Daktronics, Inc. (DAKT) Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Daktronics Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Lindsey Vetter. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating in our third quarter earnings conference call. During today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements reflecting our expectations and plans about our future financial performance and future business opportunities. These forward-looking statements reflect the company's expectations or beliefs about future events based on information currently available to us. Of course, actual results could differ. Please refer to Slide 2 of the presentation that accompanies today's call, our press release and our SEC filings for information on risk factors, uncertainties and expectations that could cause actual results to differ materially from these expectations. During this presentation, we will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. You can find the reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure in the appendix that's accompanying presentation slides, which may be found on the Investor Relations page of our website at www.daktronics.com. Our earnings release for the 2026 third quarter, which was furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K this morning also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures as well as a discussion of certain limitations when using non-GAAP financial measures are included in the earnings release, which has been posted separately to the Investor Relations page of our website. I'll turn the call over to Wiemann, Interim President and CEO through the third quarter for his review.

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. Thank you for joining our third quarter fiscal 2026 call. I'm joined on the call by Howard Atkins, Board member and Acting Chief Financial Officer; along with Ramesh Jayaraman, CEO and President, who is officially in the role as of February 1. We will review our fiscal 2026 third quarter, which ended on January 31, 2026, along with the results and accomplishments and then take your questions. Turning to our slide presentation on Slide 3. Here are the key messages for the third quarter. The team delivered another quarter of solid results, driving revenue growth of 21.6% year-over-year despite the effectively shorter work period due to the 3 major holidays as well as adverse weather conditions throughout the quarter. Our manufacturing team did a superb job in efficiently converting the order book we have built over the past few quarters. During the quarter, we progressed with several large-scale installations, including 5 Major League Baseball stadiums such as the Seattle Mariners as well as the University of Illinois Football's video scoring system. Orders in the quarter were once again over $200 million. Our sales and marketing team secured large orders in our Live Events segment. Our Transportation segment had a record order quarter with a good uptake in airport and in intelligent transportation system projects. With new order growth in the quarter at 7.6%, our product and services backlog grew to $342 million coming into Q4 and is 25% higher than it was this time last year. In December, we announced our acquisition of the intellectual property and the absorption of associated engineering teams from X Display Company or XDC, expanding our micro-LED and micro integrated circuit capabilities. XDC advances our high-resolution narrow pixel pitch product offerings and provides us a cost-effective pathway to service small volume display opportunities with medium-sized display solutions. While the Supreme Court decision on reciprocal tariffs is now known, the market outcome with respect to refunds is likely to be highly uncertain for the foreseeable future. Turning to Slide 4. In our live events business, as I mentioned, we won another Major League Baseball project in the quarter, making us 6 for 6 in large Major League Baseball project in fiscal '26. Additionally, we won several other stadium and arena display enhancements as customers continue to expand their digital display footprint throughout their venues. We continue to enhance our product and service offerings to align with customer needs, such as our narrow pixel pitch product line, advanced control system capabilities to engage fans and improve seamless control and management of display content from anywhere, giving venue operators greater flexibility and control over their digital assets. Pictured here is the Seattle Mariners project. In our commercial business, on-premise advertising business remains strong. Customers continue to successfully transition to next-generation fuel price products, which was supported by a large order from a national customer. In our out-of-home business, we added several new customers this quarter but were down overall due to purchase delays from a key account, which we expect to recover in the fourth quarter. Our pipeline of opportunities continues to expand with independent billboard operators as more and more customers recognize our value proposition based on brand strength, image quality, reliability, service responsiveness and reputation for innovation with the release of our new billboard product. In our outdoor Spectacular segment, we booked a large order in Times Square, and we grew our pipeline of projects. We also expanded our indoor business sold through audiovisual integrator channels through our offerings of narrow pixel pitch chip-on-board products. Pictured here is the Miami Beach Convention Center. Transportation business orders for the -- for both intelligent transportation systems and aviation were up a record 130% from last year. We secured a very significant project with one of the top 5 airports in the U.S., along with new orders from Caltrans in California. Pictured here is a rendering of that top 5 airport win. In international, a great -- after a great order year in the third quarter of 2025, our international business was down from last year. However, we secured sizable orders from 2 stadium customers in Spain and Australia as they are expanding their systems. We also see a strong uptake in indoor solutions across multiple markets, especially government entities through growing our audiovisual integrator channel partners. Pictured here is an indoor video display at the United Arab Emirates University. High School Park and Recreation continue to have a solid year with third quarter order growth of 13.4% over last year. We have expanded our presence among the 30-some thousand high schools in the U.S. and continue to win projects by leveraging our position in the communities we serve and enhancing our differentiating financial service offerings through Daktronics sports marketing. We expect continued strong uptake in our leading solutions and adoption of professional services, particularly in high school curriculum development and DakClassroom service offerings. Pictured here is Marathon High School in Florida. Turning to Slide 5. Key product releases. Our commitment to innovation continues to differentiate us as a value provider among our customers. In the third quarter, we introduced our next-generation indoor video solution for high school arenas as well as a next-generation digital audio facade for outdoor audio solutions. For the remainder of fiscal 2026, we have 2 additional product launches planned, our next-generation LED screen furniture as well as specialized large-digit fuel price system offerings, which expands our product line for high-rise signage for long-distance viewability. The photos here show an example of our indoor narrow pixel pitch at Eldon High School in Eldon, Iowa, and our new digital audio facade installed at Dallas Independent School District in Dallas, Texas. Turning to Slide 6. Our plan to achieve a sustainably higher profit growth for the company and remains on track in the third quarter, here's an update of the third quarter on initiatives and progress. The strategic price adjustments we have implemented align with our value selling approach. The development of our Software-as-a-Service initiative augments how we serve the market, developing recurring revenue subscription models and simplifying our customer engagement. We are digitizing most aspects of our business to make it easier and faster for customers to do business with us and to improve internal operating efficiency and are actively applying auto -- artificial intelligence to improve productivity throughout the company. I will now turn it over to Howard Atkins, our acting Chief Financial Officer, to review our financials. Howard?

Thank you, Brad, and good day, everyone. Thank you for your interest in Daktronics. The Daktronics team produced another solid quarter in the third quarter. We anticipated the usual seasonal pattern with fewer days to complete order bookings and to fulfill revenue and also typical adverse weather conditions that did prevail in the quarter. But because this was anticipated, we took steps in the field and in our manufacturing management to continue the year-over-year growth that we've now produced over each of the last 4 quarters. As Brad mentioned, orders grew about 8%. But remember, last year in the third quarter, we booked a $30 million stadium order. This year in quarter 3, we also had a number of larger orders, including one stadium order on the last day of the quarter, but the single largest deal in the third quarter of this year was $13 million. Importantly, our orders have now been relatively broad-based at or over $200 million in each of the last 5 quarters, including a record transportation order in the third quarter. As orders have grown, so has revenue, which at $182 million in the quarter grew more than 20% year-over-year, mostly due to efficient order conversion by our manufacturing teams during the quarter, which included working more than 1 shift at times to fulfill the extra order flow around the holidays. Gross profit margin in the quarter was essentially flat to the year ago quarter at 24%, reflecting a variety of factors. One, the benefit of operating leverage as revenue rose year-over-year relative to fixed costs in our cost of goods sold. Secondly, the efficiencies we've achieved up and down the supply chain as a result of the business transformation initiatives that have been undertaken in the last year. Thirdly, mix on new business was a little bit better in the third quarter than previously. These margin benefits were offset by the fact that the backlog fulfillment in the quarter was largely from the lower-margin live events business line. And more importantly, last year did not contain any reciprocal tariff or any other of the newer tariffs that were only introduced late in the fourth quarter of 2025. We had an extra $6 million, for example, of total tariff expense in the third quarter of this year. The sequential gross profit margin declined from 27% to 24%, the main factor there was fixed cost operating leverage again, which, as previously described, when revenue is going up, it typically goes up faster than our fixed costs and gross profit margin COGS. And on the way down, it just has the opposite effect. So our revenue declines a little faster than the fixed cost side of cost of goods sold. Daktronics third quarter '26 net income after tax was $3 million or $0.06 per fully diluted share. This quarter included nonrecurring expenses related to management transition and acquisition expenses of $1.6 million or adjusted net income of $4.6 million. Last year's third quarter net loss of $17.2 million included a $14 million fair value adjustment on the convertible note that has since been converted and also contained $3.6 million of consultant-related expenses associated with the business transformation initiatives and corporate governance matters that pertained last year. Adjusted net income a year ago, therefore, was about $0.5 million, so we're up quite substantially from there. After removing the non-recurring expenses and non-cash benefit, our third quarter 2026 net income rose significantly on an adjusted basis. Since we have solid earnings, we're able starting this year to take advantage of the new tax laws permitting accelerated depreciation for R&D and other expenses. On a pretax basis, operating income for the quarter was $1.9 million compared with an operating loss of $3.6 million in the third quarter of 2025. In addition to the non-recurring items, the company incurred a $400,000 expense for the first time as it absorbed the expert developers that Brad mentioned before from XDC. The impact of the intellectual property adjustments and the -- on the Daktronics balance sheet was negligible. We had a small gain offset by a write-down of the remaining loan that we had to give XDC from Daktronics. So negligible balance sheet impact and about $400,000 impact on expenses -- operating expenses for the 1 month that we absorbed so far, the new team. Let me now turn to segment revenue. This table, if you remember, shows at the business line level over a period of time last year and then sequential quarters as well, the percentage of our revenue coming from each of our business lines and the margin most currently they were earning on each of those businesses. It also shows, as I said, gross profit margin earned in the third quarter, give you some sense of how business impact -- business mix is impacting our revenue. As indicated a couple of times, most of our revenue growth this past year has derived from the fulfillment of the live events projects, which typically are lower margin projects. So that's what's coming through on the revenue line. We did have a small amount of revenue in the quarter coming through from new orders. But as Brad alluded to before, this quarter, in particular, we had a little bit of a skewing towards the back end of the quarter in terms of the new order growth. As a result, the revenue contribution from that will land in the fourth quarter as opposed to the third quarter. So again, most of the revenue coming through in the third quarter was from backlog fulfillment. I should mention that in live events, the fulfillment that we have is heavily engineered with higher dependence on indirect installation costs. Next slide shows you our segment product backlog. And last quarter, we highlighted for you again that most of the revenue coming through from the backlog was live events. Our product backlog stood at $342 million at the end of the third quarter, continued to be up, up 25% from a year ago. Particularly with the recent major wins, our backlog remains high and remains weighted towards live events. We are now starting to convert the major projects that we have talked about over the past couple of quarters, which will be a feature of our revenue growth in the fourth quarter and into the early part of fiscal '27. This gives us, as you would imagine, a multi-quarter runway on our revenue and a more predictable growth pattern and stronger revenue recurrence over the next couple of quarters. The combination of a high backlog, as I've just alluded to, coming into the fourth quarter with what we're seeing as a good pipeline already in the fourth quarter, good order momentum sets us up well for good top and bottom-line finish to the year. Let me now move to the next slide and talk about our balance sheet, which, as you may remember, has been intentionally strengthened over the last 3 or 4 quarters. This slide shows you how we are managing working capital and capital allocation. First, our inventory levels have moderated relative to revenue over the past several quarters. So the manufacturing team is doing a really good job efficiently managing inventory. This is one of the initiatives that we undertook on the business transformation project started last year. And this reflects, again, better alignment and improving efficiency in our working capital management. During the first 9 months of the year, we repurchased approximately 1.3 million shares of common stock at a volume-weighted average price of $17.6. That leaves us with about $17 million worth of open share repurchase authority. Since the company reinstituted, its share repurchase program in late 2024, the company has repurchased 3.36 million shares of stock at a VWAP of about 15.5%. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $144 million, an increase of 13% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. So we continue to run a relatively strong cash balance even with the share repurchase activity. We essentially are keeping a very strong balance sheet to give us the resiliency and the adaptability to continue to generate strong returns for our shareholders going forward as we use cash and capital of the company for shareholder benefit. We have converted our commercial bank backup credit line from an asset-based facility to a cash-flow facility, reducing its cost, providing the company with additional financing flexibility if necessary. We, of course, have no borrowings under the company's bank line of credit and none are contemplated at this point in time. We now turn the floor over to Ramesh.

Thank you, Howard, and good morning, everyone. It's an exciting time to officially join and serve as the Daktronics CEO. I'm honored to lead a great company at this pivotal time and to work with the talented team that has accomplished a great deal in strengthening a resilient platform for sustainable and profitable growth. As we move to the next slide, I want to start by thanking Brad Wiemann, who presented earlier today, who has served very capably as the Interim President and CEO. Brad has been instrumental in my onboarding, and we have completed a smooth transition and handover of the CEO role. Brad will stay with Daktronics as Executive Vice President and Advisor, and I will continue to rely on his knowledge and judgment as we move forward. Thank you again, Brad. Moving to the next slide. My first priority as I joined Feb 1 officially was to come up to speed quickly. And I have been on a learning journey, what I call as a look-listen-learn tour. As I settle into Brookings, South Dakota to be closer to the team and to our business, it has been an absolute warm welcome by the past management, the team and the community as a whole. I've had a chance to travel both domestically and internationally, visiting sites and bidding as well as completed stage to understand our offerings, meet our customers and suppliers, including at a global trade show. In addition, I have spent time in some of our factories and repair centers to look at the operational excellence work that's in progress and with our frontline, our sales and field service technicians. And in addition, spend time on reviewing plans for our talent development as we look at the growth that we are planning ahead. This journey continues to teach me as we continue refining our strategies, all with an intent of being a market-led, technology-driven and customer-focused difference maker in the AV market space. Turning to the next slide. I have to say, as I get around the company, I've been personally able to witness firsthand the dedication, the focus and the drive of our team members and the results they can produce as you just saw Q3 results. We are entering into the final quarter of the year with very strong momentum, strong end market demand and a strong backlog tailwind. We are driving towards a strong finish of fiscal '26 through efficient revenue conversion and expense and productivity management to deliver strong results and continued cash flow generation. We're in parallel also formulating our next strategic steps from a customer-led and market-first perspective with a lens on growth, developing products, services and solutions that extend our competitive lead and building a lens on operational excellence to optimize the profitability and cash generation we deliver. I would like to personally invite you all to our Investor Day on April 9 at the NASDAQ MarketSite, where the leadership team and I will present our joint plans to drive the next phase of Daktronics growth. We will offer updates on our vertical market growth opportunities, execution initiatives, innovation priorities as well as our capital allocation and financial frameworks. We look forward to having you join us. With that, we'll turn the call over for your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Aaron Spychalla from Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Maybe first for me on the win rates. They've been really impressive on the large-scale side of live events. You talked about 6 for 6. Can you just talk about how that pipeline is shaping up here as seasons kind of wrap up in the next few months? And then just maybe how would you characterize win rates across the overall business versus historical?

Aaron, this is Brad. Yes, we were -- won another Major League Baseball project, which is excellent. Our pipeline continues to be robust, strong going into this next year. So we're happy about that. Of course, you've seen our backlog. So we have a nice backlog in the business. And then we have the college university side. We've talked about that in the past and some of the headwinds that are in that market that are being worked out, and that's really around the NIL money that's being spent on coaches and players. We think that all gets worked out. But as you saw, we have the university or the Illinois project that we worked out, the largest football stadium build that we had. And there's others in the pipeline. So we're excited that, that opportunity still exists. So pipeline overall looks good. And win rate, of course, as you mentioned, we were 6 of 6 this last year. So we're excited about that. And that's partly to play with one of our competitors taking a little bit of a backseat in the marketplace this last year, which we've talked about before. Is that helpful?

I'm also able to add to it from my perspective, yes. I mean I think we've got a strong wins in live events, as Brad just mentioned, but our high school market, our transportation market, they also continue to be strong. And I think it's important to kind of have the fact that as we look at our growth, we are looking with the balanced portfolio and the appropriate portfolio management as we kind of move ahead to gain market share. As Brad earlier mentioned, we had a massive win in transportation that was -- we just announced. And really, as you look at our high school markets, they continue to be strong, just driven by this change from scoreboards to video. And I think we see that trend continuing to be strong in the marketplace. So I would say it's balanced overall as we try and look at our growth story. Just going through the quarters as they do in terms of how high school spends and the college in the football or the NFL or NBA teams kind of spend. So that's what we're going.

I appreciate the color on that. And then maybe on the commercial market, I know you've been making inroads, expanding the reseller and integrator channel. Just maybe an update there, and it seems like demand trends are pretty good in that market as well.

Yes, they continue to remain strong. I talked about our on-premise as well as our both Spectaculars and out-of-home market. Those are still looking promising. The overall buying position of out-of-home customers that's in the advertising segment is strong. I did mention one customer that's pulled back a little bit in the third quarter. It's one of our national customers; we believe that recovers this next quarter. So nothing concerning there. Our products that we're bringing to the marketplace for the on-premise segment continue to help us to win projects there so that we're seeing growth on that side of it. But on the Spectacular side, we had a nice win in Times Square, as I mentioned, but the exciting part for me is the audiovisual integrator space that we continue to see growth, and that's on our indoor product lines, which is really a big part of our overall growth strategy.

And just -- I mean, on that kind of reseller and integrator channel, I mean, maybe an update on just kind of efforts there, where you are in kind of that journey?

Yes. On the reseller side, we've been in that business for some time, and we continue -- we have salespeople all across the U.S. continue to work and develop sales channel partners and to promote more of our products through that channel. So that's going well. The AV integrator is a newer area for us. And we are seeing continued growth. I think this is our -- I can't quite go back to the numbers because I don't have on top of mind, but we're seeing continued growth expansion in that space in both in terms of number of integrators, number of orders and the number of quotes. So the pipeline continues to grow. And that's really aligning around our indoor product lines and this chip-on-board offering that we -- that's really doing quite well for us. That's helping us both in the AV space as well as some of these large projects, which we mentioned across transportation, airports and other things. So yes, overall, we continue -- we're going to continue to invest in that area to expand our presence in that particular market space or through that channel partner of AV integrators.

And then maybe one last question on margins. I know you highlighted the tariff impact. So excluding that, another good quarter. Maybe just talk what inning you think you're in from these operational initiatives and just trying to understand where margins can go from here? And just -- and then any thoughts kind of more broadly on any oil impact and just kind of what's going on macro-wise, what that could mean for the supply chain, if anything?

On the first issue, Aaron, in terms of where we are, we've either started or well on the way on the vast bulk of the initiatives that sort of came out of the project we did last year. And all of what we've either started or are in the process of completing has either been built into or is about to be built into our regular strategic planning process. So that's how we're embracing everything and sort of tracking to make sure that everything gets completed going forward. So I would say from a starting and along the way point of view, we're well into the game. In terms of the realization of the benefit, I'd also say we're a year into the effort at this point. And again, we're more than 1/3 to 1/2 into the actual realization of the benefit. But again, the important thing is we're taking what we've done and now building it into a sort of more comprehensive strategic plan because the world changes and there's more things that we are thinking of doing for sure, both strategically and operational efficiency things as well. And we'll continue to talk about that, and we'll have some details around that at the Investor Day. As far as the geopolitical situation in the world, we're monitoring it. There is risk out there and a lot of uncertainty. Obviously, uncertainty level has gone up. But as we've described in the past, we intentionally keep things in the company reasonably adaptable. And as the world changes, we'll adapt to the world. We have a great manufacturing network that allows us to do that. We have a team that works well together to make sure that it happens effectively. And so being adaptable and resilient here is very important and also having the cash is important. So that's kind of where -- how we're trying to deal with the uncertainty.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti.

I have some follow-ups and then I have some other questions. So on the gross margin, you also mentioned it was due to the revenue mix and the live events being softer. And given live events is a big part of your backlog, how should we think about the impact of that going forward?

Anja, there is a table in the presentation, which shows you as of the end of the quarter, the revenue -- the mix of revenue in the backlog, so you can see actually the number. And we try to give you what might be left of the revenue after the fourth quarter is finished. So we have somewhat of a hint, if you will, if not a calculation of what you might expect coming through from the backlog and how live events might impact that. The point that we would make about the revenue -- the GP margin declining sequentially, again, has to do with the fact that in our gross profit margin, the cost of goods sold side of the margin does have some fixed cost in it. So when revenue is going up, we get the benefit of that on the gross profit margin revenue is going down as we have seasonally in the third quarter, the opposite effect happens. So that -- and we'll have more to say about that as well to help you understand that in the -- at the Investor Day.

Okay. And then in terms of the Mexico facility, is that on track? And would that have any sort of impact on the margins?

I'm sorry, Anja, say again, please?

The Mexico facility, is that on track to be up and running in April? And would that potentially have an impact on the gross margin as well?

Yes, not a significant impact on the gross margin. Our overall capital expenses to be capitalized, and we're leasing the facility there. But your question about being on track, yes, it is. We expect to be up and operating in the first quarter of this FY '27, so this coming next fiscal year. But that's all progressing well and expect to be fully operational certainly by the second quarter.

Okay. And then you mentioned the delay from a key account in the commercial. What gives you confidence that, that is temporarily? And do you expect maybe that to -- that shortfall in the third quarter to be made up in the fourth quarter or...

Yes. What I'm referencing there without naming the account itself, but there was an acquisition made in the -- in this past year. So that they're going through that acquisition phase, and we expect that to fully be in place and orders continue to come in -- coming in the fourth quarter. So nothing new there. We'll certainly keep you apprised if something changes, but we don't expect that to be the case.

Okay. Great. And then just as we have entered 2026 and -- with everything that's going on and the uncertainty, have you felt that the sentiment among your customers has changed at all or...

Yes. We work in big projects, large projects that are well capitalized and have been moving along. So the opportunities that are out there, we don't -- we're not foreseeing any reduction. I'm speaking of the U.S. market, which is the majority of our business, so we get to the international side of it. And we do some business throughout the Middle East and Australia, of course, in Europe. So we'll see how that plays out. But overall, I think the sentiment is projects are moving forward. They're funded. We're part of a larger overall project, and we're typically on the back end of the project. So it's -- those are usually well funded and moving forward. So we're not expecting anything to be delayed at this point.

Okay. And then in terms of M&A, what can we expect? What are you looking at there? And how is the market for M&A?

No. As we've said in the past, Anja, we continue to believe there are opportunities to do tuck-ins and fill-ins in each of our businesses. We're obviously looking at that. But the office message I would give you on that is just our flexibility. Again, we've got a strong cash position. We -- as you know, from everything that we do, we are return-focused. We're not going to do anything that doesn't make sense strategically. It doesn't have industrial logic to it, but also it's got to meet our financial return criteria, and we have to be able to integrate properly. So those are important characteristics. But along the strategic path, there inevitably will be some opportunities for us.

I think to add to Howard, this is part of our strategic consideration. Clearly, as Howard mentioned, the industrial logic has to make sense. And as we look at it through all phases, whether it be product verticals or geographies, this is something we are considering actively on a daily basis, just given our cash position. But at this stage, we don't have any one that we could go and say we're right behind. But it is clear that once one of these comes to fruition, we will be able to talk about it to the Street.

And this does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Ramesh for any further remarks.

Thank you. Again, thank you, everyone, for participating. Thank you for joining our call today. We will be appearing, as I mentioned, at the Investor Day on April 9, but also at the ROTH Conference in March, and we look forward to seeing you there. And we clearly look forward to speaking with you all on our fourth quarter call. So thank you again and just have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.