Zedcor Inc

XTSX:ZDC

Earnings Call Analysis

Zedcor Inc. Achieves Record Revenues and EBITDA Growth in Q3 2024

In Q3 2024, Zedcor Inc. reported record revenues of $9.2 million, up 42% year-over-year, driven by a 10% increase in weekly tower production aimed at reaching 15-20 towers per week. Adjusted EBITDA rose 49% to $3.4 million, with robust EBITDA margins over 37%. The fleet of security towers grew by 148 units, totaling 1,296, with utilization above 90%. Zedcor expects ongoing strong performance in Q4, particularly in retail and residential construction, while net debt decreased to $11.1 million. Cash flow generation improved, demonstrating the company's operational efficiencies and capacity for future growth.

Record Revenue and Growth Trajectory

Zedcor Inc. has reported remarkable financial results for the third quarter of 2024, achieving record revenues of CAD 9.2 million. This represents a 42% increase year-over-year and exceeds the prior quarter's record by CAD 1.8 million. The strong performance is attributed to both an expansion of the security tower fleet and high utilization rates, with recurring revenue maintaining a steady rate of over 80% of total revenues.

Impressive Adjusted EBITDA and Operational Efficiency

During Q3 2024, Zedcor also reported a record adjusted EBITDA of CAD 3.4 million, marking a 49% increase from the previous year. The EBITDA margin has remained strong at over 37.2%, showcasing the company’s focus on operational efficiency. Year-to-date, Zedcor has recorded a total revenue of CAD 22.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of CAD 8 million, representing a 28% annual growth.

Expanding Fleet and Production Goals

The fleet size has notably increased to approximately 1,296 security towers, up 52% year-over-year. The company’s weekly tower production increased approximately 10% during the quarter. Zedcor aims to reach a production rate of 15 to 20 towers per week by the end of the year, with ambitions to further ramp up to 50-60 towers if necessary.

Market Expansion and New Client Acquisition

The company continues to expand its market presence, particularly in the U.S., where they have successfully deployed towers in key cities like Dallas, San Antonio, and Phoenix. In total, Zedcor added 130 new clients to the MobileyeZ platform throughout Canada and the U.S. during the year, highlighting an expansive growth opportunity in both retail and residential construction segments.

Monitoring Center and Technological Advancements

Zedcor's monitoring capabilities are set to enhance customer convenience and security effectiveness. The Canadian monitoring center has achieved a success rate of up to 99% in incident management. The company plans to open a new monitoring center in Houston by the end of Q1 2025, which is expected to further improve its service capacity.

Robust Financial Position and Future Outlook

Closing Q3 2024 with a cash balance of CAD 5.4 million, Zedcor has a favorable net debt to last 12-month EBITDA ratio of 1.18. With CAD 4.5 million of borrowing room available on their current credit facility, the company is negotiating an expansion of its credit facilities to support its growth trajectory. Analysts forecast strong Q4 results based on existing client demand and ongoing market expansion strategies.

New Leadership Enhancements and Competitive Edge

Zedcor has bolstered its leadership team by hiring two industry experts to focus on expanding its reach in energy and retail sectors. This investment in human resources is expected to enhance Zedcor's market competitiveness, particularly as they continue to disrupt traditional security services.

Continued High Demand Amid Market Changes

The shift towards utilizing technology for security as opposed to traditional human guards has been pivotal for Zedcor. Approximately 70% of the company's growth in the U.S. is attributed to replacing legacy guard services, indicating a significant market shift that Zedcor is well-positioned to capitalize on.

Preparation for Strategic Scaling in Future Quarters

In anticipation of growing demand, Zedcor is proactively expanding its production capabilities and negotiating with multiple suppliers for cost efficiencies. The planned range for tower production is expected to bolster Zedcor’s market position, enabling the company to maintain competitive pricing without sacrificing margins.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is [ Joe Diaz ], and I will be the conference call operator. Welcome to the Zedcor Inc. Third Quarter of 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Amin Ladha, Zedcor's Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Thank you, [ Joe ]. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Joining me on our call, we also have our Zedcor President and CEO, Todd Ziniuk.

Yesterday after markets closed, Zedcor issued a news release announcing our financial results for our third quarter. This news release is available on our website and our Investor Relations section and on SEDAR+.

Please note, portions of today's call other than historical information include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities law. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws, forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. This discussion is qualified in its entirety by the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements that is appended to our news release.

Please review our press release and Zedcor's reports filed on SEDAR+ for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections. We use terms such as gross profit, gross margin and adjusted EBITDA on this conference call, which are non-IFRS and non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definition set out in our MD&A.

In addition, reconciliations between any adjusted EBITDA and net income is included in the MD&A. An important non-GAAP measure that we are using is adjusted EBITDA. The company believes adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations, which the company can use to fund working capital requirements, fund future growth initiatives and service future interest and principal debt repayments. Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income determined in accordance with IFRS. Please note that all financial information is provided in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted.

Following the prepared remarks by Todd and I, we will conduct a Q&A session, during which questions will be taken from our analysts.

Moving on to a review of the company's financial performance. Some highlights for the quarter and the year include record revenues of $9.2 million for Q3 2024. This exceeded our previous high set just last quarter by $1.8 million and is an increase of 42% year-over-year. Our reoccurring revenue for Q3 remained steady at over 80% of total revenue. We also had record adjusted EBITDA of $3.4 million for Q3 2024. This was a 49% increase year-over-year, and the EBITDA margins remained strong at over 37% for the quarter.

Our tower count and customer base continues to grow. More importantly, our weekly tower production, which is a key metric for us, continues to increase. During Q3, our weekly tower production count grew by approximately 10%, and our goal remains unchanged. We want to get to 15 to 20 towers produced per week by the end of the year and then upwards from there. During the quarter, we added 148 security towers to the fleet, and we'll look to continue to increase that number in order to meet customer demand throughout North America.

Some highlights for our year-to-date numbers include record 9-month revenues of $22.7 million, recurring revenue was over 80%, record adjusted EBITDA of just over $8.0 million which is up 28% year-over-year, and we had just over 35% EBITDA margins.

Our fleet size as at September was just over 1,150 security towers, represents a 52% increase year-over-year and utilization for that fleet continued to be over 90% for the quarter. Our fleet count as at November 12th was 1,296. So it's -- about 25% of that fleet is in the U.S. at various service centers. And we also have about 50 Zbox units, which is a new product line, and we're starting to build those and market that product line.

Our Q3, diving into more detail, revenue increased 24% quarter-over-quarter to $9.2 million. This was driven by an expansion of the fleet and strong fleet utilization. Gross margins increased to $5.4 million or 59% of revenues. This was driven by operational efficiencies and higher utilization rates. The operational efficiencies we've talked about previously in our Q2 conference call, and we anticipate these margins to continue in that range going forward.

Adjusted EBITDA increased to $3.4 million or 37.2% of revenue versus 35.5% of revenue in Q3 2023 and 36.6% of revenues in Q2 2024. Our revenues remain diversified, and we have started to show the diversity within the construction vertical of our business as well. Adjusted EBITDA worked out to $0.04 per share, driven by higher revenues and margins, offset by higher share counts.

MobileyeZ fleet was at 1,151 at the quarter end, an increase of 148 quarter-over-quarter and 396 year-over-year. And as previously mentioned, utilization continued to exceed 90% for Q3.

In terms of the future outlook, we have some visibility for the next quarter and anticipate some strong results in Q4 2024. We continue to expand our revenues in the retail segment and the residential construction segments. These are 2 verticals where we see large potential, and we'll continue to allocate resources in order to grow our revenues in these verticals.

We continue to grow revenues with key customers and expand our footprint. Current customers are requesting services at more and more locations. During the year, we successfully onboarded 130 new clients to the MobileyeZ platform throughout Canada and the United States. And as customers become more familiar with the platform, they're requesting services in additional regions, but we're careful being -- we're being careful as to what work we can accept so that we can maintain our high service levels that we expect of ourselves.

As you can see from the chart, our customer base is fully diversified by industry verticals, and we have broken out what was previously grouped into construction into a few different verticals, which are -- a few different verticals.

I just wanted to point out that included in the miscellaneous industry segments are some verticals that are currently small, but we're seeing some strong growth potential in those, and those would be municipal services and logistics and warehousing.

To continue to service our growth, we're in negotiation with our banking partners to expand our credit facilities, and this should be completed here in the next few weeks.

Moving on to a discussion on balance sheet. It's really been set up to support our growth trajectory. We exited Q3 with a cash balance of $5.4 million. We started to deploy cash from our $15 million equity financing that we completed in May. Our note repayable has been repaid and all warrants have been exercised. We have $4.5 million of borrowing [ room ] on our current credit facility. And as previously mentioned, we're in negotiations and negotiating final terms to expand that.

Our net debt at the end of Q3 was $11.1 million and net debt to last 12-month EBITDA decreased to [ 1.18 ] in Q3. This will increase over time as we deploy capital, but will be offset by growing EBITDA. $1.5 million of debt is expected to come due in the next quarter and will be retired from free cash flow.

Property and equipment increased by $3.5 million to $36.8 million due to continued investments in growing the company's fleet of security towers, less depreciation and disposal of assets. A portion of that increase is sitting in our assets under construction as we purchased a number of long lead components in order to ramp up growth and meet our production targets for Q4.

Finally, a review of our cash flow statement for Q3. Adjusted operating cash flow increased 54% year-over-year to $3.1 million, demonstrating the growing cash flow generation capacity of the business.

Capital expenditures ramped up in Q3 2024 as our manufacturing capability has streamlined. We've [ staffed ] up our team and established our processes. As previously mentioned, we've purchased long lead items ahead of tower deployment. Obviously, we don't want a lot of money tied up in these items, and we've managed that actively in order to keep our costs down, and it also has a knock-on other effects such as controlling our real estate costs so that we are constantly looking for more storage space.

Maintenance CapEx represents a small portion of the total CapEx and free cash flow for Q3 2024 was just over $3.3 million and less than the previous year due to the unwinding of a larger energy services bonus being received in Q3 2023.

I'll now hand over the call to Todd, who will provide you with an operations update and some insights into our go-forward strategy.

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Thank you very much, Amin. Good morning, everybody. As you see, we had very strong numbers, a great Q3. We're seeing opportunities in growth, largely in the U.S., but also in Canada. The goal is to get as many towers as we can out to our platform. I just want to touch on that.

We're seeing extensive growth in Canada right now due to the fact that our platform is built in Canada across 6 different branches across the country. And where our customer base is now -- even the customer base we've built is growing out to a larger customer base and now [ the ] lot of our existing clients are demanding more towers after they've put us through the tests and they love the product.

Obviously, south of the border in the United States we're growing, building out the platform. So a lot of capital going into building out the growth of the platform in the U.S. And as we keep growing throughout Q3, we expanded from Houston into Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, we have towers deployed, Atlanta, Georgia, Wisconsin as well. There, again, the Canadian side, the growth per branch and the utilizations are running quite high into the high 90s. So the goal here is to keep building the towers, shipping them to Canada, obviously, building out the U.S. side as well.

Right now, we're sitting at 260 towers in Texas, 191 in Houston. We've actually got 31 operating in Denver. Obviously, how we start our branches is we don't run out and rent buildings right away. We deploy a couple of salespeople that are local. They go around. We find the market once we get to a number of anywhere from that 40 to 50 towers. At that point, we look at putting our flag in the ground and opening up our branches. We've seen great success with it. We took our learnings from Canada, and now we're utilizing it to build the platform across the U.S.

As Amin discussed in the margin side, we're seeing strong margins due to the fact that our R&M, repairs and maintenance is down. A lot of the towers that came back from Trans Mountain, they've been through the R&M program. They're back out, spread across Canada, working across the 6 branches. And then also, we're seeing a lot of the margin growth from the AI that we put into the cameras at the edge. It's really helped our monitoring center for scalability, bringing the alarm count down as we add towers. The alarms are maintaining. So it's been a big win on that side as well.

Something I'm really, really excited about that our 2 new hires that we've just brought on board, Mr. Randy Beck and Mr. Keith Aubele. Mr. Beck was the former Chief of Security for Trans Mountain and also the former Assistant Commissioner of the Federal Policing of Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Mr. Keith Aubele previously was VP of Loss Prevention for Walmart for many years and also with Home Depot as well.

Mr. Beck will be focusing on helping the company expand to the energy-focused enterprise customers, and Mr. Aubele will be focused on helping the company expand into the retail customers into the U.S. He's already hit the ground running. He's lined up some great meetings for the company as well already. So it's an exciting time for the company to have these 2 gentlemen join the team.

Right now, we're building 15 towers per week out of the manufacturing center in Houston. We're going to -- the goal is by the end of Q4 into Q1, we should be producing 20 to 25 towers. And we've just actually taken on some more square footage to double the space [ to ] the assembly plant to the ability to go up to about 50 to 60 towers, if required. We've also -- the gentlemen that make our steel, all the steel components that come in, all the steel stuff that's welded, painted, we use one company. We've brought on a second company for -- just to be able to ramp up the building. And also, we are vetting a third one just to have the ability to -- if something happens in one of their companies, we don't want to have any form of bottlenecks. We don't have any right now in the company. We've done a great job of staying on top of that.

We're also bolstering our monitoring capabilities. Our Canadian monitoring center has done a great job throughout the year. Our success rate of bringing incidents down is 98%. Actually, most weeks running closer to 99%. So we're very proud of the team, what they've done there. We strive to the 100% every day, making changes in our monitoring centers. And in Q1, we'll be opening our monitoring center in Houston. It should be fully operational by the end of Q1. That's the goal. And then we'll take away from the monitoring that's happening in the U.S. right now, that's being done [ out ] [ in ] Calgary, Alberta, [ we'll ] [ move ] there, and it will allow the room up in Canada to have the ability for that much more growth.

As you can see on the pie chart, 2 years ago, we were just a Canadian-based company, pretty much Alberta and British Columbia. The biggest move we did was expanding across Canada with the 6 branches and now building the platform. You can really see the pie chart how it's changed to the level of all the different cities were spread out. And back in the day, it was made up of 2 clients, the pipeline jobs when we first started. And you can see we're diversifying across Canada, across the U.S. So it's exciting times for us to see the growth in us building our platform [ out ].

We -- when I speak a lot about the platform is, what I mean by the platform is, once we get the branches put in place and you keep growing, especially [ we've ] started in Houston and we keep expanding out state by state, the assembly plant is going to get that much busier due to the fact. These guys, if they need 10 or 20 towers per branch, you get 12 branches going, that's 240 towers a month, just for easy math.

But the goal is we don't want our clients to have to sit and wait 3 months for a tower. So we're going to stay ahead of our backlog of those towers to be able to supply companies with the equipment at efficient timing, right? And obviously, our biggest goal as management is to do this by keeping the guardrails on the margins of the EBITDA, obviously, doing things most efficiently as we can. So obviously, that's the biggest goals we have on that side.

For the growth outlook moving forward, we're seeing the demand at each branch, like I just touched on. Our goal is to have each branch to at least have 10 to 20 towers in their fleet. So the sales guys aren't just doing maintenance sales, they can do future sales. I believe that's a big part. Yesterday, we just deployed our first -- or sorry, shipped our first 6 towers to Phoenix, Arizona. We're expanding into there right now. We have some different opportunities coming up in Ohio, a few different places moving forward. So it's very exciting times.

And -- for example, our sales team in the U.S. at the beginning of June was at about -- was at 2 people. It's now at -- we have a sales team of 12. We'll be building our sales team out as well. It's a catch of matching the sales to how fast we can build them. And the sales team is doing a great job. A lot of these guys are just getting their feet under them and they keep building out the need for more towers and for us to obviously fill the demand with our clients.

That's all I have, I mean. I'll pass it back over to you there.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Thanks, Todd. We'll open up the call to questions. I think there's a couple. [ Joe ], do you want to...?

[Operator]

I mean, yes, we will now take questions from analysts only. We're going to go ahead and we're going to go with Kyle McPhee from Cormark Securities.

[Kyle McPhee, analyst]

Great performance. Just high level on the growth progress you're posting here. You're clearly benefiting from a combo of white space and disruption runway. How much of your fleet expansion over the last year or so has been disruptive, meaning replacing legacy human guards in that huge market versus just that core capitalizing on white space in your service category?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

I would say -- Kyle, to be quite honest, I would say in the U.S., it's about 70% disruption to guards, 65% to 70%. What would you say, I mean, probably the Canadian side would be?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Yes. I don't think we track it that closely. Ultimately, our goal is just to get the work however we get it. But I'd say it's over 50% for sure. Like we don't see a lot of times. We never see an RFP and that's very infrequently where we're offsetting other security towers. It's more frequent in the states where we're offsetting other security towers. But in Canada, it's well over 50%, where it's just educating the customer and then kind of building it out from there once they see the advantages and the benefits.

[Kyle McPhee, analyst]

Got it. Okay. And then shifting over to margins. You seem to have good regional density built up in some regions, notably in the longer-standing Canadian regions. And this is likely starting to inform you on what margins can get to at scale for [ now ] by region, but eventually for the entire company as you scale all your regions. So if you're able to break down the info this way, can you give us a feel for gross margin or EBITDA margin in regions that have attained that critical scale? Is it much higher than the consolidated company EBITDA margin we're seeing?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Todd, do you want to answer that or you want me to?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

You go ahead, Amin.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Yes. Kyle, we'll probably be prepared to answer that specifically in Q4. But definitely, the trend is, as the regions scale up and we've kind of established the platform, we've built up the service centers, we've hired the salespeople, the EBITDA margins in those regions become way -- not way, like significantly higher than the EBITDA margins in a brand new setup.

So in Canada, we might add one or 2 more locations next year depending on demand. And that's more -- I wouldn't say it's an established region. We're still going to see kind of that 20% to 30% growth there, and that's going to be constrained more by capital allocation rather than demand. But Canada is an established region where we're seeing higher EBITDA, and we'll split that out in Q4 or for year-end, you'll really see the differentiation. It's kind of staggering.

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

And I think, too, Kyle, also, Canada is going to be that higher margin as well. And then over the next year as we get into late '25, Texas is going to be the next one that's fully established, right? We'll have our 5 or 6 branches, the people in place, all the same things, just like Canada. And obviously, there are 6 branches in Canada now, you get the 5 or 6 then. And then it will go by state to state where the growth will be. But I kind of look at Texas as almost its own -- just due to the size comparable to Canada, it's almost like its own region/country itself, right? It's such a big state. So that's kind of why we started there to begin with. And that will be the second part of the platform that really gives the higher margins as well once everything is put in place.

[Kyle McPhee, analyst]

Got it. That's great to hear. And last one for me before I'll pass the line over. I'm curious if you're seeing any maturity in any of the legacy markets that you're active? And the longer-standing Western Canadian regions are probably the good case study. Have you hit saturation in any of these regions? Or are you still seeing demand and growth across your entire growing regional footprint?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

No, we're still seeing growth across the whole footprint. Some of these clients that are big, big machines, for example, like you take a construction company like [ Ledcor ], they got so much going on, and we just keep growing our relationships with them. As the company keeps accelerating and showing the efficiencies and obviously, with the money we're saving these guys on theft, and it's everything. It's not just security. It's the safety incidents that happen on site, the ability to see things. The clients love it.

So every major center that we're in right now, there's nothing but growth to be made. And it's exciting just due to that fact that -- when we first come down to the U.S., we were wondering how strong Canada would keep growing, and we're seeing a bigger demand than we actually thought. For example, year-to-date since we started assembling towers down here, we just sent our 80th tower up to Canada. We sent another load. And the solar units are catching on great there. Obviously, you can plug them in, in the winter months to get through the solar needs. So we're quite excited for the new product to catch on there. We've got those all across Canada right now. So no, there's a lot of growth to still happen there.

Do you want to add anything, Amin?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

No, I think you covered everything pretty well.

[Operator]

Now we're going to turn the mic to Gabriel Leung from Beacon Securities.

[Gabriel Leung, analyst]

Congrats on all the progress. A couple of questions. So first, in terms of the U.S. expansion, Todd, can you provide some more color around what your sales team is seeing in terms of how easy, difficult is it for them to sort of sign new brands? What sort of sales cycles are you seeing? And I think, Amin, you actually mentioned that in some cases, it's actually displacement of existing security tower competitors. And I'm curious if it's -- you're winning via price, features, anything around there?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

No, for sure. So the team has done a great job. Like I said, Gabe, we're up to 12 salespeople. The biggest to understand the sales cycle in the U.S., these guys are door-to-door, job site to job site. We use some great sales tools that are online, the ability to reach out, e-mail the particular client to the right person in the company. Being in the field, being online doing that as well leads to lunch and learns. Lunch and learns lead [ to ] us educating them on the product. We take the product, show them the product.

There is competition, obviously, out there. Their towers are quite a bit smaller. The biggest thing that cuts Zedcor apart again is the fact that we are operating -- sorry, monitoring is operated by us. It's [ in the house ]. We don't third-party. It's not overseas. A lot of the other competitors have no monitoring. It's just recording. Some of their towers don't have the capabilities to actually have the towers on during the day. So if there is an incident on site, obviously, they can't catch it because they have to turn their -- the towers are turned off during the day to have the solar capacity. That's one thing we did, and we decided to do when we went down the road to assemble our own towers, [ we ] make sure that we had enough battery backup and the adequate amount of solar power coming in that we could run 24/7.

And -- so it is price driven, but we're seeing a big demand of guys that have nothing. I think it's at an inflection point in the security world right now that -- where people are understanding that these cameras aren't just recording, they're being live monitored. And a lot of our competitors with the original towers were just recording. So now some of them are scrambling. They're third-partying it overseas, wondering how they get the monitoring. And that's the great thing about Zedcor, and I'll speak a little deeper on this is with Randy Beck joining our team.

Randy Beck was a big part of making Zedcor who we are today. Trans Mountain was a project that was in the media. It was very, very high-level security on that project, and Randy's expectations from what he expected of Zedcor was right up there with a 911 call center. And it was 8 years of learning and doing that project to get to where we are today. And it's not like you just start up a monitoring center and everything goes good. There's so much involved, Gabe, with the streaming of the data, all the different parts of the recipe that make this happen.

And so, I think the biggest answer to your original question, people see our tower and we explain exactly what we do. We're not dropping our prices. We're holding them. I use the analogy, some of the other towers are a flip phone, we're the iPhone and clients are seeing that. So our sales team, we have a lot of [ good ] gentlemen that have come over to join us that in the past were with ex tower companies, and they see our product, and this is where they want to work. It's a easier product to sell.

If that helps, Gabe.

[Gabriel Leung, analyst]

Yes. No, that's perfect. And then just shifting gears to Canada. Obviously, still super strong there as well. Can you just give us an update on what the sales count is -- sales team, what it looks like right now in Canada? And going forward, is the expectation that the growth is going to be driven by net new banners or more focus on expanding within the existing base of customers you have in Canada right now?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

I think it's a blend. Our sales team right now consists of about 9 people in Canada. And there -- a lot of the branches right now, like I said on the call, are running at that 95% to 98% utilization. So some of it's maintaining the clients you have, but some of it's looking for new work. And then it's the internal growth inside the clients, like I spoke to earlier. And that's the thing -- we don't want to slow growth there. We truly believe that we can probably grow next year a fairly good growth rate.

I'm not going to hold a number on it, but we're not going to stop sending towers to Canada. It just doesn't make sense. Some of these projects and some of these clients want upwards of 10 to 20 towers at a time, and we're going to move forward and keep growing it that way. Like Amin said, we've talked about possibly opening up a couple more branches in Canada that can make us even much stronger, much more growth.

So the team is doing a great job. They're still bringing on new clients. We've gained in Q3 -- I think how many new clients did we gain, Amin, do you remember in Canada?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

It was over 130 and about Canada was over -- like was 2/3 of that roughly.

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Yes. So there's still a lot of, I guess, you could call it white space, Gabe, or clients that we haven't touched yet. So there's a lot of growth to happen in Canada as well.

[Gabriel Leung, analyst]

Awesome. And just one last point of clarification for you, Amin. The number of towers you currently have in place right now, I missed that number...

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Close to 1,300, it's about 1,290.

[Gabriel Leung, analyst]

Awesome. Congrats again on the progress.

[Operator]

Right now, we're going to turn it over to Sean Jack from Raymond James Financial.

[Sean Jack, analyst]

So I just want to start off with a quick question on production. It looks like, obviously, the ramp continues in Texas. But besides the additional space, which sounds like you guys have just recently achieved, wondering if there's any other major work events that you guys need to cross off before you can see things really kind of ramp up here? Any other bottlenecks that you would point towards?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Sean, the only one would be, like I said, we've grabbed another facility. It's actually right behind our facility. It's a building that came available. It's a great win. We're not going to be caught up in moving parts from here to there. We're going to build the structure in one building. It will go to the other building to get the [ comms ] put on. That was probably our largest bottleneck to be able to get over the 25 towers into the 30, 40, 50, just the floor space to be able to build them quicker.

And it's just a matter of, once you get into that, is hiring more staff. Right now, in the assembly plant we're running about 12 -- 11 or 12 people, and you get up to that 16 to 18, everything just happens that much quicker. The only other bottleneck that we're -- and we're on top of it right now, would be to be able to achieve the 40, 50 towers a week is the steel component builders, the guys that do all the welding, the painting, the parts that we come to assemble. But we just brought on, like I said, the second builder. Our original builder, he has the capacity to go to that 20 to 30 without really expanding his business. And then this new builder that we just brought on, they can get up to around the 20 to 25, and then we're going to be vetting a third builder.

And I just don't want to have any of these builders where they sell their business and all of a sudden you're stuck there without the ability to keep growing our business. And if we have to, we'll move to a fourth one. And it's great because it's obviously keeping them competitive in that space as well and the ability to hold the pricing on our tower build-out, right?

[Sean Jack, analyst]

Yes. Right. That sounds great. Switching gears a little bit. Obviously, there's been a lot of investment that you guys have highlighted on like the internal functions, call it, sales, operations, et cetera. Wondering how SG&A is expected to kind of move here over the next couple of quarters and whether we can kind of see this most recent quarter as a high watermark for SG&A as a percentage of revenue? Or do you see it moving even higher?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Go ahead, Amin.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Do you want to answer that one, Todd?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

No, go ahead, Amin.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

I think it will be inch up a little higher. Kind of unfortunately, a portion of the SG&A is driven by the stock [ comp ]. So that's going to fluctuate as we add more key guys and we give out more stock [ comp ] to keep them motivated. But in terms of costs aside from the stock [ comp ], we're still playing a bit of catch-up too on the SG&A side, more in the back-office functions, accounting, finance, kind of administrative stuff. So that will catch up a little bit here in the next quarter. It's harder to find kind of key qualified people for some of those roles, but it's going to fluctuate. And as the revenue ramps up, it will probably level out, I want to say, in 3, 4 quarters as of...

[Sean Jack, analyst]

Understandable. Also, I just wanted to touch briefly upon some recent deals that have happened in the space. Obviously, Stealth Monitoring being acquired is a major event for the competition landscape that you guys are playing in right now. Wondering if you guys have any opinions on how that's going to be changing some dynamics for you? Or do you think that it's basically business as usual going from here?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

I think it's business that's going as usual from here. Stealth was bought by Garda. Garda is a big machine. They -- Another thing is they do their monitoring overseas. We have our niche product that we do in-house that I spoke to earlier.

And the other thing, too, Sean, is this space is so big, there's room for everybody. People always ask what if somebody else comes along and do this, I use the analogy, well, Ford built the first vehicle, there's more than one vehicle on the road.

So I don't think it's ever going to become a price thing because there's streaming data cost. And if you're doing monitoring, there's the monitoring cost. And I truly believe the prices will move forward.

And the thing that Zedcor has is we've got such a great -- Kyle Doenz, our Chief Technology Officer. He's done such a great job with the team. We're getting so many KPIs built out right now and all these different information that we've been gathering that now that we're bigger and have time to do it in different spaces, that we can build case studies for the big machines that, you can go into the big retail stores and actually show them what we've done.

We've done a great job in our footprint in Texas. We're -- obviously, I would say -- and honestly, I think we can say it that we're probably one of the largest homebuilder security, mobile security tower companies in Texas right now. We've really taken that market, and it's gone quite well for us. And we've got great case studies from the clients that we've been working for, that they've sent us.

So I think to answer that question, I think they're going to do their thing. We're going to do ours, and I don't think it really changes it. They've been in the space. Stealth has quite a bit of a different product. It's a post package. They rely on the client for power and to plug in and stuff. And so, obviously, we pay attention to what they're doing. And I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Amin?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Yes. I'll just elaborate a little bit on the white space. It's such a huge opportunity, is -- Even in Canada, we're a little bit further along, but really, we're in the first inning in the U.S. We're probably just getting out of the [ dug out ] to use a sports analogy. So it's great that they got bought, but honestly, it's business as usual, just given the huge opportunity and the demand we're seeing.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Alexandra Ricci from Paradigm Securities.

[Alexandra Ricci, analyst]

I just wanted to touch a bit on tower CapEx. As you're building out more towers, is there any ability to get some pricing benefit from suppliers as you kind of expand operations and production?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Absolutely, Alex. Yes, we -- for example, we've seen our prices come down. We [ were ] around that [ $33 million ]. We're closer to [ $31 million ] now, and that's due to the fact of bringing in more of the steel component builders. And obviously, we're starting to see more efficiencies in our shop.

I think the more shop space, floor space is going to help us with our processes for the wage side of the assembly as well, we're going to see things happen quicker, more -- it's just -- it's naturally -- obviously, it's the processes that we're putting in place, the learnings we've taken, like we've built over 300 towers now. You learn a lot as you move forward. And obviously, we're pushing all of our suppliers to drop pricing and -- because we have the ability now.

What's changed for the company is when you start doing this [ POing ] [ 50 ] or [ 100] at a time, -- and instead of being -- the ability of PO [ 200 ] or [ 300 ] at a time, you're starting to get the better volume discounts. I don't know if you want to add something to that, Amin?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Yes, absolutely. As we place our orders kind of for 2024, Todd hit it on the head, as you place bigger orders, people will give you more discounts and they'll be able to streamline their production as well. I think we touched on this last call, there's probably an 8% to 10% kind of savings total. Beyond that, we'll have to assess how big of an order we're going to place for 2026, but there might be a little bit more beyond that, but maybe not much more.

[Alexandra Ricci, analyst]

Okay. And then maybe just -- you touched a bit on the steel component. Is there any other external components where you'd be looking to expand suppliers?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

No. Those are -- that's like the most labor-intensive and kind of complicated production piece. The camera suppliers can definitely keep up. The solar panel suppliers, they're kind of a [ hodgepodge ]. There's nothing -- like solar panels, you just kind of buy off the shelf. All the small bits and pieces, you can buy hundreds of them. But the biggest 2 suppliers are the camera suppliers and the communications equipment and then the hard kind of iron components. So the iron components are the most complicated, time-consuming, and that's why we needed the additional supplier. The cameras are provided by a company owned by Canon. And if we want to do 10,000, they'd be more than happy to supply it.

[Alexandra Ricci, analyst]

Okay. Great. And then maybe just finally, just on pricing. I know you were getting kind of pricing discrepancy between Canada and the U.S. Are you still seeing kind of decently high levels of pricing differences between the 2 areas? And do you foresee that kind of continuing as you go along with your U.S. ramp-up? Or do you expect that to kind of normalize to one level?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

I don't think it will be normalized to one level. Even within the U.S., it's kind of regionalized almost state by state. It would be nice, but I don't think it's feasible.

[Alexandra Ricci, analyst]

And then maybe just finally on contracts. Is there any kind of -- I know you've talked in the past about ability to kind of service large-scale contracts. Is that something that has come up in discussions recently of somebody wanting large amounts of towers at once that would kind of curtail production into one set customer? Is that something that is maybe of concern as you look to ramp up production into 2025?

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

I think that's exactly -- what we plan to do in 2025 is, Alex, a bit of build it and they will come. We'll add salespeople. Now if there's something that comes out of left field, somebody that needs 100 or 200 towers, that will be on top of what our execution plan is, and that's where we'd go to our builders. And obviously, we're going to need a little bit of a lead time a month, 1.5 months with our builders to give them the heads up to step up, and we would fulfill those contracts on the outside. I think you'd agree with that, would you not Amin?

[Amin Ladha, executive]

Yes. And I think contracts, it's kind of a mix. Most kind of sophisticated companies will lock the contract terms in their favor, and we don't want to be stuck with pricing. We want to be able to up that as we prove out our service model.

[Amin Ladha, executive]

I think that's all the questions we had. I think we'll wrap it up unless there's anything else. Thank you, everyone, for your time.

[Todd Ziniuk, executive]

Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.