zSpace Q4 & FY2025 Earnings Call - Software mix drove margin expansion while cash fell to $1M and a deep restructuring aims for 2026 breakeven

Operator: Hello, and thank you for participating in today’s conference call to discuss zSpace’s financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. Joining us today are zSpace Chief Executive Officer, Paul Kellenberger, Chief Financial Officer, Erick DeOliveira, and Greg Robles from Investor Relations. Following their remarks, we’ll open the call for analyst questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robles as he reads the company’s safe harbor statement. Greg, please go ahead.

Greg Robles, Investor Relations, zSpace: Thanks, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call may be considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, we may discuss certain key business metrics, which are non-GAAP financial measures. A description of these non-GAAP measures and any comparisons to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release on the investor relations section of our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of zSpace, Paul Kellenberger. Paul.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Thank you, Greg, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our full fourth and full year 2025 earnings call. I’m Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace, and with me is Erick DeOliveira, our Chief Financial Officer. We’re excited to share zSpace’s performance and the progress we’ve made advancing our strategic priorities. Our fourth quarter results reflect our continued focus on advancing our strategy and controlling what we can control. During the quarter, our software and services revenue continued to comprise over 50% of total revenue, contributing to gross margin expansion of nearly 850 basis points. This performance was driven by strong customer renewals and the continued adoption of our software offerings, which is a key part of our strategy and a testament to our execution and disciplined focus on delivering value to our customers despite ongoing macroeconomic and funding uncertainty.

As we formally announced in late Q4 2025, we made structural changes in the business to align to the macro headwinds in the business we saw throughout 2025. We continue to look for ways to improve our business, both top line and bottom line as we get close to finalizing Q1. In addition, in January and more recently, we have announced additional capital via Planet One and Itria, as well as announcing last week the additional restructuring of our Itria and Fiza debt. During the quarter, we continued to advance our strategy by expanding both the capabilities of our platform and the breadth of our customer engagements across K-12, CTE, and workforce pathways. We also strengthened our product portfolio with the launch of zStylus One, our next-generation AI-enabled stylus designed to simplify AR deployment and enhance precision across our Inspire and Imagine systems.

The new zStylus One showcases breakthrough embedded sensors powered by machine learning algorithms that eliminates the need for an external sensor module or embedded tracking in the laptop. Early feedback from customers and partners has been very positive, and we expect this product to support broader adoption of our next-generation platforms as our customers upgrade their hardware. We also achieved meaningful customer wins across several regions and program areas. In Pennsylvania, the Greater Altoona Career & Technology Center strengthened its dental assistant program through the use of zSpace AR/VR technology, leveraging zSpace Inspire 2 and the Dental by Leopoly application to improve students’ understanding of dental structures, support diverse learners, and enhance preparation for hands-on clinical skills. In California, Mayfair High School has established a 36-station zSpace Inspire AR/VR laptop lab, where students interact with immersive simulations, applications, and guided lessons aligned to CTE and core academic subjects.

The lab serves as a central hub where teachers across the campus can bring classes to explore career pathways through interactive 3D experiences, demonstrating how dedicated immersive learning can drive cross-departmental adoption and provide students with early exposure to high-demand career pathways. More recently, zSpace highlighted the long-standing success of its immersive, augmented, and virtual reality learning platform across Atlanta Public Schools or APS, where students have used AR/VR technology since 2015 to deepen STEM learning and explore career pathways. Over nearly a decade, Atlanta Public Schools has integrated zSpace immersive learning experiences across elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, giving students hands-on opportunities to explore complex scientific concepts and practice real-world career skills in safe, simulated environments. Their long-term success underscores the durability of our platform and the impact we can achieve as districts expand immersive learning from early grades through workforce preparation.

Finally, our Career Explorer, powered by Career Coach AI, was formally recognized with Tech & Learning’s Best of 2025 Award of Excellence. This recognition reinforces the value our customers are seeing as they adopt immersive career exploration tools that engage students through real-world simulations and align directly to emerging skill trades and technical careers. Collectively, these wins highlight continued demand we see in immersive AI-enabled tools that simplify adoption for educators, deepen engagement for students, and help districts strengthen both academic and workforce outcomes. In addition, to support our global expansion and ensure accessibility across various educational geographies, we’re strategically leveraging artificial intelligence to eliminate language barriers. AI is enabling quick and efficient translation across our platform, including website content and application interfaces, and providing tools that can understand and interact in over 50 languages.

This initiative not only expands our global reach, but ensures students and educators, regardless of their native language, can fully utilize zSpace’s award-winning educational experiences, significantly broadening our global reach. In closing, we remain confident in the long-term growth potential of zSpace and our ability to deliver on our vision. That said, we approach 2026 with continued cautious optimism, given the ongoing uncertainty in the macro environment in the education market in the U.S. In addition, due to the war in Iran, we are seeing opportunities in the Middle East being delayed. We continue to believe that as the federal education policy continues to take shape and funding mechanisms become more predictable, the longer-term outlook for our business will strengthen. With that, I will turn the call over to Erik to walk you through our financial results in more detail. Erik?

Erick DeOliveira, Chief Financial Officer, zSpace: Thank you, Paul. As you consider our results, a reminder that our revenues are substantially recognized upon shipment of laptop units or fulfillment of software license keys. This includes recognizing the full value of multi-year software licenses in the period in which they are fulfilled. Only a small portion of our revenue is rapidly recognized. As a result of this revenue recognition treatment, our financial results can exhibit quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year variability that exaggerates the underlying seasonality of the business. Throughout 2025, we saw dual themes of internal execution success, driving product innovation, quality of revenues, and spend management, opposed by external headwinds from tariff policy, freezes in education funding, and the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history to close out the year. Both internal and external themes played familiar roles in our financial performance through the period ending December 31. Now diving into our full-year performance.

Revenues were $27.9 million, down 27%. As noted throughout the year, software and services revenues outperformed, down only 15% in comparison to total revenues, and making up 49% of the revenue portfolio, up from 42% in 2024, a 7 percentage point improvement. This was an important driver of gross margin expansion. As previously discussed, our P&L reflects multi-year software license revenue in period. To help better characterize the run rate health of the business, we offer two non-GAAP software operating metrics. As of December 31, 2025, the annualized contract value of renewable software was $9.9 million, down 12% compared with 12 months ago.

As of December 31, 2025, the net dollar revenue retention of customers with at least $50,000 of ACV was 71% for those customers present as of December 31, 2024. Unfavorable performance on these two metrics is attributable to two large customers who collectively expanded their zSpace footprint in 2024, but for whom macro factors prevented full renewal of their expanded commitments. Normalizing for these two customers, ACV would have been $11.1 million or down 2%, and NDRR would have been 88%, pointing to wider stability across the customer base. Bookings for the twelve-month period ending December 31 were $26.1 million, down 34% year-over-year.

Gross profit was $13.3 million, down 15% against the same period last year. This includes a one-time charge for discontinued software license inventory, which is at once related to our exit of China and also our continued efforts to bring previously resold third-party titles in-house for both acquisition of applications and internal development. Gross profit was also affected by applicable tariffs and duties. 2025 gross margins were 47.6%, up 6.7 percentage points versus 2024. Factors driving improved quality of revenue were sustained throughout the year and highlighted in our quarterly results. Firstly, favorable growth in the mix of software content of our revenues drove 2.5 percentage points of margin. Secondly, product line refreshes in our hardware ecosystem, led by the Inspire 2 platform, reduced our bill of materials costs.

Thirdly, increased first-party zSpace software content combined with those hardware improvements for a total of 4.2 percentage points of margin, delivering the total 6.7 percentage points of gross margin expansion across the 12-month period. 2025 operating expenses of $28.3 million, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 11%. People-related costs, which make up 66% of 2025 OpEx, were up 6% year-over-year, again, excluding stock-based compensation. As a result of corporate restructuring efforts in December 2025, management believes that our current OpEx run rate is closer to $19 million, still excluding stock-based comp, assuming stability of the current external environment. Now for the fourth quarter.

Q4 revenues of $4.8 million were down 43% year-over-year, reflecting what amounted to a freeze in both orders and shipments during the U.S. federal government shutdown. For business secured during the effectively truncated quarter, revenue mix trends continued to be in evidence. Software and services represented 57% of total revenues, a 10 percentage point mix shift with significant gross margin implications, with hardware revenues falling below 50% for the second quarter in a row. Bookings for the three-month period ending December 31 were $3.4 million, down 21% year-over-year. CTE customers drove 56% of bookings value, down from 58% in Q4 2024. Gross profit was $2.4 million, and gross margins were 49.1%, up 8.4 percentage points versus Q4 2024.

This laps the 6 percentage point margin expansion in that quarter and continues the improvements in profitability we have been delivering. Within the quarter, the 10 percentage point mix shift in revenues was responsible for 2.8 percentage points of margin gain, and rate-based factors drove 5.6 percentage points of improvement. Operating expenses of $6.5 million for the quarter, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 9% year over year. Our Q4 reported results include $2 million in stock-based compensation expense attributable to grants made as part of our employee equity incentive program. Relative to the 22.8 million shares issued and outstanding at the start of the year, we managed issuance of RSUs to a target burn rate of 6.2% or 1.4 million RSUs, well below our 7% target.

As of December 31, 2025, zSpace had approximately $1 million in cash equivalents, and restricted cash compared to $4.9 million in cash equivalents, and restricted cash as of December 31, 2024. Our path to profitability continues to run through revenue growth via operating leverage, our ongoing expansion of gross margins, and tight stewardship of operating expenses. While overall revenues are challenged by headwinds in the U.S. K-12 market, our success in deriving more of the revenue portfolio from software is bearing fruit. The gross margin expansions from revenue mix shift into software from additional first-party software and from new hardware product releases are now part of our track record in delivering results.

As part of our ongoing attention to operating expenses, we undertook a significant restructuring in December 2025 that resulted in eliminating approximately half the FTE positions of zSpace across all levels and one-third of the people costs. We further reduced the size of our board of directors from 7 seats to 5 and abolished the executive bonus plan for 2026. Our consideration of these factors was made with the intention of aligning revenues and costs and putting a breakeven EBITDA performance in reach for 2026.

Now moving on to our outlook for 2026. Familiar obstacles such as trade and tariff policies remain steadfastly unresolved, although promising developments have materialized. The macroeconomic picture remains persistently volatile. These external factors present the same challenges to forecasting that we identified last year. Management’s approach to 2026 was to consider the scenario in which we see a repeat of 2025’s revenue performance and what it would take to weather such an environment. If 2026 presents a second year of top line volume similar to 2025, we believe the cost reductions made in December will allow us to deliver an adjusted EBITDA performance at or close to breakeven. We further believe that the company retains sufficient resources to scale back up to historical revenue highs.

In the event that opportunities for outperformance beyond that should appear, we will consider responsible reinvestment in the business at that time. We do not yet feel strongly enough about our ability to restore guidance on a sustained basis, and want to avoid offering guidance in one quarter only to rescind the practice in the subsequent quarter. We will continue to manage the quality and mix of revenues for continued gross margin expansion as we’ve demonstrated over the past year, as well as tight control of operating expenses, as these are our two best levers for positioning the company to capture upside until our K-12 markets in the U.S. stabilize. Now I will turn the time back to the operator for Q&A.

Operator: Thank you, sir. As a reminder to ask a question, press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, press star one one again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Paris with Barrington Research. Please proceed.

Alex Paris, Analyst, Barrington Research: Thank you, operator. Hi, Paul and Erick. Thanks for taking my questions. Start off with the macro maybe. 2025 was obviously a tough year for K-12, the industry in general, due to perceived funding disruptions, including Department of Education layoffs and inter-agency transfers of responsibilities, not to mention tariffs and the government shutdown. As I recall, about 10% of your K-12 STEM revenue comes from federal sources, if I’m not mistaken. Despite what was going on in 2025, most federal dollars came through. I know there was uncertainty which probably made school districts hesitant to order or renew and things like that, but most of those dollars came through. The government shutdown is essentially over, with the exception of DHS currently.

What does the funding outlook look like for 2026? I know you expressed some cautious optimism. How has Q1 gone so far? I know a lot of the revenue comes in the last 10 days of the quarter, but maybe talk about January, February.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Sure. Alex, this is Paul here. You know, by the way, about 10% of the funding in K-12 in our market does come from the federal side of things. You’re correct. That being said, particularly in the middle part of last year, Q2, Q3, we saw some very peculiar things. I can’t recall whether we had this conversation previously, but there was one specific state in the middle part of the country that actually sent money back to the federal government because of the uncertainty and I’ll just say their discomfort, given all the headwinds and all the stopping and starting of funding. You are correct with the 10% number.

However, it was, I would say, the ramifications and implications to our specific buyers, both in the K-12 STEM as well as in career and technical education, made them really hesitant to move things forward. I think that was a big part of the middle of last year, Q2, Q3. I think in the fourth quarter, you know, and we had business that, in, towards the end of the year, that was impacted by the government shutdown. Maybe it was an excuse, but, you know, those facts were pretty straightforward that’s what we were being told by a number of different school districts. I know it’s sounding like I’m making excuses here, but it was not the year that we wanted by any means. No surprise there.

Although I do believe things, and again, cautious optimism, things are starting to settle. That’s the best answer I can give you, kind of, you know, I’ll say, you know, looking back at last year and the funding. Then, you know, this year, I’ll maybe let Erik talk a little bit about the outlook. Here we are, it’s March thirtieth. We’re not quite done the quarter, but we’re pretty close to it. You asked about January, February.

Erick DeOliveira, Chief Financial Officer, zSpace: Yeah, happy to pick up from there, Paul. What I’d say about the outlook for Q1 firstly requires an understanding that our Q1 is ridiculously back-end loaded, both in terms of bookings and shipments. Some of those on this call will recall Q1 of last year when, with only a few days left in the quarter, we ultimately wound up outperforming our guidance by something like 30%. Now, that said, earlier in this quarter, the year started out, and we were observing some encouraging year-on-year strength through January and February. In March, the picture has become more mixed, in large part because a number of our significant customer opportunities were customers that had previously started their zSpace relationship and are based in the Middle East and are therefore in the midst of the current conflict there.

It remains an open question, even with, you know, 48 hours left in the quarter, how much of that volume will actually ship and be accepted to capture as revenue in the quarter. What I think I would say is the experience earlier in the year has given us some sense that the market, you know, has resumed its willingness to open their wallets, so to speak, and actually take possession and book new zSpace content. But our progress clearly has not been linear for, you know, much of the last 12 or 15 months.

Alex Paris, Analyst, Barrington Research: Okay. Understood. To a point of clarification, Erick, one of your last comments in the prepared comments, if revenues were roughly equal to what they were in 2025, so say around $28 million, you’re saying that the hope or target is to get close to adjusted EBITDA profitability or breakeven at least. Put it that way, versus a current consensus of -$12.5 million, you know, for 2026 adjusted EBITDA.

Erick DeOliveira, Chief Financial Officer, zSpace: Correct. The two big levers there. In the absence of actually being able to forecast in the current environment, we engaged in some scenario planning and said, "You know what? There are a lot of factors driving revenue that have proven themselves to be out of management’s control. But if we saw a repeat of a $27 million-$28 million year, what are the factors in our hands?" To that end, our ability to expand gross margins by approximately 7 percentage points year-over-year and to sustain the underlying business drivers that delivered that margin expansion, coupled with the cost reductions we took in December, we believe put something close to a breakeven EBITDA performance within reach for 2026.

Now obviously, as we move through the year, the revenue performance and the operating leverage we see on that will be the biggest driver. We feel pretty good around our improvements around quality of revenue that delivered that margin expansion. Again, it all comes back to our ability to retain and renew existing software agreements, our ability to continue delivering, hardware improvements that reduce that cost of initial deployment, and also to roll out more zSpace-owned software, where we just control more of the margin.

Alex Paris, Analyst, Barrington Research: Okay. You know, in the absence of formal guidance, that’s pretty helpful. Thank you. Reasonable, you know, sort of conversation regarding what 2026 might look like. My last question for now, and I’ll get back in the queue, is I just wanted to talk a little bit about that strategic investment from Planet One in late January, $3 million convertible preferred. The really exciting thing there was the potential to expand international sales, perhaps through cooperation or a joint venture, based on what your press release said. What are you thinking there? Is that a potential opportunity in 2026?

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Let me take that, Alex. The answer is we hope so. The war in Iran just really put everything kind of on the back burner for obvious reasons. The answer is we think so, and it’s something that we’re still pursuing. There are some other opportunities Erik alluded to in his commentary in the Middle East, even some bigger ones. We, you know, we’re hoping those come back.

Alex Paris, Analyst, Barrington Research: Great. All right. Thanks. I appreciate the additional color. I’ll get back in the queue.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Thanks, Alex.

Operator: Thank you so much. As a reminder, if you do have a question, simply press star one one to get in the queue. Our next question is from Rohit Kulkarni with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed.

Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst, Roth Capital Partners: Hey, thanks. Thank you, Paul and Erik. Couple questions to kick this off. Can you frame kind of size, scale, scope of these kind of recent announcements in the PR, Greater Altoona, Bellflower, Mayfair High School, and Atlanta Public Schools? Just talk about how they came about and how significant do you feel they could be for 2026, just from direct contribution as it is incremental on top of the base of 25.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Yeah, let me take that, Rohit, this fall. Every one of those deals was, I’ll put it in a significant category. You know, they’re in the six figures. They have the potential, Atlanta being, you know, a very large school district, APS Atlanta Public Schools, which as I mentioned, you know, they’ve been our customer for 10 years. We see some other, I don’t wanna jinx us, but we see some other opportunities within that specific district late this year. All of them, I’ll put them in the category substantial. Greater Altoona was in the CTE segment in a very specific dental component of it. I would again say, Sikorsky, you know, Mayfair out here again, a school system here in California that is, newer customer.

We have a combination of both newer customers and existing customers purchasing more. I’m gonna go back to something else. Erik kind of touched on it. I touched on it on my opening remarks. Over 50% of our revenue in the fourth quarter was software and services. The way we look at the business and the way I look at the business is anytime we’re over 50% in that category, it’s a really good thing. Now, by the way, we also had a bunch of other changes we made in the fourth quarter. That’s the best summary I can give you. You know, the other thing that, Rohit, I’m gonna reemphasize is the zStylus One, which I mentioned, which is the new, doesn’t require the little device on the side.

There’s clearly a lower BOM because we have one less device. The implications for it, including how we’re using AI in the process, we’re super bullish on. We’re early in the shipments of it still, but we feel really, really positive about it.

Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst, Roth Capital Partners: Okay, great. I guess you mentioned CTE, Paul. How is the mix today versus previous periods? Is CTE growing as compared to the shrinking on the other side of the business? Maybe comment on that.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Yeah. CTE is more than 50%. I think the exact number is 56%, versus 48%, Erik, in the previous year.

Erick DeOliveira, Chief Financial Officer, zSpace: Sorry.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Sorry. Yes. Yeah. It continues to grow. Some of that, Rohit, had to do with the funding. Again, Alex was asking the questions about the funding. You know, Perkins is a big pot of money in the CTE world that is federal funding that, you know, has continued to expand, and it’s an annuity. The CTE side of the business, by the way, along with the applications that we own and control, has continued to grow for us.

Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst, Roth Capital Partners: Okay. Great. In terms of, I think just drawing out what the previous question was around, kind of run rate OpEx and kind of run rate revenues that may lead us to a point not too far out in the future that you could have a break even operating cash flows or an even kind of positive EBITDA. Is that something that you feel reasonable to expect in 2026, assuming you know modest shrinkage in revenues, but pretty significant drop in your expenses?

Erick DeOliveira, Chief Financial Officer, zSpace: Hey, Rohit, this is Erik. I’ll take that one. That’s our current outlook through the combination of continued margin expansion and the expense cuts we took in December. We think that our run rate OpEx is closer to $19 million, again excluding stock-based compensation. With continued margin gains, that and, you know, a top line that, you know, looks relatively like last year, that could put a break even adjusted EBITDA performance in front of us.

Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst, Roth Capital Partners: Okay, great. Thank you for this color and I will catch up soon. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Kellenberger for closing remarks.

Paul Kellenberger, Chief Executive Officer, zSpace: Thank you, Carmen. We’d like to thank everyone for listening in to today’s call, and we look forward to speaking with you when we report our first quarter 2026 results. Thanks again for joining us.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.