Core Molding Technologies Inc (CMT) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the core molding technologies third quarter 2025 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will turn the call over to Sandy Martin, 3PAR Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. We appreciate your joining us for the Core Molding Technologies conference call to review our third quarter 2025 results. Joining me on the call today are the company's President and CEO David Duvall, as well as COO, Eric Palomaki and CFO Alex Panda.

This call is being webcast and can be accessed through coremt.com via an audio link on the investor relations events and presentations page.

Today's conference call, including the Q&A session will be recorded. Please be advised that any time sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion.

That are not historical facts, including statements or expectations or future events or future financial performance are forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward-looking statements are uncertain and outside the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to today's earnings release for our disclosures on forward-looking statements.

These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Poor molding technology assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements publicly.

Management will refer to non-GAAP measures including adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA the debts trailing 12 month EBITDA ratio, free cash flow, and return on capital employed. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measure are available at the end of our earnings release.

Our earnings release has been submitted to the SEC on Form 8-K, and now we would like to turn the call over to the company's President and CEO Dave Duval.

Thank you, Sandy, and thank you all for joining us today. The positive momentum we've highlighted last quarter has continued to build and remains firmly in place. The only change from our Q2 update relates to the timing of our tooling revenue, which has shifted into the fourth quarter.

As a reminder, tooling is an in process involving fabrication, testing, and ultimately customer final sign-off, making it inherently challenging to predict the exact timing of revenue recognition.

With the vendor trucking industry, several projects remain on hold pending greater clarity around the administration's policy direction. That said, we have continued to make significant progress this year and this quarter across our next largest verticals.

During the third quarter, sales on our power sports, building products, and industrial and utilities markets grew year over year, reflecting the continued traction of our invest for growth initiatives and the gradual improvement in market conditions.

Power Sports, a major sales category for core, achieved its first year over year growth in eight quarters, marking a return to growth after two full years of declines. We believe this momentum is being fueled by a combination of new product introductions and our continual wallet share growth. As an example, we are now in full production for the UTV skid plates.

In the third quarter, we successfully launched the UTV skid plate program we've discussed on prior calls. We're seeing signs of recovery in demand for power sports helped by expectations for continued lower interest rates and new launches.

That combination is creating a more active demand environment across both water and land power sports as we head into 2026. Regarding the skid plate program specifically, we expect it to generate approximately $8 million dollars in annual run rate revenue once fully ramped.

While this category remains somewhat seasonal, we believe Power Sports' position for a stronger rebound in 2026, particularly in a more favorable interest rate environment following recent cuts and new program launches. Last quarter, we highlighted $46.7 million in new business wins this year, 99% of which is incremental.

This builds on the $45 million in wins from last year. We are pleased with the momentum and excited about our known future growth and continue to see additional opportunities in a robust sales pipeline of over $250 million.

But we know we still have many opportunities to leverage the execution improvements we have made, and therefore, we are continuing to invest and aggressively refine our sales systems.

This has always been the last phase of the core molding transformation, and it is our current must-win battle as we drive to leverage all the business execution improvements and unlock the earnings potential of our improved capabilities.

To accelerate growth further, we have implemented a value selling program, and we're adding 3 new business development roles that are focused on and incentivized to expand wallet share with key partners and drive lead development for our new sheet molding compound opportunities.

On last quarter's call, we discussed the completion of a market analysis to determined the total addressable market for SMC in North America.

During the thirdrd quarter, we partnered with four potential customers who completed molding trials of our material and provided positive feedback.

Based on the successful product trials with the initial customers, we are optimistic about our current market potential, as we've stated earlier, we see the the cash cycle for this product in the 6 month range versus our fully designed product being in the 12 to 18 month range.

We're pleased with the level of end market diversification represented in these trials, which includes electrical boxes, multi-family commercial doors, buses, and roof and hoods for truck customers.

We remain focused on broadening our sales and marketing work to promote core's proprietary SMC product as raw material for key customers. We estimate the total addressable market for this product exceeds about $200 million.

Our focus on operational improvements and key investments in our SMC operations has significantly improved our capacity, consistency, and performance, which we are seeing as key value propositions as we engage with customers in this market.

We have always viewed our advanced formulations as a deep competitive differentiator for core, and now working directly with SMC customers, we clearly see our product and service advantages versus the current suppliers.

Specifically, core has more consistent material, expertise in modifying SMC formulations to meet specific molded part requirements, and core is significantly shorter lead times.

All these factors create significant value for our customers, particularly for customers whose end products are built around core's sheet molding compound, as is always the case with SMC.

Work continues on our strategic $25 million investment, and layouts are complete for the Matamoros expansion and the new greenfield build in Monterey, Mexico.

Monterey has been designed to provide additional capacity for future growth in low pressure injection molding and DCPD processes.

Additionally, we are adding topcoat paint capabilities to this facility as customers have specifically asked for this capability, especially in the construction and agricultural machine market.

We believe the Monterey region will continue to grow and has significant long-term potential for us.

We have also ordered two new state of the art 4,500 ton compression molding presses, and we have completed the automation design and plant layout for a sleeper route program in our Mata Morris facility.

The tooling revenue from these programs is anticipated to be approximately $35 million and is expected to be recognized in 2027.

Organic growth remains our top priority in our capital allocation strategy, and this investment not only supports the launch of a major truck program, but also adds DCPD molding and topcoat paint capabilities to our Monterey business, serving growing industries, including the con agg market.

The addition of DCPD molding positions us closer to key customers that highly value this process. Additionally, our new topcoat paint capabilities enables us to deliver final topcoat paint products that are ready to install by our customers.

This is a significant value add for our customers, which reduces overall cost and makes the process from order to finished product more efficient. Together these investments expand our technical capabilities and create new durable revenue streams.

We have good visibility into the truck and power sports industry recovery, which gives us confidence in the potential for over $300 million in total revenue in 2027. These long-term programs are expected to generate approximately $150 million in revenue over the next seven to 10 years.

Based on our current projections across truck, power sports, and other growing end markets, we expect annual product revenue to exceed $325 million within the next two years.

Turning to our Q3 financial results, revenue was $58.4 million, which is down 19.9% from the prior year, with over half of the sales decline coming from the known Volvo transition and the remaining due to declines in other truck demand.

Gross margin was 17.4%, which is within our targeted range of 17% to 19%, adjusted even a margin of 11%. That's up 70 basis points from a year ago.

Cash flow from operations for the 1st 9 months of the year of over $14 million which continues to exceed our year-to-date net earnings.

We again delivered stable growth margins this quarter within our projected range and positive year-to-date free cash flow. Sales declined in the third quarter were more than we expected.

But the new business wins are there, and we continue to ramp up our invest for growth efforts. We expect fourth quarter sales to be up year over year, primarily due to a significant increase in to sales.

Regarding the ongoing succession plan execution, Eric and I are working closely in all facets of the role as we continue to progress towards the CEO succession plan for May of 2026.

As I've discussed in the past, we have robust systems for organizational development and succession planning throughout all levels of our organization.

In conjunction with our succession plan for we have developed a strong bench under A, including an executive Vice President of Mexico operations, Arnold Alanis, who has worked for Corps for over 13 years, and our executive Vice President of US and Canada operations, Mike Gayford.

Arnold and Mike have been a part of the entire leadership transition over the last year, and I appreciate their increased engagement in our business, allowing Eric time to focus on transitioning to CEO.

I believe that our culture is a competitive advantage, and a key benefit of that strategy is our ability to develop and grow leaders from within core molding, as demonstrated by our ability to promote new executive leaders from within the organization.

I think it's a testament to the effectiveness of our organizational development and succession process. Now I'll hand the call over to A to share comments on our new production and operational efficiency efforts.

Thank you, Dave, and good morning. One of our newest program opportunities is a large Canadian rail infrastructure project. The cable railway containment trough system replaces concrete systems, and its installations were labor intensive, slow, and costly.

Under the traditional installation process, crews excavate a shallow trench and use a crane to lift and position each concrete section. The benefits of our proprietary polymer and composite troughing are that they are lightweight, nonconductive, easier to install, and made from recycled materials, reducing both installation labor and lifetime maintenance costs.

I'd also like to share an update on footprint optimization initiative launched at the end of the second quarter, which we expect to be completed by year end.

As part of our ongoing focus on product level profitability, the current softness in the truck demand created an opportunity to consolidate our RTM or resin transfer molding process by purposefully relocating select programs to another one of our facilities.

This strategic move will streamline operations at the originating site and is expected to deliver further margin improvement.

Lastly, I wanted to call out our operational teams for their 99% on-time deliveries and excellent 62 ppm performance. PPM, which measures the number of defective parts per million produced, is used by our customers to measure quality performance. The rate below 0.01% indicate.

A high level of quality and demonstrates the precision of our quality processes. We have also maintained industry low safety incident rates and employee turnover rates, which we take pride in.

These favorably trending metrics reflect well on our culture and commitment to excellence across all our people and our plants. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Alex to run through the financials.

Thank you, Eric, and. Good morning, everyone. For the third quarter, net sales totaled $58.4 million. As Dave stated, product sales were primarily down due to the known Volvo transition.

Including the Volvo transition, sales were down 8.7% from prior year due to lower demand, primarily in the medium and heavy duty truck verticals. This was partially offset by new product sales to customers in power sports, building products, and industrial and utilities markets.

Despite the operating leverage experienced in the third quarter, we maintain a gross margin of $10.1 million or 17.4% of sales.

Over the past 12 months, we have executed a series of initiatives focused on improving operational efficiency, optimizing raw material costs, and enhancing overall margin performance. These efforts have helped offset the fixed cost deleveraging associated with the planned Volvo transition.

We continue to expect our gross margin to remain within our targeted range of 17% to 19% for the year.

SG&A expenses for the third quarter were $7.6 million or 13% of sales compared to 12% in our prior year period.

Excluding the $220,000 in footprint optimization costs, our SG&A rate would have been 12.6% for the quarter. As Eric discussed, our footprint optimization project is underway.

We have invested $500,000 so far and plan to invest $1.5 million by the end of 2025. Again, this project involves relocating production to a different plant to generate cost savings of over $1 million each year, beginning in January of 2026.

Operating income for the quarter was $2.6 million or 4.4% of sales, down from $3.6 million or 4.9% of sales in the same period in the prior year. The third quarter's interim effective tax rate was 29.3% compared to 18.7% in the prior year quarter.

The increase was due to taxable income being generated in higher tax rate jurisdictions this quarter.

Net income for the third quarter was $1.9 million or diluted income per share of $0.22 compared to net income of $3.2 million or diluted EPS of $0.36 in the comparable year period. Excluding the impact of footprint optimization costs, our third quarter diluted EPS would have been $0.24.

The Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $6.4 million or 11% of sales. We generated $14.2 million in GAAP cash from operations. And after capital expenditures of $9.3 million our free cash flow was $4.9 million for the first nine months of 2025.

We continue to expect the 2025 capital expenditures to be approximately $18 million to $22 million, including investments for the Mexico expansion.

As we previously announced with the award of the Volvo Mexico business, the company will invest approximately $25 million over the next 18 months.

As of September 30th, our balance sheet was strong, with a total liquidity position of $92.4 million comprising of $42.4 million in cash, plus $50 million available under the revolver and capital credit lines.

The company's term debt was $20.3 million at the end of the quarter, and our debt to EBITDA ratio for the trailing 12 months remains less than one time. Our return on capital employed was 6.5%, and excluding cash, the rate was 8.7%.

As we continue to launch new business, we expect this metric to improve by better leveraging top-line performance and driving better asset utilization.

Both Rosi metrics are computed using the trailing 12 months of operating income in total capital employed, a pre-tax metric. Please see our earnings release for the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation tables.

Our capital allocation strategy remains flexible with a significant focus on organic growth, as well as discipline, management of debt and working capital, and share repurchases.

Year-to-date, we have spent $2.5 million on Mexico expansion projects and expect to spend a total of $7.5 million by the end of 2025 and $17.5 million in 2026.

For the three months ended September '30, no shares were repurchased. And to date this year, we have repurchased 151,584 shares at an average price of $14.80.

Our full year year sales expectations are down 10% to 12%. However, we have forecasted fourth quarter sales to increase, driven by new program launches and significantly higher tooling sales.

As a reminder regarding tariffs, our products in both Canada and Mexico are USMCA compliant and are currently exempt from tariffs. We will continue to closely monitor how changes in trade policies affect our customers and their end markets.

And with that, I would like to turn it back to Dave.

Thank you, Alex. We're excited about new and existing customers and markets, as Eric mentioned, we are finalizing negotiations on a large Canadian project for the rail data line transmission troughs called TOR, which is worth about $15 million in annual revenue starting in the second half of 2026.

We continue to see a strong pipeline of opportunities with over $250 million in business development potential in our pipeline.

We believe we can add over $40 million in new wins that would be awarded in the next three to six months. We're also excited about this year's wins because they are in new and emerging markets for core.

These new markets, which we strategically targeted, include new pickup box panels for small EV trucks, satellite tracking systems, and the truck applications.

We plan to expand our DCPD molding process for large OEMs in the areas we already serve and have added topcoat paint to our full service partner model.

We continue to invest in our sales organization, and we're driving like hell to develop new customers who trust us with their long-term business.

Eric and I are highly focused on further scaling operations, leveraging our fixed cost base, and optimizing our portfolio footprint.

Our commitment to continuous performance improvement, especially with the lower current demand, positions us to translate top-line growth into bottom line results.

We're excited about the future and look forward to leveraging all the improvements with the addition of the $65 million in incremental wins we have achieved in the last 20 months.

We will continue to strengthen our operations and take the necessary actions to drive long-term business capability and profitability.

We are pursuing the most promising opportunities in new markets and growing wallet share with our current long-term customers. We are confident this is only the beginning.

New areas are emerging, and we will continue to evolve in the construction sector, such as commercial windows and doors market.

We focus on large diverse sectors such as construction, energy, industrial, aerospace, and medical markets, and we have proven we will win.

We are driving to engage our sales and technical teams earlier in the design cycle to expand wallet share and educate customers of our full range of value-added capabilities, including SMC formulation, large part molding, and topcoat painting.

Customers desire a strategic partner like Core molding to handle design, fabrication, and completion with the topcoat paint.

Our teams are committed to maintaining our must-win battle excellence by one driving incremental sales growth into new markets, two, improving our margin profile through operational excellence and our innovation pipeline, and three, continually investing in growing a business that has proven it can execute well.

Although the truck industry forecasts continue to look soft for Q4, ACT and customer forecasts indicate a truck build increase in the second half of 2026.

As we discussed last quarter, the great pause, as one customer put it, continues with delayed decisions and major markets still serving in a lower than expected demand environment.

Tariff concerns have caused companies to pause, and we've seen delays in demand and even more so in the decisions of launching new programs.

However, recently we have seen signs of stabilization and rebounding demand in several of our key markets. We are finding ways to attract new customers and increase wallet share with current customers.

Our must-win battle of invest for growth continues, which is reflected in our confidence to make significant investments in future growth.

Developing a world class engineering and manufacturing solutions partner for large and ultra-large molded solutions is our goal.

Again, I want to thank our team for their hard work and dedication to excellence, which has enabled us to achieve successes throughout our transformation journey.

I also want to thank our customers, investors, and board for their belief in what we do every day at C Coming.

Finally, we will present our investment story and host one to one meetings at the Southwest Ideas Conference in Dallas on Wednesday, November '19. Please reach out if you would like to see us there in person or set up an investor call soon.

With that, let's open up the line for questions, operator.

(Operator Instructions)

Your first question for today is from Chip Moore with Roth.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to a lot of noise around tariffs for trucking specifically, I think right there were some actions got pushed October to November, but just.

Your updated thoughts around those tariffs specifically, any potential impacts or or you know what you're seeing from customers.

In regards to those.

Yeah, I mean, all of our products are USMCA compliant, so right now, we still, our understanding is we are exempt.

Our bigger concern is the impact that it could have on customer demand down the road, but right now we're not seeing the impact on tariffs just yet.

Got it. Okay, no, that's helpful, and I guess.

Overall.

I think overall too from an operational standpoint we have both operations in the US and Canada and if need be it's not a short change to move but it's always possible to move.

Yeah, and.

And then the only other thing I would add is, we have RMA, raw material adjusters in our in our all of our contracts and so if we do get hit with a tariff and increased costs, we can pass that through to customers.

Got it. That's helpful and I need to follow-up on, as you look out, it sounds like your line of sight to $300 million plus is quite strong. Just, if you think about 27, I guess what biggest risks to that or, upside to that and then what do you have built in around trucking as we look out, maybe the 2027.

That's a great question. So when I look at it from a high level, as we said, our quote to cash cycle time is 12 months to 18 months. So as we know, the Volvo program won't launch until 27 and we have $45 million of wins in prior year and $47 million of incremental wins this year that we see layering in over the next you know 18 months.

So that's where we're saying as they ramp up, you start out with a ramp and maybe you're ramping for six to seven months until you get into full volume. So that's where we start seeing the sales coming together. So we're pretty excited about that.

When we talk with truck customers right now, there's and looking at ACT, we're seeing that we believe truck or they believe truck will start coming back the second half of next year. Probably the biggest concern, we were talking with one customer.

Yesterday and the rate of increase that they had going into the second half next year was significant.

So I would say after yesterday our biggest concern was really how fast will the truck market come up because they can come up pretty quick and being able to hire and meet all those demands on the upswing because it goes up as fast as it comes down and the further it goes down, probably more likely the more it's going to go up.

Perfect.

If I could ask another one, just around sort of more near term, the tooling revenues, getting bumped to Q4, any sense of how to think about tooling revenues, maybe for Q4 and even over the next couple quarters just with all the the new programs you've got on the horizon.

Yeah, so for the full year of 2025 we anticipate tooling sales to be roughly 15% of our total sales in 2025.

And then keep in mind, Chip, those sales will be at a lower margin than our product sales. And then in the future year, so 26, I mean. We're not really given any guidance from a number perspective for '26, but the Volvo Mexico tooling job will We'll close, it'll be close at the end of '26, maybe slips into '27, but it'd be December of '26, maybe January of '27.

Got it. Okay, so a little negative mix impact Q4 on higher tooling revenues. Any way to think about.

But yeah, so margins will take a little bit of a hit, but we still are, providing guidance that will be within that 17 % to 19% target that we've, put out there each quarter and for the full year. Yeah.

That's what I was going to ask, and I was going to follow-up just sort of longer-term, as the tooling normalizes 17 to 19 still the right way to think about it, or do you think there's upside potential at some point, on higher volumes.

Yeah, I think you know when we start getting back into the $300 million, there's going to definitely be some upside. I mean, we'll start getting back some fixed leverage. We'll reverse, favorably, and so I think that'll be worth, anywhere I would say right around 200 basis points if you go.

Back and look at our previous quarters and see the lost leverage each quarter. Yeah, I think if we go back two years we're losing right around 200 basis points. So you could add 200 basis points, I think is a is a good way to look at it.

Also the part that we believe is that on the new programs, the systems that we put in place and how we're quoting business, it's definitely incremental on the margin side.

Excellent. Okay. I don't want to give you a number on how much yet though.

Yeah, understood. Yeah, I'll hop and let others. Thanks.

(Operator Instructions)

You have a follow-up question coming from Chip. Your line is live.

Thanks. I just want to make sure I wasn't hogging the line. I guess it's just one more for me on the new business opportunities that the Canadian rail project, that's a nice win.

Opportunity for similar type projects and then SMC, how is the reaction there? It sounds like it's going pretty well, but any more detail you can provide.

Yeah, two parts to that chip. So the first one on the on the rail Trojan troughs. We actually had that business in 2023. It tends to be a project based when a city or a municipality does a section of rail.

It's a big project for us for a couple of years, so we've had a couple of years without any, and we Another one of those currently building a test track for next summer, and that that would turn into that bigger multi-year program. So we're excited about it.

Can't say that we've 100% won it, but we are we're certainly there providing the test test track and believe that we are in a good position to win the whole installation.

Your second question was around SMC. We put some comments in there. We have since last quarter four very specific customers that are trialing, actually molding parts, had some of our engineering teams working with them, and so it made a lot of progress with four of the 10 customers that we had focused on.

And so we believe in the next quarter or so we'll be having awards or agreements with some of those customers to announce in our next earnings.

Perfect. Okay. And they just la on the buyback, you didn't do any this quarter, but can you just remind us what your authorization is there.

Thank you.

Yeah, we have roughly about just over $2 million left in the buyback is, it's still in place as of today, and so, but yeah, we plan on still utilizing that as a way to use our capital.

Great. Okay, thanks for all the call. I appreciate it.

Thanks. Thanks.

Your next question is from Bill Dieselle with Titan Capital.

Thank you. A couple of questions. Would you please start by walking us through the tooling business that.

Shifted to Q4. From. The Q3, what the dynamics were behind that?

So tooling in general, they've kind of walked through this on the call, but for us to recognize revenue, the customer has to accept tooling. So there's all kinds of different tests. You have to do full production run tests. You have to do quality tests. There's different specifications.

And so, working with a customer at times, those tests get delayed for one reason or another. One could be because the customer decided to do engineering changes and so.

In this case, one of our bigger tooling jobs that we originally thought was going to close in Q3 got delayed into Q4. We are currently in the process of doing those tests.

I don't see that job specifically being pushed out any further at this moment, but that it's just that's kind of the nature of the toying. We don't have a ton of control.

We can push our customers as hard as we can and work with them. But there is still a risk from a from a job being delayed from a quarter to quarter, but at the end of the day it's not lost revenue, it's just a timing issue.

Hey Bill, kind of a way that we look at it as well, usually if it's a lot of times it's not us, it's the entire product level is really what they're dealing with. And they're trying to really put everything together.

What the ideal case for them would be every supplier, every validation test, everything works, and then they get full approval. When one of those things doesn't work, the entire supply base is not PAP approved.

So once we get PAP. Approved, we recognize the revenue, which is a signed off document. Now if that PAP is going to be pushed for a long period of time, we would certainly be in there talking with the customers saying, hey, we can't wait a quarter for this to be done.

But if it's weeks, it's probably not worth pushing that hard.

That's helpful.

Thank you. And then you referenced the footprint optimization.

That you were doing and that was going to have nice cost savings. Would you please walk us through physically what's what's moving from where to where and and why that's taking place besides just the money aspect and maybe it's as straightforward as the cost.

Savings.

Sure, Bill, if you remember the term resin transfer molding or RTM parts, we used to have a business in Batavia, Ohio a number of years ago that built almost only resin transfer products.

We ultimately closed that plant and moved that product into our Matamoris facility and our Columbus facility, and ultimately what we've decided is to move what was left in our Columbus facility down to our Mata Morris facility. And our facility down there has, employees with 20 and 30 years of experience doing resin transfer molding.

Over 300 of our employees in Mexico are a part of that business unit down there and so they are just they're skilled, capable, and engaged, and we've struggled in Ohio to produce those.

Heavy manual labor, difficult parts, very handwork with fiberglass, and so ultimately, we're just leaning into where our strength and skills are and there's some labor savings associated with it, but really it's about the technical expertise and the employee base that we have is capable of it.

That that is very helpful and the math behind this you said was you were going to spend about a million dollars on the transfer and it'll save you about a million dollars a year. Did I hear that correct earlier?

It'll be about 1.5% total investment.

So cost side and then a million dollars a year annual run rate ongoing so.

Excellent. Okay.

Thank you both.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session and I will now turn a call over to Dave Duva for closing remarks.

Thank you for your continued interest in our company. We look forward to providing an update on our progress when we report our 4th quarter results. Have a great day.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.

Thank you for your participation.