Hillman Solutions Corp (HLMN) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

(video playing) Good morning, and welcome to the fourth quarter and full year 2025 results and 2026 guidance presentation for Hillman Solutions Corp. My name is Liz, and I will be your conference call operator today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that today's presentation is being recorded and simultaneously webcast.

The company's earnings release and earnings presentation were issued this morning. These documents and a replay of today's presentation can be accessed on Hillman's Investor Relations website at ir.hilmangroup.com.

I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Koehler with Hillman.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being with us for our earnings call. I am Michael Koehler, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury. Joining me on today's call are Hillman's President and Chief Executive Officer; Jon Michael Adinolfi, or JMA as we call him, and our Chief Financial Officer, [Robert] Kraft.

I would like to remind our audience that certain statements made today may be considered forward-looking and are subject to safe harbor provisions of applicable securities laws. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, many of which are beyond the company's control and may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in such statements.

Some of the factors that could influence our results are contained in our periodic and annual reports filed with the SEC. For more information regarding these risks and uncertainties, please see slide 2 in our earnings call slide presentation, which is available on our website.

In addition, on today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our [use of] and reconciliations of these measures to our GAAP results are available in our earnings call slide presentation.

JMA will begin today's call by providing some commentary on our full year 2025 results, briefly introduce our 2016 guidance and then discuss our performance for the year by business. Rocky will then provide a more detailed walk through our 2025 financial results and our '26 guidance before turning the call back to JMA for some closing comments.

Then we will open the call up for your questions. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Jon Michael Adinolfi. JMA

Thanks, Michael. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Let me start by saying how proud I am that the Hillman team successfully navigated the impact of tariffs in the dynamic environment during 2025.

The entire organization worked extremely hard taking care of our customers during the year, and our team rose to the occasion to put the best year in this company's 62-year history delivering record net sales and adjusted EBITDA. For 2025, net sales increased 5.4% to $1.552 billion, and adjusted EBITDA increased 13.9% to $275.3 million versus 2024. We are pleased with our results for 2025 and remain focused on the growth opportunities that lie ahead.

Looking to 2026, we estimate full year 2026 net sales will be between $1.6 billion and $1.7 billion, the midpoint of $1.65 billion represents top line growth of 6.3% compared to 2025. Additionally, we expect to generate between $275 million and $285 million of adjusted EBITDA for 2026. This midpoint of $280 million represents growth of 1.7% compared to 2025.

And finally, we expect to deliver free cash flow between $100 million and [$120 million] for 2026. The midpoint of $110 million reflects a 90%-plus conversion of adjusted net income into free cash flow. The main contributor to our top line growth during 2026 will be the rollover from pricing that went into effect during 2025.

Our sales team is focused on winning new business, and we are confident that new business wins during 2026 will outpace last year. As for the markets, we are yet to see any meaningful changes in the macro that could produce tailwinds for Hillman and therefore, do not expect any help from the market this year.

Rocky will provide more details on our guidance shortly. But for now, let's turn back to our financial highlights for 2025. Net sales for 2025 increased by 5.4% or $80 million over 2024, even during a challenging market.

Driving the increase in net sales was 3-point contribution from Intex DIY, which we acquired in August of 2024 and a 2-point contribution from new business wins as we continue to steadily win new business and take market share. Price contributed 5.5 points of growth during the year, which covered the higher costs resulting from tariffs.

Partially offsetting these were market volumes, which were down about 5% in 2025. Existing home sales remained soft and unchanged from the 30-year lows we saw during 2024 totaling $4.06 million. This figure is well below the average of $5 million existing home sales per year over the last 10 years.

We believe this number of existing home sales is a headwind to home improvement projects, which impacts our sales, that said, during the year, we grew our top line to a record high. This is a testament to our resilient business model and the hard-working folks at Hillman and strong partnerships we have with our customers.

Turning to the bottom line. Our record adjusted EBITDA for 2025 increased by $33.6 million to $275.3 million, marking an increase of 13.9% over 2024. This puts our compounded annual growth rate for adjusted EBITDA since coming public at over 7%.

The increase was driven by the timing of price increases and tariff costs hitting our income statement. For the most of the second half of the year, we had price increases in place, which lifted our top line. At the same time, we had pre-tariff and thus, lower priced goods flowing through our income statement. The results were record margins and outsized earnings.

This benefit peaked in the third quarter, moderated in the fourth and will be fully normalized in the first quarter of 2026. Another main contributor to our record profit for our global supply chain and operations team. We are running this business efficiently and effectively. We are taking care of our customers shipping orders on time and in full and delivering fill rates that are as high as I've seen in my 6-plus years with Hillman. Now let's drill down by business segment.

Hardware and Protective Solutions, or HPS and is our biggest business and delivered excellent results during 2025. HPS net sales increased 7.8% to $1.2 billion, while adjusted EBITDA increased by 26% to $196.3 million. Driving this strong performance was our outstanding sales and service teams, which successfully manage pricing for tariffs, while executing new business wins in power screws and open chain to name a few.

Leveraging our moat with our long-term retail partners drive consistent performance and growth regardless of macro market conditions. Robotics and Digital Solutions, or RDS, returned to growth during 2025. Net sales increased 1.6% to $220.2 million when compared to last year.

During 2025, we installed over 1,800 mini key 3.5 kiosks and we continue to be pleased with the performance of these new machines. We completed the rollout of one of our top customers before the end of 2025 and expect to complete the rollout with another top customer by the end of 2026.

The rollout is tracking to our expectations, and we are pleased so far. The enhanced capabilities of these machines, including auto key duplication and endless aisle are driving comparable net sales increases versus older generation machines.

As of today, we have nearly 3,500 mini key 3.5 machines in the field, and we feel really good about the business and how it's positioned for 2026. Adjusted gross margins and adjusted EBITDA margins were both near historical norms, totaling 73% and 30%, respectively. Turning to Canada.

Net sales in our Canadian business were down 6.6% compared to the prior year. New business wins were partially offset by another quarter of soft market volumes and FX was over a two point headwind. Adjusted EBITDA margins came in just shy of 10% in Canada for the year. This Hillman team executed very well during 2025, and I am proud of the team for their performance.

Looking to 2026, we will continue to control the controllables. Our teams are performing at a high level, and we will continue to win with our customers and in the market. The M&A pipeline is healthy, and we have several exciting bolt-on acquisition opportunities that we are working on.

We continue to invest in taking great care of our customers and delivering increased value to our stakeholders. We are confident we will capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us as we expand our focus on the Pro. This will broaden our go-to-market channels, diversify our customer base and provide meaningful white space for growth.

We have recently assembled an experienced team with deep Pro knowledge that is focused on growing our Pro business. We are confident we have the right to win and are excited about the opportunities in this channel. We look forward to providing you our detailed plans to win the Pro during our first Investor Day, which will be held next month on March 19.

With that, I'll turn it over to Rocky to talk financials and guidance. Rocky?

Thanks, JMA. Let's start with our fourth quarter and year-end results before I get into our guidance for 2026. Fourth quarter 2025 net sales increased 4.5% to $365.1 million versus the prior year quarter. 2025 full year net sales totaled $1.552 billion. Fourth quarter adjusted gross profit margins were 47.6%, which stepped down sequentially as expected.

Compared to last year, margins were down 10 basis points. For the full year 2025, adjusted gross profit margin increased 60 basis points to 48.7% from 48.1% during 2024. Adjusted SG&A as a percentage of sales for Q4 2025 increased to 31.8% from 31.5% during the year ago quarter.

For the full year 2025, adjusted SG&A as a percentage of sales decreased to 31% from 31.6%. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter increased 2.3% to $57.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 increased 13.9% to $275.3 million.

Our adjusted EBITDA to net sales margin during the quarter was 15.8%, which compares to 16.1% a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA to net sales margin for the full year was 17.7% and which compares favorably to 16.4% a year ago. Now turning to our cash flow and balance sheet. During 2025, operating activities generated $105 million versus $183 million in 2024.

Impacting our operating cash flow, and therefore, free cash flow was about $65 million of tariff impact. Free cash flow for the year totaled $35.1 million, which included the $65 million of tariff impact versus $98.1 million in 2024.

We ended the year with $665.8 million of net debt outstanding versus $674 million at the end of 2024, an improvement of $8 million. Liquidity available totaled $306 million, consisting of $279 million of available borrowing under our revolving credit facility and $27 million of cash and equivalents. At the end of the year, our net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA ratio was 2.4 times, which improved from 2.8 times at the end of 2024.

Our strong balance sheet allows us to play offense. We can invest into organic growth opportunities, execute M&A and be opportunistic when it comes to using our balance sheet to add stockholder value. Now let me turn to capital allocation. During 2025, we invested $70 million in the form of CapEx back into the business. This compares to $85 million in 2024.

The decrease is a result of our mini key 3.5 investment slowing. During 2024, we had an accelerated capital spend to build and retrofit mani key 3.5 machines that were placed in the field during 2025. We continue to build and retrofit machines, but the pace of capital spend is moderated.

Additionally, during 2025, we invested $12.4 million to buy back 1.4 million shares of stock at an average price of $9.07 per share. Let me now talk about our 2026 guidance. We anticipate full year net sales for 2026 to be between $1.6 billion and $1.7 billion with a midpoint of $1.65 billion.

The midpoint of our guidance reflects an increase of 6.3% over 2025. Driving this increase will be a combination of new business wins and a mid-single-digit contribution from price. The high end of our guide assumes that market volumes are flat, and the low end of our guidance assumes that market volumes stepped down from where they were in 2025.

There are a lot of variables that drive our top line performance but as we have seen over the last 20 years, we usually see mid-single-digit growth on our top line. We expect the same for 2026. Going forward, we will not provide explicit price and market volume performance on a quarterly basis.

We will stay away from providing quarterly specifics on price for competitive reasons and in order to protect our customers. For our bottom line, we expect full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA to total between $275 million and $285 million.

The midpoint of $280 million represents an increase of 1.7% versus 2025. As we have talked about, we expect margins to normalize following robust results in '25, which will prove to be a difficult comp. The result is that we expect our 2026 net sales growth to outpace our 2026 adjusted EBITDA growth.

We expect our full year adjusted gross margin to be between 46% and 47% for 2026. The step-down from last year is the result of tariff pricing and costs being fully realized in the P&L. This will result in margins being fully normalized starting in Q1 of 2026.

Lastly, free cash flow during 2026 is expected to come in between $100 million and $120 million, with a midpoint of $110 million, which reflects a 90-plus percent conversion of adjusted net income. We expect to invest between $70 million and $75 million of CapEx into our business in 2026, which is comparable to our 2025 spend.

We continue to make necessary investments into the expansion of our mini key 3.5 fleet as well as invest in merchandising solutions across our customer base. For 2026, we expect to continue repurchasing stock under our stock repurchase program. Our objective remains to offset any dilution caused by employee equity grants and opportunistically buy back stock.

Excluding M&A, we expect we will end 2026 around 2.1 times levered. This assumes that we fall near the midpoint of our guidance in that 2026 is a somewhat uneventful year, unlike 2025 when we had to deal with tariffs.

During Q1 of 2026, we expect to use cash and our leverage will likely tick up as we build inventory to support our busy spring and summer seasons. This is typical for Hillman in the normal year. Following Q1, we expect to generate free cash flow during each of the remaining quarters of 2026.

Hillman is in a great position to build on the success we had in 2025, and we are confident we can achieve the targets we have laid out for you today. Our focus remains taking great care of our customers while growing the top and bottom lines of our business.

With that, let me turn it back to JMA.

Thanks, Rocky. We're optimistic about the year ahead and energized to keep pushing forward. We expect to grow share and achieve solid revenue and earnings gains throughout 2026. Our unwavering focus is on taking care of all of our stakeholders, customers, suppliers, team members and investors, and we will work diligently to deliver on that responsibility. We look forward to updating you during the year with our progress.

With that, we'll begin the Q&A portion of our call. Operator, please open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Lee Jagoda, CJS Securities.

Good morning. Rocky, can we just -- I know you gave the full year gross margin expectations. Can you kind of walk through the cadence of the gross margins? And I guess, just given -- I would assume Q1 is going to be the low point but can you give us any sense for how low is low in Q1?

Yeah. I think, Lee, as we said on the call, in our prepared remarks, we believe the year will be between 46% and 47%. And I think Q1 will be the low point of the year. There's a couple of things. First off, obviously, it's the lowest volume quarter that we have each year heading into the Q2 spring busy season.

Secondarily, we actually have -- in the first quarter, we'll probably have the highest cost inventory flowing through the system that we've probably had in the history of Hillman just given the timing of where reciprocals were last year and the timing of flowing through.

So I would expect that we'll be slightly below that 46%, 47% in the first quarter. We should see it step up sequentially in Q2 and in the back half, I would expect we'll be at the high end of that range as we think about the second half of the year.

Got it. And then Rocky, I think you were talking pretty positively on new business wins and looking for them to be higher year-over-year in '26 versus '25. Can you talk to kind of what gives you the confidence there? How much of the new business wins anniversary on stuff that you've already started to load in '25. And then on the stuff that isn't [anniversarying], what have you won already? And what should we be looking forward to?

Sure. I'm going to throw that over to JMA and let him comment. Thanks, Rocky. Yes, we're excited for several reasons. First off, we've got a solid set of initiatives this year. We have some nice wins that we're building off of in '25, that would cascade in the '26 to your point.

I'm really fired it up because we have actually our national sales meeting this coming week Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Colorado. So we'll be in Denver with our sales folks get really fired up about the year. We've got some great new products. We got business development, while it was a core function side of Hillman, we've actually grown and invested that.

We've got a business development team that's focused on a number of our brands where we got some exciting products and then the Pro. You heard us sprinkle a little bit of that into the presentation. But the real exciting thing is we're actually here this week in Orlando for the in a National Builder Show, we're actually broadcasting live from here. We got our booth. We have Power Pro.

We got a lot of great Pro product that we're showing off. And our business is over $400 million of its Pro, and we're really fired up about the team that we have assembled that's driving it. So we got a lot of reasons to be confident that we're going to go win new business in a tough environment in '26, and we look forward to talking more about that when we're together on March 19 for our Investor Day.

Andrew Carter, Stifel.

Thank you. Good morning. To ask about the deterioration in sales in Protective Solutions. Correct me if I'm wrong, that is the business that can be subject to some channel load because it goes through the DCs. But anything else going on there besides just some near-term dynamics?

Andrew, thank you. Yeah, I mean near-term dynamics, I think, is probably the right way to think about it. Yes, there's a little bit of a channel inventory balancing that we went through in the fourth quarter. That business actually has quite a few new products coming out in 2026. So we feel good about the trajectory as we move forward.

We've also successfully integrated our Intex DIY business, and that platform is performing pretty well in a tough market. So nothing else to really share. Rocky, unless you had anything.

No. I mean, again, as we've said many times, that business is more subject to timing around when products launch when they come into the market and when -- like off-shelf activities are happening. And so I think that's what we saw in the fourth quarter. And we think as you go into '26, it should be growing like the rest of the business.

Thanks. Second question to kind of think about RDS and kind of the machine rollout. You also have customer transition in that business. Could you quantify the headwind from that customer transition? Did that peak in 4Q. Therefore, it slows during next year. Anything else to help with the modeling or how -- or to frame expectations on RDS? Thanks.

Yeah, the customer transition, Andrew, is -- will continue in Q1 and Q2, and then we'll anniversary that and that'll be behind us finally. So that would be one way to think about that as you're putting the numbers together for 2026. I think the big thing with that business is three, five rollouts as we -- as I framed in my prepared comments, is actually doing well. Our RDS team and our field teams are doing a great job.

We've actually been out in the field now that we've got scale in several markets, really focusing on driving the business, fine-tuning the technology, which we feel really good about. And we're confident that, that business will continue to grow after putting up a year of growth in '25, we'll build on that in 2026. So we're excited about where that business is moving to, and we look forward to reporting more as those results come in.

(Operator Instructions) Stephen Volkmann, Jefferies.

Great, good morning, guys. I'm curious, I guess, it sounds like '26 were sort of transitioning to what we might consider sort of a more normal year from an operating perspective. So I'm trying to think about leverage when things do start to come back. So if those existing home sales come back that you talked about JMA, what's the right way to think about sort of the incremental EBITDA margin sort of based on where we're starting from here?

Yeah, I think, Steven, it's Rocky. I think the way to think about it is we would expect anything and everything that we do to be above fleet. The easy way to think about it is plus 20%. When you think about most of the business, obviously, RDS a little bit better than that, probably plus 30 when you think about incremental sales. But when we think about the business, that's what we're looking for as we grow.

Okay, thank you. And then any thoughts on sort of Canada as we model 2026?

Yeah. I think Canada is still under a fair amount of pressure. We actually have -- our sales team up there has really fired up about the new year. We've got some exciting things we're doing in Pro and other areas. So not a lot more detail to go into there.

We think that economy, as we get through or into the spring season will be better. So we expect it to return to growth in 2026.

David Manthey, Baird.

Good morning, guys. First off, on the sort of the long-term targets here, the 6% and 10% organic revenues and EBITDA growth, I guess I look over the past couple of years, the top line has been pretty consistent with that view. EBITDA has tracked a little bit below that.

And I guess, philosophically, when we think about when you set those targets initially, I think RDS was expected to be a bigger contributor maybe to growth, but definitely to contribution margins. Can you just talk about that, the 6 and 10? And going forward, you're still feeling comfortable that those are the right targets for the company?

Yeah, David, it's Rocky. I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about -- we would have expected coming out of the IPO that RDS would have been a bigger growth driver. And because of that, you would have seen higher growth relative to EBITDA from an organic perspective.

Again, 7%, if you look back since the IPO compounded growth in EBITDA in the business, which we feel pretty good about. I think what I would say is, in March, we are going to do our first Investor Day, I think you're going to hear us at Investor Day talk a lot about those longer-term targets.

I don't think it's going to be a revolution. It will be an evolution of those targets. But I think we're going to give you the building pieces about how we think about the business how we think about it over the next three to five years. And I really don't want to steal the thunder, as you can imagine today from Investor Day. So I look forward to talking to everyone about that then.

Yeah. Fair enough. And a minor point here but we're starting to hear whispers out in the market about chip shortages. And I don't know if that's the same type of chips that you guys are using in your machines but how are you situated relative to supply versus your growth goals in RDS and the mini 3.5 million?

Yeah, I think we're in good shape, Dave. I think as you think about the wind down of having to do retrofits and new builds for [3.5], we're in good shape. As you think about once we've completed the entire fleet on to 3.5 by the end of 2026, then we're going to go into more maintenance mode around those. And I've not heard anything from our teams around chip issues, and I don't think we expect that, that will be a challenge going forward.

Brian McNamara, Canaccord Genuity.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I just had a question on the guidance overall. I think it implies a bit of a step down. I think you had prior gave directional guidance of plus high single to plus low double digits, and I think you're at plus 6% at the midpoint. Just trying to figure out what drove the change there.

Yeah. I think -- Brian, it's Rocky. I mean, obviously, the fourth quarter was a little softer than we expected. And we would tell you, even early in the year, what we saw in January and what we've seen because of weather in February has been a little softer than probably we would have anticipated. And so we're going to come out with a conservative guide given just what we've seen in the markets.

It kind of puts you down a few points. We're not going to give exact guidance, but of a market, if you think about the midpoint which if you go back a few quarters ago, when we talked about directional guidance, we talked about a flat market. That was the hypothetical that we use to get to the high single or the low double digits. And so if you assume a few points down in market, that gets you down to kind of a mid-single digits kind of number at the midpoint.

Great. That's helpful. And then second, is there like a magic existing home sales number where it would meaningfully impact your business? We're at [4.1%] right now, January is a rough month. anything where you like that number, our business starts to hum along a little bit better?

Brian, I don't know that there's a magic number, but we do like in the mid-4s to 5% feels like the right better spot for us where you'll see some of that home improvement, whether you're putting houses on the market or you're looking to buy a house and you're making some modifications to it. So that's really where we'd like to be.

So I don't know if there's really a sweet spot, if you will, but we'd like to see a bit of improvement from where we are today. Our repair and maintenance side of our business actually humming along pretty nicely. I'd just love to see a little bit more of that, get houses ready and also getting homes ready to be lived in, if you will, we'll see a little benefit from roto stay tuned but we're excited to capitalize that.

That's why we're excited about the Pro side of our business as well.

Great. If I could just squeeze in one last one on M&A. It sounds like you guys are -- it sounds like you're a little more constructive on the M&A environment. I'm just curious how that environment looks relative to last year.

I'm assuming a lot of talks were kind of paused because of tariffs and policy uncertainty. Is it just a function of maybe some targets coming back to the table? Is it new opportunities? Is there anything you could, any more color there would be helpful.

Yeah, we are more excited now than we were last quarter or the quarter before that. So I think the -- we feel confident we'll do one to two deals in 2026. So we're excited about what we see in front of us. To answer your question where they're coming from, it is -- there's some opportunities that are coming back to the table that were put on pause.

We're also seeing some new ones, and we see some activity and some definitely more M&A opportunities coming our way. So our M&A team is actually quite busy right now looking at a lot of deals, and we're excited about what's in front of us.

This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Adinolfi for some closing comments.

Thank you, [Liz]. We look forward to hosting our first Annual Investor Day on March 19. So please keep an eye out for more information to date approaches. Thank you for joining us this morning, and I hope everybody has a great day. Take care.