Marchex (MCHX) Earnings Call zu Q2 2026: Archenia treibt Wachstumsausblick für Q3

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der Umsatz im zweiten Quartal 2026 lag bei 11,0 Millionen US-Dollar, was einem Zuwachs von 0,4 Millionen US-Dollar gegenüber dem Vorquartal von 10,6 Millionen US-Dollar im ersten Quartal entspricht, gestützt durch Neugeschäft und Upselling bei Bestandskunden.
• Marchex schloss die Übernahme von Archenia am 1. Juli 2026 ab. Die Transaktion war in den Ergebnissen des zweiten Quartals nicht enthalten, ist jedoch im Ausblick für das dritte Quartal vollständig berücksichtigt.
• Das Management erwartet für das dritte Quartal einen Umsatz von 16,0 Millionen bis 16,5 Millionen US-Dollar und ein bereinigtes EBITDA von 2,3 Millionen bis 2,5 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Kombinierte KI-Produkte steigern den Umsatz bei Bestandskunden. Ein Kunde aus dem Bereich Heimdienstleistungen steigerte seinen annualisierten Beitrag von etwa 500.000 auf mehr als 1 Million US-Dollar nach der Einführung von KI-verifizierten Ergebnissen.
• Das Management identifizierte eine zweistellige Anzahl von Kunden mit dem Potenzial, einen zusätzlichen jährlichen Umsatz von mindestens siebenstelliger Höhe zu generieren, wobei mehrere im Laufe der Zeit potenziell mehrstellige Millionenbeträge erreichen könnten.
• Marchex konzentriert sich weiterhin darauf, im Laufe der Zeit ein Geschäft mit einem Umsatz von mehr als 100 Millionen US-Dollar aufzubauen, während das Unternehmen über Umsatzwachstum und höhere bereinigte EBITDA-Margen einen Zielpfad nach der Rule of 30 bis Rule of 40 anstrebt.

Wichtige Finanzdaten

Der Rückgang der liquiden Mittel entsprach primär Transaktionskosten, Kosten für die organisatorische Neuausrichtung und weiteren Effizienzinitiativen. Laut Management wurden operative Effizienzgewinne im Quartal teilweise durch akquisitionsbedingte Aufwendungen ausgeglichen.

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

Marchex führt seine Kompetenzen in den Bereichen Conversational Intelligence und Analytik mit der leistungsbasierten Kundenqualifizierungs- und Akquisitionstechnologie von Archenia zusammen. Die daraus entstehende Plattform soll Kundenerkenntnisse mit automatisierten Aktionen und messbaren Umsatzergebnissen verknüpfen.

Das Unternehmen hob zwei erste kombinierte Angebote hervor: KI-verifizierte Ergebnisse, die auf Pay-per-Event-Basis verkauft werden, und Conversational-AI-Agenten, die Buchungen, Terminquoten und die Anrufbearbeitung verbessern sollen. Laut Marchex entfallen auf die 100 größten Kunden etwa 90 % des Umsatzes, was Cross-Selling innerhalb dieser Gruppe zur unmittelbarsten Wachstumschance macht.

Das Management nannte drei Beispiele für die Kundenexpansion:

• Ein Kunde aus dem Bereich Heimdienstleistungen steigerte seinen annualisierten Analytikumsatz von etwa 500.000 US-Dollar auf mehr als 1 Million US-Dollar nach der Einführung von KI-verifizierten Ergebnissen.
• Ein Kunde aus dem Bereich Automobildienstleistungen mit mehr als 300.000 US-Dollar an annualisiertem Analytikumsatz weitete ein kostenpflichtiges Pilotprojekt von 40 auf mehr als 60 Standorte aus. Das Management glaubt, dass eine breitere Einführung mindestens 1 Million US-Dollar an annualisiertem Umsatz ausmachen könnte.
• Ein Werbe- und Medienkunde, der rund 400.000 US-Dollar an annualisiertem Analytikumsatz generiert, startete ein kostenpflichtiges Pilotprojekt mit einem Conversational-AI-Agenten. Eine breitere Einführung könnte im Jahr 2026 zu zusätzlichem Umsatz führen und den annualisierten Umsatz mit diesem Kunden im Jahr 2027 um mindestens 50 % steigern, so das Management.

Das Unternehmen arbeitet an etwa fünf kombinierten Produkten, von denen sich ein oder zwei noch in späten Entwicklungsphasen befinden. Laut Management haben die drei offengelegten Implementierungen die Umsatzchancen bei einzelnen Kunden um 50 % bis mehr als 100 % gesteigert.

Ausblick des Managements

Für das dritte Quartal 2026 erwartet Marchex einen Umsatz von 16,0 Millionen bis 16,5 Millionen US-Dollar und ein bereinigtes EBITDA von 2,3 Millionen bis 2,5 Millionen US-Dollar. Der sequentielle Umsatzanstieg dürfte in erster Linie auf ein volles Quartal von Archenia zurückzuführen sein, zusammen mit weiterem Wachstum im bestehenden Geschäft von Marchex und bei den Bündelangeboten.

Das Management erwartet im Laufe der Zeit eine Verbesserung der Margen aufgrund einer niedrigeren Kostenstruktur und eines potenziellen operativen Hebels bei zunehmender Akzeptanz neuer Produkte. Zudem plant das Unternehmen gezielte Investitionen in Vertriebs- und Entwicklungsressourcen, um Wachstumschancen im Jahr 2027 zu unterstützen.

Marchex beabsichtigt, bei der Vorlage der Ergebnisse für das dritte Quartal, die derzeit für Anfang November erwartet wird, eine Prognose für das vierte Quartal 2026 sowie einen ersten Geschäftsausblick für 2027 abzugeben.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

Das Management betonte, dass die Umsetzung davon abhängt, messbaren Kundennutzen nachzuweisen, kostenpflichtige Pilotprojekte in breitere wiederkehrende Implementierungen umzuwandeln und eine disziplinierte Finanzperformance beizubehalten.

Das Unternehmen ist zudem in einer sich schnell verändernden Branche mit Unsicherheiten und weiteren Risiken tätig. Seine längerfristigen Umsatzziele sowie die Zielpfade der Rule of 30 bis Rule of 40 hängen vom Erreichen des erwarteten Umsatzwachstums, der Verbesserung der bereinigten EBITDA-Margen und der erfolgreichen Skalierung kombinierter Produkte über den Kundenstamm hinweg ab.

Wichtigste Punkte aus der Fragerunde für Analysten

Laut Management könnte eine zweistellige Anzahl von Kunden jeweils mindestens 1 Million US-Dollar an zusätzlichem jährlichem Umsatz generieren, wobei viele in dieser Gruppe im Laufe der Zeit das Potenzial für mehrere Millionen US-Dollar haben könnten. Größere Geschäftsvolumina werden durch die Verlagerung von reinen Analytikangeboten hin zu Bündelprodukten angetrieben, die Chancen identifizieren, Aktionen automatisieren und Umsatzergebnisse messen.

Die Technologie von Archenia umfasst agentische KI-Funktionen, dialogbasierte Lead-Qualifizierung und die Echtzeitanalyse von Kundeninteraktionen. Diese Tools können die Absicht von Verbrauchern klassifizieren, erfolgreiche oder erfolglose Ergebnisse identifizieren und die Resultate zur Optimierung in die Plattform zurückführen.

Zur Kapitalallokation merkte das Management an, dass Marchex ein kapitalarmes Geschäft mit steuerlichen Verlustvorträgen und zunehmender Flexibilität ist. Das Unternehmen verfügt über eine bestehende Ermächtigung zum Rückkauf von 3 Millionen Aktien, wenngleich keine spezifische Allokationsentscheidung bekannt gegeben wurde. Das Management gab außerdem an, dass Insider und Vorstandsmitglieder rund ein Drittel des Unternehmens halten.

Vollständiges Transkript des Earnings Calls

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Marchex's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference call over to Francis Feeney, Chief Operating Officer. Francis, please go ahead.

Francis Feeney

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Marchex's Business Update and Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. Joining us today are Russ Horowitz, our Chairman of the Board; and Brian Nagle, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements, including references to our financial and operational performance, and actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's earnings press release and in our most recent annual or quarterly report filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and undertake no obligation to update these statements for subsequent events.

During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. The earnings press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website.

At this time, I want to turn the call over to Russ.

Russell Horowitz

Thank you, Frank, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. The July 1 completion of Marchex's acquisition of Archenia marks an important step in our strategy to expand our AI-powered conversational intelligence and analytics solutions beyond insights and into actions and outcomes. By combining Marchex's conversational intelligence and analytics capabilities with Archenia's performance-based customer qualification and acquisition technology, we are creating a highly differentiated, more comprehensive AI-powered solution that not only helps businesses better understand customer interactions, but also turns those interactions into measurable outcomes with demonstrable value impact.

While we operate in a rapidly evolving and dynamic industry with uncertainties and various risks, we believe that the combined company can achieve greater revenue scale and growth, higher margins, expanded market reach and enhanced strategic flexibility. Further, in light of our emerging sales growth levers and additional cost efficiencies, we will now be looking to make selective investments in incremental sales and development resources to help our 2027 growth opportunities.

As we discussed last quarter, if you zoom out and consider what our customers most fundamentally rely on, it's knowing how to leverage AI-driven strategic solutions to more efficiently drive growth-oriented customer acquisition and optimization. We believe that we are seeing continuing signs of validation that there is significant opportunity for us to rapidly expand into highly measurable AI-powered bundled solutions, which provide the strategic insights our customers need, the automated actions those insights inform and the revenue-generating outcomes those actions achieve.

We believe that there are significant untapped opportunities within our existing customer base and within each of our current verticals. We believe selling bundled solutions across the entire customer value chain can accelerate our business and make us more valuable within our vertical markets as AI opens new product possibilities that can help businesses grow meaningfully while driving efficiencies.

We have been jointly developing and selling the initial products that reflect the combined capabilities of the 2 companies. Product examples of this collaboration, which leverage Marchex's data and AI signals and Archenia's AI toolset and user interface are, first, AI verified outcomes, which drive increased revenue on a pay-per-event basis; and second, conversational AI agents, which increase customer bookings and appointment rates. We believe that our ability to sell these and other combined solutions to our installed customer base is our most immediate opportunity that will be a meaningful sales catalyst in 2026 and beyond.

As discussed last quarter, our top 100 customers represent approximately 90% of our revenue and this customer base has been the initial focus for presenting the new products. At that time, we had made presentations to nearly 1/3 of these customers, approximately half of whom have already purchased one or more of these products on a recurring or paid pilot basis. Of those remaining, we stated that we believe that over time, the majority are also likely to purchase one or more of these products on a recurring or paid pilot basis. Since this time, we have continued to see further progress and validation with these efforts.

To this point, let me provide 3 examples of successful sales of new combined products to existing customers. First is an existing home services client, which generates approximately $500,000 in annualized analytics revenue for Marchex. This customer subsequently adopted our AI verified outcomes offering, increasing its total annualized revenue contribution to more than $1 million. This example illustrates the potential to take an established analytics relationship and expand it by connecting conversational insights directly to measurable customer outcomes.

Second, an auto services customer generating more than $300,000 in annualized analytics revenue began a paid pilot designed to improve sales agent performance across 40 retail locations. That program has since expanded to more than 60 locations. This customer operates thousands of locations. If the program achieves its performance objectives and it expands more broadly, we believe the relationship could represent at least $1 million in annualized revenue.

And third, an advertising and media customer generating approximately $400,000 in annualized analytics revenue wants a paid pilot using a Marchex conversational AI agent to improve call handling. If the pilot converts to a broader deployment, we believe it could contribute incremental revenue during 2026 and increase annualized revenue from this customer by 50% or more in 2027. These examples demonstrate how our model can progress from an existing analytics relationship to a much more significant, strategically bundled and competitively differentiated solution.

I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss our second quarter 2026 financial results and third quarter outlook.

Brian Nagle

Thank you, Russ. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $11 million, compared to $10.6 million for the first quarter of 2026. We saw a favorable impact of new sales and existing customer upsells benefit the company in the quarter. For operating expenditures, we saw efficiencies throughout the business as we benefited from the continued realignment of the organization and other expense efficiency initiatives that have taken place over the last several months. The benefits were offset by acquisition-related costs incurred during the quarter as we completed the acquisition of Archenia.

We anticipate that our overall margins can continue to improve over time as we are carrying an overall lower cost structure going forward, which could enable meaningful future operating and financial leverage for the business as new products and features sell through. We ended the second quarter with $8.2 million in cash compared with $9 million at the end of the first quarter. The decrease primarily reflected cash payments for transaction expenses, organizational realignment activities and other efficiency initiatives.

Now turning to our outlook. Because the Archenia transaction closed on July 1, our second quarter results do not include Archenia. Our third quarter outlook includes a full quarter of Archenia's expected financial results. For the third quarter of 2026, Marchex currently expects revenue of $16 million to $16.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $2.3 million to $2.5 million. The expected sequential increase in revenue primarily reflects a full quarter of Archenia's operations, together with continued growth in Marchex's existing business based on our evolved strategic approach with delivering bundled solutions, including insights, actions and outcomes.

We plan to provide our fourth quarter 2026 financial outlook and initial business outlook for 2027 when we report third quarter results, which is currently anticipated in early November.

With that, I will hand the call to Frank.

Francis Feeney

Thank you, Brian. Marchex's acquisition of Archenia creates a vertically focused, AI-driven customer acquisition and outcome optimization platform. Marchex brings a deep foundation of first-party data derived from years of analyzing customer conversations for many industry-leading companies, with Archenia adding AI-powered lead qualification, conversational IVR, performance marketing infrastructure and expertise in activating call intelligence at scale. Together, the companies provide a comprehensive platform that connects customer insights, automated actions and measurable business outcomes.

Based on the increased opportunities of the combined company, moving forward, we are focused on scaling our financial performance to potentially achieve Rule of 30 to Rule of 40 trajectory. For reference, the Rule of 30 to 40 metric represents the combination of annual revenue growth rates plus adjusted EBITDA margins. If we're able to achieve anticipated revenue run rate growth and combine this with our improving adjusted EBITDA margins, the combined company could be positioned to potentially achieve these Rule of 30 to 40 metrics over time, which we believe helps highlight the unique opportunity of the combined company.

With that, I will hand the call back to Russ for closing remarks.

Russell Horowitz

Thank you, Frank. As we previously shared, we're highly focused on building a more than $100 million business over time, and we believe that the combination of Marchex and Archenia has better positioned us to achieve this goal. We enter the second half of 2026 with a larger revenue base, a more comprehensive AI-powered platform, and a broader opportunity to help customers turn conversations into measurable business outcomes. Our priorities are clear. We'll expand the adoption of our combined offerings across our existing customer base with an emphasis on converting successful paid pilots into broader recurring deployments. And we will also continue to manage expenses carefully while making selective investments that can support sustainable growth and operating leverage.

We believe Marchex now has a stronger foundation from which to grow. At the same time, we recognize that successful execution will depend on demonstrating measurable customer value, converting that value into recurring revenue and delivering disciplined financial performance.

I'm going to close out today's call by thanking all of our investors, partners and other stakeholders for your ongoing support. I also want to thank our employees for their expertise, urgency and commitment while we execute on the growth opportunities ahead. And with that, I will hand the call back to the operator for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ross Koller with Koller Capital.

Fragen und Antworten

Ross Koller

Congrats on the early wins and momentum. Have a few questions today. First, the 3 examples of customer expansions are great and seem to validate the cross-sell. Russ, can you provide some more color on the quality of the pipeline and particularly the amount of million-dollar deals in there? And as a follow-up, how big can deals get on an annual basis? And in particular, are there any multi-million-dollar deals in there?

Russell Horowitz

Yes, it's a really good question. It actually hits right on how we think about our pipeline and are looking at the growth path. We believe we have a double-digit number of customers where there's potential for 7 figures or more of incremental revenue from today. Within that group, we believe many of them over time likely have the potential to incrementally deliver multi-millions of dollars per year. So there's really plenty of opportunity at the million-dollar-plus and multi-million-dollar scale. So if we can make this happen, it'll be very meaningful, and it will move the needle.

This has been one of the big takeaways for us so far that we have this big potential revenue expansion on a per customer basis. And we believe our expanded TAM just on existing customers is very significant. And it's why we're working with urgency to build the momentum.

Ross Koller

Awesome. Russ, what's driving the dramatically increased deal sizes? And how is AI affecting the growth and the amount of value you can provide your customers today?

Russell Horowitz

Yes, the deal size, that's really being driven by our ability to move beyond selling just the analytics and the resulting insights and now bundling it with the actions and revenue-generating outcomes that the insights inform. When we've only sold insights, they have very little influence or control on whether the customer actually follows through and takes action on these, and in the absence of action, they don't achieve the value impact that the insights inform. Don't get me wrong, I mean, many customers do take actions in various forms, but although a lot of the low-hanging fruit and potential value never gets harvested fully because taking these actions involves their need to make operational changes, mobilize cross-departmental collaboration and other logistical requirements in these large, complex organizations.

But with our solutions now connecting our insights to the AI-driven automated actions, to hit on the second part of your question, where we effectively can take the action for them. And with the outcomes being tangibly achievable and measurable, it changes how much they're willing to pay us. And that's what really drives the increased revenue opportunity with so many of these customers. So our value impact at the bottom of the customer acquisition funnel, where much larger existing budgets exist, is significantly amplified. And the great part is our analytics are able to objectify the improved results by measuring the revenue dollars of the outcomes we generate.

So our evolved solutions can and will not only inform the action that's needed, but they can then take the action on the customer's behalf and achieve the transactional outcome most valued by the customer, and then also measure and validate the results. We can complete and close the entire loop right down to the customer acquisition layer. And because of this, we can substantiate a much bigger piece of the pie. And that's all that we've learned so far in this process continues to support our belief that on a combined basis, as we noted in the body of our presentation, that we have a $100 million-plus revenue opportunity, and we're just approaching all of our efforts as a profitably focused sprint to that $100 million revenue run rate and beyond.

Ross Koller

Awesome. And then with the enhanced profitability of the business and the nearly $10 million EBITDA run rate projected for this quarter, can you walk us through your thoughts on capital allocation and buybacks versus reinvesting back into growing the business?

Russell Horowitz

Yes, things we think a lot about. We think we're at a positive inflection point. Clearly, we're just getting into this involved opportunity, but in terms of our increasing ability to generate more cash, we'll assess best and highest use of that increasing cash as we go forward and achieve these milestones. It is worth noting we're a low-CapEx business. We have meaningful tax shields. The Archenia transaction actually helps us optimize our free cash flow generation in totality. So, as we move forward, it just gives us more flexibility.

I've also noted before, if you look at our history, we've had times where we've done stock buybacks. We've done self-tender offers. We've declared special dividends and other kind of, I think, shareholder-centric behaviors. And just to remind everyone, we do have an existing 3 million share buyback program that's authorized at this time.

And the other thing I'd point out is that me, the other insiders in the Board, we own about 1/3 of the company. And we're super focused on getting the stock value recognized and also creating new incremental value. To that end, on the investor relations front, with where we are now in our opportunity and how we think about it going forward, we're planning to be much more active and out there with investors, communicating about what we're doing, why it's exciting, different and defensible, and how big we think this can be so that investors can hopefully start to appreciate us more and what our potential might look like.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

Mike Latimore

Great. Yes, congrats on the acquisition here. The sequential growth in the second quarter and then forecasted in the third quarter looks pretty healthy there. Is that still mainly the core businesses sort of organically doing their thing, or is there a fair amount of cross-sell already benefiting the numbers here?

Russell Horowitz

Super good question. Both companies kind of on their own have had and continue to have growth catalysts, but what's really driving it is these collaborative products. It's what really opens up the wallet share at the customer level when we can deliver these integrated bundled solutions, and it's really where we think our competitive moat is because we've got the customer data. We know where the opportunities exist to do better. And kind of as we noted previously we had dependencies on them looking at the insights and doing something about it independent of us. But now we can go to them, tell them not only can we illuminate where the big opportunities are to drive much better ROI and performance at the bottom of the funnel, but we can automate the actions using the bundled solutions.

And then we can also deliver and sell the outcomes. And then it's not invalidated, so we get that closed loop. That's been a very appealing value proposition. It's obviously very early. We gave the 3 examples that reflect kind of 3 different products that have translated into meaningful customer expansion. So yes, we really looked at this and are mindful of each of the opportunities on the standalone products that came for Marchex and Archenia, but what's really driving it and where we see the competitive differentiation and growth is with these combined solutions.

Mike Latimore

And then yes, the 3 customers were super interesting. And is it fair to say that the upsell that you're seeing across those 3 is with one product? And that over time, you might have -- I think you originally were talking 5 potential products. Is that a fair way to think about it?

Russell Horowitz

Yes, there's kind of 5 products, 1 or 2 of them are in later stages of development, but we are in conversations with customers on our expected timing of their availability, but it's why with the 3 examples, we chose 3 specific products that are new and leverage the combined solutions. The AI verified outcomes, which we talked about more than doubling the home services company opportunity. We talked about the specific integration focused on enhanced agent performance for a big auto services company with thousands of locations where that has a very significant direct impact on bottom of the funnel performance. And then the third one is conversational AI agents to improve call handling with a third customer.

So 3 different product implementations, all of which leverage the combined capabilities and increase individual customer revenue by between 50% and over 100%. So for us, the model is there, it just comes down to how many more of these yeses can we get? How fast can we get them? And what does it look like to scale that? And that's what gives us the urgency and encouragement.

Mike Latimore

Right. And then just -- can you just touch on the kind of evolution of Archenia and in particular, how has -- obviously, it's been around a while. How has AI sort of changed what they can offer, the type of outcomes their customers get? And like what kind of AI are they really using here or developing? Is it generative? Is it natural language understanding, agentic? Just a little color on the evolution of Archenia and how AI has changed what they can offer and what benefits come from them.

Russell Horowitz

Yes, there's aspects across the board that are all incorporated into a solution. But yes, it does definitely integrate and utilize agentic AI capabilities. When we look at some of the core components that Archenia has developed and validated with its customer bases that we're now leveraging across the combined company, one of them is our conversational lead qualification agent. So we can take kind of inbound leads at the top of the funnel and on an automated basis qualify those before they ever kind of connect with an advertiser.

And then additionally, what we're able to do is real-time conversational analysis to categorize and understand success and failure, both on a transactional basis, which leads us to the ability to sell AI verified outcomes and whether it's different forms of consumer intent like an appointment or an actual sale. And then feed all of that real-time analysis back into the system to optimize the other components.

So the ability to do all those things in relative real-time and at scale as well as take these highly detailed specific classifications and transparently and we talk about transparency and truth. Truthfully, transparently make those available to our customers in a way that gives them a lens on their business and their core success metric they haven't previously had is an important ingredient in what these combined solutions are leveraging.

Operator

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Russell Horowitz

We appreciate everyone's participation in our call today. We're pleased to keep you updated on both the closing of the transaction and where we are and what our primary focus is and what we think is an evolved exciting opportunity that we're going to focus on successfully executing and delivering real progress. Appreciate your support and we'll look forward to updating you as we move forward. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.