CPS Technologies Corporation (CPSH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CPS Technologies Corporation Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Chris Fraser, Chief Financial Officer at CPS Technologies. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Ali, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Brian Mackey, our President and CEO. We look forward to discussing our second quarter results with you. But first, Chris Witty, our Investor Relations adviser, will provide a brief safe harbor statement. Chris?

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin the business portion of today's call, I would like to point out that statements in this conference call that are not strictly historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and should be considered as subject to the many uncertainties that exist in CPS' operations and environment. These uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, other geopolitical events, economic conditions, market demands and competitive factors. Such factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward-looking statement. Additional information can be found in our filings with the SEC. Now I will turn the call over to Brian to offer his perspective on the quarter, after which Chris Fraser will review the financial results in greater detail. Brian?

Thanks, Chris. As a quick reminder, at the time of our previous quarterly earnings call on May 5, it was only Chris Fraser's second day with the company. He officially assumed the role of CFO on May 18, and our former CFO, Chuck Griffith, retired from CPS at the end of May as expected. The transition has gone well, and we're very glad to have Chris on board. Now turning to our Q2 results. We posted sales of $8.3 million, up slightly year-over-year and with an increase over first quarter levels, reflecting overall robust demand. While pleased with this top line improvement, we're also glad to note a substantial recovery in gross margins to 14.8% from 8.6% in Q1. Our outlook remains strong, and I'll come back in a moment to talk more about our commercial outlook as well as our plans for an improved manufacturing center. But first, let me turn the call over to Chris to provide further details about our financial results. Chris?

Thank you, Brian. As just stated, CPS reported revenue of $8.3 million for the period compared with $8.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. And we anticipate shipments to continue at a similar pace as the second quarter going forward given our current order backlog and outlook. We're very focused on executing a plan to move to a new facility, which will position the company for better performance in 2027 and beyond. Brian will speak more to this in a moment. And we reported gross profit of $1.2 million or 14.8% of revenue versus $1.3 million or 16.5% of revenue in the second quarter of last year, with the year-over-year decrease caused in part by higher material and plating costs, which is partially offset by improved labor and overhead efficiency. As Brian mentioned, our gross margin improved by 620 basis points relative to Q1 levels this year. SG&A or selling, general and administrative expenses totaled $1.5 million in the second quarter of this year, up from $1.2 million last year, reflecting some one-time expenses, mainly noncash stock options, which happened in the first quarter of last year and the second quarter this year. And the company posted an operating loss of about $200,000 in the current quarter compared to an operating profit of $100,000 in 2025. Including other income and tax benefit, we reported net income of roughly $40,000 or $0.00 per share this quarter, essentially breakeven versus net income of around $100,000 or $0.01 per share in the second quarter of last year. Before turning to the balance sheet, I'd like to note that we successfully completed a secondary offering in May that raised proceeds of $9.6 million that the gross proceeds, providing additional capital to support our growth initiatives. With this in hand, we ended the quarter with $15.4 million of cash and $3.8 million in marketable securities or $19.2 million combined versus a combined total of $13.2 million at the beginning of the year. Last -- at the beginning of the year, we had $4.4 million in cash and $8.8 million in marketable securities. So we are currently very well funded. Trade accounts receivable totaled $4.9 million at the end of June 2026 versus $5.2 million as of the end of Q2 last year, while inventories increased to $8.6 million at the end of the second quarter compared with $5.6 million at the start of the year, reflecting our preparation for a move to a new facility. Turning to the liability side. Payables and accruals totaled $4 million at the end of the second quarter versus $4.3 million as of December 27, 2025. Now Brian will provide more in-depth discussion of the period and outlook. Brian?

Great. Thanks, Chris. I want to first give an update about our plan to move to a larger improved manufacturing facility. I realize our investors are eager to hear an update on the status of this initiative to relocate to an improved space, something we consider fundamentally important to our go-forward growth strategy due to both strong demand for our existing products as well as the need for space to manufacture new products that we're bringing to market. It is clear now that our initial estimates were overly aggressive. Today, however, we're very close to finalizing the lease terms for a new facility, and I expect we will soon be making a formal announcement regarding a facility that is twice the size of our current location. The specialized operating factors necessary to optimize our production, including power requirements, industrial gas provisions, the floor build-out, et cetera, and all within relatively close proximity to our current locations to maintain our talented employee base expanded the time line for this effort. So while this search and negotiation process has certainly taken longer than we expected, we believe our measured approach is ensuring the optimal selection for our needs. Although the lease document is not yet signature ready, we are very close to resolution. Once this lease is executed, our design-build partner, Dacon Corporation, will work to complete the detailed architectural and engineering design phase, which is already underway. We expect this process, including laying out the production flow of our various work centers to take approximately 3 to 4 months, culminating with permit approval. The subsequent 7 to 8 months will include construction and equipment installation. Following the phased relocation of our manufacturing operations, we will conduct the necessary equipment qualification, process validation and customer approvals to ensure a smooth transition while minimizing disruption to production and customer deliveries. As a reminder, our current lease runs through February of 2028. So we have sufficient flexibility to get this done. We believe this process culminating with occupancy at the right location for our company will enable us to capitalize on opportunities for expansion, increase efficiencies and improve margins, leading to better overall long-term performance for the company. Regarding the current state of our business, the company's backlog for its core products remains strong, supported by the various markets we support and our optimism about our newer products continues to grow. We're experiencing increased interest from a number of industries that our investors are familiar with, including energy infrastructure, AI, defense, semiconductors, space and other commercial applications. Our markets are expanding as our technology offerings support and drive new applications across a wide range of existing and potential customers. We've completed 2 capital raises within the last 12 months, which provide us with sufficient resources to pursue relevant growth opportunities. The first of these is obviously the cost of outfitting the new location to suit our needs for our production requirements as well as the cost of physically relocating our company. In line with that will be some capital expenditures to improve and expand our production capacity, particularly for metal matrix composites. Also, we anticipate additional expenditure over time to support the scale-up of the capabilities we have for our newer offerings such as AlMax material as well as tungsten alloys produced using our QuickSet injection molding process. Regarding tungsten, funding from the U.S. Army supports our ongoing work on a controlled fragmentation 40-millimeter warhead with that program continuing until the fall of 2027. We remain optimistic about the potential volume revenue opportunities that may ultimately come from that development work. In parallel, we are now seeing positive market feedback from our offerings of tungsten alloy components. As I mentioned previously, we completed our first small commercial sale earlier this year. Now our business development team is actively quoting tungsten alloy parts, which we believe we can produce more cost effectively than competing manufacturing processes for potential commercial and defense applications. Additional CapEx may be necessary to support this product line as it grows over time. In line with the indications of market interest that we're seeing for tungsten, AlMax materials and various other products, we're also working to expand our business development team. We need a larger team to respond to the potential sales opportunities that we have identified in various markets, and we anticipate near-term investment in this growth of customer-facing personnel. As I mentioned before, congressional funding has already been approved to implement ballistic shields from CPS on a small number of destroyer class vessels. Along with our partner, Kinetic Protection, we expect these contracts to be resolved and issued later this year. This represents a return to revenue for our HybridTech Armor product, which we're excited about. With regard to our proprietary portfolio, our research and development work continues, often under externally funded initiatives with the government such as SBIR programs. These include the tungsten warheads for the Army, radiation shielding funded by the DOE, impact limiters for the DOE, thermal energy storage for the Navy and lightweighting of the amphibious combat vehicle for the Navy and Marine Corps. For the ACV program I just mentioned, we're now in a 6-month option period, which the Navy exercised in June. Once this concludes in December, we expect to have the opportunity for potential follow-on Phase II funding. This program enables us to offer lightweight benefits of 2 of our materials. First, our AlMax material could potentially be used to replace certain steel components across the entire vehicle. Second, our HybridTech Armor solution can provide ballistic protection in place of the steel plates currently used. This represents a second volume opportunity for HybridTech Armor distinct from the destroyer vessels of the U.S. Navy. As mentioned previously, the SBIR and STTR programs have been fully reauthorized by Congress through fiscal 2031. However, while our pace of submitting proposals continues, there is a significant backlog still awaiting formal responses from the SBIR offices of the DoD and DOE. A number of our Phase 1 and Phase 2 proposals, some going all the way back to August of last year, are awaiting funding decisions. While it's difficult for us to predict the timing of responses we'll see from the government, we see that these agencies are actively working through their proposal backlog. As a result, we expect to receive responses in the coming weeks and months. Overall, given expanding demand for our innovative products and the applications they serve, we remain optimistic about the remainder of fiscal 2026 as well as the years ahead. In addition, working with Kinetic Protection, we're upbeat about potential new HybridTech Armor orders in the coming quarters. The outlook for such new awards has not looked as positive in several years, and we look forward to providing critical protection to U.S. Navy destroyers just as we've done in recent history with aircraft carriers. We'll keep our investors updated on these developments along with any decision on our pending new facility transition. Once again, I'd like to thank our investors for their interest and enthusiasm as we continue to position the company for even better days ahead. We can now open the call up for questions. Ali?

[Operator Instructions] We have a question on the line from Steven Fassey, who is an investor.

So you had posted something online recently, maybe on LinkedIn, comparing AlSiC versus copper tungsten from a sort of cost and price volatility standpoint. Can you comment on where that comparison stands and whether you're seeing any actual retaining of business you might otherwise lose or new business from it?

Yes. That's a technical post there that I'm a little hesitant to get too deep into the weeds on that, Steve. I know that that's a competitive area where we like what our offering represents. But specifically how we're seeing that manifest, I'd have to pull some other people into that conversation, and I'd be happy to send you something offline that speaks directly to that. So I want to make sure I'm being factual.

Yes, that would be great because I think traditionally, copper has been a pretty strong competitor to your materials. But anyway, I realize it's deep in the weeds.