Atlas Engineered Products Ltd. ($AEP)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Welcome, and thank you for joining Atlas Engineered Products Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. I am Jake Bouma, an IR Consultant for AEP. Today on the line discussing AEP's Q4 and full year 2025 financial results and company highlights are the company's President, CEO and Founder, Hadi Abbasi; and CFO, Melissa MacRae. Following their remarks, we will open up the call for an analyst Q&A session. Before handing over the call to Hadi, please note that information we present today could contain forward-looking information that is based on management's expectations, estimates and projections. Please consider the risk factors, including those in the filings made by AEP on SEDAR when reviewing this information. Also, all amounts discussed will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Hadi, please proceed with your remarks.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to AEP's earnings call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year of 2025 performance. We are excited to be with you, and thank you for your time, and thank you for joining us. I'm proud of the team as we delivered top line growth in 2025 despite the tough market conditions, especially in both Ontario and British Columbia, driven partially by a lack of affordability and people not being certain about their future because of all the political stuff going on in the last few years and lack of home sales. A revenue increase of 12% for the year and 17% in the fourth quarter, driven by both acquisitions and continued organic growth momentum across all product lines. was no easy accomplishment with the current economies of these 2 provinces. Additionally, across Canada, we faced varying political factors at home and from other countries and changing tariff announcements heavily impacting key markets in Ontario with the steel and auto and British Columbia with the forestry and construction. Despite these factors, we were able to increase our revenues and market share while fighting it out in the market to ensure our success. One of our original goals when we first went public was to have a national footprint across Canada to ensure geographic and economic diversity, which is providing proving a successful strategy in light of the current market across Canada. The acquisition this year of Truss-Worthy and Penn-Truss have expanded our national footprint, and we are focused on integrating our newest operation, strengthening our sales capabilities and leveraging automation and scale to improve efficiency and capture additional market shares in a competitive environment. AP is also nearing completion of the first robotic truss manufacturing facility in Canada in Clinton, Ontario. The building is in its final stages of interior painting and officer of while the equipment has been shipped and is anticipated to be operational at the beginning of July 2026. There were a slight delays of 2 to 3 weeks due to the shipping process from impacts of the war additionally, impact of the war in Iran. Additionally, we continue adding and strengthening our sales and design force and getting ready for the future, expanding into different market areas in wall panels, floor panels and floor presses and trusses. We have seen high coating volumes since early 2025 with over $80 million in coats in Q1 2026. Because of coating activities has been significantly higher, order volumes have also been increasing, reaching over $21 million in Q1, up from more than $11 million in the same period of 2025. However, shipping during this period was challenging and lower as much of Canada experienced more severe winter weather compared to prior year. We continue to drive organic growth by expanding our wall panel manufacturing and being able to supply customers with a full package of roof and floor trusses and wall panels and engineered wood products as needed for their projects. This organic growth will increase revenue per order and help mitigate potential recession impacts. While macroeconomic factors remain outside of control, we aim to gain market share through a scale, agility and a strong balance sheet. On the M&A front, we are actively evaluating opportunities across Canada in the trust and wall panel industries. With industry conditions stabilizing post pandemic, we see a strong pipeline of deals providing an opportunity for significant value creation for shareholders over the medium to long term. I would like now to introduce Melissa MacRae, CFO of AEP to provide commentary on our financial performance and position to Q4 and the full year 2025.

Thank you, Hadi. Results for our quarter 4, the 3 months ending December 31, 2025, include revenues of $17.6 million, gross profits of just under $3.6 million and normalized EBITDA of just under $2.4 million. Results for the full year ending December 31, 2025, include revenues of $62.6 million, gross profits of just under $12.2 million and normalized EBITDA of just under $7.4 million. Overall, revenue has increased due to acquisitive growth and organic growth related to the walls from the beginning of the year and an increase in roof and floor trusses this year. The company has seen an increase in -- has continued to see an increase in manufacturing metrics, but due to the competitive market, sale prices are still lower than in the same period in 2024, resulting in reduced profits. The company has been working hard to gain market share and keep staff busy even in the competitive market, which means sacrificing margin and profits at this time in order to be better prepared for the turnaround in the market when it comes. This hard work has shown in our fourth quarter and year-end results as we continue to work hard into 2026. Normalized -- just a heads up that normalized EBITDA for the year does include adjustments to onetime costs for legal and consulting fees related to the new automation facility in Clinton, acquisition projects throughout that 2025 year and credit facility updates. No adjustment has been made for some other costs associated for future automation, which would be ongoing moving forward, but incurred now to prepare for the future expansion and organic growth. These costs include expansion of the sales and management teams. Additionally, there are no adjustments for management labor costs related to the 2 acquisitions completed in Q2 and Q3. After the acquisitions, continued deposits on automation equipment and a significant portion of the construction of the new facility complete, the company still has cash at the end of the fourth quarter of $2.4 million with access to enough capital through the line of credit facility and the $4 million federal grant recently announced to finish out the Clinton facility project and scale up with the increased capacity. We were excited to announce that grant finally, which was almost a couple of years of hard work to apply and move through all the phases of the grant process until we were finally selected for the grant. Having this financial support to increase our manufacturing capacity, minimize lumber waste, enhance precision and improve overall operational efficiency in the manufacturing of roof testers is fantastic, and we are very grateful to have received it. I'd now like to open up the call for your questions. Operator, please provide the appropriate instructions.

Thank you, Melissa. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Nick from ATV, Nick, you can go ahead. [audio gap] Ok Nick, feel free to raise your hand again. I'm going to give the turn to Frederic for now and feel free to raise your hand later. -- and then we have Frederic from Desjardins.

First question was on just the pricing environment. And what is, I guess, your general views on the pricing outlook as we get into the busier construction season? Do you think there's potential for pricing to improve? Or would we potentially remain in a tough environment on that front?

Historically, as the market picks up and the winter weathers are over, the pricing will improve. And that's been the trend in the industry as long as I remember it. However, in the last few years, it just -- it hasn't been a normal condition of that you deal with the up and down the industry and you deal with the percentage of the home sales and starts, everything there. Right now, in the last few years, we're dealing with a lot of outside elements that affects our industry or any industries out there. So from what I see, the prices will improve. And from what I've seen is I am open to many, many surprises out there. So what we decided to do, we find out the sweet spot to be aggressive, gain market share and protect our clients and still make money, and then we will just go at that, Frederic. So -- and if the prices improve, we will improve to them. And it's just staying on good with our industry at the moment and see how it goes because in certain provinces, we are doing good like expanding our footprint and expanding our operations and doing the automation and everything, we're expanding and we are gaining market share. There are a lot of companies in trouble at the moment that we are not surviving because of being just in single provinces or in single towns. So it's just -- there's a lot of elements. It's not like the old days, I was say winter is over, the ice is gone, the snow is gone, and we're getting busy, so everybody is going to raise the price. It's not like that anymore. We got some people that every 5 seconds get on the Twitter or get on the social media and shoot their mouth up and it affects everything in the world. So we deal with that right now. And so to answer your question, the trend is it will improve. And the last few years, who knows what will happen. We just got to control what we can control in our own at the moment.

Okay. And just one more before I get back in the queue. You did mention some severe winter weather in Q1. Can you maybe expand a little bit on the impact that this had on your ability to ship and deliver products in Q1? And if you see that sort of normalizing in Q2?

Yes. Basically, in most of the areas like Tas, British Columbia, we deal with the winter and then there are certain products that you can premanufacture and keep everybody working to when the clients are ready because these are all signed contracts. These are not all wishful thinking. So you manufacture as much as you can, but majority, you can't build ahead of time because of certain measurements and design involved. So what we will do, and we are used to it, you will go Q1 and the weather is not very good, then you go to Q2, Q3 and Q4 and all of those orders ramp up and basically, you get ready and ramp up your production and whether you need second shift or third shift and you just deliver it. That's the good news. That's the kind of thing we are used to handling that once we get busy overnight and may we just go, we do whatever it takes to ship the product. And so what will happen is for the amount of orders that we didn't ship in Q1, the balance of it will be included Q2, Q3, and it will compress it. So we have to work harder and longer hours to deliver all of that stuff. That's what will happen because now the weather is warming up pretty good. And that it, Frederic, like I was absolutely very, very pleasant and Melissa, we were surprised at the amount of bookings. Honestly, I was caught by surprise. I did not -- I -- like you built your sales force to make that happen, and I didn't think there was demand in the marketplace for it. And I was pleasantly surprised.

And next, we have Russell from Beacon Securities.

Just following up on your comments around quoting, the $80 million in the quarter. How does that compare to quoting levels from Q1 of last year? Just trying to understand the lift you saw.

Russell I don't have the exact you the exact number? Melissa can you help me out here with the exact number?

I don't have the exact number, but it was about $65 million, I think. The difference being though a little bit that we did do an acquisition during the 2025 year.

That's why I figured it was about $15 million, $18 million more than last year.

Got it, that's helpful. Great to see that lift. And just on Clinton, Melissa, thanks for the color around the sufficiency of capital. I guess, can you elaborate on how you expect the cadence of payments around the $4 million government program to work? And I guess, talk to how much CapEx is left on Clinton in order to get through ramp-up as of year-end?

Definitely. So the $4 million, we actually got in, in the last quarter of that round of funding. So we've just finished applying for the payment of the $4 million grant. So we're not quite familiar at this point with how long it takes to get the grant out, but we have finished all the paperwork to get it as of now. So it worked out that they're applying it against all the payments we made basically from the signing of the contract date to the end of March 31, 2026. So -- and then the round was done, and now we're moving into further rounds and hopefully further grants eventually, but we'll see what projects we can come up with.

Sorry, go ahead.

Yes. The -- we have about $3.5 million left between the payments in the equipment and the final little pieces of the building, which is mostly holdback amounts throughout the year. So once we get the final construction sign-off and occupancy, then that all goes through. Over the next -- I'm going to say this quarter is the vast majority. We will have some payments from the equipment into quarter 3, just the way our contracts are that we have to be fully commissioned and operational and tested fully.

And you talk to additional programs. I guess that was my last question for the moment. Congrats on that $4 million win. But can you, I guess, talk to, I guess, what other opportunities there might be? Obviously, the $4 million win was something that you've been cultivating for quite some time. So I'd love to hear what other opportunities there might be out there for Alice on that front.

Yes. I mean the same program has started a new round. not to say it, but we're not -- nothing has been approved or discussed really and we can't discuss more, but there is a new round of that funding. There are other grants available provincially and federally. There's some that were -- they're onetime use grants or applications. We're saving for certain bigger projects down the road, like as you know, we kind of have those 42 acres in Colborne that eventually need to be developed. And we're kind of eyeing areas that we struggle with labor significantly to help support with robotics and automation and whether some of these bigger projects we can put together and get some more funding for between federal and provincial governments.

And that marked the end of our question-and-answer session. So the company is available post call to answer any questions that you may have and with the contact information that's on the screen right now. So you can e-mail us at [email protected] or you can go on to our website, which is atlasap.ca, and you can submit a form or reach us by the phone number that's listed on that website. And we thank you for your interest in Atlas Engineered Products for participating in this call. And at this time, you may disconnect. Thank you so much, and have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.