TechPrecision Corporation (TPCS) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the TechPrecision Corporation Fiscal 2026 Third Quarter Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Brett Maas, Managing Director of Hayden IR. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you. On the call today is Alex Shen, Chief Executive Officer; and Phil Podgorski, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements as contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties in the company's financial filings with the SEC. In addition, projections as to the company's future performance represent management's estimates as of today, February 17, 2026. TechPrecision assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements. With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to Alex Shen, Chief Executive Officer, to provide opening remarks. Alex?

Thank you, Brett. Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us. For the third quarter, Stadco revenue decreased and operating losses increased. This was due to four factors: one, delay in receiving customer furnished materials, which delays revenue and dropped revenue; two, unfavorable project mix; three, higher provisions for projected contract losses; and four, some, not a lot, but some equipment downtime. Third quarter revenue at Stadco was $2.9 million with an operating loss of $1.2 million. Compared to the same period a year ago, Stadco losses were higher by $0.6 million. Overall, fiscal 2026 third quarter consolidated revenue was $7.1 million or 7% lower when compared to $7.6 million in the fiscal 2025 third quarter. Consolidated gross profit totaled $0.4 million or $0.6 million lower when compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Fiscal 2026 third quarter Ranor revenue was $4.4 million with an operating profit of $1.5 million, in line with the prior year third quarter results. We remain highly focused on aggressive daily cash management, a critical piece of risk mitigation. We continue to manage and control expenses, capital expenditures, customer advances, progress billings, and final invoicing at shipment. Our tactical execution focus and success enable us to continuously resecure strategic customer confidence at both segments. Our Ranor segment was very recently awarded a new grant of just over $3.2 million. This brings the total of completely funded grant money to over $24 million from our U.S. Navy submarine programs-related customers. Ranor continues to execute a cadence of sustained procurement, delivery, and installation of new equipment, which enables a reliable, robust, and resilient manufacturing capacity dedicated to submarine programs. This over $24 million represents more than 50% of TechPrecision's market cap of $45.5 million. Customer confidence remains high. At both Stadco and Ranor, our customers have expressed their strong confidence as we continue to maintain on-time delivery of quality components. This delivery performance is leading both Stadco and Ranor to new quoting opportunities in air defense and submarine defense sectors with the same customers that already know and trust our capabilities. Both subsidiaries are continuing to experience meaningful new capture of business awards from these same customers, adding to our strong $46 million backlog. This backlog only includes the funded portions of customer purchase orders. We expect to deliver this $46 million backlog over the course of the next one to three fiscal years with gross margin expansion. And now I will turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Phil Podgorski, to continue with the review of our third quarter and nine months ended fiscal 2026 results. Phil?

Thank you, Alex. As Alex just mentioned, for our fiscal 2026 third quarter, consolidated revenues decreased by 7% to $7.1 million compared to $7.6 million in the same period a year ago as revenue fell short at Stadco. And Alex had pointed out what those four factors were. Consolidated cost of revenue increased by 1% or less than $1 million -- I mean, $1.1 million. Consolidated gross profit decreased by $0.6 million in Q3 fiscal 2026 to $400,000 due to lower revenue and higher loss provisions at Stadco. Consolidated SG&A increased by 3% to $1.7 million as an increase in stock-based compensation more than offset a decrease in outside professional services. Fiscal 2026 third quarter interest expense was lower as interest costs decreased for term loans and for borrowing under our revolver. Net loss was $1.5 million for the third quarter or $0.15 per share on a basic and fully diluted basis. For the nine months ended December 31, 2025, consolidated revenue was $23.6 million or 4% lower when compared to the same period a year ago. Consolidated cost of revenue was $19.7 million or $2.6 million lower than the same period a year ago due to favorable customer mix and achieved productivity gains at both Ranor and Stadco. As noted, the favorable customer mix and achieved productivity gains increased gross profit by $1.6 million or 7 percentage points. SG&A decreased for the nine months ending December 31 by 1% as lower office costs more than offset higher corporate unallocated expenses. Consolidated operating loss for the nine months ended December 31, 2025, was $0.9 million and decreased year-over-year by 65% or $1.6 million, primarily due to improved margin drop-through. Interest costs decreased by 2%, primarily on lower interest expense under the term loans. And net loss was $1.2 million or $0.13 per share on a basic and fully diluted basis. Now moving on to our financial position. We continue to actively manage our cash flow, as Alex had mentioned earlier. Net cash provided by operating and investing activities totaled $0.6 million for the nine months ended December 31, 2025. Net cash used in financing activities totaled $0.8 million primarily to pay down principal under our revolving loan and term loans. Our total debt was $6.7 million on December 31, 2025, compared to $7.4 million on March 31, 2025. Cash balance as of December 31, 2025, was $50,000 compared to $195,000 on March 31, 2025. Now let's take a little deeper dive into the segments for fiscal 2026 Q3. For Ranor, third quarter revenue was up year-over-year by 1% and overall strong margin growth was evident across all projects, resulting in improved margin drop-through, which contributed $1.5 million in gross profit for the quarter. Stadco Q3, as Alex had mentioned, revenue decreased by $0.3 million compared to the same period last year, primarily due to delay in receiving customer furnished materials, unfavorable project mix, and some equipment downtime. Stadco additionally experienced Q3 year-over-year gross margin decline as gross profit decreased by $0.6 million due to lower revenue and higher provision for contract losses as the company continues to face headwinds in finishing out unfavorable legacy contracts, underpriced onetime contracts, and specific first article part numbers. As Alex noted, we continue to actively work with our customers on these contracts to recovery and new pricing. With that, I will turn it back over to Alex.

Thank you, Phil. In closing, for those on the call who may not be very familiar with our company, TechPrecision is a custom manufacturer of precision large-scale fabricated components and precision large-scale machined metal structural components. The components that we manufacture are customer designed. We sell to customers in two main industry sectors, defense and precision industrial markets, predominantly defense. We do most of our work in industries that are highly sensitive to confidentiality, which preclude us from speaking publicly about many things that a company not operating in TechPrecision's specific environment might discuss. Please understand there are real limits as to what I can discuss and sometimes those limits do change. Tech Precision is proud and honored to serve the United States defense industry, specifically naval submarine manufacturing through our Ranor subsidiary and military aircraft manufacturing through our Stadco subsidiary. We aim to secure and maintain enduring partnerships with our customers. As noted earlier, the total of completed funded grant money of more than $24 million from our U.S. Navy submarine programs related customers reflects this strong partnership. This commitment represents more than 50% of TechPrecision's market cap of $45.5 million. Overall, at both the Ranor and the Stadco subsidiaries, we continue to see meaningful opportunities in our defense sectors as evidenced by the strength of our backlog. And at Ranor, this is also further evidenced by the strength of our completely funded grant money. We are encouraged by the prospects of growing our revenue and increasing profitability in future quarters. We are showing progress. We have more work to do with our Stadco subsidiary to get it into the black. We are targeting to build and sustain a trend. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Ross Taylor.

Alex, can you guys address how much more in the way of bad contracts, first items or whatever we have left to work through, particularly at Stadco to get to where we can see the benefits and fruits of these contracts, which appear to have some significant value, but have yet to really generate much in the way or quite honestly, anything in the way of earnings?

Well, let me parse that question and answer it in two chunks. So we have the same concerns. How much more is left on these legacy contracts that are legacy repeating part number contracts or the legacy onetime underpriced contracts? How much more is left? That answer comes back in the form of working through both the operation sales as well as finance as one team to make sure that we capture all that in the expected contract losses. So Phil and I, with our people collaborate to identify that to the best of our ability and forecast that to make sure that we understand how much loss is left. So that's one piece of the answer, right? Ross?

Well, I'm trying to get an idea of -- we keep thinking we're getting through this. We keep thinking we're getting to the promise land and yet we keep falling back into it. It reminds me a little bit like we got a NASCAR problem. We're just constantly turning left here and left is into continued problems generating profits out of Stadco. I mean you've owned Stadco for a long time. These contracts have been around for a long time. I'm just trying to get a handle of do you have a couple of million dollars left? Do you have $5 million left? What is it? And when do we see breaking through getting past the bad contracts to where we get to contracts that are going to allow us to make money, perhaps more reflective of the current operating environment, operating costs and the like.

I don't think I'm able to exactly quantify that because there's also a time element, right? So when we're waiting for certain decisions to be made, and this is not entirely in our control, we need to work with the customers for that time element to come true as to when. The -- I think the key is whatever the number may be, we are attempting to capture the whole impact of these numbers. So we want to capture all the losses. So when we're taking a loss reserve on projected contract losses, that encapsulates up to the point of shipping and being done with these, right? Phil?

Yes, I agree. And Ross, I'll help with a little bit of the answer here to give you a little bit more clarity on some of the quarter and what we experienced in the quarter. So two of our contracts, our customers with items that are going back quite some time. We were looking to see if we could get the customer to agree to accept, and we had very strong indications as we are working with these customers over quite some time. And unfortunately, they surprised us with a no, you need to do some additional rework on these items, and these are legacy items. So we had the hopes that we are putting it to bed, and we then had to rebuild into the estimated contract, again, fixed price contract, the additional hours that we're estimating to rework that, right? So relative to those contracts, we're hoping that the estimates that are built into the loss provisions that are built into the quarter will cover that. We are a very -- these parts are very, very specific and from a tolerance perspective require exact precise measurements. So can I guarantee that they're completely behind us? No. But I think we've reserved right now to the level that we feel comfortable with for these particular ones. We're whittling them down one at a time, and we're getting closer. I'll just leave it at that. Hopefully, that helps answer your question.

Not really. What are doing -- yes, I mean, it's just getting back to the idea of generally the concept of the business is to make money doing what it does. Obviously, these are contracts that are bad contracts. You don't have the same -- it doesn't appear you have the same relationship in Stadco that you have in Ranor with your customers because they're not extending you any of the -- any of the kind of, let's say, the professional courtesy of allowing you to make a profit, which is problematic. What are you doing -- I mean there's got to be a growth plan here beyond just kind of taking what's out there in the current kind of backlog and in the current part numbers and the like. What are you doing to drive revenue? We're stuck in the $7 million to $9 million a quarter range. It's not enough to break out profitability-wise. It's pretty clear, I think, at least myself, I'm confident to others who followed the company for a while. You really need to break that top line out and start to print numbers that are several million higher than you saw perhaps last quarter so we can start to actually produce some pretty meaningful free cash flow that would let you pay down debt, let you repair the balance sheet, all that stuff. What's the plan? I can't believe that the Board is kind of sitting there happy to see this kind of wallowing in the same $7 million to $9 million a quarter, lose $0.15, make $0.10 kind of, but usually lose or make a few pennies. There's got to be some strategy you guys have to drive more through the facility. I can't believe that you're fully -- that if one walks through the plant floor that at any given time that we're seeing everyone working at full rate all the time. So what's being done to kind of find new business that honestly can be priced better?

We have found new business, and we are filling the backlog with new business that is priced better. This business has already started shipping on certain part numbers that are new to Stadco. That's one piece. The other piece is on our legacy customers. Our largest one, as everyone knows, is Sikorsky. Sikorsky, as you alluded to, certain customers give the professional courtesy to vendors to let them be profitable. Sikorsky is playing ball with us, and that's the plan. That's the biggest piece of the plan since Sikorsky is the biggest piece and the majority over 50% of our volume. So the combination of working with our biggest legacy customers to be profitable and new customers with new part numbers that we already have proven ourselves on first articles and second articles, third articles and ongoing potentially decades-long programs of record. That is the plan forward. We cannot do -- go ahead.

When do we see the benefits of this? As I said, I mean, we've been stuck in the $7 million, $9 million; $7 million, $9 million kind of range. When do you see us breaking out of that $7 million to $9 million a quarter revenue run rate range?

That's a good question. I hesitate to answer because this quarter has been unexpectedly bad and worse -- much worse than our expectation. And we were surprised by, like Phil was saying, a couple of customers that didn't play ball. That was a surprise. I don't think we're going to have that similar type of surprise this next quarter ending March 31.

Okay. So we get -- but that could -- quite honestly, that could allow us to get back to the high end of the $7 million to $9 million range, probably fairly easily given that I think you probably -- I won't ask you how short you were, but my guess is that if you add back what you were short to kind of the middle of that range, you get to the high end. When can we see -- when do you expect that we're going to kind of set -- move to a new low level? When can we get past, so we get rid of the 7s and the like? It seems like if we can get revenues $9 million, $10 million, $12 million, you can make pretty good money. In fact, you can make really good money. But when do we get to that level where our slow quarters are at the $9 million range and our better quarters are double digits?

We're working on that. I'm pretty sure whatever answer I try to give is not going to be great. I don't know. But I know that what I am...

Not going be informative.

Well, informative or not informative, the goal is to first get us into 9 plus and 10 would be good. When would I do that? And can I please have a trend established. And that's really the question we're both wanting to get answers from me and Phil, and we're wanting to get these answers from ourselves as well to do the right things when nobody is looking or questioning. Our results are not showing that yet. Nobody is happy. And I'm ready to cook myself. But that does not stop me from doing the right things and moving things forward. Our plan is solid. We need to eliminate the risks that bite us. We'll continue to do so. And we are working together with our customers that we want to be partnered with for the foreseeable future decades.

Okay. I mean I think it's very clear, shareholders are out kind of an imperative. If you take what the Navy has given you and you add back the -- what Stadco has cost you, it's probably equal to the market cap of the company. So there's not a lot of value been added over the last few years. It would be nice to see you guys over these coming quarters this year, get back to where we can add some value and really push this thing on to the next level. I'll let some others ask questions.

Your next question is coming from [ John Brandberg ].

I'm assuming that the product mix issue is isolated to Stadco, but I don't want to assume anything. So can you expand about the problems with product mix? And given the fact that your -- you work with customer design products, how much of that is customer controlled or customer related? And how much of that is management related?

Go ahead, Phil. You go first.

Yes. So thank you, John. So the -- I think to answer your question directly, Stadco related for sure. We are, again, reliant heavily on customer furnished materials, and we did experience a lot of delay in the quarter receiving those. And it does unfortunately affect the utilization in the facility. We moved certainly individuals on to other contracts as we adjust. Some of those contracts are not as profitable as Alex had mentioned, some of the newer ones, particularly Sikorsky and whatnot. So we did experience a shift from more profitable to less profitable business and projects during the quarter. So that's -- it's unfortunate. It was certainly customer furnished materials that drove that. And the resulting factor was a stronger sales and revenue related to those weaker performing contracts.

I'll add to that a little bit more and just say that we are custom and precision fabrication and custom and precision machining. So that means we don't have a mass production line. We make things by hand one at a time. So with each piece, the situation is you make it one piece at a time. There are certain factors that go into it that may affect that one piece that could be mitigated at the second piece. It's not a mass production line. There's deviations between the two. They might be the same part number. They might be the same operators or they might not be. There are certain factors that change. But since it's not a production line, there's more factors for change than there are in a production factory that just makes one part number.

Are you doing anything in your contracts? I mean I find it kind of unusual to say that Sikorsky allows you -- maybe poorly paraphrasing it, but the gist of it is Sikorsky is kind of allowing you to make a profit. I just find that to be a very unworkable, untenable, you should be able to make a [indiscernible] profit. And now I understand that Sikorsky has been characterized as a better customer or a good customer or someone that is working with you more closely. So that begs the question, the other 50% of revenue that's non-Sikorsky, I mean, you have to somehow because of your -- the concentration on high-precision manufacturing, if some customer doesn't work with you, it's not as if you can switch from A to B easily. I mean you have to somehow either contractually or through customers -- you selecting customers decide you got to maybe eliminate some of these people and start focusing on people that "allow you to make a profit." I mean it just seems as you're trying to turn this company around, you have to be in an environment where either contractually, you have more control or you make better decisions on the other 50% of your customers.

That's exactly right. We have to choose our customers and choose the ones that we can work with better to get better results for our shareholders. Exactly.

I mean you have something unique to offer. And no, I understand "the customer is always right." Well, maybe not. I mean I think you're offering a very limited skill to affect the total development of certain key defense products, end products. And not everyone can do what Stadco does. And so I'm just underlining the fact that I would be very demanding on contracts to protect yourself. I mean if your customer is not giving you product on time, they should be penalized or you should be given some type of fee adjustment. There should be mechanisms in your contract that protect you. Do you have those now? Do you have any type of -- I'm using the term, I don't need to know the specifics. I just need to know, are there protection? I'll use the term protection mechanisms that backstop you when these occasions occur because they're beyond your control.

It's going to be difficult for me to answer because so much of it is very particular and specific. The answer is not 0. We cannot survive with 0 contractual protections. We agree and those contracts -- new contracts coming up, we cannot accept them if they are detrimental and harmful to Stadco or to Ranor. We need to function both the same and not harm the companies because the customer wants it to be so. And you are correct. The customer is not always correct. The customer is not always right. There are certain protections in place? Yes. Should we strengthen them going forward? Yes. And should we deselect some areas and not go into them? Well, that depends on how much a chosen customer wants to play ball. If they don't, we do walk and we have walked. And that's a choice that we need to make.

I hear the talk from Mr. Taylor about revenue. And of course, everyone wants to see people -- see the company get out of a so-called rut in terms of the $7 million revenue. By virtue of what you do in both companies, Stadco and Ranor, high precision, one at a time, how do you address -- how do you get scalability? I mean it's not like you can put more tomatoes in the pot and feed more people. I mean -- I don't see the scalability issue because, obviously, you want to get the top line up. But because of the virtue of what you do and the cost of both in terms of talent and machining, I mean, what is your operating capacity? Are you at 50%, 70%? Do you have room for that top line to be there if the customers are there? So I just have a problem with trying to see how you scale things with -- by intrinsically by what the degree of your whole process is so specialized.

So there's a process that's specialized and it's specialized for each part number, right? So then the key is going to be for that part number that we specialize in to keep repeating. So we make this part number again and again and to have a number of these repeating part numbers and to really eliminate the onetimes because that's the thing that takes a lot of time is the first time or the first article. If there are no follow-on articles, that's the kind of business that we need to really get away from, so we can have some kind of scalability. So that when we do repeat a part, we've already learned the process, and now it's going to be the next tranche of the same part number. We're refining the process that we already established first article protocols on and that we passed first article inspections by the customer on. And then now we're into follow-on orders and into programs of record that are going to exist for not just years but perhaps decades. There are some programs that we are leading ourselves into and cross utilizing the members between Stadco and Ranor to gain a foothold to let Stadco also gain a foothold through that cross-pollination between the two companies. That is -- so eliminating onetime projects and going towards repeating part numbers that have longer legs. That is one very big key strategy. It's not a big secret, but it takes a while. We need partnerships with customers that have the long legs on programs of record. So that's the ones that we are choosing carefully, and that's the ones that also are willing to choose us, both at Ranor and at Stadco. And that's what makes sense to us. We're so small. We can only do what we can do and do the best we can at it and add more to it and scale up. And the scale-up isn't going to be 10x. The scale-up is going to be a gradual scale up. But as we all wish to achieve, we want this -- the lowest water level to rise beyond what we have today. I am not very happy at all with our performance today.

Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I will now hand the conference back to Alex Shen for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.