Spectral AI Q1 2026 Earnings Call - DeepView FDA Clearance Nears, $31.7M BARDA Award Drives 2027 Revenue
Summary
Spectral AI reported a solid start to 2026, driven by a $31.7 million acceleration in BARDA funding and continued progress on its DeepView burn assessment system. The company delivered a prototype for its DoD handheld device and is positioning for a late 2026 commercial launch of DeepView in the U.K., Australia, and GCC countries, pending expanded UKCA labeling. Management maintains confidence in receiving FDA clearance before the end of Q2 2026, which would unlock the primary commercialization of its cart-based system in the U.S. market.
Financially, Q1 revenue declined to $4 million year-over-year due to the completion of the base phase of the Project BioShield contract, though gross margins improved significantly. The company reiterated its 2026 revenue guidance of approximately $18.5 million, which heavily relies on the accelerated BARDA funding rather than commercial DeepView sales. Most of the $31.7 million award is expected to be recognized in 2027, coinciding with the launch of an economic outcome study and potential U.S. commercialization.
Key Takeaways
- DeepView FDA De Novo Application Status: Management remains confident in receiving FDA clearance before the end of Q2 2026, following an active dialogue and additional information requests since the June 2025 submission.
- Commercialization Timeline: The company aims to commercialize the DeepView system for the burn indication by the end of 2026, with initial sales targeted for late 2026 in international markets (U.K., Australia, GCC) pending expanded UKCA labeling.
- $31.7 Million BARDA Award: Spectral AI secured $31.7 million in advanced funding from BARDA in March 2026, which includes a no-cost extension and acceleration of Phase II. This funding supports feature design and procurement of up to 30 devices for burn centers and trauma departments.
- 2026 Revenue Guidance Reiterated: Management reiterated 2026 revenue guidance of approximately $18.5 million. This guidance includes the accelerated BARDA funding but does not include significant contributions from commercial DeepView system sales.
- Revenue Recognition Cadence: The $31.7 million BARDA award is expected to be recognized unevenly, with some revenue in 2026, most in 2027 (coinciding with the launch of an economic outcome study), and a small component potentially in 2028.
- Q1 2026 Financial Results: Revenue for Q1 2026 was $4 million, down from $6.7 million in Q1 2025, primarily due to the completion of the base phase of the Project BioShield contract. Gross margins improved by 360 basis points to 50.8%.
- Handheld Device Prototype Delivered: A fully functioning prototype of the handheld DeepView device was delivered to the MTEC consortium last week. The company expects to be invited to bid on Phase III of the DoD contract in late 2026.
- 510(k) Clearance Strategy for Handheld Device: Spectral AI plans to pursue 510(k) approval for the handheld device by utilizing the cart-based DeepView system as its predicate, streamlining the regulatory pathway.
- TBSA 2 Software Upgrade: An advanced Total Body Surface Area (TBSA 2) module is in development and expected to be available in 2027. This software upgrade is expected to require minimal additional regulatory hurdles, likely no more than a 510(k) or less, provided the base TBSA component is approved.
- Economic Outcome Study: A protocol for an outcome study involving approximately 240 patients across 12 clinical sites is being finalized. The study aims to demonstrate surgical precision, improved time to treatment decisions, and reduced length of stay for burn patients.
- Cash Position and Capital Allocation: The company ended Q1 2026 with $11.7 million in cash. Management emphasized disciplined capital allocation while investing in R&D and commercialization initiatives ahead of the anticipated U.S. launch.
- New CFO Appointment: David McGuire joined as the new Chief Financial Officer, bringing over 20 years of experience. His focus is on building scalable financial infrastructure and optimizing capital efficiency as the company transitions toward commercialization.
Full Transcript
Nick, Conference Operator: Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Devin Sullivan from The Equity Group. Please go ahead.
Devin Sullivan, Investor Relations / Conference Moderator, The Equity Group: Thank you, Nick. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Spectral AI’s 2026 first quarter financial results conference call. Our speakers for today will be Vincent S. Capone, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, and David McGuire, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that during this call, certain statements made are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the company’s strategies, plans, objectives, initiatives, and financial outlook. When used in this call, the words estimates, projected, expects, anticipates, forecasts, plans, intends, believes, seeks, may, will, should, future propose, and variations of these words or similar expressions or the negative versions of such words or expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions, or results and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors, many of which are outside the company’s control that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. As such, listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Investors should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of the company’s filings with the SEC, including registration statement and other documents filed by the company. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Vincent Capone, Spectral AI’s Chief Executive Officer.
Vince, please go ahead.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Thanks, Devin. Thank you all for joining us today. We issued our earnings release this afternoon, which contains additional details of our operating results, and we will also file our Form 10-Q with the SEC this evening as well. I’d like to start the call by welcoming David McGuire to his first earnings call as our new Chief Financial Officer. David joined us last week and has been quickly getting up to speed. He brings to MDAI more than 20 years of experience across a variety of accounting and finance functions. Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have him join the leadership team. It has been just a short time since we last spoke, so I will keep my remarks fairly brief. As previously announced, we submitted our De Novo application to the FDA in June of 2025.
Since then, we have replied to additional requests for information and have maintained an active dialogue with the agency. We continue to anticipate a response from the FDA before the end of the second quarter of this year, after which time we hope to move quickly to commercialize our DeepView system by the end of 2026. We are executing our strategic priorities with a well-capitalized balance sheet that includes approximately $11.4 million of cash at the end of this quarter. With that as our backdrop, the first quarter was defined really by 2 words: progress and preparation. Progress as it relates to advancing the development of our DeepView system and continuing to highlight its attributes to physicians and clinicians around the world. Preparation to continue our primary goal of commercializing the DeepView system for the burn indication.
Progress was demonstrated when we announced our $31.7 million advanced funding from BARDA in March 2026. This award included a no-cost extension of the base phase of our contract and the immediate acceleration of the second phase of our contract, which included funding to support and accelerate additional feature design and aspects of the DeepView system and the procurement of up to 30 devices for burn centers, level 1 trauma centers, and emergency departments. Preparation was demonstrated by expanding our leadership team. As noted, we’ve added a new CFO. We have expanded our Chief Commercial Officer search, we’re working towards completing that in the near term. We continue with the engagement with Deloitte Consulting to finalize our commercialization strategy. Lastly, the finalization of our protocol of our outcome study is also in the works.
This outcome study will focus on the benefits derived from the use of the DeepView system across clinician workflows and patients’ journeys with an intended scope of approximately 240 patients spread across 12 clinical sites. The outcome study is designed to demonstrate the surgical precision that results from a wound assessment made by the DeepView system and how improving time to treatment decisions through the use of the DeepView system will beneficially impact a patient’s overall care journey and therefore reduce the overall length of stay. We are also working to advance our international sales strategy. As we touched on at our 2025 year-end earnings call in March, upon FDA clearance, we will update our UKCA burn assessment approval, which we secured in 2024, to re-reflect the improved algorithm, hardware, and software included in our FDA-submitted DeepView system.
We continue to expect to begin initial sales in late 2026, pending such expanded UKCA labeling, and that will either take place in the U.K., Australia, or in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. I’d also like to take a moment to provide an update on our handheld device, which we are developing as part of our Department of Defense contract through the contracting consortium called MTEC. On our 2025 year-end earnings call just this recent March, I noted that we expected to deliver a fully functioning prototype of the device by the end of the second quarter of this year. I’m pleased to announce that we delivered a prototype to MTEC just last week.
We hope to be asked to bid on the phase III of that contract later this year, and we would anticipate pursuing a 510(k) approval of our handheld device by utilizing our cart-based DeepView system as its predicate. We had a great showing at this year’s annual meeting of the American Burn Association, which was held in Orlando in April. The conference provided a welcome platform to showcase the DeepView system to more than 2,200 clinicians, researchers, and burn care leaders from around the world. The DeepView system was prominent in a number of podium and poster presentations, and Dr. Christopher Lewis presented an overview of the technology, including his real-world experience and results to attendees at the ABA Innovation Theater. These types of events continue to accelerate the awareness of our DeepView system.
Lastly, we just recently received the Small Business Innovator Award at the inaugural Texas Innovation Conference, which was held April 22nd and 23rd at the campus of TCU. The award highlights the years of disciplined research, close collaboration with clinicians, and our commitment towards developing a technology with a real-world clinical need that can genuinely improve patient outcomes for burn victims. Our commitment goes beyond simply launching our DeepView system into the market. We are focused on delivering this innovative technology in the market in a way that drives real value for patients, clinicians, payers, and of course, our shareholders. With that, I’ll now turn things over to David for a review of our first quarter financial results.
David McGuire, Chief Financial Officer, Spectral AI: Thanks, Vince. I’m excited to join Spectral AI at this pivotal time in its history. I spent my career helping public companies build scalable financial organizations, drive capital efficiencies, and navigate funding opportunities. After meeting my new colleagues and getting an up-close look at the DeepView system and its underlying technology, I believe Spectral AI is well-positioned to capitalize on a significant market opportunity. To echo what Vince said, my focus will be on ensuring we have the right financial infrastructure and processes to execute on our strategy. As Vince noted, we delivered a solid start to the year and remain confident in our ability to continue our R&D efforts and evolve into commercial business. Starting with the top line, R&D revenue for Q1 of 2026 was $4 million, compared to $6.7 million.
The year-over-year decline was anticipated and primarily driven by the completion of work under the base phase of the company’s Project BioShield contract with BARDA. This decline was partially offset by increased activity under other U.S. government contracts, including work on the handheld device that Vince referenced earlier. Gross margin for Q1 of 2026 improved by 360 basis points to 50.8%, driven largely by a higher concentration of direct labor as a component of overall revenue. General and administrative expenses were down slightly to $4.0 million from $4.1 million in the prior period, reflecting continued cost discipline, partially offset by some increased public company infrastructure costs. Other expense for Q1 2026 was $1.5 million, compared to other income of $3.9 million in the prior year period.
The change was primarily driven by the non-cash fair value adjustments related to our warrant liability. Net loss for Q1 2026 was $3.4 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.9 million, or $0.11 per diluted share. Excluding the impact of the warrant fair value adjustments in both periods, the underlying operating performance was generally in line with our expectations. With respect to our financial condition, as of March 31, 2026, cash was $11.7 million compared to $15.4 million as of December 31, 2025. Cash usage during the quarter reflected continued investment in R&D and commercialization initiatives. We remain focused on disciplined capital allocation as we advance towards commercialization. As of March 31, 2026, total debt was $8.5 million, with 31.8 million shares outstanding.
Overall, we believe we are well-positioned to support the next phase of growth, and I look forward to engaging with many of you in the quarters ahead. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Vince.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Thanks, David. Before turning things over for questions, I want to address our 2026 revenue outlook. For this year, we are reiterating our revenue guidance of approximately $18.5 million, which includes the effect of the accelerated BARDA funding. This guidance does not include any significant contributions from the sale of the DeepView system. With that, I’ll open the floor to any questions.
Nick, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then two. At this time, we’ll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. The first question will come from Ryan Zimmerman with BTIG. Please go ahead.
Ryan Zimmerman, Analyst, BTIG: Good afternoon, thanks for taking our questions, Vince and David. Welcome. Maybe, you know, to start, just ’cause FDA clearance is so, you know, close potentially, you know, Vince, it’d be good to expand a little bit on kind of, you know, the tenor of your conversations or what you’re comfortable saying that gives you confidence that, you know, these timelines will stick for 2Q. Then, you know, if you talk about some of the commercial activities that you’re doing in preparation for the commercial launch of DeepView, and then I have a follow-up.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Sure, Ryan. I guess a few things. I don’t, you know, we have had a number of pre-submission meetings with the FDA prior to the submission of our application in June of 2025. Frankly, I mean, we had a number of those, so I felt like our submission was strong. We kinda knew what we needed to provide to the FDA. I think since our submission date, some of the responses we’ve had, some of the additional requests for information, you know, we’ve maintained, as I said earlier, an active dialogue with the FDA.
You know, I don’t think, you know, I think that we’re in as good a position as we can be, and I think our timeline has remained solid, where we expect a resolution of our application by the end of the second quarter.
Ryan Zimmerman, Analyst, BTIG: Okay.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: As far as some of the commercial activities that we have been doing, in connection with looking to advance sales in 2026, the ABA was a great opportunity for us to meet with some of the participants that have been using our device in the U.K. and Australia, over the last year or so. I continue to think that getting our UKCA expanded labeling to track to what we hope gets approved by the FDA will give us a strong balance to place devices in the U.K. We continue to do work with the teams in Australia. I know that a lot of the work that’s done with Dr. Fiona Wood out of Perth continues to be strong. I know they continue to use our device.
Those are great opportunities for us where we can really drive value towards, you know, a disparate group of burn patients to show real value in getting quick treatment decisions for their injuries.
Ryan Zimmerman, Analyst, BTIG: Understood. That’s very helpful. Just as a follow-up, that additional BARDA contract that you guys picked up or that $31.7 million in funding, I know you’re not gonna guide 2027 right now, Vince, but is there any conceptual commentary you can give us around kind of the cadence of how you think that contract plays out or whether that’s evenly spread as you begin to use some of that funding? Or is there troughs and valleys, if you will, around how the cadence of development may go with that as we think about our models?
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re hitting on a good point on the $31.7 million accelerated funding under phase II. We’ll see some of that in 2026. I mean, revenue recognition is the issue upon why we won’t generally see much of it in 2026. You should see much of that being spread out in 2027, especially with us launching the economic outcome study. We’ve worked hard on the protocol. That will take some time in 2026, but you should see much of that run through into 2027. I mean, the cadence I would see would be, you know, some of the $31.7 in 2026, most of it in 2027, and maybe a small component remaining in 2028.
Ryan Zimmerman, Analyst, BTIG: Okay. I’m going to leave it there. I appreciate it, and, you know, congrats on all the progress you guys are making.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Thank you.
Nick, Conference Operator: The next question will come from John Vandermosten with Zacks. Please go ahead.
John Vandermosten, Analyst, Zacks: Great. Thank you. Start out with a question on. It sounded like you guys had great participation at the American Burn Association meeting. I’m wondering what you are hearing from stakeholders, you know, like in medical personnel, hospital administrators, and things like that. If there’s any anecdotal commentary you have on, like, your interactions or feedback that they’re giving you.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: John, good to hear from you. Yeah, look, ABA was good for us. It’s an opportunity for us for people to actually touch and feel the device that may have not had the opportunity to do so. I was quite pleased with kind of the wait list that we got of potential installations as we moved through the conference. You know, Dr. Christopher Lewis’ presentation at the ABA Innovation Theater was well attended, and his results spoke very strongly to the benefits of using our technology in diagnosis, assessment of the severity of burn wounds. For us, it was a great opportunity. We are, you know, frankly kind of excited to move through the second, third, and fourth quarter this year with an opportunity to hopefully commercialize this year.
John Vandermosten, Analyst, Zacks: Got it. If you win that handheld contract, would you see any additional R&D revenues in 2026, or would that be pushed out further?
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: No, that’s a great question. That contract comes up, we don’t expect to hear about whether or not we were selected to participate in phase III of that contract until very late in 2026. I believe the decision time point in that is December of 2026. We should see none of that in 2026, and hopefully, if we’re lucky enough to be asked to participate in the quote process, we would see some of that in most of that in 2027 and 2028. I’m really proud of the work our team has done on our handheld device. You know, our ability to distribute to MTEC a prototype last week really speaks to the effort of our team to get things done in a timely fashion.
You know, we’re just gonna continue to plow forward with, you know, our goals and our timelines, to really see some real success in 2026 and 2027.
John Vandermosten, Analyst, Zacks: Got it. How difficult would it be to layer on the Total Body Surface Area module? You talked about that before as being kind of another investment that you guys might make into the product. How hard would it be to layer that on to the anticipated deployment coming up? Then, are there any regulatory hurdles of that or timing hurdles, or is that just kind of a software upgrade that you could provide?
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: We do have a TBSA tool included in our FDA-submitted device, we’re excited to roll that out if we get FDA approval. Our team has been working hard on an advancement on that. We affectionately call it TBSA 2 internally, and that software upgrade should be available in 2027. It should provide even additional support for clinicians and attending physicians to provide a patient with, you know, a strong image and analysis for them to understand how much of their body has been burned, what area will heal, what area will not heal. Almost as if you’re gonna provide a patient with an X-ray for them to see where their bone was broken.
You know, I’m excited that we can include TBSA component in the FDA-submitted DeepView system, and I’m even more excited with the work that we’re doing with the TBSA 2 and ultimately potentially TBSA 3, to really make this feature valuable for clinicians.
John Vandermosten, Analyst, Zacks: Are there any regulatory hoops you have to go through to add that TBSA two or three on?
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: We should be okay, provided that the DeepView system TBSA component is approved as a De Novo, as part of our De Novo application. The rest of that may be 510(k), it’s no more complicated than that. It may not even rise to the level of a 510(k), it’ll be no more complicated than that.
John Vandermosten, Analyst, Zacks: Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Vince.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Thanks, John.
Nick, Conference Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Vincent Capone, Chief Executive Officer, for any closing remarks.
Vincent S. Capone, Chief Executive Officer, Spectral AI: Great. Thank you. To close, I want to again thank our investors for your support in our company. I wanna reiterate how excited we are about what lies ahead for our company, our shareholders, patients, and clinicians across the country and around the world. I also would like to remind you to vote your shares at our upcoming annual meeting. Lastly, I wanna thank you all for your attendance and interest in our company, and I hope you all have a good evening. Thank you.
Nick, Conference Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.