Axon Enterprise Q1 2026 Earnings Call - AI Era Plan Drives 140% Bookings Surge and Dedrone Scales Beyond Expectations

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Axon’s executive team today. Before we get started, I’ll note that our remarks today are meant to build upon our most recent shareholder letter and investor materials, which you can find at investor.axon.com. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, as discussed in our SEC filings. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Descriptions and reconciliations to GAAP are included in our shareholder letter and available on our investor website. Now, as always, before we kick it over to Rick, we have a quick video to get us started. Let’s pull it up.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research1: Welcome to Axon Week, and welcome to Nashville, Tennessee.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Welcome to the singularity, where AI changes the equation entirely. We’re standing on the most extraordinary frontier our species has ever stood at. The explosion of AI capabilities we’ve introduced this past year has been mind-blowing. For example, Axon Assistant grew from a few skills to a chatbot with real-time detection on the way. Prepared and Carbyne doing AI for 911 and voice. Vehicle intelligence, Outpost and Lightpost with computer vision. Draft One, Form One, Brief One are streamlining records. Smart Detection, Auto-Intel, Attribute Search help you make sense of your evidence. Case Compass and People Search go through your records management. MetaCoach and VR are transforming how you train with interactive AI. Next, we’re bringing Axon Gravity, one program to pull all of your agency’s data into one place. You have a super intelligent analyst you can ask any question powered by AI.

20 years ago, we were a company with 1 product, the TASER. Today, we operate the largest network of public safety sensors and technology on Earth. Everything we built sets us up for this moment now. We can layer AI on top of all of this. We must do this ethically.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: This isn’t automation replacing judgment. Humans make 100% of decisions.

David Paige, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: It’s helping humans do things they couldn’t do on their own. Speak 30 languages. Surface the right information at the right moment.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Our mission is about connection, but the most important connections we’ve ever made aren’t just in the technology. They’re here in this room.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research1: In the relationships that we have with Axon, the one thing that really sold me is this is much more than a company.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: The relationships with the people who trust us with the hardest moments of their lives, that’s the network that matters most. All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I’m really pleased with how the year has started, and I’m even more excited about where we’re going. I always say Axon Week is one of my favorite events of the year, and every year it somehow gets better. What we shared with customers this April felt fundamentally different. It’s no longer just about our new products. After decades of partnership, it’s about how we’ve earned our customers’ trust at a moment when it matters most. I’m more convinced than ever that we’re building something the world genuinely needs. I spend my time thinking about how we can make an impact, how we can do more faster.

Today, I think we’ve passed the inflection point. We are entering what I believe will be a generational leap in both the pace of innovation we can achieve and the speed of customer adoption we will see. There are two things I’m looking at that drive my conviction. First, technology is no longer evolving linearly or even exponentially. It’s evolving across multiple dimensions at once, a hyper-exponential. The result is a compounding effect where more data, more tools, and more connections multiply what’s possible. Our ecosystem is built for exactly this moment. We’ve created secure end-to-end operational workflows across products, customers, and verticals. We made the decision over a decade ago to invest in tightly integrated solutions across hardware and software, creating an ecosystem that allows customers to scale and grow as fast as technology is moving.

Our software is better because of our hardware. Our hardware enables software features that wouldn’t be possible without capable, connected sensors at the edge. No single tool or even a collection of individual tools can deliver the same value as this kind of unified system. As technology advances, the difference isn’t incremental, it’s transformative. The simplest way to think about it is this: outcomes now depend on the fusion of sensors available and connected in real time with an increasingly intelligent AI backbone. Across AI, real-time operations, drones, and connected devices, we’re moving beyond product adoption and towards system adoption, a system that operates faster, safer, and with more awareness. Axon Vision, Guardian, and Assistant are early examples of what this phase looks like. Always on, always available, and more and more intelligent.

Axon Vision enables teams to understand what’s happening in time, so they can respond with the best and most informed resources. Axon Guardian monitors alongside officers and can call for help before they can. Axon Assistant has already surpassed 1 million uses and will soon be available wherever officers work. Over time, our Axon Gravity initiative will bring in more data that can be harnessed to make even more possible. Our position as the leading repository of data for our customers will continue to broaden to be the leading unleasher. Importantly, every capability we add now makes every other capability more valuable. Data flowing through Axon 911 becomes more powerful when connected to first responder drones or body cameras. Insights from Vision become more impactful when integrated into real-time operation centers. Draft One improves with every report and every sensor.

The value of each will continue to get stronger. My second observation is just as important. Adoption is now accelerating akin to innovation and expanding in scope. In the past, new technologies were adopted gradually. Today, demand is immediate. Customers want these tools now, and they want more of them. They are ready. Just yesterday, I hosted a collection of chiefs in San Francisco. 2 years ago, when I queried the room who had used AI, it was almost 0. Today, it’s 100% are using AI tools in their personal lives daily. They know those tools can’t be used on government data, and that’s why we added the Axon chatbot into a system so that they have a CJIS secure, accredited AI they can use at work. That’s just one of many features we’re bringing to them. This isn’t limited to law enforcement.

Fusus, Dedrone, Axon 911, license plate readers, vehicle intelligence are being deployed across entire cities and countries. Now enterprises are seeing similar needs. The environments may differ, but the requirements and the needs are the same: safety, efficiency, and trust in a fast-moving world. Everything we do is built on trust. Our customers move faster than anyone else to adopt AI because they trust how we build it carefully, deliberately, with the hard conversations happening up front, not after the fact. That’s what makes our technology more durable, more trusted, more widely adopted. That trust is what earns us the privilege to keep pushing forward. Three decades of building millions of sensors, millions of users, trillions of data points flowing through one connected network. Every camera, every device, every line of code, it’s all been leading here to this moment, the AI breakout.

No one in public safety is positioned like we are. Positioned to change the world. Positioned to create extraordinary value for our shareholders, our customers, and society itself. I’m incredibly proud of what this team has built, and as I look at all this coming together, I’m just even more excited about what comes next. With that, I’ll turn it over to Josh.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks a lot, Rick. Good afternoon, everybody. I’m proud to report that we’re off to another incredible start here at Axon. As Rick mentioned, we welcome 3,000 people to Axon Week in April. We quickly learn what customers are excited about, what’s gaining traction, and ultimately, where our pipeline goes from here. The reception from agencies, enterprises, and international partners was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Frankly, it’s reflective of the growth we are seeing every day. Our flywheel is spinning. We are delighting customers with market-leading products, pairing that with customer obsession. We are earning the right to do more, and we wear that as a badge of honor and a badge of responsibility. That expanding opportunity set is already showing up in our results.

We enter 2026 with tremendous momentum coming off a massive Q4, the team came out of the gates even faster than we did last year. Q1 was our strongest ever first quarter across revenue, bookings, and new products, and it was a record in markets, U.S. public safety, international, and enterprise, each setting first quarter bookings records. The core is off to a great start with sustained TASER growth rates, the breadth of overall demand is compelling. It tells us that the growth we are seeing is not isolated to 1 product, 1 geography, or 1 customer segment. Across the business, we are tracking indicators like customer engagement, pipeline quality, adoption of new products, and continued strength in the core. Those indicators support another year of 30+% revenue growth. A major driver of that momentum is the continued adoption of the Axon AI Era Plan.

AI bookings were up 140% versus Q1 last year. We are seeing AI move from early interest to a standard part of how large agencies think about their future technology stack. In fact, nearly all large domestic law enforcement agencies are now including AI in their purchases. This is a powerful signal that customers are treating AI as a core capability for improving productivity, accelerating workflows, and giving officers time back. We expect the rapid adoption to continue as we deliver more AI-enabled capabilities into the platform, including Axon 911, Axon Vision, Axon Gravity, and an expanded Axon Assistant functionality. We are determined to become the AI company in public safety. We are well on our way. The Axon AI Era Plan is not the only thing driving explosive growth. Dedrone, our counter-drone business, is scaling beyond our most aggressive assumptions.

Bookings are up 500% year-over-year. We are continuing to see rising demand. Dedrone is now on a similar trajectory as the Axon AI Era Plan, and it’s relevant to every market we sell into. Rick saw this opportunity years ago. As it is coming into fruition, we are well-positioned to serve our growing and diversified customer base with this product line. For example, Dedrone protected the 2026 Super Bowl, as well as last week’s Kentucky Derby. We are proud to support the American World Cup sites, as well as several other large-scale events throughout the year. Dedrone is also featured in some of our largest international opportunities of the year. This allows for expansion into other product categories. We are seeing that play out in real time.

We have laid the infrastructure to sell globally over the last several years, and now Dedrone has established itself as a further accelerant to our growth. Finally, it is no secret that physical AI infrastructure is going to be a source of record spending in the years to come. Our enterprise team is in conversations with many of the largest infrastructure providers to protect their ever-growing portfolio of sites and data centers. Speaking of enterprise, we have exciting news to announce on this front as well. After a 50% year-over-year Q1, in April, our team closed a $40 million opportunity with one of the largest telecom providers in the world. The deployment centers around Fusus, which continues to garner interest and drive growth in this segment, along with Axon Body Mini and Axon Outpost. We will also be launching Axon Vision directly into enterprise.

By recognizing abnormalities as they occur, this product will add immediate value to any security operation. At the same time, Assistant and Draft One are becoming enterprise-ready. We’re showing up as a true technology leader in this space with the advantage of already knowing how to deploy at a large scale securely. Something very special is happening at Axon right now. Our core investment in both products and markets are paying off just as our acquisitions are hitting the steepest part of their respective curves. We acquired Fusus 2 years ago and Dedrone approximately 18 months ago as of Q1. We have now booked over 1.5 times the combined purchase price of those two companies. We see a similarly disruptive opportunity in Axon 911 as we integrate Carbyne and Prepared.

We are proving our momentum is sustained. Because we expect a lot more growth, I have sponsored a significant investment in core product inventory. We are fortunate that our TASER CEW life cycles are 10-15 years. Our body cameras continue to sell for 5+ years. Thus, we have minimal obsolescence risk as compared to most hardware. Given the expanding geopolitical risks, the competition for key components, and the growing demand of our products worldwide, we are investing in inventory with durability in mind. We never want inventory to be the reason we cannot maximize our growth and impact. After all, our customers do the most important jobs in the world. They rely on more and more of Axon products. We will not let them down. Thanks, everyone. Over to you, Brittany.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Josh. Well said on what an exciting opportunity we continue to see in front of us. Rick has consistently provided a compelling vision, and we are seeing the results of that come through in our numbers. Revenue of $807 million was up 34% year-over-year and marks our ninth consecutive quarter of growth above 30%. Software and services increased 35% year-over-year to $355 million. While all of our software products continue to grow, AI was a standout, with AI product revenue growing more than 700% year-over-year. This is on a small revenue base but is delivering on the strong bookings from last year and will continue to scale. Our AI products are also continuously improving, including with the launch of new features at Axon Week, which we highlighted in the shareholder letter.

The value proposition is clearly resonating and adds another leg to our consistent software growth. This growth supports strong net revenue retention, which was 125% in the quarter, and strong in ARR, which grew 35% year-over-year to $1.5 billion. Connected devices revenue grew 33% to $453 million. This was a particularly strong Q1 for connected devices. TASER 10 and Body Four remain durable drivers of growth, and platform solutions, which includes our counter-drone hardware, grew 95% year-over-year. In total, across hardware and software, Dedrone revenue was up over 300% year-over-year. The need for counter-drone capabilities is becoming increasingly obvious and critical, and we’re proud to have a leading solution in this space. As Josh mentioned, we expect this strength to continue, and counter-drone is another major leg supporting our growth.

In addition to strength across our products, we are seeing strength across end markets. International revenue was up over 100% year-over-year as we delivered on the bookings momentum we highlighted last year, and it represented 20% of our revenue for the quarter. Future contracted bookings was up 44% year-over-year to $14.3 billion, reflecting this broad-based momentum. Given these trends, our strong Q1 results, and the momentum we are seeing in our pipeline, we’re well-positioned to deliver on our top-line expectations and are raising our revenue guidance for the year to a range of 30%-32% growth. We still expect to deliver 25.5% adjusted EBITDA margins for the year, consistent with our prior guidance.

This improves upon the 25% adjusted EBITDA margin we delivered in Q1, with operating leverage expected in the second half of the year, allowing us to hit that annual target. Incorporated in this guidance is continued tariffs, inflationary component costs inclusive of memory, and product mix shift from continued platform solutions growth as well as software and services. As we scale the business, we are also focusing on our free cash flow conversion from adjusted EBITDA. Josh talked about the continued investments we’re making in inventory this year, which you can see in Q1. These investments will position us well to deliver on demand through the rest of this year. Even with these investments, we expect free cash flow conversion to improve meaningfully and expect to deliver approximately $450 million of free cash flow for the full year in 2026.

On stock-based compensation, we expect full year of expense of approximately $590 million-$620 million. As a reminder, a portion of our stock-based compensation expense is tied to our performance plans and will only be realized if we hit the share price and operational milestones laid out as part of our XSP program. This program is long-term in nature and doesn’t scale linearly with growth because of how we account for the probability of the tranches. The expected expense from this plan is down from last year. The other portion of stock-based compensation is run rate RSU grants, which are important to hire and retain the best talent. Inclusive of both of these programs, we are committed to average annual dilution less than 2.5%.

As the impact from our performance plans normalize, stock-based compensation dollars should remain roughly flat over the next few years, meaning it will decline as a percentage of revenue with our continued growth. Yet again, we delivered in excess of that goal this quarter. We’re very happy with the results, especially in what is typically a seasonally softer quarter, pointing to the underlying momentum we continue to see in the business. We’re focused on growing and scaling for many years to come, supported by our great customers, diversifying end markets, and broad product portfolio. We’re excited to deliver another great quarter. With that, I will turn it over for questions.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, everyone. All right, today up first we have Will Power at Baird.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen9: Okay, great. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, congratulations on another, you know, really strong, you know, start to the year. I, you know, probably for, you know, Rick, Josh, Jeff, really whoever wants to take it, just coming out of Axon Week, a lot of focus on some of the new AI capabilities, Axon Vision, Guardian, you know, Form One, et cetera. It’d be great just to get a sense for, you know, where you saw the highest levels of, you know, customer engagement and interest and how that might kind of fold into the pipeline build for the year as you think about the broader AI portfolio. Then I have a question for Brittany too.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Yeah. Let me start with that one. I would say, look, you know, the keynote ran a bit long because we had so many things to talk about, frankly, across so many different personas in the audience. We had leaders from healthcare, we had leaders from enterprise, we had prosecutors, police chiefs, TASER instructors. Part of what I really wanted to do was to just share the breadth of everything becoming possible in every role with AI that can impact anybody who’s touching this information, wrap it up at the end like, "Hey, this is like more than you can really wrap your head around, we simplify it all with this Axon AI Era Plan." The feedback I got pretty overwhelmingly from customers was that that really hit home.

There’s a sense of like, "My God, the world is moving fast. It’s like almost disorienting, but we know we have to keep up." The general sense was, "Look, you guys have always You know, you brought us TASERs when we didn’t think we needed it. You brought us body cameras when we, you know, nobody wanted to wear them. Like, you know, thanks for making this something where we have a partner that we feel like you guys can help us make sense of all this because it’s head-spinning." Really it’s just each of those features are targeting different personas.

Like, you know, Brief One is really focused much more on an investigator or a command staff or a prosecutor compared to, you know, Form One, the new feature that enables them to use their digital evidence to fill out any form, not just ours, but any web-based form. For me it was pretty evenly distributed. This was the first year I felt that the entire vibe, nobody was saying like, "I don’t know if this AI thing is for real." Like everybody was like, "Wow, it’s like it’s everywhere and, you know, help us figure this out." I don’t know if Josh or Jeff, if you want to add anything?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Yeah, I’ll just add 1 quick thought, which is I think, you know, in times of uncertainty, this is where the 17, 18, 20 years in the, in the cloud and software space and wearable space really pays off. It’s like customers trust us to bring market leading products to market in responsible ways, and I’m really proud of Jeff and our team as to how fast we’ve been able to release new features into our Axon AI Era Plan. I think that’s incumbent upon us to continue to delight customers. Look, we’re like, you know, we’re Kentucky Derby was last week. The Belmont’s in a few weeks. We look at ourselves like Secretariat at the Belmont.

We wanna be accelerating ahead of everybody in AI, and the sheer volume of new useful tools we are sending out to our customers, like our customers had, we do this shock tank idea where they come up with new ideas, and we’re building one, and our goal is to release that to every customer who came to Axon Week in the next couple months just to show we can go from idea to execution to output in a very condensed period of time now, and we think that’s gonna be a massive tailwind for our customers, our investors, and our company. Okay. If I can, I appreciate that, great perspective. I, you know, Brenda, I, you know, I guess some of the questions I’ve gotten early here have been on the free cash flow side.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen9: I know you addressed it on the inventory piece and the inventory commentary. Is there any way to kind of share, as you think about, you know, the inventory investment, how much of that relates to higher memory cost and inflationary pressure versus just trying to meet, you know, customer demand? Then anything you can share on the CapEx change, which I think came down a little bit. Just putting all that together, how do you get comfortable with kind of the free cash flow conversion targets given the moving pieces here?

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Yeah. No, thank you for asking. As we look at inventory, of course memory is included in that overall number. This is really about inventory investments to make sure we have supply across all of our products and have the ability to scale to meet demand as we look forward into the next year. I would view it as including memory and making sure that we’re in a good place on memory, but not at all, you know, solely driven by memory. We would be doing this with or without memory just to make sure that we are in a good supply chain position. If you look at Q1 is our, you know, generally our seasonally softest quarter from a free cash flow standpoint. We have bonus payments, we have commission payments, we have one of our two semi-annual interest payments in Q1.

Even with all of that, without the inventory investments, we would’ve been positive from a free cash flow standpoint in Q1. As we look at the next 3 quarters of the year, we’re very comfortable that with the inventory investments we have in mind, with everything we can do around working capital, and the fact that we won’t have some of those Q1 events reoccurring, that we can get to that target for the year. From a CapEx standpoint, you know, as we go into the year, we tend to have a lot of projects, a lot of things on our plate. As we get into the year and we see what we’re actually executing on, we can refine that CapEx forecast.

That’s really all you’re seeing there is we’re just refining and you know, tightening up that CapEx forecast for the year.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Okay. Thank you.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research0: Thanks, Will.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Will. Up next we have Andrew Sherman at TD Cowen.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen: Oh, great. Thanks. Good to see everybody. Congrats on the quarter. Josh, the Axon AI Era Plan bookings up 140%, revenue up, I think 700%. That was a lot higher than I thought. Interesting comment on all large agencies including that now. Maybe just expand on that. Are we hitting a tipping point now where the bundle’s been out for a while, so you’re seeing more viral type of adoption? Are you seeing that in the pipeline?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, Andrew. Glad we could beat your expectations on how many of these things we’re gonna sell in Q1 here, it’s been a great start to the year. I think, you know, like, these deals take a long time to come into fruition, right? Like, we’re talking, you know, $50 million-$200 million deals with some of these large major cities. As a result, you know, sometimes, like, it takes 8-12 months to get these things across the goal line. We announced the Axon AI Era Plan at the very, very end of 2024. Last year was a great start. We had said we had booked $750 million on it, we certainly expect that number to keep rising. Like, there’s more and more belief in what we’re doing. There’s more and more engagement.

There’s more and more engagement across the features in the bundle itself, which are driving, you know, a better view of the ROI that we’re offering. Just today, a major city in the Mid-Atlantic region went in front of their city council and had an $150 million deal approved that included the Axon AI Era Plan. We’re seeing this all over. We’re very excited about it. We know that responsibility comes with it. Like I said, we have to keep iterating and making sure that we’re delighting our customers with this feature set. I certainly have a lot of confidence in our team to be able to do that.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen: Excellent. Thanks. One more for you, Josh. The Enterprise Telco deal in April, very impressive. That’s your second big deal in Enterprise focused on Fusus. Talk about the use case in this example. What problems does Fusus solve for them? Are there more of these in the pipeline? Thanks.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing. I think about our enterprise business in really 3 buckets, Fusus, Dedrone, and then the ABW or the Axon Body Mini. With Fusus, you know, all of these businesses have dozens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of video streams around the world. As they’ve brought those online, a lot of times they’ve, you know, siloed across different systems, and they don’t have a real unified user experience. We’re able to come in with Fusus and bring everything in together in one place and be able to connect it with public safety, you know, at the customer’s option, in terms of the protocols there. That’s been very valuable.

It’s certainly as camera infrastructure has grown across all cities and businesses, that’s been a certain tailwind for Fusus adoption. We’re seeing similar interest in Dedrone right now, as I said, protecting data centers, high value, warehouses, headquarters, other physical infrastructure. Then of course the Axon Body Mini start shipping, production units start shipping in July. So, as we get through beta there, we’re seeing a lot of momentum, a couple major customers growing their deployments already of ABW. I keep, ABW is Axon Body Workforce, which is the first version of that product. So we’re seeing, we’re seeing it really start to happen in Enterprise.

It’s exciting, but it’s also really exciting to see it continue to happen in public safety and to see international grow explosively as well. A lot to be looking forward to this year.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen: Awesome. Thanks, Josh.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing, Andrew. Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Andrew. Up next we have James Fish at Piper Sandler.

James Fish, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Hey, guys. Nice quarter. Look, multiple large events are coming up here. You just highlighted a few that this past weekend, hopefully your horse won. Just how is this impacting bookings and pipeline? Really how much of the Dedrone kind of uptick and outsized performance is being tied to these events? Really the crux of it all, guys, is just trying to understand, like, is this event driven or is it sustainable kind of demand?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: I would think of this as infrastructure. Certainly events are nice moments in time where we can show off the product. They’re not super large deployments and they’re kind of like ephemeral in nature, but what it does do is it gives the host city and federal law enforcement a view into what’s happening. Federal law enforcement was very complimentary to us about our Dedrone installation at the Super Bowl, and that drove interest in that segment. Think of these are great, like, opportunities to show what we can do, but it’s really about translating that into, you know, permanent infrastructure in these cities and businesses is, you know, and that’s where the real long-term value lives or lies, and that’s happening.

Like Dedrone is, you know, we’re very bullish about, you know, the acquisition and what it would mean for our business and what it would mean for our ability to protect lives and all of those expectations have been shattered. I mean, this, the demand for this product is in terms of hardware, about as fast as I’ve ever seen, you know, adoption of a hardware product that we’ve made. Very, very exciting and a lot of work to do to continue to build out the ecosystem there. Certainly, you know, a lot to get us very optimistic about, you know, being a leading counter drone provider.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: I would just add, even if you look at some of the legislation, like the Safer Skies initiative that’s coming through, it is really enabling counter drone technology to be sustainable, and that is a multi-year program. To Josh’s point, the events are great, but I would not view Dedrone as being successful only because of those events. This is a real trend and a real change in the trajectory and the need for adoption of counter drone. We are seeing that. I would say right now we’re more limited by our actual ability to scale and get the product out the door than we are by opportunities out there.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: Yeah. It’s really these things are all a catalyst for a shift in mindset to viewing counter-drone as an essential infrastructure capability for cities, for enterprises, for all of these things, and it triggers the notion of them viewing it as a sacrosanct thing they have to add to their portfolio.

James Fish, Analyst, Piper Sandler: I appreciate all the details there, guys. Brittany, not just to belabor the point, but what’s your purchase commitments at this point as if I look at your inventory today and I understand the investment you’re making, it’s about half of your product cost for the year. What’s giving you enough confidence here that we have the inventory availability to meet the demand for the year?

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Yeah, look, I think part of the thesis behind this investment is you can see how quickly we’re growing and how quickly we’re ramping all of our hardware. We want to make sure that we have the ability to hit that demand, and that is part of the investment behind it. We work really closely with all of our suppliers. We have mission-critical hardware. This hardware is, it is not a nice to have, it is a must-have for our customers. As we look at our investments and we look at the year, we’re really making sure that we work with our suppliers to get in what we need to get in, to give them those long-term forecasts.

Because we have products that last for a long time, we have a lot of stability in our demand and our need. I would just say it’s really, really close collaboration with our partners and our supply chain.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Can I just add to that, just so there’s no confusion. You know, we have been investing in inventory for quite a while, and we entered the year. You know, one of the reasons that, you know, we haven’t had much impact from the memory costs in terms of our guidance is because of our inventory philosophy. We had a lot of inventory for this year coming into the year and thus, you know, we were able to be a little more patient and are still able to be a little more patient to ride this wave out on the memory costs.

Really, we’re looking toward next year at this point and how we can position ourselves well across our core products so that international, like large international orders are not taking away from our ability to ship to U.S. customers and not putting a ceiling on our revenue growth. Certainly geopolitical risk going into next year, we’ve got our eye on that, and we certainly don’t want anything, you know, that happens in the world to have an impact on our ability to support our customers. We’re looking at this as a sustained inventory investment to get up to certain levels where we think we can support the growth and hedge some of the risk.

Like Brittany said in her remarks, it’s that is already contemplated in our free cash flow guidance for the year.

James Fish, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Makes sense. Thanks, guys.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Jim. Up next we have Jonathan Ho at William Blair.

Jonathan Ho, Analyst, William Blair: Hi, congratulations on the excellent quarter.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, Jonathan.

Jonathan Ho, Analyst, William Blair: can you maybe talk a little bit about your AI cross-sell cadence, you know, particularly for customers that are maybe in the middle of like the existing long-term contracts. You know, are most waiting until their contracts expire? You know, is there a way for you to sort of restructure these mid-flow, particularly for those contracts that are in place? You know, any color would be helpful there.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing, Jonathan. A lot of that happens very naturally even before the Axon AI Era Plan that was happening relatively naturally. You know, we do release new products every single year. We release some at Axon Week. We’ll have more exciting things to talk about at IACP, those are often catalysts to rewrite contracts. You know, Customer sees something they like and says, "Okay, you know, if I’m gonna buy this, we might as well put everything together and create a new contract that contemplates all of this." Between camera upgrades, new products, urgency around AI, these are all catalysts for those conversations. You know, we do rewrite these contracts as we go according to, you know, new product availability and it has been a great driver of bookings growth.

Jonathan Ho, Analyst, William Blair: Got it. Just as a follow-up, you’ve referenced multiple times the strength in international growth, and I just wanted to, you know, better understand sort of the drivers here. It seems like you’ve initially landed with many of the national police forces. Are you seeing this strength come from filter down, or is this, you know, new national police forces? You know, any color would definitely be helpful.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing. It’s a good question. I guess it’s not one individual thing, but I think it’s a combination of having a far better team and go to market operation, and that’s not only our own internal team, but that’s partners, technology partners, and system integrators and distributors. We’ve really figured out the right way to go to market in some of these, you know, different nations around the world, and that’s been certainly some wind at our back. We can, you know, parlay that into better product market fit. There’s demand for Fusus, there’s demand for records, there’s certainly a lot of demand for Dedrone, and that’s driving a lot of conversations into other product categories. That’s certainly a big part of it as well.

Ultimately, I just think we’re showing up as more of a global company at this point. You know, it’s not, you know, kind of one person in a very large country showing up trying to sell TASERs for the first time. We’re showing up like a technology vendor that can help across a number of different product lines, and that land and expand strategy is starting to really work like it did in the U.S. The consistency of our results now is showing that, where last year was our first year over $1 billion in bookings. This year we have a very, very strong pipeline, and certainly hope to grow well beyond that.

We’re certainly, you know, confident as we’ve ever been in the international business, and I think that’s a tribute to Cameron, you know, our Chief Revenue Officer. He’s done a really nice job rebuilding a lot of that function, as well as a lot of folks on the ground doing really good work every single day.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Yeah. I would add in, I just got back from a 2 week, two and a half week, you know, overseas trip. We are seeing some of the smaller countries looking at going all in on a national basis, which is kind of a new dynamic, and I think that’s really quite helpful. Especially, you know, within some of these different blocks where maybe there’s historically not been as much comfort with the cloud. You know, seeing some of these smaller countries go all in gives us proof points.

I had one of my, you know, first like 90-minute sessions with a prime minister, where this is rising up to like that level, where they’re looking at this going, "Wow, we could sort of leapfrog and become one of the most advanced police agencies on Earth, because we could just deploy everything with Axon." Which it’s been a pretty solid dynamic to feel that shift happening. I think as these smaller countries do it’ll give us the ability to, you know, earn our way up into the larger. As with everything, you know, the really mega forces move much more slowly, and that’s true of like these big national forces compared to maybe some of the smaller ones we’re finding a bit more nimble.

It’s, again, it’s plowing the ground, by having, like for example, in the EU, having some people leading the way, really going all in on cloud.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: The last thing I’ll say there really fast, similar to the enterprise discussion that Josh said before, you know, in a lot of these other countries, they’ve spent a tremendous amount on massive networks of CCTV cameras. That’s another place where Fusus is a catalyzing part of the equation, right? It’s not just our body cameras and just DEMS. Like Fusus is a socket to let them get more value out of the investment they’ve already made in these other cameras, and that just makes the overall ecosystem story from Axon kinda easier to reach the tipping point of their interest. It’s a great catalyst.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thank you. Up next we have Keith Housum at Northcoast Research.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen3: Great. Thanks, guys. Good morning. You know, obviously a very solid quarter for you guys. Brittany, if there’s anything to pick on from an investor standpoint, it might be in the software and services standpoint. You know, software and services tends to be very lumpy. I think what we saw here is sequentially probably a little bit lower for us, some people were expecting. Perhaps walk us through some of the puts and takes about software and services for the quarter and how we should be thinking about that.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Sure. Happy to. I would say this is pretty typical for our seasonality in Q1. You saw a similar dynamic in Q1 of 2025. We just tend to have a slightly smaller software step in Q1. If you wanna look at our ARR, though, that’s usually where it shows up first. We had absolutely phenomenal ARR growth this quarter. Really I’d look at 2025 and say it comes through first in the ARR growth. You could expect you’ll start to see that in the software step for next quarter. I would dive a little deeper on the picking and look at it as pretty typical seasonality with very nice strength continuing in our software business. You just see that picking up in ARR first.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen3: Okay. Appreciate it. Then Josh, if I could ask you a follow-up to the enterprise question before. Maybe I missed this. Was this a telecom retailer? I understand Fusus-Axon Body Mini, not only as a retailer but also, is this an auction process? Was this you guys going to them? Perhaps some of the background behind the adoption by this customer.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing. Keith, I’ve said on the call a couple times historically, I’m generally a little more uncomfortable about sharing names of enterprise partners because sometimes they’re competitive with our other customers, and sometimes, you know, there are other dynamics where it doesn’t necessarily serve us to be front and center with other brands versus just supporting them behind the scenes and talking about, you know, the customer in more general terms. This is, you know, when you think of telecom providers, this is one of the first three or four that’s gonna enter your brain. I would say that.

The use cases across retail locations, other company physical assets, certainly any video stream essentially that’s in their ecosystem of one of their cameras, that’s now being managed and integrated into Fusus. This is really about having complete situational awareness across all of their physical assets.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen3: Great. Thank you.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thank you, Keith.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Keith. Up next we have Brendan Rodgers at Wolfe.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to ask a quick one on AI. Like, coming out of Axon Week, there was, like, a ton of innovation, ton of new products. How do you guys think about, like, pricing to value as you kind of furiously add these new products into the bundle, like, over the course of the year? I think traditionally, like, a pricing cycle would happen and you guys would revise the pricing in, like, you know, Q4, Q1. Just given, like, even in the shareholder letter you guys are talking about, Axon Vision being GA in Q4. Like, we just heard about that in Axon Week. You guys probably won’t have a chance to update pricing. Like, how do you guys think about that?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure. Great question. Look, I think as always, you know, we want our price to be commensurate with the, with the value we’re creating. In our bundles, you know, you could certainly compare the sum of the parts of all the individual features versus the bundle price, and generally we want those things to tie up. The more features we add, you know, you should expect that to be reflected in the price as we revise it each year. There is an annual kind of, you know, escalator in the contracts, you know, to account for the fact that each year will represent, more value and functionality in the plan. Generally speaking, you know, it serves customers well to get in early.

You know, the longer you wait, the more the sum of the parts adds up. No matter what, we’re gonna make sure that the customer feels like there is a, like, hit your forehead simple ROI on what we’re providing, you know, relative to the cost.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: This is where the Axon AI Era Plan is just really loved by customers. You know, this idea that, hey, this is moving so fast, like, we can’t even predict with certainty what we’re going to be building next year. To avoid having to constantly going back to procurement cycles, it would just be exhausting. They really love this idea that, you know what? Axon Vision’s new. You didn’t know about it when you signed your contract. Frankly, maybe we didn’t either, but you’re going to get it if you’re on that plan.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: I would say we’re really careful on pricing to make sure that we are delivering more value to our customers before we take prices up. That’s a pretty strongly held belief of ours, is that it’s tied to value. I think what you’re seeing is we are putting more value into the Axon AI Era Plan, which is great, ’cause then it means our customers will see that value. When we do get to our annual pricing discussions, we will look at the value we’re delivering relative to the price.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Got it. Thank you. Just one more, sort of on that memory side. Any chance that you guys can quantify the impact, in terms of margins? I’m assuming it’s probably not big enough to reprice, or maybe that’s the wrong assumption. Anything on that front?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: It’s the right assumption.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Yeah.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: It’s the right-

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: It’s not big enough for us to break it out for all of you guys. If you think about it, the products that we have memory going into the most are our camera products, so they’re clearly important for us, but they are only a part of our overall portfolio. You can imagine that the basis point impact to gross margin is not meaningful enough to break it out. Now, it’s certainly something we’re looking at. It’s certainly one of the many puts and takes going into our gross margin for the year, and it is all contemplated as we think about our guidance. I wouldn’t over-index on it.

Brendan Rodgers, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Got it. Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Brendan. Up next we have Meta Marshall at Morgan Stanley.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen4: Great. Thanks so much, guys. Maybe a couple of questions for me. You know, noted still very early days of Carbyne and Prepared, but just what you’re seeing in terms of kind of how you’re looking at that market opportunity. Maybe just second on federal, obviously some kind of, you know, shutdowns at various points this year. Know it’s not a major business for you, but just how you’re seeing kind of the deal environment on the federal side. Thanks.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure. On 911, I think I would say I have a lot of confidence that we will be contending for market leadership in this space in the next few years. I believe we have the most talented team in the market. I believe we have the most talented leadership, all the way down to the folks building the products and selling the products. I think the value proposition is very, very strong there. It reminds me when we first got into cloud 15 years ago, when the options were all on premise, and it’s like, hey, this is kind of the next generation and there’s a lot of benefit to doing it this way. Our customers are now seeing that after being entrenched in very, very outdated technology.

Ultimately, there’s a lot that goes into it, but I really am pleased with the early progress here. As a reminder, we really think Prepared is out there capturing logos with their over-the-top feature sets, and then Carbyne is the capable fast follow for call handling when the time is right for the customer. One of the things I think we’re seeing that we’re particularly excited about is Carbyne has got a large international rebrand and a lot of momentum there as well. Certainly not limited to the U.S. in Carbyne’s case. We’re feeling good about it. Still early innings and we’ve got a lot of work to do to keep building.

You know, we’ve already signed some of the largest jurisdictions in the country on Prepared in the last, you know, three or six months here, and we expect that to continue. Feeling really good about what 911’s gonna look like for the year to come.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Yeah, I would tell you my natural inclination, I’m highly biased towards building things ourselves. When we met both Amir and his team at Carbyne and Michael Chime and his team at Prepared, we were like, "Wow, these are great teams." You know, it takes time to go build great teams, they’ve built great products. Customer feedback has been just phenomenal. I was just with them recently at some customer events, I can tell you it’s we’re getting glowing customer feedback. It’s also kind of fun for me as an entrepreneur who’s, you know, getting a little further in my career. The energy these younger entrepreneurs are bringing into the organization is great.

It’s like just a fresh wave of energy into a, you know, into the whole company. It’s been great.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: It’s just one more.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Then Meta-

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: Oh, go ahead.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: Oh

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: the federal question after.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: Yeah. I was just gonna say really, really quick, it’s yet another example of how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? The enthusiasm that we’re seeing customers have for how quickly we brought the data from Prepared and 911 alerts directly into Fusus, and then also bringing that directly into Skydio as part of DFR. Those things together make shorter response times happen, that is a perfect example of the flywheel that Rick was referring to before.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Mita, on federal renewed momentum there. Last year we rebuilt a large portion of the team including our leadership. Claudia Davidson has come in from Palantir and is a fantastic fit at the company, and is someone that I think is gonna be a long ball hitter here for a long time. She’s done a nice job kinda rebuilding the momentum. We’re seeing renewed interest in body cameras and TASERs in federal law enforcement. We’re seeing a lot of interest in Dedrone. Of course on the DOD side we’re also seeing some Dedrone applicability there.

really the federal business is trending very much in the right direction, and with a few things going our way it could be a banner year in fed, but again, that’s. We gotta do the work still.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen4: Great. Thanks so much.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Meta. Up next we have Joe Cardoso at JPMorgan.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen1: Hey, good evening, guys. Thanks for the questions here. Maybe you can just touch on, I wanted to circle back with, on the Fusus conversation and maybe more specifically the level of attach that you guys are seeing with some of the opportunities here, particularly as it relates to Outpost. You know, you mentioned it with the telecom win, curious how much more pervasive that dynamic is playing out, and what’s exactly driving customers to adopt the hardware side of things. You know, I guess like the crux of the question really comes down to are you actually seeing folks rip and replace hardware to essentially install Outpost, and what’s kind of the driving force behind that? I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing. We absolutely are. There’s 2 or 3 driving forces behind it. Number 1 is the product is performing exceptionally well in the field. Relative to incumbents in the space, our product is out-performing them in terms of lane coverage, plate reads, performance in bad weather. All the things that our customers would expect from an Axon product, this product is doing. It’s cheaper. That’s certainly helping, you know, in the context of competing against incumbents. Then I’d say, you know, the 3rd one is the idea that, again, it’s a new sensor in this broader ecosystem. You can run AI on it at the edge. You have immediate utility from the plate reads. It fits in this broader play with Axon Vision and so forth.

You know, reminder on Axon Outpost is it’s got 2 cameras in it. 1 is for plate reads and the other 1 is just for CCTV streaming. We think this is, again, physical infrastructure that’s gonna lead to more and more utility, safer outcomes, more AI adoption, and ultimately it’s 1 of those where, again, like the trust in Axon, the belief from our customers that we do things the right way from data privacy, from making sure the community had a voice in product development. All these things combine into what looks like another transformative hardware program here.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: If I could add in, if you go search, the mayor of Denver did a great, you know, video tweet, where he was talking about, you know, they moved from a competing system to Axon largely because of the data privacy, data ownership. You know, we really structured this in a way, where It’s not just talk, right? We, when we think about building products rigorously in a way we’re gonna be proud of, we do that both so our insides match our outsides, you know. Employees wanna be authentic and know that we’re doing things, you know, in a way that they’re gonna be proud of, but it stands up to scrutiny.

Ultimately, you know, that pays off when customers are like, "Oh, wow, we didn’t realize our license plate reads were being shared with a federal agency. That’s frankly not popular with our constituents in this area, and we, you know, don’t want that happening certainly without our knowledge." When we come in, we say, "Look, here’s how this system works. It’s your data. We don’t have any right, title, or interest to it. We certainly enable you to share with anybody you wanna share it to, but in ways that are very explicit and well understood, and it’s you making the decision so you’re never getting surprised." You know, those sort of things pay off pretty big when.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: controversy said, one of the things, you know, we hear from the customers or that we’re actually positioned with them is like, "We can help you get your job done and stay out of the headlines," and that’s important to them.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: I’m just gonna add that one of the fun things about talking about Prepared and Carbyne and, you know, Outpost is that these are all things that are not called out in our revenue commentary ’cause they’re still immaterial to our revenue in this quarter. We did 34% growth without any of these, and these are amazing drivers to support our long-term growth and our future.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen1: No, appreciate the color, guys. Then maybe just as my follow-up here on the drone opportunity, and maybe this one’s more geared towards you, Brittany. Obviously, nice growth this quarter. Appears to be a building pipeline here, a strong pipeline building, you know. Just given its infancy, I’m sure it’s weighing on the device margins here. Maybe can you help us frame where this business sits today within the margin structure versus, you know, maybe what’s your ambitions at scale, and what level of scale would you need to achieve that? Thank you.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: No, it’s a great question and you’re absolutely right. We’ve called out before that our platform solutions business is the lowest of our three hardware businesses inside of connected devices. Certainly the Dedrone hardware is a portion of that. I do think there’s room for us to continue to improve that margin as we scale. I don’t have an exact level for you, that is something where it is small today, and as we scale and as we get repeatability, and as we get, you know, larger numbers that we can go leverage, we would of course expect it to improve over time. I would also, you know, make a reminder that there’s also a nice software component to our Dedrone business. That spreads out more years.

We get more of the hardware up front, but there is a great software component to Dedrone that shows up inside of our software business, and our software-only gross margins, if you include the services piece, continue to be above 80%. We’re still really happy with the contribution of Dedrone. Certainly with the type of growth we’re seeing, we will take a little bit of movement, you know, quarter to quarter in our connected devices gross margin in return for that.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen1: No, fair. Thank you. Appreciate the response.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Joe. Up next we have Trevor Walsh at Citizens.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen8: Great. Thanks, Erik. Josh and or Jeff, maybe for you guys, also wanted to ask about Dedrone, but maybe in a different way. The commentary you had around the strength and the momentum there seems very event-driven, protecting of infrastructure, counter-drone. We’ve thought of Dedrone as well as more the airspace management and how it can relate to DFR opportunities. Is it really being driven by that counter-drone piece, or is that DFR element still present, and how is that going? I guess I’m trying to just like Can you think of it as two separate buckets, or they really need to be together, I guess, is maybe the question.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: No, I think it’s, I think it’s two, you know, two advantages to deploying Dedrone. I actually think right now it’s far more predicated on the counter-drone than it is on DFR. That’s more of a reflection on who’s buying it now. U.S. state and local is buying it, but international enterprise and federal I’d say are buying it as much or more. In those three markets, it’s far more for counter-drone. As DFR becomes more, you know, as it continues to proliferate, certainly there’ll be a lot of utility with Dedrone, and there’s opportunity to make it much more tightly ingrained with Fusus so you see everything on one map. It’s just a very clean user experience in that way.

The counter-drone functionality is what is driving the Dedrone interest up front.

Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer, Axon Enterprise: Just to connect those dots, the technology piece is shared, so that thesis is still 100% right. As But what you’re just seeing is, as DFR is also explosively growing super-duper fast, there’s just a mixture of, like, where they’re relying on the onboard autonomy versus where they’re relying on the Dedrone tech to do it, and it’s just a mix and situational. You have all of these things growing super fast, and the Right now at this moment, I totally agree with Josh, right? The majority of the Dedrone growth is on the counter side, but the tech thesis is the same, and it goes, fits hand in glove with the overall DFR hypergrowth as well.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen8: Perfect. Makes sense. Maybe just based on your answers, a quick follow-up for Brittany. Just given what your colleagues just said, are you currently or in the future gonna be able to maybe differentiate between what revenue is more DFR related for Dedrone versus counter? Do you have that level of visibility? Could we maybe expect something to kind of give us some just breadcrumbs as to how that’s all flowing and which direction, if you will, for that line of the business?

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: I mean, I think you might expect us to give, you know, breadcrumbs and continue to give color on the call. I think we’re a pretty long way from, like, further breaking out platform solutions as a segment. As we always do on some of these segments, we will of course try and give you color as we see developments going places.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen8: Cool. Great. Thanks, all. Appreciate it.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, Trevor.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Trevor. Up next, we have Jeremy Hamblin at Cowen.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Cowen: Thanks and congrats on the strong results. I want to start with your annual recurring revenue. An uptick in the year-over-year growth rate on that from a sequential and total dollar amount, you know, the fastest growth that you’ve ever had. Just in terms of kind of quantifying how or what’s driving that, is the portion of growth, is that more being driven by user growth, or is that being driven by more adoption of AI Era Plan and really getting, you know, higher kind of monthly user pricing as a result of adoption of more premium plans?

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: I mean, it’s really both, honestly. We continue to see nice growth in our user counts and our user adoption, and you’re seeing AI come in. There’s really no sort of one driver. I would say you’re seeing the business hit on all cylinders, and you’re seeing the AI plan really kick in on top. You know, you’re seeing the benefit in ARR of our big bookings quarter in Q4. You’re starting to see that show up. We’re continuing to have NRR of 125%, that’s been very consistent. You’re seeing those existing customers come back in and trade up and buy more. I mean, as I said earlier, it’s sort of strength across the board, you’re seeing it in ARR first.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Cowen: Just a follow-up here on the commentary around drone and your international business. You saw, you know, huge growth internationally, the best in quite some time, and 20% of your total business here. What portion of that is being driven by Dedrone? Is that something that, you know, the international portion because of that and because of what’s going on geopolitically, is that something where we should be expecting international is gonna be just a bigger portion of the total here for the foreseeable future?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: It’s a great question, Jeremy. I think the challenge we always have in predicting that one is just, it’s a question of how fast U.S. is gonna keep growing. Every time international grows fast, we also have a great quarter from U.S., so the mix doesn’t, all that, doesn’t change all that much. I would say, you know, if we isolated international, it’s a little bit of both. We have some markets last year where we opened up on cloud, then the conversations have really quickly advanced to following fast with Dedrone, in large ways. Then there’s the inverse of that, where we’ve had some large Dedrone deals and now we’ve built some equity with those customers, and we’re talking about how else we can help.

On a revenue basis, you know, Dedrone does factor in a little more because there’s a lot of hardware, versus, you know, some of our services that are more bookings oriented that hit revenue over time. So you might see, you know, international revenue, you know, you know, still be lumpy from quarter to quarter. As we zoom out on the year, I’m sure Dedrone will be a driver of increased international revenue. I’d say that’s pretty safe bet.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: And I-

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Cowen: Thanks, guys.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: it is, it’s gonna move around. As Josh said, it’s lumpy. It’s quarter to quarter. We are seeing fundamentally more strength in international, and so I would expect you’ll continue to see it be a big topic for us and some of the momentum. We’ve had sort of two quarters in a row now up at that 20% level, so it is really contributing nicely to the business.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Cowen: Thanks so much. Best wishes.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Jeremy.

Thanks, Jeremy. We would love to try to get everyone in here knowing that we’re coming up above the hour here. Maybe if everyone could pick their favorite question for the next few. We’ll start with Michael Ng at Goldman Sachs.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen6: Great. Good afternoon. Thank you for the question. I think implied bookings in the quarter were up roughly 75% year-over-year. You know, I certainly appreciate it’s the smallest seasonally bookings or there’s, you know, seasonally the smallest booking quarter of the year. I was just wondering, you know, what that tells you about the momentum for full year bookings growth. Could we expect, you know, full year bookings growth kind of growing in line with revenue growth? Thank you.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: I would say so, yeah. Yeah, Michael. It, you know, in that, directionally, I think that’s how we look at it as well. You know, the back of the napkin is if bookings grow at the same rate of revenue, then we can assume the revenue growth rate continues way out into the future. You know, there’s a lot of opportunity out there. We see, you know, a relatively similar pipeline ratio to what we saw last year versus the goals, which gives us confidence that bookings are continuing to grow. As you know, quarter to quarter, they can change a little. You know, back half is very weighted, especially Q4 with the growing size of these deals.

Yeah, we’re bullish on bookings like we always are and feeling really good about where we started the year.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Michael.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen6: Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Up next we’ll go to Andrew Spinola at UBS, if you’re still with us. Maybe we lost Andrew. Okay. David Paige at RBC.

David Paige, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe just a quick one again on the drone. It looks like you have a quote here in the deck that says over 400 unauthorized drone detections by Dedrone. I’m curious when you actually go to market and sell the drone offering, like what are people looking to protect against? Or like what’s their main use case? Thank you.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Sure thing. I think it starts with just situational awareness. I’d say my guess is a lot of those 400 were, you know, people who just didn’t know what they were doing or, you know, irresponsibly flying a drone, but not necessarily like nefarious predatory drones. I think the first step is just having a basic understanding of what’s going on in your airspace day to day. As some of these U.S. state and local laws start to change that allow for mitigation, I think you’ll see customers follow with jamming capabilities, nets. Interceptors, probably a little bit of a toss-up. Just, you know, that feels like making things explode in the sky will be a lot more highly regulated.

At least those first couple, I think are more likely to start to happen faster. It’s a case of one thing building to the next, and, you know, customers are seeing a lot of value in that, and they’re able to locate the pilots as a result of understanding what drone it is, and where the pilot is, you know, out in the wild so they can go send the drone home and meet the pilot there. Yeah, you know, again, it’s, this is a new and growing segment, and technology is changing fast, and our job is to stay ahead of that curve, and Jeff is doing a fantastic job with this team doing that.

Plenty of problems to still go out and solve and counter-drone. That’ll be a continued place of focus and momentum for us.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thank you.

Thanks, David. Up next, Jordan Lyonnais at Bank of America.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen0: Hey, thanks for taking the question. On Dedrone, the, how you guys are going to market for it, how is it different than your other products? Is it customers coming to you, selling through distributors? Then for the defense and international side, how much more do you think we could see this accelerate if Fusus gets FedRAMP status?

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, Jordan.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen0: Do we have time for Jeff? Yeah.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: Thanks, Jordan. On the counter-drone go-to-market, I think it varies a little by market. U.S. state and local, we very much sell direct, it’s in our packaging there, you could buy it as a standalone as well. I think the real, like, takeaway on Dedrone, outside of its just pure momentum and revenue growth and bookings growth and all that, is the idea that this product is truly opening up opportunity across all four of our customer segments. Even more so than TASER, more so than body cameras, like, this product solves a need in all four customer segments that’s urgent.

Our job is to not only win those deals and delight customers out of the gate, but that land and expand play that is the hallmark of our execution as a go to market apparatus. Like, we’ve got to do that well in Dedrone across all 4 markets. You’ll see the tailwinds of that in our other product sales. You know, really excited about not only the growth, but the doors that are opening as a result of the interest in that 1 product. Fusus FedRAMP certainly opens up opportunity, you know, in the federal government.

I’m not sure that if I were stack ranking the products, I’d still say there’s interest across the board and certainly in our core business and core products, as well as Dedrone and DFR and others. Fusus is in that bucket and it’ll certainly help, especially across some of these ecosystem deployments where you’re adding to an evidence.com environment with this Fusus, these Fusus streams.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen0: Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Jordan. We’ll take our final question today from Michael Latimore at Northland.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen5: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question here. I was curious what your acquisition interest looked like for the year. I saw that you had a $10 million investment in Buntar Aerospace. Maybe it’s, the acquisition is a drone manufacturer. Anything there would be great.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen2: We’re heads down working on integrating and maximizing the potential of all the acquisitions we’ve made over the last couple years, and there’s been a bunch of them. I think, Alex, this is a year where, of course, we’ll be opportunistic, of course, we’ll continue to invest in other companies that we think could be great partners or future acquisition targets. Really for this year, it’s about going into execution mode, integrating the acquisitions we’ve made very, very well, and putting up more results like we’re seeing out of Dedrone, Fusus, and our 911 business right now.

Brittany Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Axon Enterprise: Alex, I would just note that was an investment though, and I would expect, like we have been historically and we will continue to make investments in places that we think are interesting in the ecosystem. I differentiate that pretty dramatically from us making acquisitions where we have to, you know, bring the companies and the teams on and integrate them and all of that. We’ll continue to make investments sort of consistently as we go.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Yep. That one in particular, Buntar, you know, they are in Ukraine. They’re one of the leading reconnaissance drone makers. They’re one of several companies we invested in to help build our sort of footprint and our relationship across the Ukrainian drone and counter drone space because, you know, that’s where the fastest level of innovation is happening and, you know, our Dedrone is one of the key systems there. I would look at that one more as a key market partnership than like any sort of a near term acquisition. Lord knows what could happen way down the road, I would say in Ukraine right now, you know, their hands are pretty busy.

They’re not looking to get acquired, but we do think it’s important for us to put some investments in the market to build those relationships and for us to be able to learn together with them and have people that can help us grow our footprint in Ukraine. Long-term, we could also be a great sales channel for some of the technology coming out of Ukraine. When the war is over, we think there’s gonna be a lot of go to market opportunities where we might be able to bring that tech, you know, into other markets.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen5: Thank you.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thanks, Michael Latimore, and Rick, we’ll let you close us out.

Andrew Sherman, Analyst, TD Cowen7: Awesome. Well, it’s been a wild year geopolitically. You know, I the optimist in me hopes that the universe is clearing its throat and we’re gonna get back after, you know, the pandemic and the wars that have happened to maybe a little more stability in the world. You know, I’m proud of the role that we’re playing in helping to mitigate, you know, some of those threats, to help to reduce some of the effects of violence in society that at times is feeling more polarized and unstable than ever. At least maybe it feels that way.

You know, I’m really proud of our team’s ability to continue to execute, and to continue to build out the team with great people and great technology, and it’s just continues to be a real privilege for me to get to work with awesome people on problems that really matter, doing things that are fundamentally moving the ball down the field. You know, we never look to be second or third in a category. We like to create new categories, new capabilities that have never existed. Stay tuned. Over the next year, you’re gonna see, in addition to, you know, the great stuff we’ve been doing, we have whole new categories coming, and that’s what keeps us really invigorating and excited. Great seeing you all, and we’ll see you on next quarter’s call.

Unknown, Moderator/Operator, Axon Enterprise: Thank you.