Research Solutions closed fiscal 2026 as a two-speed company: a higher-margin research platform that kept adding corporate and academic seats, and a still-larger document-delivery book that lost paid order volume. That mix is the entire investment case. Platform subscriptions now do enough of the work that net income more than doubled even as total sales slipped. The market is treating the print as a shrinking content reseller rather than a software conversion still in mid-inning.
Business-to-business annual recurring revenue, the contracted software that renews, rose fourteen percent. That line finished the year near $16 million and included a still-small artificial-intelligence layer that more than doubled from the prior quarter after the company shipped connectors that let ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot call Scite and Article Galaxy. Consumer Scite subscriptions slipped, and transaction sales fell, especially through the middle two quarters. Gross margin still expanded because platforms carry software-like cost of goods. The equity works only if the recurring side keeps compounding faster than the transaction side decays.
Fourth-quarter sales still declined because transactions did not fully stabilize, and reported earnings fell against a prior-year quarter that booked a large Scite earnout credit. Cash finished the year a bit higher even after four quarterly earnout checks. Three more earnout payments remain in fiscal 2027. The next several quarters resolve whether B2B recurring growth stays in the teens while early AI bookings convert, or whether the transaction fade and the remaining Scite cash drain reassert themselves first.