Cadre Holdings, Inc. (CDRE) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Expectation to complete at least one additional transaction before year-end. Earlier this week, we acquired the business and real estate of a key supplier of custom precision, metal fabrication, and other products to our EOD business. We completed this small tuck-in to vertically integrate these capabilities, which we believe will ultimately lead to enhanced productivity and expanded performance for our customers. As we enter the balance of 2026 and into 2027, we maintain substantial financial flexibility and a robust pipeline of potential acquisitions. We continue to target transactions focused on complementary capabilities, new market access, and greater penetration of our existing customer base. At the same time, we are focused on driving greater profitability across our businesses through continued implementation of the CADRE operating model. Our ongoing initiatives to improve manufacturing productivity, sourcing, pricing discipline, and operating efficiency, together with the thoughtful application of AI, represent additional opportunities to strengthen our operating performance and expand margins as we grow. With that, thank you for being with us today, and I will turn the call over to Brad Williams. Brad, over to you.

Thank you, Warren. We are pleased to report another strong quarter highlighted by double-digit top-line organic growth in our product segment, meaningful improvement in profitability, and continued momentum across our businesses. Before discussing the quarter in greater detail, I want to spend a few minutes underlying what makes Cadres such a differentiated company and why we believe we are exceptionally well positioned to create enduring value for our shareholders. Since our IPO, we have made important progress expanding our platform, strengthening our market positions, and building a diversified portfolio of safety businesses with durable demand drivers underpinning long-term growth opportunities. As you can see on slide 6, we have established CADRE as a global leader in highly engineered safety equipment serving two primary markets, public safety and nuclear safety. While these markets are distinct, the characteristics that make them attractive are similar. In both our customers, depending on highly engineered equipment and working conditions where performance, reliability, and safety are paramount. Purchasing decisions are driven by mission-critical mandates, rigorous performance standards, and long-standing customer relationships. Importantly, the QADRI operating model provides a common foundation across all of our businesses. We believe there is great potential to drive continuous improvement through our operating model with a near-term emphasis on manufacturing productivity, sourcing, and pricing discipline, and overhead efficiency. Turning to slide 7, we believe CADRE offers a compelling combination of industry tailwinds, a proven strategy for growth, and a strong track record of execution. At CADRE's core are highly engineered products leading into principal market positions and recurring demand trends more than 80% of our public safety product lines sell on refresh cycles. M&A remains an essential component of our long-term strategy. We maintain a highly selective and disciplined approach to acquisitions, focused on high-quality businesses with strong margins, recurring revenues, and cash flows, as well as opportunities to create value through the cadre operating model. Our strong free cash flow generation, supported by an asset-light model and minimal capital requirements, provides ample flexibility to invest in our businesses, pursue strategic acquisitions, and consistently return capital to shareholders. Turning to slide 8 and 9, we believe CADRE stands to benefit from a unique combination of industry tailwinds. On the public safety side, global unrest Officer protection needs, modernization, and refresh cycles continue to drive growing demand for CADRE's body armor, duty gear, and EOD equipment. In the core markets that we serve, we expect 3% to 5% growth and a steady, consistent revenue stream, regardless of macros. European and other targeted international public safety opportunities offer a platform for higher growth at a rate above the domestic public safety market. On the next slide, we lay out long-term fundamentals across our nuclear safety businesses. Our opportunities span three primary areas, environmental management, national security, and commercial nuclear energy. First, environmental management. Where mandated multi-decade government programs support ongoing nuclear cleanup and remediation efforts. Second, national security, where sustained defense funding is driving warhead modernization and pit production. Activities that require nuclear containers, criticality alarm systems, remote handling, and bespoke engineered solutions. And third, commercial nuclear energy, where growing power demand and renewed interest in nuclear generation are supporting investment in extending the life of existing facilities and developing next-generation technologies. Collectively, these demand areas support our expectation for consistent mid-single-digit growth over the next five years. Turning to slide 10, our long-term strategy is built around a straightforward but powerful approach to compounding value. We start with high-quality businesses operating in attractive markets where recurring demand, a commitment to innovation, and strong competitive positions provide a foundation for consistent organic growth. We then leverage the CADRE operating model to continuously improve performance and drive greater value across our businesses. Importantly, the combination of organic growth and operational improvement supports attractive margins and strong cash flow generation. This provides us with the financial flexibility to reinvest in our existing businesses, pursue strategic acquisitions, and consistently return capital to shareholders. As we expand our platform, we look to repeat this process across a larger and more diversified portfolio, creating a sustainable cycle of growth, reinvestment, and long-term value creation. While the true value of our strategy is realized over time, our third quarter performance provides further evidence of the benefits of our disciplined approach to growth, operational improvement, and reinvestment. Turning to slide 12, we delivered financial results that exceeded our expectations with net sales of approximately $203 million and adjusted EBITDA of $41 million. Both ahead of our guidance. Net income increased 46% year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 110 basis points to 20.2%. Following our acquisitions of Tier Tactical and Alien Gear earlier this year, both businesses continue to perform in line with expectations and contributed to our strong third quarter results. I want to thank our talented employees around the world for their unwavering commitment to our customers and our life-saving mission. Our team's dedication and consistent execution are fundamental to our success and the continued progress we are making across our businesses. Looking ahead, we remain focused on further embedding the CADRE operating model throughout our organization. Complementing these efforts, we have outlined our focus around AI to our organization and are in the beginning phase of setup and kicking off projects in various work streams. We feel strongly that AI is another tool that our teams can utilize in our operating model to streamline repetitive workflows, enhance decision making, and enable more effective operations as we continue to scale. Alongside our continued focus on operational excellence, we are encouraged by some of the initial use cases we have completed to date. We are also energized by the positive momentum our sales teams are making from focused efforts to expand into new customers domestically and within select international markets. Following the selection of Safariland's SXHP ballistic panel as the ballistic package for the FBI, the program continues to ramp as expected. Additionally, we've obtained a third purchase order valued at $3.6 million for the Blast Exposure Monitoring, or BMO, program with the U.S. military. This third purchase order brings our total to date to over $20 million received for the BMO program. As a reminder, this is a five-year, $50 million IDIQ contract that was awarded to our MedInch business last year. The list of domestic and international successes is long, but we are extremely excited to share that TIER Tactical was awarded an estimated $25 million opportunity to provide ballistic shields to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Turning to the next two slides, we continue to see highly supported demand trams across both public safety and nuclear safety in markets. On the public safety side, as outlined on slide 13, rising global security threats and increasing complexity... Complex operating environments are among the many factors driving long-term resilient spend among law enforcement and military customers worldwide. Increased defense spending in Europe supports the growth opportunity we see outside the U.S. market. Turning to nuclear safety on slide 14, we believe the long-term outlook remains equally compelling. Governments and agencies globally continue to prioritize environmental remediation and nuclear cleanup initiatives while national defense modernization programs support sustained investment in nuclear safety, infrastructure, and protective solutions. We are pleased to see multidirectional support strengthening across all three of our market segments. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Blaine Brouwers, to speak more about M&A, CADRE's Q3 financial results, and increased 2026 outlook.

Thanks, Brad. Before turning to the quarter, I'll kick off my comments with a review of our M&A strategy on slide 15. As Warren mentioned, we completed a small bolt-on acquisition of a supplier of custom precision metal fabrication that will help us expand capacity and capabilities in our EOD portfolio. Including this deal, we have now deployed more than $475 million across eight transactions since our IPO in November 2021. At the same time, drawing on our steady cash generation and strong financial position, we have paid 21 straight quarterly dividends, totaling approximately $73 million. We believe we are well-positioned to continue pursuing attractive M&A and paying a consistent quarterly dividend without compromising the financial flexibility that is central to our long-term strategy. In addition, with the board's share purchase repurchase approval, we now have another tool to deliver value to our shareholders. Turning to the next slide, we highlight the key criteria that guide our process when evaluating potential acquisitions. For each of the eight deals we've completed as a public company, we have maintained a high bar for strategic and financial fit. We are steadfast in our commitment to businesses with strong margins, leading and defensible market positions, recurring revenue characteristics, and durable cash flows. We also look for opportunities where the CADRE operating model can drive continuous improvement and value creation. As we approach the end of the year and into 2027, we maintain substantial flexibility and we have a robust pipeline of acquisitions that we are actively pursuing. Turning now to a summary of CADRE's financial performance, slide 18, details our third quarter results. Q3 net sales of $202.9 million increased 30% year-over-year and 10% organically excluding distribution. With strong growth in EOD related to the NGABS program, partially offset by lower distribution revenue. NGABS, which is an R&D project for the next-generation advanced bomb suit, occurred a quarter earlier than expected, driving the overperformance versus our Q3 guidance. Both tier and alien gear performed at expectations in the quarter, continue to have a great first year as a part of the CADRE portfolio. Gross profit of $88.1 million was up 32% year-over-year, with gross margins expanding 70 BIPs year-over-year. This improvement was driven by price and mix. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 38% year-over-year. Illustrated on slide 19 is our strong track record of net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth over the last several years. Based on our upwardly revised full-year outlook, which I'll discuss more in a moment, we forecast year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth this year of 24.9% and 27.1%, respectively, at the midpoints. You can see that CADRE has delivered consistent and stable growth with a portfolio of businesses that are largely unaffected by economic, political, geopolitical, and other cycles. On slide 20, we present our capital structure as of September 30th, 2026. Our net leverage declined to 2.2 times. We believe this level provides us with ample financial flexibility to continue to pursue organic and inorganic opportunities while continuing to return capital shareholders through our quarterly dividends. For the second quarter in a row, we have now increased our full year 2026 guidance. Outlined in slide 21, net sales are now expected to be between $756 million and $769 million. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance is now between $140 million and $144 million, implying adjusted EBITDA margins of 18.6%. We still expect organic revenue growth to be in the 3% to 4% range on a full-year basis, and the team's executions in Q2 and Q3 gives us confidence in our full-year guidance. The midpoint of our full-year guidance implies Q4 revenue will be about $197 million, with EBITDA margins around 19%. Overall, our businesses are performing well, and we expect to close the year out strong and be set up for a great 2027 across our core markets in public safety and nuclear safety. Now I'll turn it back to Brad for concluding comments.

Thank you, Blaine. In closing, as you can see on slide 22, we again executed well across all facets of the business during the third quarter. Our results exceeded expectations. Record of consistent... Demonstrating the strength of Cadre's businesses across our law enforcement, first responder, military, and nuclear end markets. We continue to actively evaluate compelling M&A opportunities, consistent with our patient... Discipline approach. We are focused on targets with strong financial profiles, durable competitive advantages, and structural growth drivers. Looking ahead, we remain confident in the opportunities across our markets, as reflected in our higher full-year guidance for the second consecutive quarter. We believe we are exceptionally well-positioned to build on Cadre's momentum, execute our strategy, and deliver sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value. We look forward to continuing to update you on our progress. With that, operator, please open up the lines for Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Larry Solo with CJS Securities. Larry, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks, and good morning, everybody. And, Brad, it sounds like you were cleared for takeoff at just the right time there. On the first question there, just on the first question, just I guess that the... The top line beat feels like I guess it was pretty much just from EOD. It sounds like it was like a 10 million gain, plus or minus. Is that fair to say? And just to follow up on that, just how the other, you know, the other, it sounds like everything else is kind of performing well or in line. Can you just give us any feel for just bookings and backlog and stuff? I don't think there was much discussion on that in the presentation.

Yeah, I think, Larry, you're right. The headline is really that NGATS program for the EOD space. I mean, there was some pressure, you know, with distribution being down slightly year over year. So there's some other businesses that did well, but really it boils down to that major headline. When we look at backlog, we're slightly ahead of where we expected. Backlog will be down in the quarter, obviously, with this large NGABS order, shipping in Q3. But when you look across sequentially, Our backlog is down about $29 million with EOD and then Tier being kind of the two drivers, and both those are in line with expectations, right? Tier is large and programmatic. They had a really solid quarter, shipped really well. They'll replenish as we kind of move to the end of this year and next year, and then that EOD order was expected to go. So we did see some positive momentum, both in armor and duty gear. When I say armor, outside tier armor, so the domestic and international Safariland brands of armor, both, they increased their backlog. By just under 10%, and duty gear, you know, similar increase. So we're continuing to see a good flow on there. So demand side's been very strong for the businesses.

Hey, Larry, some of those successes are also coming internationally, where the teams put additional focus on various higher margin international customers, and, you know, we're seeing wins in, you know, Asia, Canada, UK, Brazil, that's falling into those numbers that Blaine just mentioned.

That's great. If I could just follow up with one more, just on the margin profile. I know you guys have had kind of a flurry of acquisitions, I think over $400 million in the last two and a half years. I know a big part of the story is just kind of margin expansion, but just to play devil's advocate, if we look kind of the last five years, Kager sales growth, 16.5, EBITDA growth modestly ahead of that, 18.3. But we would expect over time that EBITDA growth relative to revenue growth, that spread to widen. Is that fair to say? And is it just kind of a timing thing? And we're looking at it now right in the midst of a flurry of acquisitions or any more color on that would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, no, great question, Larry, and I think the first part of your comment is, yeah, over time, we expect that to really the EBITDA, the profit, to outgrow the revenue. You have to keep in mind really kind of two things that create a little bit of a lull here recently. One is, and we knew this going in, the Zirclo acquisition, which was last year, was a, you know, mid-teens EBITDA business, right? And, you know, the teams are engaged in the journey to expand those margins, you know, towards the kind of 20 and low 20s percent. But that's going to be, you know, it's going to be more than a six-month journey, right? So that will come with time. And then the second component, which, you know, we talked about is just some of the unfavorable mix we faced in the alpha business this year. You know, Topline's been fine. They've been able to find new opportunities, but that was. Was a piece there that's kind of created a little bit of a headwind. So when we get through this year, right, as we look into 2027 and beyond, we do feel like we're set up well, you know, tier. As we kind of suppose acquisition is accretive to the overall. And then Alien Gear, which, you know, we did here in Q2, you know, we've talked about the opportunity there for us to get that to a, you know, mid-20s, high-20s EBITDA business, you know, over the coming, you know, really 18 months. So we're very excited about the future. Just a couple. One, we knew was going to happen, which is that Zerkaloy, the cars engineering business acquisition. We knew that'd be a little bit of a headwind until we get that business up and then the alpha piece.

Great. I appreciate that plan. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Leonard.

Your next question comes from the line of Tomo Sena with J.P. Morgan. Tomo, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Ethan on for Tomo. Kind of piggybacking on the previous question with regards to alpha, and you mentioned it earlier in the year, could you potentially give us an update on where you're seeing kind of the end markets as well as where you see mix potentially going into 2027?

Yeah, no, we can, I'll walk you through that, starting with energy. So what we're seeing on the energy side of things is, you know, really good order flow. And we've talked about in the past the cast systems, those are the Criticality alarm accident systems that will notify employees and folks in a nuclear facility if there's, you know, any kind of leak or any kind of emergency that needs to take place. So, you know, if there's upgrades and facilities that continue to have capital invested in those, that's where we're seeing a really good funnel, and then we expect it to continue to expand through the end of this year and then also next year. So that's energy. On the weapons side of things or defense side of things, you know, we are seeing some run rate increases on what we call our bags and filters side of the business. We've seen those pick up over the last few months. And then we think that is from some of the ramp up that we're seeing in pit production from LANL. So overall, feel good about that side of things. And then the last one, the environmental side, we talked about the executive order that happened last year. That one, there's been really no significant change. There's activity that's going on from the Department of Energy has worked with five different companies with some R&D funding to look at how to recycle plutonium.

That's helpful, Keller. And then when we're looking at the overall kind of capital allocation moving forward, the $100 million repurchase authorization where current leverage sits, how do you think about the balance moving forward across M&A? Is it going to be closer to the tuck-in side, or is it going to be prioritizing a little bit more on the share repurchases or dividends front?

Great question. Our focus is going to continue to be on M&A. I think the right way to think about the share repurchase program is really just one more tool that we have available to create shareholder values. So I would not think about this as a change in strategy. We still believe there's plenty of opportunities to find businesses. Whether it's bolt-on or, you know, really larger businesses, both now and in the future. So we'll continue to focus our time and effort there, but this just gives us that one extra tool that, you know, we can look at to create an incremental shareholder value.

Thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Samuelson with Jeffries. Adam, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Um, I guess, first, I wanted to just dig in on tier and it seemed like that was a part of the strength in the quarter. But maybe pulled some business forward from the fourth quarter, because it seems like there's a step down implied in the acquisition contribution as we go into 4Q. So just help us think about how that business is kind of performing on its own on a like for like basis. Is that, I mean, it seems like it's tracking above your underlying kind of core organic business that can be accretive to growth in 27. So maybe start there.

No, we've been really, really pleased with both TIER and Aileen. You're out of the gates. We entered the year right before we closed the deal, and we talked about them being, to our expectations, $100 million in revenue for the full year, so more around 90 contribution for our current year. You know, moving through Q2, we've really seen them perform really well and really kind of moving towards more in line with kind of 120 on a full-year basis. So it's not, you know, we're being a little bit cautious as we get into Q4. You know, they are heavily European or heavily outside the U.S. You get in the holiday period, so we are a bit cautious there, but a very… A lot of confidence in that business based on what we've seen so far on their execution. I think going to your second comment, which is what does their growth look like on the out years? Brad mentioned it in his comments, and it's in the slide deck. We do look at that outside the domestic U.S. law enforcement as a different drive or different growth. We do see six to seven outside of that. And having Tear as part of the portfolio, along with the existing brands that have presences in Europe, we are excited about those growth opportunities outside the U.S.

Great. That's very helpful. Can you just provide any additional color on the small bolt-on you completed here in the fourth quarter? That sounds more of a manufacturing kind of supply chain play, but any tied with very few million large revenue just help us think about size.

Yeah, it's a fairly small business. It does add significant capabilities around the precision machining. You know, for modeling, when you're thinking about it, you know, the external, you know, revenue is going to be mid-singles, you know, kind of four to five million with, you know, margins. You know, around, or EBITM, around a million to a million and a half. So, small bolt-on, what we're really excited about, though, is the capability it gives, not just really primarily focused on the EOD business, but the broader cadre portfolio, where we're adding some very significant capabilities that, you know, we look forward to leveraging in the future.

Okay, great. That's a helpful caller. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Vincinderen with B Reilly Securities. Jeff, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and let me add my congratulations on the strong metrics. Any thoughts on how the recent change in political power might influence your business as we look out to 2027?

Hey, Jeff, it's Brad. Good morning. You know, when you look at the recent political changes in that climate, I kind of think back historically across the country, and you look at the macros or any effects on our business, and it's been very consistently steady. So whether it's been, you know, like we've talked about in the past with defunded police or COVID or, you know, Industrial Revolution, you name it, any of those times, we've had that consistent growth across the company, especially within public safety. So the only area that we have seen changes from the past is depending on who's in office, we do see some changes in demand from a consumer product standpoint with our holsters. And just to put that in perspective, as you may remember, it's about 8% of revenue. So not a huge part of the business, but it is important because it's highly profitable for us. But we have seen some changes there if individuals and consumers think that if they think there's going to be a change in gun policies.

Okay. And then any other caller you can share on plans to further applying AI to your business?

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely an area we're excited about. We took the leadership team. There's about 15 folks in the leadership team. I did an off-site with an AI consultant for a few days to begin to, you know, create what our strategy is with AI. How do we apply it? What's our philosophy? You name it across the board. I've presented that to the organization within CADRE so our organization understands, you know, how we're going to apply things. So that was the first step. And then we've been working on various implementations of pockets of improvements, which is pretty exciting. And we think transactionally, we have a lot of opportunities across the company when you think about anything from how we do planning. procurement, how we're doing quoting, how we're pricing things, how we're supplying, providing customer service to our customers, and we've got some really good examples, like there's some teams in the UK that have done We've had major changes with, like, PFMEA or risk analysis type things where we've taken, you know, think of it as it takes about six or seven folks a week to do that type of work, and, you know, now AI is able to draft that information and they do a team review of it. You know, another one that the team has completed is build materials for large jobs, and the nuclear industry can take up to a week to do a full review and gathering that up for these large projects that are very complex. You know, they've got that down to about a day, and they're mostly just doing quality checks on that side of things. You know, and I'll give you one last one. Contract review in one of the nuclear businesses is significant. It takes several days to review contracts, and now they're at about a few hours to do contract reviews. So we've got a pretty long list of use case wins that we're now using to share with the organization to build people's confidence in the company that, you know, AI is ready for us. We're, as you know, a very practical company. We're not going to just talk about the technology. We're going to talk about, you know, what are the things that we can do to improve shareholder value and then how we perform with our customers.

All right. Sounds great. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Caranda with Roth Capital Partners. Matt, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks. A fair amount of mine had been asked and answered, but I guess I... Since you mentioned consumer demand for holsters, I guess I wanted to hear more on Alien Gear. I think you said historically that was like a $20 million sales type business before you had acquired it, and you were kind of counting on it declining a bit while you kind of reset it. But it looks like it's kind of already back to that run rate. So I just wanted to hear a little bit more about where you're seeing success with Alien Gear and then where you think. You could take that maybe in the next year or so. It just seems like a good environment for that type of business and potentially good profit accretion as well there.

Yeah, Matt, it's a great acquisition, great team to add to our duty gear business. We are the largest holster company in the world, so we do have that scale that we can tuck it into, which is definitely helpful. You're exactly right. Coming out of a bankruptcy process like that, we expected potentially to see a dip due to customer confidence in terms of what we're going to do with the business, et cetera. I think the teams, both on the Alien Gear side and Safariland Duty Gear, have done an absolutely amazing job with customers on both sides to build that confidence that, you know, we're not here to eliminate the Alien Gear brand. The Alien Gear brand has a great following on the consumer side, has a really great following on the law enforcement side, you know, overall. So there is that alternative now that we have to the Safariland brand, so we are looking definitely forward to that. We've got a team going up next week up to the Aylengir manufacturing facility. As you know, we talked about we've announced closing that facility and then integrating it with the Safariland manufacturing facilities that we do have. The team's going up now and further building out the detailed project plans so that we can begin that transition. We expect that transition to take, you know, about 12 months. So, you know, any of the savings that you've heard us talk about or, you know, incremental improvements to that EBITDA goal that Blaine mentioned a little bit earlier, you know, we won't see those kick in fully next year, but they'll be kicking in in 2028 as we finish up that closure and we continue to get the commercial synergies that we expect.

Okay, very helpful. And then maybe just on tier as well. I mean, it seems like something's holding you guys back from declaring victory and sort of citing this at a higher sales run rate. It's been running pretty hot for the last couple of quarters, and it seems like there's probably a good funnel of opportunity there as well. But if I kind of just annualize the last couple quarters. North of 140 million in annualized revenue. Just wondered sort of why the conservative stance on tier, if you could elaborate there. And then you said it's a creative to overall margin profile, maybe just anything more you can say on sort of how that's contributing to EBITDA margins in 26 and how you kind of think about it further out.

Yeah, no, we're super excited about TIER, okay? I want to make sure that's clear. It's a phenomenal acquisition. Our largest acquisition fits really well within the public safety side of things. The teams are working extremely well together, and when I say teams, I'm talking the Safariland Armor Team and the TIER Tactical Armor Teams working very well together there. The only thing that's holding us back a little bit on that, Matt, is just we made the acquisition this year, and when we do that, we just want to continue to build our confidence, especially with an acquisition that has some larger, lumpy-type business that we have, as Blaine talked about, in Europe, and then also with larger federal customers. I also mentioned, you know, they, Jason Beck, who's one of the founders of TIER and the team, have an absolutely phenomenal win with the RCMP that I mentioned, that Shield win. It is an extremely large Shield program that you typically don't see in the industry. And Jason and the team have done a phenomenal job on that one. So they're, you know, they're cruising, quite frankly, in terms of the work they're doing with us. They're fitting in really well. We're excited about them. We've actually got an innovation conference going on out there here in, I think, about two weeks, where we've got all the Safariland folks, the leaders in Safariland, the product guys coming together out in Peoria, Arizona, which is the TIER headquarters. We're holding it out there so everybody can take a look at what TIER's doing. And then we're starting to share innovation. This is not just on current things, but where are we going to be in the next few years from an innovation standpoint? What products, what can we leverage across the board? So it's an exciting business for us to be in.

Yeah, and I'll kind of pick up the margin piece, Matt, but just to reiterate, like what Brad said, I mean, we are excited. They've done really, really well at the gates. So we look forward to continued growth. So if we're not picking that up in the comments, the business has done really, really well. So we are very excited about that. You know, we acquired them really kind of 20-ish, right around 20s for the EBITDA rate. That's really kind of about where we're seeing it come in. With their customer concentration, they do have some, you know, they can have some mixed movements. So Q3, they came in, you know, quite a bit better on EBITDA, which was great to see. But that can change just depending on, you know, what that order of makeup looks like. So, we think about that, and as Brad talked about, kind of thinking through the cadre, operating model implementation, and some just the natural synergies between the, you know, Safariland armor business and the tier armor business. Yeah, we think there's a really long runway, both on the commercial side, but also on the margin side to really expand both businesses.

Okay, great to hear, guys. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Matt.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Smith with Lake Street Capital Markets. Mark, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys, I wanted to ask one follow-up and just kind of dig in a little deeper on TIER. Just curious if you can kind of compare and contrast the domestic business from TIER compared to the international business and where you're seeing growth and how it's performing in both markets.

Yeah, so just to kind of go back a little bit. So one of the things that we loved about the TIER business as we were doing diligence is the opposite in terms of revenue makeup compared to Safariland Armor. So, what do I mean by that? Tier, domestically, the majority of their domestic revenue is focused on federal accounts that they have, and they've done a great job in that area, and then a large concentration internationally, especially in Europe. And Safariland, most of the concentration is domestic law enforcement. Armor, and then a small amount of the revenue is in federal until the FBI piece that we've talked about, that recent win, and then a little bit internationally. So that's the compare and contrast of the two revenues overall, where we see them continuing to win, and what we're seeing from them is the international side of things. They're very strong and very good at sniffing out and finding those higher margin type customers, you know, that fit within, you know, the type of customer that they look at, they have a problem, and the engineering team at TIER works with them hand in hand to solve what that is, and they make changes to their products to do that, which makes a great, great solution for a customer. So that's their expertise. That's what they've done. The shield win that I talked about, that was going against a new standard that in the industry has really not been out there before from a shield perspective. And, you know, I don't, to date, I don't know that anyone else has been able to pass that standard. So, you know, they continue to differentiate their products against others.

Perfect. And then I just wanted to ask on acquisitions. You did a small bolt on here. Are you guys still looking for one more this calendar year? And then any insights you can give us on kind of what you're seeing out there in the pipeline?

And so we're always active. Here we are. You know, early November, so the year's not far away, so we'll kind of see what the rest of the year holds for as far as M&A for the remainder of this year. But, yeah, the funnel continues to be robust, lots of opportunities. You know, and we're still bullish on the longer term as well. You know, certainly when it comes to sponsored-owned assets, you know, haven't seen a flood of those hit the market. So we believe, you know, we've seen a steady flow, you know, certainly uptick over the last couple years from what was available in 2023. But as we look forward, you know, we think we'll continue to see good assets become available, whether that's from, you know, sponsor-owned or privately owned. So we're... Still very active. The funnel itself, I'd say, I don't know that it really has a bias towards bolt-ons or larger. I'd say it's pretty consistent with what we've seen. So, you know, at that 2.2 times, you know, we have ample capacity to do bolt-ons or even look at something, you know, a little larger.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mark.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Brad Williams for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator, and I'd like to thank everyone again for joining us on today's call and for your continued interest in cadre holdings. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you and have a great day.