Research Solutions (RSSS) The 15th Annual East Coast IDEAS Conference summary

Market overview and transformation

• Operates in a large, growing, non-cyclical market driven by AI and digitization of research.

• Transformed from a low-margin article delivery business to a vertical SaaS platform with AI capabilities between 2017 and 2021.

• Recurring revenue increased from $6M to over $20M, with SaaS revenue mix rising from 16% to 37%.

• Customer base and market focus expanded to 60+ verticals, with a single-digit market share in a large TAM.

• Corporate clients account for 80%-85% of revenue, with academic libraries at about 15%.

Product innovation and AI integration

• Offers SITE for AI-powered search and analysis of peer-reviewed research, reducing hallucinations compared to generic AI tools.

• Article Galaxy manages entitlements, subscriptions, and pay-per-view access, optimizing research acquisition costs.

• References product enables storage, organization, and sharing of acquired research within organizations.

• SITE underpins all products, providing advanced analytics, citation metrics, and full-text search.

• AI features include article validation, summarization, and extraction of structured data from research.

Financial performance and business model

• SaaS platform revenue has 85%+ gross margin and is growing 20%+ organically, now exceeding $20M ARR.

• Transactional revenue is stable, about 63% of total, with 25% gross margin; SaaS now generates two-thirds of gross profit.

• Blended gross margin has risen from 39% to nearly 50%, expected to surpass 50% soon.

• Adjusted EBITDA reached $5.1M, with $6.7M in cash flow from operations and $9.9M in cash on hand.

• Cash reserves are earmarked for strategic M&A, not required for organic growth.