Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Nick Nelson, Alpha IR Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for Quest Resource's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or future performance of the company. Use of words like anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, believe, and other similar expressions are intended to identify those forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the company's current expectations, estimates, projections, beliefs, and assumptions, and involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual events or the company's results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors which are discussed in greater detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements and to consult SEC filings for additional risks and uncertainties. The company's forward-looking statements are presented as of the date made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update such statements unless required by law to do so. In addition, this call may include industry and market data and other statistical information, as well as the company's observations and views about industry conditions and developments. The data and information are based on the company's estimates, independent publications, government publications, and reports by market research firms and other sources. Although Quest believes these sources are reliable and the data and other information are accurate, we caution that Quest has not independently verified the reliability of the sources or the accuracy of the information. Certain non-GAAP financial measures will be disclosed during this call. These non-GAAP measures are used by management to make strategic decisions, forecast future results, and evaluate the company's current performance. Management believes the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors' understanding and assessment of the company's ongoing core operations and prospects for the future. Unless it is stated otherwise, it should be assumed that any financials discussed in this call will be on a non-GAAP basis. Full reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Perry Moss, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Nick, and thanks, everyone, for joining this afternoon. Quest delivered a solid quarter of results as the sequential improvements in momentum we experienced in the first quarter carried forward into the second period. We returned to top-line revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth compared to both the prior year and the prior quarter. This was supported by the growing contributions of recent customer wins and wallet share expansions, stabilizing volumes from our industrial customers, and ongoing productivity improvements across the business. We're encouraged by this progress, but understand that the macro environment remains complex and at times uneven. Within our industrial portfolio, we also saw positive trends carry forward into Q2. This drove sequential volume improvements as well as meaningful year-over-year growth from some of our largest customers. That said, volumes still remain subdued relative to a few years ago at a few select accounts and are likely the new norm. We will continue to monitor the broader macro environment closely. Given how the first half of the year played out, we're cautiously optimistic that our industrial portfolio has stabilized. The non-industrial portion of the portfolio, meanwhile, continues to perform as well as or better than expected, as we've grown meaningfully in markets like food service, retail, hospitality, and more. The comprehensive efforts we have taken over the past several quarters designed to streamline our operations, diversify the business, and improve productivity levels are clearly showing results. I'm incredibly proud of the entire Quest team for their hard work and commitment through this period, and the way they've bought into the changes we've implemented. While there remains significant work to be done, we are encouraged by what appears to be a gradually improving operating environment, as well as the wins our initiatives are delivering. We're mindful that these trends can shift, so we're staying disciplined rather than getting ahead of ourselves. Along those lines, we'll continue to seek ways to drive incremental improvements in the business through our operational excellence initiatives, effectively control our cost structure, and ensure the business is well positioned to drive stronger financial results going forward. Moving to specific results for the period, revenue in the second quarter grew by 8% compared to the prior year and 4% sequentially. That growth was driven by a renewed sales and go-to-market effort that elevated our focus on non-industrial markets, as well as wallet share opportunities across our existing portfolio. With the internal tools and processes we've implemented to better identify, track, and close these opportunities, the results have followed. Over the past 4 quarters, we've successfully onboarded several new customer wins. Importantly, as I've noted earlier, many of these wins are outside the industrial sector and are helping diversify the portfolio. They include a customer in the food products market, a large restaurant chain, a large retailer, and one of the largest franchisees in the quick service restaurant industry. At the same time, we've landed several new wallet share gains with existing customers, including an expansion with an existing retail customer, the addition of several hundred new locations with a customer in the automotive services end market, and expansions with two other major customers. More recently, in the second quarter, we landed four new share of wallet wins, including a significant one with a large national automotive parts retailer. Each of these wins over the past year is helping create a better balance across our portfolio and demonstrates both the capability of our sales team and the appeal of the Quest model across markets. We also continue to expand our sales pipeline during the period. Our pipeline remains healthy and we're engaged with several promising opportunities to add large national brands to our portfolio. Some of these opportunities are in markets that are new for Quest, which would further diversify our customer list and provide incremental offsets to the seasonally slower periods for many of our industrial customers. That said, many of these companies are also actively monitoring the current macroeconomic backdrop, which is elongating the sales cycle. We like our positioning, but the timing on closing these opportunities will ultimately depend on how quickly these companies gain confidence in the broader environment. Operationally, we continue to execute well and I believe we're operating more efficiently than at any point in my time here. Brett and his team have done a terrific job optimizing our cost structure, improving our cash cycle, and reducing debt, which will put us on firmer financial footing as volumes improve. Some of this is already evident in the strong flow-through of our sequential gross profit gains to adjusted EBITDA in the most recent quarter. On the cost side, diesel prices have risen amid geopolitical events around the world, yet Quest has experienced only a limited impact on our financials through this extended period of elevated prices. We view this as a good proof point for our model and its relative resilience to short-term commodity fluctuations, as well as our ability to use our scale to push back on cost increases where we can or to pass through unavoidable costs to our customers. Lastly, we continue to evolve our organizational structure and make personnel changes to attract, develop, and retain the best team possible. This holds true across the organization, from sales and key accounts to IT, finance, and more. We made some exciting changes so far this year through the addition of high-quality talent in key areas, and we'll keep finding ways to put the team in the best position to succeed and serve our customers. Looking ahead, our priorities remain focused on growing the business with new and existing customers, driving margin improvements, continuing the development of our operating platform, improving cash generation, and reducing our debt balance. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brett to review our second quarter financial results in greater detail. Brett?

Thanks, Perry, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I walk through the financials, I want to underscore the themes from Perry's remarks regarding our second quarter results. First, we returned to top-line and adjusted EBITDA growth, which came from parts of the portfolio we have been deliberately building. This includes new customer wins and wallet share expansions in non-industrial markets. Further, our industrial business has stabilized and contributed meaningfully to our year-over-year growth, which is encouraging to see. We're not taking this stabilization for granted and remain optimistic about the environment. Lastly, the progress on operational excellence is being reflected in our financials as we saw lower SG&A on higher revenues, strong operating cash flow, and continued debt reduction. Taken together, we are building a more diversified revenue base with a leaner cost structure and a healthier balance sheet. So let's talk through our results. Revenue for the second quarter was $64.1 million, an 8% increase from 1 year ago, and a sequential increase of 4% compared to the first quarter. The increase was primarily driven by volume improvements from certain clients in the industrial end market, which increased revenue by approximately $3.3 million compared to the prior year. As well as new business, net of customer attrition of approximately $1.2 million from new client wins and wallet share expansion with existing customers. This marks an encouraging reversal from the industrial headwinds we experienced in recent quarters. While we believe the stabilization we are seeing across several of our largest industrial accounts can continue, we know that conditions can change quickly, especially given the ongoing macroeconomic complexity. This return to growth reflects the team's focus on diversifying the business into non-industrial markets and also the resonance of the Quest value proposition with customers across economic sectors and which is centered on operational efficiency. Also, as a brief reminder, we are now reporting much cleaner, comparable results year over year, as we have sunsetted the majority of the significant headwinds experienced across 2024 and 2025. As we look ahead to Q3, we expect another quarter of sequential growth in revenue. Moving on to gross profit, in the second quarter, gross profit dollars totaled $10.4 million, a decline of roughly 6% compared to the prior year, but a sequential increase of 8%. This resulted in a gross margin of 16.3%, which was down from 18.5% in the prior year, up from 15.7% sequentially. The year-over-year decline in gross profit dollars and gross margin is primarily isolated to margin pressure with select industrial clients, despite the volume improvements noted above. This was offset by both higher gross profit dollars and improving gross margins across the remainder of the business, as margins from recent new customer and wallet share wins are maturing, and we continue to employ a continuous improvement approach to optimizing our cost structure. We still anticipate gross margins to be flat to slightly up in the third quarter as industrial volumes ramp at a few select larger customers. However, we are clearly demonstrating our ability to help offset this impact by focusing on what we can control, growing in non-industrial markets, optimizing service levels across the portfolio, winning incremental wallet share with existing customers, and executing our land and expand strategy to grow margin levels at recently onboarded accounts. Now moving on to SG&A, which was $8.2 million, an 11% reduction compared to the prior year, despite revenue growth of 8%. It was also a sequential decline of 2% despite a 4% sequential increase in revenue. These productivity improvements are tangible examples of our operational excellence initiatives, delivering real results and focusing on elements directly within our control. We'll continue to be disciplined on the cost front and remain vigilant for incremental ways to improve efficiency levels. During the quarter, we incurred a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $11 million, triggered by the decline in our market capitalization. The charge has no impact on our liquidity, cash flow, or compliance with our debt covenants. Moving on to a review of the cash flows and balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $1 million in cash and approximately $19.4 million in availability on our ABL credit facility. Net notes payable was approximately $59.4 million, a reduction of $4.6 million year-to-date, and approximately $17 million over the last 6 quarters. We delivered $4.5 million of operating cash flow in the quarter, driven by higher revenues, cost discipline, the ongoing optimization of our billing and collections processes, and our improved vendor payment processes, all contributing to improvements in our cash cycle. This facilitated the further reduction of our term debt held by Monroe Capital as we utilized our strong cash flow to make another voluntary $2 million early payment. We expect continued progress on cash generation paired with the lower future interest expense to free up additional cash to allocate toward debt reduction, and we will execute additional early payments as appropriate. Year to date in 2026, we have now reduced the term balance by over $4 million and debt reduction remains a key priority. Our DSOs finished the quarter at roughly 70, which was a nice improvement from the mid-70s at the end of the first quarter. Accounts receivable declined by roughly $2.5 million sequentially, despite the sequential increase in revenues. We will continue to implement ways to improve our cash cycle and believe that we have a clear path to our near-term target of the mid-60s. During the second quarter, we also reduced the number of working capital days to 5 days, an improvement from 12 days at the end of the first quarter and 19 days 1 year ago. Overall, as Perry noted, we are cautiously optimistic that the operating landscape is slowly improving. Stabilizing volumes from the industrial portion of the portfolio, coupled with the organic initiatives we've taken to diversify the business and elevate productivity across the organization, are driving improved financial performance, despite what remains a difficult environment. We are continuing to focus on what is within our control, and our financial priorities are unchanged. Beyond investing in our talent and growth opportunities, these include optimizing our cost structure, leveraging our operational excellence initiatives to drive cash flow, and paying down debt. Our continuous improvement approach to our cash cycle is centered around elevating our billing and collection practices and further optimizing working capital. Collectively, these actions are providing the financial flexibility to position Quest for continued success as our business moves forward and will allow us to deliver improved financial results as conditions continue to improve. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Perry for some closing comments before we open it up for Q&A. Perry?

Great. Thank you, Brett. Our second quarter was another step in the right direction, as the proactive efforts we've taken over the past year plus to improve operations are being supported by a gradually improving macroeconomic backdrop. While this optimism is tempered somewhat by renewed geopolitical risks, we are cautiously optimistic that the current trajectory of the business, combined with the ongoing initiatives within our control, have us on a path towards improved financial results. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our operator to move us to Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Aaron Spychalla from Craig-Hallum.

Good afternoon, Perry and Brett. Good to see the traction on the wallet share wins. Any details on the automotive customer size, locations, or waste streams? And then can you just speak to confidence or growth in that wallet share pipeline? I know you've targeted some industrial expansions. Are those still possibilities and just maybe some color there, please.

Yes, so, Aaron, you know, we don't typically talk too directly about individual customers. The share of wallet opportunity that I referenced in the call is similar to a target for a new business account, so 7-figure plus. And it's in the commodities sector. So those opportunities come to us at kind of our normal margin and not the land and expand option. So they come in a little higher from the very beginning. So they help to drive incremental GP. And I think there's still future or additional, I should say, opportunity to grow with that account and perhaps some of their competitors. So it's a little niche solution that we offer that has kind of gotten some traction. As we've talked about, you know, we'll continue to attempt to diversify our portfolio. It certainly doesn't imply that we wouldn't pursue an attractive industrial opportunity. In fact, there are several in the pipeline, but I think diversification is very important. We are working on share of wallet opportunities with our current industrial customers, and we'll continue to do, to find those efforts. Just since the back half of... We probably haven't said this before, in the back half of '25 into this year, we've now closed nine different meaningful share of wallet opportunities and they are all 6-, 7-figure opportunities. So we'll certainly continue that effort. Our relationship with these customers certainly makes the sales effort easier. We're trusted, we're proven, and I guess we're a known commodity. So it's a little quicker and easier to land those deals. And they certainly have been accretive to our gross profit.

Great. Yes, that's good to hear. And then, you know, just with that kind of combination of growth and new and existing and the operational initiatives you had, I know in the past you've talked about, like a 50% conversion from gross profit dollars to EBITDA. I mean, is that still fair or is the target maybe a little bit higher just given some of those operational improvements you've made?

Yes, I think it's fair to say it's a little higher. It's certainly higher with the share of wallet opportunities. As we've talked about before, the implementation or onboarding costs are significantly lower with the share of wallet because we've already got these customers set up in the system. They know us. The transition goes much smoother. So I don't really want to have a quote, an actual figure, but I would say it's fair to assume that it's slightly higher.

Makes sense. And then just maybe last, any update on just operational initiatives over the last year plus that you've made and any other areas of notable focus moving forward?

Yes, I mean, our focus has been on, you know, redefining all of our internal processes, optimizing those, getting them documented, training our folks so we have very standardized processes. That makes the work a lot easier because everyone is doing the work the same way. It's easier for us to train. And the goal is do it right the first time so there isn't remedial work to do. We have found our productivity levels increase significantly in certain areas because of those efforts. You know, when you're not tracking or measuring, it's very difficult to improve, right? You have to have a starting point or a baseline. You have to create an improvement plan. You have to implement it, and then you have to track it every week. That's what we do. So there's been, as you can see through the reduction in SG&A, you know, the first 6 months this year compared to last year is a 20% reduction. The initiatives are certainly paying off.

[Operator Instructions] Since there are no more questions, that will conclude our question-and-answer session. We'll now turn the call back over to Perry Moss for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, Operator. And thank you and thanks to everyone for joining this afternoon. We really appreciate your continued support and interest in Quest, and we look forward to updating all of you for the next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.