Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the BK Technologies Corporation Vision 2030 Investor Day. This event is being recorded, and all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. Following management's presentation, the event will be open for questions. To ask a question, please submit via the webcast platform, which we will pull from throughout the presentation. I will now take a moment to read the safe harbor statement. Statements made during this presentation and presented that are not based on historical facts are forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, projections or statements of future goals and targets regarding the company's revenue and profits. These statements are subject to known and unknown factors and risks.
The company's actual results, performance, or achievements may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, and some of the factors and risks that could cause or contribute to such material differences have been described in today's presentation and in BK's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on information and understandings that are believed to be accurate as of today, and we do not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. At this time, it is my pleasure to pass the floor over to your host for today, Jaeson Schmidt of Lake Street Capital Markets. Jaeson, please go ahead.
Thank you, Corbin. Good morning and welcome to BK Technologies Vision 2030 Investor Day. I'm Director of Research at Lake Street Capital Markets, and I cover BK Technologies here at Lake Street. We have the full team on today's presentation, including John Suzuki, Chief Executive Officer and Board Director, Scott Malmanger, Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Theisen, General Manager of the LMR Business, James Teel, General Manager of the Solutions Business, and Carlos Camps, Vice President of Software Engineering. The agenda today will begin with an introduction of the company's Vision 2030 objectives, followed by an outlook on the North American public safety Land Mobile Radio market, a public safety broadband market overview, a roadmap on the company's engineering and product initiatives, and a comprehensive discussion on capital allocation.
Following the presentation, we'll open up for a question and answer session with the full BK Technologies management team. With that, I'll turn the call over to John Suzuki, CEO of BK Technologies.
Thank you, Jaeson.
Go ahead, John.
Thank you, Jaeson. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our Vision 2030 Investor Day. BK Technologies is a company that has been in business for over 75 years, designing, manufacturing, and marketing Land Mobile Radios. For most of the history of the company has focused on wildland fire market. While we enjoy a 90% market share in this vertical, the wildland fire market is a very small market compared to the broader public safety communications market. To address the larger TAM, in 2019, the company made a strategic decision to invest in a new product line, the BKR Series Radio.
Over the preceding five years, the company invested about 20% of its revenues in R&D to develop its first BKR radio, the BKR 5000, that launched in 2020, and more recently, the multiband BKR 9000 handheld radio in 2023. This investment has proven to pay off. As we closed Vision 2025, these two radios doubled revenue from $44 million to $86 million. Our shift to an asset-light model increased our gross margin to about 50%. The combination of higher ASP product mix and lower cost structures improved EBITDA margin from 3.5% in 2020 to over 20% in 2025. As we look forward to Vision 2030, we plan to double revenue to $170 million, increase gross margin to 60%, and expand EBITDA margin to 35%.
This would triple EPS to $13 and generate $55 million in free cash flow. To accelerate our revenue growth, we expect to start shipping our multiband in-vehicle mobile, the BKR 9500, in the first half of 2027. Afterwards, engineering will shift to our next generation platform, the BKRX, for expected launch in 2029. For competitive reasons, we are not discussing or disclosing information on the BKRX platform today. I felt it was important that we communicate that we intend to continue our engineering spend through the Vision 2030 timeframe. We believe we can achieve the $170 million revenue target through our core business. We also believe that over this period, the business will generate a tremendous amount of free cash flow.
Our intention is to allocate some of this new capital to either enter new markets or to add solutions that can help accelerate the adoption rate of the BKR 9000 and BKR 9500 multiband radios. Our go-to-market focus is on two product lines, Land Mobile Radios and solutions, both of which will be discussed in greater detail during this presentation. At this point, I'd like to turn over to our General Manager of LMR Business, Stephen Theisen. Stephen, the floor is yours.
Thank you, John. My name is Steve Theisen. I'm the General Manager of BK's LMR business. I'd like to take a moment to give a brief introduction. I've been in the industry for over 25 years, the last nine of which with BK Technologies, where I started in a sales position and have held various leadership roles, moving to the head of sales and marketing. As of July of this past year, I was, as I assumed the position as General Manager of the LMR business. I'd like to talk first about the total addressable market. The market is about $2.4 million, where it has grown to that level over the past five years at a rate of 7.5%. BK has grown at 14% over that same period of time.
Industry has shown that, or industry evaluations have shown that we are expecting a compound annual growth rate of about 10% over the next five years, taking the total addressable market to $3.8 million. In that period of time, we expect to see a 15% compound annual growth rate. The market share at that point, we would expect to grow by nearly 10%. Sorry, I'm having slide presentation problems. There we go. Thank you. Our product portfolio is deliberately focused for purpose-built and meant to deliver exceptional performance and reliability for public safety professionals.
It consists of P25 portables and mobiles, as John said, starting with our BKR 5000, and then our BKR 9000 multi-band followed by our KNG mobile series, and then launching in the first half of 2027, we'll see the BKR 9500 multi-band portable or multi-band mobile. We have the accessories that go with those radios, and then unique feature sets within our base stations and the industry's only rapid deployment portable repeater, the RelayONE. Market overview, particularly over the last five years, has been focused on federal government, military, and state and local, segmented by tiers. Tier 3 being the largest of those and has been our primary focus. The mission has been to leverage our wildland relationships and reputation to penetrate the structure fire market, which is the most price-sensitive market.
We opportunistically look at state and local Tier 1 and two markets as well. The key growth strategy or the service addressable market is about $2.3 mllion-$2.5 million. This is the largest of which is in the fire segment. 40% of that business is west of the Mississippi, and 85% of those users already are familiar with the BK Technologies brand and product. This is important to us as not only is this a large segment, but it works with our focus-driven portfolio and purpose-built product. We have established a presence in that market, and we can leverage those relationships. In addition to this, these markets tend to be the most price sensitive and the most resistant to move away from LMR. Couple case studies to talk about is Florida Forestry.
Florida Forestry looked at our BKR 5000 for a period of nearly two years. This is a legacy account where they have been a BK user for decades. As the market has changed, they needed to address interoperability issues. They decided to make the decision not to go forward with the single band, but to purchase the BKR 9000 multiband radio at a 40% price premium to give them that ability to move forward into other bands, interoperability with adjacent agencies, whether it be federal, local or state. A couple key points there is that this enabled them to bridge that interoperability gap and to eliminate redundant hardware. One radio, multiple missions. Another example of this is Washington County Sheriff's Office. This is in Idaho. This is a core Tier 3 jurisdiction.
Very typical of what we see, not a very large population, but very large geographically and with some specific challenges. They needed to focus on interoperability issues where they had traditionally been VHF, but they had surrounding municipalities that were UHF band, the state patrol that was operating on the P25 trunk system, and of course, federal agencies all around them. This is a very rugged terrain that they operate in as well, so they had communication gaps. They decided to move forward after being a long-time Motorola customer to go with the BKR 9000, a brand that they were already familiar with because of the fire around them, but not necessarily a radio that they had used themselves.
They trusted, they went forward, and with that, they have closed some interoperability issues, and they have stated that the radio actually performs better than other radios that they have tried in the most challenging territories. Again, I'm sorry I'm having trouble with the moving. Thank you. Thank you again for your participation, and I'll now turn the presentation over to James Teel, our General Manager of Solutions. James, please go ahead.
Thank you, Stephen. My name is James Teel, and I'm the General Manager of our Solutions business here at BK. As a brief overview on my background, I've been in the LMR and cellular communications industry for over 40 years, including 28 years with L3Harris and four years with BK Technologies. This slide that I'm showing summarizes the evolution of public safety communications, starting from single-band LMR radios, evolving to multi-band LMR radios and broadband in the vehicle, which at that time was characterized and today is characterized by mobile data terminals, GPS, and video, and ultimately to broadband outside of the vehicle or on person. This evolution has been heavily driven by the advancements of the smartphone. Today, broadband technology such as 5G and emerging satellite direct-to-phone play a key role in augmenting LMR mission-critical communications.
Likewise, worldwide standards are moving broadband toward mission-critical communications akin to LMR. However, for the foreseeable future, we think both LMR radios and smartphones will continue to play a key role in this market. Technology innovation has driven the U.S. public safety broadband market to a range of $4 billion-$8 billion annually, which represents 40% of the global market. This market's growing at 8%-12% CAGR. That number includes network infrastructure, devices, applications, and services associated with public safety broadband. However, applications is the fastest-growing segment within that space at 12%-20% CAGR, and currently represents 15%-30% of the total market, or $600 million-$2.5 billion annually.
Key application categories include push-to-talk and collaboration tools, situational awareness platforms such as CAD overlays and mapping, video from body cameras, drones, and real-time streaming to dispatch centers and emergency operation centers, as an emerging category that we hear quite a bit about, and that is artificial intelligence and analytics. We are embracing our customers' growing need for increased intelligence and situational awareness. We launched our BK ONE brand of interoperability solutions in the spring of 2025, roughly a year ago at the IWCE conference. Our portfolio provides advanced field applications that enhance situational awareness, decision-making, and inter-agency coordination, enabling the first responder to be safer and more efficient. BK ONE provides our customers with value-based solutions while enhancing the overall value of our BK Radio portfolio. Today, our portfolio consists of InteropONE, which is a SaaS-based push-to-talk over broadband service that provides on-demand interoperability for unified communications.
LocateONE, a solution that provides geospatial real-time tracking of personnel and assets. RelayONE, a portable bring-it-with-you solution that extends LMR radio coverage and enhances on-incident interoperability. We will continue to enhance these offerings as well as add new ones under the BK ONE umbrella throughout the Vision 2030 timeframe. I wanted to highlight, starting with InteropONE, a bit more detail on each of these solutions in our portfolio. The left half of this slide highlights the interoperability challenge in today's push-to-talk over cellular or push-to-talk over broadband market. It remains very siloed today, even with the passage of the FirstNet legislation in 2012, over 14 years ago, that attempted to address the interoperability challenges that came out of the 9/11 incident.
We developed InteropONE to break down these silos by enabling an InteropONE user on their smartphone to create a talk group on the fly and include anyone with an active smartphone number within minutes and without the need for back-office administrative support. This is a unique capability in the push-to-talk over broadband space, and it is BK patented technology. Moving to the right half of the slide, we are developing technology that extends InteropONE capability to our BKR Series radios, which we are calling BKRplay. BKRplay enables a cost-effective alternative to integrated cellular service in the LMR radio. With BKRplay, the radio acts as the front-end device for the InteropONE app, providing the end user the ability to make and receive calls on the radio and change InteropONE groups or channels from the radio.
This is analogous to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, where our car display takes over some of the applications on our smartphone. BKRplay is BK patent-pending technology, and we are planning customer beta testing to start in this quarter. Falling into the situational awareness category, LocateONE is a cost-effective solution that provides unified visibility of radio and field assets across LMR, LTE and 5G, and SatCom networks. LocateONE provides out-of-the-box data connectors that enable interoperability and ecosystem friendliness. The value delivered is increased situational awareness, which in turn drives reduced incident response times, which again in turn enhance end-user safety and citizen safety. Moving to the right half of the slide, we launched LocateONE LITE at the International Wireless Communications Expo, or IWCE, conference just this past month in March.
Sparked by a specific customer challenge, this solution focuses on situational awareness for teams operating in austere Internet-deprived environments such as wildland fire, backcountry search and rescue, rural sheriff's departments, and border patrol units. LocateONE LITE leverages the growing Team Awareness Kit, or in the industry known as TAK, software ecosystem and enhances the value and stickiness of our BKR Series radios. LocateONE LITE was well received during a recent field exercise hosted by the North Carolina First Responder Emerging Technologies Program, or FirstTech, as indicated by the quote from Charles Laird on the slide. As important, our LocateONE solutions are in alignment with the 2019 Dingell Act, which contains important provisions affecting public safety communications, especially public safety personnel location.
In June 2013, the Yarnell Hill wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona, killed 19 members of the elite Granite Mountain Hotshots and became one of the deadliest firefighter disasters in U.S. history. While the Dingell Act was not a direct response to Yarnell, the incident highlights exactly the kinds of communication and location gaps the law tries to fix and which LocateONE helps to address. Lastly, RelayONE. We rebranded what was previously called Rapid Deployment Portable Repeater, or RDPR, as RelayONE when we launched BK ONE last year. As previously mentioned, RelayONE is a portable bring-it-with-you solution that extends LMR radio coverage and enhances on-incident interoperability by enabling cross-mode, cross-band, and cross-protocol communications. Our latest enhancements include incorporation of our BKR 9000 into the offering.
RelayONE, equipped with a pair of BKR 9000s, offer the most flexible LMR cross-communication solution with respect to the frequency being used, whether that's VHF, UHF, or 700 MHz or 800 MHz, and the system type, be it analog, conventional P25, and trunk P25. This concludes my overview of the public safety broadband market. I will now pass the presentation to Carlos Camps, our Vice President of Software Engineering. Go ahead, Carlos.
Thank you, James. As James mentioned, I'm the Vice President of Software Engineering over at BK Technologies. Having joined BK just about 11 months ago, I'm one of the newer members of the team, but I bring with me over 30 years of LMR industry experience, including 28 years at Motorola Solutions in their engineering organization. I'd like to start today talking about our Technology Innovation Center and why we believe it positions BK to remain relevant and continue building momentum over the next five years. Our Sawgrass Innovation Center was established in 2019 when a unique concentration of experienced public safety radio engineering talent became available in the South Florida market. We moved quickly to build around that opportunity, beginning with our CTO, Dr. Branko Avanic, and an experienced team that understood how to design high-performance mission-critical radios.
That investment produced the BKR 9000, which we believe established BK as a credible, competitive, premium, multiband public safety communication player. More importantly, it validated the underlying model. Targeted R&D investment with deep domain expertise and intimate customer knowledge can and does produce differentiated products. We are continuing to build on that foundation with the BKR 9500 while also applying the same playbook to software. In 2025, we began investing in an in-house software team to broaden our platform capabilities and create additional ways to deliver value to customers over time. This is not just a story of one product, it's really the story of a repeatable innovation engine, one that has already been proven in hardware and is now being extended into software and platform development.
Next, I'd like to talk about the BKR 9500, which is an important example of how we are extending the platform in a very disciplined way. We have intentionally designed the 9500 to be a low-friction upgrade path for our existing installed base. Rather than asking customers to to replace an entire mobile installation, the 9500 is being developed as a drop-in replacement for the transceiver. That means practically that customers can continue using the existing control heads, cabling, and much of the vehicle's installed infrastructure already installed in the field. That matters for two reasons. First, it reduces development and deployment risk. By leveraging proven interfaces and existing accessory ecosystem, we can narrow the validation scope while preserving a familiar user experience and support a faster path to market. Second, it should improve customer adoption.
For agencies with existing KNG mobile deployments, the upgrade path to multi-band becomes much more cost-effective and operationally practical. In many cases, a customer can remove their existing KNG mobile radio, install the BKR 9500 transceiver, reconnect the existing cabling and control hardware, and then complete the upgrade with very limited installation disruption. That installed base is pretty meaningful. We have more than 50,000 KNG mobiles in the field, and we believe that creating a practical multi-band migration path for a large group of our existing customers is going to be compelling. The message here is pretty straightforward. The BKR 9500 is designed to help us scale faster by reusing what is already installed, already works, lowering the upgrade costs for our customers, and increasing the probability of adoption with our existing customer base.
I'd now like to talk a little bit about how our software investments are being deployed. That software investment strategy is evolving from a primarily device-centered model into a broader end-to-end solutions platform. In Vision 2025, the majority of our internal software effort is really concentrated around traditional LMR and its components, radio firmware, editing software, support tools, and a limited set of adjacent applications. That work remains important because it continues to enhance the value of our radio platforms and supports feature-driven ASP expansion over time. As we look toward Vision 2030, our objective is to build a more balanced software portfolio, one that supports the core LMR and P25 environment while also expanding into larger solution areas that matter to public safety customers.
Those include fleet management, mobile and broadband application integration, shared device cloud architecture, and the ability to support third-party integrations. A key part of that strategy is fleet management. For fire, EMS, and police customers, managing large deployed fleets is not optional. It's a necessary part of operating at scale. We believe that building stronger fleet scale software capabilities makes our platform more valuable, more embedded within the customer workflow, and more relevant beyond the initial hardware sale. We're also continuing to invest in our BK ONE platform, where we see opportunities to extend the reach and capability of traditional LMR voice and data systems through meaningful integrations. In practical terms, that means helping bridge the space between conventional infrastructure-based communications and the kinds of off-grid or off-infrastructure use cases where resiliency, mobility, and situational awareness become even more important.
In several cases, the innovations we have developed for austere and off-network environments can be applied back into broader public safety workflows. That gives us an opportunity to fill important capability gaps between traditional and more dynamic field deployments. Finally, we see growing interest from third parties that want to access the metadata and interoperability layers that our platform can provide. Over time, that creates the potential for BK to participate in a wider solution ecosystem, not just as a device provider, but as a platform enabler. Our software investments are designed to make BK more valuable, not only at the device level, but across the broader mission-critical workflow. Now I'm going to get into the five-year LMR roadmap. This slide lays out how we are managing the LMR roadmap over the next five years. The first point is that our core platforms are durable.
We expect both the BKR 5000 and the BKR 9000 to remain relevant and in the market through the Vision 2030 period. These are long-life platforms, and that durability is important because it gives us a stable installed base, a continued revenue foundation, and an ongoing platform on which to deploy additional software features and capabilities over time. At the same time, sustaining engineering remains essential. Long-life platforms still require active investment as components phase out, whether that means simple part substitutions or more involved redesign work to preserve product availability and life cycle support. The next visible step in the roadmap is the BKR 9500, with development underway now and production planned for the first half of 2027. We expect that platform to continue evolving with additional variants after launch. Beyond that, we're already funding the next radio platform, shown here as BKRX.
For competitive reasons, we're not providing details on that platform today, but the key point for investors is that the new radio development is already planned within the Vision 2030 timeframe, with revenue contribution expected to begin in 2029. The overall takeaway is that we are managing the portfolio across multiple horizons, sustaining a durable installed base, bringing 9500 into production, and investing ahead of the next cycle. Now let's dig a little bit more into software. This slide lays out how we see the software roadmap contributing to our Vision 2030 period. There are really three priorities here. First, near term, we are using software support to support revenue growth and margin expansion within the core radio platform. That means adding feature and options that increase the value of the BKR platform, support new BKR 9000 sales, and help expand gross margin through higher ASPs.
A key enabler of that is the move to a twice-yearly release cadence, which creates more predictability for upsell planning, customer adoption, and monetization. Second, over the medium to longer term, we are investing in broader platform capabilities that support larger, more complex customer environments. That includes fleet management, mobile phone symbiosis, and platform longevity. Capabilities we believe are increasingly necessary as we pursue larger radio fleets and more integrated deployments. Third, we are continuing to build out our BK ONE solutions portfolio. That includes expansion of InteropONE, LocateONE, and device management and configuration capabilities. As we bring these solutions to market, we are getting direct customer feedback that helps shape the roadmap. LocateONE LITE is a good example of that process, a solution direction that came from listening closely to customer needs and translating that feedback into more targeted offering.
More broadly, what we are building toward is a more complete software platform. Some of these solution areas are not unique to the market, but our objective is to deliver a better implementation, one that is tightly connected to our devices, informed by customer workflows, and differentiated by the underlying technology that we're developing. Our software roadmap is designed to increase value per device in the near term while building the broader platform capabilities needed to serve larger fleets and more integrated mission-critical workflows over time. With that, I will now pass the mic over to Scott Malmanger for a discussion on our capital allocation strategy. Scott, please go ahead.
Thank you, Carlos. Capital allocation at BK Technologies is grounded in a clear objective: maximizing long-term value per share. We take a disciplined approach to deploy capital. Capital allocation decisions are guided by a consistent set of principles. Return-driven. Prioritize opportunities that generate attractive returns on invested capital. Strategically aligned. Focus on initiatives that strengthen our position in the public safety communications market. Data-informed. Leverage market insights, customer feedback, and industry trends to guide investment decisions. Adaptive. Continuously monitor performance and reallocate capital as conditions evolve. Our capital allocation approach has a strong bias towards reinvesting in the business where we see the highest returns. With approximately 3.6% market share today and a long-term goal of reaching 10%, we believe we have a meaningful opportunity to drive organic growth.
Our first priority in investing is in innovation, particularly expanding our BKR platform, which benefits from a long product life cycles and predictable free cash flow characteristics. The second would be advancing software capabilities that improve functionality, accelerate growth, and create recurring revenue opportunities. Third would be integrating broadband and cellular technologies that enhance first responders' safety and effectiveness and extend connectivity beyond the vehicle, thereby leveraging cellular technologies. We believe these investments will not only support organic growth but also position us for increased recurring revenue and margin expansion over the long term. We target investments that are expected to generate returns meaningfully above our cost of capital and contribute to long-term free cash flow per share growth.
We will complement organic investment with targeted acquisitions that will strengthen our portfolio, provide defined integration, and identifiable value creation opportunities, particularly in software and solutions. We will also expand our role in the evolving public safety communications ecosystem. We apply a strict financial and strategic criteria to all M&A opportunities, including clear strategic fit within our core and adjacent markets, expected returns exceeding internal hurdle rates, and defined integration plans and identifiable value creation opportunities. We will return capital to shareholders when we believe it represents the best use of capital. Our share repurchase program is opportunistic and valuation-driven, and we will consider special dividends when excess capital exceeds our reinvestment opportunities. Overall, we believe this balanced and disciplined approach positions BK Technologies to expand market share, improve profitability, and deliver sustained growth in free cash flow per share over the long term.
By maintaining a disciplined focus on high return organic investment, complemented by strategic acquisitions and opportunistic capital return, BK Technologies is well-positioned to expand market share, increase margins and profitability, grow free cash flow per share, deliver sustained long-term value to shareholders. Again, thanks to all participants for joining us today. This concludes the formal presentation of today's session. I will turn it over to Jaeson Schmidt, who will serve as moderator for the open question- and- answer session.
Sorry about that. As a reminder, we have been polling for questions throughout today's presentation. We're limiting participants to one question. If you have a follow-up, please submit via the webcast, and we will address as many as time allows. Just jumping into the questions we've received, what's driving your strategy of utilizing the smartphone for broadband connectivity? What are the advantages and also the challenges?
I think I'm gonna give James the opportunity to address that question, Jaeson.
Yes.
James.
Yeah. Thanks, John. Our approach of leveraging the smartphone for broadband convergence is really twofold. One is we looked at that situation. You know, the alternative there is, you know, incorporating the cellular hardware into our radio as a single device. The one thing I think we can all agree to is everyone has a smartphone. They've made that investment already. We are taking an approach that leverages that investment by integrating through BKRplay or tethering that smartphone to our radio. That's a much more cost-effective approach, we believe. Probably more importantly, the two devices or technologies have very different life cycles. As Carlos alluded to in his presentation, we're developing Land Mobile Radio platforms to last for 10+ years, right? As a life cycle.
Contrast that to cellular, where we have an expectation that every two to three years we're getting a new cell phone that has new technology in it. Very short life cycle. Our approach acknowledges that different life cycle model and basically leverages the best of both of those worlds to bring LMR and broadband convergence to our customers in a very cost-effective way.
Perfect. A few questions on the competitive landscape, specifically how you compete with the likes of Motorola in solution space where they are so vertically integrated?
Well, I'd say in a nutshell, we're really not trying to compete with Motorola. They are extremely large. They're very vertically integrated. They've made a number of acquisitions. Our approach is to bring practical and cost-effective solutions to our customers, and primarily in the Tier 3 and the Tier 2 markets, where you know, budgets are generally very constrained. It kind of aligned with our strategy around you know, cost-effective, value-based radio platforms. We're doing the same with our solutions approach and bringing solutions that solve problems for our customers. An example of that was highlighted with LocateONE in my presentation. LocateONE LITE.
Perfect. A few questions on the federal government. I'm gonna combine them. First part is how dependent is growth on the federal government spending environment? One wanting you to comment on the federal revenue decline in 2024 and 2025, and how we should be thinking about the outlook here in 2026 and beyond.
Thanks for the question, Jaeson. I'll take that, and maybe Stephen can add some more color. Let us go back to, you know, 2020 timeframe when, if you looked at our revenue profile, I would say half of our revenue was generated from the federal government. Of that $44 million, half of that came from the federal business. Last year we did $86 million, and I believe the percentage was somewhere around 30% or 35%, in that range. Substantially less. As we've grown our business, we really have grown our business outside the federal government, more in the state and local side of the business.
We do see that as a continued trend as we move forward with expanding the adoption of the 9000 and, of course, the upcoming 9500 radio. The primary market for those radios and the primary growth driver is really in the state and local market. Over time, the percentage of business from federal will decline. Now, that being said, if there are opportunities for us to get into agencies, 'cause the federal government is a very large purchaser of Land Mobile Radios, we have a very successful position with the U.S. Forestry. If we were fortunate enough to position ourselves with another federal agency, you could see that percentage climb, as that new agency onboards with the BK radios.
The other comment I would make is if you're looking at large agencies such as U.S. Forestry or any of the federal governments, a lot of that is budget dependent and moves from year to year, and these things get deployed over a period of time. I would say that when you're dealing with large customers, the order cadence tends to be a little bit lumpy. They may get some extra money in one year, or they may decide to allocate more funds towards Land Mobile Radio in a specific year than another year. That doesn't mean over time, when you look at it on a five-year basis, you know, I think you would find that the amount of money that they were gonna spend was more within that predictive range.
I think looking at historical numbers year over year can be very deceiving, and you really have to look at it as a trend over time. Again, we view our growth really being more in the state and local markets. That being said, I'll ask Stephen if he has further comments in terms of where he sees the market growth coming from. Stephen?
Thank you, John. Yes, I would concur with all the statements that John made. The opportunity for growth within our legacy accounts, the federal business that we've enjoyed over the past few decades is really in migration to the new BKR multiband series. That's where we'll see that growth come in. In terms of number of users, it's really not changing too much. We would expect the business there to be in terms of the number of units being sold to be, you know, somewhat stable, up and down a little bit from year to year, depending upon budgets. We have seen quite an interest in adopting the multiband. As we pointed out with our state legacy account, Florida, they were willing to pay a 40% premium to have the ability to have the interoperability at their fingertips when they're ready to add those software options.
Perfect. Next question here is, can you talk about the path to 60% gross margins as Motorola equipment tends to be in that 55%-56% range?
Yeah. It's a good question. I would say Motorola's product basket is pretty wide, right? They have a wide portfolio. Contrast that with ours, as we're very focused on one part of that portfolio, which is the high-end public safety device market. In my opinion, next to software perhaps, that is the highest margin portion of the product portfolio. Where we are just laser-focused on executing on the top-end public safety market for devices, our competitor, Motorola, has a much broader portfolio which dilutes the overall gross margin. While we're targeting 60% on devices, you know, that's our primary focus, and that's where the majority of that profitability that Motorola enjoys as well. They just get diluted from other parts of their portfolio to get down to that 50%- 55%.
Okay. That makes sense. Can you lay out your go-to-market strategy, how you're approaching the dealer market, how the sales force efficiency is tracking, and then how much do you plan to grow the sales force and dealer network in order to hit the targets?
I think that's a great question for Stephen.
All right. Happy to answer that. I actually had a slide that kind of got jumped over in the process of my challenges here, technical challenges. We have about 130+ dealers, and it is a part of our program that we're trying to grow out. We also have grown our direct sales. Now, our direct sales works with the dealer, not against the dealer channel. The dealer channel is an extension of our sales team. We intend to continue to work that. Specifically, I talked about the Tier 3 markets. We are targeting dealers in those Tier 3 markets as well to get the coverage.
I think, Stephen, you commented that there are about 870 counties in the Tier 3. Can you comment on the coverage, the dealer coverage within that t oday?
Thank you, John. That's correct. About 870 Tier 3 counties in the nation, and we have about 80% or just shy of 80% coverage at this time. Getting to that level was a little easier than getting to 100% will probably be a little bit of a challenge, but we're definitely working towards that.
Perfect. A question here on your 2030 financial targets, and if they include any acquisition activity or is the doubling in revenue based solely on organic growth?
Yeah. That's exclusively organic growth. We look at acquisitions as being something in addition to that on top of the $170 million.
Gotcha. What is driving the 2026 to 2030 market growth acceleration to 10% from that 7.5% between 2021 and 2025?
Yeah. First you look at the market overall, right? I mean, you're dealing with public safety, and the number of first responders in the market is really directly proportional to population. You can see as the population grows, the number of first responders grow, and then, of course, the need for radio communications grow. Population growth is not growing at 10% or even 7.5%. I think what you're seeing is really a shift in the average selling price of radios, the value proposition that new technology is bringing. If you look at the average cost of a radio today versus it was, say, 20 years ago, it's probably double that price. There is an acceleration of that average selling price over the last few years, and we see that continuing.
Now, a couple of technologies that are gonna be driving that higher ASP, you know, the first one is multi-band. The multi-band adoption rate has been, I would say, very slow over the last 10 years when it was first introduced, primarily because of the price points of those radios. Today, the customers have more choice at a much more budget-friendly price point, and we see that the adoption rate will go up. That's actually will be an increase overall to historical pricing. I think a lot of that is technology-driven. Multi-band is one aspect of that. Another aspect of that is it's just broadband solutions. As we look at integrating broadband solutions with LMR to augment the overall solution, there's opportunity to increase price and introduce new. I think those are two key drivers of the technology side that's driving the overall market growth over the next period.
Gotcha. Then next question also sticks with some of your targets. The revenue target of $170 million and a 35% EBITDA margin equates to about $60 million in EBITDA. Then this question really wants to kind of bridge how you get to that $55 million in free cash flow.
That definitely sounds like a finance question, so I'm gonna pass that over to Scott.
Thank you, John. Thank you for the question. Basically, we think our forecast is reasonable and yet conservative, and so I'll start off with that. As a part of that, you know, we do have add backs for basically non-cash stock comp, and then we will basically have higher spending for research and development, so we're gonna have some benefits on the income tax side. It's really too early to tell, you know, what's gonna happen four or five years from now, but we've modeled it out, and I'm comfortable that we'll have a free cash flow of someplace in the range of $55 million on $170 million worth of revenue.
Understood. Another question here on the competitive landscape, this time more on the likes of JVCKENWOOD and some of the cheaper radios out there. How you guys differentiate compared to them?
Yeah. I think Stephen can address that. Stephen?
Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you for the question. A good question at that. JVCKENWOOD and Tait are highly competitive from a price standpoint. When the price is equal, customer's looking at which is the least risk, which is the easiest to transition to. Our radio has a form factor that's gonna be very familiar with them. It's going to feel like the radio that they're used to using at a much higher price point, if I dare say, a Motorola radio. In performance, we put a lot of focus on the performance of the radio, as well.
You know, in leveraging our relationships, the size of our company, the way that we can take care of the customer, and then putting a radio in their hand that feels like something that they're used to having in their hand. It operates like a radio that they're used to having. It makes it a little bit easier, I would say, to remove price from that equation.
Stephen, if I can just add to what you're saying, right? I mean, first you end up with a—let's just say it's a Motorola customer, which, I mean, they own 70% of the market share. Chances are it's a Motorola customer that we're talking about. First, for them to make a decision to move away from Motorola, a company that they've probably purchased radios from for a majority of their career, is not a simple one. They've made a decision because they really need to have a multiband radio. They want a multiband radio. They feel they need a multiband radio, but their budget is only allowing them to afford a single band radio from Motorola Solutions.
They open up the door, right, to competitors who have multiband radios that are comparable price to say, a Motorola single band radio. The question is really when you compete against these other competitors, Tait and say, JVCKENWOOD, you know, what is the distinguishing factors that can actually make a difference in BK's way? I wanted to reiterate what you just said because I don't think we can overstate the importance of this. When you're dealing with law enforcement, they hate change, right? Form factor matters in terms of how they use their radios, the familiarity they have with their radios, especially if they find themselves in a life-threatening situation.
When a radio that you give them, if it's a new radio, their first reaction is, "I hate it because it's new." Right? Then they warm to it if the form factor is very similar to what they've used in the past. That was one of our key design criteria when we brought the 9000 out to market. The form factor is very similar to a Motorola APX 8000 radio, and we did that on purpose. That the transition from, say, an APX 8000 or an APX 6000, which is their single-band radio, to the BKR 9000 all-band radio, would be a seamless event.
In fact, you know, we've given 9,000 radios out in the marketplace to first responders, and their first reaction is, "Oh, this looks like a Motorola radio." We would ask them, "Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing?" They would say, "Absolutely, it's a great thing." Because the ability to put those radios in first responders' hands, train them on those radios, is almost seamless. Now, you contrast that with our competitors of Tait and JVCKENWOOD, and you can go online and look at their radios. There is a distinct difference between the form factors of these radios. It's that factor in my mind, or in our experience, I would say, has been a key factor in the end customer selecting BK. A little bit longer-winded answer, Jaeson. Sorry, but I thought it was a very important point that we need to reinforce.
No. That, that's helpful. The next question is, you addressed it, I think, in a previous question, but this goes back to the gross margin difference between Motorola and specifically how you guys are able to make these radios at such lower cost compared to a competitor with so much more scale.
Yeah. The comment I would make is that we don't produce these radios at a lower cost than Motorola Solutions. If you look at an equivalent radio to ours, I believe that their cost structure is much better than ours because they use a lot more customized integrated components, and they have a lot more volume and manufacturing scale than we have. I think that if you look at our gross margin on the nine thousand at being 60%, then the question, you know, people should ask is what the gross margin of Motorola's comparable radios are in the marketplace. It is substantially higher. Again, it's diluted from the other parts of their broadband. Now, I don't know that for a fact. I don't know what their cost structure is.
You know, I don't know what their margins are. I don't have any inside information on that at all. I do know, right, that these guys use a lot of customized parts. I do know that they have a lot more volume and a lot more manufacturing scale. These are, these are reasonable assumptions that I can make. I know that they sell their radios at a lot more money than we do. I expect that their margins would be much, much greater than this.
Okay. That's helpful. A few questions, I'm just gonna combine them here. Looking out to your targets, how much revenue are you expecting from either accessories or BK ONE?
On the accessory side, I think we've said in the past it's about 30%-35%. Again, it fluctuates a little bit depending on you know, in the middle of fire season, you get a lot of people coming in asking for more accessories because, you know, they're going out on mission. During the fourth and first quarter when things are dying down, the percentage of accessories is less. But it's in that 30%-35%. In terms of BK ONE, I mean, it's still relatively new, the portfolio. And I think again, the value in the portfolio is not that it's just gonna be this huge revenue stream as compared to the radio revenue stream. To be honest, the radio revenue stream is the lion's share of our business and very profitable.
BK ONE is profitable, but it's not a significant part of the revenue portion. Now, as we go forward over the next five years, but more importantly the next when I look at Vision 2035- 2040. As broadband becomes more relevant in public safety communications from a first responder standpoint, when they're outside the vehicle. I do think that the opportunity there is greater every year as we go forward. Part of the reason why we're making this investment there is because we do see this shift in public safety's interest in using broadband, and there is value.
We've seen it in the vehicles where they brought broadband communications to the vehicle, how that's made, you know, the first responder safer, more efficient. You know, as we look forward, it's really about when that first responder steps out of the vehicle. He is carrying a smartphone. I think we saw some Verizon studies where 60% of the first responders are being issued with agency-paid smartphones, and that percentage continues to climb over time. You know, I can't tell you where we're gonna be on the solution side of the business in BK ONE as a percentage of the revenue. I would suspect, you know, if I look at the next five, 10, 15 years, the radio portion will still be a significant part, just because the industry doesn't like to give up their radios.
I do see that side of it growing, and it's becoming. It will become more material. Customers are asking today, you know, "What is your broadband strategy, and how do these things work together?" That's why James and the team has been very focused and very successful, I will say, in communicating to the market on how we are doing it a little bit differently than our competitors.
Perfect. Appreciate that color. This next question I assume relates more to manufacturing and supply chain. Can you scale without breaking the model?
I'm gonna let Stephen. He just picked up the operations group, so it's fresh in his mind, I'm sure.
Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you for the question. Yes, we absolutely can, and we already are. We proved that in 2025 that it's scalable, and we continue to work on our relationships and contract manufacturers, suppliers in general to make sure that they're prepared to grow with us as well. I'm very happy to report that I have no concerns at all that we'll continue to improve the scalability of the model that we've began about two and a half years ago, I think, when this all started.
Yeah. Just to add, I mean, our partner, East West Manufacturing, has been great. They have numerous facilities around the world, including in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Asia. The versatility for us to be able to leverage their manufacturing scale across the globe is fantastic. You know, the reality is we are a fairly good-sized customer for them, given the size of their business and our business, which is good 'cause they actually pay attention to us, and they want us to help us grow, and they are a shareholder as well. I think that our interests are very much aligned, and they're excited about Vision 2030 and our growth prospects.
Thanks for that answer. Next question here is on how you guys view the LMR and broadband markets and if you think they're competing technologies.
That sounds like a James Teel question. James.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the question. No, we don't view them as competing technologies. In fact, we believe that, as we've discussed, broadband today is augmenting LMR in a very positive way, and we don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. Even when broadband is, you know, more integrated into the public safety operations, I'll go back to what John was talking about with form factor around the device. We don't see that form factor going away anytime soon. You know, some of you hear you'll never see a firefighter go into a burning building with their smartphone, and we believe that. We believe that LMR radio form factor is gonna be here for the foreseeable future.
That's helpful. The next question is on your backlog ending 2025, and then looking here in the first half of 2026, which key contracts or agencies are you expecting to materialize?
Yeah. First, I would say, again, if you start looking at it year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, there's lumpiness in the order volume and then large orders that we get from, you know, some key customers. U.S. Forestry, we get orders every year. It's usually in the Q2 to Q3 timeframe. You know, those deliveries can take five or six months to make a delivery to convert to revenue. The order profile for large customers will vary a lot from year to year. But if you take it on a five-year view, you'll see that it smooths out, and it's pretty consistent. As I look into 2026, you know, clearly, we expect orders from one of our key customer in the federal side, U.S. Forestry.
They have been assigned budgets, but the timing of the release of those funds and the process they have to go through, again, historically, has been in Q2 and Q3. We expect that to be replicated in 2026.
Gotcha. How does the BKR 9500 drop-in replacement strategy reduce customer upgrade costs?
I'm gonna shift that to Carlos since he hasn't had a question, and then maybe get a follow-up from Stephen. Maybe I can do the cleanup on the end. I don't know. Let's go, Carlos?
Thank you, John. This was a key design consideration when we developed the 9500. Mobile replacements in general can be very difficult to implement. You have to take all the existing equipment out. It requires you usually to take the vehicle out of service for a day or longer in order to remove all the existing cabling, wiring, control heads, power lines, and then replace them with newer ones, right?
When we approached this problem, we said if we want to get fast adoption, if we want to reduce that headwind, that disruption to operations and that cost, which sometimes can be anywhere from 30%-50% of the purchase price of the device as well for labor, what if we made a box that just fit right in, you took out the existing cables, plugged them right into the new device, and with a couple of programming actions, you were ready to go? That's really the challenge that we gave the engineering team, and I think they took that to heart and are delivering to us a device that fits that exact model that we have put together for our customers to be able to take advantage of.
Stephen, can you comment? I mean, this strategy is or this product approach we've communicated to customers, can you give some anecdotal feedback on how that's being received?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. That is true. You know, as we've seen, especially in the federal space, the workforce at that technician level is shrinking. It's a real important issue for them to be able to program radios, install radios quickly. In having conversations with that particular customer base, they're saying that they're gonna have radios programmed up, queued up, and just ready to drop in, and they figure that they can do that in a very short amount of time. It doesn't take a huge number of people to go through a huge number of radios. It's being very well received. In fact, I think our customers would say that they're excited about what we're offering them in that regard.
I think just a final point on this is we estimate that there are 50,000 of the single-band KNG mobile radios. These are customers who have these things installed in their vehicles today. Again, it's a single-band radio, if they wanted to do an upgrade to a multi-band radio, they could buy the 9500, and within a matter of minutes, you know, open up the trunk, replace out the old radio and put in the new 9500. You know, although I would love to replace all 50,000 of those radios, but it just gives you an idea of the market size. You know, the level of success on replacing those radios is still to be seen and the speed at which we can do that.
The fact that we've made it really easy for them, and it's again more cost-effective from the install side. The control heads are all the same, so user training is like zero, right? Transitioning from a KNG mobile to that they've been using for 10, 15 years, right? To the new 9500 is absolutely seamless.
I appreciate that color. Next question here is on the 9000 and deals that you aren't able to win. What tends to be the common feedback you get from customers?
I'm gonna start that off, and then I'll let Stephen finish 'cause the one area that I think that I'm more aware of, 'cause I'm, you know, it's disappointing to see, is when the customer has funding and a need to really purchase both portables and mobiles in-vehicle radios at the same time. For some customers, we've been able to, you know, persuade them to spend all their money on portables and then just wait for the in-vehicle mobile radio to come out. There are certain cases where funding had to be spent, and they have their need, and we've lost that business because they just can't wait. I think that's disappointing to hear because I think that these customers wanted to buy BK, but because of the timing of their funds and their need to spend those funds, they weren't able to purchase our radios.
I'll leave it to Stephen to talk about maybe the broader case, perhaps when we're not successful in selling the 9000 against competitive radios. Stephen?
Yeah. I would agree with that. As you were saying, John, immediately some examples came to mind that I won't name, but absolutely lost an opportunity to sell because the customer wanted to stick with the same brand for both products, and they weren't willing to wait to buy. That's gonna happen, right? That's obviously what we're trying to put a stop to here with the introduction of the 9500, and we think that we'll be successful with that. I believe that the market is continuing to shift as well, and it's shifted in our favor. We remain to be that value-added, I guess, supplier, a great quality product at a great price, great service, and I think our success rate is gonna go up substantially.
Okay. That's helpful. The next question here on M&A, you've outlined it's gonna be part of the growth strategy going forward. How should investors think about the potential cadence of M&A? Is this a situation you eventually wanna do one deal a year or just be opportunistic? How should we think about sort of that timeline?
Yeah, I think that's a great question, right? You know, we are gonna generate a lot of free cash flow, and therefore there's gonna be this, "Hey, let's go do something," right? You know, when I look at the opportunity here, the opportunity is so large in terms of our core business. We're at 3.5% today, and you can see the growth rates Stephen was talking about. I mean, you know, we have the opportunity to grow faster because the market is so big.
The question is how do we do that? When I look at acquisitions, I'm really looking at opportunities that can open up new markets for us or to accelerate the adoption rate of the 9000 and 9500. That's my first and foremost priority. If there's an opportunity to do that, and I feel like it brings accretive value in these areas, then we will close the deal. I will say, if I don't close a single deal in five years, I'm not gonna lose any sleep, right? I would be very disappointed in me, and maybe the board will relieve me. We shouldn't be doing deals to just do deals. When you ask me about a cadence, that's not on my mind.
I wish I could do five deals today that drove the adoption rate or open new markets. I would do five deals today if I had that on my plate. We're gonna be very opportunistic. We're gonna be very thoughtful in terms of how we spend that money. We do think that our core market has a huge runway, and that's where we wanna reinforce our investments because we think that provides the highest rate of return.
Okay, that's helpful. The next question kinda goes off your last comments there, John. Just how you think about the international markets.
Yeah. Obviously, our core market here is in the United States, where Project 25, which is the technology used for public safety, was really adopted under the TIA standard. Canada also adopts P25, and we have some business in Canada. There are about 30 other countries worldwide that also use P25. Australia and New Zealand are probably the larger markets outside the U.S. and Canada. But these markets are, in general, quite small. I tell my team, "You know, we did $86 million last year. I bet you we could do $86 million in Florida alone." There's just so much opportunity in the U.S. I think our focus needs to be here.
Now, that being said, if there was an opportunity for us to partner with someone or acquire someone that participates in these other markets, then I think that would be of interest to us. For us to go out on our own on an organic basis to establish offices in these areas, I just don't see that being realistic. When I talk about international, I'm really, you know, really talking about Canada for the most part, which in my mind, you know, we've done business in Canada. It's a very easy place for us to go do business. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, it's certainly not a priority.
Gotcha. And then a question here on sort of going back to the ability to scale, specifically how you're thinking about the sales force and further building out that sales infrastructure.
Sure. You know, Stephen's gone through a lot of that over his last four or five years. You know, I think when I started in 2021, the sales team was probably half of what it is today. I'm gonna let Stephen answer that 'cause he's got a lot of experience, and he certainly understands the challenge to get to $170 million. Stephen, why don't you give your thoughts on that?
Yeah. Thank you. That's true. There's a couple different divisions within our organization that are growing substantially. Carlos is part of one of those, and sales is another one of those. The sales team, we're continuing, as I said earlier, to try to grow our dealer channel, and we have absolutely grown our direct sales team as well. We still have a lot of sales team members that are covering large geographical areas, and we do define their individual territory by population. I don't think that doubling the size of our sales force is gonna double our business, so we have to be thoughtful and strategic about how we go about this.
As we get to a point where a sales team member is kind of maxing out their capability within a territory, then we look at splitting up territories and adding another person. We absolutely are looking long-term to grow that. In fact, we've added another division where we had the country divided into two. It's now divided into three, and someday it'll be divided into four, and so forth and so on.
Yeah. I think just to add on to what Stephen is saying, you know, when you're looking at our sales team, they work at the state and local level, right? They work primarily with or exclusively with dealers, right? We would prefer our customers purchase through our resellers. The reason for that, we view that as a force multiplier, right? There's a lot of time that's spent with customers, both in acquiring the order, but deployment of radios and support of those radios, and there's no better person to do that than someone that's local to them who's focused on public safety. That being said, the salespeople we're bringing on board are not order takers, right?
Their job is to get out in the marketplace and interact with first responders in the communities where they work. Public safety on a monthly basis get together, whether it's fire or police or jointly together to discuss very various things. Typically, they will allow vendors to come in or at local exhibits. We're at hundreds of local exhibits every year. Their job is really to bring our flag and promote our value proposition into these marketplaces. Then as they uncover leads, introduce the local reseller to that opportunity. Now, in some cases, the dealers will bring opportunities for us. You know, our experience has been the best way for us to go to market is if the BK sales representative is in the field working with first responders, promoting our products in terms of our value proposition and then supporting that through our reseller channel and their resources.
That's helpful. Next question here is: Is it fair to assume the BKR 9500 could replace the 50,000 KNG units over time?
Yeah, that's a good question. If you asked me, I would love to see that. Do I think that's gonna happen? The answer is no 'cause the 9500 is gonna be much more expensive than the KNG mobile. It'll go back to needs, right? You know, we look at the overall market for Land Mobile Radio today, and this is just a guess from myself and our team. About 15% of the radios, so there's 700,000 radios sold every year-ish. 15% of that we feel is multi-band radios today. We think that maybe it could go to 60%, which would be very aggressive. Think about it, right? It's been 15%. It's been almost 10 years that the first all-band radio was first introduced.
It's not like it's lighting a fire and transitioning this market very fast. Again, you know, our view on that is the adoption rate has nothing to do with the capability. It had more to do with the price points of what these people were paying. Now we do feel that with ourselves and other competitors at more budget-friendly price points that the adoption rate is gonna accelerate. If you were to ask me to say where do you think things will settle out? I would say 60% all-band radios, 40% single-band radios. I would assume that percentage is possible on the 50,000 radios that are embedded out in the base. Now again, that's just, you know, over the napkin math. I can say with probably great certainty it wouldn't be 100%.
Okay. Perfect. Next question here is on the Tier 3 market. Just if you could outline the annual unit opportunity in the Tier 3 space, assuming that it's a lower radios per agency number compared to the Tier 1 and Tier 2?
I don't necessarily agree with that assumption, Jaeson. First, the way we break out the tiers is by population. The first tier is 100 million people, and it's about 50 counties. If you look at Tier 2, the next 100 million people is in about 200 counties. Tier 3 is 870 counties, 100 million people, right? I think that you'll find that the number of devices is pretty consistent with the number of first responders you have. The number of first responders is consistent with the population within that area. I mean, there's some variations clearly, but that's more or less what it is.
You're looking at a good third of the devices being sold into that Tier 3, and I guess what we call Tier 4. It's like $20 million-$30 million. These are like, you know, over 1,000 counties. Whatever's left. There's 3,000 counties throughout the United States. But that's where we feel our strength is. Now that being said, that doesn't mean, you know, a Tier 1 county or customer couldn't buy our radio, right? I mean, we've sold radios to New York City. You know why? Not that they have wildland fires in Manhattan. They don't, clearly. But they do have a lot of firefighters, and they do like to do wildland fire. So when they go on mission, guess what?
They put their radios that they purchase on their daily use aside, and they grab their BK radios, and they go out on mission on wildland fire. There's the exposure. There's a lot of smaller communities, even though there's a lot of pressure to buy, you know, a common brand, especially as you look in the Tier 2 markets, where they’re independent, they have their own money, and they make their own decisions. There are certainly counties that are not adjacent to large metroplexes, such as Boulder County. We were very successful in taking, I think it's like 40+ fire departments. They had bought a variety of different radios. Every brand of radio for their home use solution, they all bought BK radios for wildland fire.
When they got some funding, they decided to choose one radio for both missions, and one brand, and that radio was the BKR 9000. We talk a lot about Tier 3 because we do think that it's our easiest story to tell. There are plenty of opportunities in the Tier 2 and, in some cases, in the Tier 1. It's just more opportunistic versus an overall strategy.
Okay, that's really helpful. A question here on the recent news on AT&T investing $2 billion to upgrade FirstNet and how you view any potential implications for either positive or negative for you guys.
That sounds like a James question.
Yeah. Thank you, John. That is a significant upgrade. We view that positively because ultimately it is going to enhance the services that are being delivered to public safety. What happens, and we've seen it, you know, AT&T won the FirstNet contract and of course really focused on public safety redundancy and priority on the network for first responders. Of course, that has cascaded to AT&T's competitors, Verizon and T-Mobile to the big three. At the end of the day, that brings more value to public safety. It also gives you know, from a solutions perspective, solutions that are interoperating over these cellular networks and these capabilities. It gives us the ability to take advantage of those. At the end of the day, it's a good thing.
Perfect. Next question here. Given the strong free cash flow dynamics, if deal opportunities don't present themselves, would you guys consider an aggressive stock buyback program?
Yeah, I mean, the short answer is yes, but there's also the opportunity for first-time dividends. I don't wanna make, you know, comment on one or the other. Your statement is if we don't see a good acquisition opportunity on the horizon, and we've got a fairly healthy cash balance, and of course, we view ourselves as generating more cash every quarter on a go-forward basis. I think the prudent thing would be to return that to the shareholder. Whichever is the more efficient vehicle at the time, whether it's a one-time dividend or a stock buyback. Scott, do you wanna add to that?
Yeah. I would say that we have experienced excellent free cash flow. I looked at our cash balance at the end of 2024, it was $7 million. Our balance as of the end of December 2025 was $22.8 million. We are, you know, accumulating cash through our free cash flow. I think the emphasis would be whatever is most effective for shareholder value, which is probably more aligned with a special dividend than a share repurchase.
Okay, that makes sense. This next question is specifically for John. Can you talk about your own personal long-term plans, given your extensive history in the industry and long career, how you're thinking about your next steps essentially?
Well, I appreciate the question, Jaeson. Yeah, if you asked me this, you know, five, six years ago, would I be back in the LMR industry? My answer would have been no. But the opportunity came, and I couldn't say no to the opportunity, and I've enjoyed my tenure here at BK, and I love interacting with shareholders and investors. It's been a great run through Vision 2025. When we started looking at planning for Vision 2030, and again, when I think about this, it's more of a 15-year life cycle, right? 'Cause these platforms that we're producing, they have very long life cycles.
If we take the next period of 2030, we put together our projections and sat with the board and said that, you know, we think that this is within the realm of possible, right? It required a lot of work, just like getting through to Vision 2025, but if we stay focused and we build a strong team, we believe we can double that revenue and so on. Part of that was a conversation that Scott and I had with the board that says, you know, Scott's actually a little older than me. I'll let him speak for himself. We wanted to align our long-term incentives, right?
We are both fortunate in the positions that we are in today in our lives, but we felt that if we did something extraordinary in achieving the Vision 2030, that we should probably share in that reward as well. We took a page from I guess the playbooks that we're seeing in the industry and said, "Look, if we don't, if our shareholders don't gain from the activities that we do in the next five years, then we shouldn't gain either." We set these targets. Our compensation is tied specifically to shareholder price. It's actually in five tranches. There's an 8-K. You can go look at that. Our interest is really in bringing, getting the shareholder price up.
Now, that being said, the way Scott and I, we're a little bit old school, is you go make more money, right? You go make more money, higher earnings per share, then the chances are the share price is gonna go up. You know, that's the way we think, right? We're more long-term thinkers, and that's what the plan has been set on. That's where our heads are on this. I know, for myself, the way the plan is structured, you know, I can't exercise. Even though they vest, I can't exercise for five years, which it'll be like 2030. Good, bad, indifferent, you know, I've kind of made my bed with the company.
I'm excited about what the opportunity can bring and I expect to be here through 2030 unless the board decides that they wanna go in a different direction or some. Which they always have the ability to go do. From my personal standpoint, both Scott and I have kind of made our bed here and we believe strongly in what we're doing and just as we executed on Vision 2025, we're excited to execute on Vision 2030.
No, that's good to hear and appreciate that color. Next question here is just given the security and safety product dealer market has seen quite a bit of consolidation, how that has changed your market positioning, positive or negative?
I would agree with the comment, right? There's been consolidation on what we would call the radio dealer market over the last 10 years, right? There's been some concentration in those dealerships. You'll find that most of them are in the primary markets. As you go into the Tier 3 markets, there's still quite a lot of independent shops, and it's just harder to roll up, I think, in that particular market. As it aligns to our Tier 3 strategy and our growth area, we do find that there are a lot of independent people out there that are willing to entertain our product line. I can't speak, you know, five years from now how that's gonna look. We certainly see that consolidation in the Tier 1 and into Tier 2 markets, but we've not seen as much consolidation in the Tier 3 side.
Understood. Next question here is on the potential threat of satellite to LMR and how you guys view sort of satellite mobile services.
Yeah. I don't think I'd use the word threat. I think I would use the word opportunity. On that note, I'll ask James to kind of expound on that.
Great question. You know, I mentioned the satellite direct-to-phone in my presentation. That's certainly a technology innovation that we're watching very closely. The big three carriers are making major investments into that technology along with you know, the LEO SatCom providers to essentially enable an off-the-shelf smartphone to talk to an LEO satellite when in fact you know, it thinks it's talking to a terrestrial network, but in fact, it's talking to a satellite. That, we believe, will have significant positive implications on public safety. Think about it. Think about wildland fire. You know, they're out wildland firefighters typically are in very remote, internet-deprived environments. They may be lucky to have an LMR repeater. A lot of times it's talk around or direct mode in the radios.
The ability, if they have a phone on them, you know, stashed in their turnout coat, for example, that can connect to a satellite, it opens up so many, many opportunities. It's essentially connectivity everywhere. It's also driving our strategy around broadband, and that's why we're leveraging the smartphone as a platform to make that connection. Because in the future, if the smartphone can connect to an LEO satellite, we can leverage that connection through our solutions portfolio. We think that it is a major technology innovation that's gonna have significant positive impact on the industry.
Okay. No, that's good to hear. The next question here is on your guys' opportunity to upgrade existing 5000 units to the 9000 product at that higher ASP.
Yeah. I'm gonna take that, Jaeson, 'cause, you know, I can tell you when I started talking, when I joined the company, we looked at the 9000 strategy. We really looked at this as a separate market than the 5000 or the wildland fire market. Since then, you know, we've seen that that's not true, right? We've seen a lot of customers, and Stephen presented an example with the state of Florida, where they spent two years testing the 5000 and in fact were ready to pull the trigger on the 5000. The facts on the ground is that the state of Florida will have an 800 MHz system P25, which gives them greater, broader interoperability communications capability.
When they made the final assessment, they paid more for the 9000 than they did for the 5000 because of that future path. They didn't buy all the software in the 9000. They couldn't afford to because they really budgeted around the 5000. But that's okay, right? Because as they get more funding, then they're gonna upgrade those radios. For example, the 800 MHz band is not something you purchase initially. They'll add that to the radios and dramatically increase their communication capabilities. We're seeing that more of a trend across because if you look at state and local LMR communications for their daily use, a lot of that is at 800 MHz.
Of course, wildland fire is at 150 Mhz. Having at least a dual band radio just increases their overall capabilities but allows them to have a single radio versus two radios. We've seen a more significant uptake towards the BKR 9000. That being said, the BKR 5000 is still gonna be here for 10+ years. There's a core set of users that are very focused on forestry, and they love the BKR 5000, and at the end of the day, they just don't need to spend the extra money. It meets their mission.
Okay. That makes sense. Next question, kind of circling back to the Motorola dynamics. As you migrate more into that law enforcement market, have you seen or heard Motorola change their strategy at all just given you guys are making a little more noise in that market these days?
I'll start off and see if Stephen has anything to add, but I'll be honest with you, right? At $86 million, I think they probably get that revenue by noon. I'm not really sure that certainly at Greg Brown's office, that we really matter at this point. If we did, they could probably just buy us. It'd be less expensive. They have contracts and dynamics that really make it harder for them to move without creating some huge problems on their profitability side. They do tend to, I mean, they have a huge embedded base, and they press on that, and it is hard to move people off their brand that they've been buying for a while, and I think that they depend on that.
I think that the things that we're doing is still to be seen, right? I mean, I feel that our strategy, we can get to a 10% market share, which would be a substantial growth. We're not obviously saying that in Vision 2030, but I think that there are enough players out there that have a compelling need to buy an all-band radio but are budget-constrained. I think that we're gonna take these customers one at a time, and I think that our potential market for that could be that 10% point. Now, on a fair competitive area, could we get to 20% or 30%? You know, that's where in my mind James Teel comes in, right?
I mean, we have to provide something that's innovative and compelling, that's beyond what we're offering today, right? We think that that opportunity comes on the broadband side. To the extent that we can bring solutions to market that's very innovative and different than what our competitors are doing, then I think it offers more of a compelling reason for them to take the risk and move. To go beyond that 10%, you know, we really are looking towards the solution side to drive that business.
No, that makes sense. Looks like we are out of questions. I think we've covered quite a bit. John, I'm gonna turn it back over to you, closing remarks.
Well, I appreciate that. Before I forget, Jaeson, I wanna thank you on behalf of BK for hosting this. I know it takes time out of your day and you have plenty of things to do, but you did a great job today. Thank you so much. Keeping us honest on those questions, I appreciate that very much.
Happy to be part of it.
To everyone, you know, thank you for joining us today as we unveil our Vision 2030 plan. The last five years has been transformational for BK Technologies. We stand here today with a debt-free balance sheet, $22.8 million in cash, record margins, a proven track record of strategic execution, and a clear roadmap for the next phase of growth. We are confident the same disciplined execution that defined Vision 2025 will carry forward into Vision 2030. These objectives are anchored by the delivery of long-term value creation for our shareholders and our commitment to serve those who serve us all. To the firefighters, law enforcement, and public safety heroes, thank you. Your mission is our mission, and we reiterate our commitment to delivering the most reliable, mission-critical, safety, and communication solutions possible.
To our shareholders, thank you for the continued trust and confidence in our strategy. We have never been more energized to successfully execute on our Vision 2030 strategy. We look forward to updating you on our milestones throughout this next phase. At that point, I again would like to thank you for participating in this call. All the best to you, and have a great day.