For full-year 2025, Acorn Energy delivered record revenue of $11,478,000 (up 4.5%) and a third straight year of profitability, powered by 22% growth in high-margin recurring monitoring revenue (about a 95% gross margin) that lifted full-year gross margin 400 basis points to 76.8%. Operating cash flow more than doubled to $2,090,000, year-end cash rose $2.1 million to $4,454,000, and the company remained debt-free. Reported diluted EPS fell to $0.99 from $2.51, but the decline was almost entirely non-operating — 2024 had included a $1.77-per-share deferred-tax benefit versus $0.18 in 2025 — while total hardware revenue slipped 8% on the timing of the large national cell phone contract and an $885,000 drop in non-cash deferred-revenue amortization, and residential generator demand stayed soft industry-wide. The headline strategic development was a new partnership with AIO (All In One): a capital-light acquisition of exclusive North American (plus South/Central American) commercialization rights to AIO's proven monitoring and control suite for cell towers, data centers and utilities, structured as a modest upfront fee plus an ongoing monitoring revenue share, with average sales expected to be five to six times a current Omni sale and first revenue anticipated in the second half of 2026. Management reaffirmed its ~20% average annual revenue-growth target over three to five years, ~50% incremental flow-through to operating income, and pointed to $14.4 million of NOLs as a strategic asset for growth and M&A.
Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining our call today. First, I'd like to remind you that today's remarks, including responses to questions, contain forward-looking statements. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Factors that may impact our future operating results and financial performance include general risks such as potential disruptions to business operations or changes in consumer or customer demand, as well as specific risks related to our ability to execute our operating plan, maintain strong customer renewal rates, and expand our customer base. Additional risks that may arise from changes in technology, competition, or shifts in the macroeconomic or financial environment.
These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are based on management's current beliefs, assumptions, and information that is available as of today. There can be no assurances that the company will meet its growth targets or other strategic goals and objectives. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise such forward-looking statements to reflect future events or specific circumstances that may occur after today. For a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties that may affect our business, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K, which is available online at www.sec.gov or on our own website at acornenergy.com. I'll turn the call over to Jan Loeb, CEO of Acorn and OmniMetrix, for further comments. Jan.
Thank you, Tracy, and thank you all for your interest. In 2025, Acorn Energy achieved record revenue, improved operating income, higher cash flow, and our third straight year of profitability. Our performance benefited from a 22% increase in high-margin monitoring revenue, driven by continued growth in our installed base of remote monitoring endpoints. Our year-over-year Q4 and full year comparisons reflect the benefit of a national cell phone provider contract, the largest in our history. The bulk of hardware revenue for this contract was recorded between Q3 of 2024 and Q2 of 2025, contributing to lower year-over-year hardware revenues in the second half of 2025. The contract also includes one year of monitoring services ratably over 12 months following each hardware unit's commissioning.
We earned very favorable feedback from this customer regarding our technology, monitoring capabilities and customer service, resulting in what we believe is a solid relationship with future potential. Our 2025 hardware revenue was also tempered by an $885,000 decrease in non-cash deferred revenue amortization from units sold prior to September of 2023, when the majority of our hardware sales were deferred and amortized over three years. Acorn's 2025 results reflected $956,000 in revenue from amortization of deferred hardware revenue, a 48% decrease from the $1.84 million recorded in 2024, but with no impact on cash generation. This revenue impact will end this year as we expect the balance of deferred hardware revenue of $168,000 to be fully amortized by August of 2026.
Lastly, our 2025 revenues were also impacted by an industry-wide slowdown in residential generated deployments, which we and other industry participants attribute to high interest rates, fewer major power outages related to hurricanes and other weather events in 2025, as well as inflation and economic uncertainty that impacted consumers' ability or willingness to invest in backup generator security at a cost of approximately $15,000 per installation. Our belief is that consumer generator demand is likely to return to more historic levels as impending factors moderate. Turning to our strategies for growth, we reviewed five complementary core initiatives in today's press release on which I'd like to provide a little more color. One is larger commercial industrial opportunities, which our internal sales teams continue to pursue across various sectors that include healthcare, telecom, real estate, retail, grocery, hospitality, government, and financial institutions.
We have a range of ongoing discussions. The most significant opportunities are with more large organizations that require budget compliance and also longer, more complex sales cycles. Two is the pursuit of strategic relationships to integrate our technology with OEMs or other strategic partners, for example, through white labeling our products for the OEMs. We have ongoing dialogues with a few industry OEMs to bundle OmniMetrix solutions with their product offerings. Currently, our monitors are installed by the dealers in the aftermarket. Our technology, service leadership, and support for all generator brands puts us in a strong position to partner with one or more OEMs.
Their core business isn't providing monitoring services, and by working with us, they can offer a superior solution that offers greater value to their customers, while also providing the potential to reduce or eliminate their overhead and investment in an in-house solution. We believe this is the direction our industry is going, and we continue to work to advance OEM discussions. However, it's difficult to predict the potential or timing of these efforts. Three is expanding our penetration of the residential and small business markets through our network of 600+ generator dealers. While the retail market was slow in 2025, as I mentioned, we are optimistic for a rebound in 2026, given the potential stimulus to secure backup power provided by recent winter storms, as well as moderating interest rates.
One of the larger generator manufacturers has publicly stated they expect a 10% increase in residential generated sales in 2026, we expect to benefit if this does indeed occur. Four is our ongoing investment in research, development, and engineering to enhance existing OmniMetrix products and develop new products. These investments are essential to maintain our competitive position and expand our value proposition and addressable market. Tracy will review our recent product launches momentarily. Five is our ongoing pursuit of accretive opportunities to expand our product offerings, market reach, and customer base with a focus on businesses that have a meaningful monitoring component to their businesses. The nature of the M&A process is that it takes a lot of work, research, and negotiation to get to the point where you have a solid opportunity at an acceptable price.
We are highly motivated to identify and execute on an acquisition to enhance our growth, operating leverage, and monetization of our NOLs, but balance this with a disciplined approach to managing deal terms and risk for our shareholders. Our recent strategic partnership with AIO, which stands for All In One, emerged through our M&A dialogue. AIO is a global leader in remote monitoring and control solutions for critical infrastructure but had no business operations in the U.S. They provide best-in-class technology and cloud-based business intelligence platforms that are successfully deployed at over 110,000 sites in 15 countries. In this case, we found the best path was to secure exclusive North American rights to their proven product suite for what amounts to a modest commitment to invest in building out the business.
AIO solutions target the full cell phone tower campus, as well as solutions for data centers and utility operations. Their monitoring control solutions deliver actionable insights through advanced analytics, machine learning, and comprehensive monitoring of environmental conditions, battery health, security breaches, energy optimization, microgrids, and more. The technology reduces downtime, streamlines maintenance, and provides measurable cost savings and ROI, making it the logical choice for smarter, safer, and more profitable operations. The partnership is a perfect fit for Acorn and our OmniMetrix brand as it substantially expands our product offerings and addressable market by integrating AIO solutions with our industry-leading remote monitoring and control technology. Our 20+ year reputation and established U.S. customer base.
We see exciting growth potential starting with our existing telecommunication customers and then expanding to data center and utilities to strengthen our ability to serve rising demand for data-driven infrastructure management with solutions that protect against power issues, theft, and environmental and other risks while maximizing energy utilization. We anticipate that the average sale of OmniMetrix labeled AIO products will be approximately 5x-6x the average current Omni sale. As we will be sharing SaaS revenue with AIO, it is too early to project what our margins will be. We will be selling AIO technology solutions under the OmniMetrix brand. From our market research, there are no better existing technologies in the industries they serve.
This partnership has the potential to transform our company by expanding the respected OmniMetrix brand into new end markets with a product that would take us many years and significant R&D dollars to develop. We expect to have our first demo unit installed by the end of the month with a large existing telecom client. AIO has been in existence for 18 years. As we have stated, we do not expect any revenues from this partnership until the second half of 2026. We see secular tailwinds that should support our growth in coming years as business and consumers take action to ensure uninterrupted access and support for their energy infrastructure management and regulatory compliance needs.
Energy demands for AI, data centers, electric vehicles, electrification of buildings, and reshoring of industry are all straining the aging U.S. electrical grid, which is also being disrupted by extreme weather events, forest fires, and other natural disasters. Despite a relatively benign year in 2025, we've already seen a rebound in power outages from winter storms so far this year, including severe ice storms across 12 states in the Southern Appalachian in late January, resulting in over 1 million customers without power, many of them for days and some for weeks amidst winter weather. Even if the nation changed course and started massively investing in energy resources and infrastructure today, we are so far behind. It would take many years, if not decades, to meet our rapidly growing energy and reliability needs.
Given the substantial unmet needs of the markets we now serve, we continue to believe 20% average annual revenue growth over the coming three to five years is an achievable target. Further, given the efficiency and scalability of our model, we believe approximately 50% of each incremental revenue dollar from our existing business should flow through to operating income. As a small company, peaks and valleys in purchasing cycles for major hardware orders will persist. We believe that our high margin, capital-light business model positions us very well for the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tracy for financial and operational insights. Tracy?
Thank you, Jan. The key takeaway from our 2025 results is the solid growth we are achieving in our annual recurring monitoring revenue stream, which achieved a 95% growth margin in 2025 and was driven by the ongoing expansion of our installed base of monitored endpoints. We view the steadily growing base of annually recurring high margin revenue as the core value driver for our business, fueled by new hardware deployments, which could continue to be more regular in nature, leading to some variation in year-over-year comparisons. We've provided a fair amount of detail in today's news release, I'll just touch on a few key highlights. Revenue rose 4.5% to $11,478,000, thanks to the diligent efforts of the entire OmniMetrix team. Monitoring revenue grew 22% due to the expansion of monitored endpoints.
Total hardware revenue declined 8% due to the timing of deliveries for our large cell phone customer and a $885,000 decrease in the amortization of deferred hardware revenue. Excluding the impact of declining amortization of deferred hardware revenue, new hardware revenues rose approximately 8% in 2025 compared to prior year. Gross margin improved to 76.8% versus 72.8%, an increase of 400 basis points, reflecting the increase in higher margin monitoring fees as a percentage of revenue and hardware margin improvements related to the cost efficiency of the next generation products that deliver more value.
Diluted earnings per share was $0.99 in 2025, including an $0.18 per share deferred income tax benefit compared to diluted EPS of $2.51 in 2024, which included a $1.77 per share of deferred income tax benefit. Cash flows from operations more than doubled to $2,090,000 in 2025, or an increase of 131% year-over-year. Our year-end cash position improved by $2.1 million to $4,454,000, and we've maintained a strong cash position of $4,131,000 as of March 3rd, 2026, following our investment of $250,000 since December for the AIO OmniMetrix partnership and North American product launch. We also remain debt-free.
I think it's important to note that Acorn was able to release an additional $464,000 of its valuation allowance against our deferred tax assets in 2025 as a result of the Build Back Better Act, which allowed us to treat certain R&D expenses in a more favorable way for tax purposes. This compares to $4.4 million released in 2024, both of which were reflected in our bottom line results. We now maintain a $10.3 million or greater than 70% valuation allowance against $14.4 million in NOL and capital loss carryforward. Most of our NOLs expire in 2031 or later, so we still have plenty of time to utilize them through growth in our existing operations via potential M&A initiatives.
In late 2025, we launched our next generation of generator monitors, the Omni, for the residential market and the OmniPro for commercial and industrial applications. In addition to significant upgrades and new features, design innovations have reduced installation time and service costs while enhancing reliability. We also launched RADex, an enhanced version of our RAD Remote Alternating Current Mitigation disconnect product for the pipeline segment. These next gen product launches enhance our value proposition, expand our technology leadership, and will contribute to our growth in 2026 and beyond. We're very excited about the potential AIO opportunities ahead as well as the other growth opportunities that Jan discussed in his remarks, and we look forward to updating you on our progress. Operator, you may now prepare the lines for questions. Thank you very much.