Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Core Molding Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Sandy Martin, Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for Core Molding Technologies conference call to review our 2025 results. Joining me on the call today are the company's President and CEO, Dave Duvall; as well as COO and incoming CEO, Eric Palomaki; and CFO, Alex Panda. This call is being webcast and can be accessed through coremt.com via an audio link on the Investor Relations, Events and Presentations page. Today's conference call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded. Please be advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements or expectations or future events or future financial performance are forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are uncertain and outside the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to today's earnings release for our disclosures on forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Core Molding Technologies assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements publicly. Management will refer to non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA and debt to trailing 12 months EBITDA ratio, free cash flow and return on capital employed. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures are available at the end of our earnings release. Our earnings release has been submitted to the SEC on Form 8-K. Now I would like to turn the call over to the company's President and CEO, Dave Duvall. Dave?

Thank you, Sandy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in Core Molding Technologies. In 2019, we set out to fundamentally transform the organization to create a company with 3 foundational values. Number one, a winning culture that values team success over individual success. Now, a short story here. It's funny how things can make complete sense after some time. You know, I had a leader tell me many years ago, after me working all night long, getting a plant up and running, that winners win. At the time, I thought, whatever, and just wanted to get some sleep. But I learned it really is a truth. You create a team that sees themselves as winners, and they enjoy winning enough to overcome all the challenges that you face as a team. Number two, disciplined execution, which is even more important than a good strategy. Number three, the team values and expects a daily inner drive from every employee to continually improve, learn, and grow. To me, this is the required basic foundation for any high-achieving organization, and we have purposefully driven these values throughout every system in our business. We are more excited than ever by the progress we made and the robust foundation we built to drive sustained growth. Through this transformation, we've implemented more robust operating systems, expanded margins, strengthened the balance sheet, created a deep and capable leadership team, and established a performance-driven culture. With that foundation firmly in place, as proven by our financial performance, we are now focused on leveraging all that we've created to drive growth. Over the past 2 years, we have also completed a comprehensive executive leadership transition through a purposeful and structured process. This strategic emphasis on continuity and readiness, supported by extensive training, coaching, and development, will ensure strong alignment, continued financial and operating performance, and ultimately drive long-term success for the company and our shareholders. As previously shared, I plan to officially retire from Core at the end of May, with Eric succeeding me as CEO. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to continue supporting the organization in an executive advisory role through the end of 2027. In that capacity, I'll continue to work closely with Eric, our board, and the broader leadership team to ensure continuity and a smooth and successful transition as they lead the company forward. Looking ahead, I'm confident in Core's long-term direction. The momentum we built, the recent wins across the business, and the strength of our leadership team reinforces the path we are on as the company continues to drive growth and long-term value creation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Eric and Alex to discuss our fourth quarter and full-year performance. Eric?

Thank you, Dave, and good morning. I'll begin with a few high-level comments on our 2025 performance and strategic progress. Our Invest For Growth initiative generated $63 million in business wins, successfully executing our must-win battle for 2025. Importantly, the majority of these new wins support our strategic diversification strategy, expanding beyond truck and powersports end markets and strengthening the resilience of our portfolio. Turning to powersports, we are seeing early signs of an industry recovery, which the market now broadly anticipates. Major OEMs launched multiple products with additional Core Molding Technologies content in the form of watercraft, skid plates, and cargo boxes. These new product solutions launched on vehicles in the second half, leading to 2 consecutive quarters of revenue growth in powersports for 2025. Another area of meaningful progress is our sheet molding compound, or SMC business. Early in 2025, we established SMC compound as a new sales channel to support the growing building products market, which represents an addressable opportunity of more than $200 million. Our sales and marketing team generated $12 million in annual SMC revenue during the fourth quarter and $21 million for the full year. 1/3 of these compounds have already been launched, and all of them are scheduled to be in production by the end of the third quarter of 2026. We remain focused on expanding customers' adoption of Core's SMC offerings as a preferred supplier of molding compound. Our Voice of the Customer, or VoC initiative, was instrumental in securing new SMC programs in 2025 and expanding our top coat capabilities at the Monterrey facility. This value-added capability enables us to deliver finished installation-ready products for construction and agricultural equipment, as well as aerial lifts and other industrial applications. As we previously discussed, we invested $6.5 million in 2025 for the Mexico…

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. As expected, fiscal 2025 revenues declined 9.5%, driven primarily by the continued weakness in the truck sector, which represented 44% of Core's product sales for the year. As Eric noted, despite lower volumes and pressure on operating leverage, we delivered gross margins of 17.4%, reflecting solid margin stability. We compute roughly 100 basis points higher 2025 gross margins when we adjust for hourly related severance and the impact of tooling margins. By maintaining margins within our target range of 17% to 19% and tightly managing SG&A costs, we generated $19 million of cash flow from operations for the year. We were encouraged by fourth quarter net sales of $74.7 million, driven by tooling revenue of more than $19 million. While higher tooling revenue was partially offset by lower product sales overall, this was mitigated by strength in powersports, building products, and industrial and utilities, which helped offset continued truck softness. In the fourth quarter, we generated gross margin of $11.3 million, or 15.2% of sales, which is consistent with our historically lightest sales quarter of the year. Hourly severance costs and tooling margins had approximately 230 basis points unfavorable impact on fourth quarter gross margins. Over the past year, we executed several initiatives focused on operational efficiency, raw material cost, footprint optimization, and overall margin improvement, which helped offset headwinds to margins. SG&A expense in the fourth quarter was $7.7 million or 10.4% of sales, compared with 14.4% in the prior year period. Excluding severance and executive transition costs of $476,000 incurred in fourth quarter of 2025 and $1.066 million incurred in the prior year period, SG&A expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $7.3 million or 9.7% of sales, compared with 12.7% in the prior year period. Operating income for the…

Thank you, Alex. We are building a world-class engineering and manufacturing solutions organization with a trusted reputation in highly specialized, large and ultra-large molded solutions. We continue to see a strong and expanding pipeline of opportunities and are encouraged by the breadth of engagements across both new and existing customers and end markets. Today, our business development pipeline represents $220 million of quality opportunities, and we are well on our way to securing an additional $50 million in new program awards during 2026. We look forward to presenting and discussing our Q1 wins in May. We are particularly excited about the 2025 wins because 65% of those wins are in new and emerging markets for Core and align with our deliberate diversification strategy. These strategically targeted markets include inner-box panels for an electric pickup, satellite tracking systems, building products, and specialized transportation applications. Operationally, we remain highly focused on scaling our platform of execution excellence, leveraging our fixed cost base, and optimizing our overall manufacturing footprint. We are energized by the progress we've made and by our $102 million in annualized run rate incremental business wins over the past 2 years. This has been an outstanding job executing by our sales team and the entire organization behind them. We will continue taking deliberate actions to enhance our operating capabilities and profitability as we execute all of these new launches. Looking further ahead, we are confident in our ability to achieve $500 million in annual revenue as part of our long-term objective of [indiscernible]. We will maintain an intense focus on profitability, cash flow, and return on capital employed. Our strategy is rooted in disciplined capital allocation, continuous improvement, operational excellence, and growth. We are confident that this is only the beginning of the continued momentum we are seeing here at…

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today is coming from Chip Moore from ROTH Capital.

Maybe for me, on the outlook for flat to up 5%, I think you called out you're expecting a decent amount of tooling revenue from the expansion -- or related to the expansion. Is there a way to help us think about the split or the tooling revenue potential in '26 embedded in that outlook?

Yes. So the split will be similar to 2025. Similar split year-over-year, and again, that's mainly due to the Volvo program that we announced in Q2. So we'll be forecasted to closing that tooling revenue in Q4 of 2026. So very similar to 2025.

Got it. And with Q4 being higher.

Correct.

Okay. Okay. And if we look past that -- if you look out to '27, your visibility is getting better, and markets are showing some encouraging signs. Any way to think about margin potential? You know, obviously 17% to 19%, you've been very consistent, but is there ability to, you know, even go beyond that as you get volumes back and with some of the initiatives underway?

Yes. So I think we gave the guidance of 0% to 5%. Right now we're forecasting, and the visibility we have is we would be closer to 5% in '26. Now, that's mainly due to the program wins we had. They're going to launch in the second half of 2026, so we'll get a full run rate in 2027. And then I think you're absolutely correct on the margin. You know, we will start to get leverage back in 2027. I think that could be somewhere between 150 to 200 basis points. You know, we see low 20s as possible.

Great. Very helpful. And calendar '26, we know the truck market, we see that coming back at least through ACT. They're saying up about 5%, mainly in the second half. We're seeing powersports already coming back. That's stronger than we thought in the beginning of the year. I think the real benefit that we all see is that with all the launches from last year and launches getting into this year is how quickly they ramp up. That's usually the -- which -- with a little bit of variability for us relative to how quickly they can ramp up. We can ramp up quick. It's really how quickly can they ramp up.

Yes. Yes. That's great. Okay. And the SMC progress, great to see. You know, I guess on the go forward, you know, the additional potential for additional opportunity there, you know, what are you seeing in that channel and potential for SMC sales?

Yes. Chip, we are very successful in the fourth quarter, as we mentioned, and the $21 million of annual run rate won last year. We have a number of projects in the pipeline. Very bullish and confident that, that is going to be a good opportunity. We started that about a year ago, a little over a year ago, we started that project, and it has been very successful. We're confident in it, and we're happy with that decision. We still have some capacity left for the coming year, although we're getting to the point where in the next 12 to 18 months, we may need to add capacity for compound. That's how successful it's been.

Good problem.

Yes. Good problem.

Yes. And any more update on the expansion? It sounds like everything's tracking well. You know, any big hurdles or permitting or anything yet to get through, or it looks like it's pretty smooth sailing?

No, been pretty smooth. I will compliment our team in Mexico. They have done just a spectacular job at picking up pieces of machinery the size of the foundations and the installation it takes to put in 30-ton cranes and 4,500-ton presses. I mean, it is massive infrastructure, and they work their tails off over the holidays and Christmas season into January. You know, the new plant is now done. Signs are hanging on it. I think we got some pictures of it out there, but Yes, just doing a great job. Already have moved a couple products. We're already shipping product out of the new facility in Monterrey. As of the last couple weeks, a few loads have actually gone out of that building, which is outstanding. So we're looking forward to show that off later this year to anybody that would like to visit.

Yes. Fantastic. I look forward to that in the fall, and we'll see you in a few weeks in California.

The next question is coming from Tom Klugas from Impala Capital.

Impala Capital today. Anyways, the spending was quite large for Mexico this year. I guess my question is, next year, does that ramp down a lot? You also started talking about SMC potential expansion. I was sort of surprised to hear that you guys did $21 million this year. My other question on SMC is, you were very specific in the press release for some reason about it being late Q3 SMC ramp, and I didn't understand. It sounded very specific for some reason. I didn't know if there was any commentary around that. The reason I'm asking about the CapEx is on the new wins, is most of that going to be in the current plants in the U.S., or are you going to get higher utilization out of the Mexico plants for some of the new business that's being signed?

Yes. Great questions. I'll take the first piece of the CapEx. In 2025, we spent roughly $6.5 million on the Mexico expansion project for capital. We're forecasting $18 million to $20 million in 2026, and that's consistent with what we previously said about $25 million, which I believe we disclosed in Q3 of last year. We're still running at that run rate, and we're looking at $18 million to $20 million in '26.

In '27, though, the Volvo project is implemented.

Yes. And that will be specifically for the Volvo roof program in Matamoros, which will start production in Q1 of 2027.

And I'll take the second half of your question on SMC compound. So very specifically, we won $21 million of annual run rate wins, not all of those have launched. About 1/3 have launched, they're in production. I'd say over the last quarter to two, we've been running at a 7 million pounds a year run rate of that product line. There is still testing on some of those, Tom, like we've talked about with some of the large OEMs where product gets validated, and it can take 12 to 18 months for a project to go into full production. SMC compound is definitely shorter than that. Some of these are 1 to 3 month type tests, we believe we'll be up in production by Q3 of this year for all of them. So that whole $21 million will be in production by the end of Q3. Some of those tests are like UV tests, where the part has to have 2,000 hours of ultraviolet, you know, sun exposure on it, and there's just no way to speed that up. You just have to wait for that testing to be complete. The third question I think you asked was, from a CapEx perspective, we're working on improving our utilization of our current assets so that we don't need to buy another compounding lines. We have 2 of those in Columbus, Ohio, as I think you remember. We're definitely not going to be doing that in '26 as we finish all the rest of the CapEx for Volvo that Alex talked about. But by '27, '28, we might need to add more additional capacity to do compounding. More to come there as we're successful in compounding, that could be a problem where we do want to add capacity.

Okay. So my follow-up is, how much SMC did you guys sell in 2025? And then again, the question was utilization of -- all that CapEx in Mexico is 100% Volvo related. I guess what I was trying to understand is it seems like a big number, so I didn't know if any of the new programs would be in Mexico or all the new programs mainly in North America plants.

Of the $25 million in CapEx, $20 million of it is, I would say, related to that roof program. $5 million of it is related to the new greenfield plant, the 200,000 square foot plant in Monterrey, our additional capabilities that we've talked about like top coat paint that we have added to that facility. Those are things that will absolutely give us more capacity and for other customers outside of that. So there's room to grow there in that facility.

I think optimizing the footprint in Mexico as well to benefit customers.

Yes. We relocated the product family to Monterrey. So instead of shipping 180 miles, it will ship 1 mile.

Yes. And I think the other thing, Tom, and I know we've talked about this in previous conversations is the -- our Volvo contract, we put some protection in there on our capital spend. So if volumes don't hit certain levels, our capital spend is protected through our contract with Volvo.

Reimbursed.

Okay. And the SMC for 2025, do you guys have a number on that or no?

So of that $63 million of new wins, $21 million of the new wins were SMC compound.

No, I was asking how much of the revenue for this year? Was there any revenue from SMC in 2025?

Yes. So we don't specifically disclose that. It's trying to think how to answer that. Of the -- so what Eric just -- yes -- what Eric said is 1/3. So 1/3 of it is already launched and was recognized in our 2025 numbers. And the other customer that we sell to, Tom, is Yamaha. So you could go look at the major customer footnote and some of that is SMC sales. Not all of it, but a good chunk of SMC sales.

The next question will be from Bill Dezellem from Tieton Capital.

Two different questions. First of all, relative to SG&A, would you please talk about the drivers that led to you being able to lower your SG&A as much as you did in Q4 versus Q4 a year ago, please?

Yes. So last year, during Q4, we did a pretty big layoff. That was part of it. And then the other piece, and it's in the -- our earnings release is our year-over-year severance costs in Q4. In the previous year, we had $1 million and in the current period, it was only $0.5 million.

And then in addition to that, was there any meaningful structural adjustment to SG&A? I guess, to some degree, there would have been with the layoffs that would have been a function of potentially impacted, but I'll let you answer the question.

Yes. So moving forward, our SG&A run rate, we're looking at is somewhere between $30 million and $32 million. Now in 2026, you will need to add in the onetime costs that we're disclosing in our press release. So the $2.5 million related to the Monterrey facility that we won't be able to capitalize and then an additional $1 million related to succession planning costs.

And then secondarily, would you please talk in some more detail about what's happening with powersports and that uptick? I know that you had said there was an SMC win there. You referenced powersports coming back, but hoping that you can provide more details around the dynamics behind the powersports market rebounding and maybe more on that Yamaha SMC win.

Yes. So start at the highest level, the general powersports market. There was that COVID boom back in '21, '22, then a lull into, let's say, '24, '25. We're starting to see that come back. So just the total quantity of vehicles being produced, that inventory at dealerships that has to get sold and sort of that used market being -- having some pent-up demand for vehicles, that has kind of gotten through the pipeline, I'll say, right? And so it's back to a normal run rate. So the assembly plants are building more personal watercraft, more side-by-side, more ATVs than they were a year ago. So we get that macroeconomic support. And then on a very acute scale, we launched a number of platforms over the last year. Some of those were in some of our investor decks and platforms like a skid plate. You might remember, Bill, we talked about that's now in full production and running as well as a new cargo box and another ATV with a cargo box and the SMC for the Yamaha Watercraft. So all of those launched last year. All of those are incremental brand-new wins because they're on a new vehicle or a new part on a vehicle that we already had a part on. And so all of that supports our powersports growth. Kind of that grow wallet share that we always talk about. We go back to those customers that we've won product with before and sell them another product. We're good at that, and they're good at buying parts from us, and we're good at working with their engineers and getting early in that design phase.

That's really helpful, Eric. And as you look at those design wins, tied to a more supportive market backdrop, would you anticipate that each and every quarter in '26 that powersports will be up from the corresponding quarter in '25?

'26 over '25, my guess is yes, incremental over the prior 12 months, but I'm looking at Alex to make sure.

Yes. I mean, for the full year, we would forecast that it will be up, especially given what we've seen so far in 2026. To sit here and tell you, hey, every single quarter is going to be up. I don't know that off the top of my head. But yes, for the full year.

And then just taking that one step further, then, you don't know of anything specific in terms of customer plans, et cetera, that would lead to a quarter to be down, but you're just wanting to be practical in answering the question. Is that what I'm hearing?

Correct. Correct.

Good definition of how we answer questions.

And Q1 and Q2 should be up because of the skid plates. So the skid plates launched in Q3 of 2025. So Q1 and Q2 should be up, and then we'll just see where the powersports demand is in the second half of the year.

We still see strong sales in the -- more of the industrial side of the ATVs with the Rangers and things like that, side-by-sides and work trucks.

Congratulations on solid quarter.

And there were no other questions at this time. I would now like to hand the call to Eric Palomaki for closing remarks.

Thank you for your continued interest in our company. We look forward to providing an update on our progress when we report our first quarter results in a couple of months. Have a great day.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.