M-tron Industries - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered double-digit top-line growth, but margins compressed and EPS missed consensus: revenue $12.73M (+13.8% YoY), gross margin 42.5% (-470 bps vs Q4), diluted EPS $0.56 vs S&P Global consensus $0.66; adjusted EBITDA $2.50M.
• Backlog surged to $55.5M (+20.3% YoY; +$8.3M QoQ), supported by several large defense and avionics orders; management highlighted strong bookings and a robust pipeline, including drones in 2H25.
• New program ramps (space products, EW/RADAR oscillators) and initial tariff impacts (<$0.1M in March) weighed on margins; management expects yields and margins to improve as mix normalizes (missile programs resume shipments).
• Corporate actions: warrant dividend distributed April 25 (5-for-1 warrants, $47.50 strike, early exercise trigger at $52 VWAP), a potential sentiment and liquidity catalyst; company to host investor presentation and Annual Meeting on June 10, 2025.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Revenue growth and backlog strength: revenue up 13.8% YoY to $12.7M, backlog up 20.3% YoY to $55.5M, reflecting large defense/avionics orders and broad demand.
• Strategic progress and market positioning: “We are involved… in over 40 programs of record,” underscoring embedded defense exposure and program-centric model.
• Avionics recovery signs and operations initiatives: management saw growth in commercial avionics and is deploying greater factory-floor automation to improve yields.

What Went Wrong

• Margin compression: gross margin fell to 42.5% from 47.2% in Q4 and 42.7% YoY, driven by new-product inefficiencies, product mix (lower shipments on two high-margin missile programs), and initial tariffs.
• EPS and revenue below S&P Global consensus: EPS $0.56 vs $0.66 and revenue $12.73M vs $13.00M, reflecting mix/tariff headwinds and ramp dynamics.
• Cost pressure: higher engineering, selling and administrative expenses tied to R&D investments, commissions, and scaling corporate functions with growth.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Mtron earnings call for Q1 2025. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Linda Biles, Mtron's EVP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Linda Biles (EVP of Finance)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2025 Mtron Q1 earnings call. Please note that this call will be recorded, and we will make the recording available on our website, www.mtron.com, shortly after the call. Yesterday afternoon, we released our earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2025. Before getting underway, we are required to advise you that the following discussion should be taken in conjunction with our most recent financial statements and notes as contained within our 2024 10-K, which was filed on March 27th, 2025, with the SEC. This discussion may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of 27-A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21-E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements contain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in our SEC filings.

Although the company believes that the forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions regarding its business and future market conditions, there are no assurances that the company's actual results will not differ materially from any result expressed or implied by the company's forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as the result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Readers are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Interim CEO, Cameron Pforr.

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Yes. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Linda. First of all, I want to thank all of our shareholders and interested parties for attending our first quarter FY 2025 earnings call and your interest in the company. We're pleased to discuss our strong start to the 2025 fiscal year and our outlook going forward. As a reminder, Mtron designs and manufactures highly engineered RF solutions, including electronic components and subassemblies used to control the frequency and timing of signals and electronic circuits. We're a global company with three manufacturing sites in the United States and India. The company's primary markets include defense and aerospace, commercial avionics, industrials, and space. We are pleased to report that the company continued to perform well, with continued strength in Mtron sales and good financial performance for Q1 fiscal year 2025.

Our revenues continue to be driven by defense-related orders, and we also saw some growth in the commercial avionics market, something we believe bodes well for the future recovery of that market. We are pleased to see Boeing resolve its labor dispute early in the year and expect orders from the major airframe manufacturers to pick up throughout the year. With consistent operating performance, we have been able to continue to make strategic investments in research and development and continue to increase the market profile of the company. Part of that effort was the recent rebranding of the company as Mtron, updates to our logo, our website, and sales materials, as well as the initiation of advertising in some of the leading publications for our sector and also enhanced lead generation activity.

We also continue to make investments in our production facilities, and we've seen good initial results in a program that I mentioned, I think, on the last call to deploy greater automation on the factory floor to improve yields. It looks like we have gotten through some of the choppiness in the defense market caused by some of the conflicting messaging from the administration on the defense budget. We at Mtron have seen no disruption to our business and expect to continue the company's revenue growth throughout the year. The continuing resolution passed and signed in mid-March 2025 extended government funding through the end of the federal fiscal year and largely preserved the defense spending as it was, actually increasing the defense budget by, I guess, a relatively small amount, $6 billion.

The administration is now proposing increasing the defense budget for this fiscal year by $150 billion through a reconciliation process and also substantially increasing procurement spending in the federal fiscal year 2026 budget. Many of the areas targeted for investment, such as next-gen aircraft, shipbuilding, loitering and precision-guided munitions, border security, and the Golden Dome anti-aircraft, anti-missile defense, all require a significant amount of RF subsystems and components, highlighting the continued growing need for Mtron's products. The importance of filters and oscillators has only increased as the electromagnetic spectrum has become a more contested part of the battlespace, and communications between systems and commanders and combatants remain subject to electronic countermeasures such as jamming and interference. We believe that we are well-positioned to continue to perform well with the anticipated changes in military procurement focus. Now, Linda, would you mind giving our audience the highlights of our fiscal year Q1 performance?

Linda Biles (EVP of Finance)

Yes. Total revenues for first quarter were $12.7 million, a 13.8% increase over the $11.2 million of revenue in the same period last year. The revenue increased in the period primarily due to strong defense program product and solution shipments. Gross margins for the first quarter of 2025 were 42.5%, a 20 basis point decrease over the 42.7% gross margins in Q1 of 2024. The decrease is primarily due to additional manufacturing costs with the initial production runs of several new products. In addition, we saw the initial impact this quarter of duly initiated federal tariffs on imports of foreign-sourced materials and partially finished goods. Net income was $1.6 million, or $0.56 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025, compared with $1.5 million, or $0.53 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2024.

The increase in revenues discussed above was partially offset by higher manufacturing cost of sales consistent with the growth in revenues and the introduction of new products, as well as higher engineering, selling, and administrative expenses related to continued research and development investments, higher sales commissions from an increase in revenues, and an increase in administrative expenses consistent with the overall growth of the business. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, compared with $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily due to higher revenues resulting in higher income. Backlog was $55.5 million as of March 31st, 2025, compared to $47.2 million as of December 31st, 2024, and $46.1 million as of March 31st, 2024. The increase in backlog reflects several large defense and avionics orders received during the quarter and the continued broad demand for our products.

In early February 2025, for example, we publicly announced one large order supporting shipboard systems for over $10 million that was expected to have been received in the fiscal year 2024. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Cameron.

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Yeah. Thank you, Linda. In March 2025, Mtron saw the initial impact of the recently announced federal tariffs on the import of goods and materials from outside the United States. While Mtron is a United States-based manufacturer with a great degree of vertical integration, something we pride ourselves on, we do import some materials from Japan, China, South Korea, and a very small amount from Europe. We also perform some finishing work at our facility in India. It's difficult to predict the long-term impact of this trade policy on our financial performance as it changes regularly. We are working with many of our defense customers on enacting parts of the federal acquisition regulations, which potentially exempt materials received for defense production from entry tariffs.

In addition, we continue, as always, to analyze our supply chain in order to make sure that we have redundancy of suppliers where possible and consorts from reliable suppliers at the best prices possible. To date, we have seen no impact from tariffs on demand for our products. Also, I wanted to highlight the recent distribution of warrants. On April 25, 2025, the company distributed the dividend of warrants to stockholders of record as of March 10th, 2025. The warrants are listed on the New York Stock NYSE American Exchange under the ticker MPTIWS. The warrants may be listed on certain financial websites under the ticker MPTIWT or a similar nomenclature. Pursuant to the warrant agreement, the warrants contain the following terms, which I'll summarize, and we're happy to answer questions about this later. But five warrants are exercisable to purchase one share of common stock.

The exercise price is $47.50 per share. The warrants are exercisable at the earlier of 30 days prior to the maturity date of April 25th, 2028, or on the date when the average volume weighted average price, or the VWAP, of Mtron's common stock is greater than or equal to $52 per share for the prior 30 consecutive trading days. We call this the accelerated trigger or early trigger. The warrants expire at the earlier of April 25, 2028, if they run to full maturity, or 30 calendar days following Mtron's public announcement of the date of the accelerated trigger being triggered. Warrant holders exercising their full allotment of warrants can apply to subscribe for any and all shares of common stock issuable pursuant to any outstanding but un-exercised warrant. This is called the oversubscription feature, and it's included on your warrant agreement.

Further information on the warrants is available in a FAQ found on our Mtron investor website, which is ir.mtron.com. Just to highlight some of the strategic activity, we do continue to execute on our strategy of continuing moving into more program business, which now makes up the vast majority of our aerospace and defense revenues. We are involved, for example, in over 40 programs of record, a very significant amount. Defense and aerospace has been an amazing market over the past several years, and it does remain one with plenty of room for us to grow. We seek to maintain close relationships with our customers and be their first-line resource for them as they plan upgrades to current systems or compete for the design of new systems to meet government program needs. The same can be said in our other sectors like avionics and industrials.

We have also ramped up our pursuit of complementary acquisitions and strategic partnership opportunities in both the RF component and subsystem space, as well as some tangential subsystem and solution companies that focus on the same markets. We are focused on finding deals that would be accretive for shareholders and help both companies strengthen their financial performance and customer base. Strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base is one of the goals of the administration's trade policy and current budget focus. They have actually dedicated budget dollars to the strengthening of the defense industrial base and the anticipated increase in this year's defense budget. Having a U.S.-based advanced manufacturing capability to support our joint forces is more important than ever before, and we thank our employees for their dedication to their jobs and the mission.

We also thank our dedicated customers for their continued business and the trust they place in Mtron and our people. Mtron plays a critical role in the defense of our nation by providing U.S.-sourced, highly engineered components for many U.S. and allied military programs. Before I open the floor to questions, I wanted to mention that we will be holding our annual meeting on June 10th, 2025, at 10:00 A.M. at the Harbor Club in New York City. The meeting will be open to all shareholders of the company's common stock. In addition, we will hold an investor presentation and question-and-answer session before the annual meeting. Information for both of these events will be posted on our investor website. For those interested in attending in person, you'll need to get a QR code from our IR site to pass through the Harbor Club security.

Operator, can you please open the lines and allow the first question?

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. In terms of the gross margins, since that was a bit muted due to the ramping of new programs, how is that going to sort of develop? With those new large contract wins, are we going to see that being a ramp for a longer period of time, or will it pick up pretty quickly?

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Yeah. Good question, Anja. Thank you for joining. The gross margins were impacted by really three factors. One was just product mix. We had less products being shipped for two of our long-term missile programs, which have relatively high margins. That is expected to return very shortly. That part of the mix is going to increase in Q2 throughout the rest of the year due to some of the orders we received in Q1. The thing I mentioned earlier was that we did ship some new products. Whenever you're working on new products, the first couple of runs are a little bit less efficient than when all the kinks have been worked out in the process and you're running at a higher yield. We shipped some new space products, which require rigorous testing.

They have been successful, but the first couple of runs of those take more labor than you would hope to use later. Also, we shipped a new type of oscillator in the quarter that is used in EW and radar, which I think is great for the long-term prospects of the company. I think that those yields will improve over time. I do expect the yields to improve and the margins to improve throughout the year. We also did see some impact to the tariffs. We had a little bit less than $100,000 of tariff charges in March. It is kind of difficult to predict how much we should anticipate receiving there for the rest of the year. We hope that a lot of the progress that has been made over the past couple of weeks reducing the tariffs will have a positive impact there.

I do anticipate this to go up in the rest of the year.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

Okay. For those new programs that you shipped in the space and the oscillators, are they higher than the average margins?

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Yeah. They'll be very strong margin products, but they're just early to develop.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

Okay. In terms of the tariffs, you're not able to pass that on at all, or?

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Yeah. We do have the capability on our contracts to pass that on. The reality is that in the market, there are a lot of mistakes being made in terms of how the tariffs are applied. The whole thought of passing on tariffs to vendors is relatively new. I do anticipate a fair amount of pushback, although I think ultimately many customers will pay per their agreements. We are really hoping that we can work through the tariff situation in the short term. We do have in our contracts the ability to pass on taxes and tariffs. I think over time, this will work out. There will be some disruption in the industry in terms of cost for the short term.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

Okay. Thank you. Also, these large contracts you've been winning, and congrats on those, are they also higher margin programs then?

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

They are. They were actually some of the programs that I mentioned. We did not ship a lot of it in Q1, which did impact our margins then. Return to that is very positive.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

What does the pipeline look like for other large deals like that?

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

We actually have a pretty strong pipeline for the year. We do not really talk about bookings per se and give numbers on that, but we have had two very strong quarters of bookings. We do have a lot of large programs that we think we will be announcing over the next quarter or two. Both missile programs as well as some in the avionics space. Back after the year, we are working on some really significant drone bookings and programs, which I think will be exciting for the company.

Anja Soderstrom (Financial Analyst and Equity Research)

Okay. Thank you. I'll get back in here.

Operator (participant)

At this time, there are no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Cameron Pforr for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Cameron Pforr (Interim CEO)

Okay. Thank you, Operator. I appreciate you helping us manage the call. I would like to thank everybody for participating today. If there are no further questions, please have a great day. If you want to follow up after the call, after you have kind of read the transcripts or you have had a chance to kind of go through the earnings release in more detail, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We will respond in kind. Thank you again.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect.