Elmet Group Co. (ELMT) Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning.

Welcome to the LMIC Group Company's second quarter, 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's chairman and CEO, Peter V. Anania, and CFO Mike Lee. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's remarks, we will open the call for questions. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the investor relations section of the company's website at investors.theelmetgroup.com. Before I turn the call over to Elmet's chairman and CEO, the company would like to remind all participants that statements made by management during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. securities laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events and are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those risks identified in the risk factors section of the company's registration statement on Form S-1 and in its other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participants on this call are cautioned not to place under-reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's belief only as of the date hereof. The company expressly disclaims any duty to update or correct any forward-looking statements. Further, management remarks today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are calculated by management and do not have any standardized meetings under the U.S. GAAP. These non-GAAP measures supplement GAAP measures, but should not be viewed as substitutes for GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to these non-GAAP financial measures is available in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q and in its earnings press release. I will now turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Peter V. Anania, for his comments. Sir, please proceed.

Welcome. Thank you. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Elmett Group's second earnings call as a public company. Since we are still new to many people following our story, I'll begin my remarks with a brief overview of who we are and what we do before discussing updates from our strong second quarter. The Elmett Group brings together a rare set of strengths with the mission to secure U.S. critical material supply chain. Today, we are the sole U.S.-based provider of certain precision-engineered refractory metal components in some high-power microwave systems, serving the U.S. government and top blue-chip customers across key end markets, such as aerospace and defense, or ADG, as well as industrial, medical, semiconductor, and electronics in energy. We operate through two divisions, the critical materials components, or CMC, a vertically integrated manufacturer of critical materials specializing in tungsten and molybdenum products, from powders to machine goods to fine wires, and engineered microwave products, or EMP, a manufacturer of microwave systems and high-power components for military and demanding industrial applications. In terms of how we are positioned competitively in the market, we believe our long-term outlook is supported by several key advantages. Macro tailwinds from defense fortification and U.S. reshoring and the overall focus on U.S. material independence continue to drive backlog and future growth. Second, as mentioned a moment ago, we have a sole U.S.-based supplier of certain highly engineered critical materials components, making us a critical supplier for key end markets and customers. Our vertically integrated operations supported by our dedicated engineering team allow us to maintain strong control throughout the engineering to production process, from material processing all the way to final machining. Fourth, our difficult-to-replicate asset base, paired with our specialized production capabilities, has created a naturally high barrier to entry, which took decades to develop. Finally, our team has a proven track record of driving organic growth in the business while also integrating synergistic acquisitions, helping drive sustainable long-term growth. With that overview complete, I will now briefly discuss some updates from the quarter before, handing the call over to our CFO, Mike Lee, for review of our financial results in greater detail. In the second quarter, we built on our existing momentum and delivered strong results highlighted by our acceleration in revenue growth and profitability with a record backlog. More specifically, revenues growth increased 35% year-over-year to 66.4 million, gross profit expanded by 430 basis points, leading to 57.9% growth in adjusted EBITDA, and our open order backlog now stands at $131.5 million, up 55% from this time last year. Our performance was driven by a healthy combination of strong operational execution, skillful navigation of dynamic metals pricing market, and ongoing returns from our strategic focus on servicing the broader ADG landscape, all of which we expect to drive continued demand through the balance of the year. Outside of our own execution, the largest factor impacting our results this year has been the significant and persistent rise in prices for global tungsten and molybdenum markets, which have been exasperated by export controls on critical materials. The prices of critical materials like tungsten have dramatically increased over the last year, which is further complicated by fluctuating in often steep tariffs on those same critical materials. While these dynamics create challenges, they also create opportunities. opportunities that we have navigated to date through a combination of foresight and strategic agility. For over a decade, we have sourced more than 95% of our tungsten and molybdenum from outside of China, which largely shields us from export control related supply chain disruptions. Additionally, our strategic tungsten sourcing agreements have kept us highly protected from material input pricing changes. This positioning enables us to capture the benefits of the sharp increase in tungsten prices during Q1, which drove a portion of the increase in Q2 backlog. Relatedly, and to further support our commitment to securing sustainable and resilient supply chain for critical raw materials, in June we announced our increased ownership stake in EQ resources as part of our strategic collaboration and long-term offtake contract. Over the last two years, we have witnessed an increased focus on the critical material supply chain, particularly in defense applications, which is why we sought out the strategic collaboration with one of the fastest-growing Western tungsten mining groups. We look forward to continuing our strategic collaboration, as well as exploring additional opportunistic investments to bolster our long-term competitive positioning. We believe today's environment presents a significant opportunity to grow our business and differentiate ourselves, thanks to our positioning. To that end, we are investing in growth to support the accelerating demand we are seeing. Our increases in both staffing and third-party support to improve operations in our CMC factories have been significant, and we are already seeing favorable impacts on productivity across the CMC sites. Looking outward, there is a bipartisan support for strengthening our domestic industrial base and we are seeing the effects of current U.S. focus on replenishing stockpiles for the general increase in global defense spending. For example, in June we announced we had secured strategic funding of $4.3 million to develop in advanced domestic manufacturing capabilities for molybdenum-based products and refractory metal components utilizing critical defense programs. This contract award aims to bolster domestic manufacturing readiness to meet the projected long-term demand for refractory metal components, specifically molybdenum-based products used in modern defense interceptor programs. These funds will enable us to expand capacity and deploy advanced manufacturing technologies in support of our nation's critical defense initiatives, several of which depend on molybdenum-based components as a foundation. With the ongoing conflict in Iran, as well as the in-process budget and appropriation cycle as a backdrop, we expect to see continued funding opportunities ahead. Importantly, while many AD&G programs operate on multi-year implementations, we are not an impediment to the process, and we typically produce multiple years of production in one year for such programs. Looking ahead, we believe we remain well-positioned to effectively meet today's and tomorrow's demand as we expand our role as a trusted supplier across mission-critical systems. Longer term, we expect the operating environment to remain highly favorable for element, supported by our strategic position and the nexus of several megatrends that remain in the early stages of an investment super cycle. I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Mike Lee, to go over the results for the second quarter.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to present a strong Q2 performance for the fiscal year 2026. Before I begin, please note that all numbers I plan to discuss have been rounded for ease of presentation. Our full financial results for the quarter can be found in our quarterly report filed with the SEC this morning. Now let's get started. Revenue in Q2 increased 35.2% to $66.4 million compared to $49.1 million in Q2 2025. Approximately 55% of the revenue growth is true to net demand increase across aerospace defense and government, industrial, medical, and semiconductor end markets, with a balance associated with tungsten and molybdenum raw material in pricing impacts. Gross profit for Q2 2026 increased 63.7% to 16.6 million, or 25% gross margin, compared to 10.1 million, or 20.7% gross margin in Q2 2025. The increase was driven by our CMC division as our strategic Strategic tungsten sourcing agreements enabled us to capture the benefits of the sharp increase in tungsten pricing during Q1 that began flowing through our P&L during the quarter. We also saw favorable impacts from productivity increases across our CMC sites making a meaningful impact. Operating expenses for Q2-2026 increased 251.2% to $24.2 million compared to $6.9 million in Q2 2025, for a net increase of $17.3 million. Within the quarter, we incurred approximately $14.2 million associated with equity-based compensation, compared to $0.4 million in Q2 2025. Of the $14.2 million, $12.9 million was associated with one-time vesting of awards associated with the completion of our IPO. We also saw increases in costs associated with our initial public offering, ongoing in compliance and expenses associated with the growth. Turning to the balance sheet, cash at the end of Q2, 2026 totaled $66.1 million compared to $1.8 million at the end of Q1, 2026 and $1.8 million at the end of Q4, 2025. The increase in cash is driven by proceeds from our April IPO where we raised a net proceeds of $125.4 million, retired $17.5 million in term debt, and paid approximately $8.6 million for working capital and other corporate requirements we also paid approximately 31.0 million on our revolving credit facilities to optimize interest expense at the end of q2 2026 we had approximately 44.6 million in borrowing capacity on our revolving credit facilities which when combined with cash on hand gave us approximately 110.7 million of cash availability for strategic At the end of Q2-2026, we saw inventories grow to $102.4 million, up from $75.0 million in Q1-2026 and $67.1 million in Q2-2025. The increase was driven by our CMC division by a combination of tungsten and molybdenum raw material pricing increases, sourcing dynamics, and volume increases associated with growth. To supplement our financial statements presented in accordance with GAAP, we use certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA, because we believe these metrics provide investors additional meaningful methods to evaluate certain aspects of our results. We define adjusted net income as net income less stock-based compensation and one-time non-reoccurring costs, such as tax impacts of our reorganization, discontinued operations, the costs associated with the IPO, certain acquisition and transaction costs, severance and restructuring costs, other non-reoccurring costs, and income tax benefit of such adjustments as applicable. Net loss for Q2 2026 was $4.5 million, or 16 cents per share, compared to net income of $1.2 million, or 6 cents per share, in Q2 2025. Adjusted net income for Q2 2026 was $5.2 million, or 18 cents per share, compared to $2.8 million, or $0.14 per share in Q2 2025. Worth noting that the majority of the adjustments in Q2 2026 are associated with the equity compensation associated with our national public offering. We define adjusted EBITDA as a net income plus interest expense, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and as applicable for each period, stock-based compensation expense, and non-cash gains and losses on sale of assets. Adjusted EBITDA also excludes certain non-reoccurring costs, such as costs associated with the IPO, certain acquisition and transaction costs, severance and restructuring, and other non-reoccurring costs. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2-2026 increased 57.2% to $8.9 million compared to $5.6 million in Q2-2025. The increase was driven by operational performance improvements within our CMC division. Full reconciliation between GAAP net income and adjusted net income and EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA can be found in our quarterly report and our earnings. As we've shared previously, our susceptibility to quarterly performance fluctuations, driven by factors including timing of purchase orders, metals market pricing dynamics, and other drivers across our business, we believe it's prudent to examine our results over a longer time horizon. To that end, I will now review our results with trailing 12 months, or TTM. For clarity, the following comparisons will be made between the 12-month periods ending July 3, 2026, and April 3, 2026. Revenue increased 8.2% to $228.5 million, compared to $211.3 million for the prior TTM period. Approximately 55% of the revenue growth was attributed to demand across, increased across aerospace, defense, and government, industrial, medical, and semiconductor end markets, but balanced associated with the tungsten and molybdenum material price. Gross profit increased 14.6% to 50.7 million, or 22.2% gross margin, compared to 44.3 million, or 20.9% gross margin, in the prior TTM period. The increase in gross profit and gross margin was driven by the aforementioned effects of our strategic tungsten sourcing and productivity gains within the CMC division. Operating expenses increased 52.2% to $50.8 million compared to $33.3 million in the prior TTM period. The increase was primarily related to the equity compensation associated with the IPO, expenses associated with the ongoing public company compliance, and expenses associated with growth. Net loss was $1.7 million, or $0.08 per share, compared to the net income of $4 million, or $0.20 per share, in the prior TTM. Adjusting for IPO-related operating expenses, equity compensation, and reorganization costs, our adjusted net income increased to $18.6 million, or $0.84 per share, compared to $16.2 million, or $0.81 per share, in the prior TTM period. The adjusted EBITDA increased 11.3% to $31.8 million compared to $28.6 million in the prior TTM period. I'd like to touch base on our backlog where we've seen significant growth over the last Our firm order backlog grew to approximately $131.5 million at the end of Q2-2026 compared to approximately $113.3 million at the end of Q1-2026 and approximately $84.6 million at the end of Q2 2025. Our ADG and market backlog is up 100.5% at the end of Q2 26 compared to the end of Q2 2025, driven by a series of new and growing programs such as CERN, Strategic Missile Systems, PRISM, Standard Missile, and Patriot, along with a mix of commercial and defense-related aerospace and radar programs. We also should attribute approximately 36.3 million of the 46.9 and we have total backlog rules between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026 to tungsten product increases within ADG market driven by a mixture of price and volume. That concludes our prepared remarks, and I'd like to hand it back to our operator for Q&A.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation call will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. And our first question comes from the line of Colin Canfield with Cantor. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks for the question. Maybe starting out on munitions, we saw some pretty sizable missile defense interceptor awards to the defense primes, and it looks like that's probably not reflected in backlog yet. So maybe if you could characterize kind of how – kind of like the quantity or the magnitude of those potential orders related to those specific orders, and then perhaps kind of the timing of when you think that might hit.

Thanks for the question, Colin. Yeah, you're correct. We really haven't seen a significant amount of those larger multi-years, the primes are being awarded, flow down to us yet. But we've definitely seen some RFQ activity, and we've seen a couple modest sweep funding, tidal funding, and they came in for due a few years funding, but nothing from the time of significance.

That's great. And then maybe following up on the orbital compute discussion from last quarter, if you could kind of talk through kind of where initial discussions are at with SpaceX and how you think about U.S. domestic supply chain requirements for orbital compute satellites versus international sourcing? Thank you.

Well, we not presently have orders from SpaceX. We do have from other satellite companies that we just bought a new line, roughly spent $3 million in CapEx to stand it up, and that is just starting to produce and we see that that is going to continue to be an area that we want to increase that's on the CMC side and on the EMP side we are seeing an increase in defense activities and now that is expanding into satellite areas where we are providing a similar product to help defense against Got it.

Thank you for the color.

And the next question comes from the line of Jim Ricciuti with Needham & Company. Please proceed.

Thanks. Good morning. I was hoping to get a little bit more color on the decline in backlog outside of ADG. Obviously, you saw significant growth in ADG backlog. But I'm wondering if you're anticipating a pickup in order activity from your large medical customer.

Thanks, Jim. And you hit it right on the head. That large medical customer absolutely creates volatility in the other bucket. And while the actual demand for them is up this year in the first half over run rate last year, they are, again, their order pattern will place large orders. Without a doubt, Q2 2025 in our CMC division, you know, driven by this customer, we had almost $12 million of backlog. And at the end of Q2 26, we're all driven by that one customer. So if you look at that total bucket, you know, they're driving the swing. All other, you know, if we look at our other end markets, we've seen increases in industrial and semi start to move up a little bit. Again, that's a smaller end market for us, but we're seeing some traction there. Energy is down a little bit, but it's small enough that the very non-medical influence, we're seeing some traction.

And just if we could switch gears a little bit and talk about margins. Obviously, very strong gross margins in Q2. And I don't know if this is in any of your filings or if there's, you know, you can give us some colors to how much of a benefit you've gotten from pricing on gross margin. And the follow-up to the margin question is just around EBITDA margins, where you showed very good growth and proven in CMC. But, you know, we're still not seeing much improvement on the EMP side. So I wonder if you could just talk to some of those margin questions.

Thanks for the question, Jim, and insightful questions. So starting with gross margin, in particular with the impact of we definitely saw – first off, I want to acknowledge the execution of our team during a rapid material we do. and we got the benefit of managing the price curve up. As we look in our CMC division, the growth in the quarter, we attributed about half of that growth to slightly more, to zero spikes. We were able to either A, leverage our owners, or B, in effect sell some material at market versus what we had on the shelf and simply to think about it. So that's definitely been beneficial. We do think that our supply agreements will continue to help us as we move end productivity within our good signs that going forward and that we tie that in its size. CMC will kind of dictate MP margins, EMP, EBITDA. We definitely, you know, we have a lot of demand for our end product as well as semiconductor. We did see some operational challenges in Q2 in our factory that happens to semiconductor margin size. So, diligently to correct that in the second half from our Q2 results, but we do think it's going to take us a little while to get there throughout.

Got it. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of Chip Moore with Roth MCAM. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to maybe follow up on industrial, the strength there, right, I think 64% growth or something like that. but just maybe some of the trends you're seeing there and pockets of strength.

Yeah, so we're seeing a couple spots. In our EMP division, we've definitely seen an uptick in the industrial space, continue to see further growth there and a lot of opportunity. We think there's some opportunity with our IP that could definitely give us some longer-term continued growth. On the CMC side, you know, we've seen, while we've seen demand growth, tungsten, drive, ADG, also seeing, you know, the industrial segment get some uplift as well. You know, we do sell tungsten and molly into those in the market as well. So that is a little more distributed where it's more concentrated in ADG. But in general, we haven't seen a major pullback on demand in industrial at CMC, and the pricing uplift definitely flows through there. So we're seeing it for various reasons, but for sure it's something we're very happy about, and we see it as being something that's going to continue throughout the…

I think we're in a good CapEx cycle, but in addition, people are finding more and more uses for our products.

Yeah, no, that's helpful. And, you know, maybe back to just the raw material side, and you've done a great job managing that, particularly tungsten with some of the volatility. It looked like that contributed to those gross margins and CNC for sure. Sure. Just anything near term to contemplate around some of the movements and some of the underlying commodities?

You know, we did talk about the margins at the EMP division being down a little bit, and I think that may be because material costs there were spiking faster than we thought. with some of our long-term agreements that we have with, like, CERN and Fermi and so forth, making these gigantic circulators, and I think that caught us off guard. But as Mike said, we're, you know, really digging into it, really making sure that the backlog, we can figure out how to get that backlog up in gross margins up in the backlog. That's what I want to say and move forward.

Great. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from the line of Austin Muller with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed.

Hi, good morning. I think we already discussed the outstanding opportunities for some of the missile system weapons and structures for Tungsten and Mali that are outstanding. but I was just wondering if we could think about how we should think about the gross margin ramp and improvement as some of those larger volume production awards come in in the next 12 to 24 months.

Thanks for the question, Austin. I'll go back to some of our prior communications in our S1 that all continues to hold true. We've, you know, we make a mixture of, you know, or we provide engineering services, you know, microwave components that are quite difficult to produce, and as well as a lot of materials that can early stage production, say powders, all the way through to near-net shape or finished components built to spec. Just the simple nature of the closer you get to an end component, the more value you put into the actual product. When we get into the ADG space, we're starting to live in that space. So, you know, we end up creating more value for the customer, and therefore our margin profile tends to be D. And so, as we see our growth being driven predominantly over the long term by ADG that new business to be coming in at a differentiated margin and that will end up lifting our average. We're seeing some of the product faster than we had we originally anticipated. We're very encouraged by that but you know we the combination of those two things and then you know we've done fairly well with managing again the material pricing spike on as well And that will have maybe 12 months. That's the way I continue to think about it is net demand growth coming from ADG, which is an average higher margin. And us getting to 30% and holding that, we still think that's a very viable target for us in four to five years.

Okay. And can you comment on within the fiscal year 27 base budget and also the reconciliation bills that are being talked about, 3.0 or 4.0, are you seeing any opportunities in there for additional investment funds for the defense industrial base that could be allocated to increase your capacity? yeah yeah i mean we've we're always always got a a finger on that pulse we're reactive yes i think it's fair to say that when the opportunity arises we're best in the past and

and we continue to be seen as a critical partner for the department of war and and uh as as the nature of critical material supply chains change we we only think that's going to be excellent Thanks for the details.

Thank you, Austin.

Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. If you have any additional questions, you may contact Elmitt's investor relations team at ELMT at gateway-grp.com. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Anania for his closing remarks.

Thanks again, everyone, for joining us today. Before we wrap up, I want to provide you with some closing remarks but why we remain confident in our long-term opportunity. As the sole U.S.-based supplier of certain highly engineered critical materials and components and some high-power systems, we believe we remain well-positioned to benefit from several favorable long-term market trends. With most of our competitors owned by foreign entities, and as export restrictions cause more constraints, we remain one of the last U.S.-based facilities with capabilities to provide key components for mission-critical systems and the ability to source critical materials at a reasonable cost. We have leveraged our difficult-to-replicate asset base and production capacity to support key U.S. defense programs over the last decade, which we intend to continue growing as we qualify on additional DOW programs, given the accelerating demand we are seeing today. Finally, we remain encouraged by the opportunities and increased activities we are seeing across all of our markets, driven by multiple megatrends from increased global defense spending to reshoring of critical manufacturing. To close, I'd like to thank our employees, partners, shareholders for their committed support. Operator?

Thank you for joining us today for the Element Group Company second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.