to time. But if you can just kind of walk us through what you're seeing in front of you relative to what we saw in Q2? And are you hitting your construction time lines as part of this?

Daniel McDonough: George, thanks for joining the call, and thanks for that question. It is a funny one. When we talk about backlog, a lot of times companies are talking about their operational inability to fulfill. That is not the case with us. In our instance, and I think it's funny, you mentioned we have limited control over it. We have almost no control over the construction side of this business because, of course, we're sequenced in with the general contractor on these new developments.

Operator: Pardon me, Mr. Sutton, are you muted?

George Sutton: Yes, I apologize. I'm not sure. I think it went into an AirPod.

Barry Rubens: Yes, I think we lost you for a bit, Dan. You may want to repeat your response to George.

George Sutton: Got you. Am I here? Can you hear me?

Daniel McDonough: We can hear you fine now.

Barry Rubens: Yes.

Daniel McDonough: Yes. So George, I was just saying that in the third and fourth quarter, we have a lot more conversion of construction for us as opposed to new construction. It's a lot more predictable, and it's a lot quicker from contracting to actual revenue. So that's why we were way more bullish on Q3 and Q4 for network construction revenue versus the first half of the year, and it's way more predictable.

George Sutton: Got you. I'm just wondering if we could talk about the 4,100 units from the 2 large REITs, and you mentioned hundreds of thousands of potential opportunities there in terms of units. But outside of that, I think, or perhaps inclusive, you're talking about 500 properties and 98,000 units in your pipeline. Can you just make sure we understand those 2 numbers and kind of how it flows in your opinion?

Daniel McDonough: Sure. Actually, Barry, do you want to grab that since you've been chasing the team.

Barry Rubens: Yes. A number of these companies are in their budgeting process, allocating properties that -- where they can get a release from the current carrier and move them over. So for most of these people, what we're looking at is large portfolios convert, it may very well be a steady stream of properties we see coming in over the next 4 or 5 years. So the process is being allocated out by these companies as they, again, free themselves from old contracts and are able to convert those properties, and that really becomes the gating factor.

George Sutton: Just to be clear, when we talk the 2 large REITs and the opportunity there versus what you're talking about in your 98,000 unit pipeline, are those -- are we looking at the same numbers or are those different numbers?

Barry Rubens: No. We're looking at mutually exclusive numbers. They will talk to us as we go into the third and fourth quarter about the properties they're allocating for 2027. We don't have those property names yet. So our focus is purely on execution right now, but we're well aware that these companies have future projects that they want -- that they'll be allocating to us. They are mutually exclusive numbers.

George Sutton: Yes. So to be clear, there's also 500 other properties that are currently in your pipeline that you're pursuing.

Barry Rubens: Correct. Unidentified at this point in time. But if we look at the size of these companies, that's a reasonable estimate.

Operator: And this will conclude our question-and-answer session as well as our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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