Airgain, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRG) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Airgain, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRG) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 6, 2026

Airgain, Inc. reports earnings inline with expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.08 EPS, expectations were $-0.08.

Operator: Good afternoon. Welcome to Airgain’s First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. My name is Sherry, and I will be your operator for today’s call. Joining us today are Airgain’s President and CEO, Jacob Suen; and CFO, Michael Elbaz. As a reminder, this call will be recorded and will be made available for replay via the link found in the Investor Relations section of Airgain’s website at investors.airgain.com. [Operator Instructions] I caution listeners that during this call, Airgain’s management will be making forward-looking statements about future events as well as Airgain’s business strategy and future financial and operating performance. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company’s business.

These forward-looking statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in today’s earnings release and Airgain’s SEC filings. The conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, May 6, 2026. Airgain undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call. In addition, this conference call will include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures. Please see today’s earnings release for further details, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. I would now like to turn the call over to Airgain’s CEO, Jacob Suen. Jacob?

Jacob Suen: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The first quarter marked a solid start to 2026 as we began converting the strategic groundwork we laid last year into broader commercial momentum across the business. Over the past several years, we have been transforming Airgain into a higher-value system-level connectivity company. In Q1, that transformation showed up through customer wins, expanded platform capabilities and deeper commercial engagements across our core markets and growth platforms. Let me start with our platform initiatives. First, we expand AirgainConnect’s capabilities through the acquisition of the HPUE MegaFi 2 assets from Nextivity. This acquisition expands our portfolio and strengthens our vehicle gateway capabilities across public safety, utility and enterprise fleet applications.

It also broadens what we can offer to our customers. Some customers need a fully integrated vehicle gateway. Others want a simpler high-power router solution. With AirgainConnect, we can now support a wider range of deployment needs, both AirgainConnect Fleet and AirgainConnect MegaFi 2 are part of the AT&T FirstNet offering, and customers can order these solutions directly through the AT&T Speed portal. We are also seeing encouraging progress in the AirgainConnect pipeline. In March, we closed a Tier 2 customer in the energy sector that upgrades across multiple U.S. regions. This customer is deploying AirgainConnect across a fleet of more than 300 maintenance and service vehicles following field trials that demonstrated improved connectivity performance and ease of installation.

As of last week, our pipeline includes more than 55 Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities, up roughly 40% from the approximately 40 Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities we mentioned on our last call. The mix is also becoming more attractive with most of these opportunities now coming from non-first responder markets. Importantly, these opportunities are also advancing through the funnel. More than 1/3 of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities are now in trial or post trial stages compared to a quarter on our last call. This gives us increasing confidence that the pipeline is not only broader but also moving closer to conversion. At the same time, Tier 1 engagement continues to deepen with several opportunities becoming more strategic, while these larger opportunities take longer to convert we believe the pipeline is moving in the right direction.

These emerging opportunities reinforce our view that the strategy we outlined on our last call is working and that AirgainConnect is positioned to become a more meaningful contributor as we move through 2026 and beyond. Second, we continue to advance Lighthouse. In the U.S., we are now working with a business sponsor and a Tier 1 mobile network operator to progress towards a live enterprise trial. This moves Lighthouse from network validation into the business and commercial base. If the trial progresses as expected, we believe initial commercialization opportunities could begin towards the end of 2026 with a broader opportunity developing in 2027. This opportunity with the Tier 1 MNO is being driven by clear customer pain points around coverage, capacity and the cost of network upgrades.

In many in-building environments, traditional solutions such as DAS or small cells can be expensive, disruptive and slow to deploy. Lighthouse gets customers a faster and more cost-effective path to upgrading from 4G to 5G coverage. For indoor deployments, the value proposition is straightforward, better coverage, lower cost and faster deployment. For outdoor user cases, Lighthouse reduces coverage gaps and provides network performance benefits, non-disruptive integration and scalability. Based on our engagement with this Tier 1 MNO, we believe indoor deployments could represent the near-term opportunity with initial deployments targeted towards the end of this year. Outdoor deployments remain an important longer-term opportunity and are expected to follow a more expanded evaluation and commercialization cycle.

In the Middle East, our relationship with Omantel remained an important entry point. Deployment activity was paused due to the conflict in the region, but engagement is now ongoing, and we expect to move forward with initial deployments over the coming months. We continue to advance our road map for integrated 4G and 5G coverage solutions designed for challenging indoor and outdoor environments. This road map supports 4G and 5G co-location, expands the range of deployment scenarios we can address and strengthens the long-term commercial opportunity for Lighthouse. We are seeing customer interest in trialing the combined solution as units become available. As our engagement with the Tier 1 MNO and enterprise customers has progressed, we believe we now have a clear path to commercialization with our current product road map.

As a result, we have realigned our resources and priorities to focus on accelerating commercialization and revenue generation. Now turning to our core markets. In consumer, we secured a multiyear, multimillion dollar in-build antenna design win for a next-generation 5G home connectivity platform with a Tier 1 North American MNO with production units anticipated later this year. As expected, consumer revenue declined sequentially due to seasonality. Looking into Q2 we expect consumer revenue to remain relatively stable with underlying demand still healthy. The primary factor, we are monitoring in the near term is a supply constraint at the gateway level, particularly around memory availability and pricing. This is impacting our OEM’s ability to ship finished systems and in turn, can affect the timing of our antenna shipments.

At this point, this dynamic is limited to a single OEM serving cable operators. Based on feedback from this OEM, they are actively working to address the issue, and we believe the impact is temporary. As we mentioned earlier, we have secured 2 Tier 1 MNO design wins, and we remain on track for those programs to ramp in the second half of the year. In enterprise IoT, momentum is building. We received a $4 million purchase order from a long-standing IoT solution customer with shipments expected to be completed this year including initial shipments in Q2. This order reflects the resumption of demand from this customer and improves our near-term visibility. We are also seeing continued traction across our embedded modem portfolio and expanding opportunities in emerging applications.

We increased our IoT presence in robotics through a new design win with Coco Robotics, and we are seeing additional activity in adjacent areas such as storms, including preproduction shipments in Q2 for a new customer program focused on autonomous VTOL rotorcraft for defense and commercial applications. Stepping back, Q1 reflects progress across our growth platforms in our core markets. Both enterprise and automotive grew sequentially. IoT momentum improved. AirgainConnect engagement product, Lighthouse move into more focused commercialization discussions and our consumer business remains supported by strong Tier 1 relationships. Just as important, our pipeline is broader and continues to expand. We enter this next phase with a more focused operating model, improving visibility and clear opportunities to convert customer engagement into revenue.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Elbaz: Thank you, Jacob. Before diving into the numbers, please note that my review of our financial results and guidance refers to non-GAAP figures. Information about the non-GAAP financial measures, including GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings release. Now let’s turn to our first quarter results. Q1 sales came in at $11.5 million which was at the midpoint of our guidance range. Enterprise sales were $5 million, up $0.7 million sequentially, driven by higher embedded modem sales. Automotive sales were $0.9 million, up $0.4 million sequentially, reflecting higher sales of AirgainConnect vehicle gateways. Consumer sales came in at $5.6 billion, sequentially down $1.7 million, primarily due to seasonal impact.

Non-GAAP gross margin for the first quarter was 44.2% compared to 46.3% in the prior quarter and relatively flat year-over-year. The sequential decline was primarily due to a lower enterprise margin rate, driven by an unfavorable product mix. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the first quarter amounted to $6.1 million while modestly higher sequentially due to typically higher first quarter marketing and trade show activities, operating expenses declined by 8% or $0.5 million year-over-year as we continue to optimize our OpEx model. In Q1, adjusted EBITDA was negative $0.9 million, $0.2 million lower than the midpoint of guidance. Non-GAAP EPS was negative $0.08 compared to negative $0.07 midpoint of guidance. As of March 31, 2026, our cash balance was $7.1 million relatively flat sequentially.

Net cash proceeds from our ATM were $0.6 million. Now moving to our outlook for the second quarter ending June 30, 2026. As a reminder, we provide quarterly guidance for sales, non-GAAP gross margin and expenses, non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA as we believe these metrics to be key indicators for the overall performance of our business. For the second quarter of 2026, we project sales to range from $12.5 million to $14.5 million with a midpoint of $13.5 million. The midpoint represents a 17% sequential increase driven by enterprise and automotive. We believe our outlook reflects improving demand visibility across the business and continued progress in converting the commercial traction Jacob discussed into revenue. We expect non-GAAP gross margin for the second quarter to be in the range of 42.5% to 45.5% or 44% at the midpoint.

We project operating expenses to decrease sequentially to approximately $5.8 million. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to be positive $0.01 at the midpoint of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be positive $0.2 million at the midpoint of our guidance. Overall, the actions we have taken over the past few quarters have improved our operating leverage and position us to convert top line growth more effectively into profitability. Now I would like to turn the call back over to Jacob for his closing thoughts. Jacob?

Jacob Suen: Thanks, Michael. As we look ahead, we have good visibility into Q2 and see positive momentum for both our core and growth platforms for the rest of the year. Beyond Q2, we see a broader set of drivers. Demand in our consumer business remains healthy, and we expect improvement as supply constraints ease. IoT continues to build momentum through repeat orders and new application design wins. AirgainConnect is progressing from engagement toward conversion with growing activity across utility and enterprise markets, and Lighthouse is moving towards targeted commercial deployment in the U.S. and Middle East. Taken together, these drivers reflect a more focused and better position business with a stronger platform portfolio, a broader pipeline and an operating model positioned for improved leverage as revenue scales.

Our focus is execution, converting pipeline into deployments, driving growth and including profitability as we move through 2026. Operator, we’re now ready to take questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Anthony Stoss: Michael, I was trying to write as fast as I could. Can you just give me the revenue splits? I got consumer $5.6 million, but I missed auto and enterprise.

Michael Elbaz: The guidance you meant, Tony?

Anthony Stoss: No, the percent of revenue in the quarter that came from auto and same question for enterprise.

Michael Elbaz: So auto would be about 40% approximately. I don’t have the other numbers in front of me. And enterprise would be about higher actually, 50% approximately.

Anthony Stoss: Enterprise 50%, auto 40% and Consumer 10%?

Jacob Suen: No, no, no. It’s…

Anthony Stoss: Yes. September is $5.6 million.

Michael Elbaz: Yes. I’ll have to come back to you on this, Tony. I don’t have those numbers in front of me.

Jacob Suen: Yes, the bottom line is overall the enterprise and automotive, we’re seeing a sequential growth, and we expect that momentum to continue. And consumer in Q1 was due to seasonality. So we also expect the consumer to improve throughout the year.

Anthony Stoss: Perfect. And then Jacob, just getting on the…

Michael Elbaz: Tony, the number is 49% on the consumer, 8% on the automotive and 43% on the enterprise in Q1.

Anthony Stoss: Perfect. Related to the memory shortages, I get it. A lot of people are talking about it, thinking it’s going to get worse throughout the remainder of the year. But given — I guess the first part of the question is how much of your revenue was affected in Q1 as a result of not being able to ship? And then, Jacob, more longer-term picture, when do you think — which quarter is it this year? Is it next year when you can get back to the kind of $7 million to $10 million in quarterly revenue on the consumer side?

Michael Elbaz: So yes, Tony, this is Michael. So in terms of Q1 impact, we had no revenue impact from the shortages, and we had no gross margin impact from the shortages. In Q2, we are being conservative on the consumer. Typically, you would see that seasonal down in Q1, which we saw and a rebound in Q2. And right now, we are expecting to be relatively flat and mainly because one specific OEM is being impacted. They believe it’s a temporary blip right now, and it will be worked out by the end of the quarter, but again, we’re being conservative on that.

Jacob Suen: Yes. And regarding your questions about the consumer revenue, certainly, as we indicated, the good news is that we always have the stability regarding the MSOs. We are now adding the MNOs. We are now working on 2 major MNOs in the U.S. So that should help us well positioned for the rest of the year. Are we able to get to the $7 million to $8 million range like we used to have, we do have the path for that. Now is that going to be happening this year or next year? We don’t know that yet, although it’s trending very positively. We mentioned about the design win with the MNO, that should be in the latter part of this year.

Anthony Stoss: Got it. And then my last question related to AirgainConnect. Are you seeing a speeding up of some of these trials or your ability to convert? It’s great to see that Tier 2 energy customer. What’s your feel on how quickly you can convert the trials into more signed deals?

Jacob Suen: So on the Tier 1 type of customers, we mentioned before, 12 to 18 months of the cycle time, and we are in the cycle time. The good news here is that the pipeline is changing favorably to us quarter-over-quarter. So for example, we mentioned on the call that we have a current pipeline of over 55 deals in Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers. 20% of that is Tier 1 customers. And of the 20% of that, the vast majority are for non-first responders. So they tend to be moving quicker. However, because those tend to be also strategic type of deals, they are also very much of a multilayer type of meetings, engagements, trials taking place. And so we are basically on track to what we had mentioned about the 12- to 18-month cycle. On the Tier 2, we just mentioned that we closed a Tier 2 customer.

Overall, the velocity of the design wins that we have, primarily on the Tier 3 and the Tier 2 so far is accelerating. Last year, we would be closing 1 deal per month. And this year, so far, up until May, it’s been about 2 deals per month. I hope this is helpful.

Anthony Stoss: Perfect.

Jacob Suen: Yes. Tony, also the Tier 1 opportunity size, the vehicle size is also getting bigger as we go after the non-first responder vehicles because a lot of these are large enterprise fleet. So we’ll start to work on tens of thousands of vehicles instead of just several thousands or several hundred as in the case of the first responders.

Operator: Our next question is from Jaeson Schmidt with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Jaeson Schmidt: Just looking at Lighthouse and that potential trial here in the U.S., what additional steps, if any, do you guys need to complete to continue to move that forward?

Jacob Suen: Jaeson, yes, Jacob here. So yes, it’s actually a very significant milestone. And as I was alluding to in the call earlier, is the fact that — basically, as far as the technology validation, that looks to be already proven with the trial we have done in the corporate office. And so now we are working with the business sponsor. So typically, they would not work with us to do a business sponsor until they feel very comfortable with the technology validation. So that phase is done. We are now working with them on their sales team to identify several potential customers that would be able to really take advantage of our Lighthouse product. And these are customers as we work with this particular MNO where they actually have to walk away from deals previously due to lack of budget using existing system.

So our solution are giving them a fraction of the cost otherwise. So as an example, where they have to have using a system that’s going to be $4 per square foot, now we’re going to be able to offer them a fraction of that, so they can meet that budget. So those are the customers that we are targeting, and we intend to get 1 or 2 of those customers for the live trial and hopefully, in turn, become permanent. So that’s where we’re at regarding the progress with this particular MNO. Now as you know, dealing with MNO, it takes time, although they’re really seeing a unique value with our Lighthouse.

Jaeson Schmidt: Okay. That’s good to hear. And then looking at the consumer segment, understanding the near-term dynamics, but do you guys have confidence that you will see that rebound in Q3? Or is it just too early right now?

Michael Elbaz: It’s a bit early right now, but let me put it this way. The demand is very healthy and the demand, what we mentioned before last quarter is that we were expecting a modest growth on the consumer market across the year. So from a demand standpoint, it’s there. It’s a question of supply and the timing of it. I should also mention from a consumer business model itself, the way it’s being set up and really is based upon the strong relationship we have with the service providers, the OEMs themselves, the CMs and the distribution channel as well, too. And that gives us quite a bit of visibility, at least in the short term about some of the supply management that we have to do. The other piece also that I should mention is that typically, service providers have 2 or 3 OEMs. And typically, we are designed in with 2 OEMs. So if there is any type of supplier allocation being redone, for instance, we’re still somewhat covered by it.

Jaeson Schmidt: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just the last one for me, and I’ll jump back into queue. You’re expecting a nice sequential downtick in operating expenses. Is this sort of a level we should feel comfortable with in the back half of the year? Or how should we be thinking about OpEx?

Michael Elbaz: Yes. I think first half of the year, I believe, in 2026 is about 9% down compared to the first half of last year. As revenue grows, you would expect a modest uptick on that. But overall, our sense is that we definitely want to make sure that we have a very strong operating leverage so that when the top line grows and that top line should be having some higher gross margin than the corporate average. As it grows, then we really optimize our overall business model and be — really offer some positive and accretive EBITDA margin in the long run.

Operator: At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. If your question was not answered, you may contact Airgain’s Investor Relations team at AIRG@gateway-grp.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Suen for his closing remarks.

Jacob Suen: Thank you all for your thoughtful questions and for your continued interest in Airgain. If there’s one key takeaway, it is that Airgain is a more focused and disciplined company with a stronger foundation and improving operating model and growing platform momentum. We believe the work we have done positions us to drive sustainable growth and improve profitability as we move through 2026 and beyond. We appreciate everyone joining us today and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Operator, you may now conclude the call.

Operator: Thank you for joining us today for Airgain’s First Quarter 2026 earnings. You may now disconnect.