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Blackpearl Group builds AI models that help American sales and marketing teams work out which companies are likely to buy, and runs them on a platform it calls the Pearl Engine, which it says processes more than 32 billion buyer signals a day. The Wellington company, listed on the NZX and ASX, has told the market its quarterly loss narrowed to $2.97m in the three months to 30 September, a 34 per cent improvement on the previous quarter, and that it has signed its first distribution agreement in the United States.
The loss was within the guidance the company had given. Blackpearl now says it expects to reach profitability, measured on EBITDAF, in the quarter ending 30 June 2027. That replaces the quarterly forecast it had issued for the September 2026 quarter.
The improvement came mainly from merging sales, marketing, development and customer teams across Blackpearl’s three ventures wherever possible, and refocusing them on selling data and platform services rather than individual software products. The company says the changes cut its quarterly cost base by about 27 per cent on a run-rate basis compared with the fourth quarter of FY26, or roughly $9.4m a year.
Because the changes took effect during the quarter, the September result and the half-year figures capture only part of the savings. The full lower cost base applies starting this quarter. Blackpearl said folding in B2B Rocket, one of its three ventures, delivered permanent reductions and was the largest single contributor to the improvement. It also consolidated marketing for B2B Rocket and Bebop and moved its platform from a build phase to an optimise phase.
The distribution deal is a non-binding heads of agreement with a private US company the release describes as one of the largest data providers in the United States, serving Fortune 500 companies with business-to-business intent data and demand generation. That partner works only with large enterprises and does not serve small and medium US businesses.
Those smaller customers are now referred to Blackpearl, which supplies them with data and platform services and maintains the customer relationship. Revenue is shared, with Blackpearl retaining between 20 and 40 per cent depending on the type of deal. The partner has identified a pipeline of more than 70 companies, with typical deals ranging from US$10,000 to US$30,000 per month.
Because the partner brings the customer, Blackpearl incurs no upfront cost to win the work and recovers its acquisition cost immediately. The company says the incremental cost of serving these customers is low, so most of the revenue reaches the bottom line. Onboarding is quick because Blackpearl already holds the underlying data and applies its models over it. Further distribution agreements are in negotiation.
Revenue for the six months to 30 September was $7.33m, up 42 per cent on the $5.15m recorded in the same period a year earlier. Revenue in the September quarter alone was $3.39m, which the company attributes to the US summer holiday period, when buying decisions slow and new customers are harder and more expensive to win. Rather than spend during that period, Blackpearl chose to invest in launching the partnership strategy.
The company says it has been lifting the share of revenue from data contracts, which now make up about 40 per cent of the total, because it sees durable value sitting in proprietary data and the systems businesses use to generate revenue rather than in applications layered on top. From the current quarter, it will report statutory revenue as its growth measure, since platform revenue is charged based on usage and partnership contracts billed on their own cycles.
Blackpearl measures its technology against rivals on GTM-Bench, a public benchmark of how well AI systems match buyer demand to what sellers offer. In June, its Pearl Engine led the then-leading foundational model by 22,575 points. In September, after what the company calls a significant step in foundational model capability, it led the new leading model by 158,595 points, scoring +205,732 against +47,137.
Chief executive Nick Lissette said the result came as research and development spending increased. “We said we would hit our Q2 EBITDAF guidance and we did. We have updated that guidance to reach profitability during Q1 FY28, and we got there while increasing R&D and extending our technology lead through a significant shift in foundational models. As those models get better, the Pearl Engine gets better,” he said.
Lissette said the company had also changed how it grows. “Our data intelligence now powers other companies’ products and revenue systems, and the US distribution partnership is the first of these,” he said.
The agreement tests whether Blackpearl can grow through other companies’ sales channels rather than its own sales team. If the 70-plus referrals convert, revenue arrives without the upfront cost of finding each customer, which is the difference between a loss-making quarter and a profitable one at this scale.
For smaller firms selling into the US, the arrangement illustrates a model worth watching: a large data provider keeps the enterprise accounts and passes smaller ones to a specialist, who pays for the introduction from revenue rather than upfront. Blackpearl says its priorities for the second half are converting the pipeline into signed contracts, holding the lower cost base and reaching profitability in the June 2027 quarter.
Source: NZX announcements
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