Tantalus Systems Holding Inc

TSX:GRID

Good day, and welcome to the Tantalus Systems First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Deborah Honig of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Operator. Thank you for joining us to discuss Tantalus Systems' financial results and operating performance for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Tantalus issued these results, including their financial statements, management's discussion and analysis, and press release yesterday after market close, which is also posted on the company's website.



Joining me today on the call from Tantalus Systems herein referred to as Tantalus or the company are Peter Londa, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Azim Lalani, Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements about Tantalus' business. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially. Tantalus refers conference call participants either today or in the future to the company's forward-looking statements contained in the investor presentation on our website at www.tantalus.com. Statements made on this call reflect management's analysis as of today, May 8, 2025. Management does not assume any responsibility or obligation to update forward-looking statements made during this conference call unless required by law.



Please note that the financial information referenced on today's call is stated in U.S. dollars and in accordance with IFRS, unless otherwise stated. The company is also presenting selected non-IFRS financial measures, including gross profit, gross profit margin, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, recurring revenue, and annual recurring revenue referred to as ARR. Tantalus believes that these non-IFRS measures provide meaningful information to investors. However, they do not have a standardized meaning and are not likely comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. I will now turn the call over to Peter Londa, President and CEO. Please go ahead, Pete.

Thank you, Deborah. Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. Azim and I are pleased to provide a business update through March 31, 2025 on behalf of our team at Tantalus. To avoid any confusion for those on the webcast, we are no longer presenting slides during our earnings call. To the extent you would like to learn more about Tantalus, please reference our investor presentation which can be found on our website, along with our recent Q1 financial filings.



At the start, I'd like to commend and thank our team for getting off to a strong start in 2025. The progress we are making in the grid modernization market segment, coupled with improving financial performance is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our employees in building a strong company that we believe will drive value ahead. Our strong financial results to start the year, coupled with the favorable trends in the grid modernization sector, provide us optimism as we move further into 2025. In terms of the grid modernization sector where Tantalus remains of the few publicly traded pure pay investment opportunities in North America, we continue to witness favorable trends as utilities prepare for rapid growth of electricity consumption in the United States.



The continued electrification of our daily lives, including transportation, heating and cooling, coupled with the rise of datacenters across the United States, are expected to increase the demand for electricity by 2% to 3% annually, equating to 15% growth in electric consumption by 2030. A recent Reuters article estimated that widespread electrification is expected to more than double electricity demand in the U.S. by 2050. While the long term trends towards electrification remain robust, we are tracking anticipated power supply shortfalls this coming summer across the PJM service territory that could lead to an increasing number of power outages.



For those not familiar, PJM is a regional transmission organization or an RTO that manages high-voltage electric systems across 13 states and Washington, D.C., serving roughly 65 million people in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. Specifically, PJM Interconnection recently activated a fast track process for 51 natural gas-fired generation projects to increase power supply by 11.8 gigawatts by 2030. While this initiative is impressive and robust, there are expected power supply shortfalls that need to be addressed in the immediate term to reduce the risk of rolling blackouts. As utilities, cities and communities cope with the rising risk of shortfalls in electric supply, we are also witnessing an increasing presence of renewables and distributed energy resources such as solar and battery storage being deployed throughout the grid.



As an example, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, which delivers power through 153 local power companies to over 10 million people across the Southeast region of the United States, has witnessed all-time peak power demands in 2024 and 2025 due to increased population, economic development and the rise of new datacenters. The Valley witnessed its first blackout in decades this past year. To address the increase in electric demand, the TVA is planning to add 5 gigawatts of new dispatchable generation by 2029, and at least 10 gigawatts of solar by 2035.



While in both the PJM and TVA examples these new generation assets are helpful to offset the pace of rising demand for electricity and offer an alternative to traditional power supply from fossil fuels and nuclear, grid modernization across the electric distribution grid is essential to reliably incorporate new capacity and deal with the near-term shortfalls.



We need look no further than last week's unfortunate countrywide power outage that impacted Spain and Portugal to see how fragile the grid is becoming as renewable sources of power are integrated into the system. In short, the increasing demand for electricity is self-evident and the need for utilities to take a data-driven approach to grid modernization is becoming increasingly apparent. As our 2025 Utility of the Future survey results show, 74% of North American utilities say grid modernization is a priority, yet only a small portion of those utilities feel prepared.



To help utilities prepare for the challenges ahead, investments in the grid are expected to be massive. A January 2024 report from the Joint Economic Committee projected that the U.S. power sector needs roughly $1.4 trillion in investment over the next 5 years and that the North American smart grid market is projected to reach $55 billion a year by 2032. While previous approaches to smart grid and grid modernization investments centered around upgrading meters and automation equipment, we see the market becoming increasingly focused on connected devices that support compatibility with existing infrastructure in order to access the right data for analytics and data-driven solutions. Ripping and replacing the entire grid is not feasible or practical. Making informed decisions based on data is the path forward.



The increasing momentum we are seeing across utilities to embrace a data-driven approach to grid modernization and the corresponding market drivers behind them are resulting in rising demand for Tantalus' grid modernization platform. This demand for our capabilities is evident by our Q1 results, which included revenue growth of 27% year-over-year and converting the second highest amount of orders in a quarter at $19.5 million. In addition to expanding our user community by another 4 utilities during the first quarter, our trailing 12-month revenue hit an all-time high at just under $47 million, along with adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.2 million.



In terms of the progress we are making with the TRUSense Gateway, above and beyond the improved financial performance of our business, as of the date of this conference call I'm pleased to report that we are now working with 33 utilities that are activating trials, pilots and/or deployments of our new offering. As you may recall, the new TRUSense Gateway is a connected device that is focused on a data-driven approach and integrates into existing infrastructure. In the aggregate, these 33 utilities that are at the forefront of leveraging our new innovation represent approximately 150,000 gateways that could be deployed to the extent these 33 utilities move forward with us. That translates into approximately $100 million of identified opportunity through those 33 utilities when we include incremental capabilities tied to the deployments of our technology.



A few interesting comments regarding the momentum we're building with the TRUSense Gateway and the 33 utilities that have placed orders. Roughly 75% of the initial utilities evaluating the gateway are existing customers. We believe existing customers present a more predictable path to deliver revenue contributions in the near term as deploying the TRUSense Gateway is an incremental investment and/or upgrade to their existing systems. Approximately 70% of the TRUSense gateways that are currently on order are for our cellular module, which is in alignment with our own internal expectations as the cellular gateway is applicable for all utilities.



Of the primary use cases that are getting validated with these 33 utilities, the advanced power quality measurement capabilities is emerging as our killer app to help utilities pinpoint vulnerabilities across the distribution grid, particularly with respect to transformers. Early detection is crucial for the management and preventative maintenance of distribution transformers and other critical assets. As an example, early detection through transformer analytics that Tantalus currently offers could have potentially helped avoid the power outage at the London Heathrow Airport, which was caused by a transformer that failed.



As an aside, we also took note that one of the major players that builds large distribution transformers highlighted in their recent Q1 earnings call that their team is currently taking orders for 2028. That's 30 months from now, meaning lead times for critical assets and transformers are only increasing. Protecting existing assets through the TRUSense Gateway and our transformer management analytics tool is paramount for utilities today and over the coming years.



In anticipation of hitting an inflection point in our business, given the emerging trends in our sector and the progress that we've made in bringing new technology into the market, we added significant bench strength to our executive leadership team during Q1. Specifically, in January of this year, we announced the addition of Azim Lilani as our new Chief Financial Officer. Azim has over 25 years of financial and management expertise and has held senior management roles in both public and private companies. In addition to recently serving as the CFO of AutoCanada, Azim was also the CFO of American Hotel Income Properties where he was instrumental in leading the growth of that business. Azim also serves as the Board Chair of the UBC Investment Management and provides us with expertise towards improving our systems, processes and governance.



In addition to Azim, we were pleased to announce the addition of Chris Allen as our new Chief Operating Officer and EVP of Solution Strategy in February of this year. Chris recently served in a dual capacity as COO and CFO of Copperleaf, who was instrumental in taking the company public and ultimately executing the strategic trade sale to IFS in 2024. Chris brings over 30 years of experience from various high-growth and competitive technology companies. For me, it's a privilege to have both Azem's and Chris' expertise as part of our team, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to work alongside both of them as we chart the course ahead for Tantalus.



We've gotten off to a good start in 2025, and I'll now turn it over to Azim to walk through our financial results. Go ahead, Azim.

Thank you, Pete. I would like to remind everyone that we report our results in U.S. dollars. We delivered record first quarter revenues of $11.9 million, up 27% over the same period last year, with growth attributed to an increase of $2 million from our Connected Devices segment and $0.5 million from the Software segment. The increases in revenue came from adding new utility customers and continuing to expand deployments with existing accounts. Recurring revenue represented 26% of total revenue in the quarter. The strong recurring revenue was bolstered by the expansion of our customer base and adding new data analytics into our software solution offering. As a reminder, our recurring revenue is comprised of Software as a Service or SaaS subscriptions, term-based software licenses, software maintenance, technical support, and hosting services.



Gross profit margins remained strong, increasing 130 basis points to 55% during the first quarter and continue to trend above our target of 50%. Our Software segment generated gross profit margins of 74%, up 200 basis points from last year. For Connected Devices, gross margins increased to 44% during the quarter, also up by 200 basis points due to the product mix shift during the quarter. We anticipate our gross profit margins from Connected Devices to revert to historical averages through the balance of 2025.



The company's operating expenses during Q1 2025 included additional investments of $700,000 into sales and marketing initiatives. The increase in sales and marketing during the quarter includes expanding our presence at annual trade shows such as DistribuTECH and TechAdvantage as well as additional marketing to build awareness of the TRUSense Gateway. Please note that we also incurred the bulk of our expenses in Q1 tied to our annual Tantalus Users Conference, which included over 300 participants from over 85 utilities this year. This increase in sales and marketing expenses was offset by reductions in R&D costs as the development of the TRUSense Gateway was primarily completed during the fourth quarter of 2024.



We have started the year on a positive note and continue to make progress on our path towards profitability by delivering $317,000 of positive adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter. The results for Q1 reflect a solid improvement over the prior year when we delivered adjusted EBITDA of negative $536,000. Loss for the period was $651,000 or $0.01 per diluted share, reflecting an improvement on a comparative basis from the prior period loss of approximately $1.6 million or $0.03 per diluted share. We generated positive cash flow from operations of $3.2 million in the quarter, which is a significant improvement from last year's negative cash flow from operations of $239,000. We also generated free cash flow during the quarter of $2.7 million.



We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $15.9 million and available liquidity of $20.7 million as compared to $9.4 million as at March 31, 2024. The available liquidity was comprised of the cash balance plus borrowing availability of $4.8 million under our line of credit.



Beyond the reported numbers, I thought it would be helpful to reference that approximately 85% of revenue generated in the quarter came from existing customers. This reflects our strong visibility with our existing customer base while improving our ability to convert and drive growth from new customers.



Finally, subsequent to the end of the quarter, we completed an amendment to our line of credit facility with Comerica and paid down the outstanding balance of that loan, which reflects a significant reduction in the outstanding debt on our balance sheet by approximately $3.7 million. In terms of the amendment to the facility, we secured positive changes, including extending the maturity date to June 30, 2027, improving, removing or limiting the application of certain covenants to provide more flexibility moving forward, reducing the prime lending spread by 75 basis points, as well as having the option to choose between a SOFR or prime-based lending and other administrative changes.



These positive changes to our credit facility highlight our great relationship with our lending partner and the favorable trajectory of the business. As of this call, we currently have full access to the entire $8.5 million amount of the line of credit facility to support our growth and strategic objectives in the future. I will now turn it over back to Pete to address the remaining topics. Pete?

Thanks, Azim. Beyond providing an update on our Q1 results, we thought it would be helpful to also address the activation of tariffs by the United States and the anticipated impact to our business and industry. I'd note that things seem to change on a daily basis with respect to tariffs. Even as we're on this phone call with announcements of a pending trade agreement between the U.S. and the U.K. While our target market continues to demonstrate strength given the acceleration of electrification, we are not immune or fully sheltered from the complexity of the broader economic climate. Utilities are mindful of uncertainty and the corresponding impact tariffs may have on their customers through inflationary pressure or an economic downturn. While we see continued activity and progress through our sales pipeline and deployments, we are mindful that some regions of the United States could be impacted more significantly than others, which could alter the pace of the utilities grid modernization initiatives in the near term.



As a reminder, we build our Connected Devices, such as our edge computing TrUConnect modules and our TRUSense gateways in the Philippines with our contract manufacturer, and we are currently exposed to a 10% tariff as our goods are imported into the U.S. Our software and services revenue are not impacted by tariffs at this point. We are working urgently with our contract manufacturer and supply chain vendors to mitigate exposure on behalf of our customers and shareholders and actually view the near-term challenges caused by the implementation of tariffs by the United States as an excellent opportunity to further distinguish and differentiate Tantalus as a strong partner to our customers. While our standard contractual provisions afford us the right to pass along tariffs to our customers, rather than take the approach we are witnessing from other vendors in our space by activating price increases, our plan is to implement a surcharge that provides complete transparency to our customers on the incremental costs associated with the tariffs. Additionally, we are currently offering to share a portion of the incremental cost burden from tariffs with our customers to demonstrate our commitment to their long-term success. Our best estimate as of the time of today's call is that the tariffs may impact our internal adjusted EBITDA target for 2025 by approximately $700,000 to $800,000 to the extent the 10% tariff remains in effect through the balance of this year. Despite the impact, we remain fully committed to delivering positive adjusted EBITDA in 2025.



We believe the short-term impact to our results will pay dividends over the long term as we further strengthen our customer relationships, which typically last for decades. Our continued growth and corresponding financial performance afford us with the opportunity to invest in the relationship with our customers by sharing a portion of the tariffs, and we believe this is the prudent course of action in the near term. The positive feedback received from customers during our recent annual users conference confirms our point of view.



As Azim shared a few minutes ago, our team made solid progress during Q1, and we are building momentum through our data-driven approach to grid modernization. The meaningful progress being made with the TRUSense Gateway and the broadening suite of software applications and analytics capabilities positions our team for success within the grid modernization sector to meet the growing demand from utilities with a disciplined execution and a unique product offering.



Finally, I'd like to take a moment to personally thank our Board of Directors, our employees, our customers, and other key stakeholders for their hard work, effort, and continued support of the business. Operator, we'll now open the line for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And the first question will come from Nick Boychuk with Cormark Securities.

You mentioned a lot of the macro constructive things that are going on globally for your products specifically. Blackouts, what happened at Heathrow. Are you seeing that utilities are actually changing their behaviors though? Are they maybe now coming to you and responding in a way that suggests they're going to move faster or be more interested to deploy technologies like yours into their existing grid to augment things a little bit faster than they maybe would have previously?

Yes. Thanks, Nick, and I appreciate the time and continued attention to the business. I think probably the best way to answer that is based on what we saw unfold last week during our annual Tantalus Users Conference, where we had over 300 people attend and representatives from over 85 utilities. I think as we were there at the users conference, the news broke about the countrywide outages across Spain and Portugal, which were really unfortunate, but also created an interesting and compelling dynamic in terms of conversation. And what I'd say is I think what we are seeing, Nick, and what I saw firsthand last week, is that as we build awareness and as we educate even our own customer base on what we can do with data that we're accessing from the distribution grid is directly correlated to solving problems and avoiding outages or other circumstances. And so the number of questions and the color commentary received from utilities in attendance last week I think is a good indication of what we can anticipate and what we're seeing more broadly to your question. And so it's a high-level way of answering that, yes, I do think we're seeing a change in behavior. I do think we're seeing an increased amount of curiosity from utilities to start thinking about things differently and taking a data-driven approach as opposed to just focused on what's the next asset to deploy. The lead times for transformers is forcing that issue. Whether that translates into urgency is a little too early I think to tell. But having almost $20 million in orders in a quarter, by far and away second highest that we've ever had, I think is a good indication that utilities are beginning to move. I wish I could give you a more concrete answer in terms of dollars or percent, but I think overall, we're starting to see a change of behavior and increased urgency. We'll see how that translates in terms of improved financial results moving forward.

Okay. Understood. That makes sense. And then as it relates to the TRUSense demos, trials, and deployments that are ongoing, first on the trials and the pilots, is there anything that came out of TUC that's worth sharing any feedback? And then on the deployments, can you give us a little bit more color on maybe not who it is, but kind of how they're deploying it, what their scale is, what their plans are for the product?

Sure. So I think the overarching feedback from our customer base based on last week's users conference reinforces our optimism around the innovation that our team has delivered in conjunction with the advisory committee in the TRUSense Gateway. Without a doubt, the power quality measurements that the TRUSense Gateway delivers is relevant for every utility that we interact with. And so I think that alone got the attention and certainly increased the buzz and I think enthusiasm for increasing the number of utilities that have activated pilots or trials and analysis of the device itself. I'm hopeful that we continue to see an increasing number of utilities join the party here and expand beyond the 33 that are already activated. As it relates to the deployments, it varies. We have some utilities that are the 1, 5, 10 devices that they're putting in the field just to get a sense of what it does and evaluate how it can tie to very specific use cases and/or areas of focus for the utility. Beyond that, we're also seeing -- and I'd say that's a little bit more indicative of the utilities that are really starting to put their toes in the water and think of behind-the-meter control to deal with increasing demand and consumption of electricity and have a lot more granular control and insight into the demand side of their power supply equation. We're seeing a number of existing utilities that have been with us for some time look to the TRUSense Gateway as a path to upgrade their entire system. And most importantly, migrate to latest generation of communications technology, particularly on the cellular side between private LTE and 5G -- or excuse me, LTE, private LTE and 5G networks. It's a device that not only captures power quality data, can support behind the meter advanced metering infrastructure itself, but it also is a collector. And so we're seeing an increasing number of our existing customers look to bolster and build improved redundancy in their communications networking for our systems through the TRUSense Gateway. And so that leads to the utilities that are in the call it hundreds to a few thousand devices. And then we have some utilities that are thinking more broadly and boldly, particularly those that have fiber deployments to the home, where we'll see a higher penetration of TRUSense gateways to meters. And the largest of the utilities that is field trying has got 300 devices in the field as part of their analysis. I think we'll see a cascading set of circumstances, Nick, that from my perspective in the immediate term, getting the TRUSense Gateway in the hands of as many utilities as possible, is paramount. The numbers are going to then follow and the scale and the growth will follow, but building awareness and validating use cases and ensuring that we've really come up with something that's innovative is our highest priority in 2025.

Okay. Got it. And then last, just you mentioned that if the 33 trials, demos and pilots represent about 150,000 TRUSense deployed equivalent to $100 million. Can you reconcile how that compares to the prior chats that we've had on these calls about kind of the revenue opportunity within the advisory committee only plus the additional groups?

Yes. So not -- so we have members of the advisory committee that still have the original iterations of the TRUSense Gateway that helped us get to final design. But not all 9 members of the Advisory committee have activated what we would refer to as their field trial or pilots. There's still some upside within the advisory committee per se. In the aggregate, we've been chasing and have been articulating about $150 million in the advisory committee and then about another $350 million with a collection of utilities that continues to grow that would be new to Tantalus or were not included in the advisory committee. In the aggregate, about $0.5 billion of quantifiable opportunity. I'd say of the collection of utilities that we refer to in this group of 33, it represents about 20% or $100 million of that $500 million that we had identified. It's a good portion to be chasing after and now actually been in the field with orders from utilities that are moving. And I think it's -- we see upside in almost every circumstance, Nick. A good example of that is the city of Bolivar, which we've announced publicly. It was a new utility to us through our relationship with Urby as a channel partner. It's a utility that's deploying fiber-to-the-home. It's got progressive and ambitious initiatives. The initial deployment included 300 TRUSense gateways. That number is going to expand as the system is fully deployed, as they understand the use cases behind the TRUSense Gateway, and as they build out their fiber network. It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly how many more devices, but it's not in the hundreds, it's in the thousands.

Okay, so it sounds like a lot more opportunity to come. Appreciate it.

Your next question will come from Gianluca Tucci with Haywood Securities.

My first question, so of the 33 utilities or over 150,000 endpoint potential, do you expect any seasonality to order inflows given customers' budget cycles?

Gianluca, good morning. Or afternoon I guess on the East Coast. But thanks for the question. The budget cycles for utilities vary. It's not a one size fits all. We have a portion of utilities within that 33 that operate like us on a calendar year and start January 1 and end December 31. We've got some utilities that are on a July 1 fiscal year, so their yearend is June 30. And then we have some utilities that fall in between, a handful, October 1 as an example fiscal year that align more to the United States government as an example. And so where we -- so seasonality in the context of our 4 quarters, yes, I think we typically see a good wave of orders that hit early in our calendar year like Q1, which is now back-to-back years, our #1 and #2 quarters in terms of history of the company and orders converted. And then we see a decent wave of orders that start to hit in the Q3 timeframe as that second batch of utilities get budgeting. I think there is -- there'll be that context that's inherent. It's not tied to the TRUSense Gateway. It's just an inherent aspect of our business.

Okay. That's good color. And just as a follow-up, it's clear that the TRUSense activity is really picking up now. Are you seeing sales cycles get easier thus far in the TRUSense journey? Like any perspective on that would be helpful.

Yes. I think what intrigues me and I think has gotten attention internally at Tantalus is that we've started certain trials or field trials of the TRUSense Gateway with utilities that are focused on a specific use case. And then through initial deployment and sharing information from other utilities, that's one of the great elements that I think you've seen at our users conference is utilities share information quite frequently, especially within our user community of what they're seeing and how they're addressing issues or benefits that they're extrapolating from our technology. What's intriguing is decision may be tied to one use case. But as the device is deployed and as we gather more data, we're seeing that in some circumstances, a second or third use case emerge that ties to a different department within the utility and gets their interest. And so, when we think about scalability inside a utility, this is true of everything that we do through the grid modernization platform, the goal is to ensure that our technology is delivering value to as many stakeholders within the utility as possible. The history of the business in terms of upgrading metering infrastructure and AMI, it typically was in a very specific area of the utility. The TRUSense Gateway brings us quickly into engineering and operations. It brings us into system planning and their distribution engineers. It gets you to the executive level very quickly. Not to say that AMI doesn't, because it's a significant expense and capital investment utilities make, but we're getting cross disciplines through the TRUSense Gateway. We're seeing that as an example at United Illuminating, another opportunity that we've highlighted publicly with an IOU in Connecticut. The primary use case there is around controlling load during the winter months with electric water heating and electric heating inside homes in an economically challenged area. The power quality data which was not part of the original basis for the utility to move forward with our pilot through the Innovation Energy Solutions Offering program, that power quality data is getting fed now into their engineering and operations team that initially wasn't part of our original pilot. That's where we get excited, where we can see multiple birds with one stone concept. And that, in my mind, increases probability of success in scaling quickly. I hope that answers your question, if I understood it correctly?

Yes. That's a great insight, Pete. And then just one last one for Azim. Just on the R&D spend or the R&D roadmap for the rest of the year, Azim, any planned investments or planned spending for the balance of the year that we can expect? Or is this a good kind of quarterly run rate to model from now?

Yes, it's a good run rate to use.

The next question will come from Daniel Rosenberg with Paradigm.

My first question comes around just the budgeting process and decision making for the utilities. I was wondering what the model is to get TRUSense more broadly adopted. And effectively, when you're targeting a utility, is it a traditional AMI upgrade and then discussion can start around TRUSense? Or is there a separate kind of approval process that needs to happen in order to start piloting TRUSense? And understanding that every utility is different, but just trying to get a sense of what requires a heavier decision process versus a direct sales process.

Let me -- I'll try to disaggregate that. First off, Daniel, thanks for the question and thanks for joining. The -- in terms of budgeting, I'd say on average, co-op is a little bit different than munis, both different than the investor-owned utility. So again, not as clean an answer because it varies. But I'd say sort of looking at it holistically, utilities operate, particularly muni public power and co-ops, they'll operate on an annual budget. That annual budget will include a multiyear CapEx model and priorities that the utility works on. Some utilities work on like a 10-year CapEx plan, some 5 years, some 3 years, some just year-to-year depending on size and flexibility and financial stability of the utility. But they all operate on an annual budget. Within the utility space, I'm going to talk public power and co-ops, the IO is a little bit different. But within public power and co-ops, which is where our focus is predominantly, everything that the utility does with the exception of some discretionary dollars is tied to specific initiative. And so within a budget year, you may get some of those discretionary dollars to activate field trials as new innovation unfolds or utilities learn new things when they attend conferences or hear from other neighboring utilities. But in order to really start program and dollar allocations in a material way, you got to be in the field with adequate time for those utilities to stress test the device and in some circumstances, look at different times where their peak load may hit. Some are winter, some utilities now winter and summer. You get a seasonal review of the product itself. And that's why we say it could be 3, 6, in some circumstances 9 months depending on utility. What's the seasonality that they're dealing with and when their peak load hits? From there, it's then how do you activate and get into the budget cycle with dollars allocated every year that then tie to a master CapEx or capital budget planning cycle? That's where I think I hear from a lot of folks, utilities move slowly. It's not that. It's just very deliberate and in the context of a fiscal process that they have to run through and that we have to model to. And so from my perspective, taking a step back, we've got 33 utilities activated already, in under 6 months effectively, of going commercial for all 3 versions combined. That gives us a pretty good opportunity to start seeing a chunk of those utilities prepare for their next budgeting cycle, some of which starts July 1 of this calendar year, which is why we've been indicating we would expect more revenue contribution from the TRUSense Gateway second half of this year and then a real ramp 2026 and into 2027. That's the budgeting side. The IOUs operate on rate cases typically state by state. It's a 3-year rate review. With that said, like in the state of Connecticut, there are exceptions where I wouldn't call it fast tracking, but as regulators create new initiatives or new drivers like the equitable modern grid in the state of Connecticut, there are exceptions and opportunities for a utility to go back within that 3-year window of their rate review and access additional dollars. There's also some discretionary spending with an IOU for testing of new innovation. And so I'd say we're pinpointing and prioritizing states like Connecticut where there is a movement at the regulatory level to drive innovation and new emerging regulatory drivers that enable utilities to go back for a review of CapEx investment and dollar spend instead of having to wait for a 3-year cycle to come up. That's sort of the focus at the IOU level and how they budget. Before we move on to the second part of your question, does that -- does that sort of give you a perspective on the budgeting process?

Yes, that's great. Thank you.

Okay. And then as it relates to the second half of your question, it really depends. We are seeing through some channel partners, particularly Urby, which is one of the leaders on the broadband side in public power and electric co-ops where they're deploying and managing fiber networks that are being deployed rapidly at utilities. We're seeing opportunity to leverage the TRUSense Gateway as our differentiator and path to help those utilities upgrade a legacy metering infrastructure over time. In that circumstance, the sale may start on the broadband side and quickly migrates over to the group or the silo that's focused on metering and customer engagement and billing. Within our own -- that's an example of one scenario. Within our own existing customer base, which is about 75% of the first 33 utilities, Daniel, it's a combination of the folks we've been interacting with for some time on the metering side as they're preparing for an upgrade of our system. Particularly some utilities that are into the second decade, 12, 15-plus years with earlier generation technology from Tantalus. That leads to upgrade of metering infrastructure. But we're also seeing our champions inside existing customers share data with their colleagues on the engineering and operations side. It's justification of accelerated investment to upgrade across the utility. That's where I think we'll demonstrate the multi-use case scenarios within the existing customer base the quickest. I hope -- sorry, it's long-winded, but I hope that addresses the second part of your question.

Yes, that's helpful. Lastly for me, I heard a lot about transformer analytics and you just spoke about fiber deployment as very interesting use cases for TRUSense. Are these the main product sets that you envision driving growth in the next few years? Or are there any other use cases that excite you as we think about the future for Tantalus?

Yes. It gets a little bit into -- your question gets into our roadmap, Daniel. And not to tip hand, I'd say we're fortunate that the innovation our team has been able to deliver between the TRUSense Gateway, our grid reliability, and our transformer monitoring analytics tools are gathering increased levels of attention and confidence from utilities to scale the company. In parallel, I think what you can expect from our organization, from product management to engineering to our customer ops and delivery, is harnessing the power of the data that we're capturing as it relates particularly to power quality measurements. This device is unique. Over 1,000 data points per second and capturing 17 different parameters that tie to power quality. I think there are a number of incremental use cases that fall under advanced power quality measurement that will lead to incremental analytics tools for utilities beyond transformer monitoring and grid reliability. I think we'll be excited to put our arms around that and, frankly, working with some utilities already on the next set of analytics tools that we'll bring to the market. But it's all going to tie to --the means to the end is getting the data. That data is from the TRUSense Gateway.

The next question will come from Gabriel Leung with Beacon Securities.

Pete, during the I guess the investor update during the user conference, you had indicated that you weren't getting much in the way of pushback from customers on the proposed surcharge that you're applying on your hardware. I'm just curious, I know it's been a couple of weeks, but has there been any sort of change in tune in terms of utilities and their sort of willingness to spend given the base tariffs are in place right now?

Yes. Thank you, Gabe, something that we're monitoring daily. As it relates to our approach on presenting the tariff as a surcharge and then absorbing some portion of it to help, I think the overarching feedback that's been shared with me directly or through team is one of appreciation. I think we have the right to pass that tariff on. Utilities know that. The willingness to share in some of it I think is not lost on decision-makers inside utilities, particularly as they think about long-standing trusted technology partners that survive and relationships that survive. I'd say the feedback has been favorable. I am not aware yet of a utility pushing back on the concept at all or that they're on the hook relative to the Ts and Cs in our agreements. As it relates to behavior, we're still seeing good traction through Q2 through our sales activity. I think the -- I wouldn't be surprised, Gabriel, if we see some utilities take a kind of wait-and-see approach, not just on the TRUSense Gateway, but in general, And not just on Tantalus, but generally in terms of CapEx spend. It's what we kind of saw -- I don't think it will be as severe as what we saw back in the days of COVID, but it's a data point. There's a disruption, there's uncertainty in the economy, there's uncertainty in the market, there's uncertainty as it relates to interest rates and cost of capital. And so utility is not alone. Businesses typically pull back on CapEx. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some utilities do that. The flip side to that is, the challenge of tariff creates opportunity. And the fact that there are large public companies communicating that their factories are full for transformers and critical assets for the next 24 months, 36 months, means utilities got to protect what they've got. And the TRUSense Gateway surgically deployed with analytics is a way to do it. I don't see long-term or medium-term disruption. Whether we see a couple of utilities hold off months, weeks, possible. We haven't seen it yet, Gabe, but it doesn't mean it doesn't surface as the tariffs kind of continue.

Got you. That's helpful. And just a question for Azim. As it relates to the tariffs, just from a modeling perspective, are we going to see that as sort of a bump up on the revenue side offset on the cost of goods side so that the net impact is I guess ultimately a negative on the gross profit side of things?

Yes, that's the way to look at it. To the extent that we can recover, it will come in as a revenue item. The other way we're kind of thinking about it is to actually show it as an other, as a net other, so it doesn't sort of mess up our numbers a little bit, but we're still working our way through that.

The next question will come from Daniel Magder with Raymond James.

Congrats on an excellent quarter. I guess just a few quick ones for me, given some of the earlier questions. We've touched on analytics, but I was wondering specifically about cybersecurity and whether that's become more of a focal point in your discussions with the utilities, especially given the recent events in Europe.

Yes. Daniel, I haven't yet seen that the circumstances in Europe were tied to a cyber or malicious attack. It looks from everything that I'm reading is just the variability of renewables and not having enough spinning reserve to maintain inertia within the system. So unfortunately, I should say nothing is fortunate, excuse me, but it doesn't look like it's been malicious. It's just a function of system planning. With that said, within our Utility of the Future survey that we just issued last week, #1 issue within grid modernization was how to manage the increasing volume of data from the grid. Right up there and top of the list was how to fortify with cybersecurity. Absolutely high priority and an area of focus all the way down to contracting in terms and conditions in today's world. We don't offer a cybersecurity solution per se. We wrap everything that we do with cybersecurity and hence it's important enough where we've put that expertise at our Board of Directors level with the addition of Christy Honey from her days as Chief Information Security Officer at Ontario Power Generation. We continue to beef up our core competencies and continue to track best practices. I'd say that the team from Congruitive that we acquired a few years ago, while it may not necessarily show up as a dedicated line item from a revenue perspective, the cybersecurity wrapped around our grid data management system we now call TruSync, that was part and parcel to the value that we saw in Congruitive and sort of forward thinking on how we do everything possible to mitigate that exposure.

Got it. Very helpful. I guess maybe a question for Azim here. But regarding your debt, obviously the refinancing and the repayment of the line of credit, with the impressive cash generation here, would the plan be to pay down your debt as quickly as possible? Or is that just a function of revenue growth and the funds needed to fund your working capital?

Yes. Thanks for the question. From our perspective, we're just looking to optimize the debt. And whether that includes refinancing or paying down a portion of it is some of the analysis we're working our way through. But in terms of -- if you look at our existing cost of debt right now, it's actually quite expensive. And so that's one of the things that we're focused on over the coming months is trying to figure out what's the best way to optimize that and all options are on the table.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to our CEO, Mr. Peter Londa. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you all for dialing in to our Q1 financial results earnings call. As I mentioned at the outset, Azim and I have the pleasure and the honor to report our results on behalf of the entire team at Tantalus, and I'm grateful for the continued support of employees, customers, and our shareholders. I hope you all have a productive balance of the day, and we'll look forward to providing continued updates on future earnings calls. Thanks for your time. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.