Our first speaker today will be Peter Londa from Tantalus in about one minute.
I'm on the clock. I think there's a countdown. Good morning. Thanks for making the effort to come for one of the first presentations after a night in Vegas. It's much appreciated. My name is Peter Londa. I have the privilege of serving as President and CEO of Tantalus Systems. For those of you that may have sat in on the pitches yesterday afternoon, I'll do my best to give as compelling a presentation as Jeff did on our behalf, which was terrific to see. I'm going to try to flip through a couple of slides. If any of you have questions along the way, please don't hesitate to ask. Much more conducive to dialogue. I'll try to get through it.
If you're hesitant to ask questions in the middle of the flow, we'll have a few afterwards and then certainly can catch up after presentation to the extent that that's helpful. Just way of background, I've been CEO at Tantalus for 11 years. I have certainly outlived my welcome. Prior to running Tantalus, I was CEO of another company in our similar sector of using technology to help electric utilities. It was a company called BPO Global, privately held. We did not go to the public markets. The company, after gaining some traction, was sold in a strategic trade sale to a large division of Danaher Corporation. Career started in investment banking and from there into the software industry. From software industry, that's how I ended up working in conjunction with BPO Global and Tantalus to help utilities.
I don't come from the utility industry, and I flag that. For those of you that want to chat about the utilities, I'm more than happy to do that. I don't come from utilities. I come from a software background. With that in mind, Tantalus was founded in 1991. It started initially in 1989. Excuse me. It started initially as a consulting company in the early 1990s. First product was brought to market in the early 2000 timeframe. I'll walk through the evolution of our technology. At the highest level, we are a hardware-enabled software company. What that means is we build edge computing devices much like the guts of your iPhone or laptop. We embed that edge computing device into electric meters, infrastructure devices, distribution automation equipment, substation equipment. From those devices, we access data much like your phone.
From that data, we drive applications and analytics for utilities. The purpose is to help utilities modernize every aspect of the distribution grid, which is a fairly ambitious objective. When you think of the utility industry, most people don't think about it until they get a bill that doesn't make sense, or when you get home and there's no power, and then you're just pissed. Within the utility industry, you have generation. There's then transmission lines. There is the distribution grid, which is where we all live and work. It's the substation, electric wires that are typically above ground in the United States, all the way down to the meter on the side of your homes, apartment buildings, businesses. From the meter, the devices that we all use today that require charging.
As you think about the grid and you think about what's unfolding, consumer behavior has a huge impact on what's unfolding. Today, I like to personalize things as I go through this. I'll get to the slides momentarily. Today, I live in Connecticut outside of New York City. I drive the F-150 Lightning pickup truck, which has a 19 kWh battery in it. Awesome drive. A lot of fun. Every time I plug that vehicle into the side of my house to charge it, I am doubling the amount of power that I consume. When the utility rolled out pole top transformers, power lines, the meter on the side of my house, back in the late 1990s—pole top transformer actually dates to 1988—they never envisioned my home consuming twice as much power. Not just because of my vehicle.
In my briefcase that I came to this event on, I have nine devices that need to be charged at the hotel. I am only adding to them as I automate my day-to-day, much like all of you. It is that strain. It is that change in my behavior. Whether you believe in EVs or not, it does not matter. The reality of it is we are all consuming more power at the residential level. You give rise to AI and data centers. Utilities start to have serious problems at the distribution grid. To that end, today, we are helping 320 utilities prepare and upgrade their infrastructure without having to rip and replace everything, which is a $100 trillion initiative. It is not possible. How do we take edge computing? How do we capture data on what is happening across the grid?
How do we use software and analytics to help utilities gain visibility? How do we improve their perspective on what's happening? How do we help them prioritize assets like transformers, which are now a massive bottleneck, extremely expensive, extended lead times thanks to tariffs that have gone in place, putting more constraint on what utilities can do every day? While we continue to make good progress in adding utilities and building a fairly diverse set of customers, from a financial profile perspective, $45 million-ish, we report USD, even though we're traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. $45 million of that, $45 million in revenue. 35% of that comes from software and services. 25% of total revenue is recurring. The model is pretty simple. Convince the utility we're the right partner. They can trust us. Sell them a physical edge computing device. I'll show you some pictures.
Get that device deployed in the field and let it sit there for 12 to 15 years, collecting data every millisecond of every day, and then leveraging that data and monetizing that data through software and services through a very extended relationship with utilities. That is the basic fundamental model. With that in mind, a couple of emerging trends that are unfolding. For those of you that may come from the Southeast, you fall within a footprint called the Tennessee Valley Authority, depending on where you live, outside of Atlanta or major metropolitan areas. TVA is a great example. TVA dates back over 100 years. For the first time in 50 years, they had rolling blackouts last summer because the amount of generation that TVA has was insufficient to meet the demand of everybody consuming.
When you think of the grid, you can think of it in simple economics, supply and demand, the supply of power versus the demand of power. We're seeing at a regional level, at a state level, an imbalance between how much is available and how much we're consuming. What utilities are trying to do is figure out how do they prepare for increased demand. We call it peak demand in the utility industry relative to supply. Supply is pretty constant, with the exception of when we see extreme weather events. For those of you who live in Texas, as an example, big winter storm, grid freezes, supply drops by 50% within a day. People are still consuming. That's what brings the grid down. Imbalances between supply and demand, we talk a lot about.
How do we help utilities get control of that demand profile? How do we help them incentivize us to change behavior, particularly in emergency situations? How do we help them shift and shave peak load to mitigate substations from crashing? That leads to helping utilities avoid outages. As you think about increased power outages, here is an amazing aspect of the utility grid. It is arguably one of the most important items that we rely on beyond oxygen, food, water every day. Utilities, in their mind, a five-minute outage is not an outage. They do not report it. Think about what happens in a five-minute outage when you are working, especially if you are virtual and you are in the middle of a meeting. Wi-Fi is down. Things in the house have to be reset. The economic cost of a five-minute outage is skyrocketing in today's world.
We see some progressive utilities starting to think about that. They start to think about it in the context of trying to attract new businesses to their communities to drive economic growth. Reducing outages is really important. As we collect data, we're selling that capability to a utility industry that is historically just focused on assets. They buy assets. They deploy those assets, typically big infrastructure. They run them until they fail. All of a sudden, we're creating a massive amount of data for an industry that historically has had an allergic reaction to technology and data. How do we help them manage that data and leverage that data over time? That's what's driving our recurring revenue and our software. This is a massive opportunity that we're pursuing.
60% of all the transformers in the United States have exceeded their expected life. For example, the pole-top transformer in front of my house that I referenced at the beginning, dating from 1988. The expected life of that transformer is 40 years. 60% of all of those in our neighborhoods and communities are beyond 40 years of age. When things get older, they tend to break and they tend to fail. That leads to outage. It can also lead to an explosion and a fire. How do we help utilities protect transformers in particular? It is a huge effort. The numbers here are massive that we are chasing after. We are doing that with a platform. We call it the Tantalus Grid Modernization Platform. It is a full stack from devices, edge computing, all the way up to analytics.
The way we're helping utilities is the way we look at it from a strategic perspective is meeting them through a grid modernization journey. Utilities cannot rip and replace all of their infrastructure. In some circumstances, they can't adopt or embrace everything at the same time. Depending on where a utility is, as they try to transform the distribution grid and become that much more reliable for us, we try to meet them where they are. Whether that's trying to upgrade metering infrastructure, we don't build meters. We build the sort of intel inside, the intelligence inside meters. Whether they have some capabilities, edge computing capabilities, maybe not Tantalus's from a third party or competitor, how do we leverage that data through analytics? That's really where we distinguish ourselves quite a bit.
What we do is we take a device, an edge computing device, like the guts of your iPhone, and we turn that into analytics. We capture that data. We transmit that data through communications networks. We bring that data into a data management platform, and then we serve that data to a growing suite of analytics to help utilities pinpoint a couple of little images here, what's on and what's off in terms of their devices. Where do they have a reverse flow of power? Because I'm charging my vehicle, or I have rooftop solar on my house, or I've purchased a Tesla storage wall. When you think about all those things, it's important for utilities in the circumstances of an outage, understanding where reverse power flow is really important because in many circumstances, the line crews go out after a storm.
They try to restore power as quickly as possible. If they do not have a sense of where that reverse flow is, you have electrocution risk. You have workforce safety risk. There is a disconnect between permitting in cities versus what utilities know. How do we track reverse power flow so utilities know exactly where there is risk when they are trying to restore power? Transformers is on the bottom left here image. Kind of hard to see with this screen, so apologies. How do we help utilities figure out what is in overvoltage, potential risk of overheating and exploding? What is undervoltage, not generating the revenue that it should relative to the investment that the utilities made? Even though we are a small company, we have been very successful in growing our user community. We refer to our customers as a user community.
When I joined the business 11 years ago, we had 54 utilities. Today, that's 320 and growing. Last year, we added 31 utilities. The reason why those utilities are selecting us is a combination of reasons. We are moving very quickly as it relates to leveraging and harnessing the power of data that distinguishes us from much larger organizations. We take a very flexible approach. We're opinionated about the devices and the data. We want utilities to buy that because it locks us into a long-standing relationship, and we generate cash flow from those devices. At the same token, if a utility has already purchased or chosen a competitor's device, that's okay. We can still use the data and drive analytics and software. That's the flexibility. Most of our competition is it's their system or it's nothing.
From our perspective, that's not very nimble, nor is it agile. We leverage existing infrastructure. A lot of our competition is focused on ripping and replacing because they typically come from the metering industry. Their business model is building meters and selling meters. Our model is based on driving, accessing data, and driving analytics. I'd say from a support perspective, we take that really seriously. Jeff had highlighted one of the statistics that I think is the one that really highlights the importance of what we're doing. We tend not to lose customers. When we think about customer retention, it's not just on a SaaS offering of last year to this year. Over the last 20 years, our customer retention rate is over 99%. Once we lock into a utility, we're there for a really long time.
Our goal as a management team is to figure out how we help not only solve problems for them, but for our shareholders, drive scale and drive growth. Growth tends to come from when we get to leapfrog opportunities in technology. Over the last three years, we've been working on this device in the middle of the page. We call it the TruSense Gateway. A lot of details on this on our website and in our investor presentations. Trying to do this in a 20-minute presentation doesn't give this justice. This is a device that we have built with nine utilities. The amazing thing about our customer base is they actually serve as our product management team in many circumstances.
Nine utilities volunteered their time to work alongside our engineers to build this product to solve a set of use cases that they're trying to address. What that does for us is we've invested $15 million to bring this product into market. What it does for us is we know where this product is going to be sold before we even spend dollar one from an investment perspective in R&D. This product has taken us quite a bit of time to bring to market. We refer to it as a meter collar. It sits between a meter socket on the side of your home or apartment building, that sort of metal box, and any existing meter, whether it's an intelligent meter or whether it's a meter that is read manually.
Believe it or not, about 18% of all meters in the United States today still have meter readers that show up at the side of someone's home once a month to get one data point for a bill. We're delivering 1,500 data points in a day. Transformation of what utilities can do with that. For some utilities, they're stuck with legacy metering infrastructure, particularly some utilities that bought stuff seven, eight years ago. They have a 15-year depreciation schedule. Rather than sitting and waiting for those utilities to get to a point where they may consider replacing that meter, as an example of where we can meet them where they are, put our device behind that meter. Different rate case, different ROI perspective, leverage that existing infrastructure so they never have to touch that meter again.
Within our device, massive horsepower in terms of edge computing, memory, analytics, applications. An example of what we're doing for utilities when I talk about that imbalance between supply and demand, we're partnering with GE Appliances and a company called Savant Energy, which has a lot of home automation. From our device on the side of a home, a utility can track the load profile of a GE Appliances water heater. We can turn an electric water heater into thermal storage. There's carbon savings there. More importantly, there's 6 kilowatts of power that we can control over a 6-hour time frame. As you think about hot water heating, I don't have an electric heater in my house. I'm tied to oil, but that thing is just firing all the time.
There's a thermometer in there, and as soon as the temperature drops in the water tank, bam, more power delivered. That's really inefficient. With GE Appliances, what we're working on, they have a concept of a net zero home, so we're part of that community of how does a utility, how does the homeowner predict when they need that hot water? How do you preheat that water, keep that water hot for a defined period of time so that we're not inconvenienced with cold showers? I got a 15-year-old son. That wouldn't go too well with him if I told him that you'd have to take cold showers. It's how do we control that water heater without inconveniencing consumer and taking 6 kilowatts per home, aggregating that and shifting peak load?
How do we preheat that water in advance of a storm where there may be power outages? That's the type of granular control that we're providing to utilities. That's the data that we're capturing. What's the thermal profile of that water heater? Real effective thing. It's a high priority right now for Tennessee Valley Authority. Actually, while I'm here, we've got teams presenting to 150 utilities today on this solution across TVA with Oak Ridge National Labs. It's focused on trying to figure out how to help utilities shift peak load. The picture on the far right of the slide is a pole-top transformer. If we start to see that pole-top transformer arcing or stressing, immediately reduce load off of it by controlling that water heater or other smart circuit breakers inside the home. It generates a huge opportunity for us.
A couple of numbers that we've been sharing in the market. We don't provide guidance from a financial profile perspective, but the advisory committee of nine utilities that have helped us develop this technology and bring it to market, which is now fully commercial and in scale, represents about $150 million of incremental revenue for us. We are working with an incremental group beyond the nine members of our advisory committee that reflect about another $350 million of growth potential for us over about a seven, eight-year time frame. In the aggregate, we've got I don't want to confuse anybody.
It's not backlog, but we've got a really good idea of where this device is going with the first nine utilities and what that translates into in terms of revenue profile over the next five and seven years, in addition to the core competencies of the business today to drive growth. We've got an increasing amount of visibility as to where this device will go beyond those nine utilities that represents almost in the aggregate $500,000,000 to scale our company on behalf of our shareholders. We've had some good momentum. I'd say the utility industry, some refer to them as slow movers. They tend to be very slow in their sales cycle. I prefer the word deliberate. They're risk-averse organizations. They have to make sure what they're putting in the field works and solves problems.
They have to make sure that that technology doesn't cause new problems. We work with utilities over an extended period of time to get them comfortable with the technology. We meet them where they are. Some utilities are responding to emergency. They move faster. Some utilities just move in a deliberate manner. That lends itself to steady growth. We don't predict hockey stick growth, but with the TruSense Gateway, we anticipate, and we've communicated this, that we think it's 15%-20% growth per year and doing that in a profitable manner. 2024 was a historic year for us. Highest amount of revenue in a calendar year. Highest order conversion, $51 million of orders surpassed our revenue as we build backlog. Highest gross profit margin, 54% return to positive EBITDA as we've completed the R&D investment on the TruSense Gateway.
Recurring revenue continues to grow at about 18-20% compounded annual growth rate. The model is simple. Convince the utility that we've got the right device, put that device in the field, access data, drive analytics that ultimately represent 25% of total revenue today and scaling quite nicely. Capitalization, we're on the TSX. We've just recently got a symbol on the OTCQX as well to simplify things for shareholders and investors here in the US. Unlike a lot of other micro caps, 75+% of our shareholdings is with institutions that take a long-term horizon, which gives us some stability in terms of fluctuations in the market.
I'd say relative to some downward pressure that the market's seen over the last several weeks, our share price has held in quite nicely with increasing liquidity and volume every day, which Deb Honig, who's sitting up here on my left, is responsible for all of IRR. We thank her every day for helping us out as there is a lot of turmoil in the market. We have six covering analysts, Raymond James being the most recent one that activated a few weeks ago after we filed our 2024 results. We're fortunate to have that type of institutional backing at the investment banking level as well. In terms of the team that's executing, the team's been pretty stable over the years. At the board level, our chair is Laura Formusa, former CEO of Hydro One, among the most accomplished female executives in North American utility industry. Dr.
Harvey, similarly, former COO of Westinghouse, was responsible for the utility power and oil divisions. Most recently, we've added a gentleman, Dave McLennan, former CFO of Sierra Wireless, big networking company, and also joined had Christy Honey, former Chief Information and Security Officer of Ontario Power Generation. For those of you who may not be familiar, OPG is responsible for all the nuclear power plants up in Ontario. At the management team level, we've just added, as we anticipate scaling and growth, we've added a new CFO to our company, Azim Lalani, 30 years of public company experience, both Nasdaq, TSX. The last business he was a part of was a $6 billion company. From a process and systems and infrastructure perspective, we're fortunate.
A gentleman, Chris Allen, has just joined us, was COO and CFO of a company called Copper Leaf up in Toronto that was just recently transacted for a billion dollars. Really comes out of the software industry to help us think through how we accelerate. With that in mind, I see I'm almost out of time. Despite saying I'd leave time for questions, unfortunately, I distracted myself. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you. Thank you so much for allocating the time, especially early in the morning as first presentation. I think maybe I have a minute for any questions on the floor. Yes, sir. Yeah. Question on upgrading software. Much like your iPhone, we use over-the-air programming. We have RAM and flash memory at each device, and we can push firmware upgrades as we have them roll out.
We have two releases a year, and then we have dot releases if something happens or we find a bug or backdoor or something like that that needs to be addressed. Two releases a year with over-the-air programming so that device is future-proofed. Yes, sir. What's the feedback to the utility company that you're using? What are the utility companies that you do across all the customers? The TruSense Gateway, yeah, it's a socket. It's a meter socket. It fits in the meter socket. United Illuminating is the first investor-owned utility that we're working with. They are in the process of running an 18-month demonstration and pilot with the regulators in the state of Connecticut. That's the largest utility that started to move down that path. We have a few large public power utilities that are also moving down that path.
Payback period varies based on the use cases, but about three years, two and a half, three years, so pretty quick. Some would argue we're not charging enough, but our goal is to try to get into market. Thank you very much. I can take questions out in the hall if anybody has them. Thanks for your time.
We'd like to thank panelists for showing up today and enjoying your company.