SoundThinking (SSTI) Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Ausblick gesenkt, da Verzögerungen bei der Bereitstellung belasten

SoundThinking (NASDAQ: SSTI) meldete für das zweite Quartal 2026 einen Umsatzrückgang im Jahresvergleich sowie einen höheren GAAP-Verlust, kehrte jedoch im Vergleich zum Vorquartal zu einem positiven bereinigten EBITDA zurück. Das Management senkte die Prognose für den Jahresumsatz und die bereinigte EBITDA-Marge aufgrund von Verzögerungen bei der Bereitstellung, dem zeitlichen Ablauf bei Professional Services, dem Ausschluss von Puerto Rico und einer schwächeren Vertriebsabwicklung bei ShotSpotter.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der Umsatz im zweiten Quartal belief sich auf 23,9 Millionen US-Dollar, verglichen mit 25,9 Millionen US-Dollar im Vorjahr. Der Umsatz im ersten Halbjahr lag bei insgesamt rund 48 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Der GAAP-Nettoverlust weitete sich auf 4,8 Millionen US-Dollar bzw. 0,37 US-Dollar je verwässerter Aktie aus, verglichen mit 3,1 Millionen US-Dollar bzw. 0,24 US-Dollar je verwässerter Aktie im zweiten Quartal 2025.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA lag bei positiven 1,2 Millionen US-Dollar, verglichen mit minus 0,1 Millionen US-Dollar im ersten Quartal 2026 und positiven 3,4 Millionen US-Dollar im zweiten Quartal 2025.
• SoundThinking senkte seine Umsatzprognose für 2026 von 109 bis 111 Millionen US-Dollar auf 99 bis 100 Millionen US-Dollar. Die Prognose für die bereinigte EBITDA-Marge wurde auf 8 % bis 9 % reduziert.
• Das Unternehmen liegt weiterhin auf Kurs, durch Maßnahmen zur Personal- und Geschäftsoptimierung jährliche Einsparungen von rund 4 Millionen US-Dollar zu erzielen, wovon etwa 28 Mitarbeiter betroffen sind.
• Nach Angaben des Managements spiegeln etwa 70 % der Senkung der Jahresprognose um rund 10 Millionen US-Dollar zeitliche Verschiebungen bei den Umsätzen wider und keine verlorenen Verträge, wobei ein Großteil dieser Umsätze nach 2027 verschoben wird.

Wichtige Finanzdaten

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

SoundThinking schloss Verträge im Gesamtwert von über 23 Millionen US-Dollar im Rahmen mehrerer mehrjähriger Verlängerungen ab. Dazu gehörten eine fünfjährige ShotSpotter-Verlängerung mit Albuquerque, dreijährige Verlängerungen mit Kunden in West-Massachusetts, Richland County, Macon und Peoria sowie eine zweijährige CrimeTracer-Verlängerung mit der Massachusetts State Police.

Zudem schloss das Unternehmen einen mehrjährigen CrimeTracer-Vertrag für das Texas-Anti-Gang-Programm ab, der sich auf einen jährlich wiederkehrenden Umsatz (ARR) von rund 2,5 Millionen US-Dollar beläuft. Texas wurde nach Tennessee, Massachusetts und Utah der vierte Kunde von SoundThinking auf Bundesstaatsebene für CrimeTracer. Das Management erklärte, dass die Bereitstellung potenziell auf das Dreifache ihres ursprünglichen Umfangs ausgeweitet werden könnte, wenn die erste Phase frühe Erfolge zeigt.

Die Entwicklung von ShotSpotter blieb sowohl bei den Auftragseingängen als auch bei den Inbetriebnahmen hinter den Erwartungen zurück. Das Management führte den Rückstand auf das Auslaufen von ARPA-Fördermitteln, langsamere Bundesmittelzuflüsse an Kommunen, längere Genehmigungsverfahren, politische Überprüfungen sowie interne Probleme bei der Vertriebsabwicklung zurück. Das Unternehmen verwies zudem auf die Stornierung einer Ausschreibung in Kapstadt, nachdem dieser bereits der Zuschlag erteilt worden war.

Die Verlängerungsaktivität blieb solide. Detroit verlängerte seine Bereitstellung auf 38 Quadratmeilen um neun Monate, während eine Ausschreibung (RFP) durchgeführt wird, deren Abschluss für Anfang 2027 erwartet wird. Erie (Pennsylvania) und Cambridge (Massachusetts) kehrten nach früheren Unterbrechungen oder Rückzügen zu ShotSpotter zurück. Cambridge nahm den Dienst für eine erste 90-tägige Evaluierungsphase wieder auf, wobei SoundThinking die wiederhergestellte Abdeckung während dieses Zeitraums finanziert.

Die Nachfrage und die Buchungen für SafePointe blieben stark, aber größere Unternehmensbereitstellungen benötigen mehr Zeit zur Aktivierung. Das Unternehmen buchte fast 90 neue Zugänge („Lanes“) im zweiten Quartal und hatte mehr als 100 gebuchte Zugänge in verschiedenen Bereitstellungsphasen, was einem wiederkehrenden Jahresumsatz (ARR) von über 2 Millionen US-Dollar entspricht. Laut Management umfassen Bereitstellungen nun häufig 10 bis 20 Zugänge pro Unternehmen, was die Komplexität bei Bauarbeiten, Netzwerkzugang, Berechtigungsvergabe und der multisite-basierten Sequenzierung erhöht.

In Chicago verblieb die Ausschreibung für Schusserkennungssysteme in der Prüfung durch den Chief Procurement Officer der Stadt. Das Management gab an, dass sich der Prozess bis Februar 2027 hinziehen könnte. Die Prognose von SoundThinking geht von keinem Umsatzbeitrag aus einem erneuerten ShotSpotter-Vertrag mit Chicago aus.

Prognose des Managements

Die Umsatzrevision enthält fast 3 Millionen US-Dollar im Zusammenhang mit verzögerten Professional Services bei Technologic Solutions, rund 2 Millionen US-Dollar durch langsamere SafePointe-Bereitstellungen und etwa 1,5 Millionen US-Dollar durch den Ausschluss von Puerto Rico. Die verbleibende Reduzierung spiegelt ein langsameres Vertriebswachstum und die Verschiebung anderer gebuchter Bereitstellungen nach 2027 wider.

Das Management erwartet für die zweite Jahreshälfte einen Umsatz von etwa 51 bis 52 Millionen US-Dollar, um die korrigierte Jahresspanne zu erreichen. Die Visibilität wird durch gebuchte Professional Services, die SafePointe-Bereitstellungspipeline und die konservative Annahme von etwa sieben ShotSpotter-Inbetriebnahmen aus rund 15 gebuchten oder kurz vor dem Abschluss stehenden Projekten gestützt.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

• Die Vertriebszyklen bei ShotSpotter verlängern sich, da an Entscheidungen mehr Stakeholder beteiligt sind und diese strengeren Budgetprüfungen, öffentlichen Debatten und politischen Überprüfungen unterliegen.
• Das Management räumte sowohl externe Finanzierungsengpässe als auch interne Probleme bei der Vertriebsabwicklung ein.
• Die Umsatzrealisierung bei SafePointe hängt von kundenverantwortierten Bereitstellungszeitplänen ab, einschließlich der Bereitschaft von Einrichtungen, Bauarbeiten, IT-Zugang und Berechtigungsprüfungen.
• Puerto Rico wurde aus dem Plan für 2026 gestrichen, da SoundThinking einen anderen Beschaffungsweg verfolgt.
• Professional-Services-Arbeiten für Technologic Solutions und das New York City Department of Correction hängen weiterhin vom Zeitplan der Kunden ab.
• Der Beschaffungsprozess in Chicago könnte sich bis Februar 2027 hinziehen, und in der aktuellen Prognose ist kein Beitrag aus Chicago enthalten.

Highlights der Analysten-Fragerunde

Das Management gab an, dass es die Vertriebsabwicklung bei ShotSpotter durch eine verbesserte Vertriebsdisziplin und eine externe Beraterressource angeht, die Kunden bei der Entwicklung von Finanzierungsstrategien unterstützen soll. Der überarbeitete Ausblick geht von einem nur begrenzten Beitrag von ShotSpotter in der zweiten Jahreshälfte aus, um Raum für Ausführungsrisiken zu lassen.

Bezüglich SafePointe betonte das Management, dass der Engpass in der Geschwindigkeit der Bereitstellung liegt und nicht in der Nachfrage. Größere Aufträge erfordern mehr Abstimmung mit den IT- und Gebäudeteams der Unternehmen, was die Umsatzrealisierung verzögert, obwohl der damit verbundene ARR gebucht bleibt.

Bezüglich der Prognosesenkung erklärte CFO Alan Stewart, dass etwa 70 % auf verzögerte Umsätze zurückzuführen sind, die sich zeitlich nach hinten verschoben haben, statt ersatzlos auszufallen. Die restlichen 30 % spiegeln langsamere Neuvorhaben und Buchungen wider.

Das Management hob zudem den operativen Hebel hervor, der sich aus der niedrigeren Kostenbasis ergibt. Der Umsatz blieb im Vergleich zum Vorquartal weitgehend stabil, während sich das bereinigte EBITDA von Q1 auf Q2 um 1,3 Millionen US-Dollar verbesserte, da sich die Kostensenkungen in der Gewinn- und Verlustrechnung auszuwirken begannen.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz zu den Ergebnissen

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to SoundThinking Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Clio, and I will be your operator for today's call. Joining us are SoundThinking CEO, Ralph Clark; and CFO, Alan Stewart. Please note that certain information discussed on today's call will include forward-looking statements for future events and sound thinking's business strategy and future financial and operating performance. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and they are subject to risks and uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict and may cause actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by these statements.

Certain of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions are discussed in SoundThinking's SEC filings, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings. These forward-looking statements reflect management's beliefs, estimates and predictions as the date of this live broadcast, August 13, 2026, and SoundThinking undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call.

In addition, our comments on the call today contain references to non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA and key business metrics such as annual reoccurring revenue. Non-GAAP measures should be reviewed in addition to, and not as alternative for the company's reported GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly compatible GAAP measures as well as definitions of the key business metrics, referenced and management, reasons for including the non-GAAP measures and key business metrics referenced may be found in the press release.

Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at ir.soundthinking.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ralph.

Ralph Clark

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. I want to start today's call in an unusual place by going back to last quarter's call. In Q1, we discussed several strategic initiatives that we believe would shape our year. I want to review those strategic initiatives and share where we delivered and where we fell short and more importantly, what we are doing on a go-forward basis. .

Let's start on where we delivered. I told you our year had structural shape and that Q1 sat low our operating leverage line and that Q2 through Q4 would sit above it with incremental revenue converting to adjusted EBITDA. Despite sequential flattish revenue growth, we crossed that line in Q2. Adjusted EBITDA moved from roughly negative $100,000 in the first quarter to a positive $1.2 million in the second quarter.

We've been aggressively applying AI across our own operations, and that is a meaningful part of why we believe the workforce and business optimization initiatives we actioned this year from which we expect approximately $4 million of annualized savings is structural rather than a onetime cut. This was not a headcount reduction dressed up as strategy. we believe it is a lower, more scalable cost base that lets us intentionally reduce our expense burn going forward while protecting the investments that drive growth.

Our cost discipline can cushion the profitability impact of a lighter top line. We believe it is a durable advantage, not a one-quarter maneuver. Revenue retention continues to be a business model differentiator for us as we drive revenue renewals to protect the revenue growth gains. We closed more than $23 million in total contract value across several multiyear renewals. A 5-year ShotSpotter renewal with Albuquerque covering approximately 42 square miles, 3-year ShotSpotter renewals with Wester Massachusetts, Richland County, South Carolina, MACI Georgia, Peoria, Illinois; and a 2-year crime tracer renewal with the Massachusetts state police.

Additionally, we saw a key ShotSpotter renewal in Fayetteville, North Carolina funded through 2029 as a part of the city's $324 million fiscal 2027 budget. Further, we also secured a modest term by critically important 9-month extension of our 38 square mile Detroit deployment to bridge them to and through their RFP process, which is expected to conclude early 2027.

The number and quality of these multiyear renewals speaks to the stickiness of our solutions and the high confidence and satisfaction our customers have in our capabilities. We also saw 2 key ShotSpotter winbacks recently with Erie, Pennsylvania and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here's deployment lapsed in January due to funding challenges However, our customer and their local civic leadership were motivated and successful in securing outside funding to come back online with 6 miles, which we're targeting for later this month.

As for Cambridge, this is a win back that was unfortunately driven by tragedy. When Cambridge City Council decided to withdraw from the Boston 5 coverage area against the protest of Cambridge leases leadership, their allocated coverage model was quickly absorbed into the larger Boston Vibe coverage area, making it a commercial neutral impact for us.

But within 3 weeks of this withdrawal, another City employee by the name of Xavier Batista was shot and found dead and estimated hour plus after his shooting. Xavier was a father of Fiance, a son and a beloved friend who deserve more than the bleed out without first responders even knowing that he was shot and wounded and therefore, they were unable to render potentially life-saving assistance.

The response from his family and the broader community was swift, along with local and even national attention, including but not limited to, editorials from the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald as well as the editorial board of the Washington Post, all quoting the wisdom of voluntarily and intentionally taking this potentially life-saving technology offline. This forceful public response, which by all accounts led to the City Council to reverse its decision and reinstate ShotSpotter for an initial 90-day reevaluation period was both encouraging and correct in our view for our part in being a good corporate partner in citizen and also playing homage to Xavier's legacy.

We are investing in restoring the ShotSpotter coverage had no cost to the city of Cambridge during this period. Lastly, we discussed in last quarter's earnings call and in pending large state Prime tracer deal that, in my words, was no more than 30 to 45 days from being papered. I'm pleased to report that crime tracer deal is now fully executed as a new multiyear contract worth approximately $2.5 million in annual recurring revenue for the Texas Anti-gang program, which is also known as TAG, which has regional Texas anti gang centers across the state.

These multi-agency hubs are funded through the public safety office within the office of the Texas Governor and coordinated alongside the Texas Department of Public Safety, DPS. We're very excited to share more in the future with respect to the use case and strategic implications for what is now our fourth prime tracer state level deal beyond Tennessee, Massachusetts and Utah and now includes the great state of Texas.

We believe once we can demonstrate early success that this can potentially expand to triple the footprint beyond the initial user base of this current Phase 1 deployment. We cannot underestimate the value of our over 1 billion proprietary seeds records and documents combined with our recent significant investments in user interface and artificial intelligence enhancements and features which we believe makes Crime tracers a unique solution.

Now for the more difficult review of where we came up short. We had long held and even reaffirmed the view that on a topline revenue basis, we expect a roughly $50 million in GAAP revenue in the first half of 2026 and $60 million in the second half of 2026. We came in at about $48 million in revenue in the first half with a Q2 revenue attainment of $23.9 million, a near miss, but a miss nevertheless, and should be counted as one.

Most of the $2 million shortfall can be attributed to some renewal timing and professional service project delays from technologic and NYC Department of Corrections. These delays in projects are solely customer-oriented and because they are already booked and budgeted, it is not a revenue loss, but is effectively a revenue pushout into 2027.

Our second half $60 million revenue expectation was tied to our full year revenue guidance range of $109 million to $111 million, which we are now revising to $99 million to $100 million. We had expected to recapture the Puerto Rico ShotSpotter contract in the second half as we did with the Texas Fannie GaN contract, but now that recapture has been pushed out of our 2026 plan entirely.

We are now pivoting from engaging exclusively with the state of Puerto Rico, where our project is delayed along with several other post-hurricane initiatives toward another procurement avenue in order to get something across the line sooner. This restart effectively puts us on a different deal clock post 2026. The rest of the second half reduction comes from our 2 growth engines, and I want to be precise about which problem is which, because they are not the same problem.

The first is SafePointe, and here the issue is cadence, not demand. Our SafePointe bookings remain strong and our hospital pipeline continues to build, but SafePointe revenues recognized as systems go live, and go-lives are inherently lumpy, especially as we begin to implement double-digit lane deployment within the enterprise. These deployments depend on customer side facility readiness, construction, door schedules, credentialing and the sequencing of multisite rollouts much which sits beyond our control.

Several go-lives we had modeled for the back half have moved by a quarter or 2 on to customer time lines. which pushes the associated revenue, though not the underlying bookings into 2027. The booked ARR is still intact and growing. What has shifted is the timing of when it converts to recognize revenue. I'm not troubled by SafePointe's trajectory. We're simply not going to model lumpy go-live cadence as though it were linear and our revised guidance reflects that discipline.

The second driver, and frankly, the more disappointing one is ShotSpotter and here we will not hide behind cadence because this quarter, it was both bookings and go-lives that came in well below our expectations. Some of this is explainable. The wind down of ARPA, the slower flow of federal budget dollars to municipalities has delayed funding that several new and expansion deployments we're counting on, but that would be too easy and not fully honest to lay it all on federal timing.

The fuller truth is that ShotSpotter sales cycles are elongating at the same time, our sales team is underperforming. Deals that historically closed within a predictable window are now moving through more stakeholders, more budget scrutiny, in an environment where gunshot detection has become more public and more politicized, decisions requiring much longer deliberations before achieve our counsel will commit.

That's real, and our revised full year guidance now reflects a more conservative view of how quickly that pipeline converts and our ability to measurably grow qualified pipeline, we do not believe that it reflects any erosion of underlying if latent demand. The win backs I described in Erie and Cambridge, the strength of our renewals and the momentum of positive sentiment we are seeing in places like Chicago, which I'll discuss next, all point to the same direction. When communities weigh the true cost of going without this technology, they want it or they want it back. Our job now is to underwrite a longer sales cycle, honestly, keep proving the operational value that ultimately decides these deals and convert that demand is funding and political time lines catch up.

Before I turn it over to Alan, let me summarize recent developments in Chicago since our last earnings call. First, while there has been no definitive award on the city of Chicago Zikos gunshot detection RFP published in February of 2025, there has been public inquiry and discussions between the City Council through hearings held by the Public Safety Committee and the Chief Procurement Officer on the status of the RFP.

The upshot is that the process is still ongoing and resides with the Chief Procurement Officer. When asked specifically about the timing of a final decision, the formal response was that it could possibly take all the way up to February 2027. While the timing is not like what we had hoped for given earlier public commentary, we were nevertheless pleased to see the city's apparent commitment to see the process through to its conclusion/award.

We remain positive about our submission and track record and respectful of the process. In other key developments, the City Council was successful in adding a nonbinding referendum to the November ballot, putting forward the question directly to voters on bringing gunshot detection back to Chicago. Referendums are notoriously difficult to add to the ballot in Chicago as there are only 3 slots available in many competing candidates for those 3 slots. It therefore speaks to the importance of the technology in the City Council's resolve to keep gunshot detection front and center of a public discourse.

If the referendum tracks the recent public holding responses we expect to see continued strong support, especially in those neighborhoods that have been dealing with ongoing persistent gun fire.

Lastly, the Chicago Mayor election is coming out as fast in 2027. And declarations are being made and campaigning has ensued. Approximately 9 candidates have declared in 4 of those 9 have publicly included bringing back gunshot detection to the city of Chicago as a part of their policy platform including the 2 presumed front runners, Susanna Mendoza and AlexiGenolius.

The active campaigning in debate, combined with a nonbinding referendum in November and the outstanding RFP gives us increasing confidence and we will have more clarity about the future of gunshot detection in Chicago early next year, if not sooner. I'll now turn it over to Alan to walk you through the financials. Alan, over to you.

Alan Stewart

Thank you, Ralph, and good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the second quarter was $23.9 million compared to $25.9 million in the prior year period. Total operating expenses were $16.2 million compared with $16.7 million in the prior year quarter. During the quarter, we continued executing on the workforce and business optimization initiatives announced earlier this year. .

While approximately $900,000 of restructuring-related costs were recognized during the period, we remain on track to achieve approximately $4 million of annualized savings. These actions improve our visibility into the margin profile of the business while preserving our ability to invest in key growth initiatives across the Safety Smart platform, AI capabilities and commercial security opportunities.

GAAP net loss for the quarter was $4.8 million or $0.37 per diluted share compared with a GAAP net loss of $3.1 million or $0.24 per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 million compared with $3.4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Despite a lower year-over-year revenue comparison, we generated positive adjusted EBITDA and reduced operating expenses by approximately $1.5 million compared to the second quarter of 2025, reflecting the benefits of our workforce optimization and broader cost management initiatives.

These actions are helping us preserve investment in innovation and growth opportunities. As we move through the remainder of 2026, we expect these structural cost reductions to support stronger adjusted EBITDA performance and contribute meaningfully to margin expansion. As a reminder, adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure is calculated by taking our GAAP net income or loss and adjusting our interest income, income taxes, depreciation, amortization and impairment restructuring and related expenses and stock-based compensation expenses.

Importantly, while we have experienced a slight decline in revenue from recent quarters, we continued to make meaningful progress on managing costs of our business. Adjusted EBITDA improvement on a sequential basis as the benefits of our workforce and business optimization initiatives and disciplined expense management begin to flow through the P&L.

As a result, we are entering the second half of the year with a leaner cost structure, improved operating leverage and greater confidence in our ability to expand margins as our annual recurring revenue, or ARR, converts to revenue and deployments accelerated. Total operating expenses were $16.2 million compared to $16.7 million in the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by reduced sales and marketing costs partially offset by increased AI research and development investments and restructuring charges related to the workforce and business optimization initiatives we announced earlier this year.

Breaking down our operating expenses. Sales and marketing expense was $5.9 million compared to $6.5 million in the prior year quarter, reflecting disciplined spending while maintaining support for our strategic growth initiatives. Sales and marketing expenses represented approximately 25% of revenue during the quarter. R&D expense was $4 million compared to $3.7 million in the prior year period. Our continued investments reflects ongoing development across the Safety Smart platform including AI-enabled innovations such as Safety Smart field agent as well as enhancements designed to support future platform expansion and deeper customer engagement.

R&D spending represents approximately 17% of revenue during the quarter. G&A expense was $6.3 million compared to $6.5 million in the second quarter of 2025. The decrease was primarily driven by our ongoing cost optimization initiatives. In the near term, we expect our G&A expenses to be relatively flat as compared to fiscal year 2025. More broadly, we continue to evaluate opportunities to improve efficiency across the organization while we remain focused on our core growth initiatives.

We believe the actions taken during the first half of the year have established a more scalable operating model and enables profitability to improve faster than revenue growth as we continue executing against our ARR objectives. Deferred revenue as of June 30, 2026, was approximately $36 million. In addition, we ended the quarter with approximately $93.1 million of contractually committed revenue providing strong visibility into future revenue and reinforcing the recurring nature of our business model.

We ended the quarter with $6.4 million in cash and cash equivalents $24.5 million of accounts receivable and contract assets and approximately $36 million of deferred revenue and $4 million outstanding on our credit facility. We also have approximately $36 million of available borrowing capacity under our facility. Our balance sheet continues to provide us with the flexibility to invest in our strategic priorities while supporting the growth opportunities we see across both public safety and commercial security markets.

Now turning to our guidance for the full year 2026. I -- we are reducing our full year revenue to between $99 million and $100 million, primarily due to delays related to professional services related to our technologic Solutions division which reduced our expected revenue by almost $3 million. While our pipeline is strong in SafePointe, the deployment is slower than expected, reducing our expected revenue by another $2 million.

As Ralph mentioned, until the Puerto Rico contract gets resolved, we have excluded that from our guidance as well, which originally represented almost $1.5 million in our original guidance. The remaining revenue guidance reduction is related to slower expected sales growth and deployment delays for other booked contracts that are not gone, but are moving to 2027.

As our revenue growth drives most of our adjusted EBITDA growth, we are also reducing our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to a range of 8% to 9%. We continue to expect ARR to increase from $95.4 million at the beginning of 2026 to over $100 million entering 2027.

As a reminder, revenue and profitability are back-end loaded as deployments, renewals and expansions built throughout the year. Our outlook continues to assume no contribution from our renewed Chicago ShotSpotter contract. We remain confident in the underlying strength of our business and our ability to execute against our long-term growth strategy. Overall, our second quarter results reflect the impact of softer-than-expected first half results, our outlook remains positive.

Our recurring revenue base, ARR growth trajectory and improving expense structure provide confidence in our ability to deliver stronger financial performance. With that, we're now happy to open the call for questions. Operator, will you please open the call for Q&A.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Richard Baldry with ROTH Capital Partners.

Fragen und Antworten

Richard Baldry

When you look specifically into the ShotSpotter segment, you talked a bit about it, it sounds like there's some sales execution issues part of it tied to this sales cycle length. How much of the improvement that you need to do there, do you think is within your control? And how much of it is sort of external? Is there anything sales turnover or management led? Or is it majority of it an externality?

Ralph Clark

Yes. Thanks for that question, Richard. This is Ralph. Can you hear me okay? .

Richard Baldry

Yes.

Ralph Clark

So I don't know that I can put a percentage base on it. I think both factors are contributing to what we're seeing in the second half. I will say there's a number of transactions that have been frankly, kind of sitting on the bubble that have not been able to either convert to a booking or have that booking go live. So for example, I'll just point out a couple of transactions. We had a 10 square mile deal that, frankly, we closed in Q4 and last year that has yet to go live as an example.

We've had another transaction we name this particular customer. Cape Town where we effectively were awarded the tender, but due to some political moves there in South Africa, Cape Town, in particular, they basically canceled the tender post awarding it to us.

And that was considerable amount of revenue and ARR. We basically had to kind of take out of our plan I do think there is some, there are some issues around kind of the funding environment with the reduction in ARPU funds being available. We're trying to address some of that by hiring an outside contracting resource to work with customers on developing funding strategies to keep the process moving forward. But frankly, I think there are some sales hygiene and sales execution issues that could help us convert faster. And that's a bit of a frustrating issue for us.

So we're looking into that and have a number of levers that we're going to be pulling to help accelerate the conversion of deals that are out there kind of getting them from interest to bookings to go live to reaccelerate our ShotSpotter growth. But for the second half, we want to be very conservative about how we're thinking about the revenue contribution from the ShotSpotter for 2026.

Richard Baldry

And then for my follow-up, first half $48 million to do $99 million to $100 million, you've got to do $51 million, $52 million, obviously, is easy math. So how much of that do you have visibility contracted already 1 versus go get or some sort of turns oriented, just sort of trying to get some confidence in that second half step-up to revenues.

Ralph Clark

Sure. Very appropriate. I'll answer and then Alan jump in and adding correct as appropriate. So a fairly significant lever for us is what we expect to get on the booked and already budgeted professional services line for technologic as well as our New York City Department of Corrections. We had a bit of a bulbus kind of going on there in the first half where they -- we're basically cutting over some major systems and have to basically absorb that before they're ready to kind of reengage and going forward with some additional projects.

So I think we have pretty good visibility into that kind of lumpy revenue that can help us get to the $99 million to $100 million in guidance. We also have a pretty nice pipeline of over 100 of lanes that are in flight. These are deals that have already been booked. They are in various stages of going live with SafePointe. And on an ARR basis, that represents more than $2 million in ARR.

So to the extent that we can convert at least 30% of that $2 million, that gives us a pretty good deal of confidence that we can get to where we need to get to the number. And then with respect to ShotSpotter, I think we've been fairly conservative in terms of looking at basically 7 go-lives. There's probably about 15 or so deals that are either booked or soon to be booked and we're counting on about 7 of those to go live. In fact, 1 of them is a city that we've already deployed the technology on it's a Midwestern city.

They were supposed to go live before the World Cup. But due to the complexity of getting the drawdowns from the federal government on funding, they've been stalled. And so the minute that, that funding becomes released, we can effectively flip the switch and go-live revenue on a revenue basis. So we're expecting that to be a part of those kind of 7 go-live projects as a part 300, 400 plus additional revenue we expect to get from ShotSpotter.

So I would say we have fairly good visibility that we want to give ourselves the space to hit the number so that we can kind of focus on growing the business and addressing some of the sales execution issues that we have domestically. Did that answer your question, Alan, did I get anything wrong or...

Alan Stewart

No, I think you answered it appropriately. .

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Trevor Walsh with Citizens.

Trevor Walsh

All maybe to start off, Ralph, you mentioned with respect to SafePointe, that just overall deployment and operationalizing of lanes is kind of holding back the revenue kind of picture there. Has there been a fundamental change recently that's just slowing things down? Or was this sort of a known I guess, dynamic, I suppose, but when you kind of first did the acquisition and brought them kind of within the SoundThinking family -- or just I guess a little bit more color on kind of why that's happening now or if that's just the nature of the business for them.

Ralph Clark

Yes, sure. So I'll answer the question operationally and then Alan can talk about the kind of GAAP revenue flip over that we did. So operationally, what we're finding is as we've kind of gone from kind of 1 to 2 lanes per enterprise to like 10 to 20 lanes per enterprise, it's just a completely different cadence. There's a lot more, I would say, kind of structure and I won't say resistance, but there's a lot more structure dealing with IT organization when they're talking about giving us access to their networks, doing physical construction or whatever, we're finding that that's a lot more involved than, say, maybe a year ago when we were lighting up maybe 1 or 2 lanes per enterprise. So the deals have gotten bigger. And as a result, the go-live cadence has become a little bit more elongated as we're dealing with very mature structure. This is the way we do things type of IT organizations that we're having to interface with.

Alan Stewart

Yes. This is Alan. Just 1 thing to add. I think Ralph is absolutely correct. If you think about it, we had almost 90 new lanes booked in the second quarter. But when you have that many, it takes you longer to deploy and 1 of the things that we have learned very much in the last 2 years is the deployment and making them the product to perform as the customer expects and we expect sometimes takes a little longer to do. .

So that's basically why things are getting delayed a little bit, more bookings, strong pipeline, but it's taken us longer to get to deployed in a way that we feel comfortable about the performance and the customers are happy.

Trevor Walsh

Got it. Okay. That's helpful perspective. Alan, maybe I'll stick with you, if that's okay. With -- you kind of gave some color in your prepared remarks around why, how you got to the guidance, top line lowering down? I think you called out $1.5 million from Puerto Rico and then $2 million, give or take, from SafePointe, correct me if those numbers are incorrect.

But -- and then the balance of that was coming from just general deal slowdowns or just a more broad kind of designation. So I guess for that latter part, is that remaining portion tag to very specific deals? Or are you just trying to do your best sort of over under around odds of just kind of what's left in the pipeline and just seeing how deals generally are tracking? Or again, if it's a little bit more 1, 2, 3 type of deal that's kind of driving that further number. Does that make sense?

Alan Stewart

No, it does. And thank you for asking that question. I think it's really important when you look at the amount of our guidance of docks about $10 million. The good news is about 70% of that is really due to timing. It's not due to contracts that were locked, it's timing related to delivering some of those professional services in New York City and Department of Correction which, as Ralph mentioned, will start in the second half of the year. And all of those SafePointe lanes that we booked, that's significant as well.

I don't know, $2 million, that might shift into '27 as well. So when you start adding those up, out of that $10 million reduction, about 70% of that didn't go away. It just shifted to the right. We are expecting that we're going to get some of that in the second half of this year, but the majority of that will probably shift into 2027. But just as Ralph also said, 70% there, the other 30% is the slightly slower in terms of the actual sales movement that we've had, new bookings. That was the other portion of that reduction that we thought was appropriate to make sure that we were honest about that and make sure we're giving you numbers that we can hit.

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street.

Eric Martinuzzi

Yes. It looks like you're pretty aggressive on the workforce optimization. Can you quantify the number of heads or the percentage reduction, the steps you took at the beginning of Q2?

Alan Stewart

Sure. This is Alan, and Ralph, you could add it correct. There were about 28 people that we took a look at in terms of what things that we had to change. And I think that was appropriate for us to do, but not just personnel, I think ultimately, we also had some changes in terms of some marketing plans and programs and some other expense reductions that we knew we could achieve. .

Eric Martinuzzi

Got you. And then earlier in the year, there was an activist effort by a pretty substantial shareholder. It was around the topic of a change in board seats. And I don't know what other discussions were held, but I was just wondering if there's any update there. We've had -- we're now declining revenues for 3 of the last 4 quarters have things like strategic alternatives been discussed besides board changes and other actions that this activist might have entertained?

Ralph Clark

Yes. This is Ralph. I'll answer that question. So not that we would be talking about publicly at this point in time. But I would say that everyone is keenly focused on working with the senior leadership team to get this train back on the track and being a kind of growth and profitability story. So there's a lot of work to do, and everyone is committed to getting it done.

Alan Stewart

Is there another question there? .

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our next question comes from Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum

Jeremy Hamblin

So you noted that sales cycles have become elongated. And I wanted to get your assessment in terms of there's been quite a bit of noise around tools similar to ShotSpotter. I know there was a on the John Oliver Show last week tonight, they had a segment the other week that really was about ALPR, but it did include ShotSpotter in there. And some of the pushback communities have had on these things. Do you feel like the environment is creating the sales cycles as much as things like ARPA funding and so forth? Or how do you assess that?

I mean, you've been at it for well over a decade. But how would you compare, you've always had political pushback from elements out there. But how does that compare today? And do you think that, that is impacting some of the sales cycle?

Ralph Clark

Yes. Thanks for that question, Jeremy. And this is Ralph. And I think on a qualitative basis, we're definitely feeling a different type of scrutiny that we hadn't really felt before and we obviously listened in on a lot of city council meetings on renewals as well as kind of new opportunities. And I think the Cambridge one is actually pretty instructive in terms of like who's showing up and what their messaging is. And unfortunately, we're finding that we're kind of getting wrapped up in the kind of ALPR debate and controversy that's going on. We're kind of getting wrapped into that. That was really what the John Oliver story was about, attack really was on automated license plate reader technology. And then we just kind of got swept in there as a part of the overall kind of Uber surveillance thing inappropriately, by the way, from our point of view. .

We're also seeing, frankly, that people are trying to tie us to immigration enforcement, which is really quite interesting. If you listen in on a number of these city council meetings, again, I'll just kind of go back to Cambridge A large part of the attack vector was really about sending police into these communities where potentially their vulnerable populations could be at risk from a deportation immigration enforcement point of view, which is kind of an interesting line of attack.

But I guess, the opposition to law enforcement doing their job they'll take any kind of tool or vector available to them to kind of help make their case. So it's definitely having an impact. We're trying to address that by being not completely 100% law enforcement centric but kind of fanning out and making sure that we have strong city council support educating city council members and the like. We have a whole community engagement team on our customer success organization that's doing some really phenomenal work directly engaging the community in different nonprofit organizations that are all kind of built around violence prevention and getting them on site with us. We're doing a lot of work with civil rights organizations and the like.

And so we're seeing some good progress. We're having some really good conversations, but it's definitely stretching out the process because it's politically charged to make a decision to go forward with ShotSpotter or CSA gunshot detection. And now we're seeing the counter where there are some consequences with making the decision not to go for it because the impact is real. And unfortunately, we saw that in the case of Mr. Xavier Batista.

Jeremy Hamblin

So I wanted to ask a question, I think, for Alan here. In terms of your adjusted EBITDA guide for the year, I wanted to get a sense for the range that you were including for stock-based comp for this year? And then what would your -- obviously, you're not hitting your initial targets. I don't know how much that's impacting your SBC. But what would your normalize? Or what was your kind of start of your target? What's -- what are those 2 differences numbers?

Alan Stewart

Yes. Thank you for that question, Jeremy. And I think it's important for us to -- if we just take a look at our stock-based comp, Q2 of $25 million was $3.8 million, right? Q2 of '26 was only $2.4 million. So we reduced that by $1.4 million. So our stock-based comp is going down for the year. We expect it to be certainly lower than we had in '25. So I think that's 1 of the things that is important. I think the other thing you should look at is our revenue was basically flat from Q1 to Q2. And yet our adjusted EBITDA improved by $1.3 million, realizing that our allocations of the expense reductions didn't start till Q2, you can see that, that already increased that even with revenue being flat by $1.3 million. So we do expect that our stock-based comp is probably going to be about $10.4 million for the year, significantly lower than last year.

And I would also say that as our revenue does go up, and were for us to hit that guidance, it has to go up to $48 million to closer to $52 million, that adds $4 million, most of that's going to be flowing down to the bottom line. So that increases it as well as the cost reductions that we've had. So we feel pretty confident about how we're going to get to that percentage for adjusted EBITDA.

Operator

This now concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Ralph for closing comments.

Ralph Clark

Great. Thank you very much. So let me close where I began, and that's really with accountability. This certainly wasn't a part that we wanted at the top line and certainly not what we expected in the second half, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. But on the good news front, the core has turned profitable on a leaner base. Our renewal and retention wall has held firm, and we did win our 4 statewide crime tracer deal. And all of this was accomplished on top of a leaner, more profitable company. We believe we've reset the number to something that we can meet and possibly beat. And I'd ask you to measure our progress based on getting to those numbers. And most importantly, let's not lose thread of why we do this. Every renewal, every city, every hospital lane that's in a place where someone is feeling safer because of what we build. We know that we're making a difference. And so I want to thank our team for all the work that they do and also thank all of you for your support. And with that, I think we'll conclude the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.