CEMATRIX Corporation ($CEMX)

[Audio Gap] conference call to discuss the company's financial results for the year and fourth quarter ended December 31, 2025. With us today is Randy Boomhour, President and CEO; Marie-Josee Cantin, CFO; and Jordan Wolfe, President of CEMATRIX subsidiary, MixOnSite. Before we get started, I want to remind our listeners that today's call is being recorded and will be made available later on the Investor Relations section of CEMATRIX Corporation website. The full financial statements and all disclosures related to this earnings call are also available on sedar.com. After management's formal remarks, we're going to conduct a Q&A session. When we take covering -- we're going to take questions via the phone from the covering analysts and via the webinar portal from all other attendees. [Operator Instructions] Prior to turning the call over to management. I'm going to read the forward-looking statements, which are also available in the company's financial results press release and investor presentation. This presentation contains certain statements that may be deemed forward-looking statements. All statements in this document other than the statements of historical fact that address events or developments that CEMATRIX expects to occur are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally but not always identified by words such as expects, plans, anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, projects, potential and similar expressions or that events or conditions will, would, may, could or should occur. Although the company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include failure to successfully negotiate or subsequently close such transactions, inability to required shareholders of regulatory approvals, uncertainty with respect to findings under exploration programs and general economic market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the company's management on the date of the statements are made. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management believes, estimates or opinions or other factors should change. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Randy to start his part of the discussion and presentation.

Thank you, Glen. Very much appreciate that. That was a mouthful. So I appreciate you taking that on. Thank you, and welcome to everybody who's joining our call to talk about our Q4 and our 2025 full year results. We expect that almost everybody on this call is either a shareholder or has pretty good knowledge of CEMATRIX. So we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the company and what we do. We're going to really focus the call on the financial results. I just want to start with this highlight slide, which I think is important. We'll kind of hit on the highlights of the company. So CEMATRIX is a cellular concrete specialty contractor. We're a leading provider of lightweight cost-effective durable cellular concrete for infrastructure projects. We provide solutions to our customers' geotechnical challenges using cellular concrete on time, on budget, on quality as our mantra. Customers always choose cellular concrete because one or more of its physical properties, and we have a strong competitive advantage in the marketplace. We have a very strong financial position and an overall growth trend. Cumulative annual growth rate for revenue has been 25% since 2017. 2025 was a record in almost all of our key financial KPIs, including record adjusted EBITDA, record cash flow from operations and record earnings per share. We are forecasting 2026 to be another good year, and we continue to post consistent positive results. We've got a small chart there that I won't go through that kind of demonstrates our results. And then just in summary on the slide, for CEMATRIX, there's a significant market opportunity in front of us. We're an industry leader the global cellular concrete market is significant and expected to continue to grow, and there's tailwinds from infrastructure spending in both Canada and the U.S. So we're going to flip through a couple of other slides that we left in here for completeness, but we'll go right to the financial section where MJ will lead you through the slides.

Thanks, Randy. Let's go through some financial highlights. As you mentioned, it was a record year for us in 2025. EBITDA is higher than our previous 20 years combined. Adjusted EBITDA of $8.3 million is higher than previous 2 best years combined, if you look at 2023 at $4.9 million, and 2024 at $3.3 million. We do fit on the threshold of a Rule of 40 for quality investment with revenue growth of 27% and EBITDA margin of 18%. So that's like 45%. Our top line is as a growth trend. We have positive bottom line, and we are generating cash. So as Randy mentioned, our CAGR is 25% since 2017, again, record $8.3 million in 2025 for adjusted EBITDA, $8.2 million in 2025 cash flow from operations and EPS of $0.0027 per share is also a record. We have a healthy balance sheet with low leverage. We had $11.9 million in cash with no long-term debt at the end of Q4 2025. And as of a couple of days ago, we had almost $17 million in our cover. So we collected on some of the working capital investment we had last year. Some keys to understand our business. Revenue growth will be lumpy. It will not be a perfect staircase. Financial results will be variable based on the timing of when large projects start and stop. Construction is a seasonal business with higher revenues in warmer months. Average revenue over the last 5 years were 18% in Q1, 17% in Q2, 34% in Q3 and 31% in Q4. We are a specialty construction contractor. So margins tend to be higher than general contractors, but we have more idle time and more fixed cost. Project size impacts margins. Larger projects have more competition, and as a result, lower margins. We do have excess capacity, which enables us to do significantly more revenue with existing equipment and staffing levels. Let's go through some of our results for Q4 and the full year. So revenue for the quarter in Q4 was $12.5 million compared to $10.4 million last year, so that's a 20% increase. Revenue for the year was $45.1 million compared to $35 million in 2024, that's a 27% increase. These two metrics are like the second-highest revenues that we've had in the history of our company. Gross margins, we'll talk about that a bit later as well, but 40% for the quarter, 29% in 2024. That's an 11% gross margin increase. And for the year, we had 35% in gross margin compared to 27% in 2024 and that's an 8% gross margin increase. Operating income, $1.9 million in Q4 compared to $600,000 in 2024. That's a $1.3 million increase and a record $5.8 million for the full year compared to $500,000 in 2024, which is a $5.3 million increase. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.4 million in Q4 compared to $1.4 million in 2024, that's a 71% increase. And when you look at the year, it was $8.3 million. We've mentioned it 3 times, but we're very proud of it in the year and $3.3 million in 2024. So that's a 152% increase. Cash flow from ops $2.5 million in Q4 compared to $1.4 million last year, that's a 79% increase. And when you look at the year, $8.2 million compared to $3.1 million in 2024. So that's up $5 million. When you look at cash, again, our balance at the end of the year was $12 million. So it's up from $10.3 million in 2024. And as I mentioned a couple of days ago, we had $17 million in cash in our coffers. So this is a good visual for you. So you can see that our revenue trend line is up. So I'm not going to go over the seasonality of our business. We talked about it already. In terms of gross margin, it was 35% for the year, as I mentioned, and I'm going to cover it a little bit in the next slide, but as you see mid-graph, you can see there is a dip there, just so you know, it was during the COVID pandemic when there was supply chain cement shortages. So that's why there's a dip there. When you look at our debt and interest, so we've come a long way since 2017. So right now, our only debt is our equipment finance loan. We -- at the end of the year, we carried $1.3 million for that debt. Looking at our share structure. So it's the first time in the history of the company, we were able to reduce the count. So we repurchased during the year, 1.3 million of common shares under our NCIB. So at the end of December 31, 2025, we had 149.7 million of shares outstanding. We had 5.6 million of options. RSUs, we have 2.9 million outstanding and warrants 8.2 million outstanding for a total of 166.4 million. All right. Since the beginning of the year, this year, in 2026, we announced $12.3 million. But looking back at last year, we had $55.5 million project awards that were announced. And in the last quarter, $6.9 million was announced. And so that puts us in a strong position for this year. So it's a testament of our -- the success of our sales teams. They're doing a great job continuing to win work. So at the end of the year, we had $67.7 million in backlog. And then talking about gross margins, so the structure of a key contract in 2025 was arranged to allow the customer to buy the cement, and the company meets some gross margin dollars -- the same gross margin dollars. So under our traditional contracting model, our revenue and cost of sales would have been higher, and the resulting gross margin percent would have been lower. So we put this chart there to give you some color of what's other traditional business model, how our margins would be looked at. So as you know, margins are also impacted by project size and project mix, but we thought that would be a good thing for you to look at this. So I think I'm going to turn it over to you, Randy, to carry on the presentation.

Thank you, MJ. Working mistake there. We always like to end on this slide, just talk about why we think you should invest in CEMATRIX. So the first reason is we're an industry leader, as we've already talked about, we're really well positioned to capitalize on the large opportunity in the growing infrastructure construction segment. We are a growth company, growing revenue, positive EBITDA, positive cash flow from operations and a strong balance sheet. We believe that we're currently undervalued based on traditional metrics, whether that's a multiple of forward revenue multiple of EBITDA or a multiple of EPS, we believe we are still undervalued on all of those metrics, however, you want to cut the cake. We don't have to raise any new capital to fund the burn rate. We generate our own cash now and are growing our cash balances. The only capital we would raise in the future would be to support an accretive acquisition that was bigger than our balance sheet's current ability to do it. And as I noted, we already have capital to deploy. So we're pretty confident that the first acquisition we find, we'll be able to do that with our existing balance sheet. On the right-hand side there, I list our Investor Relations contacts for -- so our retail shareholder base, we encourage you to contact the company directly with the information there. On the institutional side, we encourage you to reach out to Bristol Capital. Glen, whose information is there, and of course, the one analyst that covers CEMATRIX is Russell Stanley at Beacon, and we'll hear from Russell shortly here as we go to Q&A.

Perfect. You're ready for Q&A, Randy.

Absolutely.

Super. Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question is going to come from Russell Stanley. Okay. We'll take a question from the Q&A text box, while Russell, I guess, gets to the queue. First question is, Randy, congratulations on a strong Q4 in fiscal 2025. Are you seeing any negative impact on cement price and supply chain due to current macroeconomic conditions?

So the honest answer is no. Not at this time, despite all the sort of events that are happening in the world, we have not seen any impact in the markets that we operate in terms of cement prices or cement availability.

Next question is, Russell, are you with us, by the way? He's got his hands raised. Russell, you're on mute, if you can hear me. Okay? I'll just take the next question. Here we go. Russell, can you hear me? Okay. Could you characterize the pipeline of opportunities you're pursuing versus a year ago? And how many in the sales force versus a year ago?

So we continue to see growth in the opportunities that are in front of us in terms of the number of bids that we have active, and in the number of opportunities or the dollar value that we're chasing. We don't disclose sales team count numbers for competitive reasons. But if we're going to spend more money on SG&A, that's the first place we'll add because we're committed to growing the top line revenue because we know that's the key to growing the company long term.

Okay, super. And I see Russell has his hand up and is now off mute. I hope that you could hear us, and we can hear you.

Can you hear me now?

Yes. Perfect.

My apologies for the technical problem on my end. Congrats on the quarter, Randy, MJ, maybe around gross margins in Q4, even adjusting for that contract modification from the prior quarter still came in very strong at 33%. I'm wondering, given you normally see, you see a seasonal top line decline in revenue, those margins look really good. So wondering what you can say around revenue mix in the quarter and how that might play out in 2026 as well?

Yes. It's a really good question, Russell. I mean, each quarter, each year, the margin is always just a compilation of all the different projects that we had going on at the time. And I would just say the mix of projects that we had going on there had a better margin profile than the comparable mix a year ago. I do think the margin at 30% is long-term sustainable over a year and a margin of 33% is probably more indicative of a busier quarter.

Got it. And maybe around M&A, you talked about the potential there. I'm wondering what you can say as far as the market out there. I think you've talked in the past your first choice would be other cellular concrete players with a second choice being complementary products. What does the market look like out there for you? What does it look more likely to be a plan B type transaction? Are good businesses for sale at this point? And any color there would be great.

Yes. It's tricky. So I mean, in 2025, we're really focused on just sort of delivering the goods as you know, right? And so we've really just kind of started the process of talking to potential targets. I think you've correctly identified that I think it's unlikely we'll convince one of the existing cellular concrete competitors to sell to us, but we're going to try. So I think the more likely outcome is we'd have to look for something in the second prong of our strategy, which would be to get a company that does something similar to us in a market that we're really interested in like Florida or Texas. There's lots of talk around seasonality. I personally don't -- I'm not super concerned about seasonality per se. Having slow periods allows us to work on our equipment and busy periods, we have the equipment and crew to support that. I'm much more interested in making money. So if I could do $50 million in revenue in July and make our seasonality even worse, I would do that. So that's always our first priority is making money, not smoothing seasonality. That said, there are some benefits to try to reduce seasonality, which we're trying to address by entering those markets I talked about.

Got it. And maybe a question around SG&A. You mentioned not expecting any lift there unless it would be for sales, a little elevated in Q4 at around a little over $3 million. Were there any one-offs in there that you'd call out any kind of nonrecurring items? Just wondering what was behind that number?

Yes. I wouldn't say there's anything that would be a one-off where you can model out going forward. I would say what contributed to the increase is insurance primarily. So we have a number of our insurance policies, specifically our general liability policies that are generally tied to revenue. So the more revenue we do, the more insurance costs we have. And so if you have a large year-over-year increase in revenue, we have a corresponding large increase year-over-year in insurance costs. And then we just, in general, have higher wages when we are successful.

That's all for me. Apologies for the disruption earlier, but congrats again on the quarter.

Thank you, Russell. I really appreciate you doing this Russ and joining the call.

Next question, can you give any guidance on the follow-on, I guess, 2026? Does the company give guidance? And if yes, can you give it?

So we don't provide formal guidance. And I got to admit, I struggle with this because we want to tell you the shareholders what we're doing and our stakeholders, what we're doing. But I find that sometimes the words are used against us. So for example, last year, we provided an informal guidance to say we're going to have a record year, and people extrapolated that to be a record in terms of every single financial metric they could come up with. So we're kind of nervous about providing that. The general guidance we are providing for 2026 is it's going to be a very good year for us.

Okay. Randy, you have $16.7 million in cash, and you also have, I believe, 12 million warrants due in July. Can these warrants be canceled or repriced for a later time, as we think we don't need the cash, and we don't need the total shares to grow?

Yes. So unfortunately, that's not the way life works, right? You can't issue warrants and say, oh, yes, that's -- I wish, I wish, I hadn't put those out there. That's a contractual commitment. So those warrants are outstanding. If they do get exercised, I think that's a good thing because that means the share price is over $0.60, which I think we'd all be happy with. And the plan would be whatever capital comes in, we're going to use that to do an accretive acquisition. So for me, if the warrants get exercised, while I don't really want the dilution, I think that the dilution is at a price that makes sense for the company, then I don't really have an issue with it. So -- that's a long story short. I cannot reprice those warrants, not even open for a conversation. And our plan is to put that cash to use as we talked about.

Okay. And I guess another question around the cash with $16 million in the bank. Do you plan to just keep it there? Or do you plan to do something with it?

Yes. We absolutely plan to do something with it. We're -- our first choice is going to be to acquire a company. We don't have any plans to announce a dividend or a special dividend. None of that's in the works. We're a growth company. So to the extent we're raising or generating cash, we're going to reinvest that back in the business to grow it.

Okay. Congratulations on an amazing quarter and a fantastic year comparing your Canada and U.S. operations, have you seen the pipeline growing faster in Canada or the U.S.?

That's a really good question, actually. The U.S. market is at least 10x bigger for cellular concrete in the U.S. than it is for Canada. And so if you look at the proportion of our revenue, it's about 25% Canada, 75% U.S., it fluctuates every year. So just doing that would sort of indicate that our revenue in the U.S., really, if it was same size should be 10x bigger than what we do in Canada. So all those signs generally indicate that there's more opportunity for us in the U.S. than there would be in Canada. And I think that's definitely reflected in terms of what we see day-to-day on the ground.

And Randy, if I may add, in the U.S., not only is the market larger, but it's older too, meaning it's been around longer. There's more people that are specifying this product without us being involved in the early design stages. So that also adds to a larger total number of bids and volume in the U.S.

Yes. Thank you, Jordan. That's a good add.

Great. A couple of questions around backlog. So number one, maybe if you could state what the current backlog is? And number two, maybe talk about the conversion rate of your pipeline to backlog.

So, MJ, can you provide the current backlog number? Do you have in front of you?

Yes, it's $67.7 million.

Yes. And then in terms of conversion rate from pipeline to wins, again, that's a number that we don't share for competitive reasons. I would say the conversion rate varies quite a bit depending on the region, the competitors, the application, the complexity, all those things factor into whether we win the work or not. So if it's a small local job, and we're local, then the conversion rate is going to be much higher. If it's a very large job that's national that anybody could mobilize to, the conversion rate is going to be lower, and the margins are going to be lower just because the competition is going to be much more higher.

Okay. Can you provide color or insight on your Q4 U.S. revenue growth versus Canada, which I believe was up 200%?

I really can't, other than to say, it really is just the mix of projects and when large projects start and stop. So in the fourth quarter, we were lucky enough to have a very large grouting job in the U.S., go for almost the entire fourth quarter. And then also, we were lucky enough to have the North Carolina project going for part of the fourth quarter as well. So both of those things are probably contributing to the overall increase, and we've been sort of public about that disclosure before, which is why I'm sharing it now. But outside of that, we don't really discuss individual projects and what's happening with them.

Perfect. Can you give any update on Glavel?

Glavel is a private company, so we don't give updates on it. I will just say, as I've said in past calls that we're a minority investor in a private company. I don't see a path anymore to us owning more than 50%, and incorporating their results into our financials. So at this point, it really is just going to sit on our balance sheet until there's some kind of larger exit where we would look to recognize a gain on that investment.

This is a follow-up to the previous question on Canada versus U.S. Are you seeing more competition growing in Canada or in the U.S.?

In the U.S., for sure. Again, same sort of rationale, right? There's just more opportunity there. There's higher population concentrations, higher infrastructure concentrations, and so we just -- we see more competition there. A lot of U.S. companies struggle when they come into Canada because of the geography and because of the spread out population. And so they often struggle with how do they -- if they base their operation in Toronto, how do they do a job in Vancouver? It becomes quite tricky unless the job is really big, as an example. So generally speaking, I would say, it's in the U.S. for sure.

Do you have a sense regarding the infrastructure bill that was passed in the U.S. a few years ago, how much money was spent under that bill and how much remains to be spent?

I have no idea, actually. We don't -- because we're not at the general contractor level, talking with owners, we don't get into those discussions around where the appropriation is coming from. I will say what we just see in general, and we've talked about a lot is there's just a general tailwind associated with fixing and maintaining infrastructure because where we've seen a lot of infrastructure fail or a lot of infrastructure that's aged, and we know that it needs to be repaired, so it's just for us, what we see more is just this general activity around infrastructure and trying to maintain it.

Okay. Recent purchase orders around -- announced in Q1 of '26 that were worth $12.3 million. Can you comment on the size of those orders? Were they large? Were they small? And can you comment on their margin profiles?

Yes. So again, we don't disclose details around specific projects. We're not going to disclose the makeup of those. I will say at every announcement, there are some large ones, and then there are some small ones.

Okay, super. We've got one other question in the queue, but it's a guidance question. So I know that you can't answer it. So with that, Randy, I will end the call. I'll let give you some closing remarks and then we'll end it.

Yes. I just want to say, I'm really sort of -- not sort of, I'm really proud of our team, and the results that we delivered in 2025. Sometimes it's easy to look at numbers, and they're just numbers, but every single dollar of revenue is somebody out in the field, time away from their home, time away from their family, working in a construction situation worrying about safety, worrying about quality and delivering for our customers. So just really proud of how our team performed this year. Really looking forward to 2026 to be another great year for not only the company and our customers, but also our shareholders. As I said many times, my intent and goal is to ensure that every shareholder that's purchased a share of CEMATRIX can, at some point, say, they've got their money back and more. And we continue to be on the right path to get that done. So just really proud of what we've accomplished and a hope that we get more shareholders on board for the ride into the future.

Super. Thank you, Randy. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you, MJ, and thank you to our audience. This concludes this quarterly call.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.