QT Imaging Holdings Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Revenue Surges 133% as Scanner Shipments Double and Debt Maturity Extended
Summary
QT Imaging Holdings reported a sharp revenue jump in Q1 2026, doubling its scanner shipments to 13 units and driving revenue up 133% year-over-year to $6.5 million. The company is successfully transitioning from a hardware-centric model to a recurring SaaS platform, supported by strategic distribution agreements in the Middle East and North America. Management highlighted significant progress in regulatory approvals, including a new CPT code for reimbursement and FDA clearance for enhanced imaging capabilities, while extending its senior secured debt maturity to provide crucial financial runway.
Despite the top-line growth, the company faced near-term margin pressure as cost of revenue rose sharply with increased hardware shipments, though net losses narrowed substantially to $3.4 million from $11.1 million a year ago. Management reaffirmed its full-year 2026 revenue guidance of approximately $39 million, underpinned by contracted distributor minimums totaling over $75 million through 2028. The call underscored a company at an inflection point, balancing aggressive commercial expansion with clinical validation and software innovation in the competitive breast imaging market.
Key Takeaways
- Revenue surged 133% year-over-year to $6.5 million in Q1 2026, driven primarily by a doubling of scanner shipments from 6 to 13 units.
- Net loss narrowed significantly to $3.4 million compared to $11.1 million in Q1 2025, reflecting improved operational leverage despite higher costs.
- Gross margin compressed to 41% from 65% in the prior year quarter, as higher hardware shipment volumes increased cost of revenue to $3.9 million.
- Management reaffirmed full-year 2026 revenue guidance of approximately $39 million, representing more than double the 2025 revenue run rate.
- The senior secured term loan with Lynrock Lake was extended by two years, pushing the maturity date from March 2027 to March 2029, providing additional financial flexibility.
- A new Category 3 CPT code for QT Breast Acoustic CT was approved by the American Medical Association, effective January 1, 2027, standardizing reporting and facilitating future reimbursement pathways.
- FDA 510(k) clearance was obtained for software and hardware enhancements that improve visualization and imaging coverage of posterior breast tissue, a historically difficult area for traditional imaging.
- Distribution contracts with NXC Imaging, Gulf Medical, and Al Naghi Medical lock in over $75 million in committed scanner sales through 2028, with 60 units contracted for NXC in 2026 alone.
- Software version 4.5.0 delivers a 40-50% improvement in spatial resolution for reflection imaging, directly enhancing the detection of critical findings like calcifications.
- Clinical validation continues to expand, with a prospective feasibility study at Mayo Clinic showing absolute agreement between QTscan and MRI for identifying positive findings in high-risk women.
- QTI Cloud Platform and SaaS model are being monetized early across clinical and research customers, signaling a strategic shift toward recurring revenue streams beyond hardware sales.
- International regulatory progress includes UAE clearance for both hardware and software, with Saudi Arabia FDA approval expected within a month and CE mark tracking for Q2 next year.
Full Transcript
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: Day, and welcome to the QT Imaging Holdings First Quarter 2026 financial results conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bruce Voss. Please go ahead.
Bruce Voss, Investor Relations, Alliance Advisors IR: This is Bruce Voss with Alliance Advisors IR. Thank you for participating in today’s call. Joining me from QT Imaging Holdings are Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, and Jay Jennings, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind listeners that comments made during this call by management will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statements that are not statements of historical facts should be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements.
All forward-looking statements are based on QT Imaging’s current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to QT Imaging and relate to, among other things, QT Imaging’s QT Breast Acoustic CT, including its product commercialization and manufacturing, the evolution of QT Imaging into a scalable imaging platform, the QTI Cloud Platform and SaaS model, performance of software enhancements, new product development and introduction, and product sales growth and projected revenues. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with the company’s business, please see its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Furthermore, the content of this call contains information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, May 13, 2026.
QT Imaging disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial or operational projections or other forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Dr. Raluca Dinu. Raluca.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Thank you, Bruce. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for spending the time with us and for your interest in QT Imaging. The first quarter of 2026 was a highly productive period for QT Imaging as we continued to execute across commercialization, clinical validation, reimbursement, regulatory expansion, and software innovation. We believe that the progress achieved during the quarter further strengthens the foundation for the long-term adoption of our technology and supports our strategy of building a leading quantitative breast imaging platform. During the quarter, we shipped 13 QT Breast Acoustic CT systems, which was in line with our commercial distribution commitments. These shipments reflect continued operational execution and growing commercial activity as we expand our installed base both domestically and internationally.
We’re also pleased to announce that subsequent to the close of the quarter, the maturity date of our senior secured term loan with Lynrock Lake was extended by 2 years from March 31st, 2027 to March 31st, 2029. We would like to thank Lynrock Lake for their continued support and confidence in QT Imaging. This extension provides the company with additional financial flexibility as we continue executing on our commercial, clinical, and strategic growth initiatives. On the reimbursement front, we achieved an important milestone with the approval by the American Medical Association of a new Category 3 CPT code for our technology effective January 1st, 2027. We believe this is a meaningful step toward broader clinical adoption, standardized reporting, utilization tracking, and future reimbursement pathways for our technology.
We also received FDA 510K clearance for enhancement to our QT Breast Acoustic CT scanner and platform designed to improve visualization and imaging coverage of posterior breast tissue. This region has historically been challenging to evaluate with traditional breast imaging technologies, and we believe the updated configuration further improves the clinical utility and overall performance of our system. On the international regulatory front, we secured official classification and clearance in the United Arab Emirates for both our QT Breast Acoustic CT scanner and the QTI SaaS Cloud platform under our distribution agreement with Al Naghi Medical Company. We also continued to advance our software ecosystem and imaging capabilities. During the quarter, we launched the QT Imaging-Olea Viewer, an innovative multimodality imaging platform designed to support efficient review and correlation of imaging findings across modalities while enabling longitudinal patient evaluation and quantitative analysis.
In parallel, we released software version 4.5.0, a next-generation image reconstruction update that improves spatial resolution in reflection imaging and enhances image quality while maintaining efficient processing time. We believe continuous software innovation will remain a key differentiator and advantage for QT Imaging as we expand our install base and advance toward a more scalable imaging and data platform. Importantly, our commercial efforts continue to be supported by growing clinical evidence generated at leading institutions. For example, at the Mayo Clinic, a prospective feasibility study evaluating QTscan as a supplemental screening tool compared to an MRI in high-risk women provided encouraging early validation of the technology. The study demonstrated absolute agreement between QT Imaging and MRI, suggesting comparable effectiveness of QT Imaging and MRI in identifying positive findings. We also continue to strengthen our clinical and medical advisory team.
During the quarter, we welcomed Dr. Mary Yamashita as Senior Clinical Advisor to support our clinical strategy, reader training activities, and development of structured interpretation pathways for QTscan. More recently, we welcomed Dr. Barry Roseman, a senior medical advisor. Dr. Roseman is a breast surgical oncologist with more than 25 years of experience treating breast cancer and breast disease. He currently operates Advanced Breast Care Surgical Oncology of North Georgia, which is a comprehensive breast imaging and diagnostic center. His engagement with QT Imaging includes implementation of QTscan within his busy clinical practice to support physician training, workflow integration, patient access, and the collection of real-world clinical and operational experience with the technology.
Given his extensive experience at treating women with dense breast tissue, Dr. Roseman understands firsthand the limitations of existing imaging modalities, which can miss cancers in dense breasts, and the need for additional technologies capable of providing more quantitative and clinically meaningful information. We believe QT Imaging technology is uniquely positioned as a radiation-free, compression-free through 3D breast imaging platform capable of delivering quantitative information that may improve clinical decision-making, particularly for women with dense breasts. More broadly, we believe QT Imaging sits at the intersection of advanced imaging, quantitative diagnostics, and AI-enabled healthcare infrastructure. Overall, we remain focused on discipline execution as we continue expanding commercialization efforts, advancing our technology platform, and building long-term value for patients, providers, and shareholders. Now I’ll turn the call over to our CFO, Jay Jennings, to review our financial results. Jay?
Jay Jennings, Chief Financial Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Thank you, Raluca, good afternoon, everybody. Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $6.5 million, up 133% from the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily attributable to the shipment of 13 Breast Acoustic CT scanners during the quarter, up from 6 scanners in Q1 2025. Cost of revenue for Q1 2026 was $3.9 million, compared with $986,000 for Q1 2025, resulting in a gross margin for the 2026 quarter of 41%, compared with 65% for the 2025 quarter. The higher gross margin in the 2025 quarter was primarily due to the sale of 2 scanners with a lower cost basis. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $5 million versus $2.9 million a year ago.
The increase was primarily attributable to higher employee compensation and professional and outside service costs. Net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $3.4 million, which is a substantial reduction from a net loss of $11.1 million for the first quarter of 2025. EBITDA for Q1 2026 was negative $2.5 million, compared with negative $10.4 million for Q1 2025. Excluding stock-based compensation and other non-cash expenses, such as the change in fair value of the warrant and earn-out liabilities, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2026 was negative $1.5 million, compared with negative $903,000 for Q1 2025.
Net cash used in operating activities during the first quarter of 2026 was $3.7 million, compared with $3.5 million used during the first quarter of 2025. As of March 31, 2026, the company had cash, restricted cash, and cash equivalents of $7 million. Please see our Form 10-Q filed earlier today for further details regarding our first quarter financial results. Subsequent to the close of the quarter, we amended our credit agreement with Lynrock Lake, extending the maturity date of the $10.1 million senior secured term loan to March 31, 2029, and increasing the interest rate from 10% per annum to 12% per annum. Turning now to 2026 financial guidance. We are affirming our expectation for revenue of approximately $39 million for the year, more than double 2025 revenue.
This guidance is based on the expected shipment of scanners under distributor minimum order quantities, as well as the early monetization of cloud-based services as we bring our platform online across clinical and research customers. Under our distribution agreements, in addition to the 60 scanners contracted by NXC Imaging for 2026, Gulf Medical is contracted for 20 scanners in 2026, 32 scanners for 2027, and 40 scanners for 2028, for a total exceeding $51 million. Al Naghi Medical is contracted for 7 scanners in 2026, 16 scanners in 2027, and 20 scanners in 2028, for a total of approximately $24 million. Now I’ll turn the call back to Raluca.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Thanks, Jay. In summary, QT Imaging is building a leading platform in breast imaging and quantitative imaging-based precision diagnostics. We have done the following. One, we have a differentiated technology addressing a large unmet need in dense breast imaging, with greenfield opportunities in adding biomarkers and precision breast technology. Two, we have a strong clinical, regulatory and reimbursement momentum, including our new category 3 CPT code. Three, we have strategic manufacturing, distribution and software partners that support global scale in the SaaS-enabled business model. Four, we have a clear roadmap from hardware to recurring software and AI revenue as we expand our installed base and data assets. We are excited by the progress we’ve made, and we are confident in the path ahead. Thank you so much for your interest in our company and for your support.
With that, we are now ready to take questions. Operator?
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: The first question today comes from Jeffrey Cohen with Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead.
Jeffrey Cohen, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Hey, good afternoon, Raluca and Jay. Thanks for taking our questions and congrats on all the accomplishments in the quarter. Firstly, can you touch upon Gulf Medical? What’s the regulatory status in Saudi? It’s approved. Could you talk about the updated and amended agreement that expands the units and the timeline, and maybe give us a sense of how those financials work as far as units and/or the additional software, AI or SaaS model that may be included?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Great. Hi, Jeff. Great to hear you, and thank you so much for joining us. Going back to the beginning of your question. We got the UAE regulatory approval, MOHAP in UAE, and we are not there yet with SFDA. Saudi Arabia FDA approval is still to be received. Jeff, I can tell you we’ve gone back and forth three, four times with them, how we are at like one or two questions left. We do hope, within the next month or so we’re gonna get our SFDA approval. For, I’m sorry, please.
Jeffrey Cohen, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: No, go ahead.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Yeah. regarding agreements for
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: So regarding the-
Agreements for the Gulf in Saudi Arabia and UAE, we are discussing back and forth with our distribution partners there. As soon as the war gives us a little bit of a break, we’ll start shipping in UAE. As soon as we get our SFDA, Saudi Arabia FDA approval, we’ll start shipping in Saudi Arabia.
Jeffrey Cohen, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Okay. Would you anticipate Saudi approval this calendar year?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Saudi Arabia, FDA, Jeffrey, it should be within a month or so. That’s, hopefully no later than that.
Jeffrey Cohen, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Okay, got it. I wanted to jump over to your Canon agreement. Could you talk about, it was mentioned in the press release, you called it an amended distribution agreement? Maybe talk about that and tell us if there’s been any updates recently as far as timeline and cadence and perhaps beyond this year?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Jeff, we’ve pushed out the debt of the company from January, from March 31, 2027 to March 31, 2029. The team at Lynrock Lake was very kind, and we’ve discussed this back and forth, and they do have the trust in the company and obviously in the strategy of us together. In terms of NXC Imaging, the contract is for 2026. We are discussing with NXC Imaging and Canon U.S.A. further business beyond 2026. We’ll update in the next call as we have more data on that.
We’ve met in Seattle at SBI conference, we’ll continue meeting to hash out what’s happening beyond 2026. Thank you so much for the question.
Jeffrey Cohen, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Thank you.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Thank you so much. Great to hear you, Jeff.
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one to join the question queue. The next question comes from Ben Haynor with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Good afternoon, Raluca and Jay. Thanks for taking the questions.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Hi, Ben.
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: First off-
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: How’s it going?
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Great. First off for me on the software improvements, that you bumped up the imaging quality on, is there any range?
Beyond, I mean, obviously in just improving the image quality is a good in and of itself, but are there any sort of edge cases whether it’s like calcification or things?
-of that nature where the updated image algorithms do a much better job of helping folks identify, you know, important structures or findings?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Ben, that’s a great question. First of all, we have improved the resolution of our reflection images in the X, Y, and Z direction. Meaningful like 40% to 50% improvement in the resolution. That’s critical as we are looking into the morphological shapes of various findings in the breast. To your point, indirectly, we are having better resolution with all the findings, the results from the reflection in the breast. Certainly, calcification is the one finding critical for. That gets discovered via our reflection, not via our transmission. Thank you so much for bringing that up. The 4.5.0 software version directly improves resolution for us to get calcification.
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Okay, great. That sounds like a great update. Then, on the kind of, I guess, longitudinal imaging slash.
biopharma front, you know, I know the applications there are potentially pretty exciting. Anymore to share the investors would be interested on that front?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Ben Haynor, we are ready to submit a manuscript for a paper with clear results that show the responders that over various therapies. Those are results from our Odette Cancer Centre IRB program. I think everybody will be very pleased reading the paper. It’s exactly what we discussed in the past. The patients are being tracked, the volume is being measured of the findings under the certain treatment. Rather than the linear dimension that has much higher error in the measurement, the volume is clearly showing the increase or decrease with much higher precision.
What paper is going out, we have one other very large institution in Boston that’s going to be working with us on a very similar study. We do seem to be getting a lot of interest in the precision therapy monitoring as you and I discussed again and again over the last quarters. We’re tracking this very important direction for us.
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Great. Looking forward to seeing that. Lastly for me, and I apologize if you already mentioned this, but, on the kinda new distribution agreements front, you know, obviously you’ve got the couple of Middle East distributors and then NXC Imaging. Are there other discussions that are ongoing that, you know, folks should maybe think about new countries coming on, you know, this year, next year, what have you?
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: We would like to cover fully the Gulf region, Ben Haynor, for obvious reasons. We have other four countries in the Gulf region so we’re trying to cover from regulatory perspective. It’ll take us a quarter or two. We have applied also for AMAR regulatory approval in Israel. It’ll take us probably till August or September to get to that. We’ll work through the year to get our paperwork together for CE mark like we discussed. That’s tracking as we promised in the past. We’ll probably have that up and running Q2 next year. That’s where we are in terms of expansion, international expansion. A lot to do in the U.S. for sure, but we’re tracking international expansion too.
Ben Haynor, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Okay. Very helpful. That’s all I have. Thank you so much.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Oh, thank you so much, Ben. Thank you so much for joining.
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over for any closing remarks.
Dr. Raluca Dinu, Chief Executive Officer, QT Imaging Holdings: Thank you so much, Betsy. Once again, I’d like to thank you for joining us today and for your interest in QT Imaging. We are energized by our momentum with more to come. We look forward to discussing our progress during our next conference call in August, and we can, when we can report the second quarter results. Until then, have a nice afternoon, and thank you so much.
Betsy, Conference Call Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.