Blaine Browers
Analyst · Mark Smith with Lake Street Capital Markets. You may proceed
Thank you, Brian. Slide 8, building on Brad's comment on M&A, Cadre has a successful history of acquiring, integrating, and optimizing asset-light businesses with high free cash flow models. We take a very targeted approach and think about acquisitions in three buckets. The first bucket is focused on geographic expansion and expanding core products and new markets. The second is related to introducing new products and existing core markets, and the final bucket is expanding our portfolio of safety products outside of our current law enforcement and military markets into attractive adjacencies within the safety and survivability and escape. Examples of this include fire, EMS, and industrial safety. We target businesses with a number one or number two market position to have leading and defensible technology in strong brain recognition. From a financial perspective, it is important that a potential acquisition and recurring revenue profile high cash-generation relative to EBITDA, is asset-light and has an attractive return on investment capital. Our strong balance sheet and cycle of cash flow enable Cadre to be opportunistic and pursue acquisitions consistent with these criteria. Additionally, believes our operating model, customer relationships, and expansive channel health maximize the value created from acquisitions once completed. We have a robust pipeline of M&A opportunities that we continue to evaluate. Following the acquisition of Radar, which I will discuss in a moment, our team is currently in the process of actively evaluating other opportunities that we're excited about and would enable us to expand the share of our existing customer's wallet. In terms of M&A evaluations, we do expect in the current environment we will see multiples compress. We're moving to Slide 9. We are excited that completed acquisition on [Indiscernible]. It's a business with leading market shares and a reputation for innovation, safety, and quality that specializes in the production, high-quality holsters, belts, duty belts, and other accessories. Consistent with the criteria that I've just outlined, as well as the strategy we laid out with investors, both during the IPO process and since the acquisition enabled us to advance the important strategic objective of furthering the penetration of our European markets, adding to that our international footprint in the UK and miscellaneous and providing multiple job avenues. The integration process is well underway and we're pleased with the progress we've made thus far to welcome Pietro and Paolo Pellegrini and the rest of the Radar teams to the Cadre projects family. We expect continued growth in European market leveraging the strength of Radar's brand, customer relationships in R&D, along with Cadre's operating expertise and global resources. On Slide 10 and 11, we detail our full 2021 results as compared to 2019 and 2020, illustrating how our business performs in higher growth and lower growth scenarios. We continue to stay very focused on price, material inflation, supply chain constraints, and are very proud of the team's ability to execute in this environment. First, if you compare 2020 and 2019, we achieved about 1% top line growth and expanded gross margins approximately 9% on a continued ops basis. EBITDA was up 33% in that period. Turning to the 12 month ended December 31, 2021, we achieved stronger growth, expanding sales 6% organically, and increasing gross margins 6%. EBITDA expanded 23%. Notably, our 2021 net sales and gross profits were all-time highs. Looking at Slide 11, I'd like to highlight the adjusted EBITDA conversion detail on the bottom right of the slide. In 2021, EBITDA conversion was 96% versus 92% in the prior year. We're very proud our success is generating significant free cash flow. We don't have seasonality in our business and more importantly, from a cash generation perspective, we have very low CapEx needs at approximately 1% of revenue annually. We note that sales were down Q4 -- over Q4 from high demand in Q4, 2020 for duty gear and crowd control products. As we continue to execute on our strategic initiatives on organic growth through new products and geographic expansion and M&A, spikes in demand should become more muted to the overall business student side, scale, and the types of acquisitions that we expect to target. On Slide 12, we present our capital structure as of 12-31. Following the closing of the IPO, we use a portion of the proceeds to pay down debt as planned. We paid down $59.4 million of debt outstanding on an existing term loan and revolving loan under the new credit agreement way and sorted it into the third quarter. Our net leverage was reduced to approximately two terms, which provides a significant financial flexibility to grow organically, and more importantly, inorganically through acquisitions. Turning to our 2022 outlook on Slide 13, Cadre expects to generate net sales in 2022 between $434 million and $441 million. An adjusted EBITDA in 2022 of between $70 million and $75.5 million. Additionally, we expect adjusted EBITDA conversion to be between 92% to 95% for the full year 2022. In terms of our quarterly outlook, we anticipate net sales between $101 million and $103.5 million in Q1. This is driven by project timing as well as our growth initiatives ramping up later in the year. Please note that we do not expect to provide quarterly guidance on a go-forward basis. Now, I'll turn it back over to Brad for the concluding remarks.