Knowles Corporation (KN) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Thank you for standing by. My name is Preilla, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Knowles Corporation Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Sarah Cook. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Sarah Cook, Vice President of Investor Relations, and presenting with me today are Jeffrey Niew, our President and CEO; and John Anderson, our Senior Vice President and CFO. Our call today will include remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects for Knowles, which constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under applicable federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements in this call will include comments about demand for company products, anticipated trends in company sales, expenses and profits and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company urges investors to review the risks and uncertainties in the company's SEC filings, including, but not limited to, the annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year-ended December 31, 2025, periodic reports filed from time to time with the SEC and the risks and uncertainties identified in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and Knowles disclaims any duty to update such statements, except as required by law. In addition, pursuant to Reg G, any non-GAAP financial measures referenced during today's conference call can be found in our press release posted on our website at knowles.com and in our current report on Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. This will include a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. All financial references on this call will be on a non-GAAP continuing operations basis with the exception of cash from operations or unless otherwise indicated. We've made select financial information available in webcast slides, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff, who will provide details on our results. Jeff?

Thanks, Sarah, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We started 2026 with solid financial results in Q1 and great momentum entering the rest of the year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom-engineered solutions and then delivering them at scale for blue-chip customers in high-growth markets that value our solutions is proving to be a powerful combination. We had strong organic growth in the first quarter as we delivered revenue of $153 million, up 16% year-over-year and at the high end of our guided range. EPS of $0.27, up 50% year-over-year, exceeded the high end of our guided range and cash utilized in operations of $1 million was within our guided range. Now on to our segment results. In Q1, Medtech & Specialty Audio revenue was $68 million, up 14% year-over-year. Our customers' new product introductions, coupled with our position on these platforms have led to stronger-than-expected growth in the first quarter. Knowles continues to demonstrate our ability to deliver unique solutions with superior technology and reliability our customers have come to depend on. MSA's first quarter revenue grew well above our annual organic growth target of 2% to 4%. However, the hearing health end market is expected to continue to grow at normal historical rates in 2026. Therefore, we are projecting Medtech & Specialty Audio will grow within the 2% to 4% range for the full year 2026. Beyond 2026, we are positioned well to win next-generation designs for MEMS microphones and balanced armature speakers. As I said during our year-end call, we are also -- we also see the prospect to increase our content per device in next-generation hearing health products and expand our reach with our Microsolutions group, which provides the opportunity in the future to increase growth rates above the historical rates. In the Precision Devices segment, Q1 revenues was $85 million, up 17% year-over-year with all our end markets we serve, Medtech, Defense, Industrial and Electrification growing on a year-over-year basis. Let me share a couple of highlights driving growth in our end markets this quarter. We saw strength in the defense market across our product families. Our capacitors were in demand supporting ongoing OEM investments in defense programs, new products starting production and share gains. We also saw broad-based orders for our RF microwave products as we continue to be a sole supplier on a number of key defense programs. Additionally, we do expect increasing demand in 2027 and beyond, driven by the replenishment of stocks in connection with the Iran conflict. In the industrial market, demand continued to grow with strong order activity across a wide range of our capacitor products, supporting a multitude of applications and industries at both our distribution partners and OEMs. As an example, our ceramic capacitors were in high demand in the semiconductor equipment market and also for use in downhole applications. Additionally, with inventory challenges we saw last year behind us, we believe our distributor partners' orders are aligned with end market demand. In addition to the strong shipments we saw in the first quarter, our book-to-bill in Precision Devices was very strong at 1.19. This ordering pattern was broad-based, and this marked the sixth consecutive quarter where the book-to-bill was greater than 1. We see order strength across all our end markets, both at OEMs and with our distribution partners. A robust pipeline of new design wins, coupled with favorable secular trends gives me confidence in our ability to continue to grow revenue above the high end of the organic growth target of 6% to 8% for Precision Devices in 2026. I continue to be excited by the strength of our business and the momentum we exited the first quarter with. We are well positioned for continued strong organic revenue growth and margin expansion through 2026. We believe this momentum is sustainable for 2 key reasons. First, our portfolio of businesses are well positioned in markets with strong secular growth trends. Whether it be defense, medical, industrial or electrification, the secular drivers of growth in these markets is forecasted to be positive for the foreseeable future. Second, we design high-performance customized solutions for our customers that have demanding applications, and we have the manufacturing capabilities that allow us to ramp up these solutions quickly and efficiently. This combination differentiates us, allowing us to garner premium margins for the products we produce. This is proving to be a winning combination. Before I turn the call over to John to cover our financial results and provide our Q2 guidance, I would like to reiterate what I said on previous calls. I believe Knowles has entered a period of accelerated organic growth. With a very healthy backlog of existing orders, we now expect our revenue growth in 2026 to be above the high end of our target organic revenue target of 4% to 6% that we provided at our Investor Day in May of last year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom-engineered solutions and then deliver them at scale for blue-chip customers in high-growth markets that value our solution is proving to be a powerful combination, driving revenue growth, expanding margins and strong cash flow to drive shareholder value. Now let me turn the call over to John for our financial results and our Q2 guidance.

Thanks, Jeff. We reported first quarter revenues of $153 million, up 16% from the year ago period and at the high end of our guidance range. EPS was $0.27 in the quarter, up $0.09 or 50% from the year ago period and above the midpoint of our guidance range. Cash utilized by operating activities was $1 million within our guidance range. In the Medtech & Specialty Audio segment, Q1 revenue was $68 million, up 14% compared with the year ago period, driven by increased hearing health shipments associated with our customers' successful new product introductions. Q1 margin -- gross margins were 53.5%, up 480 basis points from the year ago period, driven by both increased factory capacity utilization and favorable mix. For full year 2026, we expect MSA gross margins to be in line with 2025 margins of 51%. The Precision Devices segment delivered first quarter revenues of $85 million, up 17% from the year ago period, driven by broad-based strength across Medtech, Defense and Industrial end markets. Segment gross margins were 39.2%, up 350 basis points from the first quarter of 2025, as improved pricing and higher end market demand is driving increased factory capacity utilization. These improvements were partially offset by higher factory costs in our specialty film product line as we ramp up production capacity to support our $75 million-plus energy order. While we delivered significant year-over-year margin improvement in the first quarter, I'm confident in our ability to further improve Precision Devices gross margins in the second half of 2026 as we increase production volume in our specialty film line. On a total company basis, R&D expense in the quarter was $10 million, up $1.4 million compared to Q1 2025, on higher project spending in both MSA and PD segments. SG&A expenses were $28 million, up $3 million from prior year levels, driven primarily by higher sales commission, timing of expenses and additional head count within the Precision Devices segment to support future revenue growth, including new product initiatives. Interest expense for the quarter was $2 million, $1 million lower than last year due to lower average debt balances. Now I'll turn to our balance sheet and cash flow. In the first quarter, we utilized $1 million in cash from operating activities and capital spending was $11 million. Cash from operations includes $8 million in outflows related to the CMM business, which was divested at the end of 2024. Payments related to the CMM business are now substantially complete. During the first quarter, we repurchased 276,000 shares at a total cost of $7.5 million. We exited the quarter with cash of $41 million and $131 million of borrowings under our revolving credit facility. Lastly, our net leverage ratio based on trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was 0.6x, and we have liquidity of more than $310 million as measured by cash plus unused capacity under our revolving credit facility. Moving to our Q2 guidance. For the second quarter of 2026, revenues are expected to be between $152 million and $162 million, up 8% year-over-year at the midpoint. R&D expenses are expected to be between $9 million and $11 million. Selling and administrative expenses are expected to be within the range of $26 million to $28 million. We're projecting adjusted EBIT margin for the quarter to be within the range of 20% to 22%. Interest expense in Q2 is estimated at $2 million, and we expect an effective tax rate of 15% to 19%. We're projecting EPS to be within a range of $0.28 to $0.32 per share, up $0.06 or 25% year-over-year at the midpoint. This assumes weighted average shares outstanding during the quarter of 87 million on a fully diluted basis. We're projecting cash from operating activities to be within the range of $20 million to $30 million. Capital spending is expected to be $8 million. We expect full year capital spending to be approximately 4% to 5% of revenues as we continue to make investments in the first half of this year associated with capacity expansion related to the large energy order we received in 2025. We started 2026 with significant year-over-year revenue and earnings growth, and we have positive momentum entering the remainder of the year. Our first quarter performance, combined with a robust backlog and increased order activity throughout the first 4 months of the year, give me confidence in our ability to deliver an increase in 2026 adjusted EBITDA above our cumulative annual growth target of 10% to 14%. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A portion of our call. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna.

Congrats on the results. So in your press release, I think you mentioned numerous design wins across multiple end markets. And Jeff, you might have addressed this fully in your prepared remarks, I'm not sure. But if you didn't, if you could highlight perhaps those products, the applications, kind of how you view the lifetime value just broadly of these sockets, all of that would be appreciated.

Yes. I mean -- Chris, I wish I could sit there and point to one specific one. I mean the one obviously that we continue to ramp on or work on is the energy order, which will be fully ramped up at the end of Q2. So that's not a significant contributor in Q1. But it's very broad-based, whether it be in medical, we have a lot of applications relative to wearable-type devices. You can go into industrial, and we have a lot of things going on in downhole applications, a lot of good stuff going on there. Defense, I would characterize just briefly, orders are up. There's no doubt, orders are up. But the level of activity relative to everything that is going on in the globe, it's like really high. And so you're going to see, we think, in defense, some strength in '27 -- '26 rather, that's probably stronger than we expected. But '27 looks shaping up to be even better for defense. And so overall, I think we're executing on this concept of that we built out an engineering team that can customize to solve really hard problems across these applications. And then we can scale the production very quickly on these customized solutions. And it's just very broad-based what we're seeing.

Excellent. And then maybe, John, a question for you. Gross margin expansion, you talked about that. I think you talked about pricing -- favorable pricing. Maybe if you can talk about pricing increases, whether you put them on or whether you have an ability to increase price from here? And then just more broadly, the drivers of gross margin beyond pricing. I think you talked about ramping the specialty film line, which is great. Any other things to think about on gross margin and drivers there would be great...

Let me -- Chris, let me take the pricing question, and then I'll let John cover the other drivers of gross margin expansion. I mean I think more and more, Chris, what we're starting to realize as we go through this journey is that we have a lot of very strong positions. And we're looking at this on a regular basis. And I would say more specific to the PD business, where we have a lot of different applications, a lot of different customers. And pricing strategy is becoming a big part of our opportunity every single year. And I would sit there and say the things that we've done should lead us in that 2% to 4% in the PD business on price a year, somewhere in that range, and we should be able to garner. It's a little different in the MSA business. I think we have a very limited customer base. We have very strong margins in that business. So we aren't really seeing like price increases in that business. And that's why we're sitting there saying that the gross margins are not expected to expand. But I think John talk a little more about it. Pricing is one piece, but there's other things involved.

Chris. So I talked in my prepared remarks about the MSA gross margins. We kind of expect that to be flat around the 51% level for full year. They were above that in Q1. It's really we are operating near full maximum capacity. We also had some favorable mix. But MSA, kind of think of it year-over-year, flattish at a very attractive 51%. From PD, that's where we think there's margin expansion opportunity. We delivered 39.1% this quarter. And as we look, Q2 will be kind of in that range. But as we enter in the back half of '26, we see increasing capacity utilization in both the specialty film line as we ramp up production, we'll be kind of ramped up, as Jeff mentioned, as we exit Q2 there. And so we should see some really good improvement in capacity utilization in the back half but also in our specialty -- in our ceramic capacitor line and our RF filters as demand is increasing, we think there -- there's opportunity...

I would sit there and say our variable margins are very strong in all of our businesses. And right now, obviously, we will probably need to hire more direct labor as this continues to ramp in these businesses. But there isn't a tremendous amount of overhead that's needed in order to support increased volume.

And your next question comes from the line of Robert Labick with CJS Securities.

This is Will on for Bob. Looking at specialty film pilot programs, you discussed downhole fracking and energy transmission pilots. Can you give us an update on how they're progressing? When do you know if they may convert to larger programs? And did you win any new pilots in the quarter?

They're on the list. We review on a very regular basis of the pilots. And I would say we're due to deliver pilots on 20 different customers over the next, say, quarter. So just figure every quarter, we're delivering pilots...

Broad-based applications and downhole.

Yes, I would sit there and say just a little bit more specific on the energy order. We are on track from a ramp standpoint. We are on track from a yield standpoint. And so we feel very strongly about that $25 million-plus at pretty good gross margins for the rest of the year, right, especially in the back half as it's fully ramped. Bottom line is, I think everything is heading kind of the right direction here for the specialty film line. And we see the opportunity, as John kind of laid out, that within the Precision Devices, this is going to be especially on a year-over-year basis and a sequential basis, going to help drive improved gross margin within the specialty -- within the PD...

Yes. I will be surprised at full year, we don't improve gross margins within the PD segment by 100 basis points, and it's really driven in the back half of 2026.

That is super helpful. And you talked about the tailwinds from the war in defense. Are there any headwinds from the war that you're evaluating?

Just a little bit on input costs. I mean our transportation costs are fairly low. You think of the size of our components are very, very small. And we manufacture in a lot of the regions that we're selling. So they're fairly minimal. But that's really the only thing we've seen, maybe some resin-based products, some modest increases, but not significant.

Yes. I mean the cost that we're looking at here, if it were to become more substantial, we would -- like on the transportation costs, a lot of our customers take possession at our dock, and we're not paying for the shipping anyway. So I mean, I think -- and then there are some input costs like resins and things like that, but it doesn't seem to be a big portion of our bill of materials.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum.

Jeff, just getting back to pricing power because maybe I wasn't following it correctly. It seems like there's a ton of activity, especially on the military defense side. And maybe there's puts and takes in each of the different divisions. Do you -- given the nature of activity, do you think it's fair to say that gross margins and pricing in 2027 on average is going to be higher than 2026?

No, I would sit there and say, we have a pretty strong cadence of how we do pricing at this point. I wouldn't sit there and say that we're going to sit there and see pricing. If I say it's in PD 2% to 4% per year, maybe it gets towards the higher end of that range. I'm not seeing that. I mean, you're right, the demand -- I mean, just more than defense, the demand across the board is pretty high. I looked -- we talked about the book-to-bill being 1.19. That's on top of 16% growth, right? So that book-to-bill represents a fair amount of orders. And I just got off the phone with our sales team. The order rate in April is already strong again. We're looking at another strong month of bookings in April. I think we're starting to spend a little bit more time, obviously, analyzing pricing and things like that. But just remember, we don't have huge amounts of cost in order to get these units out. They're very profitable already in the PD segment. And so I think we're going to continue to follow our kind of, what I would say, playbook of increasing price on a somewhat regular basis by market, by product, by customer to cover any cost -- input cost increase and some more where we can.

I would add, Tony, I do think from a gross margin standpoint, there is some opportunity in '27 to be above '26 just because think of the trajectory through '26, we're increasing gross margins as we -- '27 margins should be similar to what the margins we exit '26 at, which will be, again, higher than we're delivering right now.

Got it. That makes sense. And then 2 last questions on the energy ramp. Is there any technical hurdles or either production setup hurdles that you still need to overcome before the end of Q2? Or is it pretty much blocking and tackling?

I mean it's a lot of blocking and tackling. And I would sit there and say, we're in the process. All the equipment is on site. It's a matter of bringing it up, fully qualifying it and then running high volume through it. I mean there isn't -- I would sit there and say, like we're waiting for a piece of equipment that may not arrive on time. I mean everything is in place. And so it's a matter of just bringing everything up. I would sit there and say, in Q1, they were slightly ahead of what they had projected in terms of output and getting things qualified. I'm not committing that we're going to be ahead for the first half. But I think everything seems to be -- I was just down there 1.5 weeks ago at the facility. I mean everything was great. And so I think we're in pretty good shape.

Okay. Last question. Your group that you don't talk about that often, the RF side, quite a few of the RF power amp folks are all talking about just huge orders in satellite. Do you have any products that are exposed to satellite? Or can you tweak anything that you could gain exposure to huge satellite orders...

Yes. I mean if you think about our -- I mean, here's the thing. If you think about our line, we do have some satellite business. I wouldn't say it's a huge driver. I think what we have, what we provide is the super, super high-performance RF filters. And that's why we can garner great gross margins. We can -- we make good money in the space. I would say there's more of a mix in the satellite business of using, like, more commercially available RF filters versus specialized stuff. To the extent, and I would almost say this, the satellite business is like where we are with EV, where we can be differentiated, we'll sell into that market. But when they come to us and say, we want something really low cost, and we want it to be at a very low price, we tend to say, there's other guys who are willing to do that kind of stuff. So we do have some, but it's usually where they need something very unique and special where we can garner very good gross margins.

And Tony, I'd just add, we talked about 17% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 in the Precision Devices segment. RF was a big contributor to that. They grew. It's -- you're right. It's smaller as far as a percent of the total, but their growth rate was in the double digits.

Yes. I mean I guess my point being is we're just not going to deviate from the idea here. We don't really want to be in the commoditized portions of the market. And there are some commoditized portions of the market. And I would say my take is satellite is a little bit more mixed in terms of what they're looking for.

And the next question comes from the line of Tristan Gerra with Baird.

In Precision Devices, could you give us a sense of where your front-end utilization rates are? And as ultimately utilization rates go to full utilization above 90%, what type of gross margin would that imply? And then are you also able to quantify the impact on gross margin currently from the energy order production ramp? And when does that headwind go away?

So first, let me just cover on capacity utilization. It is different from product to product. We have RF filters. We have ceramic caps. We have film caps, which is the old Cornell acquisition. It's a little different from product to product. But generally speaking, we have done a lot of capacity planning for the mid- to longer-term in the last quarter. And what we're seeing with the growth rate that we're having, at least within 2026 and into probably the first half of '27, we're going to need more direct labor. We're not going to need a lot more, I would say, equipment. There may be some selective places we need equipment. We're probably running on average in the 80% range right now across the PD business. That's probably where we're running. And we have some room to still bring up output without adding a lot of expensive capacity. So I think, again, the stuff that's been -- our variable margins are very strong. We expect we're going to drop a lot of this growth, the revenue to the bottom line. As far as the energy order, I think how I kind of see the energy order is this, it is definitely weighing on the PD segment. We really haven't quantified to the extent that it is at this point. But I think it is going to be a driver of margin expansion in the back half.

So just directionally, Tristan, think of maybe 200 to 250 basis points better than we're doing today as it relates to the PD segment, and that's driven heavily by this energy order.

Okay. Great. That's very useful. And then given lead time expanding and all type of shortages happening in the industry, are you seeing appetite from customers to try to secure capacity into '27? And have you done LTAs in the past? Is that the type of discussion that customers are coming to you with? Or is it mostly short lead time type of orders?

I would sit there and say, in our distribution business, for the most part, it's been short-lead-time orders. In our OEM business, I would sit there and say, there is a lot more discussion, specifically in the defense area about larger orders. We're starting to see more people come to us saying, we would want to place an order with you for instead of a year, which would be very more typical for defense, we want to place a 3- or a 5-year order in defense. So there's a lot of negotiations and discussion going on about that right now. I would say in industrial and medical, we have long -- very long-term customers. We get regular forecasts from them, and we are prepared to make sure we meet their requirements. But I think defense is the area where we're starting to see at least more discussions about bigger orders. But I will add that book-to-bill of that 1.19, we did not have any real, like, big orders that were scheduled out more than a year. So there's nothing in that book-to-bill that would be an anomaly that drove that book-to-bill up to 1.19. I would say 97% of that book-to-bill will be shipped within 12 months.

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.