Standard Motor Products - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Standard Motor Products fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing the star two. Please note, today's call will be recorded, and I will be standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Tony Cristello, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tony Cristello (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Chloe, and good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us on Standard Motor Products fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me today are Larry Sills, Chairman Emeritus, Eric Sills, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Burke, Chief Operating Officer, and Nathan Iles, Chief Financial Officer. On our call today, Eric will give an overview of our performance in the quarter, and Nathan will then discuss our financial results. Eric will then provide some concluding remarks and open the call up for Q&A. Before we begin this morning, I'd like to remind you that some of the material that we'll be discussing today may include forward-looking statements regarding our business and expected financial results. When we use words like anticipate, believe, estimate, or expect, these are generally forward-looking statements.

Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they are based on information currently available to us and certain assumptions made by us, we cannot assure you that they will prove correct. You should also read our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to Eric Sills, our CEO.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Tony. Excuse me, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. Overall, we are quite pleased with our results. Excuse me. The strong performance we have been experiencing continued into the fourth quarter, putting a cap on a solid year and with good momentum heading into 2026. Our top line grew by over 12% in the quarter and over 22% for the year, while much of this was from our Nissens acquisition, consummated in late 2024, excluding Nissens, we are up about 4% for both the quarter and the year. The strong sales performance, when combined with various internal initiatives, generated favorable bottom line numbers, both in terms of earnings growth and EBITDA margin expansion. All of our segments performed well. Let me go through them, starting with the North American aftermarket.

Vehicle Control sales were up 3.3% against a very strong quarter the previous year, with several contributing factors. First, our products are non-discretionary and largely DIFM. In general, the categories outperform in uncertain economic times. On top of that, we believe our customers are successful with our well-regarded brands. This is evidenced by their strong sell-through, as their POS was up in the mid-single digits throughout the year. As you look at the subcategories, you will note that the wire sets subcategory saw a 27% drop-off in the quarter, bringing the entire segment down 2%. Representing less than 10% of Vehicle Control, wire sets are a category in secular decline. Certain customers chose to reset their shelves in the second half, right-sizing their inventories for this mature category.

It's important to note that their wire set POS for this period was only down in the mid-single digits, which is more reflective of ongoing demand. Our sales in the segment benefited in the back half of the year as we began to pass through our tariffs at cost. Turning to Temperature Control, robust sales continued, up nearly 6% over a very difficult comp, though the fourth quarter is the smallest in this heat-related business. In a seasonal category like this, the cadence across quarters can vary year-to-year, the key measure is full-year sales, and for the full year, the segment was up more than 12%. What's driving this? As we described on last fall, the air conditioning season seems to be elongating, starting earlier and ending later.

Customers are recognizing this and getting their inventory in place ahead of the season to be able to take advantage of early demand. We also believe a key driver is the success of our AC kit program. An air conditioning repair done right consists of the replacement of several system components. Over the last several years, we have seen increased adoption of our kits, where we have all you need to do the repair included in a prepacked kit. Not only does this increase the ticket as more of the related parts get included, technicians love its simplicity. It tends to end with a happier end customer as the repairs are more successful. Lastly, here too, we saw a modest lift due to tariff pricing. Next, I'll speak about our newest segment, Nissens Automotive, which has been a part of SMP since November of 2024.

We have now completed our first full calendar year of ownership, we are delighted with its performance, both in and of itself and as a complement to our other businesses and the synergies it creates. Sales remained strong, contributing $64 million in the quarter and $305 million in the year, posting full-year mid-single-digit increases from 2024 in local currency. While there are reports from others with business in Europe of a general softening of the market, Nissens continues to excel. We attribute this to three primary dynamics. First, we participate in many of the same non-discretionary categories as in the U.S., which tend to remain stable in difficult economic times. Second, we enjoy strong sales in Eastern and Southern Europe, which have been outperforming other parts of the continent.

Most importantly, we are gaining share through a combination of new category placement, increased share of wallet with existing customers, and enhanced pull-through by the workshops who seek the highly respected Nissens brand. We are also deeply engaged in seeking synergies. Our preliminary focus was on savings, seeking best cost on sourced products, insourcing as appropriate, leveraging our increased purchasing power on freight and logistics, and so on. We are also focused on cross-selling, adding coverage in new categories on both sides of the ocean. While these initiatives can take time to show in the numbers, they represent exciting opportunities. Lastly, I'll speak to our non-aftermarket segment, Engineered Solutions. As we have discussed, this business will be subject to more volatility than the aftermarket, as it will rise and fall with demand for new vehicles and equipment across our different end markets.

Halfway through 2024, business started to drop off, leading to several consecutive quarters of sluggish demand. Happily, this trend reversed mid-2025, We have experienced sequential improvement. Q4 was up about 6% over the previous year, Although the full year was down slightly, the momentum is same. While we can expect the segment to be more cyclical than the aftermarket, we see it as a strong complement to our core business. It operates out of the same plants, producing the same product types. It enhances our quality capabilities and access to new technologies. It provides an OE pedigree to leverage in the aftermarket, It provides a healthy contribution to our bottom line. Finally, let me speak briefly about the current tariff landscape and its impact on our business. Over the past several months, we have entered a more stable environment.

In the fourth quarter, our tariff-related costs were essentially offset by pricing. Obviously, there have been recent announcements, both by the Supreme Court and the White House, that will have an impact. We're digesting the rules as certain tariffs are eliminated and new ones take effect, but we have developed processes and methodologies with our customers that allow for this flexing, and we plan to continue to operate from the successful playbook. We believe that our diverse global footprint will continue to provide us with a competitive advantage. The new rules allow continued exemption for USMCA-compliant goods, which is a significant part of our offering. It's worth reiterating that as most of our products are non-discretionary, and as product decisions are typically made by professional repair facilities, they are relatively priced inelastic at the end consumer as our sell-through confirms.

When you put all these moving pieces together, we are very pleased with the quarter's financial results and with our ability to execute on our initiatives during complex times. Let me hand this over to Nathan, who will provide the details.

Nathan Iles (CFO)

All right. Thank you, Eric. Good morning, everyone. As we go through the numbers, I'll first give some color on the results for the quarter by segment, and then look at the consolidated results for both the quarter and year. I'll cover some key cash flow metrics and finish with an update on our financial outlook for the full year of 2026. First, looking at our Vehicle Control segment, you can see on this slide that net sales of $193.7 million in Q4 were up 3.3%, while being up against a difficult comparison from a year ago when the segment grew 4.9%.

While we continue to see a decline in sales of wire, as Eric noted, we were pleased to see the engine and electrical and safety categories grow a combined 6.3% versus Q4 last year. Vehicle Control Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was even with last year, 11.1%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was flat as higher sales volume was offset by some gross margin rate compression from passing through tariffs at cost, as well as some higher distribution expenses as we transition into our new warehouse. Turning to Temperature Control, net sales in the quarter for that segment of $61.5 million were up 5.9% for the reasons Eric said.

Temperature Control's adjusted EBITDA increased in Q4 to 13% due to higher sales volumes that led to a higher gross margin rate, as well as improved operating expenses as a percent of sales for the quarter. While adjusted EBITDA was very good in the fourth quarter, it's a low point in the year for sales volume, and so would also highlight full-year adjusted EBITDA came in at 15.7% for this segment. Next, let me touch on Nissens. This fourth quarter was the first time we have year-over-year results as we acquired the business on November first, 2024. Nissens sales grew by $28.4 million or 79%, mostly reflecting an additional month of business in 2025 versus 2024, but also continued strength in the segment.

Adjusted EBITDA for Nissens increased to 10.1% of net sales in Q4, again, partly reflecting an additional month of results in 2025. Keep in mind, the Nissens business is seasonal, given their offering of temp control products, the fourth quarter profit is generally lower than other quarters, and the full-year adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.9% was in line with expectations. As this was our first full year of ownership of Nissens, this was the first year we needed to assess the internal control environment of this formerly private business according to Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. As noted in our 10-K filed earlier today, we disclosed that we identified a material weakness in internal controls over financial reporting at our Nissens segment related to its general information technology controls.

We're expeditiously taking action to remediate controls by both adding a technical solution and enhancing other compensating controls. It's very important to note this weakness did not result in an error in our financial statements, as we do a thorough review of all our numbers and received a clean opinion from KPMG. Turning to Engineered Solutions, sales in that segment in the quarter were up 6.3%. We were pleased to see growth return to the segment as we lap market softness that began in the second half of last year. Adjusted EBITDA for Engineered Solutions in the quarter was up 9.6% from last year as higher sales led to better gross margin and operating expense leverage.

While we did incur some one-time costs related to winding down certain customer programs in the quarter, and these were adjusted for non-GAAP reporting, we were pleased to see both the top and bottom line increase in this segment. To wrap up our results discussion, we put it all together across the four segments for Q4. Let me just say we had a great quarter and year. Consolidated sales increased 12.2%, and adjusted EBITDA increased to 9.7% of net sales in the quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were up 19.1% as a result of higher sales and strength of operating performance. For the full year of 2025, our sales increased 22.4% over last year and 4% excluding Nissens, helped by strong sales in both our North American aftermarket segments.

Our adjusted EBITDA was up 160 basis points, and our non-GAAP diluted earnings per share increased 26.8%. We were pleased to see our top line come in right in line with prior expectations, while our bottom line came in above the range previously provided. Turning now to cash flows. Cash generated from operations for the full year of $57.4 million was down $19.3 million from last year. Our cash flow was lower in 2025, mainly due to an increase in inventory during Q4 as our business continues to grow and we prepared for the upcoming selling season. Note that part of the increase in inventory is also due to higher tariff costs incurred during the year.

Our investing activities show capital expenditures of $38.7 million, which includes $10.4 million of investment related to our new distribution centre. CapEx is slightly lower than last year, as capital spending related to the DC is nearing completion. Financing activities show payments of $27.3 million of dividends, as well as $27.7 million in borrowings on our credit agreement. Note that we repaid $51.4 million on our credit agreement from Q2 through Q4, and with that, our net debt stood at $546.7 million. We finished the quarter with a leverage ratio of 2.7x EBITDA and believe we are on track to get to our target of 2x by the end of 2026.

Before I finish, I want to give an update on our sales and profit expectations for the full year of 2026. Before I do, let me note that our 2026 outlook does not take into account recent changes in U.S. tariffs on imported goods. We follow changes closely, but things change continuously, creating uncertainty in the market. Whatever the impact is on our business, we will continue to offset our costs with a dollar-for-dollar pass-through in pricing. We expect sales growth in 2026 to be in the low to mid-single-digit percentage range, driven by continued momentum in North America and Europe and more stable market conditions in our Engineered Solutions segment.

Our outlook for adjusted EBITDA margin is a range of 11%-12% of net sales and reflects margin benefits of sales growth, but also some continued margin compression from passing through tariff set costs. In connection with our adjusted EBITDA outlook, we expect interest expense on outstanding debt to be about $30 million for the full year. Our income tax rate to be 27.5%-28%, and depreciation amortization to increase to $45 million-$50 million, as we'll have a full year of depreciation on distribution center investments and also continue to invest generally in our business. Regarding operating expenses, keep in mind these expenses are incurred more ratably across the year, but do have some variability with sales and as such, will fluctuate with seasonality in the business.

We anticipate total operating expenses, inclusive of factoring, will be approximately $106 million-$114 million each quarter in 2026. As noted, there is a seasonal aspect to our business with regard to Temperature Control products we sell in North America and Europe. Our pre-season can span across Q1 and Q2, with some variability between quarters, and given we saw a large amount of growth in Q1 last year in these products, we will be going up against a difficult comparison in Q1 2026. It's important to look at the first half of the year in total regarding cadence of sales. To wrap up, we're very pleased with our sales and earnings growth in 2025, and that we can share expectations for further growth in 2026.

We continue to execute on many initiatives, including the integration of Nissens, and expect to realize increasing benefits from that in 2026. Thank you for your time. I'll turn the call back to Eric for some final comments.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Well, thank you, Nathan. In closing, let me just spend a moment discussing how we're viewing things in 2026 and beyond. Even in the face of a challenging economic environment, we have enjoyed several consecutive quarters of strong performance and believe that this momentum will continue. We operate in strong and stable markets and are outperforming due to a combination of structural advantages, customer relationships, and execution. We've made great strides in diversifying our business with new product categories, geographies, and end markets, all with the focus on seeking complementary attributes. Within our legacy business, the North American aftermarket, we believe we excel. The industry itself continues to demonstrate its stability and resilience in the face of turbulent times. Within it, we are in great non-discretionary product categories that are less impacted by consumer sentiment.

We target the repair professionals with quality products and brands they trust. These are the folks making the purchasing decisions, creating pull-through to our channel partners. We nurture our customer relationships with a program they value and with the execution they rely on. Our recent geographic expansion with the acquisition of Nissens is exceeding our expectations. They continue to impress us as terrific operators with strong relationships with their customers. They enjoy many of the same benefits I just described for us here, both in terms of market dynamics and their place in it. The more we work together, the more we are impressed with their team, with their capabilities, and our ability to identify opportunities. Our Engineered Solutions business is on the rebound, and while it can be volatile, it is a strong complement to our core business and generates favorable returns.

We continue to gain traction with blue-chip customers around the world, leveraging the breadth of our offering and our capabilities. As we become known, doors are opening for us. While we continue to see supply chain complexity, we feel that we can navigate it better than most. So we remain very bullish about the future. That concludes our prepared remarks. With that, we will open it up for your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, press star one on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question comes from Scott Stember with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you, gentlemen, and congrats on the very impressive results.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Scott.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Eric, in Vehicle Control, in the release, it says that your sell-through or POS was essentially in line with what you, I guess you had seen through the first three quarters. Does that assume that you were up low to mid-single digits at sell-through or POS?

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, that's correct. If I was unclear on that, I apologize. Yeah, the POS was pretty consistent really all year long for the big players, which was in the mid-single digits.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. very strong growth in the business outside of wire. maybe just talk about some of that. I know you guys have been much more focused on increasing your portfolio of products earlier in their life cycle and, you know, with more complexity in electronics. Maybe just talk about behind the scenes, how that's, you know, coming about.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, great question, and that's one of the reasons why we do break the subcategories out the way that we do. We have carved out the wire business to show that it does perform differently, just where it is in its life cycle, to the other areas where we do continue to see growth. Our Vehicle Control offering is extremely broad. It spans many categories, whether it's addressing conventional engines or safety-related products or other electrical products around the vehicle. What we're seeing is a proliferation of not only SKU opportunities, but also replacement rates on some of the newer technologies. It's an evolving category, it's a growing category.

In the aftermarket, nothing moves very quickly, as you know, but what we are seeing is that there continues to be really nice opportunities for growth across both conventional technologies and some of the newer ones.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Then one more before, and I'll jump back in the queue on the synergies that you talked about. Obviously, lots of synergies, cross-selling, new customers, introducing to each other and, I guess cross-pollination of products. Can you talk about how we're doing and what innings we are in some of these initiatives?

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Sure. Since you started by asking about the growth opportunities, let me respond to that. What we did over the course of 2025 was to look first at where we saw gaps in the common product categories. For example, we both sell air conditioning compressors. Where did we find opportunities for us to expand their North American coverage with what we already had, and some opportunities where they had some SKUs that made sense for us to add? The bigger area that we're excited about is identifying entire categories that one was in and the other wasn't.

We added several of these in 2025 for the Nissens offering, some in Nissens Europe and some in Nissens North America, really capitalizing on product strength that SMP brought to the table. With, for example, within Europe, we launched in December a line of ignition coils to expand their engine efficiency category. Ignition coils is a great category here. It's one we are very basic as a manufacturer of, and we manufacture them all in Poland, which is a great selling point in Europe for Europe. We expanded some of their air conditioning subcategories that they were not in on both sides of the ocean. Really, 2025 was a year of putting the programs in place.

It's about getting out there in the market, getting traction, getting some shelf placement with the distributors. It takes a little while for us to see the value that it brings, but we're excited about the potential. This is really one of the things we came into this acquisition thinking that while we have a lot of common categories to seek synergies, we also have these complementary categories to add and seek growth. On the cost side of things, this is the area we've been talking about really all year long, as we've looked at commonizing vendors, beefing up those vendors, and figuring out where there are cost-type synergies. We came into this saying that we would have a run rate of $8 million-$12 million in savings by the end of 2026.

I believe we're very comfortable with that. We believe we're ahead of that. Important to note, this doesn't all hit the Nissens P&L. This gets spread across the entire enterprise, because as we've seen, the savings we each benefit the other in what we bring to the table.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. If I could just squeeze one last one in about the timing of the remediation of the internal control issue in Europe.

Nathan Iles (CFO)

Scott, like I said, we're working on it right now with both the technical solution and compensating controls. I believe we're making very good progress, and we'll update you as soon as we can on that front.

Scott Stember (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Scott.

Operator (participant)

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your keypad now. We'll take our next question from Bret Jordan with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Bret Jordan (Managing Director)

Hey, good morning, guys.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Good morning, Bret.

Bret Jordan (Managing Director)

You talked about a tough comp in Temperature Control in the first quarter. Could you maybe give us some color as to where retail inventory in Temperature Control product stands year-over-year, going into what might be the cooling season?

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, what we've seen coming into the year, is that their inventories are up slightly, but they're really up tracking with how much their sales are up, so I wouldn't say that they're in a different position than previous years in terms of readiness for the season. We are seeing ongoing good preseason order requirements across the customer base. As Nathan pointed out, this can hit in the first quarter, it can hit in the second quarter. A lot depends on when we ship. It usually ends up being right at that crossover point. Last year, we did a lot of them in that first quarter. That's why you saw last year's Q1 was really very strong. We think it's gonna be more normalized this year, and that's why it's important to look at the full year.

The preseason should be good this year.

Bret Jordan (Managing Director)

Great. Then on Nissens, a couple of the large parts distributors in Europe are talking about private label programs that they're emphasizing. Can you be a private label supplier, be it Nissens, into those and pick up share if they gain share with private label?

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Certainly, we do a little bit of private label there today. We really have been emphasizing our brands, and the majority of our sales there, about 80% or so of our sales in Europe are under the Nissens brand. We have two other brands. We have an entry-level brand called AVA, and one that's more dedicated to commercial vehicles called Highway. Each kind of has its positioning within the space, depending on customer needs. We do see private labeling as something that is a successful partnership when it works well for both partners. If we see opportunities there, we'll certainly capitalize on them.

Bret Jordan (Managing Director)

Great. Obviously, you get some visibility on tariff outcomes here. Is there any opportunity for tariff rebate, collection, or are you guys just not as exposed to some of that Asian, import product?

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Well, I think that it's still very unclear. If you're asking about refunds from the IEEPA tariffs, I think it's still very unclear how that's gonna play out. We're in the same boat as everybody else. If there's an opportunity to recover it, we will certainly avail ourselves of that. I think that everything I'm hearing is that we're a long way from figuring out how that's gonna get resolved.

Bret Jordan (Managing Director)

Yeah, I think so. All right. Thank you.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, sir.

Operator (participant)

Once more for your questions, that is star and one on your keypad. We'll pause just another moment. Thank you. At this time, there are no further questions in queue. I would now like to hand it back to the presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Eric Sills (Chairman and CEO)

Okay, we want to thank everyone for participating in our conference call today. We understand there was a lot of information presented, and we'll be happy to answer any follow-up questions you may have. Our contact information is available on our press release or investor relations website. We hope you have a great day. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.