Key Highlights

● Fiscal 2026 Revenue was $48.3 million, down 1.5%.

● Adjusted EBITDA reached a record $5.8 million for the year.

● AI-related annual Recurring Revenue was $0.8 million in the fourth quarter, up 125% sequentially.

● Cash was $12.6 million at year-end with no revolver borrowings.

Research Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:RSSS) closed fiscal 2026 with record adjusted EBITDA and a growing set of AI-related integrations that it hopes will broaden its revenue base. The scientific-content platform, whose results for the year ended June 30, 2026 were released in September, reported modest revenue contraction alongside higher profit and a larger share of platform sales. Its partnerships with AI assistants and publishers sit at the center of the fiscal 2027 narrative, and investors may want to separate confirmed figures from management ambition.

Latest Company Context

Research Solutions operates Article Galaxy, a document-delivery and workflow platform, and Scite, a citation-analysis tool. In February 2026 it launched Article Galaxy and Scite connectors, using the Model Context Protocol, that let users reach its tools through ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot. It also introduced a publisher gateway that makes content from roughly 40 indexed publishers discoverable by AI agents while protecting paywalled full text, and the company says it has signed its first two gateway agreements.

Financial terms were not disclosed. For fiscal 2026, revenue was $48.3 million, down 1.5%, while platform revenue rose 9.8% to $20.8 million, or 43% of the total. Gross Margin improved 260 basis points to 51.9%, and the company's chief strategy officer, Josh Nicholson, said about 43% of content accessed by AI agents is paywalled, which frames the rights-cleared delivery opportunity. Net Income was $2.8 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, and adjusted EBITDA reached a record $5.8 million.

Key Business and index Drivers

Annual recurring revenue ended the year at $22.5 million, up 7.8%, with business-to-business ARR rising 14.1% to $16.2 million and consumer ARR falling 5.6% to $6.3 million. AI-related ARR was $0.8 million in the fourth quarter, up 125% sequentially. Management said it introduced metered billing for AI-agent usage and that agentic access roughly doubled contract value on average, though fiscal 2026 connector deals were almost entirely upsells to existing Scite customers.

Fourth-quarter revenue fell 2.9% to $12.1 million, and net income was $666,000, compared with $2.4 million a year earlier, which had included a $1.1 million earnout adjustment. Operating Cash Flow for the year was $5.3 million. The company provided no formal financial guidance for fiscal 2027, but chief executive Roy Olivier has pointed to a large pipeline of AI-related revenue opportunities, which is an expectation, not a result. The company also noted that about three-quarters of connector usage comes from paid plans.

What Investors Should Watch

Investors may watch whether AI-related ARR keeps compounding from a small base, and whether new customers, not just existing Scite clients, adopt the connectors. Further publisher gateway signings and any disclosed Economics could clarify how large that channel might become. Management expects transaction revenue to stabilize while still declining at a low-single-digit rate, and consumer revenue to stay roughly flat, so progress in business-to-business sales is likely to drive the headline trend.

Cash was $12.6 million at year-end with no revolver borrowings, which management says provides room for remaining Scite earnout payments and for considering strategic alternatives; the nature of any such alternatives was not specified. The next catalyst is the fiscal 2027 first-quarter report, expected around November based on last year's schedule of November 13, though the date should be confirmed with the company.

Early AI Revenue, Slim Growth

Research Solutions enters fiscal 2027 with improved margins, record adjusted EBITDA and a set of AI integrations that are early but measurable. Revenue is still slightly shrinking overall, and the Partnership upside rests on adoption that has yet to be demonstrated at scale.