CPI Card Group (PMTS) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Executive Summary

Q2 net sales grew 9% to $129.8M (15% ex one-time accounting change); Adjusted EBITDA rose 3% to $22.5M while diluted EPS fell to $0.04 as acquisition, restructuring, higher interest, and tariff/mix pressures weighed on GAAP earnings.
Guidance: 2025 net sales growth raised to low double-digit to mid-teens; Adjusted EBITDA growth outlook maintained at mid-to-high single digits; outlook excludes proposed chip tariffs announced Aug 6.
Consensus context: Q2 missed Wall Street on revenue ($129.8M vs $133.0M est*) and EPS ($0.04 vs $0.50 est*); EBITDA also trailed ($14.9M vs $23.7M est*). Management noted tariffs and dual-facility transition costs as headwinds, with Arroweye outperforming early.
Key drivers/catalysts: Arroweye delivered ~$10M revenue in <2 months and is tracking above expectations; tariff headwinds (~$5M 2025) and ~$3M duplicative costs from facility transition; narrative hinges on executing Arroweye synergies, Card@Once growth, and clarity on chip tariffs.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well
- Arroweye acquisition outperformed early: “Arroweye delivering approximately $10 million of net sales in less than 2 months,” with customer feedback strong and synergy plans under way.
- Card@Once and contactless (incl. metal) drove Debit & Credit strength; segment net sales +16% YoY to $110.8M (18% ex accounting change).
- Management raised full-year net sales outlook on Arroweye contribution while reaffirming secular demand (Visa/Mastercard U.S. cards in circulation +8% 3-yr CAGR).
What Went Wrong
- Gross margin compressed to 30.9% (from 35.7%) on mix, tariffs, depreciation, and facility transition costs; gross profit -5% YoY to $40.1M.
- Prepaid Debit net sales fell 19% to $19.2M on reported basis (would be +4% ex accounting change), pressuring consolidated mix and margins.
- GAAP earnings headwinds: diluted EPS $0.04 (down 91%) with acquisition/integration and restructuring charges and higher interest expense; consensus EPS and revenue misses underscore magnitude of non-GAAP/temporary headwinds* [GetEstimates Q2 2025*].

Transcript

Speaker 2

Welcome to CPI Card Group Amintore T. Schenkel, Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Bailey, and I will be your operator today. If you are viewing on the webcast, you may advance slides forward by pressing the arrow buttons. This call will be open for questions after the company's remarks. If you would like to get into the queue for questions, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press star and one. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Salop, CPI Head of Investor Relations.

Speaker 0

Thanks, operator. Welcome to the CPI Card Group Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. Today's date is August 8, 2025, and on the call today from CPI Card Group are John Lowe, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Hochstadt, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements, as they are defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. For discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see CPI Card Group's most recent filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statement to reflect the events that occur after this call.

Also, during the course of today's call, the company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures, including but not limited to net sales growth, excluding the impact of an accounting change, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, net leverage ratio, and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release and slide presentation we issued this morning. Copies of today's press release, as well as the presentation that accompanies the conference call, are accessible on CPI's Investor Relations website, investor.cpicardgroup.com. In addition, CPI's Form 10-Q for the second quarter will be available on CPI's Investor Relations website. On today's call, all growth rates refer to comparisons with the prior year period unless otherwise noted. The agenda for today's call can be found on slide three.

John will give a brief overview of business performance and our strategy execution. Jeff will provide more details on the financial results and our 2025 outlook, and then we will open the call for questions. We can start on slide four, and I'll turn the call over to John.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. We had a good first half of sales growth as our strategies and investments are reaping benefits. Our customers are excited about our solutions, our business continues to grow and share, and our ROI acquisition is performing better than our expectations. Let me give you a few highlights from our first half sales performance. Note that what I will cover excludes the impact of a one-time non-cash accounting change affecting revenue recognition timing, which Jeff will cover in a few minutes. Let's start with our secure card business, where we are a top payment card producer in the U.S. This business delivered volume and sales growth greater than 15% in the first half, and we have won new business, including metal card orders, and realized strong performance from the key customer contracts signed early last year.

Card at Once, our market-leading software-as-a-service instant issuance digital solution, grew more than 20% in the first half and expanded to more than 17,000 locations, with two consecutive record sales quarters and ongoing momentum in a business that generates strong recurring revenue. Our market-leading open-loop prepaid business has continued to grow, with sales up 17% this year, excluding the impact of the accounting change, driven by greater value tamper-evident security packaging solutions and our diversification into healthcare payment offerings. Our digital solutions, while still immaterial to overall sales, are growing and generating great customer interest, including customers outside of our typical debit and credit space. The ROI acquisition, which was completed in early May, is off to a good start, with nearly $10 million of revenue contribution in less than two months, exceeding our expectations for sales and also beating our expectations for profitability.

Before we further review the quarter and outlook, let me take a few minutes to share more on our strategy execution on slide five. Our vision is to be the most trusted partner for innovative payment technology solutions. The strategic pillars that drive our actions are customer focus, quality and efficiency, innovation and diversification, and people and culture. We strive to provide market-leading high-quality payment solutions and best-in-class customer service and seek to enhance growth through innovation and diversification. This includes our focus on expanding our addressable markets by both increasing solution sets for existing customers and adapting existing solutions for new customer verticals. We've invested significantly over the last couple of years to drive market expansion opportunities and accelerated our investments in 2025. Let's discuss our progress and expected benefits, starting with the ROI acquisition on slide six.

After three months of owning the ROI business, I can say we are even more excited about the opportunity. ROI and CPI's businesses are very complementary. While CPI's bread and butter has historically been debit and credit payment cards for financial institutions, ROI provides a digitally driven, all-in-one delivery process that has penetrated a much more diverse set of payment card users, primarily in the prepaid debit payment card market. ROI serves prepaid program managers, payroll-related providers, healthcare-related providers, fintechs of all types, as well as banks, credit unions, and others. They participate in a variety of segments, including incentives, rebates, gift cards, prepaid, payroll, healthcare, government insurance, and fleet, among others, as well as debit and credit. We have very little customer overlap and receive positive feedback on the combination from both customer bases thus far.

ROI becoming a part of CPI creates many opportunities as CPI now has access to a number of additional market segments. CPI's financial backing allows ROI's existing customers to allocate more business to them with less risk. This year is focused on bringing our companies together, but we are anticipating many potential sales synergies and expansion opportunities from the acquisition going forward. In addition to ROI, we expect several other investments to aid long-term growth and profitability, as highlighted on slide seven. As mentioned earlier, our Card at Once instant issuance solution is in strong demand and is delivering great results. We have been investing to expand the solution beyond the financial institution space and have now successfully launched into a non-financial institution vertical, specifically in the government disbursement space, providing the capability to issue on-site payment cards for social safety net programs.

This market is very similar to many of our others, as it is sizable and recurring in nature, and we are continuing to invest in our go-to-market actions to grow in the government market and introduce into other customer verticals. We have also invested to provide prepaid packages for the U.S. closed-loop market, which offers significant opportunity where we have little presence today. As customer demand has developed for secure packaging solutions in this space, we are on track to deliver our first closed-loop deliveries in the fourth quarter, already having secured customer commitments. As we are just getting started in this large and expanding market, we believe this will be a long-term contribution to growth and look forward to sharing more. We have invested in expanding our healthcare payment card solutions, with expanded offerings already driving incremental growth.

This is also an area where ROI performs well, and we believe between our combined solutions, we can continue to grow in this attractive and recurring market. Our digital solutions continue to advance. As we have discussed in the past, new solutions for small and medium-sized financial institutions take long periods of time to adapt, and we are experiencing that. However, we continue to sign new clients for our push provisioning digital issuance services and are seeing a growing pipeline of potential customers. To scale these higher margin solutions, we will continue to invest in resources, technology, and our go-to-market needs. Our investments in metal card capabilities over the years have shown results as well, as we have had a few sizable customer orders which contributed to second quarter growth.

With metal, we are providing solutions to meet demands for heavier cards that can be purchased at good value relative to other high-end metal offerings in the market. In addition to these market expansion initiatives, we have also been making significant investments in automation in Colorado, innovating our production workflow at our personalization facility in Tennessee, and continuing to invest in our prepaid business in Minnesota, as well as opening the new secure card facility in Indiana. As we have discussed in the past, the Indiana facility will bring efficiencies from automation and optimal processes while adding capacity and new capabilities. Our new facility is now starting to operate with the peak of our transition occurring in the second half.

As we open our doors, our customers are excited about the possibilities, and we have already begun working on additional business opportunities that will be made possible as we complete our transition to the state-of-the-art facility. While we see a bright road ahead with our strategic investments, this year has had its challenges. At the highest level, our goal is to grow and diversify. While we are accomplishing that goal, we are experiencing negative cost impacts this year, such as unexpected tariffs, which we now anticipate being approximately $5 million for 2025. We're also incurring one-time costs and inefficiencies in our secure card business, as the team is focused on the new facility, as well as seeing margin pressures from sales mix.

With all that said, the performance we are delivering across many areas of our business, along with the ROI investment, has allowed us to continue delivering growth in 2025. When netting the puts and takes, we have increased our sales outlook for the year, including ROI, while maintaining our adjusted EBITDA outlook, even with the increased tariff impact. As I'm sure you are aware, on Wednesday, the current administration announced proposed tariffs on chips. Our outlook does not reflect any potential impact, as specific details of implementation timing and possible exemptions have not been announced. As a reminder, we have managed through many unexpected developments over the years, and through these events, we have managed to grow the business and increase share. We are confident in our strategy and the opportunities ahead of us, and we look forward to sharing our progress with you.

I will now turn the call over to Jeff to cover the second quarter results and 2025 outlook in more detail. Jeff?

Speaker 0

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Let's start on slide nine with the second quarter highlights. Our second quarter net sales reflect organic growth from our debit and credit business, the addition of ROI, and as noted in our press release, the one-time non-cash impact from an accounting change regarding revenue recognition timing for work-in-process orders. Reported net sales increased 9% in the quarter to $129.8 million, or 15% excluding the impact of the accounting change, with organic growth led by increased sales of contactless debit and credit cards and strong growth from Card at Once instant issuance. ROI also delivered strong performance, contributing approximately $10 million of revenue in less than two months since the May 6, 2023 acquisition. Gross margins in the quarter were pressured by various factors, which I will discuss shortly, and net income was also impacted by various non-recurring items.

Adjusted EBITDA increased as the ROI contribution and sales growth helped offset gross margin pressure. The sales impacts of the accounting change on the second quarter and year to date can be seen on slide 10. The accounting change essentially moves us away from recognizing revenue from certain work-in-process orders at the end of the quarter, as was done historically, to primarily recognizing revenue only at time of shipment. We made this change after a review of our current business practices with customers and to align with ROI. Practically, this means the second quarter does not reflect any revenue for work-in-process orders at the end of the quarter, while prior quarters would have included such revenue. This resulted in a one-time negative transition impact of approximately $8 million on sales in the second quarter.

Excluding the net impact of work-in-process orders in current and prior periods, net sales increased 15% in the second quarter. The accounting change only affects the timing of revenue recognition and does not impact cash flow. Other than the second quarter of next year, there will not be any significant quarterly comparison issues from this change going forward, as the net work-in-process impacts have typically been relatively small each quarter. There was approximately $3 million of gross profit associated with the $8 million sales impact. As a result, our net income in the quarter was affected by the accounting change, but there was no effect on adjusted EBITDA as the impact was treated as an adjustment item. We can review the detailed quarterly results on slide 11. The overall 9% sales increase reflects a 16% increase in the debit and credit segment and a 19% decrease in the prepaid segment.

The accounting change had the most significant impact on the prepaid segment, which tends to have larger amounts of work-in-process due to the nature of the business. Excluding the impact of the accounting change, prepaid net sales increased 4%, while debit and credit sales increased 18%. As mentioned, debit and credit growth was led by the addition of ROI and increased sales of contactless cards, including metal cards, and Card at Once instant issuance, partially offset by a decline in personalization services. The gross profit margin in the quarter decreased from 35.7% in the prior year to 30.9%, driven by two main factors: sales mix, which has been weighted towards larger volume issuers this year, including a decline in our personalization business, and increased production costs, which includes higher tariffs, depreciation, and incremental costs related to our Indiana production facility transition.

Tariffs, which are expensed when inventory is received, were slightly more than $1 million in the quarter. Based on the latest rates and projections, including ROI, we now expect tariffs of approximately $5 million in 2025, with a slightly lower profit impact as we are partnering with our customers to share in the impacts where possible. Depreciation expense and cost of sales was $1.3 million higher than last year, reflecting the addition of ROI and depreciation related to the new Indiana factory and other new capital equipment. We continue to have incremental costs associated with operating two production sites in Indiana while we transition to the new facility. We are working to alleviate margin pressures for 2026 through supplier negotiations for key components, synergies from the ROI acquisition, better contribution from our emerging digital solutions as those businesses scale, and expected efficiencies from our advanced machinery investments.

We should also see improvement next year as our new Indiana production facility becomes fully operational and we move past the higher costs and other inefficiencies we are incurring this year operating duplicate facilities during the transition. For this year, we expect incremental costs related to Indiana to affect adjusted EBITDA by approximately $3 million, impacting both cost of sales and operating expense, and we expect that amount to decline by approximately half in 2026. We should also benefit from incremental operating efficiencies from the new state-of-the-art facility as the secure card business grows in coming years. SG&A expenses in the second quarter, including depreciation and amortization, increased approximately $3 million from the prior year, primarily due to the inclusion of ROI operating expenses and acquisition and integration costs of $1.6 million.

Our tax rate for the quarter was 61% on a relatively low pre-tax income amount, which brought our first half rates to 32%. The increase in our current rate compared to prior year primarily reflects impacts from the ROI acquisition, including non-deductibility of certain ROI acquisition costs, and we now expect a full year rate of approximately 30%. We expect cash NOL benefits of around $5 million from the ROI acquisition in the coming years, which will benefit cash flow but will not impact our reported effective tax rate. We also expect approximately $3 to $5 million of cash benefits from the recently passed U.S. reconciliation bill over the next 12 months. Net income decreased 91% in the quarter, which was also affected by ROI acquisition costs, restructuring charges related to the cost-saving activities, the impact of the accounting change, and higher interest expense.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to $22.5 million, as sales growth and the addition of ROI were partially offset by lower gross margins, including the impact of approximately $1 million of tariff expenses. Adjusted EBITDA margins declined from 18.4% to 17.3%, primarily due to sales mix and increased tariff expenses. The second quarter margin would have been slightly lower, excluding the accounting change impact on sales. First half results and variance explanations can be found on slide 12. The first half generally reflects the same factors as the second quarter. Segment results can be found on slide 13. Income from operations for the debit and credit segment decreased 9% in the second quarter and 7% in the first half, as sales growth, including the addition of ROI, was offset by lower gross margins.

Gross margins were impacted by the same factors discussed for the company as a whole, namely sales mix, increased depreciation expense, and higher production costs, including tariffs, which primarily impact the debit and credit segment. Prepaid debit segment income from operations decreased 40% in the quarter and 22% year to date, which was a direct result of the revenue recognition accounting change. Excluding work-in-process impacts, prepaid income from operations increased slightly in the quarter, with a stronger increase for the first half. Turning to the balance sheet, liquidity, and cash flow on slide 14. We generated $9.9 million of cash from operating activities in the first half, which was an increase from $4.1 million in the prior year, driven by lower working capital usage.

We increased capital spending investment from $2.7 million in the prior year period to $9.1 million in this year's first half, which resulted in free cash flow of $800,000 this year, down slightly from $1.4 million in the prior year. The increased capital spending supported the build-out of our new Indiana secure card production facility, as well as additional advanced machinery for other facilities. In May, we completed the ROI acquisition for $45.6 million, with final cash settlement dependent on working capital adjustments. The initial net cash outlay was $42.4 million, which appears as an investment item in our cash flow and reflects ROI cash balances at the time of acquisition and funds held in escrow. On the balance sheet at quarter end, we had $17.1 million of cash, $30 million of borrowings on our ABL revolver, and $285 million of senior notes outstanding.

Following the end of the quarter in July, we exercised an optional redemption feature on our 10% coupon senior notes and retired $20 million of notes at a redemption price of 103% of par value. We also increased the size of our asset-backed lending facility from $75 million to $100 million, and we utilized short-term borrowings to retire the notes. Our net leverage ratio at quarter end was 3.6 times, up from 3.1 times at the end of the first quarter due to the funding of the acquisition. We expect to utilize free cash flow to pay down our ABL borrowings and bring net leverage down over time, although ABL borrowings increased early in the third quarter to fund the senior notes redemption. Before we move on to our 2025 outlook, we have provided the latest U.S. cards and circulation trends from Visa and MasterCard on slide 15.

For the three years ended March 31, cards in circulation in the U.S. increased at an 8% CAGR. The latest earnings reports from large issuers continue to indicate card growth and marketing support despite ongoing economic uncertainty. I will now turn to our 2025 outlook on slide 16. We have updated our 2025 outlook primarily to reflect the ROI acquisition, increased tariffs, and changes in sales mix. Our current net sales outlook is low double-digit to mid-teens growth, which compares to our previous outlook of mid to high single-digit growth. The increase from the previous outlook is a result of the addition of ROI sales, partially offset by the impact of the accounting change for revenue recognition timing. Although there were puts and takes among our businesses, our overall organic growth outlook has not significantly changed.

Our adjusted EBITDA outlook is unchanged from the prior outlook, as we continue to project mid to high single-digit growth. Compared to the prior outlook, we have added contribution from ROI, but this is expected to be offset by increased tariffs and unfavorable sales mix. Our current outlook reflects existing tariff rates and does not reflect potential impacts from the proposed semiconductor chip tariffs announced by the administration on August 6. At this point, details on implementation timing and exemption criteria have not been announced. You will recall that during and after COVID, we gained significant share as we leveraged our strong chip supplier relationships, making significant investments to ensure we always had chips on hand for our customers. We have continued that practice, and while chip types vary, we have ample chip supply inventory currently, so we have some flexibility to manage supply chains in the near term.

Additionally, any final implications from chips would be an industry-wide impact, for which we would work not only with our chip providers but also with our customers on how to manage in the best possible manner. Since this is real-time news, we are not including any impact in our outlook this morning, and we'll share more when appropriate. From a quarterly standpoint, we expect the third quarter to face similar margin pressures as Q2, including costs related to further ramping up the Indiana plant before seeing accelerated sales growth and margin improvement in Q4. As we mentioned last quarter, we expect net leverage to be temporarily higher this year compared to 2024 due to cash flow being utilized for the ROI acquisition and increased capital spending. I will now turn the call back to John for some closing remarks.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Jeff. Turning to slide 17 to summarize before we open the call for Q&A. Our core businesses are on track to deliver solid growth for the year, and we are pleased with the ROI contribution thus far, as well as its long-term potential. We are also excited about the potential long-term benefits of our other investments, including further expansion into new markets such as healthcare, closed-loop prepaid, and digital solutions, and the increased capability and capacity from our new production facility. We remain focused on executing and delivering results for the remainder of 2025. Operator, we will now open the call up for any questions.

Speaker 2

We will now open the call for your questions. If you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Scout with ROTH Capital Partners. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions, and it's great to see the revenue guide raised this morning. My first one for me is on the ROI acquisition. You guys touched on the fact that some of their customers are now putting in larger orders with the backing of your balance sheet. It looks like current revenue from ROI is trending a little bit above your original expectations. Can you kind of talk about more what you're seeing from these larger orders and maybe if the backing of your balance sheet will allow you to win larger customer awards as well? New customers, I mean.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Peter James Heckmann with D.A. Davidson & Co. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. On this subject, I know it's an evolving story, and tariffs have been on again, off again. It's very, very difficult for American businesses to plan purchasing inventory when policy is so unpredictable. I guess, what ways could you see to mitigate potential tariffs on chips in terms of sourcing? Given current inventory on hand, I guess, how many months of production would your current inventory cover?

Speaker 4

Speaker 2

Thank you so much. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

CPI Card Group - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

Transcript

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