Evolv Technologies Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Raised 2026 Revenue Outlook on Purchase Subscription Mix and eXpedite Traction

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Evolv Technologies first quarter earnings results conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we’ll conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s call, Brian Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for Evolv Technologies. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Evolv Technologies: Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to today’s call. I’m joined today by John Kedzierski, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Kutsor, our Chief Financial Officer. Today, after the market closed, we issued a press release detailing our first quarter results and our 2026 outlook. The release is filed with the SEC and is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. During today’s call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements reflect our current expectations and views of future events, including, but not limited to, our business strategy and model, our expectations for future growth and market opportunities, our ability to acquire, renew, and expand customer relationships, our strategic partnership with Plexus, future demand for our products, and our ability to achieve our business outlook.

All forward-looking statements are subject to material risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, some of which are beyond our control. Actual events or financial results may differ materially due to multiple factors, including those described under the caption Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025, filed with the SEC on March 10th, 2026, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, filed with the SEC earlier today. The forward-looking statements made today represent our views as of May 12th, 2026. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that future results, performance, or the events and circumstances reflected herein will be achieved or will occur. Except as may be required by applicable law, we disclaim any obligation to update them to reflect future events or circumstances.

Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide additional insights for investors. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. Non-GAAP measures discussed today include adjusted gross profit and margin, adjusted operating expenses and operating income, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted earnings and earnings per diluted share. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today’s press release, and our definitions may differ from similarly titled measures used by other companies. We will also discuss other operating metrics, including annual recurring revenue or ARR, and remaining performance obligation or RPO, which we believe are helpful in understanding the progress we are making as a business.

Before I turn things over to John, I’d like to remind investors about Investor Day 2026, which will be held on June 9th, 2026. The event will be webcast live on the Investor Relations section of our website. We look forward to providing a deeper update on our strategy, product innovation, and long-term financial framework at that time. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to John.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. As we reflect on our first quarter results, the message is straightforward: We continue to execute on what we said we would do. The progress we’re making starts with the trust and partnership of our customers, and it’s being delivered through the steady, disciplined work of our team. We continue to strengthen the consistency and reliability of our operations while scaling a hardware-enabled subscription business that is producing increasingly predictable and durable outcomes. We’re doing this in a global security environment that is more complex than it even was a few years ago. Threat levels across schools, healthcare facilities, workplaces, and public venues remain elevated.

That’s being reinforced by instability and violence playing out globally, from ongoing unrest in the Middle East to high-profile attacks at public sites abroad, like the recent shooting at an archaeological site near Mexico City and the attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Against that backdrop, customers are increasingly focused on solutions that are not just effective, but scalable, consistent, and operationally reliable. Last quarter, we touched on the broader market conversation around generative AI and how quickly it is changing the software landscape. We won’t revisit that discussion today. The takeaway remains relevant. Differentiation comes from owning the full solution. Evolv was never built as a pure software company. Our platform combines proprietary hardware and sensors, the software that runs on that hardware, and our highly differentiated AI models.

Because our systems are deployed at scale, with our customer’s permission, we can evaluate new models using real-world data. That feedback loop, combined with operational learning in the field, helps improve performance over time and supports long-term customer relationships. We deliver this capability as Weapons Detection as a Service, which includes the hardware, software, use of AI models, and the on-site services required to keep systems operating as designed. We remain on track to be comfortably over 10,000 units deployed by the end of this year, reflecting sustained customer demand and our ability to scale responsibly. As our installed base grows, the platform becomes more valuable, supporting better detection performance, deeper customer integration, and stronger reoccurring revenue visibility through multiyear subscription contracts. As we look ahead, we believe we are still in the early innings of building scale in our business.

While the company previously shared a long-term target of 10%-15% Adjusted EBITDA margins at its 2023 Investor Day, we are increasingly confident there is a potential for much greater leverage over time. That leverage is driven by a growing install base, growing adoption of Evolv eXpedite, improved customer acquisition efficiency, and operating scale across both our platform and services. We’ll share much more detail on these dynamics at our Investor Day on June 9. With that context, let me briefly summarize our first quarter results. Revenue in the first quarter was $46.3 million, up 45% year-over-year. Our growth reflected new customer wins, strong unit deployments, continued expansion within existing customers, and a step up in product revenue resulting from our decision to directly fulfill purchase subscriptions, which provides a year-over-year one-time benefit.

We ended the quarter with annual recurring revenue of $127.3 million, reflecting 20% year-over-year growth as our subscription base continues to scale. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 8.5% in Q1, compared to 6.4% in the first quarter of last year. We welcomed nearly 50 new customers during the quarter and now serve approximately 1,300 customers globally. Finally, remaining performance obligation was up 18% year-over-year to $299 million, reflecting continued end market demand and strong upgrades to our Gen2 Express platform. Beyond the financial results, we continue to see our platform deliver practical, real-world value to the communities that rely on Evolv every day. Weapon screening isn’t just about what’s detected.

It’s about helping organizations establish environments where safety is taken seriously, and people can go about their daily lives with confidence. By serving as a critical layer within broader safety strategies, our technology supports environments where students can learn, patients can receive care, employees can work, and communities can gather, helping make the world a better place to live, learn, work, and play. Over the past several months, we’ve seen multiple instances in education where Evolv systems flagged firearms and knives during student arrival screening, allowing school staff and law enforcement to intervene early and prevent weapons from entering school buildings. In these situations, teams are able to respond quickly and allow the school day to continue without escalation, underscoring the value of preventative, operationally reliable screening.

These events are occurring alongside broader policy discussions, including in Georgia, where House Bill 1023 recently passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. The bill would require weapon screening at primary student entry points across public schools statewide. While we are not assuming any specific legislative outcome, we are monitoring this development as one example of how policy discussions and day-to-day security challenges continue to reinforce long-term demand for proactive, layered weapon screening. In the first quarter of 2026, we continue to see steady demand across our core end markets, beginning with education, where safety priorities, operational scale, and daily throughput make reliability essential. During the quarter, we added over 12 new education customers, including K-12 districts and municipalities across Arkansas, California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.

These wins spanned a wide range of district sizes and operating environments, reflecting the applicability of our solutions across diverse geographies and education systems. In healthcare, we continued to build momentum with new customers across a range of hospital and health settings. Notable additions included BronxCare Health System and the West Virginia University Health System. Additional wins with regional systems and community hospitals further expanded our footprint in healthcare, reflecting a focus on safety solutions that preserve patient access and experience. In professional sports and live entertainment, we added several high-profile venues during the quarter, including Subaru Park, which is a state-of-the-art stadium for professional soccer. We also added one of professional football’s most established franchises, as well as a major multi-use arena in the Western U.S., which is home to both professional basketball and hockey.

These environments require security approaches that perform consistently at scale without disrupting the fan experience. As the playoffs begin this spring, Evolv was proud to serve as the weapon screening partner for 50% of all playoff teams across professional basketball and hockey. This reflects sustained trust from leagues and franchises operating large scale, high visibility events. We are also seeing growing momentum in the enterprise workspace. Across corporate campuses, headquarters, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers. Security leaders in these environments are increasingly focused on protecting employees and visitors while maintaining efficient operations. During the quarter, we added several large-scale enterprise customers, including one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable technology companies, as well as another Fortune 500 corporation.

Today, we are proud to serve as the trusted weapon screening partner for more than 30 Fortune 500 companies, highlighting our expanding role in supporting safer workplaces. The momentum we’re seeing across these markets reinforces the trust customers place in Evolv as a long-term partner and validates our strategy to expand the platform beyond walk-through screening. Expedite, our autonomous AI-based bag screening solution, continues to gain traction in environments where customers want to screen bags without slowing entry or increasing staffing requirements. Increasingly, customers are looking to conduct bag screening as part of a single integrated security workflow, and Expedite is purpose-built for that model. When deployed alongside Evolv Express, we believe this combination offers customers with substantial bag and backpack usage, and specifically bags that have items like laptops in them, one of the most effective screening solutions available, enabling high throughput while delivering remarkably low alarm rates.

In fact, in a specific school deployment of Evolv Express and Evolv eXpedite, one customer reported an Evolv eXpedite average alert rate of less than 2% on over 300,000 scanned bags over a 6-month period of time. We believe the market is increasingly recognizing this type of performance. We now have over 75 Evolv eXpedite customers representing approximately 6% of our total customer base, up from roughly 1% a year ago. In the first quarter, 19% of new customers purchased Evolv eXpedite almost always alongside Evolv Express, which stacks ARPUs while optimizing customer acquisition costs. As customers increasingly see the value in operating both walk-through and bag screening through a single cloud-connected platform, we see meaningful opportunity for account expansion and deeper subscription stickiness over time.

Following a period of 18 months of meaningful progress in resetting the business and building momentum, my focus has increasingly shifted toward positioning the company for long-term success. Recently, I’ve been able to spend more of my time focused on leadership and organization development as we prepare for our next stage of growth. We strengthened the organization with new experienced talent across AI and algorithms, product management, services, and IT to support the long-range needs of a growing customer base while continuing to drive more innovation and executing with discipline. We are increasing investments in the foundational capabilities required to operate at greater scale, upgrading core back-office systems, strengthening our process and controls, and tightening key operating processes across the company.

These investments are deliberate and are reflected in our outlook that expects to deliver expanded Adjusted EBITDA margins in 2026, ensuring that increased organizational rigor and financial discipline progress hand in hand. Turning to operations, we remain on track with our strategic partnership with Plexus, our new global contract manufacturing partner. Onboarding is progressing as planned, and we expect to complete that work by the end of the quarter. The Plexus partnership positions us to expand production capacity, extend our global reach, and further strengthen operational resilience as we continue to scale. With respect to supply chain, while semiconductor supply constraints have been well documented across the industry, we’ve been able to largely mitigate these challenges and expect to maintain our delivery plans for the near term, and we continue to expect to execute against our full-year unit deployment targets.

Importantly, when we provided our guidance earlier this year, we proactively considered the impact of premium pricing for components, and those assumptions were embedded into our outlook. As a result, while we remain vigilant, we believe we appropriately plan for these dynamics and our positions to manage them through the year. Before I turn things over to Chris, I want to share some context around our outlook. We continue to see strong momentum across the business. Our pipeline remains healthy. Execution is tracking well, and for those reasons, we are raising our outlook for 2026. We continue to expect to end 2026 with comfortably over 10,000 units deployed.

We are raising full-year revenue guidance and now expect $175 million-$180 million, up from $172 million-$178 million, representing growth of 20%-23% year-over-year. While we continue to invest in innovation and operations, we expect to deliver expanded, Adjusted EBITDA margins in 2026. As we move forward, our focus remains squarely on execution and scale, delivering consistently today while building the foundation for durable long-term growth. With that, I’ll turn it over to Chris to walk through our first quarter financial results and outlook in more detail.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everybody. I’m going to review our first quarter results in more detail and then share more about our outlook for 2026. Revenue in Q1 was $46.3 million, an increase of 45% year-over-year. This reflected strong end-market demand for our solutions as well as growth in product revenue related to the transition from the direct fulfillment model, which provides a one-time year-over-year benefit by recognizing more product revenue for a given deal compared to a year ago. ARR at March 31st, 2026 was $127.3 million, reflecting growth of 20% year-over-year. This was fueled by new customer growth and expanding deployments across our customer base. Adjusted gross margin was 52% in Q1, compared to 61% in the same period last year.

As we’ve noted before, our intentional shift of purchase subscriptions to direct fulfillment creates an initial gross margin headwind. This outcome is fully aligned with our strategy. Margin stepped down in the first quarter of a new deployment, the direct model produces superior long-term returns, including higher total gross profit, increased revenue and ARR, and a better cash flow than our prior distribution approach. Moving down the P&L, Q1 adjusted operating expenses, which excludes stock-based compensation, loss on impairment of equipment and certain other one-time expenses, were $26.9 million, compared to $23.2 million in the first quarter of last year, reflecting growth of 16%. The increased spend includes investments across R&D, our sales team, higher commissions commensurate with revenue, as well as adding critical G&A roles and system investments to help with efficiencies and scale.

Q1 Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes stock-based comp and other one-time items, was a positive $3.9 million, compared to $2.1 million in the first quarter of last year. This resulted in Adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.5% compared to 6.4% in the first quarter last year. Remaining performance obligation, or RPO, was $299 million at the end of the first quarter compared to $253.5 million at the end of Q1 of last year, reflecting growth of 18% year-over-year. We continued to see a strong trend of customers upgrading to our Evolv Express Gen2 platform. These upgrades, together with solid end market demand, drove this year-over-year growth.

We continue to expect RPO growth to begin to accelerate, supported by increasing end market demand, a ramp-up of renewals going forward, and by bringing more revenue back in-house through our direct purchase fulfillment motion, which we’ve discussed with investors over the last nine months. Turning to the balance sheet. As we previously forecasted, cash equivalents, and marketable securities decreased by about $8 million sequentially to $61 million. This primarily reflected timing of the company’s annual incentive payments associated with our strong 2025 performance. This distribution typically occurs in March of each year. I will remind investors that we expect to be cash flow positive in the second half of 2026. Turning to 2026. As John highlighted, the fundamentals of our business remain strong with robust customer demand and the foundational changes we made to our business model are taking hold.

We are raising our full year 2026 outlook for revenue to $175 million-$180 million, compared to our prior guidance of $172 million-$178 million, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 20%-23%. Our upwardly revised revenue outlook reflects 3 factors. First, a higher mix of purchase subscriptions, which increases year 1 revenue of a contract. Second, incremental contributions from short-term rental subscriptions that expand customer access to our technology. Finally, continued strength in pricing and ARPU trends. We continue to expect to exit 2026 with annual recurring revenue of approximately $145 million-$150 million, representing growth of 20%-25% year over year.

As we’ve been saying for the past year, the fulfillment model and pricing changes we made in mid-2025 are important factors in understanding our revenue trends. Q1 came in above the high end of our prior guidance, with revenue up 45%. That performance was driven by strong demand and the installation of a record backlog that was more heavily weighted toward purchase subscription transactions, which by definition include more upfront one-time product revenue. During our last earnings call, we told you about our thoughts for the shape of revenue for the year, and it is coming along as expected. We continue to expect a sequential decline in Q2 revenue simply because the prior year purchase subscription backlog was largely shipped in Q1. This is a timing dynamic related to backlog mix and fulfillment timing and not a reflection of end market demand, which remains strong.

Turning to the second half of the year. We still expect H2 total revenue to be modestly higher than H1 and up year-over-year, with ARR growth outpacing revenue growth in H2. This reflects the changes to our pricing and fulfillment model implemented in mid-2025, as discussed on prior earnings calls. These changes shift a portion of contract value away from upfront product revenue and toward recurring revenue, which impacts the timing of revenue recognition. As a result, for a given purchase subscription unit, we expect to realize approximately 20% less upfront product revenue and roughly 20% more ARR beginning in the second half of 2026. We continue to expect strong unit growth with deployments in H2 exceeding H1 deployments and H2 unit deployments growing over 25% year-over-year.

In summary, we expect that H2 2026 will reflect the final period of meaningful impact from these pricing and fulfillment changes, after which our revenue profile is expected to become more normalized. Our 2026 outlook reflects a business that is capturing more of the economic value it creates while continuing to build a larger base of recurring revenue, increasing visibility through ARR and RPO, and delivering a more durable and predictable revenue profile over time. We remain committed to investing in growth and for foundational capabilities required to operate at greater scale. We plan to do this in a disciplined way that grows expenses below our revenue growth rate. We continue to expect to deliver expanded Adjusted EBITDA margins, with full year Adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits for 2026, compared to 7.6% in 2025.

Finally, a brief comment on our long-term operating model. As we’ve shared on prior earnings calls, the framework from three years ago that contemplated 10%-15% long-term Adjusted EBITDA margins is no longer reflective of how we see the business evolving. Based on continued growth and operating improvements, we now see the opportunity for greater long-term leverage. We look forward to sharing more detail about this at our Investor Day on June ninth. For more information on that event, please feel free to reach out to Brian. With that, I’ll turn it back over to you, Brian.

Brian Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Evolv Technologies: Thank you, Chris. Operator, at this time we’d like to open the call up for Q&A. We’re going to ask participants to limit themselves to one question and one follow-up.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: We will now begin Q&A. For today’s session, we’ll be utilizing the Raise Hand feature. If you’d like to ask a question, simply click on the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once you’ve been called on, please unmute yourself and begin to ask your question. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up before jumping back into the queue. Thank you. I will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question comes from Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Thanks, and congratulations on the record results. I thought I would start with just understanding the contract momentum. You noted lots of success across verticals. Wanted to get a better sense for the mix of deals. You noted that this quarter included a, you know, a bunch of purchase deals. Wanted to see if you could add a little more color to that. What portion of the mix was purchase deals versus full subscription deals? As you look ahead to Q2 in the second half of the year, how you expect that balance of mix to play out?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate it. As far as the mix, traditionally you’ve seen 60, you know, 40. As we moved into the, you know, year, in Q1, we saw a different mix, about 60/40. Traditionally, it’s been 50/50. You note inside our earnings release, we actually said that in our guidance for the year, we expect it to go to about 55 purchase, 45 subscription. We’re seeing a change that seems to be sticky, and we’ve reflected that in our guidance.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Got it. As a follow-up, in terms of thinking about, you know, the pricing change that you made last year, you provided some nice color about, you know, the 20% increase in ARR values. In terms of thinking about, you know, the kind of rule of thumb as we are going forward in the second half of the year and into 2027 and beyond, you know, if you have, let’s say, a representative $100,000 deal on a unit, you know, what portion of that mix would you expect, you know, for ARR on a purchase deal, and then what portion on a full subscription deal? Thank you.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Look, in a full subscription deal, the entire value, Jeremy, is inside ARR. On the purchase deal, we recognize the revenue upfront upon shipment, and you see that inside our, you know, product line. Then the balance you’ll see within, you know, services where we deliver the, both the software and the services. Since we provide white glove service to our customers when we pair those systems. In terms of your proportion, you know, question, you know, if we, if we take your hypothetical, you know, $100,000, it would be about 30%-40% of that as product revenue, and then the balance of it would be in recurring revenue.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Got it. If I could sneak one in real quick. Your adjusted gross margin, 52%, you know, the highest you’ve seen here in a few quarters since you made the pricing change. Should we expect your adjusted gross margin to continue to track higher here in Q2 and then in the second half of the year?

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Jeremy, this is Chris. I’ll take that. Yeah, it was 52% here in Q1. We’re expecting closer to the mid-fifties for the balance of the year. I don’t wanna get into quarter by quarter, but for the full year, closer to the mid-fifties, which would obviously indicate improvement from where we are now.

Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Thanks so much for taking the questions. Congrats.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Just as a reminder. You bet, Jeremy. Thank you. Just as a reminder for you and everybody else, gross margin is also dependent on our mix. As the customer demand dictates, more subscription mix will mean better gross margins, ’cause those COGS are spread over the full seven-year useful life.

For a purchase deal, of course, we recognize that hardware cost upfront in period one instead of over board time. Again, that’s just a dynamic and why we call out the mix that’s built within the forecast we give.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Thanks, John.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: Our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Yeah. I just wanted to revisit the guidance. Is the upward revision to the revenue and the unchanged on the Adjusted EBITDA margin, is that because that’s primarily, you know, purchase driven?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Yes. Yes, that is a significant driver and why you’re seeing that effect. The same reasons Chris just mentioned. More purchase subscription deals do bring in more revenue into the period, and you’re seeing that reflected, you know, partially in the call upon the guidance that we have. It comes with additional costs, you know, in the period, which is why you’re seeing what you’re seeing in that period.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Right.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: John also mentioned some of the investments in critical talent and hiring as well, as well as our systems and processes, which we can talk about. The purchase mix is the biggest driver to your question.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Okay. Then, just the eXpedite success, it was great to see those stats that you pointed out. That was very helpful. Do any of your competitors have a similar product to eXpedite?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: There are other X-ray bag scanning products in the market. That market’s been quite, you know, mature and been around for a long time. You know, we really believe in the product that we have and the combination of autonomous. What we mean by that, it does not require a human to view X-ray images. That’s done completely by our proprietary AI model that we deploy to the machine. The speed, we designed the machine from ground up, so we can run the conveyor at a significantly higher speed because no human has to review the images. There’s actually not even a screen to look at images on the device. It’s also integrated to our overall security platform. What does that mean in layman’s terms? That means one operator can look at alerts from both the walk-through system and Express, as well as from eXpedite.

You don’t have to add extra tablets or potentially, depending on the operating environment, extra people to look at different screens. If I have a bag alert, I have a person alert, I see both of that in one place. Finally, it’s integrated to our single cloud portal. Customers can see statistics on how many people entered, how many got stopped, as well as for the bags inside it. When you think about all those things together, we think we have a very differentiated solution.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: All right. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: We’ll take our next question from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Shaul Eyal, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Can you hear me, guys?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Yeah. Hi, Shaul. You bet.

Shaul Eyal, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Congrats on a solid start to 2026 and the improved revenue guidance. John Kedzierski, how are you using AI internally at Evolv? Maybe as my follow-up, thanks for the color on beefing of your bench. Can I ask also, what are the rest of your hiring plans for fiscal 2026 as you balance growth and profitability?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: Yes. Let’s go through both the questions. Your first question about using AI in operations. I assume you’re talking about, you know, generative AI and the various platforms that are available. First, I would state that, you know, we are not a pure SaaS, you know, company. What I mean by that is we have a combination of hardware that we design from the ground up, the software that runs on that hardware, the AI models that actually make decisions if something’s not a threat or non-threat. All of that is designed and built in-house, and we control that stack, you know, end to end, which we believe is a strong position to go be in.

I say that because we look at generative AI as a tailwind to our business in terms of what efficiency gains it can bring in terms of time to market for products, in terms of automating the tedious and the mundane, and we’re leaning in to using those capabilities inside our company to make it a better business and make it as efficient as we can be. As well as part of the work that we’re putting in in terms of governance around those kind of new solutions and guardrails to make sure we do so in an appropriate way. In short, we see it as an opportunity as we scale to grow efficiency within the organization.

On your second question about the comments that I made in hiring plans, it was a considerable effort here in Q1, looking at what needs the business are going forward, and I’m personally thrilled about the people we brought in across the organizations. You know, these are senior leadership positions that I outlined in my prepared comments, and I’m really hopeful for the impact they’re going to make over the course of the year. As far as hiring plans, you know, for the rest of the year, they’re really around scaling the business.

We make these critical talent hires that we have, and as we look forward, just balancing the commitment that we’ve made that we will grow operating expenses at a lower rate, you know, than revenue, but we will continue to invest, as we’ve outlined, with those kind of guardrails in place because of the opportunity we see in front of us.

Shaul Eyal, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you so much.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: Our next question comes from Michael Latimore with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead and ask your question.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: All right, great. Thank you. Yeah, congrats on the great results. I guess just maybe talking a little bit about sales cycle this year. You seen any change in the sales cycle? It seems like you know, a lot of macro events might have raised some incremental concerns. Also when you’re selling Expedite and Express together, does that change the sales cycle faster, shorter? Just a little more color on that would be great.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: In regards to sales cycle, we haven’t made any specific commentary about any changes, and we won’t today. What I would say is to the, to some of the specific of that in your question, you know, in general, I see 2 types of sales cycles that occur. You know, there are the sales cycles that are in response to an acute event that occur, and those can be very rapid. We’ve talked about some of those over the last few, you know, earnings calls. Something occurs, and a customer wants to do the best that they can to try to prevent that from happening again. You have more traditional, you know, sales cycles that could take longer, the traditional enterprise, you know, sales cycles that have budgeting and approvals in there, and that’s pretty consistent.

I’d say one thing to remember about us is that you will do with that dynamic, that they sort of fall in one of those two, you know, camps that occur.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Great.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: I’m sorry if you had a second question.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Let’s see. Yeah, I guess, you’ve called out the upgrade to Gen2 a couple times. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that? Is that, you know, customers that are upgrading early, like before their renewals and then, you know, kind of what’s the catalyst for the upgrades? You know, how many have upgraded to that so far?

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: I’ll comment that quickly, but I now remember the second part of your first question. You asked about eXpedite in terms of, you know, sales cycle. We’re thrilled with eXpedite. eXpedite was purpose designed to address a specific problem that we saw customers have, and that is managing alert rates in environments that have a significant amount of bags. I shared some commentary about a specific customer and their operating environment, has, you know, seen, I just view that as an opportunity, especially in some verticals like education, to potentially shorten sales cycles, because lower alert rates usually mean less burden and overhead for a client and the things they have to think about when they deploy.

In terms of your questions on upgrades, so far on upgrades that have been actioned, this includes the renewals that were early, 60% of those customers upgraded to our Gen2 unit, and we’re thrilled with that. When they do that, they’re committing for a new 4-year subscription, which maximizes the remaining performance obligation that we get. We’re pleased with those trends and the overall renewal motion and execution that we’re putting together.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Mike, this is Chris. I’d add one more thing on your eXpedite question, just in case it isn’t obvious. You talked about sales cycles. It also allows us to sell often, not always, two units instead of one. Our customer acquisition costs come down, and we get more subscriptions working to produce in what we believe is a very difficult-to-match performance in the marketplace.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: When you sell Evolv Express and Evolv eXpedite together, you know, it’s a bigger sale, so but that doesn’t elongate the sales cycle?

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: It, for a given sales cycle, if we’re selling 2 units instead of 1 and 2 subscriptions instead of 1, those unit economics are attractive. I guess I would just say it that way.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Gotcha. Okay, great. Looking forward to the analyst event.

Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer, Evolv Technologies: Great. Yeah, we are too.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: That was your last question. I’d now like to turn the call over to John for closing remarks.

John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technologies: I just wanna take a moment to extend my personal thanks to our customers who put their trust in Evolv every day. We recognize what the importance of what we do, and we take that extremely seriously. I wanna thank our investors for believing in us and the journey that we’re on, and also for our employees for the support, dedication, and sacrifices they make as we continue to grow and mature and evolve. Our mission is an important one. We focus on it every day. It’s not lip service. It is what we do and what drives the decisions that we make. We focus on that mission and bringing it to as many customers as we can, while at the same time building the absolute best business in Evolv that we can do. Thank you for joining our call.

Conference Call Operator, Moderator: Thank you for joining. This concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect.