Earnings Call Transcript - CDRE Q2 2022

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to Cadre Holdings Second Quarter Ended June 30, 2022 Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded, and all lines have been muted. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Berkowitz of the IGB Group for introductions and the reading of the safe harbor statement. Please proceed.

Matt Berkowitz, Chairman

Thank you and welcome to Cadre Holdings Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during today’s call, we will be making several forward-looking statements, and we make these statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimate assumptions based on our understanding and information presented today. These forward-looking statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that face Cadre and the industries and markets in which we operate. More information on potential factors that could affect Cadre’s financial results is included from time to time in Cadre’s public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please also note that we have posted presentation materials on our website at www.cadre-holdings.com to supplement our comments this evening and include a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through August 25, 2022, starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern tonight. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as on Cadre's website. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Cadre's Chairman and CEO, Warren Kanders.

Warren Kanders, CEO

Good afternoon and thank you for joining Cadre's earnings call to discuss our results for the second quarter of 2022. I am joined today by our President, Brad Williams, and our Chief Financial Officer, Blaine Browers. Since going public 10 months ago, our focus has been on positioning Cadre to further enhance our leadership in providing mission-critical safety and survivability equipment, as we seek to create sustained shareholder value over the long term. Our resilient operating model, combined with our entrenched position in law enforcement, first responder, and military markets, continues to serve us well and we have reaffirmed our 2022 earnings guidance. Complementing our core organic growth initiatives, we are well-positioned to draw on our strong cash flows and our recent oversubscribed secondary offering to further capitalize on a robust M&A pipeline. We are pleased with our two accretive acquisitions year-to-date and are excited about additional compelling opportunities that we are currently evaluating. Brad, over to you.

Brad Williams, President

Thank you, Warren. You'll see on Slide 4 that on today's call we'll provide a quarterly update and business overview, including a review of our most recent acquisition and M&A strategy, and cover our financial performance and 2022 outlook, followed by a Q&A session. First, turning to Slide 5, I'll discuss our team's strong execution in the second quarter. During the quarter, we continued to operate in a difficult macro environment, with increasing inflationary pressures as well as ongoing and, in some cases, worsening supply chain disruptions. We are also seeing an increasing number of examples of law enforcement agencies, especially in the international markets, not being able to fill open positions. I'm proud of how our team has navigated these challenges and executed against our strategic objectives. As we have done every quarter since going public, we exceeded our 1% pricing growth target above material inflation. And while we continue to closely watch macro developments, we believe our mission-critical products' high-quality performance and engineering position us well to maintain pricing power. Drawing on our low CapEx model, we generated a strong conversion rate of 92%. Our Q2 mix was consistent with our expectations and we continue to anticipate a more favorable mix in the second half of the year. The mix in the second quarter was affected by lower volumes in the higher-margin duty gear and crowd control products, and a large structural armor order last year. Importantly, we also grew our orders backlog in the quarter, evidence of the strong demand for our trusted products within law enforcement, first responder, and military markets. We view the backlog in this instance as a forward-looking indicator of potential sales. As of June 30, 2022, our orders backlog increased by $12.5 million since the start of the year, primarily driven by recent acquisitions as well as higher demand for soft armor. Regarding M&A, during the second quarter, we completed the acquisition of Cyalume Technologies, the world leader in chemical life solutions for the US and NATO military forces. We are pleased with the success of adding another high-quality business, consistent with our key criteria. Based on a robust acquisition pipeline, we continue to actively evaluate and are excited about additional opportunities with a focus on high-margin companies with leading market positions and strong recurring revenues and cash flows. Later on the call, Blaine will discuss our M&A strategy and pipeline in greater detail including comments on the integration of our most recent acquisition. Finally, our resilient operating model continues to drive strong free cash flow generation, enabling both accretive growth initiatives and a consistent return of capital to shareholders. We paid our fourth consecutive quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share. Moving to the next two slides, we'll discuss macro tailwinds supporting our long-term sustainable growth as well as provide an update on current market trends. On slide six, we outlined fundamental drivers of demand and visibility for Cadre's mission-critical products. These include police budgets going from defund to refund, the American Rescue Plan funding more police, and rising geopolitical tensions where EU leaders are advocating for significant increases in defense budgets. We continue to anticipate our total addressable market to grow and see opportunities to expand market share, particularly abroad, over the long term. Focusing on trends currently impacting the markets in which we operate, I'll highlight several on slide seven. In the US and Canada, police budgets remain healthy though departments are still struggling to fill open positions with the shortage of officers that will take many years to grow headcount back to acceptable levels. At this point, we are not receiving indications that agencies are increasing funding for training academies to anticipate larger class sizes. Amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, we've seen an uptick in interest from NATO countries. This has led to small orders, and we expect there could be further movement that creates demand for higher-end premium products on a larger scale moving forward. What we have seen thus far reinforces our belief that there will be more attractive opportunities for Cadre as the conflict carries on and we continue to monitor the situation closely and hold active discussions with customers. Regarding our supply chain, we're experiencing extended lead-times and capacity constraints for certain materials we rely upon, including fabrics, electronic components, and various raw materials. Our team has done an outstanding job addressing these challenges and we continue to work closely with our partners to reduce the impact on our product lines. Turning to customer trends, our stronger outlook for the second half of the year continues to be supported by a more stabilized run rate for holster demand and the timing of larger EOD orders. Before I turn the call over to Blaine to discuss M&A and cover our financial performance, I'd like to briefly speak about the implementation of the Cadre operating model. The operating model pictured on the left side of slide eight is a framework that captures our behavior-based leadership-centric operating focus that enables Cadre to create greater value for our customers and all stakeholders. It guides how we work, innovate, solve problems, improve, and engage with each other, customers, and communities. The excellence maturity model to the right illustrates how we move from fundamentals to excellence. The sequence is purposeful as some tools build upon others, beginning with a solid foundation gained by mastering fundamentals and engaging every person within the organization in pursuit of the idea of better every day. We are now at the stage of implementing the first step fundamentals at our Jacksonville locations before going broader to our other facilities and advancing towards sustained repeatable performance. Both Blaine and I come from organizations that had a proven history of striving for continuous improvement, and we are very excited about the implementation of Cadre's operating model. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Blaine Browers.

Blaine Browers, CFO

Thanks, Brad. I'll begin my remarks by talking a bit more about our M&A strategy. Our team led by Warren has a long track record of successfully acquiring, integrating, and optimizing asset-light businesses with high free cash flow, and we expect to further leverage our targeted M&A strategy to continue to unlock value for shareholders. We remain focused on businesses with a leading market position that have defensible technology, strong brand recognition, a recurring revenue profile, and high cash generation. As I've outlined in the past, the businesses we target fall within one of three buckets: the first bucket is geographic expansion and expanding core products in new markets; the second bucket is introducing new products in existing core markets; and the final bucket is expanding our portfolio of safety products outside of our current law enforcement and military markets into attractive adjacencies within the safety and survivability space. We continue to evaluate deals and have a robust funnel of targets from smaller acquisitions to larger transformational deals. We're comfortable long-term with around two times leverage, but we'll lever up for a transformational transaction. Keep in mind our strong cash generation allows us to quickly delever organically. We believe our strong balance sheet and sizable cash flow, combined with our operating model and our customer relationships, enable Cadre to both be opportunistic and pursue acquisitions consistent with these criteria as well as maximize the value created from acquisitions once completed. In terms of M&A activity, we've seen it becoming more difficult in the current environment for businesses to refinance, which could lead to new acquisition opportunities in the market. We also expect that we could see multiples compress as the global economic outlook remains uncertain. Turning next to our most recent acquisition on slide 10, I'll provide an update on Cyalume, which follows our January acquisition of RADAR, the premier Italian duty gear business that supported our further penetration in the European market and added to our international footprint. Cyalume is the leading supplier of chemical illumination solutions to US and NATO military forces, among other commercial markets. Completed in May, the addition of Cyalume, a business entrenched in combat and recurring military training applications, advances our strategic objective on increasing wallet share within our current military, law enforcement, and commercial customer base. We are pleased to add another resilient recurring revenue stream to our portfolio and continue to focus on the integration process. We've completed the analysis stage of the 80/20 process to prioritize factors that will produce the best results. Next steps include further collaboration between Cyalume and Cadre's selling teams to optimize growth and continued implementation of core Cadre operating tools. The process has been efficient and we anticipate ongoing progress as we aim to expand Cyalume's product penetration across new military and commercial markets, leveraging Cyalume's deep competency and strong customer relationships, along with our selling teams' expertise and global resources. On slides 11 and 12, we'll detail our second quarter 2022 results. Net sales, net income, and adjusted EBITDA margin each improved sequentially, illustrating our resilient operating model. Cadre generated net sales of $118.2 million, as compared to $114.6 million for the same quarter last year, primarily due to recent acquisitions and increased armor demand. Net sales increased 13% from Q1 to Q2. Gross profit margin was 36.6% for the second quarter, mainly driven by amortization of inventory step-up on recent acquisitions and the less favorable portfolio mix that Brad mentioned earlier, partially offset by pricing improvements. Of note, the impact on our margin from the Cyalume acquisition-related amortization of inventory step-up was about 100 basis points this quarter. We continue to expect margin expansion during the remainder of the year. Net income was $4.4 million for the second quarter compared to net income of $6.8 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2021. The decrease resulted primarily from increased stock-based compensation expense, losses on foreign currency transactions, and discrete acquisition-related expenses, partially offset by increased revenue. As we indicated last quarter, stock-based compensation was down from Q1, and we expected to hold at Q2 levels for the remainder of the year. We continue successfully generating significant free cash flow exemplified by our second quarter EBITDA conversion of 92%. I'd like to remind everyone that from a cash generation perspective, we have very low CapEx needs at approximately 1% of revenue annually. Turning to the next slide, we illustrate anticipated top line and adjusted EBITDA growth for the full year 2022. Based on the midpoint of our guidance range, we expect 5% annual growth for both full year net sales and adjusted EBITDA. On slide 12, we present our capital structure as of June 30. Our net debt was $123.7 million and we believe our net leverage around two times provides significant financial flexibility to grow organically and, more importantly, inorganically through acquisitions. Our capital structure reflects our enhanced liquidity position as a result of the oversubscribed secondary offering that Warren mentioned earlier. The offering resulted in net proceeds to Cadre of $47 million after underwriter discounts and commissions and fees and expenses. We provide our guidance on slide 13. Based on our strong performance to date and our expectation that our product portfolio mix normalizes moving forward, along with our progress in executing strategic objectives related to M&A, we are reaffirming our guidance. Of note, like most businesses with exposure overseas, we are seeing FX pressure due to the strength of the U.S. dollar and continued challenges with our supply chain. If the rates were to hold, this could be as much as $1.5 million of headwind for the year. Cadre expects to generate net sales in 2022 between $440 million and $452 million and adjusted EBITDA in 2022 of between $72.5 million and $77.5 million. Additionally, we expect adjusted EBITDA conversion to be between 92% and 95% for the full year 2022.

Brad Williams, President

I'll now turn it back to Brad for concluding comments. Thank you, Blaine. Before opening the call to questions, I note that while we continue to be mindful of macro headwinds that we expect to persist during the year, our execution against strategic objectives in the first half of 2022 has been strong. As we progress through the remainder of the year, our focus will remain on growing our leading and entrenched market positions across our life-saving product categories to capitalize on selling opportunities and navigate increasing inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions. We also remain committed to further improving gross and adjusted EBITDA margins over the long term. We continue to seek to achieve cost structure optimization to drive operating leverage and expect margin expansion going forward. Finally, building on our two accretive acquisitions year-to-date, in our robust pipeline we will continue to see compelling M&A opportunities that expand our product and technology offerings, enter new markets, and grow our geographic footprint. We remain extremely optimistic about our long-term prospects underpinned by this robust pipeline and the strong macro tailwinds driving demand and visibility for Cadre's mission-critical products, both domestically and internationally. With that, operator, please open the lines for Q&A.

Operator, Operator

Your first question comes from Daniel Imbro with Stephens. You may proceed.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

Yeah. Hi. Good evening guys and thanks for taking my question.

Brad Williams, President

Hi Daniel.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

I want to start on the pricing backdrop. Brad, in the release, continued momentum, obviously passing through price. It speaks to the brand equity you have. I guess, one, any changes in that backdrop of the customers? But I really want to ask about the new categories you're entering, illumination, maybe some of the M&A targets you've laid out in the past. Are those similarly, I'd say, rational pricing backdrop? Should we expect that to be the same? Do you have more pricing power or less pricing power? Just kind of curious how is the product mix shifts any change in that outlook?

Brad Williams, President

Yes. So when you look at our acquisition criteria, one of those criteria is niche, highly engineered products, where there's a fairly high share in the marketplace, which means they'll also command pricing. So as we look and evaluate acquisitions, we'll continue to look for those kinds of opportunities which resemble what we have within a lot of other businesses within Cadre.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

That's helpful. And then maybe Blaine on gross margin, a little more pressure in the quarter even relative to Q1, despite the higher revenue dollars. So not sure if there's seasonality here but could you maybe walk through just the bridge like pieces of the 550 basis point decline year-over-year, I mean which of those pieces should start to alleviate in the back half of the year?

Blaine Browers, CFO

Yes. So sequentially, we had the step-up for the Cyalume acquisition, right, which gives you about a 100 bps from Q1 to Q2. After that, it comes down to more of a mix challenge. It's been pretty consistent with armor volume and the offset of armor volume being up, while duty gear being down. When you get to kind of year-over-year, that is by far the biggest contributor on the pressure. And as we kind of move into that back half of the year, we do expect those margins and really kind of mix to flip a little bit on us. So we're expecting that natural pull-through as the mix shifts over into the back half.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

That's helpful. And then just a quick clarifier. I think you mentioned FX is a $1.5 million headwind for the year. Was that on EBITDA or revenue, Blaine?

Blaine Browers, CFO

That was on adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA, yes.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

I appreciate all the details. Congrats on the results and best of luck.

Blaine Browers, CFO

Thank you.

Brad Williams, President

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Your next question is from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen with B. Riley. Your line is open.