Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Plurilock Security's conference call to discuss its financial results for the quarter ending September 30th, 2025. I'm Ryan Freemantle from Sophic Capital, and we handle Plurilock's investor relations. On the call today, we have Plurilock's CEO, Ian Paterson, and CFO, Scott Meyers. During the call, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. We encourage you to submit your questions to the Q&A tab at any time, and management will answer them following their prepared remarks. Before management discusses the results, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements in this call may be forward-looking in nature. These include statements involving known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements.
For caveats about forward-looking statements and risk factors, please see Plurilock's MD&A for the quarter ending September 30th, 2025, which can be found on our company profile at SEDAR+. Unless otherwise stated, all dollar amounts referred to in this call are Canadian dollars, the company's reporting currency. I will now pass the call over to Plurilock's CEO, Ian Paterson. Ian.
Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for joining us today. Good morning and welcome to the Plurilock Financial Results Conference Call for the third quarter of 2025. I'm Ian Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. Today, as we review the quarterly results, I will provide highlights along with a business update and a brief overview of our recent financial performance. We will conclude the prepared remarks by discussing our outlook, and we will leave some time at the end for Q&A. Before discussing the quarter in detail, I want to start with a brief view of the global cyber landscape. Threat activity continues to rise sharply, driven by AI-enabled attack automation, increasingly aggressive state-sponsored actors, and systematic weaknesses buried within global supply chains.
In recent weeks, we've seen a stark reminder of how the threat landscape is shifting with the disclosure that a China-linked group used a major Generative AI platform to automate portions of an espionage campaign targeting technology, financial, chemical, and government organizations. According to public reporting, attackers leveraged AI to generate code, chain tasks together, and autonomously compromise networks with minimal human involvement. This is exactly the type of AI-enabled threat vector the industry has been anticipating, and it underscores why cybersecurity capabilities are now inseparable from both national security and enterprise resilience. Public sector institutions, critical infrastructure operators, and advanced manufacturers remain high-priority targets because of the outsized impact a successful breach can have. This is especially true across the defense sector.
Modern military platforms, from vehicles to sensors to precision systems, now rely heavily on embedded electronics and networked components, all of which introduce cyber exposure that must be secured to ensure operational integrity. As a result, cybersecurity is no longer a back-office IT function. It has become a strategic requirement for national readiness. Plurilock is aligned with this risk and shift. We continue to take a selective, disciplined approach to the markets we pursue across North America and NATO-aligned countries, focusing on environments where resilience and reliability are mission-critical. Our pipeline remains healthy and growing, supported by long-standing relationships, deeper partner collaboration, and targeted business development. During today's call, we'll be discussing two closely linked parts of our business. First, our solutions business, where we deliver cybersecurity technologies through our extensive partner and customer ecosystems and often serve as the initial entry point for expanding relationships into critical services engagements.
Second, critical services, which is our high-end services team that provides tailored, high-value cybersecurity expertise to help clients solve immediate security issues and strengthen long-term operational resilience. Plurilock was founded to address one of the most persistent challenges in cybersecurity. Enterprises and government agencies rely on dozens, sometimes hundreds, of point solutions, yet still struggle to extract real value or reduce risk. When we went public in 2020, our business was small and early stage. Since then, we have scaled significantly, driven by an initial strategy of acquiring IT resellers to gain customer access and then cross-selling higher-margin cybersecurity capabilities. As we look ahead, here is how we are positioning Plurilock for its next phase of growth. Plurilock's differentiation lies in our ability to operate at the intersection of critical infrastructure and mission-critical cybersecurity services, allowing us to mobilize quickly for federal, enterprise, and defense sector clients.
Since launching in early 2024, critical services has become our primary growth engine, delivering higher margins, more client stickiness, and an advisory role across compliance, architecture, and integration. Our strategy is to convert these projects into long-term engagements while adding adjacent high-value offerings that strengthen client relationships and expand profitability. We are now scaling this model globally, leveraging our success with U.S. and Canadian government clients to pursue opportunities across NATO and other allied defense and commercial markets, often in partnership with major integrators. This positions Plurilock to capture a meaningful share of the rapidly increasing global cyber and defense tech spend. That strategy continues to deliver results. Our solutions business provides scale, distribution reach, and long-standing client relationships, while our critical services, our highest-margin business and fast and growth segment, is now the primary growth driver for Plurilock.
Since the inception of critical services, it has provided triple-digit growth year-over-year, and this quarter is no exception, up 165% year-over-year to CAD 2.7 million, representing 17.5% of this quarter's total revenue, compared to 7.1% in Q3 2024. At the same time, we have strengthened our operational foundation. Following several acquisitions, we streamlined our cost structure, pulling out CAD 2.7 million in annualized savings, reducing duplicative roles, and reshaping our operating model to support sustained margin expansion, as well as leveraging global talent. We completed the divestiture of a non-core technology asset for CAD 1.8 million, enhancing our focus and further improving our balance sheet. Earlier this fall, we also secured a CAD 3 million strategic investment from a long-term shareholder through a convertible to venture, adding meaningful financial flexibility to support execution. Over the last year, Plurilock has fundamentally expanded the scope of its addressable market.
In addition to maturing our core solutions and critical services businesses, we introduced two entirely new segments that did not meaningfully contribute in prior years. First, a formal capture process for the defense sector and a refocus on Canada given the buy Canadian initiatives underway. These teams are now pursuing new accretive opportunities that previously did not factor into our go-to-market, and this strategic shift is already resulting in accelerated pipeline growth, stronger qualification discipline, and broader visibility into multi-year government and defense modernization programs. We continue to leverage long-standing relationships with U.S. and Canadian government agencies to accelerate into both domestic and international commercial and government markets where organizations face equally complex security challenges. Our strategic partnerships are also becoming meaningful contributors to growth.
Relationships such as TD SYNNEX, Forcepoint, and other OEM and channel partners we've onboarded over the past year are mature to the point where they're generating tangible, qualified pipeline across both commercial and public sector accounts. In parallel, our AI-first marketing strategy is attracting new inbound interest from larger organizations, including upper mid-market and, in several cases, very large organizations within the Fortune 100. These motions are steadily expanding our reach and creating new entry points for both solutions and critical services. Plurilock now operates with a stronger leadership bench, deeper domain expertise, and a more efficient cost structure than at any point since going public. This combination of market tailwinds, strengthened leadership, and operational discipline positions Plurilock well as demand accelerates across enterprise, defense, and critical infrastructure sectors. At this point, I would like to walk you through some of the Q3 2025 financial results.
As Ryan stated at the beginning of this call, all dollar amounts I'll refer to are in Canadian dollars, which is Plurilock's reporting currency. For more detailed information, please refer to the financial statements and management discussion and analysis document that we filed on SEDAR+. Now turning to our third quarter financial results for the three months ended September 30th, 2025. Total revenue for Q3 2025 increased 8% to CAD 15.4 million as compared to CAD 14.3 million for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2024. Hardware and system sales revenue for Q3 totaled CAD 1.5 million compared to CAD 3.1 million, accounting for 9.8% of total revenue compared to 22% of total revenue in last year. Software license and maintenance sales revenue for Q3 totaled CAD 11.2 million compared to CAD 10.1 million in 2024, accounting for 72.7% of total revenues compared to 70.9% in Q3 2024 last year.
Professional services revenue for Q3 was CAD 2.7 million compared to CAD 1 million in the prior quarter ended June 30th, 2024, accounting for 17.5% of total revenues compared to 7.1% in 2024. Gross margin for Q3 2025 was 8.8% compared to 6.9% in Q3. EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, improved 80% to a loss of CAD 0.7 million versus a loss of CAD 3.89 million in Q3. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, improved 11.5% for Q3 to a loss of CAD 1.6 million compared to a loss of CAD 1.8 million in Q3 last year. Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash was CAD 1.5 million compared to CAD 1.4 million. Subsequent to the quarter ending, the company closed a convertible debenture for CAD 3 million. We have streamlined the organization and strengthened our balance sheet, positioning Plurilock to compete aggressively for new high-value business.
As part of this effort, we've deliberately scaled back lower margin resell and shifted talent and investments into critical services and margin accretive commercial work. With a more selective bidding strategy and refined revenue recognition practices, we're creating a smoother revenue profile and building a foundation for structurally sustained margin expansion. This concludes the financial summary for the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Looking ahead, we see a clear multi-year opportunity across both commercial and government sectors supported by rising deal activity and an expanding pipeline. Within critical services, our land and expand model is working. What starts as five-figure discovery engagements with clients are progressing into larger, multi-phase programs. The land and expand motion continues to be repeatable, with customers expanding their scope with us over multiple cycles.
Increased deal flow in the third quarter has carried us into the fourth quarter across both enterprise and public sector accounts, and we expect that to continue well into the new year, reinforcing demand for Plurilock's high-value cybersecurity capabilities. We are also seeing pipeline acceleration for new and expanded channel partnerships, not only with cybersecurity OEMs, but increasingly with global strategic integrators and defense primes. These relationships create a scalable top-of-funnel motion. Partners are actively pulling us into programs, integrating us into bid teams, and positioning Plurilock as a preferred service delivery arm. This is a new dynamic compared to last year and is quickly becoming one of the strongest contributors to pipeline growth across both commercial and defense markets. Defense technology budgets globally continue to expand. The U.S. defense bill nears close to CAD 1 trillion. Canada has increased its NATO commitment from 2% to 5% of GDP.
Large modernization programs, submarines, missiles, defense systems, counter-drone platforms are all driving significant cybersecurity requirements. Every modern weapon system contains chips, telemetry, and connectivity that must be cybersecured. We believe this macro environment plays directly to our strengths with our capabilities and systems integration, security engineering, and mission-critical service delivery. We are now engaging in opportunities that simply did not exist for Plurilock 12 months ago. Our defense sector motion is unlocking access to U.S., Canadian, and NATO programs where cybersecurity is embedded in nearly every modern modernization initiative. Similarly, the capture team is now qualifying RFP opportunities with periods of performance beginning early 2026. These pursuits, combined with channel partner-driven activity, represent increased and incremental revenue streams on top of our existing business. We expect operating leverage to further improve as the mix shifts towards higher margin critical services and software-enabled engagements.
With a lower operating expense run rate following restructuring and divestiture announced earlier this year, a strengthened balance sheet, and a structured enterprise-grade capture process, our focus remains on expanding high-margin services and converting pipeline into awarded contracts as Plurilock progresses towards breakeven. With that, I think, Ryan, we should turn it over to questions.
Yeah. Thank you, Ian. As a reminder to submit a question, please click the Q&A tab at the bottom of the webinar. We'd like to thank those who have submitted their questions already. Let's start with, in an early press release, you talked about gaining new PLCS contracts up to CAD 10 million. Could you emphasize on that, and when can we see these contracts? I think, just to clarify quick, I don't think the contracts themselves were up to CAD 10 million.
I think it was new pipeline totaling CAD 10 million, but I'll let you divulge that, Ian.
Yeah. We announced, I think it was earlier this fall, late summer, that we had seen significant growth in our sales pipeline. I believe, Ryan, you are correct that it was in regards to an increase in sales pipeline in a short amount of time, and that was what was notable and remarkable. We have announced, I mean, even over the last six weeks, we have been announcing a steady drive of contract wins. I'd refer you back to the press releases that we put out.
I will also say that some of the new initiatives that we talked about just now during the early part of the presentation, so things like the focus on defense, the focus on, or the refocus on Canada, I should say, as well as the new dedicated capture team, those are things that are driving activity today, which we would expect to turn into revenue early in 2026. That is currently how things are shaping up.
What percentage of revenue does critical services now represent?
Yeah. Maybe I'll invite Scott to chime in.
Yeah. Currently, 21.2% in Q3 versus 9.9% in Q3 of 2024. We have increased that pretty significantly.
How much of your sales activity comes from existing clients versus new customer wins?
Yeah. That is a good question.
I mean, I think similar to the previous question, let me speak around what we are working on. This is going to be sales activity. I'm not talking about revenue at this point. If I think about where our sales team is spending time, we are spending at an aggregate level, we are spending much more time on new logos than we were 12 months ago or even, frankly, earlier this year. I would say this is really driven by probably four factors. First, our partnerships and alliances, like we've announced with TD SYNNEX, Forcepoint, etc., have matured and are generating meaningful pipeline activity. Number two, the addition of our capture process is bringing us into new conversations led by RFPs, RFIs that we are responding to.
Number three, the two new market segments being Europe plus NATO, as well as renewed focus in Canada as a result of buy Canadian initiatives that we saw this year. Fourth, our AI-first marketing strategy is generating new conversations. Like we noted earlier, these are with some very large enterprise organizations. Think Fortune 100, excuse me, sized organizations. All of those four factors are new in the second half of this year. Certainly, they are more mature in the second half of this year if I think about where we are with our partnerships and alliances program. All those things put together really drive more net new conversations as compared to existing client conversations if I compare where we are today versus last year.
Great.
You had an 80% improvement in the EBITDA loss to CAD 766,000 compared to 11.5% improvement in the adjusted EBITDA loss of 1.6%. Can you just touch on the difference between those? It's kind of a big number gap.
Yeah, Sean. The difference there was we did have a one-time positive gain from the sale of CloudCodes of approximately CAD 1.5 million. That is listed under the discontinued operations. You'll see that on the P&L as well as in the financial statement notes.
Great. Thanks for that clarification there, Scott. Little dip in the margins this quarter compared to previous quarter, but you're still up year-over-year. Can you kind of touch on where you see those going to the end of the year and beyond?
Yeah. I can give an initial answer, and then I'll maybe let Scott chime in as well.
As we think about the two different types of businesses that we have, the solutions business is quite a bit more transactional, whereas critical services, the aim is to build long-term, either recurring or just long-term contracts with our clients. We do see variability quarter to quarter depending on what the solutions business is doing. What we've seen, certainly over the last handful of years, is that there are some seasonal shifts. For instance, in Q3, we will typically have end-of-U.S. government fiscal year spending. Similarly, in Q1, we will typically have end-of-Canadian federal government year-end spending. As a result of those seasonal trends, we do see some up and down on revenue mix as well as customer mix. Those can drive kind of up or down depending on which deals we get in when and how they get recognized.
If I zoom out, so that's on a quarterly basis. If I zoom out, the goal of the company continues to be to grow gross profits. I think if you look at this on an annualized basis, we're making great progress towards continuing that trajectory upwards. Scott, anything you want to chime in on there?
I think you covered that. Maybe just to reemphasize that, in general, our U.S. government buying season and typically more of those deals that we're focusing less and less on, but that still arrives in Q3. You will see that mix come in and give a lower result in Q3 versus the other quarters. That said, I think you can see that we were improving upon that even as compared to last year.
Great. A couple of questions on OpEx. How much of that CAD 2.7 million annualized cost savings has flowed through already?
Most of those cost savings you'll see start in Q4 and then beyond because as they involve us reducing positions, there's always severances and whatnot that needs to ride out. We expect for next year that our OpEx will be around CAD 10 million for the full year.
Are there any other cost optimization opportunities that we're working on or you could see?
Yeah. We're always looking for ways to improve our cost structure. I think some examples are if we have duplications of roles and systems. We've been combining back-office systems and also just reducing the number of systems as you get new tools that do more than one thing or more than two things. We take advantage of updating our toolset. We're also looking at certain AI options, particularly in marketing. We've found really, really cost advantageous there.
We can get a huge reach for a lot less money now leveraging some AI tools. Finally, we use global talent. We are able to shift certain work to areas that cost less.
I think just to chime in on that, I mean, we did make the announcement in regards to the CAD 2.7 million of annualized cost savings. I think that the three drivers, deduplication of roles, taking an AI-first approach to certain departments, leveraging global talent, these are initiatives that we have been focused on since the start of this year. It is really the culmination of these that is driving our belief that we can get our OpEx run rate to be closer to that CAD 10 million mark number exiting this year into 2026.
Great. Thanks. A couple of questions on the balance sheet. What is the current quarterly burn?
With that CAD 3 million you just raised, how much runway does that give us?
Our current burn is around CAD 500,000 a quarter. As we grow our gross margins, continue to grow our operations, and reduce our OpEx, we are good on the cash flow. We will see that burn reduce and then have a kind of steady stream of cash is the plan for next year.
Okay. Just following up with that, the obvious, do you anticipate raising equity in the next 12-18 months to fund the burn?
I think you answered that, but. No.
How do you balance growth investment with your push towards breakeven?
Our priority on investment is critical services. I think if you look at the numbers that we are seeing there, you will see that we have early indication that those investments are paying off.
What level of revenue is needed to reach profitability?
Yeah. From the go for it, Ian.
I think this is a great kind of reminder that profitability is a function of gross profit more so than revenue. I mean, earlier, we noted that we've been focused more on critical services. To put that in perspective, we have a finite number of salespeople who have a finite number of hours in the day. If there is a choice between a CAD 1,000,000 hardware deal potentially at 1% or 2% gross margin versus a CAD 500,000 deal at 30% or 40% gross margin, obviously, the latter is going to be better for profitability. We might actually see a dip in revenue if we go down that road. The way that we think about profitability, again, is more a function of gross profit.
Ultimately, it's a function of revenue mix and the margin rates for the different parts of the business. Having said that, I think what you can see from the last several quarters is really a shift in focus. As we've reduced focus on some of the lower margin parts of the business, we've refocused more on the higher margin parts of the business.
Great. A couple of questions around U.S. government NATO opportunities. How did the U.S. government shutdown and the budget delays affect either Q3 or kind of our near-term pipeline?
Because we're focusing more on our higher margin business, we didn't see any significant impact from the U.S. government shutdown. There were some timing issues which we had, which we're now catching up on because the government has been reopened for a bit.
Yeah.
I think in comparison, if I think about this year versus last year versus the year before, there's usually always some franticness at the end of any budget cycle, whether it's U.S. government or Canadian government or even commercial end of year. That was no different this year, although we had the added complexity of the shutdown. As Scott was saying, it's really become more of a timing issue. I think for us, we have not been as negatively impacted as compared to other pure-play government contractors simply because of the diversity of our customer base and the fact that we have obviously customers in Canada, but also a strong commercial practice as well.
Okay. Can you talk to the durability of the federal demand? There's a lot of noise out there in politics these days. Any insight there would be helpful.
Yeah.
I think that there's always noise in politics. I don't think this time is any different than any other time. There's different political pressures, sure, but there's always political pressures. Our view on this is as a small agile company, volatility in the market actually presents an opportunity because larger companies can be slow to adapt to change. We believe that overall, the change in posture from various governments and government entities, including Canada, including Europe, including NATO, including the U.S., is favorable to our business. We've got great past performance in the United States. We've got great past performance in Canada. We have the ability to do business with some of the most discerning customers in terms of their security requirements and compliance requirements. We're also seeing that with this volatility in geopolitics, there's renewed interest in talking to Canadian companies like us.
On the whole, I think this is actually a great opportunity for us to take the insight. If I think about a speed skating oval, I think take the inside track and really pick up some speed here as others might find it harder to deal with the consistent change.
We talk about NATO quite a bit. How meaningful is NATO and European defense for Plurilock over the next few years here?
It's a good question. I mean, frequently when we're talking about NATO, we're talking about the countries that are allied with the United States and Canada. We tend to use NATO somewhat as a blanket term to talk about those regions in the world that are allied and aligned with us.
From its very inception, Plurilock was very intentional around wanting to do business with our allies as well as commercial companies in the countries of our allies. We were going to exclude certain markets that were neutral or questionable. When we are talking about NATO, when we are talking about Europe, we are talking about a couple of different types of constituencies. We are talking, obviously, about the defense establishment themselves. We are also talking about the commercial companies in those countries that are themselves aligned with Canada and the United States. Broadly, that is how we think about it from a definitions perspective. I think what we are seeing really across the board, and this is even beyond just cybersecurity, I think we see this in defense, is that there is significant interest for European countries, even for Canada, to revisit historical procurement decisions around where they go to buy.
I mean, even this morning, news in regards to the F-35 versus potentially a Swedish fighter jet is front-page news. I think it's a signal that there are new opportunities, there's new markets that might not have existed to the same degree a year ago, two years ago. That's part of it. I think the other part is that both NATO as well as kind of Europe in general is much closer to some of the conflicts in Ukraine. We see a lot with regards to drones, UAV, or what's now called UAS systems that are a growing and rising threat. There's new procurement opportunities which will require cyber, as we talked about previously.
All of that having been said, we see that there's a growth opportunity to revisit existing allies, to go to new allies, both at the government level, selling into defense as well as commercially. All those things, I think, are fantastic tailwinds for a company like us.
Thanks, Ian. We're just a little past 11:30 here. Two more questions. Quantum. Quantum hacking, using quantum computing. It's a steadily growing thing and emerging. Where does Plurilock stand in this segment of the market?
Yeah. Quantum as an emerging technology is something that our customers are asking about from us today. We hear this both from customers themselves as well as partners who are looking for experts to be able to answer these questions. We today, within our critical services team, have an area of focus called PKI.
The PKI team is responsible for both traditional encryption as well as post-quantum encryption. We're actively fielding conversations with customers. We are actively working on projects in regards to helping organizations think through quantum preparedness. Our sense is that this is very similar to Y2K in some regards. There's going to be a whole lot of companies that need to get ready for post-quantum cryptography. They're going to need experts like what we have at Plurilock to be able to help them through that journey. Today, that's really where we sit. I think the other thing that I would point to is that the divestiture of CloudCodes did go to a quantum company. We do maintain relationships there. To the extent that we may partner further in the quantum space, certainly possible.
I think right now, quantum overall, just in terms of where it's at, is that there is now attention on this issue. There is starting to be budgets assigned against it, but it is still in the early stages of the innovation curve. Most organizations are not yet allocating significant budgets to quantum outside of a handful of exceptions. Obviously, central banks, financial services, defense, those would be the exceptions. The average enterprise is not yet, from what we've seen, allocating significant or material budget dollars to this issue. For us, we would expect to scale our investment in that area alongside what customers are needing and asking for.
Thank you. We'll wrap it up here with one final question. You've announced a couple of new hires recently. What kind of impact have those people had on the business?
Are you planning any more hires in 2026?
Yeah. I'll take the second part first. The answer is we're always recruiting. That never stops. We believe that we are very well positioned to continue to attract top talent. We've talked in the past about how our board and advisory council are a secret weapon when it comes to recruiting. In addition to that, the mission focus that we have as an organization is very attractive to A players who have a choice of where they want to work. The combination of our extensive network, including management, board, advisory council, provides us an edge in that competition in addition to people wanting to go to a place that has impact. For instance, our recent CTO addition came by way of an introduction from our board of directors.
In terms of the impact they're having, I think that we've already talked about some of it. I mean, the initiation of a new capture team, the renewed focus around defense. With that, the fact that we have relationships and experience with processes in these areas as a result of recent hires kind of goes part and parcel. The short answer is the hires that we make are very intentional. We're already seeing strong impact. We're always recruiting. We believe that our human capital is definitely one of the things that separates us from other organizations. For sure, we'll continue to be looking to other top candidates as we find them.
Awesome. Thanks, Ian, and thanks, Scott. We'll wrap up the Q&A there.
If you were not able to ask your question or you have another question after the call, please feel free to reach out to us, and we would be happy to answer them. Contact information is up on the screen there. I will now pass the call back to management for closing remarks.
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. I think this was, listen, this was a good conversation. I think this was a good quarter. We are really excited about the tailwinds that we have talked about throughout this call. What we see going into 2026, we are very bullish on what the future brings. Appreciate the chance to share our story and look forward to continuing to share our progress in the quarters ahead.
With that, this concludes Plurilock Security's Q3 2025 conference call. Thank you again for joining us. Have a great day.