Christopher Thome
Analyst · Northland Capital
Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Apologies for the slight technical difficulties earlier, but it appears we're back on track. I'll begin my formal remarks on Slide 6. We are off to a strong start for fiscal 2027, delivering record first quarter revenue while continuing to execute against our long-term growth strategy. Our results reflect broad-based demand across our diversified end markets, disciplined execution, and initial contributions from our strategic investments. First quarter revenue increased 29% to a record $71.3 million. On an organic basis, revenue was up an impressive 17%. This growth reflects the strength of our diversified revenue base, including continued momentum across our Defense and Space businesses, as well as contributions from FlackTek, which added $6.6 million of revenue during the quarter. Defense revenue increased 40% year-over-year, primarily driven by the timing of project milestones, new program awards, and continued growth across existing programs. Space revenue increased 86% year-over-year, benefiting from new programs, the continued ramp of existing programs, and contributions from FlackTek. Within Energy & Process, revenue increased 5% from the prior year period, as continued strength in aftermarket demand and the addition of FlackTek helped offset ongoing pushouts in large capital project activity. Aftermarket sales across the Energy & Process and Defense markets remain strong, increasing 20% year-over-year. Similar to our sales, our gross profit for the quarter increased 21% to $17.8 million. However, as a percentage of sales, our gross profit margin decreased to 25% compared with 26.5% in the prior year period. The year-over-year decline in gross margin primarily reflects the mix of sales during the quarter, which included a higher level of Defense revenue and material receipts, which carry lower margin characteristics than many of our other businesses, and the tough comparable versus the prior year first quarter. It is noteworthy that versus the sequential fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, our gross margin percentage increased 230 basis points. Moving to Slide 8. Selling, general, and administrative expenses increased $3.2 million during the quarter, primarily due to acquisition and integration activities, incremental costs associated with FlackTek, and our continued investments in people, processes, and technology. Note that these incremental investments are being made in order to enable our future growth and accelerate the commercialization of Graham products and technologies, and are expected to amount to approximately $2.5 million in fiscal 2027. These increases were partially offset by lower costs associated with the Barber-Nichols performance bonus, which was no longer in effect during fiscal 2027. Net income for the first quarter was $3.9 million or $0.33 per diluted share, compared with $4.6 million or $0.42 per diluted share in the prior year period. However, on an adjusted basis, adjusted net income for the quarter increased to $5.7 million or $0.49 per diluted share, compared with $4.9 million or $0.45 per diluted share in the prior year, up 16% and 9% respectively. Similarly, adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter increased 28% to $8.8 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.3%, which was consistent with the prior year period. Overall, we believe these results demonstrate the resiliency of our business model and the effectiveness of our long-term strategy. We continue to successfully balance investments for future growth while maintaining disciplined execution and positioning the company to capitalize on significant opportunities ahead. Moving to Slide 9, orders remain strong during the quarter and continue to reinforce the favorable demand environment across our core markets. First quarter orders were $96 million, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.3x. This demonstrates the continued momentum we are seeing in our end markets and builds upon the 1.5x book-to-bill ratio for fiscal 2026. Order activity continued to reflect strong demand across our Defense business, including $61.8 million of new and follow-on orders supporting the U.S. Navy's Columbia and Virginia-class submarine programs, as well as the next option year for mission-critical hardware for the MK48 Mod 7 Heavyweight Torpedo. Space orders continued their strong momentum from the prior year, totaling $14.4 million for the quarter, representing a 2.3x book-to-bill ratio, while FlackTek generated $13.2 million of orders during the quarter, representing a 2x book-to-bill ratio. As a result, backlog increased to another record $557 million, up 15% from the prior year period, and is the sixth consecutive quarter of record backlog. We continue to expect approximately 35% to 40% of backlog to convert into revenue over the next 12 months and another 20% to 25% the following year, demonstrating the high visibility and stability of our business. Turning to Slide 10, our balance sheet remains exceptionally strong and provides significant flexibility to continue executing our strategic priorities. During the quarter, we strengthened our balance sheet through the previously announced $50 million strategic investment from accounts advised by T. Rowe Price and utilized approximately $13 million of the proceeds to repay our outstanding debt. Net cash used by operating activities during the quarter was $12.7 million. And primarily reflects the timing of billing and collections on accounts receivable, unbilled revenue and customer deposits, and the payment of fiscal 2026 bonuses during the quarter, which included the Barber-Nichols performance bonus. Capital expenditures during the quarter totaled $2.6 million and remain focused on capacity expansion, expanding capabilities, and productivity improvements. As a result, we ended the quarter with $27 million of cash on hand, no outstanding debt, and approximately $75 million of available capacity under our revolving credit facility, which provides us significant flexibility to execute our strategic, organic, and inorganic growth plans. Turning to guidance. Slide 11 outlines our outlook for fiscal 2027, which remains unchanged from last quarter. We continue to expect revenue to be in the range of $285 million to $295 million supported by our record backlog, favorable demand environment, a full year contribution from FlackTek, and continued execution across our businesses. We continue to expect gross margin to be between 24.5% and 25.5%, reflecting the benefits of operational improvements, automation investments, productivity initiatives, integration efforts, and an improved sales mix versus fiscal 2026. SG&A expense is expected to be between 16.5% and 17.5% of sales, and as mentioned earlier, includes approximately $2.5 million of incremental investments in people, processes, and technology to support our commercialization initiatives and future growth. Embedded within our outlook are approximately $5.5 million to $6.5 million of equity-based compensation, acquisition and integration costs, and ERP conversion costs. Based on these assumptions, we continue to expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $35 million and $40 million, representing an increase of 44% at the midpoint of that range and unchanged from last quarter. We also continue to expect our capital expenditures to be between $18 million and $22 million as we continue investing in strategic growth initiatives, expanded operational capabilities, and productivity-enhancing projects, including construction of a new 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Arvada. Before I conclude, I'd like to briefly revisit the long-term financial framework we introduced at our Investor Day in June, shown on Slide 12. As we discussed then, our confidence in the outlook extends well beyond fiscal 2027, supported by our record backlog, strong demand across our Defense, Space, and Energy & Process markets, and the investments we have made over the past several years. We continue to expect organic revenue growth of approximately 8% to 10% annually over the next several years. At the same time, we believe we have a clear path to continued margin expansion through a combination of higher production volumes, a more balanced business mix, ongoing operational improvement initiatives, and continued leverage from our manufacturing and automation investments. We expect adjusted EBITDA margins to expand into the 14% to 16% range by fiscal 2029. Importantly, we do not view fiscal 2029 as the finish line. Our objective remains to build a best-in-class industrial technology company capable of delivering top quartile financial performance over time. Overall, we are pleased with our strong start to fiscal 2027. A record backlog, healthy demand across our end markets, disciplined execution, and strong balance sheet position us well to deliver another year of profitable growth while continuing to invest in long-term opportunities ahead. With that, operator, we are now ready for questions.