Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Joe Diaz, and I will be the conference call operator. Welcome to the Zedcor Incorporated Second Quarter of 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listening-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. We will be having a question and answer session at the end of the call, and questions will be limited to analysts only. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amin Ladha, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. Joining me on our call today, we have our President and CEO, Todd Ziniuk. Last night, after markets closed, we issued a news release announcing our financial results for the three and six months ending June 2025. This news release will be available on our website under the Investor Relations tab and is filed on our SEDAR profile. Please note, a portion of today's call, other than historical financial performance, includes statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provision of those laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current views and assumptions. This discussion is qualified in its entirety by the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements that is appended to our news release.
Please review our press release and our report filed on SEDAR+ for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projection. We use terms such as gross profit, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA on this conference call, which are all non-IFRS, non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definitions set out in our management discussion and analysis. In addition, reconciliation between any adjusted EBITDA and net income is included in the MD&A. An important non-GAAP measure that we use is adjusted EBITDA. The company believes that adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations, which the company can use to fund working capital requirements, fund future growth initiatives, and service future interest and principal debt repayments.
Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income determined in accordance with IFRS. Please note that all financial information is provided in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. Following the prepared remarks by Todd and I, we will conduct a Q&A session during which questions will be taken from our analysts. Now, moving on to a review of our financial performance for the second quarter of 2025. Some highlights for the second quarter include record revenues of CAD 13.5 million in Q2. This exceeded our previous high set just last quarter by CAD 2.1 million and is an increase of 84% year- over- year. Our recurring revenue for Q2 2025 remains steady, and our revenue streams are becoming more and more predictable as we expand in the U.S. and Canada away from project work. We also had record adjusted EBITDA of CAD 4.9 million for Q2 2025.
This was an 83% increase year- over- year, and the EBITDA margin remains strong at 36% for the quarter. Our tower count and customer base continues to grow. More importantly, our weekly tower production, which is a key metric for us, continues to increase. During Q2 2025, our tower production count grew by 316 towers, which is over 24 towers per week, and we have met our previous goals of 20 towers - 25 towers produced per week. We have the optionality to increase that based on demand. For our year-to-date highlights, revenue for the six-month period ended June 30, 2025, was CAD 25 million. This compares to CAD 13.5 million for the six months ended June 30th 2024. This was an increase of 85%. Adjusted EBITDA increased to CAD 9 million, or 34% of revenues, versus CAD 4.6 million and 34% of revenues in Q2 2024.
The revenues and EBITDA have increased, but we have also had some other major accomplishments, including significant U.S. expansion, both within Texas and the Southern U.S. Our tower fleet was 1,882 towers at the quarter end. This was an increase of 879 towers year- over- year. Diving into the income statement a bit more for the three and six months ended June 30th, revenues increased 84% year- over- year and 18% quarter over quarter. The U.S. revenues continue to grow, but we are also seeing strong demand and growth in Canada, and we will continue to allocate capital there as necessary. Gross margins increased to CAD 8.5 million, or 63% of revenues. This continues to be steady, but there might be some slight reductions in the upcoming quarters as we wrap up hiring and training for expanding the U.S. Monitoring Center.
Adjusted EBITDA increased to CAD 4.9 million, which was 36% of revenues. We continue to invest in the sales team and expanding our geographical footprint in the U.S. This was steady quarter over quarter, but it could fluctuate as we will pursue growth over time. We can see strong demand for our Wall Mountain ZBox as well. This isn't contributing significant revenues yet, but we are seeing strong demand for this unit and will continue to increase production as we expand and see the demand continue. We have significant customer wins in the U.S. and Canada. This has been across a few different verticals, including residential construction and the logistics industries. For a discussion of the balance sheet, we exited Q2 with a cash balance of CAD 6.4 million. We have CAD 10 million of borrowing room in our current banking facility.
We are also in talks with our lending partners on getting that increased as our business and financial metrics have changed significantly since we expanded the facility just eight months ago. We had a debt of just over CAD 12.1 million after factoring in CAD 18.6 million of total debt. Our net debt and trailing 12-month EBITDA is CAD 0.74. This will increase over time as we deploy capital, but will be offset by growing EBITDA. CAD 1 million of the debt is expected to come due in the next quarter, and that will be retired from free cash flow. PP&E increased to CAD 62.7 million due to continued investments in growing the company's fleet of security towers. A portion of that increase is sitting under assets under construction as we purchase a number of longer lead components in order to ramp up growth and meet our production targets.
We try to keep this around four to six weeks of production, but are managing AUC actively so that we don't have unnecessary capital tied up. A review of our cash flow statement for Q2 2025, adjusted operating cash flow increased 103% year- over- year to CAD 4.4 million, demonstrating a growing cash flow generation capacity of the business. Capital expenditure in the Q2 2025 increased quarter over quarter as our manufacturing capability has been streamlined. We staffed up our team and established our processes. Maintenance CapEx continues to represent a small percentage of total CapEx, and during the quarter, we repaid $1.6 million of debt and financed leases. I will now hand over the call to Todd, our CEO, who will provide you with an operations update and some insights into our go forward strategy.
Thank you, Amin. Good morning, everyone. As you see from the numbers, we had another great quarter, strong quarter. Despite the growth in Canada and the U.S. that we can continue to see, we managed to maintain our 35% EBITDA level, which we take a lot of time on cost and, you know, keep the guardrails on the growth to the right pace to make sure that we can maintain these EBITDA levels. The biggest thing that makes Zedcor a lot different than anybody else is obviously we've got a great product, but one thing really driving our success is the fact of our service and our whole platform that we've built out to be able to service our clients. It's one thing to have a great product, but if you don't have the service in the area where the equipment's working, that's where you can possibly fail.
We've done a great job with our coverage, strategically putting our branches where our towers are. That obviously continues to grow. Obviously, one of the biggest things that we replace, like we've talked about before, as well as the guards on sites, that everybody knows, it's harder and harder to find people nowadays. The quality of people, some of the guards that are out there aren't the greatest as well, and it's a cost savings for our clients. It's a large cost savings, compared to a boots on the ground or a guard sitting in a vehicle on the job site. Very cost-effective. Clients are seeing that more and more. They're starting to see a lot of our competitors in the space. They don't have monitoring.
Now that they see with the monitoring what Zedcor can do with the Live Verifed monitoring and the fact that it's all in-house, the clients, once they get a taste of that, it really starts to draw apparently inside of every customer we have. We're seeing huge success with that. Growth updates, Canada and the U.S. both continue to grow. In Canada, we're actually seeing quite a bit of growth across the whole country, a lot in Ontario. We're starting to slowly move into Montreal as well, or Québec, sorry. We're seeing growth there. We've hired a salesperson in Québec, which is working out quite well. The U.S. side, we've total branches right now, we're running 13 between Canada, six in Canada. We'll probably be opening up another one in London, Ontario, probably Q1. Then we've got the seven in the U.S. We'll be looking to actually double that through 2026.
We're going to be looking at strategically where our branches are going to be placed from now to the end of the year. We have planned on opening a couple more before the end of the year. A lot of this is customer-driven. We've got quite a few towers working in areas where branches aren't set up. Obviously, that's going to drive some of our decisions. Also, the demand is still there. We don't have a big inventory sitting in any of these branches. It's very strategic as the towers are built. They're built, we decide where to send them. We can send them in truckloads of 20, truckloads of 10. Whoever needs them next, that's kind of what we're doing between the platform of the 13 branches. As of right now, we're right on track with our goals for 2025, the 1,200 to 1,400 towers.
I think we're going to be on the hotter side of that, closer to 1,400. We secured a new building as well. As far as our manufacturing goes, right now we operate out of about 20,000 sq ft. We're going to be into 27,000 sq ft of shop space, 17,000 sq ft of an attached office to the exact build, our same building story, which is going to be good. We're going to have the whole team under one roof. I think that's going to help a lot of efficiencies as well. As of right now, we're building anywhere from 42 towers- 45 towers a week. The plan is to get to 50 by September. We're right on track with that. We've reached quite a few different goals as far as our manufacturing sites went.
Early on, a lot of people heard me talk about where we would complete all of our packages. Everything would be built by Friday and waiting for more packages to come Monday. We've got it now where we have about 60 - 70 unbuilt towers. We have one week to cycle always ahead, which gives us the ability, if we had to, to step it up and build more. We have that ability to do that. We're quite excited where the manufacturing side's gone. The tower prices when we first got into this were close to that CAD 34,000. We've got them closer to about CAD 28,500 per tower. We've seen a lot of efficiencies. Haven't been affected at all by any tariffs, which is a good thing.
Even on our steel prices, our steel provider, now that we're PO-ing quite a few more towers at a time, has actually come down in prices, the steel and painting component side of it. We're excited about that. If you continue to grow and you have the ability, you know, a lot of people ask, you know, you can build 50 towers in that facility. We could probably actually get closer to, if we had to, build 100 - 150 a week. It's just a matter of getting everything in place, adding people, and continuing on with that. I don't have a whole bunch more to add. I think we can open it up for questions.
Yeah, absolutely.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Todd. We will now take questions from analysts only. The first question comes from Kyle McPhee from Cormark Securities. Go ahead, Kyle.
Hi guys. Great performance here. Pushing this business forward like clockwork. First question from me on margins. Your EBITDA margin in Canada benefits from density already in place, you know, relative to the U.S. Your Canada EBITDA margin was 66% in Q2, so that's much higher than 26% down in the U.S. I assume U.S. margins will catch up to the Canada level over time as you get that U.S. density. My question is, do you foresee any kind of structural reasons or competitive reasons or client-type reasons why your U.S. margins won't eventually be able to catch up to the levels we're seeing in Canada?
There could maybe be some competitive reasons, but honestly, like they should get there and it'll be sooner rather than later. Like you said, once you get that density, adding two, three locations won't significantly deteriorate that margin. It's just a matter of getting that scale and density. It took about three years in Canada to build that up, and it's probably going to happen a bit faster in the U.S.
I think we'll see it first in Texas, obviously.
Yeah.
L ike now, Kyle, all of our branches are all staffed up. We're not adding any more people right now to the branches. For example, we've got a great study on how the branches have been being built. We've got a great strategic plan. For example, you end up building 200 towers in a branch, that's when you probably add a second service tech or delivery fellow, right? We're seeing that in Texas. These other regions will be the same. I think it'll catch up probably quicker than three years. I think Texas will mature, right, and it's already maturing, right?
We will present it that way just for competitive reasons that we don't have to. Like Texas, if you look at Phoenix and Las Vegas, they're fully staffed up, but they only have less than 50 towers at those locations. They don't have the scale yet, but most of the branches in Texas, Denver is getting that scale too. That'll absolutely catch up, Kyle, you're right.
Got it. Great to hear. Okay, Canada, again, you're a relatively more mature region, but it looks like it's still delivering impressive growth. Your Canada revenue was up 13% quarter over quarter in Q2. Is there any sort of quarter over quarter seasonal lift or one-time lift in that Canadian revenue performance in Q2 that I should be aware of, or is this growth in Canada just indicative of having lots of growth runway left in the country? What do you think that medium-term path looks like for growth in Canada? This is all helping inform us on how much growth may be left in the U.S.
Lots of growth, Jeff, you're right. It's probably 10% - 15% kind of quarter over quarter. We do see some seasonality in some regions in kind of that December, January time. It seems like a lot of municipalities don't want to issue permits and construction people don't want to go to work. There's some other stuff with construction, but a lot of that would be more minimal.
That's more of the road building and stuff.
Yeah, it's minimal at all. That's a good point. We don't see that a lot of the demand from Canada is coming from existing customers, so the 10 %- 15% is definitely doable.
Got it. Okay, I'll pass the line for now. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Kyle.
Thanks, Kyle. Our second question comes from John Zhang from National Bank. Go ahead, John.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Todd, could you give us an update on your negotiations with some of the large retailers, as well as maybe an update on your SOC 2 audit?
We've completed our audits for one of our large, or it's a cyber audit for one of our large retailers. It'll be moving forward. We don't have numbers on it yet. We're just in the middle of an RFP with another quite large, very large grocery chain in the United States. We're also going to be doing an online presentation with one of the largest home improvement companies in the U.S. as well. That side of the business, John, it's a long runway, but something that we're excited about. We're starting to see outside of the retail side, some of these companies that we're starting to work for are taking like 30, 40 towers at a time. They have the runway to probably get us 200, 300, if not more. Having that platform, John, that I always talk about, that's an advantage for us because we can service our clients.
One of our goals right now, I'll say it again, is to get down to, we're going to be within eight hours of one of our towers in North America. We want to have that completed by the end of 2026. It doesn't take a whole bunch more branches in the U.S. to make that happen. We even want to shrink that further. The cyber audit, towards SOC 2, a lot of the stuff that we've done for this one region has brought us probably 65% of the way for the SOC 2, right, Amin?
Yeah.
We're probably about another six to seven months away to be, you know, get the SOC 2 compliant. What SOC 2 does for us is, it opens up the doors to, not so much opens the doors, but a lot of this stuff gets slowed down when you're with these real retailers or big companies. Once you're SOC 2 compliant, you can go into their office and just show them that you've already got the compliance going. It just speeds everything up, right, instead of having to go through all these audits. Oddly enough, we run our own internet, and it's like via cell or satellite. We're not even on their systems, but a lot of this cyber stuff comes down to if somebody gets killed in their parking lot, something happens, they want to know that their video is secured.
It's not going to end up on Facebook, end up on social media. We're not on their internet, so they don't have to be worried about us getting credit card information or people being able to get into that part of their business. I think it's something that's going to make Zedcor a lot better. I don't think there's a whole bunch of people in the space doing it either. Amin , if you have anything.
Yeah, it's going to make us industry leading for sure, on the kind of national accounts, the larger accounts. I think one important thing to highlight here is it's not just the retail space, especially in the U.S. I know everybody gets excited about the big retailers that you see them in a parking lot. They're a big name, but there's companies of multi-billion dollar market cap companies in the logistics space, home buildings, and they have divisions. Like Todd said, they could ramp up to 200, 300 . We've landed a number of those kind of customers over the last three to six months.
I think, John, I'll share a story with you about how Zedcor is servicing for everybody that's on the call. I don't want to say too many clients' names right now on the call. You know, it is a competitive space. We had a company phone us and they said, you know, we're not happy with the person we have, the provider. James got talking to him and said, where do you need a tower? He said, Oklahoma. How soon could you have one there? James was like, I'll have it there tomorrow morning. You guys have to be serious. James was like, yeah. By the end of the call, it was a Wednesday morning. We deployed 17 towers in five different states by Sunday evening. The guy was blown away, and these guys have about 90 other locations that they're looking at us doing.
It just shows you the service side of the business. Same here, you can have a great product, but if you don't have service, you've got nothing. I don't mean to go off on you, John, but if that answers your question.
What are the kind of things that we're not really going to press release?
Yeah, keep going.
Thanks again. That's great color. My other question is, could you maybe give us an update on the local hiring market and whether you're still comfortable finding high-quality talent in the markets you're targeting right now?
As far as the sales side goes, we actually, in the U.S., have people phoning us to come to work here. It's been great. They're in, been in the industry at one point, see what we're doing, or they are in the industry, and some of them want to come and join. They see the product, how well it's built. They're starting to see the towers everywhere. Management's been easy to find. Probably one of the toughest things to find is the accounting world for Amin's team. We've got great people, but we need to build it out. I would, you want to add to that, Amin?
Yeah, everybody seems to kind of want to work from home and wants a crazy amount of money. We are going to have to navigate that accordingly. I think operationally and sales-wise, we've been quite lucky.
On the manufacturing side, we've had a lot of people in our culture too, John, that have been with us a long time. We drive referrals, people that we know. It's been good that way, right?
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, John.
Thanks, John. The third question comes from Sean Jack from Raymond James. Go ahead, Sean.
Hey, morning guys . Just wondering if you're seeing any increased attention from competitors in these new markets that you're expanding to, and if you're anticipating any stiffer competition coming up as you expand into some of these larger markets in the United States.
I think there's competition out there, Sean, but the market's so big. We replace some of these mom-and-pop companies. There's, I think, two or three big players. I think we're one of the three. We've all kind of got our own niche thing, what we're into, different markets. I think you'd agree with that. Different regions might have, like Texas is a pretty competitive state. Everybody's went to Texas. We're doing, got great growth there. It's educating clients. I think we got to just stay on top of what we're doing. For example, we keep growing on the technology side of things. We've moved to a counter now that all of our counters moving forward have LPR, like facilities built into them. We keep evolving with that.
I've always told my team, I said, competition is one thing, but I got told a long time ago that just keep an eye on your own backyard. Don't worry about looking over the fence and just keep doing what we do and make sure we do a very good job at it. I think everything like that takes care of itself. We're not a company that's going to go in and drop pricing. We'll give competitive pricing. We have a little bit of room to move, but the service that we provide, we need to be paid for it. The quality of the equipment we have is going to be paid for it. We're going to stick to that. This market is large enough, Sean, that there's no reason to go do that. You see some guys that are literally dropping their pricing. We shake our heads at it.
All of a sudden, you know what? They have a whole bunch of misses. Guess what? Zedcor goes out and we make the higher rate. We've seen that in Texas. James does a great job with the sales team and Tony, telling those guys that, you know what? Don't get hung up on this guy that only wants to pay CAD 1,500 or CAD 1,400. Move on. There's clients that'll pay our rates and a lot of them. I don't think the competition thing right now. Amin, I don't know if you have anything to add.
I think the competition is kind of working in a negative fashion for us, especially down in the U.S. I don't think there's a lot of people offering the integrated service we are and that North American platform. Like Todd said, they go with the cheaper option and then they come back or they need a trial for two weeks and then they love the solution and they adopt it pretty rapidly, like 100%. P.R. Horton is that perfect example. They needed a short trial and next thing you know, they're big, right? Absolutely.
Perfect. Second one for me, just kind of going back to Kyle's earlier question, wondering how you expect profitability trending in the United States over the remainder of the year, and kind of into next year early, just with the intention to continue investing in the sales team and branches.
Still see fluctuations. It just kind of depends on the opening of the locations and the timing of that. We front-loaded the opening of the Phoenix and the Nevada locations and San Antonio and Austin. We split up in Q1, but that was later in Q1. We're kind of establishing those in Q2. As we continue to expand, as we hire people, it'll just depend on timing. There'll be fluctuations, but it won't be significant. It won't drop to zero or anything.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thanks, John.
Our next question comes from Gabriel Leung from Beacon Securities. Go ahead, Gabriel.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on all the progress. Just a couple of follow-ups. You sort of alluded to it, but can you provide any commentary around how discussions are going right now with your lenders in terms of potentially increasing the facilities and where your comfort level is in terms of where you wanted your leverage ratios to get to?
The conversation has been very positive, and I think they'll move pretty quick after Q2 here. Obviously, the numbers justify that. When we did the year of the facility in December, the expansion, we were working off of Q3, late Q4 numbers, and the business changed, like I said, dramatically from that. There's room to expand that, and we're just working through the negotiations here. That'll happen in the near term for sure. Our debt leverage, sorry, we wouldn't want to extend that past that 2.5x . 2.5x would be on the high side, on the high side short-term preferred. With that being said, just to give that market the visibility and the growth profile, we'll take as much availability as we can. We're just going to manage that internally, so we're not going back every quarter and trying to increase it.
Gotcha. That's super helpful. In terms of some of the geographies you're going into and plan to go into over the next calendar year, Todd, what's driving decisions around existing customers sort of leading you to those states? How should I think about that?
Yeah, it's 100% a lot. I'd probably say it's a tournament game, but we know which regions are driving it. You take Florida, for example. Florida is probably worthy of four to five branches, California, five or six. We've got towers in the Carolinas now. We've got towers in Columbus, Ohio. We've got towers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington. Some of these areas you start with, Tennessee. A lot of it isn't that much driven. I think the rest of it is us just knowing that the product works and where we want to open. We know the market's big. You get into Tampa, there's a lot of things happening in that whole Tampa region, Jacksonville. You get down into Fort Lauderdale, Miami area, there's a bunch going on there, Orlando. California is pretty heavily penetrated, with ECAMSecure and LBT, but it's an awesome market.
I think we're going to do some strategic stuff too Gabe to make sure that we have coverage to where our towers are. That's probably one of the most important things to me is our service levels, and we need to be able to maintain that. It is a blend of where we have quite a few towers already at now, and we know that where markets are, they're there for the taking, right?
Gotcha. I appreciate that. Just one last question for me. Of the CapEx that was reported the quarter, can you sort of break down CapEx for new towers versus maintenance CapEx Just given your experience now, how should we think about maintenance CapEx on a per-tower basis annually? I'm just curious if you got a more rounded figure there.
Yeah, the maintenance CapEx for the six months or the first half of the year was under CAD 500,000. It's not even significant given the total CapEx. That would only be for replacing cameras or if we had a unit completely destroyed, we had to replace that. In terms of going forward, we don't anticipate significant changes. We're lucky in the sense that all the cameras right now for the next three to five years are under warranty. All the electrical components are under that. That helps maintain the maintenance CapEx at a lower rate for the foreseeable future anyway.
Gotcha. I appreciate all the feedback and congrats on all the progress.
Thank you.
Kyle, I don't know if you had another question.
Thanks. Just on the rate of tower output that you have, I think you're 20%, 25% per week in Q2. Your comments suggesting you're already higher than that, with an ability to go even higher later this year. Are you actually using all this capacity you have in place? It seems like if you are, you can push well through the high end of your guidance range.
Are you referring to the manufacturing capacity or like?
Yes.
Yeah, right now we're not using the manufacturing capacity, but we're trying to manage that with the number of staff we have as well.
The goal is to get to 50%.
The goal is to get to 50%. That's within range, but we can increase that by adding more people. Obviously, we're going into the new facility in Q4, so that'll have some kind of unused capacity as well. Capacity isn't necessarily the concern at this point, I would say.
All of a sudden, we've climbed to Thanksgiving in the U.S.
Yeah, it could be.
You're going to lose all kind of a week there through Christmas as well, Kyle. A couple of weeks of filled schedules gone, right?
Got it. Okay, thanks for that clarification.
That's it. Thanks.
I think that wraps it up. I don't think there's any other questions.
Thank you, everyone, for joining.
Have a great day.