Paul Reitz
Analyst · D.A. Davidson
Thanks, Alan, and good morning. Before getting into our results, I want to take a moment to congratulate Tony Eheli on his promotion to CFO and having him today on his first earnings call. Tony has been a key member of our management team since joining Titan in March of 2021. Our ability to promote from within our organization is really a major plus and a sign of the talent we have on our team. Therefore, this is making for a seamless transition. I'm really enthused to see Tony taking charge as CFO and real proud of what he has done at Titan. I also want to thank David for his accomplishments as CFO. Note that he is hard at work. He's got a new role as Chief Transformation Officer. It's great that we have the depth on our team to make this transition to put David in that CTO role and believe it will bring value to our shareholders. We look forward to sharing more about David's efforts in coming quarters. But let's turn over to our results now and take a look at 2025. We concluded the year with another positive quarter as our Q4 exceeded prior year in revenue, gross margin and adjusted EBITDA. These results are ahead of our revenue guidance and also better than our adjusted EBITDA expectations. As I look back at 2025, this was a year where the diversity and breadth of our business from a product and geography standpoint combined with our new product introductions, our one-stop shop distribution capabilities and the strength and commitment of our team enabled Titan to weather a formidable storm in the ag sector and deal with the evolving trade policies. I'll touch on that point again later into my comments. Broadly speaking, the ag market had a bumpy tough year. It's really due to a number of factors that were weighing on demand. I do want to note that we are optimistic that the resulting OEM finished goods inventory destocking has largely run its course. We've seen that in our internal dealings and then we've all heard it recently from leadership at OEMs. While none of the major OEMs are forecasting any meaningful overall ag growth in 2026, we nonetheless think the bottom is behind us as equipment inventories stabilize, equipment keeps running and aging and the government continues with its support to farmers. Additionally, we are optimistic that trade policy will get a bit more settled in '26 and interest rates do look to be holding steady. This all leading to -- hopefully, leading buyers to start buying more equipment and feeling confident about their purchase decisions this year. With that being said, we do have guarded optimism for the year that's illustrated in our guidance that expresses some growth over 2025. So let's start by taking a deeper look into each of our segments beginning with ag. At a higher level, livestock producers enjoyed a good '25 while row crop farmers had a more difficult time. I want to note that because row crop farmers raising commodities such as corn and soybeans are natural buyers of larger horsepower equipment from tractors to combines and sprayers. Depressed grain prices, higher input costs have weighed on their P&Ls resulting in a reduction in demand for new equipment. The government programs have been really strong in '25 to support the liquidity and balance sheets of farmers and that government support is expected to continue along with hopefully some policy actions to drive biofuels to provide some tailwinds for the farming sector. Of course it also bears repeating that as long as those farmers run their equipment, they continue to need replacement tires to keep their tractors rolling. On the other hand though you got livestock producers. They tend to utilize mid- to smaller -- midrange to smaller equipment and with their operations enjoying better profitability in '25, the resulting demand for their equipment has fared better than row crop. The net result was the market for smaller equipment performed better than large and is forecasted to continue on that path again this year. I do want to note that Titan has a strong business in the smaller equipment sector as we can provide complete wheel tire assemblies to OEMs that they can simply bolt on to equipment thus greatly improving their supply chain and inventory management processes. Moving over to the EMC segment. That enters 2026 as our end market with the most optimism. The end markets we serve such as construction and earthmoving are generally in a good place right now, maybe not the same type of robust growth that we reported in Q4, but they are in good shape nonetheless. Activity in this segment is well supported by infrastructure spend and demand for minerals, which will be a benefit for our aftermarket mining sales. A good portion of our EMC sales are tied to the European construction market and the EU seems to be prioritizing investment in infrastructure. So our business there is well positioned. Moving over to consumer segment. We are optimistic as recent reports from leading powersports equipment OEMs are pointing to dealer inventories having reached a state of equilibrium. So that hopefully means any return to demand will drive production and thus a need for tires. I'll also reiterate that aftermarket sales constitute a significant portion of our consumer segment sales and there is less cyclicality to that part of the business. It's been an important part of how we've been able to drive continued strong margin results through the cyclical trough this time around. Before I hand it off to Tony, I do want to close with some comments on our business and tariffs. Obviously there are a lot of unprecedented global macro issues right now, but I want to emphasize that our end markets are overwhelmingly composed of end buyers that depend on their equipment to make a living. That could be farmers planting and harvesting crops, contractors building roads, miners extracting minerals or residential landscapers mowing lawns. That all equates to very durable long-term demand for our products. In the short term, we've seen a lengthy over 30-month downturn in ag as end buyers defer purchasing new equipment and move towards a philosophy of new to me in the form of used equipment. Even when this is the case, the continued usage of existing equipment in all of our segments drives demand for replacement tires, including our LSWs that make used equipment perform better and undercarriage parts that need to be replaced. At the same time, the equipment those tires and parts are fitted to continue to experience wear and tear driving up demand for new replacement equipment at some point. For Titan, that means we can win now and also win later and the way we maximize that opportunity is by continuing to innovate, expand our product line and stay close to our customers. And finally, regarding tariffs. I've expressed optimism throughout 2025 regarding the long-term benefits to Titan from the implementation of tariffs. My viewpoint was based on a number of factors, but first and foremost were the 3 favorable rulings that Titan received from the International Trade Commission over the past 15 years. In those cases, the ITC ruled that Titan's primary foreign competitors operated unfairly. We felt confident that was happening and that's why we brought the cases forward and that was deemed to be the case in the rulings in favor of Titan. It is clear to us that the administration was also targeting unfair trading practices with our IEPA-based tariffs. However, the implementation of these tariffs in a constantly evolving manner resulted in uncertainty and I know I'm stating the obvious with that. In our industry, there was a surge of imported tires before the tariffs went into effect, especially we saw that in ag. This story is not unique to Titan. It is being played out in many industrial companies similar to us. We also saw many of our import tire competitors absorb most of the remaining tariff cost throughout 2025. They have gone on record stating that. In essence, the potential positive impact from the administration's policies were neutralized in our sector during the past year. I want to note though we still achieved a solid performance in 2025 despite the volatility caused by tariffs. It does look like that tariff uncertainty is going to continue into '26 especially given the recent Supreme Court decision. Even so, we still believe that in the long term, tariffs are important to our industry to mitigate unfair trade practices that have taken place for many years. It is becoming more clear that the administration has options to improve trade policy that go beyond tariffs. That includes quotas, embargoes. These could be useful tools to support U.S. manufacturing as well. Titan has proven for decades and most recently during the pandemic, the resulting post-pandemic supply chain shock and now the evolving tariff situation in 2025 that no matter what may happen in the world, we are very well positioned to serve our customers with our geographical footprint, our network of joint ventures and strategic sourcing partners and our one-stop distribution and dealer network. In closing, I want to reiterate our optimism that we believe '25 was a trough year and with that behind us, we are hopeful to continue to make gains and improvements in 2026. With that, I will hand it off to Tony.