Madison Air Solutions Corp (MAIR) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to the Madison Air 3rd Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Steve Lotufo, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please, go ahead.

Great. Dustin, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Madison Ayer's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are Jill Wyand, President and Chief Executive Officer, and J.J. Foley, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements on this call are forward-looking in nature and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For information concerning these risks, please see Madison Ayer's recent SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition, in today's remarks, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find calculations and a reconciliation of these measures to the most closely comparable GAAP measure in our earnings release, the presentation accompanying this call, and in the supplemental information as applicable, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at madisonair.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jill.

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. In an effort to continue to educate investors about the company, I'll start with an overview of our business and strategy, the growth momentum reflected in the third quarter results, and provide an update on the announced acquisition of EBM Pabst. I'll then turn it over to JJ to discuss our financial performance and updated guidance for the full year before I return with a few closing thoughts before we head to Q&A. So we will start on slide five. At Madison Air, we see air differently. Our mission is to make the world safer, healthier, and more productive through the power of better air. We build and scale air quality businesses across commercial and residential segments, and our leading brands include Addison, April Air, Big Ass Fans, Bro New Tone, Nortec Air Solutions, Nortec Data Center Cooling, and Resner. Our strategy is built around three strengths that work together to deliver better air for our customers, stronger business performance, and attractive long-term returns for shareholders. The first is our return on air approach, how we help customers achieve their most critical business outcomes. We bring together technical expertise, leading brands, and deep customer partnerships to solve challenges in the environments we serve, creating measurable value for customers. Our second strength is leadership in attractive growth markets. Within our commercial segment, we serve 15 end markets where performance matters and customers invest in highly engineered custom and semi-custom solutions for mission-critical applications. Our brands support customers across healthcare, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, PowerGen, data centers, and more. In residential, our Healthier Solutions and contractor education initiatives Improve conversion, helping us gain share and deepen engagement with channel partners. Together, these efforts strengthen demand, expand adoption, and make our business more resilient, even in challenging housing and traditional HVAC markets. The third strength is our value creation model. We combine a decentralized operating structure and lean corporate center with the capabilities and scale of the broader enterprise. Our businesses remain close to their customers and can move quickly to invest where they see the greatest opportunities while benefiting from shared capabilities, talent, technology, and capital at scale. That combination of local agility and enterprise scale is an important competitive advantage for us. It enables us to pursue growth nimbly and efficiently, sustain strong profitability and cash flow, and deploy capital into the highest return opportunities. Taken together, these three strengths, return on air, leadership in durable growth markets, and a discipline value creation model, form a repeatable framework for creating long-term value. Please turn to slide six. Over the last 12 months, Madison Air generated $3.95 billion in revenue, 26.2% adjusted EBITDA margins, and $428 million in free cash flow. I'm very proud of these results, which reflect the power of our operating model and our team's commitment to solving our customers' toughest challenges. We built this portfolio for resilience. It's balanced across commercial and residential with significant exposure to replacement and upgrade activity that holds up across cycles. By combining differentiated products with lifecycle services, we add even more stability to our revenue base while creating value for customers. Together, Madison Air combines a track record of strong profitable growth and cash generation with broad end market exposure and an expanding aftermarket opportunity, creating a durable platform for sustained and profitable growth. Please turn to slide seven. From clean rooms and classrooms to hospitals, data centers, and single and multifamily homes, our solutions show up everywhere people live, work, learn, and play. And that's by design. We are not a traditional HVAC company. We focus on the high-value niches around it, where air performance is critical and the stakes are very high. We've built capabilities across the air ecosystem from air, liquid, and hybrid cooling to air handling and precision humidity control to the five pillars of residential indoor air quality. This breadth enables us to solve complex challenges in a wide range of applications and environments. We estimate our North American addressable market at approximately $40 billion, supported by powerful secular tailwinds, including the growth of advanced manufacturing, increasing demand for healthier, more resilient, and energy-efficient homes and buildings, and the rapid scaling of AI and compute. We believe that positions us well for continued growth. In an environment where macroeconomic trade and geopolitical conditions are shifting quickly, our diversified exposure provides resilience, while significant white space remains as customers increasingly use better air to improve their business outcomes. Please turn to slide eight. Our third quarter results demonstrate the power of disciplined execution against a clear long-term strategy. Across the business, we're doing what we said we would do, and the results are showing up in orders, backlog, revenue growth, and cash generation. Orders are our clearest leading indicator of future performance, and the signals remain strong. Our new business pipeline remains healthy, and combined company orders grew 26% in the quarter and 33% year-to-date. The underlying drivers of demand remain strong, and our expanding pipeline, continued opportunity conversion, and record backlog give us confidence in our ability to deliver continued growth over the next several years. We continue to actively manage these conditions and execute on the levers we can control, including pricing, productivity, and close partnership with suppliers and customers. In our commercial segment, orders growth remains broad-based. While data center cooling continued to be the largest driver, the majority of our commercial end markets grew in the third quarter. Our dehumidification business is a great example of how targeted investment in technology is translating into growth. As advanced manufacturing and logistics become more automated, a large global e-commerce customer came to us needing increasingly precise humidity control to protect optical sensors used for robotic navigation and material handling in a highly automated fulfillment center. We recognized the emerging challenge and developed a solution, and today we're seeing that customer-centric innovation, combined with our nationwide channel breadth, drive strong orders growth. With strong order activity and a third-quarter book-to-bill ratio of 1.26 times, we exited the quarter with record backlog of $3.2 billion, up 119% year-over-year. That backlog provides strong visibility into the near term and beyond, with more than 70% expected to convert in 2027 and later, positioning us well for continued growth. More importantly, we're delivering. Year-to-date net sales grew 18% on a pro forma basis and 25% in the third quarter as our teams ramped production to convert record backlog to revenue, reflecting broad-based momentum across the portfolio. Innovation is also an important driver across the business, and Aprilaire continues to lead in healthy air solutions, most recently with its new TriPure technology. TriPure brings professional-grade filtration to residential air filters, capturing up to 92% of household dust and pollen. It also improves airflow, which reduces strain on HVAC systems and helps lower energy bills for consumers. Innovation like TriPure, together with our contractor education efforts, help us gain share, strengthen adoption, and create new demand. Please turn to slide nine. Big Ass Fans delivered some of our strongest commercial growth this quarter and is a great example of our return on air approach in action. A big part of that opportunity is what we call the heat tax, the hidden cost companies pay when their people are too hot, lost output, and higher turnover. In manufacturing and logistics environments, labor often represents 20 to 40 percent of operating costs. Making workforce productivity a critical business driver. Yet fewer than 20% of U.S. industrial facilities have adequate air conditioning, and many large facilities simply cannot economically cool an entire building. Big Ass Fans addresses that challenge. In a study conducted by UC Berkeley and the University of Sydney, workers using Big Ass Fans solutions experienced conditions that felt up to 10 degrees cooler, and 79% of them said they performed their jobs more effectively. That's return on air in action, improving the environment in a way that drives productivity and job satisfaction, supports retention, and creates measurable value. And the team is now applying those same insights beyond employee comfort. By helping customers manage temperature-sensitive environments, Big S Fans is unlocking new growth opportunities where temperature control protects critical inventory, equipment, and operations. Places like steel manufacturing, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and food distribution. At Big S Fans, the opportunity is clear. Pursue a $6 billion market, which today is only 4% penetrated. Using data-driven insights to identify opportunities and generate demand, we're expanding our reach, creating customer value, and driving sustained, profitable growth. Please turn to slide 10. Our third quarter results in growth momentum reflected deliberate long-term strategy, focused on attractive growth markets, to outperform the markets we serve, drive operational excellence, and allocate capital with discipline. At the center of that strategy is return on air. We help customers turn air into a strategic asset. And by earning a seat at the customer's design table, we combine application expertise, engineering insight, and system-level thinking to solve problems and improve performance. It's a repeatable playbook we apply across businesses, markets, and cycles. We then work to outperform our markets through innovation, value-based selling, strong channel and customer partnerships, and continued expansion of services in aftermarket. Operational excellence is what turns that growth into stronger margins and cash flow. Our approach combines value selling and innovation with operating leverage, productivity, higher margin services and aftermarket, and disciplined 80-20 execution. Data center cooling is a great example. The growth opportunity is compelling, and there's a cost to seizing an opportunity of this magnitude as we invest and grow rapidly to meet significant customer demand. Today's margins do not reflect the data center business's long-term earnings power. This exceptional growth creates a significant opportunity to expand margins as the business matures, and we penetrate a growing install base with more services and aftermarket. We are very focused on improving productivity, optimizing product and project mix, and driving operational leverage from our growing scale. These are proven elements of the same profitable growth playbook we've successfully applied across the entire company. We've also actively managed a few near-term pressures in the macro environment, things like inflation, which remains elevated across materials, freight, and labor, and tariff policy, which continues to evolve. We're responding through value-based pricing, a focus on productivity, and continued supplier cost action. As we've noted in past calls, broad-based demand is putting pressure on the supply chain. We continue to work closely with suppliers to secure capacity and qualify additional sources, while aligning with customers on schedules that deliver what they need when they need it. Finally, core to our strategy is allocating capital to where it creates the greatest value. We invest in high-return organic growth while maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet and a clear path to organic delivering. We also pursue disciplined M&A where it can expand our capabilities, strengthen our technology platforms, and create attractive long-term returns. Our pending EBM PAPS acquisition, which you see on slide 11, is a great example of that strategy in action. We announced the acquisition of EBM Pabst in August and believe this combination will accelerate our strategy, significantly expand our opportunity, and create substantial value over time. As I've said before, we focus on markets that are growing, that benefit from strong secular tailwinds, and offer attractive return-on-air economics. EBM Pabst fits squarely within that strategy with differentiated technology and a strong position as a trusted partner to its customers. Upon closing, our combined company will have approximately $6.9 billion in sales, and our addressable market will expand from $40 billion to more than $70 billion. The integrated airflow technology market benefits from powerful trends, including increasing energy demand, rising efficiency requirements, and the adoption of smarter, more resilient buildings. The opportunity also extends well beyond the initial sale. EBM Pabst has an installed base of approximately 250 million fans worldwide, creating significant opportunities for replacement upgrade and service revenue. We see meaningful opportunities to apply our customer-focused approach and expand lifecycle revenue opportunities across this installed base. Together, we will have greater scale and broader capabilities to improve energy efficiency, enhance performance and resiliency, and unlock greater return on air across a global installed base. Since announcing the transaction, we've made significant progress, and our conviction in the opportunity has only strengthened. We successfully raised approximately $2.25 billion through our pipe offering, which, together with approximately $2.8 billion of debt and cash, provides the funding needed to complete the acquisition. We remain on track to close soon after the end of the year. While we continue to operate as two separate companies today, integration planning is well underway with dedicated resources focused on the combined operating model and positioning us to execute effectively from day one. We remain confident in our target of $160 million of annual cost synergies exiting year three after close, which represents a significant and identifiable source of value creation, with additional upside from cross-selling, broader customer relationships, and our combined capabilities. Importantly, these revenue synergies are not included in our current accretion expectations. We have a clear plan centered on delivering these synergies, applying our operating discipline, and capturing opportunities for profitable growth. These are the same capabilities we've successfully deployed across Madison Air, and we intend to bring that discipline to the combined business to drive long-term value creation. Last month, I visited EBM Pabst Global Headquarters in Germany and spent time with the leadership team and employees. I've participated in virtual forums with employees around the world. We are really excited about what we can do together. The strategic rationale is clear. Our confidence in the value creation opportunity continues to grow, and we look forward to officially welcoming EBM PAPS to Madison Air. With that, I'll turn it over to JJ to walk through our third quarter financial performance and outlook. JJ?

Thanks, Jill, and good day all. Please turn to slide 13. Net sales grew 25% year-over-year to $1.127 billion, driven by strong volume growth across our commercial end markets and continued demand for healthy air systems and residential. Price also contributed across both segments and helped mitigate ongoing inflation. Adjusted EBITDA grew 19%, reflecting strong top-line growth. Margins were 26.5%, with essentially all of the year-over-year decline driven by the success-based mix from outsized growth and data center cooling. where we continue to invest and grow rapidly to meet significant customer demand. Price-cost dynamics persisted through the quarter, but were largely managed across the portfolio. Importantly, the third quarter incremental margins were in line with our expectations, and as we discussed earlier, we see a clear opportunity to expand data center cooling margins over time as the business scales. We delivered strong adjusted EPS of $0.38 and adjusted net income of $199 million in the quarter. Adjusted net income grew 100% year-over-year, driven by net sales and pre-tax earnings growth mentioned above, along with tax benefits from executing our ETR strategy. On cash, we generated $298 million of free cash flow year-to-date, which represents net income conversion of 135%. We ended the quarter with adjusted net leverage of 2.6 turns, excluding the PIPE proceeds. This represents another approximate quarter turn of improvement versus the second quarter through a combination of cash generation and earnings growth. We remain on track to close this year with less than two and a half times adjusted net leverage and continue to pace ahead of what was communicated pre-IPO. Overall, the quarter demonstrates our ability to convert net sales growth into earnings growth and cash generation. Please turn to slide 14. In commercial, we drove strong orders growth up 37% year-over-year. Backlog increased 125% year-over-year to $3.1 billion, providing good visibility and supporting solid revenue momentum into 2027. On revenue, strong customer demand drove 39% year-over-year organic net sales growth to $772 million, driven by a combination of pricing and strong volume. Importantly, as Jill noted, we delivered strong orders in revenue growth in the majority of our 15 commercial end markets, reflecting continued momentum across key technology platforms, including air handling, air movement, and air liquid and hybrid cooling, illustrating how we benefit from a diversified portfolio and decentralized operating model. Commercial segment adjusted EBITDA grew 24% to $200 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 26%, with incremental margins in line with our expectations. As I mentioned, the year-over-year margin comparison primarily reflects the success-based mix impact of success-exceptional growth in the data center cooling business. As we continue to expand production and meet strong customer demand, we are making progress on production ramps, productivity, and price-cost initiatives. We have a clear roadmap to expand these margins over time, and we believe the key drivers are measurable within our control and will be demonstrating scaling progress into 2027. We closely track productivity, program maturity, and price realization against defined operating targets, and we're progressing in line with our plan. These are operational levers that Jill and I manage weekly with the team, giving us confidence in our ability to deliver continued healthy earnings growth. Beyond the financial results, we continue to expand our leadership in high-value applications, including clean rooms, where our solutions directly improve productivity yield, uptime, and asset utilization. We're also accelerating services and aftermarket growth, capturing more value across our expanding install base. Overall, the segment continues to benefit from exposure to mission-critical end markets, and we remain focused on executing our backlog, innovating to meet customer demands, and sustaining growth momentum. Now, please turn to slide 15 for the residential results. The residential segment delivered 3% organic net sales growth and 12% adjusted EBITDA growth, despite a soft housing market, performing in line with our expectations. Given the short-cycle nature of this business, as we've said before, orders in backlog are less relevant than in commercial, but for additional context, orders grew low single digits in the quarter. Importantly, we play a fundamentally different game than traditional residential HVAC providers. Our growth isn't dependent solely on housing starts or HVAC replacements. We're focused on increasing healthy air system adoption through our contractor channel, with significant white space still in front of us. Every HVAC service call or replacement creates an opportunity for our contractor partners to educate homeowners on the value of healthy air and drive greater adoption. That gives us an avenue to grow through penetration, even when the underlying market is soft. We're supporting that opportunity with continued investment. As an example, in the retail channel where we're leveraging AI and digital tools to sharpen commercial insights, protect share, and drive growth. At the same time, we continue to innovate, including the recent launch of our patented next-generation air purification technology that Jill highlighted earlier. You can see the strength of that model in the results. Residential net sales increased 3% to $356 million, supported by low single-digit pricing and approximately flat volume. Adjusted EBITDA grew 12% to $105 million, with margins expanding 225 basis points, driven by productivity, cost actions, price, tariff refunds, and importantly, the continued realization of Aprilaire synergies. Overall, residential remains highly differentiated in its products, its channel, and growth model. We have substantial white space that we can capture through innovation and greater channel penetration today, with additional upside as the underlying market backdrop improves. Now, please turn to slide 16 for a summary of our balance sheet. The strength and flexibility of our balance sheet are supported by continued strong cash generation. As of September 30th, excluding the PIPE proceeds, adjusted net debt was approximately $2.7 billion, with adjusted net leverage at 2.6 times. The financial flexibility allows us to continue investing in the long term through organic growth and strategic acquisitions. The $2.25 billion proceeds from the PIPE will be used to fund the acquisition of EVM PAPS. Adjusted net leverage improved approximately a quarter turn in the third quarter. We remain on track to exit the year at less than two and a half times trailing, supported by strong continued cash generations and earnings growth. At quarter end, we had liquidity of roughly $1.8 billion, excluding the pipe proceeds, providing flexibility to support operations, strategic initiatives, and the expected close of UVM PAPS. For the first nine months, reported free cash flow conversion was approximately 135%, reflecting our asset-light model and disciplined working capital management. Reported LTM free cash flow margins were approximately 11%. Importantly, our strong cash generation comes while we continue to make deliberate investments to support outsized growth and meet strong customer demand. That includes investing in working capital, primarily inventory, to support delivery against our record backlog. As well as strategic investments in innovation and critical operational and manufacturing capabilities to support our growth. Our 80-20 approach is an important enabler here, helping us focus resources and capital on the highest value opportunities across the portfolio. Now, please turn to slide 17. The third quarter execution and record backlog visibility enables us to raise our full-year guidance. We now expect net sales of $4.05 billion to $4.125 billion, representing mid-to-high teens growth on a pro forma basis. This enables us to over-deliver against our prior guidance and long-term organic growth ambition as a result of strong execution and increasing success in key growth markets. Looking to the fourth quarter, we expect low double-digit net sales growth. As we have noted in the last several quarters, while the underlying demand and the pipelines remain very healthy, fourth quarter's orders are expected to be down mechanically year over year due to the non-repeat of a large order in the fourth quarter of 2025. For the full year, we now expect adjusted EBITDA of $1.04 billion to $1.07 billion, representing low double-digit to mid-teens pro forma growth. This implies adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 26%. As discussed earlier, our margin outlook reflects continued mix impact of exceptional data center growth in the cooling business, alongside investments to bring new programs and production capacity online. We expect productivity improvements and price costs to support margin expansion as the business scales. Beyond the headline guidance, we're updating several assumptions based on latest visibility. We continue to expect free cash flow conversion above 100% of net income, with capital expenditures now less than one and a half points of sales. Additionally, we see an effective tax rate of approximately 27%. Following the September pipe, we now expect net cash interest expense of approximately $210 million, including interest income from the pipe proceeds, and approximately $597 million diluted shares at year end. We also now expect central expenses of approximately $35 million, down from our prior estimate of $38 million. Our guidance reflects current tariff environment and persistent inflation. The supply chain remains dynamic. We continue to deploy countermeasures including pricing, supplier negotiations, freight optimization, and operational productivity. Overall, demand remains healthy, execution remains strong, and we are raising our outlook while continuing to invest behind significant growth opportunities. Our teams remain focused on what they can control, serving customers, driving productivity, and executing our strategic priorities. We believe this positions us well to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and strong free cash flow generation. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Jill.

Thanks, JJ. Our third quarter results continue to reinforce the strength of our strategy. Our commitment to broad-based, diversified growth in high-performance markets is a durable compounding model that enables us to grow through cycles. Across the board, we're applying our proven playbook to translate that growth into sustained earnings and cash flow through the work of our very committed team. Regardless of the external environment, our priorities have not changed. Backed by strong demand, record backlog visibility, and great momentum, we remain focused on disciplined execution, serving our customers, caring for our team, and creating long-term value for shareholders by managing the factors within our control. Our mission is to make the world safer, healthier, and more productive through the power of better air. And Return on Air is how we measure the value we create for our customers and the impact we deliver to the world every day. Thank you for joining us, and Dustin, I'd love to turn it back over to you to take questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To allow as many participants as possible the opportunity to ask questions, please limit yourself to one question. To ask a question, you may press star 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To enjoy a question, please press star 2. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster.

And our first question comes from the line of 10 boys from Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, everybody. Good morning. Morning, Tim. Hey, good morning. Maybe just my question, just on commercial margins, I was wondering if maybe you could kind of break down for us kind of the drivers of the year-over-year compression, you know, how much is data center mix versus price costs versus some other things. And maybe just could you kind of outline for us what success-based mix means, just kind of what that means. I don't know if I've heard that term before. Thanks.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I'd say, first of all, we got to start with, you know, 27 percent even margins, very strong quarter, I think, particularly in the context of the year over year earnings growth and against the backdrop of the, you know, the top line growth across the company with a slug of persistent inflation. Yeah, I think as you look at the drivers here, the primary driver of margin was the success-based mix. And what that means, Tim, is that the data center business at its core right now, as it's early in the scaling journey, is lower margin. So as that business mixes in against a 28% commercial segment margin last year, that just as a nature of that, that's going to put that mix pressure in there. So, you know, I think that's the biggest driver when we talk about success-based mix. The price-cost dynamics we've talked about, you know, persisted, but were largely managed, and I would say we're on track, as we always talk about here. We covered the dollar pressure in year one with rate coverage in the following year. I think many of our businesses, you know, we are covered from a price-cost dollar standpoint, many of them covered from a rate standpoint with a few, you know, on the longer cycle side of things That'll recover here as we get into 2027. I think one of the interesting points here is if you look at the business, excluding data centers, company margins are up year to date. So we don't view this as broad-based mixed pressure across the portfolio. It is primarily a function of where that growth is coming from. And we can talk a little bit about where we're going in terms of the data center business. Specifically to the commercial segment margins, those were at 26%. Again, here, margins almost entirely explained by the success base mixed from outsized growth in the data center business. And the commercial segment incrementals, you know, on the upside were somewhat lower in line with our expectations, given where that business is in its scaling journey. We talked about the data center business margins being, you know, left of center in early days here. And I think as we said in the call, or as Jill said in the call, You know, stepping back, there's a real cost to seizing this opportunity, you know, when you think about the magnitude of it, whether it's new capacity, some inefficiency on the labor front, supporting some of those new programs, but we certainly see a compelling return on those investments both today, given that we've brownfielded most of our exposure to the data center business, and then over time as we grow and scale that business.

And I guess, you know, just as a follow-up question, I know you've been talking about kind of orders having a tough comp in the commercial segment in the fourth quarter. Would you still expect book-to-bill to be, you know, nicely above one? And, you know, of the $3.1 billion of backlog in commercial, you know, that you ended the quarter with, how much of that is shippable in 27? Thanks.

Yeah, hey, Tim, this is Jill. So as far as, you know, orders and the orders picture, Look, our pipelines are full. Our teams are all over it. I personally chair a call every two months where we go through every single business, every single new business pipeline, particularly down to the 30, 60, 90-day outlook. So I feel good about our pipelines. They continue to grow and have nice momentum. We had a healthy book to bill in the quarter of, you know, 1.3 times. We would expect in the fourth quarter that that book to bill remains healthy. I would characterize it sort of in the range of one. And those commercial orders over a billion, $3.2 billion backlog and balanced growth in both, you know, across our 15 commercial end markets. And we would estimate that over 70% of that backlog delivers 2027 or later. So we have good forward-looking visibility into 2027 and, you know, again, feel good about exiting the quarter and really the year with good growth momentum.

Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkle from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the question. Morning. I wanted to start with the comments on data center margins showing progress in 27. Can you put a finer point on that, maybe timing or magnitude or anything else you can share?

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think on the data center business, it's performing well with healthy EBITDA margins. I think for the data center business in isolation, I would tell you we see a few points of margin expansion over the course of the next several quarters, obviously assuming that we can secure parts and supply chain continues to cooperate to drive that growth. The current margin dynamic is largely a function of program maturity. And we've talked to some folks about this offline over time here, but the majority of our second half, 26 data center revenue is coming from programs that were introduced within the last six months. And these programs typically run anywhere from one to three years. So there's a ton of opportunity to be able to work these down the cost curve and improve the economics as they mature. And to make that a little bit more real for you with a few examples. There's really kind of three levers that we look at to be able to drive the margin expansion of that business. The first is really improving the cost per unit. So think about that as driving down BOM costs and driving labor productivity as the program's ramp. And, you know, if you had a new program in the first half of this year. You know, ours now are probably down roughly 25% versus where you jumped in. So with a path for more, very operational, real-time, you know, hours per unit targets and see that as we work those down the program maturity. The second really is leverage on the capacity that we've built to support the growth. So, for example, in Oklahoma City, you know, we invested a bit ahead of that in volume to be able to ramp in the second half of the year here and into 27. And as that facility scales, we'll have that better overhead absorption, and 8020 is really guiding the way there. And then the third is really more of an overtime item, but also, you know, as we commission and install more units here, we grow that services in aftermarket. So participation beyond the initial equipment sale. You know, we delivered a record services quarter in the third quarter, and that opportunity grows with the install base. So much of this should sound familiar. You know, you've studied the story here, but, you know, around our margin playbook. So we start with that value-based pricing, which, you know, we've got a number of active programs with customers today in the data center business, innovation at higher margins. The fixed cost leverage in 80-20 that we talked about here in the more operational examples and then the higher margin aftermarket and services. So very much confidence in the long-term margin profile. I don't necessarily see this as something that snaps back in one particular quarter, but like the path of travel and see a few points of margin expansion over the next several quarters.

Got it. Okay, thanks for that. That was great color. And then just quickly, any early thoughts on the data center moratoriums? Do you see any impact from that?

Yeah, this is Jill. Good morning, Ryan. So, you know, I would start there with we're obviously still digesting the elections. It's been just over 24 hours. But I focus in my mind on two or three things, because quite frankly, this is what we've, you know, irrespective of the election, kind of how I've always thought about it. You guys have heard me talk about resilient demand and flexible investment. So, you know, our backlog of projects, which is very solid when you're speaking in particular to the data center industry, is a very good indicator of demand into 2027. You know, these are not projects that are in the pre-permitting phase, right? You're bringing in cooling equipment towards the tail end of the data center construction process. So, you know, we have strong customer engagement on these opportunities and, you know, a healthy backlog. Some of these concerns were an existing issue, right? They're not net new, although the election results in many places certainly put a pinpoint on them. And we've always talked about how the fact that we build custom air, liquid, and hybrid cooling solutions that allow customers to build energy efficient, water efficient, you know, reasonable sound profile data centers are an advantage. And we think over time, EBM PAPS becoming part of the family only strengthens that. And then, you know, we are always, we very much focused on a small subset, like 10 or so, hyperscalers and colos that we believe will be here in 50 years. We've not gone into the neoclouds. Frankly, we don't have the capacity and we're not going to invest out in front of it. We've not pursued speculative demand. We have managed our exposure to this segment, which is one of 15 end market verticals. You know, as part of a diversified approach in our commercial segment. So we are very focused on what we can control. I am delighted that we have always managed our exposure and been very diversified here. And, you know, our commercial orders outside of the data center segment, the majority of those 15 end markets grew in the third quarter, and orders were up more than 20% outside of the data center segment. So we are very glad that we are decentralized and diversified because we think it builds a durable profile to execute, you know, through cycles.

Okay. Thanks, Jill. I'll pass it on.

Thanks, Ryan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Jones from Schiefel. Please go ahead.

Hi, Nathan.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning. Good morning. I guess I'll ask the regulatory and potential election result question a bit of a different way. There's obviously a backlog of projects that are under construction, and as you said, the cooling stuff comes in a bit later. Let's say just for a hypothetical that they banned new data centers tomorrow, how long would that project pipeline take to you to realize the orders and then actually deliver the revenue before it hit the wall? Obviously, that's not going to happen, but just to give us an idea of how far out that project pipeline and project deliveries go.

Yeah, I think it would be out there, Nathan. I mean, I can't put a, you know, what month or what quarter, but it would be a longer term effect. I would say this again, when we are, you know, we have customers who come to us and, you know, plan. For several years of build out, only a subset of which is in our reported backlog, you know, so we have more visibility to that. You know, I've read statistics that say in the US, we have a four times, you know, megawatt build out underway in this country, more than 80% of which is permitted or under construction. So I think we are very heavily playing in that part of the market. I would also say, again, we are not in the neocloud, you know, we have a real firm know-your-customer approach to this market. We've managed our exposure to it through one piece of our business so that we've not student body lefted the whole organization towards one particular end market. And so I think between what we believe to be the most resilient demand... You know, good, solid discipline and focus. You know, we've tried to manage our exposure to the most resilient players in the market, you know, who we need if we want things like, you know, Netflix and someplace to store our iPhone photos on the cloud, if you will. So I think any effects of that would be longer term in nature beyond what we see in our backlog. And obviously, we have a team that begins and ends each day focused on this and has its ear to the lips of the hyperscalers and colos that we serve. So we have good market intel day-to-day, week-to-week.

Thanks for that. And I guess the ROI on all of this is pretty high because your CapEx is very low. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about what it is that you're actually putting in place to ramp this capacity up and then talk about how that climbs the skill hill in order to improve those margins as you go along?

Yeah, thank you for the question. We do believe, you know, as we talked about, one of the company's strengths is our decentralized operating model and disciplined capital allocation. We measure each of our businesses on returns on tangible capital or operating return on capital. And we have, in fact, you know, clear evidence that we have entered not just the data center market, but virtually every market we serve in a very capital efficient way for share owners. Our investment here and in most places is lines, cranes, stuff to move big boxes down production lines, to some extent working capital, getting the cash to amass what you need to make thousands of units at a time for large customers, whether they be in pharmaceuticals, semiconductor chips, or data centers. So that tends to be the nature of the environment. Our 80-20 operating model, we are constantly looking at our factory capacity to say, are we using every square inch for its highest, best use? And we don't tend to invest in front of demand. We have sort of a grow to invest mentality in our company. We do make invest to grow investments, but I would not characterize them as the way we work routinely across the patch. So that really allows us to pursue growth in mission-critical end markets where air is critical to process control in a disciplined and capital-efficient way.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Faulkner from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Hey, good morning. I'm curious to help. Yes, good morning, indeed. I'm curious how to think about the capacity that you're adding, because I know it's not the mood of the market today, but if you continue to see the types of successes that you are in things like data center, my guess is you'll probably have to continue adding capacity. But how should we think about that? Is 27 a year where you can kind of harvest what you have planted, or is there a potential that we'll continue to see some of these margin headwinds from capacity additions?

Yeah, I would say, you know, we just went through the first thing. Steve, good morning. Thank you for the question. You know, we've just completed our annual planning review, our budget cycle for 2027. I would say, you know, at this point, we are not contemplating massive investments in capacity. We have 5 million square feet of manufacturing across the company as we sit here today. We had a good conversation with the data center business between, you know, efficiency and productivity and, you know, a few extra lines. We can accommodate the growth, the responsible growth within the four walls of the capacity we have today. So, again, it's sort of like we want to participate in the growth in this and other of the 15 commercial end markets that we see great opportunity in. I mean, beneath the headlines of the election and the day-to-day and the VIX and all the things, like, look, unemployment is low. Construction in certain subsegments of the economy is happening. And so, you know, because of our decentralized model and our ability to move quickly and deploy capital, whether that's another factory line or 10 salespeople to go chase an opportunity, you know, we tend to be quite nimble and capital efficient in going after growth. So the net net of it, Steve, is we feel like we have the floor space we need to meet our continued growth ambitions. And, you know, that's just kind of how we have rolled and how we plan to roll going forward.

Great. Thank you. And then maybe switching gears on the resi side margins, really impressive there. And JJ, I think you mentioned April Air Synergy is continuing. Are those, is there more there than you had originally thought? Are those going to continue?

Yeah, good question. I would tell you on the Synergy side of things from the acquisition of Aprilaire, they are over-delivering relative to the original underwriting case. And quite frankly, it's a combination of both the cost side, but more importantly, the commercial side from a revenue synergy standpoint. There were complementary brands and capabilities, particularly in the residential dehumidification space. We're seeing them outperform as well as in different geographies, where, as an example, our grown new tone business was stronger in Canada or maybe on the West Coast, and then the same for Aprilaire down as you kind of think about the southern part of the United States. So both from a cost standpoint, our materials cost reduction led by Graham from a centralized sourcing or strategic sourcing standpoint, very much delivering the same with the great work from Dale and his team and Jimmy over delivering on the commercial synergies and then getting after the product simplification on the back end, which has given us some benefit as you also think about productivity through the factories.

So, kind of a similar story to what we foreshadowed, like hit the cost synergies, over deliver on the growth synergies. And real kudos to that entire team for grabbing that mandate and executing on it in a volatile environment.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Now, our next question comes from the line of Zaffy Shetson from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Zach.

Hey, how are you? Morning. I was wondering if we could get a little more color on service, maybe the size of the revenue base at year end, the growth profile you see going forward, and if you're seeing really an inflection yet driven by data center demand.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Zach. So, you know, very good performance both in the third quarter and year-to-date in our services business, you know, in the quarter outpaced equipment growth, if you will, albeit on a smaller base than our equipment sales revenue. But we have good momentum in our services businesses. I would say you could still characterize it as, you know, within 10% of total company revenues. And again, this is because we are just growing unit volumes so quickly in a lot of places, but very strong performance out of our data center business. That team is doing a great job ensuring that we meet our customers where they need us to be to commission and start up equipment on time, on quality. You know, big-ass fans had a really good performance in the third quarter. They're making a lot of investments in digital and expanding their nationwide installer network to ensure we identify and digitize our ability to, you know, take the hassle factor and the complexity of installing fans across multi-unit locations. And then in our customer handling business, our coils business, where we've made investments in digital tools to make us easier to buy from, things like coils and spare parts in the aftermarket, saw really nice growth as well. So our investments in digitizing our services business, on deploying more great talent, continue to pay dividends, and I think we'd say, again, Growth rates at or above equipment growth, ballpark 10% of total company sales.

On the data center side of things, early stages, as Jill said, as we look at the revenue growth, the commissioning, the install, preventative maintenance, and things of that nature typically trail the equipment sale. So I would think about that, Zach, as upside as we look at margins for the business and growth into 2027.

Got it. Thank you, guys. And then just one follow-up on the EBM deal and the extent you could speak to that, you know, maybe revenue performance since announcement, any updates on customer conversations and capacity expansion.

Yep. In terms of financial performance, the team is executing quite well. So as you think about where we thought we'd finish from an estimated 2026 year-end, revenue kind of at that $2.8 billion mark, EBITDA at $343 million USD, those guys are executing well, high confidence in being able to hit those numbers, possibly some upside from that standpoint, and encouraged by the planning discussions as we look at 2027.

Yeah, and I would say with respect to their customers, as we noted in prior calls, including when we announced the acquisition, we don't compete with their global OEM customers. This is not the only acquisition we will have made where we white label for OEMs, and so we're very used to these types of arrangements. We would consider the acquisition a success if in a year or two those customers are saying, wow, like, you know, this is the best thing to ever happen to EBM PAPS. And along those lines, we are excited to bring our 80-20 toolkit and our broader operating, you know, discipline to helping them unlock more capacity and throughput for the products that they have that are highly differentiated and in high demand. So excited to help them continue to fortify those relationships and, if anything, provide their great technology, you know, more of it.

Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over back to Jill White for closing remarks.

Thank you, Dustin, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. We appreciate you being with us on our third quarter call. We continue to work to make the world safer, healthier, and more productive, despite a dynamic external environment, and are excited about our third quarter results and the momentum we have as we exit 2026. Again, appreciate your support, interest, and engagement, and we look forward to speaking again soon. Thank you, everyone. Take care.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now descend.