Dxp Enterprises Inc Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the DXP Enterprises 4th Quarter 2025 earnings release. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the call over to Kent Yee, CFO. Please go ahead.

This is Kent Yee and welcome to DXP's Q4 2025 conference call to discuss our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ending December 31st, 2025. As I mentioned, joining me today is our Chairman and CEO David Little. Before we get started, I want to remind you that today's call is being webcast and recorded and includes forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. A detailed Additional discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis are contained in our SEC filings. DXP assumes no obligation to update that information as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we may present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release. The press release and an accompanying investor presentation are now available on our website at ir.dxpe.com. I will now turn the call over to David Little, our Chairman and CEO, to provide his thoughts and a summary of our fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 performance and financial results.

Thanks, Kent, and thank you to everyone who is joining us today for DXP's fourth quarter and physical 2025 earnings call. I am pleased to report that 2025 was an exciting year for DXP, with strong performance across all our key financial metrics, including sales, sales per business day, gross profit margins, and adjusted EBITDA margins. These results reflect the continued strength of our DEX people, products, and operating model, our ability to serve customers across a broad and diverse set of in-markets. On behalf of more than 3,286 DEX people you can trust, I want to thank our customers, suppliers, and shareholders for their continued trust and support. Physical 2025 was a year of execution and our results demonstrated the benefits of diversification, scale, and disciplined capital allocation. For 2025, DXP sales grew 11.9% to $2 billion, while gross profit margins expanded 67 basis points to 31.5%. Adjusted EBITDA reached 22.3 million, 225.3 million, with an 11.2% margin. This was a record year for both sales and adjusted EBITDA margins and it marked an important milestone as we continue to scale the business. Operating income increased 21.7% year-over-year to $176.9 million, and diluted earnings per share improved to $5.37, up from $4.22 in physical 2024. Sales per business day continued to improve throughout the year, averaging $7.57 million in the first quarter and increasing to 8.51 million by the fourth quarter and physical year 2025 average sales per business day of 8 million as compared to 7.1 million in physical year 2024. These results reflect solid organic growth and contributions from accretive acquisitions operations, all while maintaining a focus on operating efficiencies. A core component of our strategy continues to be diversification of in-market exposure while building scale in markets where we have a strong competitive position. At our physical 2025, energy represented 22% of DXP sales, followed by water and wastewater at 15%, general industry at 15%, chemical at 10%, and food and beverage at 7%. This diversification has meaningfully reduced our signicality and helped drive more consistent performance over the last several years. We are encouraged by the interplay of these markets as we move into physical 26. Note that over the last few years, energy market has been flat, and our other markets like water and wastewater have grown substantially. We continue to pursue growth markets and battle increased market share on our other markets. Thank you DXP sales and operations professionals for teaming up together and winning for our customers and stakeholders. Thank you to our corporate support team for their efforts to support both our internal and external customers. Thank you DXP for an awesome year. During the year, we continued to execute on our capital allocation priorities. We completed six acquisitions including Arroyo, McBride, Moore's Pump, Absco, Triangle Pump, and Pump Solutions, all of which strengthened our capabilities and expanded our reach. We also continued to execute on our share repurchase program, returning $17 million in capital to shareholders, and we refinanced our debt in the fourth quarter, improving flexibility and positioning DXP for both organic growth and acquisition growth in 2026. From a segment perspective, innovative pumping solutions led the way, growing 26.4% year-over-year to $390.3 million. Growth was driven by strength in energy, water-related project activity, along with contributions from recent acquisitions. In terms of IPS, or Innovative Pumping Solution, it bears repeating that we have two broad businesses tied to capital budgets, or what we refer to as project work, DXP's heritage energy-related project work, and DX water. Within IPS, DXP's water represented 55% of the segment sales in 2025, up from 46% last As we have grown this platform, we have seen improvements in both gross and operating income margins. The DXP water backlog continues to grow organically and through acquisitions including Triangle, ABSCO, and Pump Solutions. Energy-related bookings and backlog remain at our long-term average, although they have pulled back in Q3 and Q4, and we look to Q1 to see if we have any trends emerging. As we When we move to 2026, we feel good about how this backlog translates into revenue given the large projects that we are still in the process of completion. But we look to this quarter of 2026 to see if we get new bookings. Service centers delivered 11% total sales growth, including 9.8% organic growth, driven by the diversity of in-markets and our multiple product MRO-focused operating model. A few growth initiatives that are helping DXP growth percentages include technical products like automation, vacuum pumps, new pump brands for water and industrial markets, process equipment, and filtration. New markets like data centers need pumps, water, power, cooling, filtration, which DXP has continued to add and expand. We have added an e-commerce channel for the generation that wants to buy pumps and parts electronically, which had a record year for DXP in 2025. Growth was broad-based geographically, but regions with experienced notable sales growth year-over-year included Ohio River Valley, Southeast, Texas Gulf Coast, and California. We also had continued strength year-over-year in air compressors, U.S. safety services, and metalworking. Supply chain services experienced a modest decline year-over-year, primarily due to customer facility closures and reduced activity at certain energy-related sites. That said, SES continues to invest in its customer care model and remote technologies, allowing us to expand service offerings to customers with smaller sites while improving efficiencies. We believe demand for SES services is increasing, and these capabilities gain traction we will look for sales growth in 2026 from a margin cash flow and financial position standpoint dxp's overall gross profit margins for the year were 31.5 or a 67 basis point improvement over 2024. ips delivered the largest year-over-year expansion with 166 basis point improvement followed by Splane Services with a 121 basis point, and lastly, Service Centers with a 59 basis point improvement as compared to 2024. These gains reflect a combination of mix, pricing, and execution, as well as the impact of accretive acquisitions. In terms of cash flow, we generated $94.3 million in cash from operating activities, which translated into $54 million of free cash flow during fiscal 2025. This reflects our focus on generating cash while continuing to invest in working capital and growth capital expenditures to support DXP. Our balance sheet remains strong, providing flexibility to continue executing on acquisitions and returning capital to stakeholders shareholders as we move into physical 2026 our focus remains on maintaining margin discipline while driving organic growth executing on strategic acquisitions and improving operational efficiency as we scale we continue to see constructive demand across energy water, and industrial markets, and we remain mindful of inflation dynamics and supply chains variability. Since 2022, DXP has grown sales at a 15% compounded annual growth rate, and we believe our strategies and our operating model positions us well to continue this trajectory over the long term. In closing, I want to thank our DX people for their passion, teamwork and commitment. Their efforts continue to differentiate DXP and create value for our customers and stakeholders. With that, I will now turn it to Kent to review the financial model in more detail.

Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for joining us for our review of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 financial results. Fiscal year 2025 was another record year for DXP reaching new highs in sales, gross profit margins, and adjusted EBITDA. It is also our first year of sustained 11 percent plus adjusted EBITDA margins and our third fiscal year of 10 percent plus adjusted EBITDA margins. We are excited to report this year's financial results. Additionally, with the consistent upward movement in our stock price and growth in our market capitalization, we are now a SEC large accelerated filer and we are excited to report fiscal 2025 financial results under a quicker time frame. Thank you to everyone who made this happen. Turning to our financial results, fiscal year 2025 financial performance reflects our ability to drive the following. Strong sales growth within IPS, along with an accelerating contribution from DXP Water. Record service center performance marked by continued growth in sales from Q1 through Q4 and gross margin strength and stability. Consistent consolidated gross margin performance with 2025 gross margins up 67 basis points year over year. Consistent operating leverage leading to sustained adjusted EBITDA margins more notably our first fiscal year of 11 plus adjusted EBITDA margins continued execution of our acquisition strategy completing six acquisitions contributing 96 million in sales in 2025 the successful refinancing and repricing of our term loan b including raising an incremental 205 million in capital and reducing interest costs by 50 basis points, and continued capital return to shareholders through our share repurchase program. A great year. Total sales for the fourth quarter increased 11.9% year-over-year to a record 527.4 million. This reflects an improvement in average sales per business day, increasing from 8.03 million per day in Q3, with 64 business days, to 8.51 million sales per business day in Q4, with to 62 business days. Acquisitions that have been with DXP for less than a year contributed 21.9 million in sales during the fourth quarter. Total sales for DXP for fiscal 2025 were 2.0 billion, increasing 11.9% compared to fiscal 2024. For the full year, acquisitions contributed 96 million in sales. Average daily sales for fiscal 2025 were 8 million per day versus 7.13 million per day in fiscal 2024 a 12.3 percent increase adjusting for acquisitions at average daily organic sales were 7.6 million per day for fiscal 2025 compared to 6.7 million per day in fiscal 2024 that said the average daily sales trends during fiscal 2025 improved from $7.6 million per day in Q1 to $8.5 million per day in Q4, or an increase of 12.5%. In terms of our business segments, innovative pumping solutions sales grew 26.4% in fiscal year 2025 versus 2024, followed by service center sales growing 11% year-over-year and supply chain services sales declining 1.4% year-over-year. In terms of innovative pumping solutions, we continue to experience strong backlogs in both our energy and water and wastewater businesses. On a comparative year-over-year basis, our average energy-related backlog finished the year up 36.9% compared to 2024. That said, our Q4 energy-related average backlog declined another 9.3% from Q3. This is the second quarter of decline in the energy related backlog but the backlog continues to be ahead of all our averages additionally january grew 5.3 percent over december as david mentioned and as we have been discussing on previous earning calls we have booked a few large projects in both energy and water that we have recognized some revenue in 2025 and will continue into 2026. now we will be looking to see what happens to our Q1-2026 average energy backlog. The conclusion continues to remain that we are training meaningfully above all notable sales levels based upon where our backlog stands today. We also see strength in our IPS water backlog as it continues to grow due to a combination of organic and acquisition additions. In terms of our service centers, our service center performance reflects our internal growth initiatives along with our diversified and evolving in market dynamics on a comparative basis fiscal year 2025 is now our strongest year with 1.4 billion in sales and sets a new sales high watermark regions within our service center business segment which experienced year-over-year sales growth include the ohio river valley southeast texas gulf coast and california from a product perspective we also experience strength in our air compressors metal working and u.s safety services divisions supply chain services sales performance reflects a 1.4 percent decrease year over year. Supply chain services sales performance reflects pullback inactivity at oil and gas and our diversified chemical customer sites. Overall we experience reduced spend from existing customers while continuing to drive efficiencies and streamline purchasing that we bring to our customers. As expected Q4 was impacted by seasonality with there being fewer billing days as SES customers have facility closures and holiday hours however interest in demand for scs services is increasing because of the proven technology and efficiencies they perform for all their industrial customers and we expect a stronger 2026 as we onboard new customers turning to our gross margins dxp's total gross margins were 31.54 a 67 basis point improvement over fiscal 2024 this improvement is attributed to strengthen gross profit margins across all three business segments with innovative pumping solutions showing 166 basis point improvement from last year and supply chain services improving 121 basis points. Additionally, the contribution from accretive acquisitions at higher overall relative gross margin versus our base DXP business helped drive consistent gross margins within consolidated DXP. Acquisitions continue to be accretive to both gross and operating margins. That said, from a segment mixed sales contribution, service centers contributed 68%, innovative pumping solutions 19%, and supply chain services was 13%. This sales mix positively impacts our gross margins as we see an uptick in contribution from IPS compared to fiscal year 2024. In terms of operating income, all three business segments combined increase 40 basis points in year-over-year business segment operating income margins are 38 million versus fiscal 2024. Service centers, IPS, and supply chain services each had 14.54 percent, 18 percent, and 8.7 percent operating income margins respectively. The consistency in innovative pumping solutions reflects the impact of our water and wastewater acquisitions at a higher relative operating income margin and a growing percentage of revenue or sales mix. DXP water has gone from 22 percent of sales of IPS in 2023 to over 55 percent of IPS at the end of 2025. Total DXP operating income was $176.9 million or 8.8 percent of sales for fiscal 2025 versus $145 million and 8.1 percent of sales in fiscal 2024. Our SG&A for fiscal 2025 increased 48.2 million to 459.1 million the increase reflects the growth in the business the addition of acquisitions as well as incentive compensation and dxp investing in its people through merit and pay raises additionally this also reflects an increase in our insurance premiums continued investment in technology in our facilities as well as acquisition costs and growth initiatives SG&A as a percentage of sales decreased slightly our three basis points year over year to 22.8% of sales. We still anticipate that DXP will benefit from the leverage inherent in the business despite increased operating dollars supporting our growth and the impact of acquisitions. Turning to EBITDA, fiscal 2025 adjusted EBITDA was 225.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 11.2%. This is our third fiscal year with adjusted EBITDA margins in excess of 10% and our first year with adjusted EBITDA margins in excess of 11% for all four quarters. We will look to continue to expand margins in 2026 as recent acquisitions should enhance our margins and internal initiatives focused on efficiency extract operating leverage. In fiscal 2025, this translated into 1.5 times operating leverage. In terms of our EPS, our net income for fiscal 2025 was $88.68 million. Our earnings per diluted share for fiscal 2025 was $5.37 per share versus $4.22 per share last year. Adjusting for one-time items, adjusted earnings per diluted share for fiscal 2025 was $5.42 per share. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow, In terms of working capital, our working capital increased $70.7 million from December, excuse me, of 2024 and decreased $2.9 million from September of this year to $361.7 million. As a percentage of fiscal year 2025 sales, this amounted to 17.9%. This is an uptick from fiscal year in 2024 and reflects the impact of acquisitions, business mix, and an increase in DXB's capital project work. As we move into fiscal 2026, we will continue to grow into the working capital as a percentage of sales, specifically the impact from recent acquisitions. That said, we do anticipate further acquisitions, which could cause a move upwards, albeit we are focused on managing working capital as efficiently as possible as we scale and grow. In terms of cash, we had $303.8 million in cash on the balance sheet as of December 31st this is an increase of 155.5 million compared to q4 of 2024 and 180 million since September this reflects the refinancing of our existing term loan b in the fourth quarter and the strong cash flow generation we experienced during the fourth quarter which we will touch upon later in my comments as it pertains to our term loan b similar to last year during the fourth quarter we announced that we refinanced and repriced our term loan b maintaining our maturity of October 2030 we successfully repriced the term loan B reducing our borrowing costs by 50 basis points to SOFR plus 325 versus SOFR plus 375 by also raising an incremental 205 million in capital to support our acquisition and investments program over the next 9 to 12 months over the last two years we have successfully reduced our borrowing costs by over 150 basis points while raising an incremental 310 million in capital and we have deployed $218.3 million for acquisitions through 2025. We look forward to an exciting acquisition year and the continued scaling of DXP. In terms of CapEx, CapEx for fiscal 2025 was $40.3 million versus $25.1 million in fiscal 2024. This increase reflects investing in some of our facilities and equipment, software, and related investments to drive improvement and efficiencies on behalf of our employees. That said, a majority of our CapEx is growth-oriented and controllable, and we have the ability to pivot if and when necessary. As we move forward, we will continue to invest in the business as we focus on growth. As mentioned during the second quarter, over the short to medium term, or the next one to two quarters, we should see CapEx lessen, and we will look for it to be less overall in 2026. Turning to free cash flow, we generated solid operating cash flow during the fourth quarter as we did during the second and third quarter. During Q4 and for fiscal 2025, we had cash flow from operations of $42.6 million and $94.3 million, respectively. For fiscal 2025, this translated into $54 million in free cash flow. This does reflect the improvements in profitability along with elevated capex, which is primarily growth-oriented, and we expect to taper again in fiscal 2026 additionally we can continue to focus on tightly managing our capital projects which we see as an opportunity to further generate and optimize cash flow we have highlighted this in the past as recurring investments in inventory product and costs and excessive billings that said we continue to focus on tightly managing this aspect of our business from a cash flow perspective and look to align billings with the investments and we look to make further strides here in 2026. Return on invested capital or ROIC for fiscal 2025 was 39.2 percent and continues to be measurably above our cost of capital and reflects the improvements in EBITDA and the operating leverage inherent within the business. Additionally, it also points to our recent acquisitions performance and their positive contribution and accretive impact to both gross profit and EBITDA. As of December 31st, our fixed charge coverage ratio was 2.1 to 1 and our secure leverage ratio was 2.3 to 1 with a covenant EBITDA for the last 12 months of 241.1 million. Total debt outstanding on December 31st was 846.8 million. In terms of liquidity, as of December 31st, we were undrawn on our ABL with $31.5 million in letters of credit with $153.5 million of availability and liquidity of $457.3 million, including $303.8 million in cash, which a portion of has been used to purchase Mid-Atlantic, Premier Flow, and Abiente, which we've closed subsequent to fiscal year end. We are excited to have all three recent acquisitions as a part of DXP and they will start reporting with us for the first quarter of 2026. All of you welcome to DXP. DXP's acquisition pipeline continues to grow and the market continues to present compelling opportunities. Looking forward we expect this to continue through fiscal 2026 and we look forward to closing a minimum of one to three additional acquisitions by the middle of the year. We remain comfortable with where our ability to with our ability to execute on our pipeline and valuations continue to remain reasonable. In terms of capital allocation, we repurchased a return $17 million to shareholders via our share repurchase program in fiscal 2025, or a total of 182,000 shares of DXP stock. In summary, we continue to remain excited about the future of building the next chapter and evolution of DXP. We will keep our eyes focused on those things we can control and what is ahead of us. With that, I will now turn the call over for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. 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 Zach Marriott of Stevens. Please go ahead.

is there any color you can share on the daily sales trends by month for both

q4 and q1 thus far please hey zach great to hear from you absolutely we'll um we'll walk through q4 and then um given the fact that we filed earlier this year and being a large accelerated filer we just really have january but we'll give some color there um starting in october uh 7.5 million per day November eight point two million per day December nine point eight million per day for a quarterly average of eight point five million per day uh January um was six point nine million per day to give you context that's up year over year two percent if you will um January also typically is um if not the lowest uh month in the year typically is always typically our slowest month in the year so um you know that's what we have at this point in time um and uh feel good with how um february is shaping up understood thank you for that and then is there anything

that should drive a meaningful margin difference whether up or down when comparing 4q with 1q

oh you mean on a go forward basis you know we don't we don't necessarily specifically provide any guidance uh zach but you know once again um to the comments we made during our script water continues to be accretive to both gross and operating income margins. And in Q4, obviously this year, a little bit different than last year, we closed three acquisitions, APSCO, Triangle, and Pump Solutions. So, you know, if they perform what we saw from a due diligence standpoint, that should be accretive to our margins here in Q1.

Noted. Thank you. And I'll turn it back. i would i'd give zach more time if he needs it sure okay thanks i got one more uh just looking for some color on the positive dynamics that you guys called out uh developing an energy in the second half of this year would this be conversion backlog or something else

um you know i'll let david comment on the overall tone but just in terms of from a backlog perspective, Zach. What our comments were is, you know, in transparency, we did see another decline in Q4 that said the tone in our business planning was everybody was quoting jobs and there was a fair amount of quote activity. And so the early expectation, the way I put

it is is for 2026 from an energy perspective potentially to be more back-end weighted um

but but i'll let david comment see if he has any yeah from from our first operating perspective

we're just seeing a lot of quoting activity uh so we go back to the third quarter and fourth quarter and so our bookings seem to be light so we followed up with what where's our quoting activity and what about the projects in the future and etc and so I think in general people felt like that people had things on hold a bit and maybe that was political maybe it wasn't I'm not sure but they just felt like that things would start being turned loose sort of at the beginning of the year and and then of course that affects sales towards the end great thanks for the

color okay thank you okay at this time there are no further questions i will now turn the call back

to david little for closing remarks yeah my remarks will basically um to all the stakeholders and VX people. We had an awesome year. We feel like that between organic and inorganic growth that we're going to have another good year. Thanks for that. Thanks for all the hard work on trying to drive whether that's new computer systems or new sales processes etc i know we work to improve continuously and even though our sgna only modestly improved it did improve so i'm i'm happy about that and uh but anyway thanks for a great year and we look forward to next year

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.