LSI Industries - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Revenue rose 36% year over year to $147.7M, with organic growth of 14%; Display Solutions more than doubled (+103%) while Lighting declined 10% due to tough comps and slower large projects.
• Diluted EPS was $0.18 (vs. $0.20 LY), while adjusted EPS held at $0.26; adjusted EBITDA increased >20% to $13.3M, though margin compressed to 9.0% amid ramp inefficiencies and EMI dilution.
• Backlog entered Q3 up 12% y/y, with Display Solutions orders +25% y/y; service revenue increased >100%, and net leverage fell to 0.6x on strong free cash flow ($8.8M).
• Management highlighted grocery demand resurgence (post Kroger–Albertsons merger termination) and a smooth refrigerant transition to R290, supporting continued Display Solutions strength into 2H FY25.
• No quantitative guidance provided; qualitative outlook points to sustained Display Solutions growth and a 2H pickup in Lighting large projects; quarterly dividend maintained at $0.05 per share.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Display Solutions delivered organic sales growth of 50% and total segment sales +103% y/y, driven by refueling/c‑store, QSR, and grocery programs; EMI contributed $23.4M in Q2 sales and operating margin improved 100 bps y/y.
• Grocery vertical sales grew >50–60% y/y, aided by pent‑up demand release post merger termination and DOE‑driven refrigerant transition; management launched new R290 product line and executed a proactive technology shift.
• Strong cash generation and deleveraging: Q2 free cash flow $8.8M; TTM FCF >$41M; net debt/TTM adjusted EBITDA down to 0.6x from 1.0x at FY24 YE.

Quotes:

• “LSI delivered 14% organic sales growth... supported by strong demand across our core refueling, c‑store, and grocery verticals.” – CEO James A. Clark
• “We successfully managed... conversion to R290... We are well positioned to capitalize on increased demand levels for display case products throughout the calendar year.” – CEO James A. Clark
• “Service revenue increased over 100% in Q2... We expect steady growth in service revenue for the Refueling/C-Store vertical moving forward.” – CFO James Galeese

What Went Wrong

• Lighting segment sales declined 10% y/y on tough prior‑year large project comps (e.g., EV battery plant) and slower large project timing; adjusted operating margin fell to 11.5% from 14.5%.
• Gross/EBITDA margin headwinds from rapid ramp to meet surge orders, EMI’s initially lower margin profile, and contingency logistics costs (rerouting to West Coast amid potential port strikes).
• Reported diluted EPS fell to $0.18 from $0.20 LY despite stronger revenue; adjusted gross margin percent declined y/y reflecting mix and ramp inefficiencies (29.0% → 23.6%).

Transcript

Moderator (participant)

Welcome to LSI Industries' fiscal 2025 second quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jim Galeese. Thank you. You may begin.

James E. Galeese (CFO)

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. We issued a press release before the market opened this morning detailing our fiscal 2025 second quarter results. In addition to this release, we also posted a conference call presentation in the investor relations section of our corporate website. Information contained in this presentation will be referenced throughout today's conference call. Included are certain non-GAAP measures for improved transparency of our operating results. A complete reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP results is contained in our press release and 10-Q. Please note that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements about our business outlook. Such statements involve risks and opportunities, and actual results could differ materially. I refer you to our safe harbor statement, which appears in this morning's press release for more details.

Today's call will begin with remarks summarizing our fiscal second quarter results. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to LSI President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Clark.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Thank you, Jim, and good morning, all. Thank you for joining us this morning. Today, we'll be discussing our second quarter and mid-year 2025 earnings results. So we're halfway through our fiscal year, and as you've likely seen from our press release this morning, we had a very good quarter with some strong orders across the board. The grocery segment has begun to recover, while our refueling projects and QSR segment continue to move forward with projects booked throughout the remainder of our fiscal year, and they extend through the calendar year. We saw strong growth in our Display Solutions segment and additional growth in our refrigeration business this quarter. EMI, who we acquired early last year, continues to do very well, and the entire team at EMI has been an immediate asset to our company.

Net sales for the quarter were above $147 million, with Adjusted EBITDA above $13 million and free cash flow of almost $9 million, leaving our TTM net debt ratio at 0.6 times leverage. Jim Galeese will provide more of the financial details in a few minutes. I think the key word for Q2 is growth, particularly as it relates to organic growth. Whereas top-line sales were up 36% on a year-over-year basis, 14% of that growth was organic, and I think it continues to show the opportunities we have in front of us. Lighting had some top-line pressures in Q2, but activity inquiries remained strong. The Display Solutions segment shined, though, across the board, creating a compelling story for the quarter.

We continue to have very strong project and quote activity levels across all vertical segments, but order timing and mix remains a bit choppy, and I think you see some of that choppiness in Q2. As we've been discussing for some time now, we anticipated a recovery in our Grocery segment as a proposed merger between two of the larger Grocery players in the United States achieves some clarity. Unfortunately, the courts in the state of Washington and Colorado did not support the merger based on antitrust and competitive concerns, but through their findings, they did give some clarity in the market, and many of the update and remodel projects that have been on hold have begun to move forward. The choppiness that I was referring to is in relation to the surge of orders that came through in the last quarter.

When order mix and demand slowed last year, we made some immediate changes to our manufacturing process and overall workforce. When the surge of orders came through in the last quarter, we needed to ramp up quickly, and because of this fast ramp-up, we were a little bit less efficient than we would normally be, and I think you see some of that affecting our margin a bit. The good news is we did not miss a beat, and we didn't leave any orders on the table. In fact, we were able to capture some orders from competitors that were not able to respond in a timely fashion. We anticipate that those order opportunities will remain high for some time, and we'll be ready to serve our customers.

Right now, it's hard to tell what this volume increase will look like in the long term and what part of it's a surge and pent-up demand versus what part is a customer's longer-term plans. I feel we'll develop more clarity around this order momentum as we move through the winter and early spring, but all in all, we expect order activity to remain robust for some time. On the refrigeration side of the business, we've worked hard over the last few months to wind down our inventory of R-448A products and fully transition to R-290. A change in the EPA rulings around synthetic refrigerants makes this a smart move for LSI, and we're looking for this solution to continue to be a product of choice and a competitive advantage for LSI for us and for our customers into the future.

Our Lighting segment, small project activity continues to move along nicely with strong quote activity and project opportunities, but in the comparative view, our large project activity has experienced some headwinds over the last few months, and activity is a bit slower. We remain vertically focused in our efforts, but I did want to mention, much like the EV battery plant we had last year, we are actively engaged in a number of larger projects this year, including six data centers and chip manufacturing facilities, but they're all moving slower, and the mix of products used in these projects is a bit different. I feel like we have good momentum, but timing's just proving to be a bit tricky right now. Staying within Lighting, I'm happy to say that interest in our next generation of our outdoor lighting product called Velocity has been very strong.

I mentioned Velocity in our last call, and it offers a total update to our core outdoor lighting offering from its performance to its aesthetics to its modular construction and build options. We anticipate that it will be complementary to our current flagship outdoor product offering called Mirada, and it will create some openings for new project opportunities that Mirada just didn't offer. As I mentioned before, in the design of this new fixture, we built on top of our prior investments in adaptability, customization, and our Redi-Mount technology, providing a product that offers next-generation performance along with reduced installation time and weight reduction. This is a significant investment for LSI, and it continues to underline and illustrate our commitment to new product development and our product vitality. Next week, we'll be hosting our national sales meeting in Cincinnati.

This is an opportunity for our internal LSI sales folks to get together from around the country and learn a little bit more about the company, the efforts of each other, our successes, and our challenges. I know that most of our folks are hoping for some warmer weather, but I know they're going to be generally excited to listen, learn, and network with each other. We always learn so much about our company, our customers, and our competitors from these meetings, and I'm genuinely excited for everyone to get together for this great event. Our thesis around vertical market orientation remains very attractive to us, and our model continues to gain strength as we work to offer more and more goods and services to the markets and customers we focus on. We accomplished a lot this quarter.

We continue to build a stronger, more capable business with a strong platform equipped to deliver profitable growth consistent with our growth objectives outlined in our Fast Forward Plan. We are using the experiences of our management team to effectively integrate EMI and optimize other parts of our operations on an ongoing basis. We believe that we have significant growth opportunities in front of us, and we remain committed to growing our business while balancing the needs of our customers, our shareholders, and our employees alike. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jim Galeese for a closer look at our financials. Jim?

James E. Galeese (CFO)

Thank you, Jim. Our fiscal second quarter results reflect improved year-over-year performance in all major financial metrics. Growth was realized in both total and comparable sales. Adjusted EPS and EBITDA both increased, and cash generation was again strong. Total sales for the quarter was 36%, and comparable organic sales increased 14%. Growth was driven by the Display Solutions segment, where total sales doubled and organic growth of 50% was realized. Multiple verticals were responsible for the increase, including the demand resurgence in Grocery and continued site implementations in the refueling vertical, covering multiple customer programs. Second quarter adjusted earnings per share were $0.26 versus $0.24 last year, and adjusted EBITDA was $13.3 million, or 20% above the prior year quarter. Free cash flow was $8.8 million and $20 million for the second quarter and first half, respectively, 21% above the first half of last year.

Solid cash generation has reduced net debt to $33 million at the end of the fiscal second quarter. Consequently, we have reduced our leverage ratio by more than half, from 1.3 to 0.6 times since the acquisition of EMI nine months ago in April 2024. Looking forward to Q3 and the second half of the year, we exit fiscal Q2 with a total comparable backlog, excluding EMI, 14% above prior year. While performance varies across verticals and product segments, total comparable orders increased 4% versus last year, contributing to the increased backlog. Now, a few comments on segment performance. Display Solutions had a robust quarter as project activity continues in the refueling C-store vertical, including strong contributions from specific customer programs in Mexico and Central America.

To accentuate our scope of capabilities, LSI provided product and/or services for approximately 1,000 refueling C-store sites in Q2, meeting the demanding requirements for multiple large customers with sites located throughout North and Central America. This represents our highest quarter in many years. Our service business continued to realize significant growth in the quarter as customers continue to see the value of our end-to-end product integration capabilities. Service revenue increased over 100% in Q2, with average service per revenue site continuing to grow, while the share of LSI projects containing both products and services continues to expand. We expect steady growth in service revenue for the refueling C-store vertical moving forward. Jim referenced a resurgence in the Grocery vertical demand.

Sales increased over 60% in this vertical, with two levers impacting demand: customers releasing programs previously put on hold and shipments of refrigerated display cases utilizing R-448A technology, which can no longer be produced after December 31st, 2024. Our manufacturing team did a great job meeting the accelerated demand requirements and managing the overall phase-in phase-out process of the DOE-mandated technology change. Display Solutions' operating income doubled in Q2 compared to the previous year, driven by organic growth, along with the addition of EMI. Operating margin improved 100 basis points, reflecting volume leverage while absorbing incremental one-time costs required to ramp up production to successfully support the volume increase. For the Lighting segment, sales for the quarter were below prior year as we continue to experience wide fluctuations in demand across verticals and project size.

Demand strength continues in small project activity, while larger project activity remains choppy, particularly in indoor applications. Overall project quote trends continued to increase, with the total value unfavorably impacted by the project size mix. Large project orders in Q2 did improve sequentially over Q1, contributing to the Q2 backlog increasing 6% over the previous year. Working closely with all our independent agency partners, contractors, and key-end customers, all indicate larger project design and proposal work is improving, and expect that activity to translate into a measurable pickup in orders as we progress through calendar year 2025. In summary, Q2 was a successful quarter for LSI, with increased financial performance, solid organic growth in many of our key verticals, noteworthy operations execution, growing customer recognition of our integral solution capabilities, and the ongoing successful integration and performance of EMI.

EMI enhances LSI's position with many key customers, and the reverse is true as well. Teams have identified key cross-selling opportunities, with progress made on numerous opportunities. All contribute to the increasing momentum as we enter the second half of the fiscal year. I'll now turn the call back to the moderator for the question-and-answer session.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Aaron Spychala with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Aaron Spychala (Analyst)

Yeah. Good morning, Jim and Jim. Thanks for taking the questions. First, for me, can you just kind of talk a little bit? It sounds like you expect the strength to continue here in the second half, a combination of backlog and orders and maybe a pickup of activity. So just want to kind of unpack that a little bit and then maybe just talk a little bit about seasonality here, potentially in the third quarter off of a strong second quarter. Just curious your thoughts there.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. Well, good morning. Thanks for calling, Aaron. Good to hear you on the call. Listen, we've been talking. We've been under this cloud that's been impacting Grocery for two years. As we said a number of times, our preference would have been that the project move forward, but certainty, at least some type of certainty, was going to be a good result no matter what. As you know, the courts in Colorado and Washington voted against a merger, the two big players in the Grocery sector, that merger, and so when that went in the direction it did, it gave some clarity, and I think it opened up the gates for projects and programs that were being held back. We got a big surge in Q2, as you see from the numbers.

There was a lot of inefficiency in that, as I mentioned in the comments here, and we mentioned a little bit in the press release because we had to ramp back up quickly. We didn't want to leave any orders on the table and that type of thing. What's hard for us to see right now as we sit here on January 23rd is sorting out what was surge, what does the remainder of the pent-up demand look like, and what does the normal run rate look like going forward. So we're going to need another quarter to give you a lot of clarity on that. But I mean, the short answer is we do anticipate that we'll remain at an elevated rate on the Display Solutions side, particularly as it relates to Grocery and the work we're doing in the convenience store refueling side.

We anticipate those will remain at an elevated rate through Q3 and Q4, maybe not quite at the same rate as Q2, but still at an elevated rate.

Aaron Spychala (Analyst)

All right. Thanks for that. And then on gross margins, I know you've been navigating some issues there for a long time. Can you just maybe talk about the kind of trajectory of growth and EBITDA margins as we move into the back half? You kind of touched on some of those inefficiencies in the quarters. Do we see improvements there as we move forward?

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, I think the whole story that LSI, if I were to kind of tell the five-year story of LSI, it is about that continual focus on operational efficiency, utilization, effectiveness, and that equals margin. Anytime we step out of that and we become less efficient, the byproduct is an impact on margin. So when you look at what happened in Q2, we didn't know what the timing would look like. We knew that there was going to be pent-up demand, and there was going to be demand related to it. We had a choice, a fork in the road, so to speak, absorb the cost and let the clock tick until that opportunity presented itself, or have a plan and be ready to execute when those orders came in. We took the latter. We had a plan. We executed it, but there were inherent inefficiencies in it.

You're bringing back a lot of people all at once. We're talking about workforce, scaling up the workforce. We have a new product design that we're not kind of pumping out on a daily basis. So there's some inefficiency in learning how to manufacture that best. There's some challenges around materials to make sure we get the materials in. So those were the inefficiencies that we experienced, and those will carry into Q3 a bit too. I don't anticipate that the margins will be any lower, not that they were low, by the way, but that they'll probably match Q2, maybe a little bit of incremental improvement. But as we move through the consecutive quarters in front of that, we'll get that efficiency back, and we'll start performing back up to that level that we like. There was also a couple of things in there.

I know I've mentioned it, but I want to remind everybody. When we brought EMI on board, their performance is lower than LSI's performance. We knew that, and EMI knows that, and they've done a phenomenal job of moving that needle already. We've done a phenomenal job collectively of moving it, but they're still a little less efficient, and they're still a little less profitable from a margin standpoint. That's a program that'll take us 12-18 months to move that needle. Then the last thing, I just want to bring it up because I haven't talked about it out loud, but with the port strikes occurring and the potential for port strike. Ports went on strike, the East Coast, that gummed up some materials for us. Then there was the potential of another issue here in January.

That got settled, but we made the management decision some four or five months back that we were going to hedge our bet and reroute a lot of materials through the West Coast at an additional cost. If the port strike had happened, we would have had the materials, and we would have executed against that. If it didn't, then we would have burdened ourselves with some extra cost, but it was worth the risk. So we did do that, and we're going to be burning off those additional costs over the last quarter and into the third quarter here. But it was still a bet. We would have made it all over again based on the information we had. But those are things that are impacting our margins a little bit.

Aaron Spychala (Analyst)

Understood. Thanks for the caller. And then just maybe last for me, curious your thoughts on some of the proposed tariffs and what that might mean for your business and maybe competitive position in the market as well?

James A. Clark (CEO)

Remember, again, I'll go back to if I could retell the whole five-year story in 30 seconds, but way back, even before COVID, we made the decision to kind of onshore. We're very proud to carry a flag that says American-made. It's not popular to be a U.S. manufacturer of some products that could be considered commodity like lighting or things like that. We made that decision back in 2019. We were, at that time, 20% domestic, 80% foreign source. Today, we are 70% domestic, 30% foreign sourced. I don't have a crystal ball in terms of what the tariffs will look like and how they'll impact us on any level or anybody else in the mix here. I will say, because of our domestic focus, the impact should be marginal, and it should be less significant than anybody else would be exposed to.

So we don't manufacture in Mexico. We export from the U.S. to Mexico. We do have some final assembly in Mexico, but I think those tariffs would be a reverse situation incoming from Mexico, and we don't do that. We have a Canadian operation. We do move things across the border from Canada to the U.S. and from the U.S. to Canada. So we'll have an eye on that. But the way our Canadian operation works, it can be 100% standalone within the country to support Canadian operations and Canadian customers. And we have enough business there, and we have supply relationships already that are stable. If we needed to, we could kind of have minimal trading or minimal inventory moving across the border for our Canadian versus U.S. operations.

Then, rest of world: most of our activities in the Caribbean and other places. I don't see anything on the board that would impact any of those, but a majority of those, or almost all of them, are us exporting there. So, I don't anticipate any impact. With all of that said, depending on how the cards land and what those tariffs look like, I think we'll be least affected in our sectors and best prepared to manage through whatever those look like.

James E. Galeese (CFO)

Yeah. Aaron, Jim G. here, just to build on what Jim said. First of all, our exposure is limited from the previous actions we've taken, as Jim noted. But in addition to that, we do have a complete contingency plan, both for our tier one suppliers as well as tier two, meaning our direct suppliers, but then also our direct suppliers that they source foreign material from foreign sources as well. So we've got both tiers covered. In fact, so what we do source from China, which, that's probably the most visible top of mind of everybody these days, what we do source today, what's remaining, we've already moved about 20% of what's remaining out of there. So as Jim said, we feel very comfortable where we're at, and we were proactive in developing plans to address this situation.

James A. Clark (CEO)

By the way, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a kick in the knees. It just means we'd get back up again.

Aaron Spychala (Analyst)

Right. Right. No, understood. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the quarter. I'll turn it over.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Our next question is from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your question.

Sameer Joshi (Analyst)

Hey, good morning, Jim and Jim, and congrats on the quarter. I think just stepping back, would you give us a refresher on how you launch new products? I think you're planning 40 new products this year. And in terms of your product roadmap and visibility and agility or quickness, how does that work? Just give us a quick refresher.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. So what you would see if you go back and list all my calls or you look at anything that we release, I always reference that we have 20-plus new products each year. Last year, my head of marketing sat down and said, "You're underselling us because there really hasn't been a year in the last five years we haven't launched less than 30 new products and close to 40." So I continue to say 20-plus new products, but they're always, I've been told, always have been in excess of 30. Our new product launches fall into kind of three buckets. There is an existing product which is refreshed or re-engineered, maybe new components, maybe we're able to find more efficiency in it or lower-cost components or whatever it is. So that's one version of a new product.

The second is a category change, or what I would say is we're expanding within that category. Maybe we have a small, medium, and large wall sconce, and we're adding some type of feature or pendant mount for it, or we're adding an extra-large wall sconce or something like that. So that might be something within a family, and this extends across refrigeration and lighting. I'm just using this as a kind of an example. I'm using Lighting, but it extends to all products, and then the third is a launch of a totally new product, and the Velocity, as an example, is a brand new category. We try to minimize our cannibalization of existing product. We try to make it complementary. We try to make it serve a new set of targets within the market, new capabilities, that type of thing.

It may overlap with some of the capabilities of an existing product. Like in this case, I was just mentioning Velocity. It overlaps with Mirada. Mirada has been one of our most successful products we've ever had, but it doesn't overlap in a way where it completely cannibalizes it. Maybe, let's say, a third. So a third of our customers are going to stay in the Mirada family, and they're going to be completely it's going to serve them for years to come. A third of our customers will be debating, "Hey, do I want to move? Do I want to stay with Mirada, or do I want to move to Velocity?" And then a third of our customers will say, "You know what? Mirada wasn't able to handle this, but Velocity is.

So I'm definitely going to Velocity." In terms of how we launch it, it is very comprehensive, right? It starts before the product's available. It's education to our own team, which we'll be doing some of at our upcoming sales meeting next weekend. It is education and preparation to our specifiers, the engineers that work with our products, our agents, our technical resources, meaning our tech support teams, our engineering teams, our manufacturing teams getting ready to manufacture and use that product. And then the last is, when the product becomes available, is that external launch, which we use social media, LinkedIn. We're not Facebook ad people or anything, but we use all the social media to introduce it, plus advertising, plus all of those.

There's all the technical background that is going on during that time, sourcing the products, running through manufacturing, looking for the manufacturing efficiencies, and that'll keep going on as we gain more and more experience with that product.

Sameer Joshi (Analyst)

Great. Great. Thanks for that refresher. I think it is going to be helpful for us to understand the future. Just digging a little bit deeper into the EMI growth, it has shown really good growth, and just wanted to understand what the reasons for that is. Is it any kind of cross-selling? Is it any kind of synergies that you're realizing from that working together? I do understand that you're working on the efficiencies and cost side, but the top line seems to be really doing well.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. So I know that we've talked about this before on these calls, but when we look at M&A, right? We look at, does it fit in our sector? Does it fit in that Fast Forward Plan? Is it part of our strategic plan? The second thing we look at, obviously, is we look at the financials and the performance of the company and all of that. But just as important as those two, the kind of third leg of the stool, we look for the culture of the company and how we're going to integrate. We don't want to take somebody that is a die-hard Yankees fan and try to get them to be a Red Sox fan. We don't want to do that. We want to find groups that are closer to kind of our work ethic, our culture.

They have similar goals and aspirations, and we look to unlock those efficiencies, the lend-a-hand. As you know, we work very hard to try to retain the talent that's there, and in all cases, we have. And so I look at JSI, and we were very happy with the Velocity and the momentum we were able to create with JSI. We learned from each of these experiences coming into EMI. We looked at that culture, and we looked at what we can do mechanically, meaning efficiency and margin improvement and all of that. But we looked at that culture, and we recognized there was pre-planning. We got a closer alignment culturally. And then we looked at our customer base, those customer relationships and how we position, how they communicate. And it was a really good fit.

And by the way, I would be remiss in saying it's a really good team too across the board, EMI from the senior leadership through the highly valued administrative pieces of that company right down through the workforce and the manufacturing team. They're good people. They're a good company. And I think the combination was really one of those one plus one equals three, and we were really able to create a lot of momentum. That efficiency is definitely carried over to cross-selling opportunities. And I want to kind of underline that the type of project work we're in, we can spend 12-18 months before we get a purchase order, and it can be another 12-18 to 36 months that we deploy that. So what you're seeing, remember, EMI has been with us for just over nine months now.

You're seeing a lot of early wins, but I think the real story is the future wins. But they could still be 12 months down the road, 18 months down the road, but we're very happy with EMI, and it's the people there.

Sameer Joshi (Analyst)

Sounds good. Thanks for that, Clark. And then this last one, based on what you just described, are there any significant acquisitions that you may be looking at? The stock is doing well. Just wanted to see how management views that.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. We have worked hard. We've talked about this before, and I hope it comes up on every call because I welcome the opportunity to underline it. We work very hard to originate deals and create relationships. These are relationships that take a very long time to mature, right? And say, "Hey, listen, we want to know more about your company. Maybe there's a way for us to work together. If you ever decide that you're looking for options, we would be interested in talking." Those conversations take place all the time. We spend a lot of time trying to create those relationships with companies we think would fit very well with us.

We have great relationships with our financial partners that do give us opportunity and exposure to projects that are out on the street, memorandums, companies that are in a process, and we look at a lot of those. We are very disciplined buyers, right? If we're looking at something, it's not about value. It's not about whether we're paying the absolute best price. We're not obviously, we'd like to get the lowest price all the time, but we'll pay the money that the company's worth, and we'll paint a picture that says it's worth more or it's worth less. And we don't mind writing the check. We just want to make sure it fits well. So with all of that said, I think we have a pretty good pipeline for M&A activity. It is very likely we will do something in this calendar year, another one.

We look at M&A in two flavors: incremental, which is a project the size of an EMI, and transformational, which would be something that would be a magnitude half the size of our company, something like that, and we look at a mix of them all the time, and we just are very selective about who we're going to pick and how it fits, but I would just say that, yeah, we have a slate, and we will likely do something within this calendar year.

Sameer Joshi (Analyst)

Great. Great. Thanks. Congratulations once again, and good luck.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Our next question comes from George Gianarikas with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.

George Gianarikas (Analyst)

Hi. Thank you for squeezing me in. I do have a couple of questions first about the surge in order activity. I just wanted to clarify, is that exclusively in the Grocery market, or were there other verticals that you saw an increased level of activity in? Thank you.

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. So a majority of the surge was definitely related to the Grocery market, but I've been mentioning this for a couple of quarters now. We're knocking the cover off of it right now in our petroleum C-store space, and we anticipate that that will remain very heady for at least the calendar year, which will carry us through the rest of our fiscal year and into the first half of our fiscal year next year. So I don't want the momentum there to get lost. And I also want to mention QSR, particularly as it relates to EMI. They've done very well. And some of the larger QSR customers, they have a number of projects that have been kind of locked up for different reasons, leadership changes, a few other things. And we see a lot of potential there.

But the majority of the surge that occurred in Q2 was Grocery related. And we have spent a lot of time, unfortunately, over the last 12 to 18 months saying that we can see this delay in execution. We can see this delay in remodels. We can see the demand building up. And what we did see here in Q2 was a release of some of that demand. And so, yeah, we're very happy with it, though. But it's Grocery. It's QSR. It's our petroleum refueling C-store space.

George Gianarikas (Analyst)

Have you had to manage customers' expectations in other verticals? I mean, you talked about having to hurry up and get orders out the door. Has there been a delay in the delivery of product to other verticals and other customers that we've had to manage expectations and maybe lead times have extended a little bit?

James A. Clark (CEO)

No. None. Our plan has always been to be very efficient, particularly with capacity utilization. But remember, our Fast Forward Plan. We plan to grow. So we've built in capacity into that growth. And every time we grow, every time we get a little bit bigger, we add a little bit more capacity. So we were anticipating this. We had the capabilities to do it. It's just that there is inherent inefficiency in it because we only have two options. One is to just stay at a ready state and absorb the cost associated with that, or execute quickly and accept the inefficiencies that come along with that. But we have not pushed any business off. As I mentioned, we were able to capture some business. And our say-do ratio is very important to us, to our customers too. We don't talk in terms of their needed delivery date.

We talk in terms of our ability to deliver when we receive an order. So if a customer says to us, "I need all of this on February 1st," and we're talking on October 1st, we say, "Great. Then the order needs to be in no later than X." If they're still saying, "Hey, we need it February 1st," and it's January 23rd, we're not going to turn around and say, "Okay, we'll deliver on February 1st." We're going to say, "Wait a minute. If you give us the order on the 23rd, this is how long it will take." And we're always willing to say to them, "If this is important, we will find a way to deliver it, but the only way we can do that will be overtime or expediting or bringing in other partners to help us do that.

Do you want us to do that, and do you want to pay for that?

George Gianarikas (Analyst)

And then maybe lastly, you've mentioned in the past that certain bottlenecks around permitting, maybe other supply chain issues. Is there anything, has there been any change, I guess, in the cadence of getting permits or maybe in getting equipment or supplies?

James A. Clark (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, so I'll break that into two pieces. On the permitting side, yeah, I think things have normalized. If we were to look at this in January of 2018, the time to go from a plan to a permit to an inspection would have definitely been shorter than it is today. The only thing that has changed is now we have all, meaning us, our customers, other contractors, other subcontractors on the site, we've all just customized or changed our planning cycles to say, "All right, permitting takes longer than it did five years ago." That's number one. On the supply chain side, I think LSI, as a company, has done a good job of making sure that we have our supply chain in order. Typically, when I'm talking about supply chain in regards to our company, it doesn't mean that we don't get impacted every once in a while.

It's generally about we're ready to go out and do a project, but the concrete contractor hasn't been able to get on site yet because an additive's missing for this project that they had. And so everything's been pushed a couple weeks or days or whatever it is. So yeah, I mean, that's how both of these guys.

George Gianarikas (Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much.

James A. Clark (CEO)

There is one thing I want to say just in general. Our Latin America business has really started to pick up again lately. This is still lingering from COVID, that we didn't get on the same kind of execution rate that we had been post-COVID or prior to COVID. The volume there or the momentum, the Velocity in Latin America has picked up for us too. We're happy about that.

George Gianarikas (Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Jim Clark for closing comments.

James A. Clark (CEO)

I think we covered a lot in that Q&A. I'm sorry there aren't more because we're excited about the quarter. I would be remiss if I did not mention this is a team effort. There are 2,000 people here at LSI that make this happen every day, every quarter, every year. I have a lot of confidence in them. I'm grateful that they're always here and willing to execute, and I'm proud of the culture that we have here. We have plans to continue to grow. You are all welcome to take a look at our Fast Forward Plan. We're very committed to executing against that, and this is just another step towards that plan. There are some inefficiencies that we're picking up right now between these surges in Q2 and Q3. There's work to be done on our Lighting side to regain that momentum we had there.

But we're very happy with the momentum we've been able to create. We're very happy with the partner that we're able to be to our customers. We're continually encouraged with our customers' understanding of our ability to come in and provide a solution for a lot of their challenges, not just one or two. And I will say that particularly on our, it's our larger and our smaller customers. But when we're able to come in and be a partner that executes across so many aspects of the businesses that they have and be a reliable partner, it just makes our job so much easier, and it makes their job so much easier. And we're benefiting from that, and we'll remain committed to that. Thank you for taking the time for the call in today.

Thank you for your continued confidence in LSI and our team here, and I look forward to talking to you on the next quarter. Take care.