Ituran at LD Micro Main Event XIX: Strategic Growth in Telematics

On Monday, 20 October 2025, Ituran Location and Control Ltd (NASDAQ:ITRN) presented at the LD Micro Main Event XIX Investor Conference. The company showcased its robust position in the telematics market, emphasizing its strategic focus on recurring revenue and subscriber growth. Despite challenges, Ituran highlighted its operational strengths and future growth plans, including significant partnerships and technological advancements.

Key Takeaways

• Ituran operates in the telematics market with a $750 million market cap.
• 70% of Ituran’s revenue comes from recurring monthly fees.
• The company aims to add 220,000 to 240,000 new subscribers in 2025.
• Ituran has $90 million available for M&A, dividends, or share buybacks.
• The Stellantis agreement underscores Ituran’s service-oriented business model.

Financial Results

• Market Cap: $750 million as of today.
• Recurring Revenue: 70% from monthly fees, with a gross margin over 60%.
• Subscriber Growth: Targeting 220,000 to 240,000 net new subscribers for 2025.
• Cash Flow: Approximately $90 million available for strategic initiatives.
• Operating Cash Flow: Almost $22 million quarterly, with a run rate of $80 million annually.
• Free Cash Flow: About $60 million annually.
• Dividends: Minimum of $10 million per quarter, yielding 5-6%.

Operational Updates

• Subscriber Base: Over 2.5 million subscribers across four segments: OEM, insurance, finance, and retail.
• OEM Partnerships: Collaborations with General Motors, Nissan, BMW, Yamaha, and Stellantis.
• Latin America Presence: Strong operations in regions with high car theft rates.
• Motorcycle Telematics: Partnerships with BMW and Yamaha in Brazil.
• New Market Entry: Launching Ituran Mob for car sharing in the U.S.
• Finance & Leasing: Expanding partnerships, notably with Bank Santander.
• Technology: Utilizing AI and advanced algorithms.

Future Outlook

• Subscriber Growth: Continued focus on expanding the subscriber base.
• OEM Partnerships: Pursuing new collaborations with car manufacturers.
• Motorcycle Telematics: Increasing emphasis on the two-wheelers market.
• Finance & Leasing: Extending services to other banks, targeting 2026 for benefits.
• New Markets: Targeting regions with high theft rates and insurance involvement.
• Technology: Advancing telematics solutions.

Q&A Highlights

• Churn Rate: Reported at 3% monthly, attributed to customer shifts.
• Demand in Developed Markets: Focusing on areas with high theft rates.
• Accident Detection: Technology provides data to dealers for outreach.
• US Market Strategy: Shifting focus to fleet management and rentals.

For further details, please refer to the full conference transcript.

Full transcript - LD Micro Main Event XIX Investor Conference:

Unidentified speaker, Ituran Location and Control Ltd.: Providing services to over 2.5 million people, I would say our pool of more or less $8 million. Actually, this year, Ituran Location and Control Ltd. celebrates 30 years since the inception of the company and 20 years since we did the IPO on the Nasdaq. We have a market cap of $750 million as of today. The telematics market is a very fast-growing market, and we are very happy to be in this market and controlling and leading this market of telematics in the vehicle environment world. What do we do? Originally, we started with stolen vehicle recovery. That’s the basic service that we managed to provide. We started in Israel, and then we managed to leverage it into Latin America, into the U.S., into many countries. Other than stolen vehicle recovery, we have the fleet management solution. We have connected car solutions. We have usage-based insurance (UBI) solutions.

Who do we offer all these 2.5 million subscribers service to? We have four main segments that we work with. The first one is the OEM. We have been working with General Motors. We are working with Nissan, BMW, and Yamaha in order to provide our services. When we provide the motivation for the car manufacturer, it’s quite simple. He provides a model of providing a free trial between 3 to 12 months. It depends on the region, depends on the car manufacturer itself. After that, there is a renewal process that we do. We provide the units. We provide, we are an A to Z solution, provide the hardware and the service. It depends on the needs and requirements of the customer.

After a free trial period, we are the ones that contact the customer to provide this kind of renewal process, which provides an ROI to the car manufacturers. They are getting commission out of that. Second, of course, is insurance companies. Insurance companies, I think it’s quite obvious. When we talk about insurance companies, insurance companies want to insure themselves by providing or by using Ituran Location and Control Ltd. services. They are actually reducing the risk, which is the main risk that they have and the main cost that they have, which is claims. By reducing the claims, they are making benefit with our services. Finance companies, I think it’s a segment that we started a couple of years ago, and I think it’s a win-win for everyone. As finance companies, they want to protect their collateral. In order to do that, they’ve been using a telematics unit.

Now they can be able to know how to recover the car, where is the car, but much more than that. They have, by installing and using Ituran services, they are actually reducing the risk of the customer. By reducing the risk of the customer, they have been able to even increase their sell points by even 5 to 10 points, which is a lot. Retail market. Retail market, it’s a B2C. Up until now, we talked to B2B, but we are selling also B2C. Retail market, I think the great example is to talk about Brazil. In Brazil, it turns out that almost 70% of the population does not do insurance, a full coverage insurance, due to the high premium that can get as high as 25% of the value of the car.

Therefore, we have been selling our product and offer our services to the retail market to act as an alternative to the full coverage insurance. Anyway, they are not going to do it. That’s also a very fast-growing market for us. Talking about competitive advantages, when you think as a global company that has, it’s not only the advanced technology that Ituran is using, which we have been investing a lot of time and efforts on R&D, of course, using AI, using advanced algorithm. An example for this advanced algorithm is that in many, many cases, we recover the car even before the car owner knows that the car had been stolen. In addition to that, we have a very big presence, especially in Latam, where the car theft rate is quite high.

That’s a big advantage for us because once you want to close a deal with a car manufacturer or a big international company, they prefer to use one provider for all the countries. It doesn’t matter if one country is a small country and another one is a big. They want one provider, and that’s also a big advantage. Of course, it’s the know-how. People think always it’s Ituran, it’s a very advanced technology company. In the end of the day, in addition to technology, you need to have the operational know-how of how to recover a car. I’ll give you a small example again from Brazil, even in Israel.

In Israel, because Israel is so narrow and so small, it takes less than 20 minutes that a car will be stolen and chopped up and coming back as a full industry of spare parts back to Israel or back to other countries. We have 20 to 25 minutes to recover the car. That’s an ability to know how to do it. Brazil, no one can go into the favela. Even the military, even the police doesn’t know how to go into a favela. To recover a car from a favela, by the way, that’s one of the main reasons why General Motors historically, seven years ago, chose Ituran Location and Control Ltd. to become their telematics provider in Brazil. Of course, the strong balance sheet that Ituran has. Business model, recurring revenue business model, that’s a dream, I would say. 70% of our revenues are recurring revenues.

That means that more than 95% of the monthly fees, the recurring revenue, are rolling into the next quarter. It means high visibility of the business, strong cash flow. You will see it when I talk about the financials. Subscriber growth. Since the inception of Ituran 30 years ago, Ituran has been increasing and growing our subscriber base every year. For 2025 guidance, it’s the highest ever net growth that we expect to achieve. It’s going to be between, our guidance is 220,000 to 240,000 net subscribers. As of today, we are in line with this guidance. I think one more thing which is nice to emphasize with the subscribers is if you can see the economic crisis in 2008, COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021, even in those crises, Ituran managed to increase their subscriber base, to increase their sales. The reason is quite simple.

We have a natural hedging. If the economy is bad, usually that means more crime. More crime means more demand for Ituran services. On the other side, for example, in the COVID, there were no car sales, but that means also no second-hand car sales. So existing car, no churn for our base, our customers. In the end of the day, we managed to keep always, doesn’t matter which kind of environment we are in. I want to discuss and I want to share with you some of the recent success, and that relates also to our future potential growth that we have. In addition to the organic growth that we have in each one of the regions where we operate, which is, by the way, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, U.S., Canada, many, many countries where we operate through our subsidiaries.

In addition to that, recently we signed an OEM agreement with Stellantis. I will talk about it in a second and elaborate more about it. We are putting more and more focus in the motorcycles, the two wheels in Latin America, as we believe that that’s a huge potential for the future growth of the company. Again, continuing with the motorcycles, two very nice agreements that we did, the partnerships and the agreement that we did with BMW and Yamaha. Just to explain a little bit more about this deal with Stellantis, which I think will help understanding the business a little bit, because many, many people are asking me all the time, hey, what happens that all the car manufacturers will come with a telematics unit inside?

That’s the best answer I can give. The Stellantis agreement that we did is actually we provide, we do not provide the hardware, but we provide the service. That means that we can offer today any kind of product to the car manufacturer or to the customer. It could be an A to Z solution, including the end unit, and it could be the service. In the end of the day, bottom line, Ituran is a service-oriented company, so we’re less scared about the hardware. We provide the service, many kinds of services that we provide in this deal, stolen vehicle recovery, fleet management. Later on, this gives us the ability to offer more services and even try to offer the car manufacturers also the A to Z solution.

Emphasizing this for a second is the car manufacturer’s motivation to install a telematics product from Ituran is, in addition to the global solution that they are providing, which is usually associated with a very high cost, Ituran cost is much cheaper, almost the same level of service, a very high renewal conversion rate that helps an ROI to the car manufacturer. For the medium and low models, they prefer to install Ituran. The second is, of course, the motorcycles. We are a great believer in the motorcycle. I believe that it’s one of the biggest assets. If you are a motorcycle owner, you are always concerned about your motorcycle. When you have a telematics unit, and there has been a big advanced development in the product itself, what we can offer with the technology.

Today, we already managed to close one deal with BMW in Brazil and another one with Yamaha in Brazil. Our, of course, intention is to expand it to other places and start offering it to dealerships. It’s a huge market. It’s a huge market. We can’t talk the story is always nice, but in the end of the day, when you talk about stories, you need to translate it into your financials. I think the financials over here, it’s very easy to see two things. First of all, 70% as I mentioned, of our revenue is coming from monthly fees with a higher gross margin of more than 60, I would say 65%.

We are selling the hardware, which is 30% of our revenues, with a lower gross margin, meaning about 15 to 20% subsidizing the hardware in order to get the customer for a longer time, for five, six years, with a 65% gross margin. The beautiful thing in a subscriber in a recurring model is that revenue, we are increasing our revenue every year, but the profits go even faster. The reason for that is that on the incremental, every new subscriber contributes more than 70, 75% to the gross margin due to the operating leverage that we have in our business model. As of today, Ituran Location and Control Ltd. has approximately $90 million, and that will be used either to do an M&A, something that we are thinking, or to, of course, share our success with our shareholders through a dividend or through a share buyback.

Strong, very strong cash flow in the company. As you can see, almost $22 million in a quarter. It’s a run rate of almost $80 million in a year. Operating cash flow, free cash flow of about $60 million. I’m not familiar with many companies, and I’m very proud of it. This really relates to the business model that accounting and cash flow go hand in hand. If you look at the EBITDA and the cash flow generation, it’s more or less the same. As an international global company, of course, we have been working in many regions, meaning many currencies. As of today, we are doing very small hedge, but that is because the company has a natural hedging locally. It means that every country in local working in local currencies, revenues, expenses are the same. Because we are reporting in a U.S.

dollar currency, then everything has to be translated. In the second quarter, it was compared to last year, it was against us. Sometimes it’s in favor, sometimes it’s bad. Dividends. Since the inception of the company, we have shared our success with the shareholders of more than $400 million. We have a dividend policy of minimum $10 million a quarter, which represents approximately between 5 to 6% dividend yield. Hidden assets. We have invested in a company called Bring, which has been used to deliver operation platform, including supply chain. This company raised a couple of years ago with a valuation of $1 billion. Our stake in this company is 16%. You can do the math. Of course, I’m not sure the valuation today is the same as in the past, but this is something for you guys, ladies, to understand and to know.

Even if you take half a million dollars, still, it’s a lot of money which does not reflect. It is not reflecting in the financial statements as it is zero in our financial statement. Other than what we talked about, growth drivers, which is, of course, expanding the business to new car manufacturers. We have discussed all the time with new car manufacturers in order to involve more and more of our car manufacturers to provide our services, or existing car manufacturers to expand the business to other regions, not only the regions where we operate. We are going to put the focus, of course, to the motorcycle, to the two wheelers, and finance and leasing companies. Regarding the finance and leasing, just one more word about this. Two years ago, we signed a very big agreement with Bank Santander for providing this kind of solution.

It’s a very big success. What we are aiming to do now is to expand it to other banks. Until a couple of months ago, there was an exclusivity. The exclusivity has passed. Therefore, now we are going to offer it to other banks. I do believe in the, I would say, in 2026, we’ll start seeing some benefit out of that as well. Some of the technological tech leadership that we have. Ituran Mob is very advanced technology for car sharing. We are going to, by the way, we are just entering the U.S. as well. We have been offering this type of very unique service in Brazil. We are going to start offering in the U.S. as well. It’s a very advanced technology that you can basically make rental of the car without any human. You just go everything with the application.

You get even including the billing, including everything. It’s a very, very nice platform for any kind of car rental company, people that are using their cars as a business, and things like that. Big data. As a company that has more than 2.5 million subscribers of data coming from the vehicle, which is a huge amount of data, we can sell this data to trail companies, to municipals, to the government. We’re already starting doing that. Of course, it will take more time that it will be significant. As of today, it’s quite small. To summarize, a subscriber-based model, recurring revenues, high visibility, high profitability, operating leverage that comes with this model, and many exciting projects, I would say, for the near and long-term future in order to continue our increasing growth. Thank you very much. Questions, if you have. Yeah, please.

Your dividend history, is it like that, or does it fluctuate, or what’s the history?

Actually, it went up in the last two years.

It went up?

It went up, yeah. It was like $5 million a quarter, and then it jumped to $8 million a quarter. Recently, it went up to $10 million a quarter due to the fact that the company is generating a very good cash flow. As long as we do not have anything as a transaction, M&A transaction, or something like that, we will share it through a dividend or through a buyback. As of today, it’s a policy of minimum $10 million a quarter.

Great, thanks.

Yes, please.

How do you think about churn? I assume you work directly with the OEM manufacturers for most of the business. Not all, obviously, but the new car, I understand, your device, or with or without your device, you offer service. That’s very clear. What happens when the owner sells the car?

It’s a great question, but let me just say one thing as a remark. Most of the 2.5 million subscribers are not related to the OEM. The big majority of the 2.5 million subscribers relate to the insurance companies, to the retail market. I would say the car manufacturer is big, but the majority is not that. Now, relates to the churn. It’s a great question because the churn that we present in the 20F, in our reports, is about 3% monthly churn. It’s artificial because we don’t have any other way to measure the right churn. I will explain why. If you are a customer in Brazil and you chose HDI as your insurance company, and after one year, you decided to move from HDI to Mafra Segura, we continue providing the service. Nothing happened. We still provide the service to the same customer, to the same vehicle.

In our system and our way, it’s a different customer. We move from HDI to Mafra. The same thing, by the way, if you sell your car. Usually, people after an average lifetime, I don’t know, two years, three years, four years, they’re selling the car. You sell the car. I’m contacting the buyer. I continue to provide the service to the buyer. Still, we consider it as a deactivation and activation. It’s more artificial churn. We all need to understand that as long as the base continues to grow as it is now, it means that also the churn will be bigger due to the fact that the base becomes bigger. Yes?

What kind of demand are you guys anticipating on more developed markets like the U.S., the U.K., et cetera, down the line?

Okay. When we think and when we look at our regions that we want to be there and penetrate, it depends on a couple of things. One is, first of all, it has to have a very high car theft rate. This is our business. That’s the basic. That’s number one. The U.S., by the way, is not there. Second, strong involvement with insurance companies. Usually, insurance companies provide discounts to a customer that installs a telematics unit. That depends on the involvement that we have with insurance companies. The third one is, of course, that the market will be big enough. Those are the three criteria that we choose. In the U.S., we less put the focus on stolen vehicle recovery. We put the focus on fleet management.

We are going to put the focus now in car rental companies, meaning more value-added services, more sophisticated services than just the SVR. Regarding Europe, it’s a great question. As of today, we are not there. I’m assuming slowly it’s a potential thing because Latin America, it’s a much more market that fits our needs due to the high car theft rates. Yeah?

I would like another one to ask you.

Follow up.

Oh, go ahead.

Anyone else? Yours?

Does your technology also detect if the motorcycle or the car has an accident on it?

Of course. Of course.

That’s very valuable.

We provide not only if someone touches your motorcycle or vehicle, if he did it illegally, we have our ways to know it. In addition, in all of our units, we have a car accident notification. We have all the sensors that provide all the information to know if something happens to the car. By the way, this is another feature that we provide to the car dealers and OEM as an ROI for their business because if they know now, if they get all the information from the unit, they can offer it to their customers by calling, "Hey, you have an accident, come to our garages." Thank you very much.

It’s a healthy way of.

Thank you very much.

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