SPX Technologies - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered revenue of $482.6 million (+3.7% YoY), adjusted EPS of $1.38 (+10.4% YoY), and adjusted EBITDA of $102.6 million (+11.5% YoY). Adjusted EPS was a significant beat versus S&P Global consensus ($1.17*) and revenue was slightly above consensus ($481.2 million*).
• FY 2025 guidance was raised: revenue to $2.20–$2.26 billion (prior $2.13–$2.19B), adjusted EBITDA to $470–$495 million (prior $460–$490M), and adjusted EPS to $6.10–$6.40 (prior $6.00–$6.25), incorporating Sigma & Omega and net tariff impacts.
• Segment performance: HVAC revenue rose to $323.0 million (+6.8% YoY) with margin expansion (+30 bps to 22.9%); Detection & Measurement revenue declined to $159.6 million (−2.0% YoY) but margin expanded sharply (+360 bps to 22.9%) on mix and KTS acquisition.
• Backlog and positioning: D&M backlog surged to $346 million (+56% sequential; ~22% from KTS), HVAC backlog was $451 million (+~3% sequential), supporting raised guidance despite tariff headwinds.
• Liquidity and leverage: cash $182.2 million, debt $960.3 million; leverage ratio ~1.9x including Sigma & Omega; net operating cash flow was $(10.4) million reflecting acquisition-related items, with adjusted free cash flow of ~$36 million.

Note: Consensus values marked with * are from S&P Global.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Margin expansion and profit growth: Adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 21.3% (+150 bps YoY), with consolidated segment income up 10.7% YoY to $110.5 million; HVAC margin +30 bps and D&M margin +360 bps.
• Strategic M&A execution: Sigma & Omega closed in April and is highly complementary to HVAC; management raised FY guidance reflecting accretion from Sigma & Omega, partially offset by tariffs. “We see numerous opportunities to leverage our combined channels to drive additional growth”.
• Backlog momentum: D&M backlog rose 56% sequentially (34% organic) and HVAC backlog increased ~3% sequentially, improving visibility into 2025 execution.

What Went Wrong

• Organic revenue growth was modest (+0.4% consolidated), and D&M saw a −6.9% organic decline on timing of shipments and lower project volumes in aids to navigation.
• Operating cash flow turned negative (−$10.4 million) in Q1 due to working capital movements and retention-related contributions tied to acquisitions; capex was $5.5 million.
• Tariff headwinds: net EPS impact of ~$0.08–$0.12 for 2025 (gross ~$20 million, offset by ~$14 million of price/surcharges), with limited near-term ability to surcharge backlog projects in D&M.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter 2025 SPX Technologies Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After this speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'll now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Paul Clegg, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. With me on the call today are Gene Lowe, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Carano, our Chief Financial Officer. A press release containing our first quarter results was issued today after market close. You can find the release in our earnings slide presentation, as well as a link to a live webcast of this call in the Investor Relations section of our website at spx.com. I encourage you to review our disclosure and discussion of GAAP results in the press release and to follow along with the slide presentation during our prepared remarks. A replay of the webcast will be available on our website. As a reminder, portions of our presentation and comments are forward-looking and subject to safe harbor provisions. Please also note the risk factors in our most recent SEC filings.

Our comments today will largely focus on adjusted financial results, and comparisons will be to the results of continuing operations only. You can find detailed reconciliations of historical adjusted figures from their respective GAAP measures in the appendix to today's presentation. Our adjusted earnings per share exclude amortization expense, acquisition-related costs, non-service pension items, mark-to-market changes, and other items. Finally, we will be meeting with investors at various events over the quarter, including the Oppenheimer Industrial Growth Conference on May 8th, the BofA Securities Industrial Transportation and Airlines Key Leaders Conference on May 14th, the Wolfe Research Small and Mid-Cap Conference on June 3rd, and the William Blair Growth Stock Conference on June 4th. I will turn the call over to Gene.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call today, we'll provide you with an update on our consolidated and segment results for the first quarter of 2025, as well as an update on our full-year outlook. We had a strong start to the year. We grew first-quarter adjusted EBITDA by 12% and adjusted EPS by 10%. Our company continued to execute well, driving strong margin performance across both segments and making progress on several key initiatives. Recently, we made another attractive addition to our HVAC segment with the acquisition of Sigma & Omega, which enhances the value we provide to customers in our HVAC segment while positioning us for further growth. Today, we're raising our full-year adjusted EPS guidance range to reflect our strong Q1 and the acquisition of Sigma & Omega, partially offset by the impact of the current tariff environment.

We now anticipate growth in adjusted EBITDA of 15% at the midpoint of our range. Looking ahead, we remain well-positioned to manage through a range of economic conditions. We have a high level of replacement sales and diverse demand drivers across our end markets. Our critical solutions are often government-mandated or required, and we have a strong playbook that has proven effective in adapting to rapid change. Turning to our high-level results. For the first quarter, we grew revenue by 3.7%, driven by a solid performance in our HVAC segment and the benefit of recent acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA increased by approximately 12% year-on-year, with 150 basis points of margin expansion. As always, I'd like to update you on our value creation initiatives. We continue to leverage our business system to manage a dynamic tariff environment, remaining nimble and redeploying resources as needed.

We are also closely managing price and our sourcing relationships to mitigate the impact of tariffs. During the quarter, we also continued to gain traction on our continuous improvement and value engineering initiatives. In our HVAC segment, we identified additional opportunities to standardize control components in our electric heat products, allowing more streamlined manufacturing, shorter lead times, and lower costs. In our Detection and Measurement segment, we continue to advance our new product initiatives. Our transportation platform introduced a new ticket vending machine called the Vendstar 5. It has a much smaller footprint, a larger screen, and several advanced features that provide an enhanced user experience. We're receiving great customer feedback on the product and already seeing significant sales. In April, we continued to advance our inorganic growth initiative with the acquisition of Sigma & Omega, which enhances the value we offer our customers in our HVAC segment.

Sigma & Omega's product portfolio includes vertical stack heat pumps and fan coils, institutional heating products, and self-contained units. These solutions are highly complementary with our existing HVAC businesses and expand our addressable market. They are often paired with cooling towers and boilers, typically receiving approximately two times the order value of the cooling tower and boiler combined for this type of solution. The transaction is an excellent fit that creates significant opportunities for leveraging our combined channels to drive growth in attractive end markets, in particular for multi-story buildings such as hotels, schools, hospitals, and commercial and residential properties across North America. Today, more than 2/3 of Sigma & Omega's revenue comes from domestic sales to their Canadian customers.

As a part of our value creation strategy, we plan to substantially increase sales to U.S. customers, supported by the expansion of production at our existing U.S. facilities with minimal additional capital investment. We're very pleased with this transaction and are excited about Sigma & Omega joining the SPX team. Now, I'll turn the call over to Mark to review our financial results.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Thanks, Gene. Our first-quarter results were strong. Year-on-year, adjusted EPS grew 10% to $1.38. For the quarter, total company revenues increased 3.7% year-on-year, primarily driven by the acquisition of KTS in late January and an extra month of Ingenia, which closed in early February of 2024. Consolidated segment income grew by $10.7 million, or 10.7%, to $110.5 million, while segment margin increased 140 basis points. For the quarter in our HVAC segment, revenues grew 6.8% year-on-year. On an organic basis, revenues increased 4.4%, driven primarily by growth in our heating platform and, to a lesser extent, in our cooling platform. The extra month of Ingenia accounted for growth of 2.9%, while FX was a modest headwind. Segment Income grew by $5.5 million, or 8%, while segment Margin increased 30 basis points. Increases in segment Income and Margin were due to higher sales, including the additional month of Ingenia.

Segment Backlog at quarter-end was $451 million, or up approximately 3% from Q4. For the quarter in our Detection and Measurement segment, revenues declined 2% year-on-year. On an organic basis, revenue declined 6.9%, partially offset by an increase of 5.2% from the acquisition of KTS. FX was a modest headwind. The decrease in organic revenue was driven largely by the timing of project deliveries in the prior year. Year-on-year segment Income grew by $5.2 million, or 16.6%, while segment Margin increased 360 basis points. The increases in segment Income and Margin were driven by a more favorable sales mix and strong project execution in our CommTech platform, as well as the addition of KTS. Segment Backlog at quarter-end was $346 million, up 56% sequentially from Q4, including organic growth of 34%. Turning now to our financial position at the end of the quarter.

We ended Q1 with cash of $182 million and total debt of $960 million. Our leverage ratio, as calculated under our bank credit agreement, was approximately 1.6x, including the effect of the KTS acquisition, which closed in January. Including the pro forma impact of the Sigma & Omega acquisition, which closed in April, our leverage ratio was 1.9x, well within our target range of 1.5x-2.5x. We anticipate our leverage ratio declining below the low end of our target range by year-end, assuming no further capital deployment beyond our guidance. Q1 adjusted free cash flow was approximately $36 million. Moving on to our full-year 2025 guidance. We are updating our range of adjusted EPS to $6.10-$6.40, reflecting year-on-year growth of 12% at the midpoint. This represents an increase from a range of $6-$6.25 previously.

The increase reflects our strong Q1 results, net of some favorable timing, as well as accretion from the acquisition of Sigma & Omega, which is anticipated to be modest due to higher interest costs from borrowings to fund the transaction. These are partially offset by the net impact of current tariff rates and our mitigation efforts, including price increases and surcharges. The net impact of tariffs to our updated guidance is approximately $0.08-$0.12 of adjusted EPS. For Q2, we anticipate adjusted EPS to be modestly higher than in the prior year period, with higher interest costs, corporate expense, and share count partially offsetting the benefit of higher segment income. As a reminder, in Q2 2024, our HVAC segment results benefited from the delivery of a $20 million cooling service project.

In our Detection and Measurement segment, we expect strong year-on-year growth in Q2, both organically and from the acquisition of KTS. As always, you'll find modeling considerations in the appendix to our presentation. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Gene.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thanks, Mark. We continue to believe that SPX is less cyclical than most industrial tech companies. We have a diverse set of end market drivers, a high level of replacement revenue, and we offer a broad set of critical solutions that are often government-mandated or essential. The business system provides effective mitigation tools and, historically, we've managed to limit the impact of economic downturns on our financial performance. For example, during the COVID pandemic in 2020, our revenue and earnings were approximately flat, while many other industrial tech companies experienced significant declines. In our HVAC segment, we have a healthy backlog for our highly engineered solutions, and our core markets are holding up well. We're feeling incrementally more positive about data center opportunities in 2025 and 2026, and our related new product initiatives are progressing well.

In our detection and measurement segment, run rate market demand remains flattish with regional variation, while our project businesses are seeing healthy front-log activity, with many new bookings slated for delivery in 2026 and beyond. Overall, current market conditions support our updated 2025 guidance range. In summary, I'm pleased with the strong start to 2025. Our acquisition of Sigma & Omega further enhances the value we provide to our HVAC customers and positions us for future growth. Despite tariff headwinds, we are confident in our increased full-year guidance, which implies adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% at the midpoint. We also remain well-positioned to manage macro uncertainty and navigate a rapidly changing environment. Looking ahead, I remain excited about our future. With the right strategy and a highly capable, experienced team, I see significant opportunities for SPX Technologies to continue growing and driving value for years to come.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Paul.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Gene. Operator, we will now go to questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one, one on your cell phone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Please stand by while we compile a Q&A roster.

Our first question comes from the line of Brad Hewitt of Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)

Hi, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Thank you, Brad.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

How you doing?

Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)

Good. Can you walk through what you're assuming in terms of the gross and net tariff impact for the year? It looks like you implicitly cut the organic EBITDA guidance for the rest of the year by about $5 million. Is that the right way to think about the tariff impact?

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah. Let me just, Brad, let me give you a little bit of color, right? We said on the call it was $0.08-$0.12 of tariff impact, right? You take the midpoint of that, right? You back up to about a $6 million net cost, you know, at the midpoint there. The gross amount of cost is, let's call it $20 million, low 20s of impact, being offset by price of about $14 million. That's a combination of price and surcharges is the way to think about it from a mathematical standpoint.

Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)

Okay. That's helpful. Congrats on getting the Sigma & Omega deal closed. I guess curious how you think about that business in terms of the through-cycle growth rates, both pre and post-energies. From an EBITDA margin perspective, is it fair to think of that business as currently being in the mid-teens range?

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

I want to start the business, Brad. I think, first of all, this is a really good business. We really like this business. They are a very complementary product to what we already sell today. Typically, when you see multi-story applications, you know, hospitals, schools, hotels, you'll see us selling the cooling tower and then the boilers and then the heat pumps that go in the rooms is an engineered product that we have not participated in today. If you look at Sigma & Omega, they have a very good product, a very strong position in Canada, and we actually see a very nice synergy opportunity to really expand their growth predominantly in the States, where we are very strong in cooling towers and boilers, obviously. We really like this business.

They're a very good technology, good product, and very complementary to our channels, and we actually see some nice synergies for growth. Do you want to run through some of the financials, Mark?

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah. I think we, you know, with respect to the sizing of the business, I think, you know, you saw in the press release from a couple of weeks ago, it's about $65 million in revenue. Obviously, we're going to own it for about eight and a half months of the year. You can do the math on that, but that gets you into the $40-$45 million range. From a segment income perspective, I would say it's, you know, just slightly lower than the segment income average of the HVAC business overall today.

Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)

Great. Thanks, guys.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Thanks, Brad.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Blair from Oppenheimer. The line is now open.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Hey, Bryan.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director)

Good start to the year. It sounds like you're very confident in the outlook, the raise guide that you've offered. We've talked for years now about the asynchronous demand profile that your company has in aggregate. There are many proof points that we have already. Just curious, you know, what you're seeing now with the tariff-related uncertainty, you know, just the overall volatility of the backdrop, you know, platform by platform, how order rates have progressed, you know, through Q1 into Q2. You know, if there are any notable changes that you would attribute to, you know, the uncertainty at hand or if it's, you know, kind of steady as a guess.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Yeah, Brian, I'd say to cut to the punchline, we haven't seen a lot of change. If anything, I feel like we're in a stronger position than when we started the year. I can kind of run you through the segments and some of the platforms. You know, if you look at HVAC, you know, last year we had very strong growth in cooling, more flattish in heating. Really, cooling carried the day last year organically, you know, in the 14% range, more flattish. If you look at heating and cooling this year, very balanced across them both. We actually, you know, we're seeing good solid demand. You know, we've talked pretty consistently around healthcare, institutional. I would say one of the ones that we're seeing a reasonably substantial amount of increasing activity would be the power, which is actually oftentimes paired with data centers.

This is an area that we are particularly well suited. You know, I'd say overall in the HVAC segment, we're very balanced and we haven't seen any impacts. The one impact I would say, the one change I would say, is we're feeling relatively stronger on data centers. Why is that? We're seeing a good amount of activity. I think we're winning. We have very good products. I would say we've also launched some new products in the data center area that are getting nice traction. If you look at TAMCO, we have a new set of solutions there that are particularly well suited for what's called the building envelope area, and we've seen a lot of growth there.

In cooling, our core cooling tower, we actually have a new Everest solution that is already starting to get some nice orders there, a different way of cooling that is preferred by some customers that we're very excited about. When we've talked about adiabatic and dry, we've launched that product, and I would say there is very strong interest in that. We really think we have a winner here. We have a product that I think just has a tremendous value proposition. There's a number of patents pending on that product. You know, as we've talked about in the past, we would argue to get some material bookings in 2025 and get some real revenue in 2026. I think that's tracking pretty well. If you look at D&M, I would say we always talk about run rate and projects. Run rate is steady.

I would say our businesses are probably a little bit more positive on the U.S. today and perhaps a little bit more cautious on Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are pretty flat for us. That is obviously a smaller portion of our business. Overall, I think the run rate business is steady. The projects, the activity is very high. You can see that in our backlog numbers, our booking, and we keep winning orders there. We feel very good about the project. If I look at 2025, the only place I can think of, you know, one of the things I do is I talk to every general manager, all of our segment leads. We go through the front line. Maybe a little bit of impact would be run rate Europe and run rate Asia, which is already set up to be pretty flattish.

Overall, I would say we obviously wouldn't have raised our guide if we didn't feel good about what we're seeing in front of us. Mark, anything you'd like to add?

Mark Carano (CFO)

I think you largely covered it. I mean, you know, we feel like, you know, our guide is pretty balanced, right? It is a dynamic environment, of course, that we're in today with tariffs and that impact, and we've tried to reflect that obviously in our guide. We feel like we're in a good spot in light of kind of the macro environment.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director)

No, understood. That's very helpful color. I'd love to dive in a bit on Ingenia. We recently saw the facility, and feedback has been universally positive on that event. For what it's worth, your team presented very well. It's obviously a rather unique asset, so I appreciate you guys putting that together. It looks like with limited inorganic contribution time in this quarter, that growth continues to accelerate. Just curious if you're willing to share what your team's projecting in terms of Ingenia revenue for this year and then speak to the visibility that you have for multi-year growth with that asset.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Maybe one of the things I can, hey, Brian, Paul, maybe one of the things I can do to just kind of constrain that for you, you know, we anticipated being at $100 million, you know, kind of at the run rate at the end of this, at the end of last year. Didn't quite get there, but due to some equipment delays we talked about, those were subsequently, you know, installed. You know, we really are hitting that pace now. Between now and the end of the year, the capacity, the revenue capacity at Ingenia, we think we'll get to $140 million. It's somewhere between those two to kind of constrain it there. Obviously, we would be, you know, certainly less than $140 million for the full year, given that's the capacity that you're going to hit at the end of the year.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

You know, Brian, on the demand side, as we've talked about, we're going to be expanding into the U.S. The demand is very high for that product. As you saw, we really have a unique value proposition there. I can tell you that there is a lot of our reps that are dying to get their hands on Ingenia for their line card because, frankly, they have a better, I believe they have a better solution. We actually see, you know, the constraint for us is not going out and finding sales. I mean, you still have to do that, but it's really building the capacity. It's hard to scale capacity. They have grown tremendously from just two years ago, and they're still growing. A very good business, a very good leadership team there. We're excited about it.

We have a lot of attention on continuing to scale that, both in Mirabel, up in Canada, but also expanding capability in the U.S.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director)

That's great to hear. One last one, if I may. Sigma & Omega again seems like a great fit for your strategy. There's an intriguing stat on the value of the combined technology. For HVAC overall, you know, to what degree does Sigma and, excuse me, Sigma and Omega increase TAM going forward?

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Yeah. You know, the TAM is a lot smaller than the cooling towers, to be frank, because cooling towers in everything, right? Every application has cooling towers, whereas this is more of a particular, you know, I would say a niche of buildings, you know, really multi-stories really where this shines. Typically, it will always have a cooling tower and a boiler attached to it, or most commonly. That is a smaller. It does expand the TAM meaningfully, but it is a smaller TAM than, you know, for us, let's say like the cooling tower market. It is a very attractive addition. That slide might have been a little bit confusing. The way we talked about that is for the order of the hospital, or the order of the building, or what have you. On that particular order, yeah, there's a lot more dollars there.

Definitely, you know, we're already in there selling to the engineers and the contractors, having, you know, the full solution there is a very attractive part of what we can provide.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director)

Understood. Thanks again, guys.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thanks, Brian.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Sparenblek of William Blair. Your line is now open.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

Hey, good evening, guys.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Hey, Ross.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

Hey, Mark. Really quick, on the D&M order growth, was that all organic or what was the contribution there from the recent acquisition of KTS?

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah, it was the order growth.

Specifically, you're talking about the, are you talking about the revenue side, Ross?

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

The backlog, I guess, the kind of organic backlog, yeah.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Gotcha. Backlog. I'm with you. Backlog overall, just repeat the numbers for everyone. $346 million with the ending backlog. That was up quarter to quarter from the fourth quarter by 56%. About 22% of that was KTS, and the rest of it was organic.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

Okay. Still, I mean, pretty solid growth. Gene, when you kind of look over the last couple of quarters here, I mean, it's been accelerating. I mean, do you get the sense that there's been a capital release from the IIJA funds? I mean, we're kind of hearing some early rumblings of this, and this business seems to be meaningfully kicking up here.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Yeah, essentially, we still look. We can't point to a lot of cases. I know some things a few guys are bidding on. I think that could be in the background of our transportation business, which is, you know, really our smallest platform. We are seeing a lot of activity out there. Outside of that, you know, and Mark, I know you studied, you tracked it. I haven't seen a lot across our business.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah, I would say you're right, Gene. That's the only area where we could kind of put our finger on it, say, it's maybe directly being funded by it, so.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Probably more on the comm.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah. It was nice backlog growth, as Paul mentioned, really, you know, both in Genfare and CommTech.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

Okay. Can you maybe just remind us of kind of the undercurrent that's driving CommTech? It has been several strong years here. Presumably, we have tough comps at a certain point, but it just continues to grow.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

I think, you know, they have different applications and different product categories: data links, their spectrum monitoring, the battlefield. I think all three have been doing well. Battlefield has been very strong in some larger projects. As a reminder, this product does very well at tracking drones. We are seeing different applications for that. I think, you know, some of the global unrest, you know, between countries tends to drive demand. We have seen a number of countries, a number of orders over a number of years. That portion has grown. Our KTS business, our newest addition, digital interoperability, we feel good about that business. Very nice synergies with our existing CommTech business. We also see some very nice growth there. Overall, you know, Mark, anything you'd like to add? Any kind of good business has had some good growth.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Here's a project-oriented business, so you have to refill that every year.

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah, that's right. I feel like we're, you know, generally, the team that runs that business just feels like we've got the right technology. We're well positioned for kind of those markets. You think about KTS, and obviously, a lot of that is funded by government spending. You know, it's DOD related, but it's in those areas where, you know, the U.S. military in particular is allocating dollars because it's kind of moving towards the future of where warfare is going.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

Yeah, that makes sense. Just really quick on the margin of the D&M, a bit nitpicky. Tapping down the full-year guide after a pretty strong first quarter. I mean, there's already tough comps. The underlying business seems like it's performing pretty well.

Can you maybe just kind of walk us through, you know, the, you know, several hundred or slight kickdown here in the margins for D&M for the year? Presumably, more HVAC related.

Mark Carano (CFO)

They're actually, from a cost perspective, they're more D&M related. So when you think about what happened in Q1, we obviously had a, you know, very strong margin performance year-over-year. There's a couple of comments I would make around that. You know, one is we actually had a drop-in project in there that was very high margin, had software elements to it. It was within our CommTech business. It actually wasn't in our forecast. Then we had some, and that benefit will pass through the year, but it's going to be largely offset by the tariff impact that you're going to see across the overall D&M segment. And then we had some slightly lower margin projects move out of Q1 and shift into kind of Q2 and beyond.

That's really kind of the drivers in Q1 that kind of set you up for the balance of the year.

Ross Sparenblek (Research Analyst)

All right. That's helpful. Thank you, guys.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thanks, Ross.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Again, as a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Ferazani of Sidoti. Your line is now open.

Steve Ferazani (Senior Equity Analyst)

Evening, everyone. Appreciate you taking the questions. Mark, I just wanted to start. I hate to do it, but I hate to circle around back on the, what, a pretty low cost from the tariffs. It's only $6 million. I'm just trying to think about this from a modeling perspective. I'm guessing the price increases and surcharges, there's a bit of a lag, and probably there's some stuff in backlog you couldn't surcharge. I guess what I'm asking is, is most of the impact, or should we be assuming it's in 2Q and then it decreases as the year goes on?

Mark Carano (CFO)

Yeah, Steve, it's a good question. Maybe just big picture, you're right. You know, I think we tried to be very thoughtful about the impact here from tariffs and our ability to raise price. We do have in the D&M side of the business, you know, projects and other parts that are in backlog. So our ability to capture price on those, you know, in the near term, we have less flexibility there. I will say, though, you know, as we roll into next year, I think our expectation is, I should say as we roll through the balance of this year and into next year, our expectation is we should be able to offset all of these costs, you know, through price and other levers that we'll look at with respect to the supply chain and things of that nature.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah. I think, Steve, I think your inclination about the cadence of the impact of that 8-12 cents is about right. It would be a little bit more, let's call it sort of if you had to size it maybe, you know, 40% in the second quarter and then, you know, 30 and 30 in the third and fourth quarter.

Steve Ferazani (Senior Equity Analyst)

We're talking about pretty small numbers here, but helpful to know. I got to ask about the demand side and how you're factoring it in. I know, Gene, for years of covering you, I know you've talked about you're not that cyclical, and you've cited the COVID year. You do have the location and inspection business. I know as we've gone through earnings season, unless you have certain end market exposure, most companies are not seeing it yet. We know the expectation is slower U.S. growth as the year goes on, or at least that's what all the smart economists are saying. Were you able to factor that in at all, or do you just think regardless it's going to be so small given your mix of businesses now?

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Yeah. I mean, I think so getting very tactically, you're right on radio detection. That is typically what we call our canary in the coal mine. And it's a very good leading indicator because that's a good proxy for economic activity. If anything, we actually feel better about where radio is today for this year. We are seeing solid activity. As a reminder, you look at a lot of our HVAC equipment, you know, the replacement stuff is replacement. You know, your cooling tower goes down in your hospital or your commercial office building or your data center, you're not going to go without cooling. It's really, you know, critical. You have to replace a lot of, so the replacement tends to be very strong, very real.

What I would say is, if let's take cooling towers, for example, we've talked about how we typically trail on cooling towers the Dodge index by about seven months. You know, so the project gets funded, they get rolling, it shows up in the Dodge report. They don't order cooling towers immediately. There's a period of time where they typically start first with some of the bigger equipment, elevators and so forth, and then they get in the middle, they get to our equipment. Point being, I think that what you're saying is there's a lot of uncertainty right now. If this uncertainty slows down large CapEx, which it could, and move things out, I think that there could be air pockets in the future. You know, and I think that's something that we'd have to keep our eyes on.

We don't believe for 2025 we're seeing that with everything we have in front of us. I do think if there is a recession, it would clearly impact us. I think it impacts us a lot less than other industrial tech companies because of our backlog, because of our replacement, because of our mandated portions of our business by the government and other. It is something we have to keep our eyes on. Right now, you know, we feel good with what we're seeing, and there's some areas we're winning as well that is driving some higher revenues than we had in our model.

Steve Ferazani (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful. I guess the flip side is if the end game here is increasing reshoring and onshoring, that could be a very nice tail for you.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Oh, no doubt. You know, almost every manufacturing plant would have an opportunity for us to sell our equipment in. And as you know, we do very well with a lot of those, a lot of those types of customers, semiconductors, battery plants, automotive plants. It's an area we have a nice position.

Steve Ferazani (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Gene. Thanks, everyone.

Gene Lowe (President and CEO)

Thanks, Steve. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to Paul Clegg for closing remarks.

Paul Clegg (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. We look forward to seeing many of you at conferences and on the road over the quarter, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. To just conclude the program, you may now disconnect.