Earnings call transcript: AudioEye Q3 2025 beats EPS forecast, stock tumbles

AudioEye Inc. (AEYE) reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2025, surpassing earnings per share (EPS) expectations but falling short on revenue. The company posted an EPS of $0.19, slightly above the forecast of $0.18, marking a 5.56% surprise. However, revenue came in at $8.9 million, missing the forecast of $10.49 million by 15.16%. Despite the earnings beat, AudioEye’s stock fell by 7.02% in regular trading and continued to decline by 2.16% in after-hours trading, closing at $14.92.

Key Takeaways

• AudioEye achieved its 39th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.
• The company reported a net loss of $600,000, an improvement from the previous year.
• Revenue missed expectations, leading to a negative market reaction.
• The stock price dropped by over 7% post-earnings announcement.
• Forward guidance suggests modest revenue growth and improved profitability.

Company Performance

AudioEye continues to demonstrate resilience with its 39th consecutive quarter of revenue growth, despite missing revenue expectations for Q3 2025. The company achieved a 15% year-over-year increase in revenue, driven by strategic expansions and product innovations. However, the shortfall in meeting revenue forecasts has raised concerns among investors.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $8.9 million, down from the $10.49 million forecast.
• Earnings per share: $0.19, exceeding the forecast of $0.18.
• Gross profit: $7.9 million, representing 77% of revenue.
• Net loss: $600,000, improved from $1.2 million in the prior year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: Record $2.5 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

AudioEye’s EPS of $0.19 exceeded the forecast of $0.18, reflecting a positive earnings surprise of 5.56%. However, the revenue miss of 15.16% compared to expectations was significant, contributing to the negative market sentiment.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, AudioEye’s stock fell by 7.02% during regular trading hours and continued to decline by 2.16% in after-hours trading. This decline reflects investor concerns over the revenue shortfall, despite the earnings beat. The stock’s current price of $14.92 is closer to its 52-week low of $8.91, indicating a cautious market outlook.

Outlook & Guidance

AudioEye provided a revenue guidance range of $10.45 million to $10.6 million for Q4 2025, with an adjusted EBITDA forecast of $2.7 million to $2.8 million. The company aims for a full-year 2025 revenue of $40.3 million to $40.4 million, alongside an adjusted EBITDA of $9 million to $9.1 million. Management expressed confidence in achieving a 30-40% annual increase in adjusted EBITDA and EPS over the next three years.

Executive Commentary

CEO David Moradi highlighted the company’s consistent revenue growth, stating, "We have achieved 39 straight quarters of record revenue." CFO Kelly Georgevich noted the increased efficiency from AI tools, saying, "We see increased efficiency with AI tools in our product development team."

Risks and Challenges

• Revenue growth shortfall may impact investor confidence.
• Increased competition in the accessibility compliance market.
• Potential regulatory changes in the EU affecting market expansion.
• Macroeconomic factors influencing customer spending.
• Execution risks associated with platform migration and AI integration.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s expansion into the EU market and its impact on future revenue growth. Management confirmed that platform migration is on track and emphasized the potential for increased demand due to upcoming EU accessibility regulations. Concerns about the impact of a government shutdown on Title II compliance were also addressed, with management stating there was no significant effect.

AudioEye’s Q3 2025 earnings report presents a mixed picture, with an EPS beat overshadowed by a revenue miss, resulting in a negative market reaction. The company’s forward guidance and strategic initiatives provide a cautiously optimistic outlook for future growth.

Full transcript - AudioEye Inc (AEYE) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: Good afternoon and welcome to AudioEye’s third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us for today’s call are AudioEye’s CEO, Mr. David Moradi, and CFO, Ms. Kelly Georgevich. Following their remarks, we will open the call for questions from the company’s participating analysts. 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 www.audioeye.com. Before I turn the call over to AudioEye’s Chief Executive Officer, the company would like to remind all participants that statements made by AudioEye management during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for such forward-looking statements.

The words believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, confident, will, and other similar statements of expectation identify forward-looking statements. These statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today’s press release, in the comments made during this conference call, and in the risk factors section of the company’s annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and its other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participants on this call are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management’s beliefs only as of the date hereof. AudioEye does not undertake any duty to update or correct any forward-looking statements. Further, management remarks today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to these non-GAAP financial measures is available in the company’s earnings release or otherwise posted in the investor relations section of its website at www.audioeye.com. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to AudioEye’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. David Moradi. Sir, please proceed.

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: Thank you, Operator. I want to begin by highlighting our record third-quarter results. We have achieved 39 straight quarters of record revenue, with $10.2 million in revenue. In the third quarter of 2025, we also achieved a record $2.5 million in adjusted EBITDA, up from $1.9 million sequentially. The adjusted EBITDA margin was a record 24%. We expect a significant increase in fourth-quarter ARR, revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin. As you may recall, we have made significant R&D and go-to-market investments in our enterprise channel, and we are now seeing the rewards. In the third quarter, we had one of the best quarters in new business in our history, including contributions from the EU. This momentum has continued into the fourth quarter, with many deals already closed in the EU and US.

We currently have several late-stage deals with ARR over 100,000 in the EU and the US, which would imply a record quarter in new business ARR based on historical close rates. Our partner and marketplace channel also continues to ramp in anticipation of the DOJ Title II rule, which begins to take effect in May 2026. Our biggest partners in the government and government-adjacent spaces contributed significantly to partner ARR growth this quarter. We believe there is significant additional runway for these partners to further expand in 2026. As discussed last quarter, we opted to migrate customers acquired from small acquisitions to eliminate duplicate systems and processes, which should further improve margins in the fourth quarter and into next year. The integration of these customers into the AudioEye core platform is on track to be completed this quarter.

As we finalize attrition from customer integrations this quarter, we expect our reported results to reflect ARR acceleration in our core direct business, and growth in our reseller revenue. There have been significant recent advancements in AI, which we are very excited about. One recent advancement is the combination of the open-source Playwright framework with the Model Context Protocol, or MCP. Using Playwright MCP enables large language models to integrate with websites and for AI agents to perform tasks like humans. Things like interacting with buttons, filling in forms, scrolling, etc. Instead of analyzing code statically, an AI agent using Playwright MCP would navigate using the accessibility tree, the same structured data that screen readers for people with disabilities use. The key change is that it uses a site’s accessibility tree rather than the document object model, or DOM.

Since Playwright MCP uses the accessibility tree, an AI agent using this framework should be more efficient when factoring in compute and LLM token usage, especially at scale. We also see significant potential for Playwright MCP in our product and expect to further improve our industry-leading detection and accuracy. Based on an analysis of 1,500 legal claims, our solution is already 3%-400% more effective than competitors. We are excited to further improve the detection, accuracy, and scale of our software with Playwright MCP. These product advancements should drive further margin expansion and cash flow as we head into next year. As we generate more cash, we believe that, in addition to M&A, stock buybacks can be an attractive way to deploy cash. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 154,000 shares, bringing our total to roughly 300,000 shares in 2025. Moving on to guidance.

For the fourth quarter, we are guiding revenue between $10.45 million and $10.6 million. For the fourth quarter, we also expect to generate a record-adjusted EBITDA of $2.7-$2.8 million and adjusted EPS of 21-23 cents. We are narrowing our 2025 full-year revenue guidance to $40.3-$40.4 million and refining our profitability guidance toward the top end of the range with adjusted EBITDA of $9-$9.1 million and adjusted EPS of 72-73 cents per share. Based on our expectation of adjusted EBITDA margins in the upper 20s% in the fourth quarter, we expect to generate an annualized adjusted EPS of nearly 90 cents. We are very excited about ARR growing significantly and the operating leverage in our model. We continue to have an aspirational goal of increasing adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS by 30%-40% annually for the next three years. I’ll now turn the call over to AudioEye CFO, Kelly.

Kelly Georgevich, CFO, AudioEye: Thank you, David. As David discussed, revenue again hit record levels with Q3 2025 revenue at $10.2 million, up 15% over the comparable period of prior year, and an increase of $370,000 over the second quarter of 2025. The third quarter marked our 39th quarter of record revenue. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, at the end of the third quarter of 2025 was $38.7 million, a $2.5 million increase over the end of the third quarter of the prior year, and a $500,000 increase from the end of the second quarter of 2025. Our two revenue channels are continuing to generate strong results with high year-over-year and annualized sequential growth. Overall, the enterprise channel grew around 26% over the comparable period of the prior year, and the partner and marketplace channel grew around 7% over the same period.

In the third quarter, the enterprise channel contributed around 45% of revenue and 42% of ARR, and the partner and marketplace channel contributed around 55% of revenue and 58% of ARR. The partner and marketplace channel includes all revenue from our SMB-focused marketplace products, as well as revenue from partners who deploy those products for their SMB customers. We saw solid ARR growth in this channel in the third quarter of 2025, driven by additional partner penetration, which will soon be affected by the DOJ Title II rule. We continue to see strong retention rates in this channel. We opted to migrate customers acquired from small acquisitions to eliminate duplicate systems and processes. While the ongoing integration will impact the fourth quarter, we expect ARR growth to re-accelerate. Customer integration will be substantially complete in the fourth quarter.

On September 30, 2025, our customer count was approximately 123,000, a sequential increase of 3,000 from June 30, 2025. Customer count decreased approximately 3,000 from September 30, 2024, due to one partner renegotiation in Q1 2025. Gross profit for the third quarter was $7.9 million, or around 77% of revenue, compared to $7.1 million, or 80% of revenue, in the third quarter of last year. As we highlighted on the last earnings call, with customer migration to the upgraded platform, we expected margins in the second and third quarter of 2025 to temporarily decrease. We are pleased to see margins remain in the high 70s in the third quarter, and we expect gross margin to be up approximately 1% sequentially in Q4 as the migration to the upgraded platform completes.

While revenue increased 15% over the comparable period of prior year on a GAAP basis, operating expenses increased only 2%, or around $150,000, to $8.2 million, with additional investments in sales and marketing offset by savings in other departments. Our total R&D spend in Q3 2025 was approximately $1.6 million, with approximately $450,000 reflected as software development costs in the investing section of the cash flow statement. This was consistent with Q3 2024 R&D investment. The total R&D spend was about 15% of our revenue this quarter, versus 18% in the comparable period of prior year and 17% in the second quarter of 2025. We see increased efficiency with AI tools in our product development team. Net loss in the third quarter of 2025 was $600,000 or $0.04 per share, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.10 per share, in the same year-ago period.

The decrease was primarily driven by additional revenue, partially offset by increases in sales and marketing expense. Our Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA was a record $2.5 million, and our Adjusted EPS was $0.19 per share. The primary adjustments to GAAP earnings and EPS for Q3 2025 were non-cash share-based compensation, depreciation, amortization, interest expense, and litigation expense. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately $1.8 million of shares at an average price of $11.86. During 2025 and through September 30, 2025, we have repurchased approximately $3.6 million worth of shares at an average price of $12.05. Our balance sheet remains well-capitalized with $4.6 million in cash as of September 30, 2025, and an additional $6.6 million in debt facilities available. As of September 30, our net debt, defined as total debt plus cash, was $8.9 million, and our net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio was 0.9 times.

Free cash flow, defined as $2.5 million of Adjusted EBITDA plus $450,000 of software development costs, was $2 million in the third quarter. We expect this to continue increasing in the fourth quarter. We will now open the call up for questions. Operator, please give instructions.

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: Thank you. We will now take questions from the company’s participating analysts. In order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, to ask a question at this time, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Zach Cummins with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Ethan Widel, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Hi there. This is Ethan Widel calling in for Zach Cummins. Thanks for taking my questions. To start, it sounds like you’re getting some nice traction in the EU, and you’ve highlighted your partnerships with CREO and Motability. Can you maybe speak a little bit more to the momentum that you’re seeing there?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: Yeah. I think we had some deals close in the third quarter. We have some large deals active in the late-stage pipeline today, and this is before any real enforcement. We expect a substantial pickup once the fines are issued, similar to what happened with GDPR.

Ethan Widel, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Got it. Thank you. And then it sounds like you’re on track for your platform migration. Can you maybe speak to where you’re at as of right now with that?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: Sure. Yeah. The migration’s going well. Most customers are going to be on the new platform this quarter. So we’re happy to see that. It’s going really well. Yeah.

Ethan Widel, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Great. Thank you. And then maybe if I can squeeze a third one in, just with regard to Title II of the ADA, have you seen any impact to the rate of compliance adoption there from the government shutdown?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: No. We’re not seeing anything there.

Ethan Widel, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Super. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: Your next question comes from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Logan, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Hey, guys. Afternoon. You have Logan on here for George. It obviously sounds like Europe is contributing nicely here. I’m just curious if you can give us anything on how the pipeline has developed over the past quarter. And kind of beyond that, is there anything you can say about close rates or conversion rates kind of relative to expectations or maybe the business historically?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: It’s too early to tell on the close rates. It’s going very well in the EU at the moment. Kelly, anything to add on that?

Kelly Georgevich, CFO, AudioEye: No. I think just the pipeline is also growing in the EU, and we’re seeing some good opportunities come up.

Logan, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Okay. Got it. Kind of staying on the same note, one of the things that we’ve picked up is that potentially in Europe under the EAA, there’s a bit more emphasis on documentation of accessibility and usability statements, things of that nature. Just curious if you’re seeing that also, and does that change anything competitively, or how does that play into your product offering?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: That’s true. We’ve adapted accordingly with that. We have all the statements for each member state.

Logan, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Okay. Got it. I’ll leave it there. Thanks, guys.

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: Thank you.

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: Your next question comes from Scott Buck with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for the time. David, could you remind us what average deal size looks like in Europe versus the US?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: It’s a bit higher. It’s running, I would say, about 50% higher than the average deal in the U.S. It’s more enterprise deals that we’re seeing there in upper-mid market.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: What percentage of total revenue in the quarter is coming out of Europe versus the U.S.?

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: In the third quarter or fourth quarter?

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Third quarter. But if you want to give fourth quarter, that’s fine too.

David Moradi, CEO, AudioEye: Decent contribution. Still mostly U.S., and it’s picking up into the third quarter or fourth quarter.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Okay. Perfect. I appreciate that and then I want to ask about the aspirational goal you laid out in the release and the early comments in the call. How do we think of that in terms of what’s coming from revenue growth versus gross margin expansion versus ongoing cost discipline? I mean, how do we kind of piece that out to get to that 30%-40% on the Adjusted EBITDA line?

Kelly Georgevich, CFO, AudioEye: Yeah. I think they’re all coming into play. To reach that aspirational goal, we do need revenue to continue to increase. We see good opportunities with E.U. resellers, U.S. business demand. So that is obviously a factor. But there is also the gross margin opportunity. And then what we’ve proven with revenue scaling, we can still be efficient with costs. So all three of those things are contributing to that aspirational goal.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Okay. Cool. Well, that’s all I had, guys. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Moradi for his closing remarks.

Logan, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Thank you for joining us today. As always, I want to thank our employees, partners, and investors for their continued support. We look forward to updating you on our next call.

Conference Call Operator, AudioEye: Before we conclude today’s call, I would like to remind everyone that a recording of today’s call will be available for replay via a link available in the investors section of the company website. Thank you for joining us today for AudioEye’s third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful rest of your day.

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