Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm David Kenneson, Co-CEO of EROAD. I'm joined by my fellow Co-CEO, Mark Heine, and our Interim CFO, Rebecca Lineham. We're excited to walk through our FY 2025 results. I'll start by highlighting our performance. Rebecca will then dive into the financials, and Mark will take you through the strategic progress we've made and where we're heading in FY 2026. FY 2025 was a year of strong execution, consistent delivery, and steady momentum at EROAD. Put simply, we did what we said we would. We hit the top end of our guidance despite navigating one of the most challenging macroeconomic environments we've seen in years, and we did it while making tangible progress against our long-term strategy. We delivered an impressive $16 million in free cash flow up $14.7 million from FY 2024.
That's a result that speaks for our disciplined execution and operational resilience. Reported revenue grew 7% year- over- year, reaching $194.4 million. Annual recurring revenue rose 6.2% to just over $175 million. Normalized EBIT landed at nearly $10 million, and we returned to profit. This was a performance that balanced growth, profitability, and efficiency in equal measure. ARR has been restated to represent annualized recurring revenue from subscriptions. This is revenue that is contracted with customers for services and associated hardware over a set term. We believe this represents predictable, high-quality revenue and provides a clear measure of our performance. This journey has been deliberate and focused on seizing opportunity at every step. Our story and our product were both simple, focused on RUC compliance and our flagship product over time.
That began to shift as we launched eHubo2, expanded into driver safety with DriveBuddy, and moved into new markets in Australia and North America. As more enterprise customers joined our platform, expectations and opportunities grew. From 2020 to today, we've been on a journey of rapid maturity. We've transitioned from fleet compliance company to a platform technology business. Our merger with Cortex more than doubled our U.S. footprint, and it expanded our vertical offerings and positioned us as a true platform player. In FY 2023, we set out a bold growth agenda and a clear roadmap to deliver on it. While there's always more to do, our trajectory is clear. We are on track. Two consecutive years of relentless focus have produced meaningful progress.
With a strong balance sheet, $16 million in free cash flow, and 54% of our global ARR now driven by enterprise customers, EROAD is operating from a position of strength. Internally, we've built greater maturity into our operations, grounded in a culture of efficiency, discipline, and execution. We're now operating a more powerful and more efficient engine, built and fueled by passionate, experienced, and capable people. Our strategic future rests on three pillars: extending our platform through our partners, embedding intelligence through AI, and co-developing solutions alongside our customers. Let's take a closer look at how these three pillars come to life. Platform extensions. We're creating value through a layered partner ecosystem. Alliances with Microsoft, Thermo King, and Geotab add credibility, scale, and specialized capabilities. We're also integrating third-party tools already in use by our customers, giving them a unified, single pane-of-glass view across their operations.
In terms of embedded intelligence, operational data has always been our most powerful asset. With AI, we're converting that into real-time intelligence. Features like fatigue detection and our Clarity Edge camera are already making real-world impacts. We're going further. We're embedding AI across the entire platform to turn raw data into scalable intelligence that drives safety, compliance, and fleet performance. Customer-led innovation. Our customers are our co-pilots in development. Through our professional services team and pilot programs, we're building solutions that solve specific operational challenges. These aren't one-off fixes. They scale across regions, sectors, and use cases. Strong performance doesn't happen by chance. It's the result of focused discipline in four key areas: cash generation. In FY2025, we delivered $16 million in free cash flow. If you normalize for the temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program, that number rises to $23.6 million.
We achieved this through a combination of price optimization, strong customer retention, and expansion of existing contracts, and tight cost controls. Our working capital efficiency also improved meaningfully, thanks in part to better inventory management and the rollout of annual customer billing. That gave us room to pay down $11.3 million of our revolving credit while maintaining over $63 million in liquidity. With sunrise costs tapering off and expansion ARR building momentum, we expect normalized free cash flow yields of over 9% in FY 2026. This gives us flexibility and confidence to continue investing where it matters most. Moving on to our disciplined investment strategy. We are investing purposely, prioritizing customer-led innovation and co-funded development. Of the new investment plan for FY 2026, over $2.5 million is tied to projects with high certainty revenue generation from existing enterprise customers. These are not speculative features.
They are designed and co-developed alongside our customers to solve high-value problems. Once completed, these capabilities will be released as scalable products across our broader customer base. We are also finishing the final leg of our 4G upgrade program this year, which, once completed, will materially reduce our CapEx run rate and contribute further to cash generation going forward. We are extending our platform reach through strategic partnerships, adding functionality and go-to-market depth without inflating R&D spend or compromising delivery velocity. With customer expansions, when our customers see value, they invest deeper. We saw that again this year. Customer expansion grew ARR by $15.5 million across our base. That includes both contract expansions and multi-product adoption. A significant portion is already reflected in our final ARR count for FY 2025. Notably, 54% of our global ARR is now concentrated in customers generating more than $100,000 annually.
That's up 7% year over year. This shift signals not growth, but quality growth: long-term, high-value partnerships with enterprise fleets. It also reinforces our platform's ROI during economic pressure. Customers are consolidating tools and leaning into solutions that drive measurable cost savings, and EROAD is delivering. Lastly, our late-stage pipeline. Finally, let's talk about the road ahead. Our late-stage enterprise pipeline continues to expand, especially across North America and Australia. The top five deals currently in the pipeline are weighted to those two regions, and 53% are with new logos, proof that our platform continues to open new doors. These opportunities have long sales cycles, typically 18 to 24 months, and we're nearing decision windows on several of them. We're also seeing strong activity across refrigerated transport, construction, and food logistics. These are industries that value safety, compliance, and efficiency.
While recent U.S. tariff developments may elongate the sales cycle slightly, we're already engaging in those conversations. Our role in improving supply chain visibility and compliance positions us well to navigate the macroeconomic environment and emerge with stronger customer commitments. This slide is a clear visual of how our strategy is working in practice. We've said that we want sustainable, profitable, and high-quality growth, and this is what that looks like. First, we're seeing a material improvement in free cash flow, and that's not just a one-off. It's a structural shift. It gives us the flexibility to keep investing in the right places while preserving our financial strength. Second, the number of customers generating over $100,000 in ARR increased 6.7% year- over- year. That's a reflection of both customer confidence and our ability to grow within our base.
We're leveling up the accounts we already have, helping them to move from single product adoption to integrated enterprise-grade solutions. Third, look at the gap between revenue and operating cost. That gap continues to widen with revenue rising and costs decreasing. That's operational leverage in action, and it's coming from deliberate trade-offs. We've dialed up or down acquisition spending to match the timing of pipeline opportunity, ensuring our resources are aligned to impact. These aren't just good numbers. They're evidence of a business operating with precision, focus, and long-term discipline. Now, let's shift to our home market, New Zealand, which once again delivered an outstanding performance. Despite macroeconomic headwinds and overall cautious customer sentiment, our New Zealand business outperformed market conditions. Revenue crossed $100 million, up 12.9% year- over- year, and we delivered $53 million in free cash flow.
Our pool increased 3% to just over $60, while ARR rose 6.5% to $89 million, and our asset retention rate held strong at 93.5%. We also secured a major enterprise renewal and added over $7 million in ARR through customer expansions. That growth is powered by deep trust and relationships and the consistent delivery of measurable value. A highlight from FY 2025 would be that RUC mileage nationally has dipped over the last two years, yet EROAD share has grown. Distance traveled through our system increased 4%, and we now account for 56% of heavy vehicle distance in New Zealand. Our partnership with Geotab is also creating new opportunities in late commercial fleets, helping expand our total addressable market and future-proof our position. Now to our 4G upgrade program, a critical enabler of future growth.
We're in the final year of a three-year upgrade program, transitioning 2G and 3G units to our next-generation 4G hardware. As of March 31st, we're over three-quarters of the way through ANZ units that were transferred to the 4G-compatible hardware. With 3G shutdown in New Zealand slated for December 2025, we've slightly increased our investment to make sure our customers are fully upgraded before then. This program ensures we maintain our leadership position in quality and reliability. More importantly, once complete, this program will significantly boost our free cash flow profile while also enabling deeper expansion in the customer fleets through additional product layers and services. New Zealand remains a high-value and strategically important market for EROAD. Our brand stands for trust and reliability, and that's built on a track record of strong returns to our customers.
Case in point, in FY 2025, eRUC alone delivered $81.5 million in direct value to our customers. In a cost-sensitive environment, that kind of return isn't just appreciated; it builds long-term loyalty and creates a strong foundation for cross-sell and upsell into broader platform offerings. Looking forward, our opportunity is growing. EV adoption is on the rise, and the proposed changes to road charging models like time-of-use pricing could open new service and data layers. Our Geotab partnership extends our reach into the late commercial segment. With this and other factors in play, our total addressable market in New Zealand is increasing from 1 million to 4.6 million vehicles. Products like Clarity Edge are gaining momentum as well, driven by rising demand for safety, liability protection, and real-time insights. We've calculated our TAM to reflect not just today's market, but the opportunity unlocked by platform innovation.
Let's move on to North America, where we continue to see a long-term strategic upside. In FY 2025, ARR grew 4% to just over $73 million. EBITDA was very strong at $17.7 million. We added $4.9 million in ARR from existing customers, which is a signal that our solutions are delivering value and earning expansion. Asset retention held firm at 92%, reflecting the strength of our enterprise relationships. Some churn occurred in lower-value SMB and dealer-led accounts, but that was expected and aligned with our strategy of prioritizing large, complex fleets. Despite churning units, ARR remained stable thanks to growth in higher-value enterprise accounts, and that's the power of our land and expand model. We also saw disciplined capital allocation in the region, delivering $16 million in free cash flow. We scaled back spend strategically to prioritize pilot conversions and future opportunities. That opportunity is now in the near-term horizon.
Many pilots are nearing decision points, and we're positioned to convert. Let's briefly touch on the geopolitical landscape. Recent tariff announcements have created uncertainty for global suppliers into the U.S. That said, EROAD's exposure is limited. 42% of our revenue is U.S.-based, but of that, 88% is services, not hardware, and thus not subject to the import tariffs. We've also taken proactive steps, evaluating alternative supply chains, leveraging U.S.-based inventory, and exploring refurbishment and cross-border efficiency options. We're evolving our platform architecture so that we can deploy EROAD solutions independent of hardware, and that flexibility reduces upfront costs and accelerates deployment. Beyond risk mitigation, we also see opportunity. As U.S. enterprises localize supply chains, demand for transport visibility and logistic efficiency will increase. We're ready to meet that demand. North America remains a complex but opportunity-rich market.
Yes, freight demand has been under pressure, but solutions focused on compliance and safety are gaining traction, supported by regulatory and insurance tailwinds. We stayed disciplined, concentrating on enterprise pilots and deepening multi-product relationships. Several of those efforts are now in late-stage conversations. Our platform, SAM, in North America now exceeds $2.6 billion. Importantly, the bulk of that opportunity lies beyond basic telematics. For example, dashcams still have less than 45% market penetration versus ELDs, which are basically fully saturated. That's where our next wave of growth will come: products like the Clarity Edge that deliver value through safety, performance, and operational insight. Combine that with increasing OEM integrations and shift in domestic logistics, we're in a strong position to accelerate as the market recovers. In Australia, we delivered impressive results in FY 2025. ARR grew 19% year over year, reflecting strong execution in Trans-Tasman and enterprise expansion.
Our pool increased 3.7%, driven by product mix and upsell momentum. There was a known enterprise roll off that concluded in August 2024, and it did affect asset retention for the year, which lands around 89%. With that now behind us, we expect greater stability going forward. Australia remains relatively underpenetrated with significant upside. We're seeing strong demand for high-compliance, whole-of-fleet solutions across verticals like construction, logistics, and food distribution. EROAD is uniquely positioned to meet that demand with a unified platform offering. Australia is a market in motion. The telematics sector here is consolidating, and EROAD's relatively small footprint gives us headroom to grow. Our Trans-Tasman strategy is proving effective, with one of our largest New Zealand-based customers expanding into Australia this year. Australian customers are heavily compliance-focused. They're looking for technology partners that can help them reduce risk, improve safety, and drive operational insight.
That's exactly where Clarity Edge is gaining traction, addressing liability and real-time performance visibility. Perhaps most excitingly, Australia represents a whole fleet opportunity. Enterprise customers want one provider to manage trucks, trailers, and light commercial vehicles. EROAD can be that provider, delivering efficiency, insight, and unified reporting across their entire fleet. Before I hand it over to Rebecca to take you through the numbers, I want to pause and recognize the people who trust us with their business, our customers. Their work is vital. They're on the road day in and day out, keeping our economies moving and our communities supplied. What they do is not easy, and safety is everything. One driver recently avoided a serious accident thanks to our Clarity Edge AI camera. The voice activation feature woke them up from a microsleep in the Ranges.
That driver made it home safely and now shares that footage as part of a company-wide driver training initiative. That story reminds us all of what we do here at EROAD. With that, I'll hand it over to Rebecca to take you through our FY 2025 financials.
Thank you, David. From a financial perspective, we've continued to execute on our strategy set out in March 2023 to reposition the company to generate cash, driven by resetting the cost base, reducing inventory levels, and growing our North American business. As David mentioned, FY 2025 revenue reached $194.4 million, a 7% increase from last year. This is driven by growth across all our key markets, with a strong performance in our SaaS business, where annual recurring revenue also grew over 6%, demonstrating the continued success of our strategy of expanding into high-value enterprise accounts and the resilience of our global customer base.
From the previously announced large enterprise customer win in Australia, we've rolled out over just half the hardware at 31 March, and we're making good progress with the remaining to be rolled out over the next few months. The hardware costs were mainly incurred in FY 2025, however, the majority of the revenue in ARR impact will be in the coming year. In terms of EBIT, we saw a significant improvement to $5.9 million, up from a re-stated $0.2 million in FY 2024. Normalizing for the 4G upgrade program, we increased EBIT to $9.9 million for the year, placing us at the upper end of our guidance range and an improvement of 161% from FY 2024. This EBIT growth is another clear reflection of our success in delivering on our strategy, with enterprise rollouts, expansion with existing customers, price increases, and disciplined financial management across our cost base, all combining to improve operating leverage.
In FY 2025, we saw the stabilization of operating costs as a percentage of revenue at 69%. This reflects the culture we've built to relentlessly focus on cost discipline. Wage growth was partially offset by savings in SaaS and other costs to operate our units as a result of negotiations with telco providers and optimization. In FY 2025, there are write-offs of aged debt amounts due to focused efforts on clearing up historical balances. While debtors increased by 25%, the provision is determined under the expected credit loss methodology. The provision of debtors was at 22% in FY 2025 versus 18% in FY 2024. We're seeing the full impact of our cost-out program that was undertaken in FY 2023 and 2024. Any further cost savings will come from optimizing our cost base to support our growth.
One way we're doing that is augmenting our teams with the expansion focused on building our engineering and customer support teams in Manila as a starting point. This allows us to grow capability while maintaining our cost base, which will drive additional operating leverage. Both our cost to acquire and our cost to support our customers has remained relatively steady as a percentage of revenue. Capitalized costs to acquire were lower this year, with the prior year reflecting commissions related to a closing of a large enterprise deal in North America. Following this rollout in North America, we've increased our service and support costs as a percentage slightly to build capability in the region. Now turning to our research and development spend. In FY 2025, our R&D expenditure totaled $35 million, which represents 18% of revenue.
While this percentage was consistent with last year, in FY 2025, our R&D efforts were more heavily focused on support and system maintenance, which is now capitalizable. This shift follows significant investment in the prior year, facilitating the onboarding of major customers like Cisco. Looking ahead, we expect our R&D investments to be more balanced towards innovation initiatives, which will be capitalizable. Our R&D program continues to focus on expanding our product offering, particularly in areas such as AI-driven safety solutions, embedded intelligence, and partnering with other hardware providers to extend our platform. Customer-led innovations is another area we're making significant progress and expect innovative product development for our large enterprise customers to generate long-term value as they scale across our customer base. Generating free cash flow continues to be a top priority for us, and that is evident in our result.
We are thrilled to have significantly exceeded our 2025 guidance by generating $16 million of free cash flow. This marks the second consecutive year we've delivered on that commitment, and it reflects the strength of our business model, our disciplined execution, and our focus on driving long-term value for our shareholders. There was an inventory build-up in the previous year to support enterprise rollouts and our 4G upgrade in the current. Similar to previous years, for FY 2026, we are forecasting the profile of inventory purchasing for the 4G upgrade program to be weighted to the first half of the year. We will continue to see the benefit of shifting to annual invoicing for new customers and existing customers when they renew and expect to roll this program out to ANZ customers this year.
When we remove the temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program, the company generated $23.6 million in normalized free cash flow. This normalization shows the underlying performance of our business. As the 4G upgrade program is completed by the end of this calendar year and would continue to deliver on our strategy, we expect to see fresh free cash flow continue to accelerate. I'll hand over to Mark.
Thank you, Rebecca. Our return on investment breakdown says a lot. Let me add a little industry context first. Roughly 90% of avocados in the U.S. come from Mexico. If the proposed 25% tariffs become permanent, they and a lot of other products just got a lot more precious. Both margins and supply are a little unclear right now. That uncertainty is rippling through our customer base, particularly with food transport.
Now, when margins are tight, regulatory scrutiny is high and all supply chains are in flux. Therefore, protecting every load goes from important to critical. One fault can wipe out the value of a shipment. This is where EROAD's cold chain platform delivers real value for our customers. In a recent pilot illustrated here, we have integrated our full refresh solution stack to equip operators to act earlier, prevent loss, and maintain compliance. Working with real data, we were able to prove and analyze a 17% reduction in operating spend, with projected 5% annual ROI on the EROAD platform once rolled out. This is a real and compelling return for a real customer problem. There is EROAD. This solution, which is where EROAD began, continues to provide a very tangible ROI to our customers.
Users of diesel-powered, electric, and heavy vehicles in New Zealand pay road user charges, essentially a tax to pay for road maintenance based on kilometers traveled. EROAD's solution allows our customers to accurately measure distance and receive rebates for distance traveled off-road, as well as reducing administration costs. The ROI for our customers is huge. Combined, the administrative savings, off-road rebates, and accurate distance correction amounts to an $81 million saving for customers in one year alone. This is 80% of the total revenue generated from New Zealand's business in 2025. This level of return is what gives us confidence, even in rocky climates. EROAD also continues to work closely with New Zealand government on connected vehicle technology. This includes recently working on a proof of concept on ingesting connected vehicle data directly into EROAD's platform.
Such connected vehicle technology can be directly applied to road payments, network optimization, and safety outcomes. EROAD is, again, leading the world in this area. This slide shows how a regulatory-led strategy drives long-term ARR growth through both product expansion and organic customer growth. It starts with initial requirements, typically a compliance-mandated product like ELD, EROAD, or our cold chain solution under the US Food and Safety Modernization Act. These entry points are low friction but high value, allowing us to build trust and demonstrate ROI quickly. Once our customers are on the platform, the ROI becomes clear. That's when we see growth, first through increased usage and fleet growth, then through cross-sell into other modules. Now, that might be things like Inspect, our driver comms, or our fatigue monitoring solutions.
In this example, we've shown how one customer expanded their annualized recurring revenue with EROAD over five times within three years. It's a strong proof point for our land and expand model, and one of the key drivers behind our account-level growth and ARR increase. Beyond increasing value, we also find that multi-product customers are far more engaged and stickier than single-product accounts, allowing for more predictability in future revenue. The strategy is working. We land with a strong value proposition. We deliver results, and over time, our customers grow with us either by their own organic growth or through adoption of additional products or services. Over FY 2025, we made targeted product investments aligned to three key areas of value for our customers, being compliance, safety, and productivity. These investments are directly linked to market needs.
They're designed to expand our addressable opportunity, deepening our customer value, and to drive ARR growth. There are three solutions for us to call out today. First is our AI dash cam, Clarity Edge. Not only has David mentioned that this camera has actually saved lives already, but we've also received excellent customer feedback on how the solution identifies only the key events that actually matter, saving time for our customers. Second is our EROAD Geotab partnership. This has broadened EROAD's product-market fit and our addressable customer base. Finally, our latest fleet navigation solution. This solution, in real time, optimizes routes and saves time both for drivers and costs for our customers. Now, as we enter FY 2026, we will maintain our clear focus on complex fleet operations, disciplined growth, and commitment to delivering value through our innovation. At EROAD, we have an incredibly strong revenue base.
This begins with our high-quality subscription ARR. And our low churn, combined with supplying critical technology transport sector, gives us confidence in the annualized recurring revenue we earn for our customers. We also remain committed to a medium-term ARR compound annual growth rate of between 11% and 13%. For full year FY 2026 guidance, today we provide baseline targets, which we aim to exceed. For ARR, which is our preferred metric, we forecast a minimum of $188 million of subscription revenue this financial year. As to total revenue, we are targeting a minimum of $205 million with upside growth. Our total revenue will reflect the completion of ongoing rollouts, expansion of our solution to existing customers, and closing off large enterprise customers who are already in our pipeline. Finally, as free cash flow yield, we continue to ensure EROAD focuses on sustainable, profitable growth.
To this end, we expect free cash flow yield to be between 8% and 10% for the year. As to the outlook in each of our regions, in North America, our focus is to continue to build our pipeline while converting existing opportunities into completed deals. In New Zealand, we're seeing press opportunity to leverage brand recognition to capture new enterprise accounts and add value for our existing customers. The proposed government-related mandate for electronic routing charges presents a compelling medium- to long-term growth opportunity, underpinned by the commitment to implement EROAD across all vehicles by 2027. EROAD has evolved in supporting governments on this journey. Finally, we've evolved in momentum in Australia, continuing to leverage our experience with Trans-Tasman customers and launching an expanded product suite. We see Australia as a real growth market and will continue to invest and explore opportunities here.
On behalf of everyone at EROAD, we thank you, our shareholders, for your continued support. Over the last three years, EROAD has laid a much stronger financial foundation that is now driving EROAD on a path to more sustainable, profitable growth. We would also like to thank our growing customer base for the opportunity to support their business through EROAD. Now we'll hand over to Jason Kepecs for your questions.
Thanks, Mark. First question is for you. With the excess cash that you're generating, how do you plan to deploy it in the future?
Look, first, we are delighted about our strong free cash flow for this year. As David mentioned, we've said structural shifts, which only get better as the 2G to 3G upgrade rolls off into our next financial year.
In terms of where we plan to invest, first, we see real opportunities for high growth in returns of capital, particularly around R&D in the short term. We will continue to target making sure we get at least 20%-30% return on any investment we put into R&D. If you look at Australia right now, there are some structural changes happening in the market around ownership. We believe it is prudent to maintain some dry powder to take advantage of those opportunities in the near term. In the medium term, we will probably consider some inorganic growth opportunities that may provide margin expansion.
Thanks, Mark. A question for David. How has the upfront rolling bill out, billing rollout been going? Can you tell me about the benefits?
Yeah, sure. The upfront billing, we rolled about 17% of our total revenue. We have shifted to upfront billing.
The benefits there are on several fronts. First of all, it reduces the number of invoices by over 91% a year. That is obviously going to give a little bit of relief to our SG&A. Most importantly, what it is doing is it is allowing the customers to fund the hardware as opposed to previously, we would have to fund the hardware, which caused real lumpiness in our cash position. It is much more steady now.
Thanks. Rebecca, why have your 4G hardware upgrade program costs expanded, or are they higher this year than previously guided?
The $30 million guidance from the program was from the outset, which was in FY 2023. The cost appreciation to $32 million is really driven by an increase in hardware costs over the time period, partly due to the extension of the shutdown date and changes to the FX rate.
At this stage, we would not expect the cost to materially change from the current view, but FX may impact final costs along with the recovery of installation costs.
Thank you. David, can you talk to us about the growth in the U.S.? Where did you grow and where did you turn?
Yeah. U.S. growth for FY 2025 was about $5 million ARR and was primarily upsell to existing customers through either fleet expansion, which is upsell, and then, of course, cross-sell with our new AI digital camera. The majority of churn, almost 75% of it, $4.7 million, was in the SMB space. That is consistent with our strategy of focusing on large enterprise accounts. The last remaining 25% that did come from enterprise accounts, they were relatively a small number, and they were previously disclosed in previous fiscal years. It just impacted FY 2025.
Thanks.
You had previously, Rebecca, you had previously disclosed a large Australian enterprise win. Can you tell us how much of that win contributed to FY 2025 and how much of it is expected in FY 2026?
Sure. So we've been working really hard on that rollout since June 2024, and it's gaining momentum with a plan to accelerate the remainder over the next couple of months. Currently, approximately just over 3,000 units have been installed, with another 2,000 units to go. We saw about $300,000 of revenue in FY 2025, and we're expecting approximately $1.1 million of revenue for those units which are currently installed, which will increase as more units are installed, building to the full $2.2 million of ARR upon full installation. Also, just to note, the cost for installed hardware for the customer for the year was $1.1 million.
As you know, with our business model, it's CapEx heavy in the first year, which impacts cash flow negatively, which will convert into positive free cash flow in year two and beyond.
Thanks. Question on the cost-out program. Having completed the cost-out, how is the cost base positioned as you scale? What further cost savings can you realize?
You're right, Jason. We are now seeing the full impact of the cost-out program we undertook in 2023 and 2024. Any further cost savings will come from optimizing our cost base to support our growth. One way of doing that is augmenting our team with our expansion focused on building our engineering and customer support teams in Manila as a starting point. This is allowing us to grow our capability while maintaining our cost base, which will drive additional operating leverage.
Thank you.
This question was partially answered, but if large deals do close in excess of baseline, would your 8% to 10% free cash flow margin be revised downward to account for the upfront hardware costs?
For a lot of our large enterprise accounts, we're now moving from a build upon install to a build to the contract. What it's allowing us to do is get cash upfront, really on signing of the contract and not have the delay of the logistics of actually installation. The answer is no.
Investment in hardware dropped this year from $32 million to $14 million. How much of that was related to the 4G hardware upgrade? How should we think about this going forward?
You're right, Jason.
Some of that was related to the 4G upgrade program, but the rest of it was actually for the rollout of new customers in FY 2024. We are ensuring that we had the stock on hand at the end of 2024 for the rollouts that were planned in early 2025.
The next question is, is there a normalized EBIT guidance range you can provide for us in FY 2026?
What we are saying is, from a profitability point of view, our focus is very much on generating positive free cash flows. We are giving that number to the market. No, we do not have an EBIT number we will be sharing with the market.
Next question. You put FY 2026 free cash flow guidance at a midpoint of 9%, so between the range of 8% to 10%.
Even though there was a strong free cash flow result in this quarter, in this year, are there any risks to this 9% number given some of the one-offs that were taken in FY 2025?
We do not believe there is. No, we have been very careful about positioning that number and what we think would be realistic free cash flow generation if we achieve the bottom end of our guidance. We are hoping that will obviously perform and that will then obviously have a benefit on our free cash flow going forward as well.
Next question. When we think about the ARR guidance of 7.5% growth in FY 2026, how should we think about that amount coming from new versus existing and the U.S. versus ANZ?
Yeah, sure. The breakdown between new and existing is going to be about 50/50, looking at our pipeline today.
Coming from the Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. markets, it's probably going to be heavily weighted towards North America, followed by Australia, and lastly by New Zealand in terms of net new customers.
This is a question about the ARR. It appears to drop versus last year. The question is, what was the adjusted number? How can we look at that? Why that happened?
We have made the decision to restate our ARR, and that is to more clearly represent the annualized recurring revenue that we get from subscription, which includes bundled hardware rental but excludes amortized revenue such as hardware sold under a CapEx model. We found this is lumpier, and we believe that the restated ARR provides a better view of the quality of our earnings.
Thanks. David, how many potential new clients in your pipeline are in the final stage of trialing with a view to making a decision in FY 2026?
Yeah, it's a great question. We have five large flagship customers right now that are in the late stages. One of the trials has already been completed, and we're actually in lot. We turned one of their pilot sites in Riverside, California, to a live production site. There's been some delay in the rollout to the rest of North America just due to the tariffs, but we believe the other ones are really large customers in construction, Clarity Edge, as well as Reefer. Those are kind of where we're seeing the big adoptions. We see them right now. We see three large ones in North America, and we have two in the ANZ region here as well, all in late stage.
It's a question about guidance being lower next year than it had been previously. Can you talk about that, the vision for next year and how that is going to grow into the future?
Sure. In our guidance, we're being conservative. We're looking at, as David's mentioned before, this being an elongation of delivery against the pipeline due to tariff impacts. New Zealand market's been somewhat soft as well in terms of impact on fleet companies. With guidance of about $25 million for revenue, we do believe that's baseline and we can grow ahead of that. Certainly targeting in the mid-range to get our ARR back to 11% to 13% as we see the economy recover. The freight sector is exposed to the economy. We do understand that that has some impact that we need to obviously see our customers improve.
Then by the economy bouncing back, we believe we'll be able to get back to our initial guide of between 11% to 13%.
Thanks. Can you talk about the price increases in your markets in FY 2025, and do you expect similar price increases in FY 2026?
We will continue to consider price increases that align with the value of our products, of course. We believe our products provide our customers with significant value through the cost savings, improved compliance with the drivers, and fleet management analytics, which allow them to run safer and better optimized operations. We're always considering that and viewing the value that our products offer our customers.
Thanks. Can you shed more light on the R&D costs? What are the biggest components in that, given that they are a material component of your cash flow?
Sure. This year, there's a bit more of a weighting towards optics. When it came to R&D, that reflects the fact that we've rolled out some significant customers recently on our platform. We invest a bit more into the maintenance support of that in FY 2025 to help support them and going forward, we'll help support them as well. We'll be going back to more CapEx into FY 2026, and that's really focusing around our innovation pipeline that we have. We recently brought to market AI Dashcam. We see other great solutions we can do and bring to market, which would help support that. We have greater focus going forward onto innovation capitalization.
Thanks. Can you talk about pricing pressures for U.S. customers in the U.S. market?
Yeah. Certainly at the SMB level, they're highly price elastic.
People in the market looking for just a simple ELD-compliant device is part of the market that we're not really interested in playing in. I talked earlier about the churn. That's primarily where we see it. At the enterprise level, the breadth of our solution and the value of our solution really does not lend itself to pricing pressures at all. It is really about making sure our customers and our prospects are comfortable with our ability to deliver. So far, the signs are showing that they are.
Thanks. Question on the North American pipeline. To what extent are the opportunities in the late stage included in FY 2026 guidance? Can you talk a little bit about the industries that they're in?
Yeah. The industries we're seeing right now are CPG, food.
Both of those are around, obviously, our core temp solution to make sure that those loads are kept safe. We also see an uptick in construction and some mining solutions that we're looking at right now. Otherwise, it's just larger fleets.
That hardware is a significant cost. Do you have any strategic plans to cost it down on an ongoing basis?
There are a couple of points there. One is we continue to always focus on how do we get the most out of our hardware and cost down. We have a team that's focusing all the time on bill of materials, places of manufacture, and the like, so we can get the best possible return on that. Second is we're transitioning more and more out of hardware.
One of the key opportunities in the pipeline is more weighted to connected vehicles, so hardware will be less prominent. We recently, as I mentioned, had done a connected vehicle trial with New Zealand government around how we can connect to OEMs directly without hardware. That is another key part of our planning, is to actually how do we remove hardware in the near term to avoid that cost in the business.
Thanks. What vertical are you finding is driving the most growth in North America today?
That is a great question. I think we are seeing pretty much even between our cold chain market and our construction market. Right now, I would say those are the two markets that we are most competitive in. We see the highest ability to get margin in, and we probably see the biggest adoption. I would say those two right in there.
Thanks. Can you give us some color on the Geotab partnership, how things are progressing?
Sure. So we see it as a key enabler across a couple of areas. One in NZ, we're very much focused on being able to ingest any company's third-party hardware into our platform. It's the leading platform in this country. We are using that to target more sort of smaller customers or those who are more susceptible to cost pressures. We also look into expanding our Geotab partnership into Australia as well. That market's going through a bit of a state of change right now where there's a number of large telematic players in the market who are up for sale.
What we are working together with Geotab on is how we use that sort of uncertainty in the market for us to team up and go a lot harder across and target heavy vehicle customers. We are looking to see what opportunities we can open up in the market there as well.
Thanks. Can you talk about the OEM partnerships on page 15 and how the U.S. business can be scaled without relying on EROAD hardware? Second part of that question, what are the tailwinds and challenges you see in FY 2026?
Sure. The first part of that question, we have relationships with Thermo King and Carrier. I talked about about half of our pipeline is coming from cold chain. We are able to, through those arrangements and partnerships, API into those vehicles through the OEM manufacturers and not have to put any hardware in there at all.
We can further expand our offering using our AI core temp solution, which again will not require any hardware. That is really exciting for us. Above and beyond that, we are always looking for strategic partners with the OEMs to start to get more and more of their data so that going into the future, when those fleets are more connected, we can take advantage of that as well. Clearly, we are still going to have some hardware component as these vehicles last pretty long on the road. If I look at the pipeline going forward, it is much more geared towards our new OEM relationships. The second part of the question, headwinds and tailwinds. We have talked a lot about tariffs, and there is some economic uncertainty globally right now.
What we found is, as much as there's a headwind on deals not closing possibly as fast as we'd like, we also see the tailwind to be a little bit that our churn numbers are going to be less than we've previously forecasted as well, as customers are likely to stay in place and not make a move.
Thanks. Are there any new partnerships or product launches planned?
I also touched on before, we're looking at how we deepen our relationships with some third parties. We're more focused right now on how do we go deeper with certain third parties, whether that's with Geotab, where I mentioned around heavy vehicle in Australia. Obviously, there's a relationship with hyperscalers like Microsoft, h ow do we go deeper around the AI side as well and really baking it in core into our platform.
There's some other partnership opportunities that we are touching on right now and talking to. It's probably a bit premature for us to announce now, but we do have an upcoming investor day where we can get into more details for those.
Thanks. Question on the pipeline and guidance. Does landing just one of the enterprise deals in your near-term pipeline mean that you will achieve higher ARR growth than you've guided to?
Oh, that's a great question. The way I'll answer is this. If we look across, if I look across the pipeline right now and I take a factoring or weighting perspective to it, to factor in the probability of these deals closing, which we always do, we have enough pipeline to meet the guidance we provided for FY 2026.
Obviously, the team is going to keep trying to be aggressive and beat those numbers, but right now, we feel that we have several different ways to get to our FY 2026 number, and our pipeline is healthy from that perspective.
Thanks. Final question, follow-up on the inorganic growth opportunities you mentioned. Can you give more color on that?
We are approached quite often around inorganic growth opportunities, and particularly those as we are now obviously generating positive free cash flow. We look really carefully at those. No, our intention is not to go out there and acquire other hardware companies. We believe as a platform, it makes sense that we ingest third-party hardware, but we do not necessarily have to buy them. What we are looking at is high-quality SaaS opportunities that could be out there that we can bolt on and add to complement our current platform.
Nothing's come across our radar yet, which really digs into that and really meets that requirement. But we are open to potential opportunities there if we can add value to our offering.
Thanks. That was a lot of questions. I'm going to turn it back now.
Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today for our FY 2025 results. We're delighted in the numbers we've hit for the market, and hopefully you are too. Please feel free to reach out to us at investors@eroad.com if you might have any other questions. Thank you.