Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ:AXON) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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View the webcast at https://axon.zoom.us/j/93430641216#success
Summary
Axon Enterprise announced a significant $1.2 billion investment in Skydio, expanding their partnership and securing exclusive distribution rights for public safety drones in the U.S. and Canada.
The company launched new AI-driven products, including Axon Body 5, which features enhanced imaging, connectivity, and AI capabilities, contributing to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue from AI products.
Despite a strong financial performance with a 28% year-over-year revenue increase to $909 million, Axon Enterprise faces delays in federal drone deals, impacting short-term revenue projections.
Bookings and five-year normalized bookings increased by over 20% year to date, with newer product portfolios like Dedrone and 911 services doubling their bookings from the previous year.
The company’s software and services revenue grew 43% year over year, driven by digital evidence management and other newer offerings, contributing to a 40% increase in annual recurring revenue to $1.8 billion.
Management emphasized the importance of trust with customers, highlighting their commitment to protecting data and privacy amidst industry controversies.
Axon Enterprise adjusted its guidance due to delays in federal deals, expecting fourth-quarter revenue between $990 million and $1.01 billion, with adjusted EBITDA projected at $924 to $929 million for the year.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR (Moderator)
Everyone, and thank you for joining Axon Enterprise’s executive team today for our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Before we get started, I’ll note that our remarks today are intended to build upon our most recent shareholder letter and investor materials, which you can find on our investor website at investor.axon.com. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance.
All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, as discussed in our SEC filings. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Descriptions and reconciliations to non-GAAP are included in our shareholder letter and available on our investor website. And as always, before we kick it over to Rick, we have a quick video to show to get us started. Let’s pull it up.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Eric. And good afternoon, everyone. I want to start with the biggest decision we made this quarter. In fact, it’s also the largest investment in Axon Enterprise’s history. Flying robots are coming. They aren’t a novelty, they aren’t a someday idea. In the coming decade, we believe there will be millions, maybe tens of millions, of autonomous drones in American skies. They’ll be inspecting infrastructure, delivering goods, supporting agriculture, and responding to emergencies.
They’ll touch nearly every part of American life. Public safety will be one of the first places that change becomes real. When a 911 call comes in, a drone can be overhead in seconds, well before any human could possibly get there. So today we announced an expanded commercial partnership with Skydio along with an additional 1.2 billion dollar investment that takes our fully diluted ownership to 37%. We’re excited to build on the existing partnership with Skydio, and the investment is the largest that we have ever made. Here’s what these two transactions mean for us. First, we’ve secured our ability to integrate the best public safety drones in the world into the Axon ecosystem as Skydio’s exclusive public safety distributor in the U.S. and Canada.
Second, we now own a meaningful piece of what we believe could become America’s leading drone company in public safety and across many other sectors. Skydio stays focused on what it does best: moving incredibly fast and building world-class autonomous flight. We bring that technology to every agency we serve, and we share in Skydio’s success well beyond our own market. Pair that with Dedrone, which protects agencies from threats in the sky, and Axon now covers both sides of the airspace.
Now picture how it all fits together. A call comes in to Axon 911. A Skydio drone gets there first. Fusus builds a picture in real time. An officer arrives wearing an Axon Body 5 and already knows what they’re walking into. AI assists throughout the incident, and everything flows into evidence, reporting, and the workflows that come after. Those aren’t separate businesses. They are one connected, superintelligence-powered system. Which brings me to Axon Body 5. The spec sheet is impressive: 25 times the processing power of our prior generation, better connectivity, and longer battery life. But the real breakthrough is that one device now records the scene and it reads the paperwork. Just like our Fleet and Outpost products, Body 5 Pro now has two cameras. One is optimized for video and the other for high-resolution still images. An officer can now scan a driver’s license or other documents seamlessly, right from the camera on their chest.
Why does that matter? Well, I want a future where a police officer never has to tie up their hands with a pen and a pad of paper again. Their hands stay free, their head stays up, they can scan information, and their AI partner processes it automatically. And with six speakers, your AI assistant is sure to be heard during translations and interactions. With Body 5 Pro, that AI partner now has a physical form with expanded capabilities. And that partner is already looking out for them.
Guardian is now generally available. It can hear when a situation may be escalating and alert someone in the real-time operations center. So another set of eyes is on that officer’s live stream and help is on the way. Axon’s got their back. And customers are responding. Our AI products have already passed 100 million in annual recurring revenue. It took us nearly two decades to build one of the largest software businesses in public safety. AI became a meaningful part of it in less than two years. We also launched TASER Ion, which brings TASER technology to people it’s never touched before—undercover officers, protection teams, and international customers who felt we didn’t have the right form factor for them.
At IACP, you could see it in people’s faces as the light bulb came on. Now Axon 911 is already beating my expectations, and we’re not even a year into bringing Prepared and Carbyne together. Three major full-scope deployments are ramping in the field, and we’re winning new customers at an accelerating pace. Then there’s Gravity, where we’re building the largest repository of AI-enhanced public safety data. Just like in physics, gravity pulls things into place, and Axon Gravity will help our customers gather all of their data into one secure place, where our mission engineers help them apply AI to see the patterns hiding in plain sight.
No more jumping between siloed systems. Our customers focus on keeping their communities safe, and we will bring their data to life. I want to close with what matters most. You may have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating. We have many hundreds of patents, many petabytes of data and millions of deployed sensors, and a world-leading software stack. But none of those is our most valuable asset. Our most valuable asset is the trust of our customers. You’ve likely seen the license plate reader controversy in the press. At its core, it’s about broken trust, misused systems, mishandled data, and uncontrolled sharing.
Nearly 500 agencies are in our pipeline or have already switched to Axon for ALPR. And the reason is simple: they trust us to help them protect their communities without losing their community’s trust. The world is moving at unbelievable speed. Everyone feels it, and so do our customers. In this age of accelerating disruption, they need a technology partner they can count on to help them navigate a pace of change the world has never seen before. That is the role they trust Axon to play. And here’s the thing about trust: it takes decades to build it, so you have to protect it with everything you’ve got. So I will guard one thing with every ounce of my energy: that this company earns that trust and defends it every day with the actions we take and the promises we deliver on.
That’s how we’ll build a safer world—one that protects privacy and strengthens democracy—in a way all of us can be proud of. And that’s how we build a company that doesn’t just last for decades, but for generations. I couldn’t be more excited about what we get to build next. And with that, over to you, Josh.
Josh Isner (President)
All right, thanks a lot, Rick, and good afternoon, everybody. As Rick said, it was another strong quarter and we’re well positioned for another great year at Axon. I’m particularly proud of the Axon Body 5 team for such an awesome launch at IACP. AB4 set a high bar in this category and we believe AB5 further differentiates Axon as the technology leader in public safety. We continue to focus on the magical formula of pairing world-class innovation with the strongest channel in the industry, and that combination is once again proving to unlock tremendous value.
The team had another strong bookings quarter in Q3 and is working hard to deliver on a very promising pipeline in Q4. Total bookings and 5-year normalized bookings are up more than 20% year to date, and even better bookings across some of the newer parts of the portfolio. Dedrone, 911, Fūsus and AI have more than doubled from last year and have already exceeded $1 billion in bookings year to date, and we could see that number double in Q4 alone as the pipeline supports it.
The opportunity for these products is not a theoretical TAM. We are winning in them, and that’s true across our growing set of customers, too. First, state and local. This remains the foundation of Axon and the business is performing at a very high level. The team is built around mission-driven, customer-focused individuals at the top of their profession, and I am in awe of their consistency and work ethic. Another team firing on all cylinders is corrections. It is amazing to see how far Axon has come in this market. Our three largest deals this quarter were all major ecosystem deployments with three different state DOCs — one eight-figure and two nine-figure multi-year agreements across nearly everything we sell.
Think about that. A customer vertical that was almost entirely new to us not too long ago is now going all in on Axon. Axon International is right there, too. Bookings are up more than 30% year to date on top of a record year last year, and we have several massive deals in Q4 that should accelerate that growth. Then there’s enterprise. We are still really early here, but about two years ago we signed our first major enterprise customer agreement for Fūsus across roughly 300,000 video streams. Today we are working on an even larger agreement with that same customer to add body cameras and AI solutions like Meta Coach. That’s the playbook: land, deliver delight, and earn the right to do more.
Finally, federal. Coming off last year we said we expected this business to start picking up and that’s exactly what happened with bookings. Year to date, we’re up more than 5x last year’s results. We also have several very large federal opportunities in the pipeline across Dedrone, TASER, and body cameras. We have a good line of sight into these projects, but we are seeing federal procurement move a bit slower around funding and election cycles, and some programs are simply taking longer to work through approvals and deployment steps than we originally anticipated.
Three large federal Dedrone deployments are really the clearest example of what we’re talking about. Together they represent about $130 million of revenue and $200 million of bookings that we expected in the second half of this year. One $30 million deployment was expected in Q3 and then two more totaling another $100 million were marked in our Q4 forecasts. Unfortunately, we’re seeing some delays and we can’t be sure those come through this year.
The reality is these projects are different from what Axon has historically dealt with at this scale. A major counter-drone deployment can involve sites to prepare, equipment to install, federal procurement requirements, ITAR and export permitting, acceptance testing, and operational requirements. Sometimes things outside of our control or even outside of the customer’s control take a little longer. And because these are hardware-heavy deployments, one individual project can represent tens of millions of dollars of revenue at once.
Historically, even very large Axon customer agreements tended to recognize revenue over a longer period. Now, a single Dedrone deployment can move our reported growth rate by hundreds of basis points between quarters. That’s a new dynamic for us. We’re calling this out very specifically because I don’t want it to obscure what we’re seeing in the rest of the business, because the demand picture is still very, very strong. As counter-drone gets bigger, particularly with federal and international customers, we are going to have to work through that dynamic quarter to quarter and be thoughtful about how much timing-sensitive hardware we assume in our guidance for this year. We’re taking a very conservative approach.
If some of these deployments get done before December 31, we will treat those as upside, but we are not going to force a deployment or bank on timing we don’t fully control just because our fiscal year is ending, especially when so much federal momentum is mounting. While a newer dynamic to manage, we’re thrilled to be working on opportunities this large in such a relevant and fast-moving space and in a business we have so much confidence in. On a similar note, I want to talk about inventory. Our inventory investment is affecting free cash flow this year, and we’re actually accelerating some of that investment because we see the opportunity to get ahead of demand, especially in the Dedrone platform. That’s what drove over $100 million of increased inventory in Q3 alone. But I want to be very clear about this and about how I think about the puts and takes of these decisions. Number one, we sell mission-critical tools that save lives.
First responders depend on our ability to ship products in a timely manner. Number two, our core hardware does not go obsolete. We sell tens of thousands of X2s and Axon Body 3s beyond their useful life, despite these product lines being 15 and 6 years old respectively. This makes us different from almost every other connected device company. Given the lack of obsolescence risk — and this, number three — our planning work suggests the risk of geopolitical conflict like China and Taiwan disrupting access to certain critical components like batteries and chips, and that risk could be roughly in the range of 10% to 25% depending on the component and the scenario. In that event, Axon would have limited access to these components given our volumes relative to the major consumer hardware brands that rely on the same components.
Now, again, this hardware does not go obsolete. This is the foundational element, and it’s very unique to Axon, that makes this strategy viable. To be clear, we’re not predicting a major supply chain disruption next year, and we’ll be thrilled if one never comes into fruition. But for Axon, where we have the balance sheet to easily mitigate this risk, we’re doing something about it. What do we get for that investment? We get better product availability, we get more flexibility in purchasing, we have more confidence in what we can deliver, and we have greater insulation if something disruptive happens in the supply chain.
I don’t see many better ways we can directly invest in our own business than this. We have spent years earning our customers’ trust, as Rick mentioned, and I don’t want to put that trust at risk because we’re trying to optimize for one year of free cash flow. Once we hit the desired inventory state in Q1 or in early Q2 of 2027, the inventory spend will be reduced to backfilling the supply and, as the risk hopefully dissipates, we will take the inventory levels back down at the appropriate time.
I generally do not talk much about inventory on these calls, as everybody knows, but given the investment as well as my absolute conviction that this is the right strategy for Axon, I wanted to spend a few minutes on it today. In the midst of our best year in company history, we remain maniacally focused on delivering over the long term for both our customers and our shareholders, and we will do just that. Over to you, Brittany.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Josh. Rick and Josh covered a lot of ground and there is a lot to be excited about. Since the financials are in our shareholder letter, I’ll just add some additional color. Revenue was $909 million, up 28% year over year. We expected the third quarter to reflect normal seasonality, which it did. In addition, though, we had the large federal Dedrone deal Josh discussed. If that had landed in the quarter, we would have been up over 30%. Connected Devices revenue increased 16% to $472 million. Platform Solutions was a standout, growing 106% year over year to $125 million, driven primarily by Dedrone. Even without the large federal deal, Dedrone delivered its second-largest quarter ever, even coming off of several large World Cup-related shipments in Q2. Demand remains very strong and the pipeline of large projects keeps building. However, as these deals get larger, particularly with federal and international customers, the timing of individual projects can move results from quarter to quarter, as Josh mentioned, so we’re resetting how we guide.
We’ll include these deals once we’re confident they’ll ship in the quarter, which keeps them as upside and limits timing risk going forward. Taser revenue of $233 million declined modestly on lower Taser 7 sales. We continue to see strong Taser 10 demand, as evidenced by our largest-ever T10 deal last quarter, and we expect the category to grow again next quarter. We also just launched Taser Ion, where the early customer response indicates a compelling future growth opportunity by expanding the pool of potential Taser customers. Within personal sensors, Body 4 grew 25% sequentially, in line with our expectations.
Body 4 demand remains strong, and with Body 5 launching next spring, we will begin another major body camera upgrade cycle for customers. Software and Services was the true highlight of our quarter. Revenue growth accelerated almost 700 basis points sequentially to 43% year over year at $437 million. Software and Services delivered its highest quarterly contribution ever and is approaching half of total company revenue. Growth continued to be driven by our digital evidence management business and increasingly by newer software offerings. Real-Time Operations, Records, AI, drone software, and 911 collectively reached an annual revenue run rate of nearly $500 million, more than doubling from last year.
That strength is also showing up in our recurring metrics. ARR increased 40% year over year to $1.8 billion, and net revenue retention remains strong at 126%. Turning to profitability, adjusted gross margin was 59.2%. Gross margin continues to reflect product mix and increased component costs, particularly memory. We believe winning early in significant new markets like counter-drone is more than worth the near-term mix impact, and over time we’ll work to continue improving these margins through operating scale and an increased mix of software. Memory costs are driving approximately 50 basis points of headwind to margins this year, with the highest impact expected in Q4 since we benefited from lower-priced inventory purchased earlier in the year.
Our current planning assumption is that elevated memory costs remain a headwind through ’27 and ’28, but that pricing doesn’t continue to increase materially from what we’re seeing today. Given those gross margin headwinds, operating leverage remains an important driver of our margin expansion. Adjusted EBITDA increased more than 33% year over year to $236 million, representing a margin of 25.9%. On cash flow, Josh covered the primary driver this year: our intentional investment in inventory. We expect to reach our target inventory levels in 1H27, and from there the cash impact should begin to normalize. Excluding the inventory investments this year, free cash flow conversion on adjusted EBITDA would exceed our 60% target, and once we are through these investments, we expect to get back to that target.
For the full year, we expect to generate $350 to $400 million of free cash flow. That compares to our prior target of $450 million, as we continue to invest more in inventory. At the midpoint, conversion is about 40%, and Q4 free cash flow alone would be approximately $450 million. I’d also like to touch on our capital structure. Our goal is to build a capital structure that minimizes our cost of capital while preserving operating flexibility and allowing us to invest back into the business both organically and inorganically when we see compelling opportunities. We continue to focus on cash generation, and this quarter we felt the convertible market offered historically attractive terms. As a result, we raised $1.15 billion and are using those proceeds to add cash to the balance sheet as well as fund part of our Skydio investment.
The $1.2 billion investment in Skydio will be a mix of cash and stock, approximately 60/40. In the P&L, you’ll see revenue from the Skydio partnership in Software and Services at our channel margin. And since we don’t have control or significant influence over their operations, there is no consolidation or equity method accounting. We’re very excited to make what we think is a compelling investment and to deepen our relationship through an exclusive channel partnership with the best U.S.-made drone company and a world-class team.
Now turning to guidance, we expect fourth-quarter revenue of $990 million to $1.01 billion. Our Q4 outlook no longer assumes two large federal drone deployments totaling approximately $100 million. Combined with the $30 million federal Dedrone deployment that moved out of Q3, these three programs represent approximately $130 million, or nearly 500 basis points of growth this year, that was included in our prior second-half expectations. Even without these materializing, the midpoint of our growth for the year is still above 30% for the fifth straight year.
We now expect fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA of approximately $245 to $250 million, implying full-year adjusted EBITDA of $924 to $929 million, or approximately 25.6% margin overall. We’re proud of the 28% growth we delivered in Q3 and excited for what we are going to deliver in Q4. The underlying demand picture remains strong, supported by our $15.8 billion of future contracted bookings. Our product innovation is paving the way for the future. We’re balancing investment in the business with delivering profitability and cash flow. We look forward to sharing more on 2027 and our longer-term outlook when we report Q4 earnings in February.
Eric, back to you.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you. All right, it looks like we’re all up in gallery mode, so we’ll start taking questions. Just an ask so that we can try to get to everyone today to keep it to one question if possible, and we can circle back around. We’ll start with Joe Cordoso at JPMorgan.
Joe Cordoso (Analyst at JPMorgan)
Hey, thanks for the question. Yeah, so maybe one question that I’d ask here is, just starting off with the Skydio announcement, you know, maybe just can you take us a little bit deeper in terms of the strategic rationale, both in terms of the investment and the increased ownership as well as the distribution exclusivity, you know, and is this a path to 100% ownership situation longer term?
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, I think I’ll take that one. So look, we spent a lot of time thinking about this, and we love Skydio, and, you know, we looked at what is the right structure, and right now what we think is best for both of us is to be the most successful partners under this structure. With their exclusive distribution in public safety, that protects our core market, and we’re providing them with more dollars to invest to go further, expanding their lead in autonomous drone technology.
What’s great about this is I believe this is a foundational technology that will drive the next decade. Flying robots will be everywhere. It’s going to be much bigger than DFR in public safety. It’ll impact everything we touch. So under this structure, Skydio can do what they do best, and we can do what we do best. We have real ownership in them and the future they’re building without holding them back. When I look a few years out from now, I think what we’ll see is we’ll both be in a much stronger position than we would have been if they were part of Axon Enterprise at this moment in time. It means we have an incredible partner, we’re fully aligned, and we can run the ball down the field together. Now, we’ll see what the future holds. But at this moment in time, you know, after a lot of consideration, we thought this was the right disciplined approach that created a true win-win.
Josh Isner (President)
I might just jump in and add a couple more considerations just in terms of the practicality of everything. You know, to be the number one drone company in America, which we have a lot of confidence Skydio is and will be well into the future, this is going to be a particularly, you know, large investment cycle for Skydio to onshore more of their supply chain and to continue to build out all of their needs around, you know, how to scale a U.S.-based drone company that’s independent of China or other markets in terms of the supply chain.
And you couple that with just the amount they’re investing in the growth. Doing that unencumbered, on their own, you know, as a separate company, I think is the thing that allows that to happen to the fullest. And frankly, you know, we’ve made four or five acquisitions in the last few years, and we’re seeing all of the benefits of those acquisitions. We’re seeing the growth, we’re seeing the adoption, and, you know, for us right now, we need to make sure we continue to see that through. When you look at Fusus, the opportunity in both public safety and enterprise is significant. You look at Dedrone, despite some of the timing, this business is moving fast and showing a lot of promise. 911, you know, we continue to win new 911 centers around the country. And so, you know, when you look at all these things, we have plenty of work to do in the next couple of years, and Skydio has to continue to execute and heavily invest to make sure that they widen their lead in U.S. public safety. And so, you know, thinking through all of that, this structure was the best possible way to land the plane, so to speak, on that—or land the drone.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thanks, Joe. Up next, we have Ryan Abbott at Piper Sandler.
Ryan Abbott (Analyst at Piper Sandler)
Thanks for taking my question. Could you give a bit more color on the reasons for the delays of the federal drone deals? Was that related more to delays in closing the deals, or was that related to any issues with getting the hardware for those deals?
Josh Isner (President)
More so the former, but also, you know, making sure that we have availability of the hardware to ship. And, you know, ultimately these systems consist of a lot of hardware from a lot of different sources, including stuff that we make, and so matching all that up takes a little time. But more so the timing. I think going into the election cycle, that certainly had an effect on the timing. And then, you know, just the general procurement. I think one thing that’s a little different about federal is they close their fiscal year September 30th.
And so, you know, they had a lot of priorities to get through. There were, you know, like we said, some dynamics around the election. And now, you know, on October 1st, they’re just starting their fiscal year. So while we’re moving fast on some of these procurements, they don’t necessarily have the, you know, just starting out their fiscal year, they’re going to have flexibility in the next couple of quarters as to how they want to time these deployments and orders.
And so we thought it was prudent to make sure we’re being very conservative in how we talk about those opportunities.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I would just add, I think you can see in our inventory investment and one of the reasons it was higher in Q3 is because we have been investing in the inventory that we will need to support these big deals. So I think the good news is that we’re not seeing an underlying risk to demand or need for this product. It truly is just a timing piece and a lot of that timing comes down to how big some of these deals are.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you. Thanks, Ryan. Up next, we have Mike Ng at Goldman Sachs.
Mike Ng (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Good afternoon. Thank you for the question. Mine is just on Skydio. In the letter you talked about Skydio expecting a billion dollars of bookings this year. I was just wondering if you could add a little bit more texture in terms of the opportunity set. You know, can you sell DFR in the markets that you currently operate in? Are there additional legal or other types of regulations and approvals that you need to make those markets actionable? And then anything you could share around expected growth rates off of that billion dollars of bookings and thoughts around how we should think about the channel take rate.
If typical IT channel distribution is kind of in that low to high single digits, are you something better than that just given your unique go-to-market? Thank you.
Josh Isner (President)
Sure thing. Yeah. Ultimately, one of the most valuable elements of this partnership for Axon is the channel exclusivity in U.S. public safety. And frankly, we’ve talked a lot over the years about what we view as our strengths as a company, and at the top of that list is our channel. And so we certainly believe we can help, as we have historically, continue to proliferate Skydio. It certainly fits very nicely into the Axon ecosystem and network and adds a very, very important capability.
I would say, whenever Skydio is in a deal, they generally don’t lose it. The deals that they’re not winning are the deals that, for one reason or another, were outside of their radar. And I think, again, with our channel, that will minimize some of that risk into the future. And then outside of public safety, Mike, we certainly see a ton of opportunity for Skydio in enterprise as well. We’re partnering on several large deals with Skydio being a piece of the overall network that we sell into these enterprises. And there the DFR use case is still very, very viable. Some of the largest companies in the United States are in our pipeline jointly with Skydio now, and certainly another opportunity for both of us to add value together.
So absolutely very bullish. We’ve talked a lot about this idea of the land-and-expand motion in public safety, and now we’re seeing it in enterprise. Skydio is just another landing point here now that allows us to expand our capabilities and the value we deliver to these customers.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you. Up next, we have Josh Riley at Needham.
Josh Riley (Analyst at Needham)
Great. Thanks for taking my question. What are you seeing from customers following the fallout from one of your competitor’s PR challenges in terms of deals pushing, if at all? It seems the LAPD deal renewal still requires City Council approval to close and has been a high-profile news event there locally. They’re yet to vote on it when the existing deal you had there expired a few months ago. Thanks, guys.
Josh Isner (President)
Yeah, thanks, Josh. Look, I think it’s always a great thing when democracy rules the day on all of this. So I would not characterize it ever as bad when city councils approve new technologies. We embrace that part of the process and, frankly, we’re going through it in a lot of different places right now. I would say the big takeaways are there are some jurisdictions that are very excited about ALPR and there are some that are less excited about it or don’t want it at all.
And our job is to support the customer and their communities on the projects they desire. So I would say in general, if ALPR is not something that’s desired and it was part of the deal historically, this isn’t one of those things that’s like, oh, the whole deal is getting off track. It’s more like, hey, we’ll remove this, and you work with your community on a policy that’ll work and a deployment that’ll work, and then we’ll re-explore it into the future. But for now, certainly, I think the value we add across body cameras, TASER devices, Fusus, our connected devices, and so forth is something that’s widely supported regardless of how someone looks at the world.
And so it’s kind of business as usual on the bookings front and the deal conversion front for us. There are some that are including ALPR where folks are excited about it and some where it’s not included. Most of all, it’s important that public safety and the communities they serve are on the same page as to what they want and what they support and how these products can add value to their communities without compromising privacy and trust.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, the one thing I would add, we’re seeing a lot of activity around ALPR legislation, and most of it is really pretty constructive. So I think what we’re hearing from a lot of our customers, too, is like, hey, we’re going to take a pause until we get the right safeguards in place. I’m hopeful. You know, again, the political landscape changed a lot in the last 36 hours, and I only say that in that it’s less predictable. We’re going to have a new party in power in Congress, so it’s hard to know exactly what’s going to happen there.
But personally, I have faith that the pressure to do something is going to remain. There’s a lot of focus on AI in general, and I think a lot of the work we’ve done around ethics and responsibility positions us well to be a thought partner with our political leaders as they figure this out, and the technology partner. And again, we’ve had several hundred agencies already come over to us from competitors, and the number one reason is the trust that they feel that we’re going to do it the right way with them. And there’s many hundreds more that are in the pipeline.
Josh Riley (Analyst at Needham)
Awesome. Thank you, guys.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you, Josh. Up next, we have Tim Long at Barclays.
Tim Long (Analyst at Barclays)
Thank you. I wanted to touch on the AB5 launch. Could you talk a little bit about how meaningful you think this can be? Obviously, you have two products there, one leaning heavily into on-device and AI features. So just hoping you could talk about the rollout and how you see, number one, an upgrade cycle in the context of having a lot of the customer base already on subscriptions where maybe they might already have an upgrade planned in there. So does it supersede that a little bit?
And secondly, what you think this could mean for things like the AI Era Plan or other software applications that you’re selling in addition to the body cam itself. Thank you.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, maybe I’ll take this first. Look, the memory costs in particular hit pretty hard on AB5, and as we were looking at it, we’ve identified we have two customer segments. We have those that tend to be more leaning into AI and really looking at the full solution set, and then we have other customers that are more price-focused. We felt, given the cost structure of what was happening with memory and the higher-end microprocessors, that it made sense for us to bifurcate at this point to be able to serve the more cost-sensitive customers.
At the same point, we always want to make sure we’re the technology leader in the space. So we think this gives us the ability to serve those different segments. Maybe I’ll just add a little bit on the timing piece. With that timing of some spring of next year, I think as we look at our personal sensors business, I would still expect we see nice performance in that personal sensors business in Q4 because, to your point, we do have customers who are on regular refresh and upgrade cycles. You might see a little bit of a pause in Q1 just because we’ll be so close to the launch of AB5, and it really does have some fantastic additional features.
And then I think you can see that we’ll get a lot of traction and a lot of excitement as we go through next year on that AB5 launch. In terms of unlocking other AI features, we continue to have such a huge opportunity in front of us in terms of our AI software. We’re growing nicely. We’re really happy to share the $100 million of ARR, but that $100 million of ARR still has a ton of opportunity ahead of it. I think this only helps drive that.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Okay, thank you. Thanks, Tim. Up next, we have Keith House of Northcoast Research.
Keith House (Analyst at Northcoast Research)
Great. Thanks, Eric. Hey, guys. It’s been about a year since you guys have got Prepared and Carbyne and combined them together for Axon 911. And I think, Rick, you said that it’s probably performing better than you expected, but maybe you can unpack a little bit about its performance. And I guess the question I have is, are you guys able to expand what the customers would traditionally pay for those services because of what you bring to the table in terms of just growing the overall pie?
And perhaps any numbers you can give us in terms of how many customers are currently engaged with you in Axon 911?
Josh Isner (President)
Sure, Keith. I’d say that the headline is ARR has doubled across the 911 business this year from the end of last year, so very encouraging from that perspective. The number of 911 centers we have won throughout this year is in the dozens, up from Axon wasn’t really participating in 911 last year. And most importantly, let’s forget about the value add or the things we can sell on top of what’s already being bought. Just the spend that’s there right now, we believe we can win there, and we can displace and move over that current spend to Axon across significant numbers of PSAPs and 911 operations across the country.
Even internationally, we’re seeing some uptake of Carbyne in a couple of large deals in Q4. Carbyne has actually led the way on some of these opportunities that have expanded into the broader Axon ecosystem. That’s really part of the value here: these things are very complementary to each other, and deploying them in tandem will create more value for the customer and, frankly, more efficiency when you think about some of the tools and products in the middle of just taking a 911 call and getting an officer to the scene.
We certainly see a lot of economic value in this as well. Very, very talented teams executing very well, excited about all the progress, and yet another area where we can expand and compete to win more and more customers on the Axon ecosystem. Thanks.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you, Keith. Up next we have Mita Marshall at Morgan Stanley.
Mita Marshall (Analyst at Morgan Stanley)
Great, thanks. In the past, you guys have talked about the learning curve or approval process that went into the demand on some of the report-writing products. Can you speak to how you see that adoption process going on Guardian, or just what early signals are about what the barriers are to getting that deployed with officers? Thanks.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
I would say that, because Guardian is a real-time product, that’s more of an internal thing within the agency. One of the things we did—Mike Wagers, who’s our Chief Customer Officer—did a fantastic job of engaging with police unions early on to make sure that we were covering all the concerns from not only police management but frontline and their representation. We’ve gotten really strong feedback from both. The one thing that is different, that I think maybe slowed down Draft One a bit, is because Draft One creates documents that then have to go over to prosecutors and the courts. We also serve those customers. They tend to be pretty conservative, shall we say, from a technology perspective and had some initial concerns about, my goodness, if AI has written the report, how does that stand up in court? Those are concerns we’ve heard all along, and we’ve built many, many controls to make sure that it is the officer’s—it’s their report.
It’s derived from their speech, their interactions, and they’re dictating what’s happening as they go. So I think the thing that’s made Draft One take a little effort is we have to get the prosecutors to sign off. In part, the fact that we’re also giving them AI tools that help them sort through these briefs as well has been helpful. I think with Guardian, we’re going to see less of that where we have to have secondary agencies sign off. We think the agency internally, together with the union, can make the call, and we’ve just not seen resistance from the unions.
They really love this idea of, wow, anything that can help their officers stay safer and call for assistance when things are escalating is a good thing.
Josh Isner (President)
I’d just add one additional thought, which is, you know, Guardian is the latest of these exciting features that Jeff’s team has done a great job developing. This really demonstrates what we believe will happen over the next couple years with AB5. Now there’s no inhibitor on how much AI can run at the edge on these body cameras with this new system, and thus we can move very, very fast to deliver new capabilities—sometimes more efficiency-related, sometimes more safety- and life-saving-related.
But the cap has kind of been removed on how much of that we can deploy on a body camera, and so we’re very excited to continue to add more and more value associated with these tools. Frankly, as others start to think about a real-time translator for the first time or Draft One, we are so far beyond that at this point in terms of the capabilities we’re going to be able to deploy on these body cameras. And we consider the second lens in there as well. Just very excited about what the future holds and the value we’ll be able to deliver across products like Guardian to our customers.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
That’s right. I think that just builds on—you’ve heard us talk a lot about this unique combination of the physical socket on an officer’s body or in a car or wherever it is, combined with practically applied AI in the moments where it matters. Anyone can put a translation app on a phone that’s in your pocket that you have to pull out and blah, blah, blah. But connecting that immediately to the body camera that’s already on their chest with the right speakers, the right microphone, the right connectivity—hands-free, eyes-free, tailored for the officer—that unique intersection of the AI with the physical objects is a huge part of our sustained differentiation.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you, Mita. Up next we have Will Power at Baird.
Will Power (Analyst at Baird)
All right, great. Yeah, thanks, team, for taking the question. I guess I want to shift back to the original product, Taser, and try to better understand the outlook there and what that means to the total company growth going forward. I get a lot of investor questions around what inning are we in? Is this the third inning? Is it the fifth inning? Is this a low double-digit grower from here? And if it is, what’s the confidence level you can get to your 30% five-year revenue CAGR growth guidance?
Ultimately, I think that’s the key question here, especially with a revenue short-term fall in Q4. What kind of underpins that continuing confidence, and where does Taser maybe, as a piece, fit in that?
Josh Isner (President)
Yeah, I’d say the Taser business is performing very, very well—roughly 2x the adoption of Taser 7. You could do the math on the five-year intervals of Tasers, and certainly we’re excited to, upon that anniversary, be moving forward with more exciting capabilities with the Taser. I think the U.S. continues to grow in Taser adoption, but it’s getting met more and more with adoption across federal and international. Ultimately, all of those markets will be a piece of the equation for continued Taser growth.
We’re very optimistic about what Taser can contribute well out into the future. And I think the big takeaway here is, even with relatively conservative expectations, 30% plus growth across this business, with a lot of large Dedrone deals slipping out, is a pretty good data point to show the strength and momentum that our core business has and continues to drive across our major markets. We’re feeling very, very confident and very bullish on Taser continuing to be a big part of that equation.
Rick, I’ll kick it over to you in case you want to add anything.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
I would just say, you know, Taser Ion is also a good one. We’re launching another variant that opens up some new avenues as we’re a little past mid-cycle, shall we say, on Taser 10. I’m very bullish on Taser. I still see that we have not yet launched the Apollo Dart—the one that will penetrate through heavy clothing. We’d announced that like 18 months ago. We thought we’d have it out this winter. That has been a difficult problem. We’re doing a lot of tuning.
I’m very personally involved and will continue to be. I think that will be a step-change function because once we take heavy clothing off the table, then I think we earn the right to become the primary defensive weapon in many countries around the world, and that I think will really drive international adoption. Ten years from now, the international market for Tasers should be larger than the domestic market. The only thing that’s prevented that from happening is the domestic market has just kept growing faster, frankly, than we thought.
Josh Isner (President)
Anything—oh, sorry, go ahead.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Well, I was going to give you a little modeling help, but if you want to jump in before, you can maybe—
Will Power (Analyst at Baird)
The modeling help—yeah, I just was underpinning the five-year 30% CAGR guidance, right?
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. So I would say, one, remember that Q3 is a seasonally softer quarter, and so I wouldn’t read more into Taser than that. We had an incredibly big deal in Taser last quarter, which made that number look absolutely fantastic, but you are going to see just a little bit more lumpiness quarter to quarter. I wouldn’t have necessarily expected it to be big in Q3. We will see growth in Taser as we look at Q4. And then, to Rick’s point, there continues to be good growth in Taser 10. You are certainly seeing a double-digit grower—I don’t know where in the double digits, but you’re seeing a double-digit grower going forward. Ion helps with that. Some of the other things Rick talked about help with that. And then I think, while we’re not really giving an update on our long-term guidance, to Josh’s point, underneath some of the timing of the federal deals, nothing has changed in the business.
We continue to feel really good about the demand and those underlying drivers. When we say we’re resetting how we think about guidance, we’re looking at those big, lumpy federal and international Dedrone deals. Everything else is performing, I would say, as well as we would like it to—or, in the case of some of our new software, even better than we were expecting.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah. Hey, by the way, one thing I want to add there: one thing I want to avoid is that this company ever gets so focused on being predictable that we stop doing things that are innovative and disruptive. The things that are happening with Dedrone—counter-drone is a business that is growing exponentially, and the worldwide need is incredible. We want to play in those markets, and that’s to me far more important. I will fight the forces of mediocrity that would say, no, we should just build a business that’s very predictable.
No. If everything we’re doing is predictable, we are not stretching far enough. Now, we want to do a good job helping you model the more mature parts of the business, but we are going to take those risks because we think that’s how we continue to deliver growth in the 30% range—and, by the way, solve problems that are super valuable for society, for our shareholders, and for our customers.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thanks, Will. Up next, we have Andrew Spinola at UBS.
Andrew Spinola (Analyst at UBS)
Thanks, Eric. Brittany, the comment about the gross margin pressure from memory for fiscal ’26—I think you said it was 50 bps—was that to Connected Devices or was that consolidated? And can you give us a little bit of color: if pricing stays here, what sort of pressure do you expect in fiscal ’27 from memory, and how does that affect your thoughts on margin expansion? Thanks.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, so the 50 basis points was consolidated—really to consolidated adjusted EBITDA. But the way that it works for us, because we do invest in inventory and then we capitalize that inventory in, is we didn’t see much of an impact from memory in the first half of the year because we were doing that at old memory prices. You started to see a little bit in Q3, it ramped in Q4, and then it will hit us harder for next year than it hit us in Q4 of this year.
You guys can go back into it, but that’s more than a 4x impact on that 50 basis points, roughly. That’s obviously a challenge for us on gross margins, and I think you’re seeing some of the gross margins come down because of that. I do think it’s a challenge that’ll be with us through ’27 and ’28, and then hopefully we are not in as difficult a position with memory as we are today. I also don’t have a perfect crystal ball on that, so I can just tell you what I’m assuming, and what I’m assuming is that we have relatively stable memory prices, and what you’re seeing is that catch up into our P&L. We will obviously work to offset that—Rick talked about us thinking about how we had to price AB5 and how we had to manage memory in AB5. So we are thinking about that impact as we come out with new products; we’ll think about that impact as we think about pricing. We have some tailwinds because of the strength in our Software and Services business. And then finally, as we think about our EBITDA targets, it means we really need to do a good job on our OPEX leverage.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Up next, we have Jonathan Ho at William Blair.
Jonathan Ho (Analyst at William Blair)
Hi, good afternoon. Can you maybe help us understand what the impact was on the federal deals from an adjusted EBITDA perspective, particularly on the incremental side? Was it similar to the 45% that you’ve talked about? Just wanted to understand the profitability impact to guide that happened from the deferral.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. So we have talked about, for Dedrone, the fact that it is slightly dilutive to our connected devices gross margin. But remember, it is still revenue and especially on those federal deals, it’s relatively large revenue. And so there is a flow-through impact from that on EBITDA because it just gives us less leverage on our overall OPEX portfolio. So Dedrone is, it’s very helpful to EBITDA, but it’s just slightly lower on that gross margin perspective in connected devices.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thanks, Jonathan. Up next, we have Andrew Sherman at TD Cowen.
Andrew Sherman (Analyst at TD Cowen)
Great, thanks. Hey, everybody. Josh, on the bookings front, how should we think about Q4 growth? You’ve done 25% year to date in the five year. How do you feel about hitting that in the big seasonal Q4? Did you see any deals pushed to Q4? You mentioned the newer products have done a billion in bookings year to date, which could double in Q4. So just help us with the cadence of bookings and your visibility into Q4. Thanks.
Josh Isner (President)
Yeah, thanks, Andrew. And good to see you. Yeah, bookings I feel good about. Like we have the pipeline right in front of us just like kind of going into every Q4 and now it’s about, you know, making sure we execute on it. But the pipeline is very promising. You know, losing the couple hundred million of Dedrone, you know, that would translate into 130 million of revenue. You know, that that makes it, you know, a little more challenging to get there.
But we have a lot of large deals across a lot of markets and our job is to execute on as many of those as we can by the end of the year. And I have a lot of confidence in our team to do so. So. So it should be another very strong year in bookings.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thanks, Josh. Yep. Thanks, Andrew. Up next, we have Trevor Walsh at Citizens.
Trevor Walsh (Analyst at Citizens)
Cool. Thanks, Eric. Hey all, thanks for taking the question, Josh. Maybe since you spent a lot of time talking about it, or a good amount of time on the inventory investments, it sounds like early ’27 is when you expect some of those to start to moderate or you think you’ve gotten, I guess, through that phase. If it stretches longer, I guess two-part question, how should we think about what you’ve given for ’27 kind of free cash flow kind of outlook if it kind of goes, if those investments go longer?
And if they do, I’m assuming that’s probably a good thing from the standpoint of, again, you’re probably seeing additional demand and you want to get ahead of that from just having things available. And so I guess how, maybe another way, how confident are you in that kind of earlier ’27 of those?
Josh Isner (President)
Trevor? Very, very confident. Early 2027, like mostly Q1, maybe a little bit into Q2, a very clear target on where we want our inventory to be by product line. And you know, for the core stuff it’s about a year. And so you can imagine once we get to a year of inventory and we sell a quarter’s worth, we’ll backfill a quarter’s worth but we’re not going to take it beyond a year. And like I said, as the risk, you know, hopefully dies down over the next 12 to 18 months, we’ll right-size that back down accordingly.
But, but ultimately we just feel like this is such an obvious decision given the puts and takes of our business. I understand that it’s relatively unconventional, you know, given the life cycles of hardware in a lot of businesses and the obsolescence risk. But for us, you know, having just done some X2 deals in Q3, it’s like there’s just not that risk of carrying this amount of inventory for us. And if it means it mitigates the biggest risks we see into the future and especially the ones we have no control over, you know, we think this is a obvious decision to do this and we understand it’s come at a cost of free cash flow this year.
But ultimately if these risks materialize, that’ll be a very, very small price to pay for having the ability to ship customer orders and to be able to continue to grow revenue, which you know, obviously is tied to hardware shipments. And so we think this is the right decision for us. And you know, we realize there’s been, you know, like with all hard decisions there’s been a little pain associated with it this year, but that pain will subside very quickly going into next year.
Brittany Bagley (Chief Financial Officer)
Trevor, with the updated guide we’re expecting about 40% conversion this year. Next year, we’ll call it conservatively half a year of having an inventory investment, and then we expect we can be back to that 60% by 2028. So, you know, it’s not a firm guide but you can imagine we’ll be better than this year but not back to our long-term target yet.
Trevor Walsh (Analyst at Citizens)
Thanks, Paul.
Eric (Investor Relations)
Thank you, Trevor. And thanks, team. I think we just hit the hour here, so maybe we’ll pass it to Rick to close us out.
Patrick W Smith (Chief Executive Officer)
All right. Hey, thanks, everybody, for tuning in. I hope you all have a very happy holiday season. We’re excited to see what Q4 carries, excited to get these new products into the market. And we’ll see you all—go hug your kids, your loved ones this holiday season—and we’ll see you in 2027.
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