Loar Holdings Inc. (LOAR) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to Loar Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ian McKillop, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Brock. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Loar Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Presenting on the call this morning are Loar's Chief Executive Officer and Executive Co-Chairman, Dirkson Charles; Executive Co-Chairman, Brett Milgrim, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, Glenn D'Alessandro; as well as myself, Ian McKillop, the Director of Investor Relations. Please visit our website at loargroup.com to obtain a slide deck and call replay information. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that statements made during this call, which are not historical in fact, are forward-looking statements. For further information about important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest filings with the SEC available through the Investor Relations section of our website or at sec.gov. We'd also like to advise you that during the call, we will be referring to adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted earnings per share, each of which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Please see the tables and related footnotes in the earnings release for a presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP measures and applicable reconciliations. To begin today, I'll now turn the call over to Dirkson.

Thanks, Ian. Good morning from my mates, and all our partners participating on this call. I am Dirkson, Founder, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman of Loar. As you all know, Loar was founded 14 years ago with the mission of building an aerospace, industrial cash compounder, wrapped in a culture that all our mates can be proud of. 14 years into our journey, I am as excited about our future as I've ever been. In 2025, we once again delivered predictable and consistent financial performance exceeding all our key annual financial goals. Sales, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margins and free cash flow were all annual records for Loar. But my excitement really comes from looking forward to 2026 and the opportunity to break all those records we set last year. Look, looking into the future, all our end markets have strong tailwinds. The commercial aftermarket has experienced an increase in the average age of the in-service fleet. Pre-COVID, the average was approximately 11 years. Today, it sits at 14-plus years. The older the fleet, the more demand for aftermarket parts. We love that. This is a trend we can expect to continue well into the 2030s as the delivery of new aircraft continues to fall short of demand. In addition, the commercial aftermarket has witnessed a decrease in the number of aircraft retired each year. Historically, 2.5% of the fleet is retired. However, from 2022 through 2025, the retirement rate has continuously decreased, reaching a low of 1.5% for 2025. Aging fleets, reduced retirement, all lead to one thing, greater demand for our parts into the future. With regards to original equipment manufacturers, who are sitting on record backlog of orders for future delivery, they have done an excellent job in addressing ongoing supply chain challenges, shortages of skilled labor and raw materials, constrained production and geopolitical uncertainty to now be able to increase production. For example, Airbus and Boeing plan to produce approximately 1,900 and 1,300 aircraft over the next 2 years, respectively. This would represent a compound annual growth rate increase of 15% over 2025 production rates. Our proprietary products that are line fit on these aircraft will generate increased sales for us as production ramps. Now with regard to the defense market, which has been heavily influenced by the current geopolitical environment, European nations have increased their military spending for the highest percentage of GDP in decades. In the U.S., there is talk of a $1.5 trillion defense budget. Combined, these trends will lead to greater opportunities for us to provide more products and solutions. So given our balanced portfolio, 50% OE, approximately 50% aftermarket, the broad spectrum of our products across all end markets, combined with executing all our value drivers, we expect to continue to grow sales at 10% plus organically and adjusted EBITDA at 15% plus annually into the foreseeable future. We continue to grow inorganically as well. Every time we add a new member to our family of companies, we view it as adding capabilities to the Loar toolkit. The larger the toolkit, the larger the revenue synergies. I'm pleased to welcome our new mates from LMB and Harper. LMB brings new capabilities to our toolkit, and we're excited to add our new mates to the team. Harper is a company I've personally known for 18 years, and I could not be happier knowing that this once employee-owned company chose us to carry their brand into the future. No option, just a good old fashion of getting to know each other and realizing that our culture is made for a perfect match. Bob and Carlo, welcome to the team Loar. With that said, Loar is a family of companies with a very simple approach to creating shareholder value. First, we believe that providing our business units with an entrepreneurial and collaborative environment to advance their brands, we will generate above-market growth rates. Since our inception in 2012 through the end of calendar year 2025, we have grown sales and adjusted EBITDA at a compound annual growth rate of over 30% and 40%, respectively. Second, we execute along 4 value streams. We identified pain points within the aerospace industry and look to solve those problems through organically launching new products. In calendar year 2026, we expect that new product growth will be the #1 driver of our organic growth as we qualify new parts in the first half of the year, fueling increased sales starting in the second half of 2026. As you all know, we track this pipeline of opportunities monthly. This pipeline represents a list of opportunities derived from listening to our customers, identifying their pain points and developing direct solutions for them. These solutions are created from the sharing of ideas, best practices and customer synergies across the group, which directly results in the high degree of collaboration that we foster across our business units. The pipeline represents over $600 million in sales over the next 5 years without including the benefit of top line synergies we expect to achieve since adding the capability to produce fans, motors, interior latching mechanisms and seat tracking filings to our toolkit through the additions of LMB and Harper. We focused on optimizing the way we manufacture, go to market and manage our companies to enhance productivity. Each year, we'll identify initiatives that would allow us to continually improve our performance with a focus on 1 or 2 major efforts that can be expected to expand margins. We continuously investigate ways to improve how we mine, collect, gather and utilize data, enhancing our management, ERP and other systems and processes allows us to efficiently leverage data and drive financial and operational efficiencies. Each year, we achieve more price than our cost of inflation, which is one of the levers we use to continuously improve margins year after year, except for the occasional temporary dilution due to acquiring a business with diluted margins or incurring costs because of being a public company. Regardless of these temporary headwinds, we continue to improve our margins. Most importantly, we are committed to developing and improving the talent of our mates because our success is solely, solely a result of their dedication and commitment. To all my mates, as always, thank you so much for your commitment and hard work. I will now turn it over to Brett to walk you through the key characteristics of our portfolio and our commitment to our inorganic growth.

Thanks, Dirkson. Good morning, everybody. One of the key drivers of our exceptional performance this quarter and this year and maybe more importantly, our consistent performance over a very long period of time is because we have a very diverse portfolio of products that covers virtually all end markets, platforms, customers and is balanced across the OE and aftermarket spectrum. Said another way, we have content on virtually anything that flies today, and that's by design as opposed to relying on any particular platform, end market or specific product line. We just want to have exposure to and be balanced across a very large and growing overall aerospace and defense market. We accomplished this through a very broad portfolio, the vast majority of which consists of proprietary products, which allows us to drive growth, achieve value pricing and create strong customer relationships and corresponding cross-selling opportunities. Effectively, we have positioned ourselves to capture the 20, 30, 40 or even 50-year annuity that any one particular platform may provide, whether it's a commercial aircraft, military aircraft or in part of its OE or aftermarket portion of its life cycle. Our proprietary products are not only growing as a percentage of our total portfolio, but also growing in the aggregate as we have a long history now of supplementing our organic growth with M&A activity and a large pipeline of opportunities. What we're seeing today with M&A is a very active market with many willing potential sellers. But as such, we think a market like this requires an appropriate amount of discipline, whether it's related to price or just the quality of the assets for sale. That discipline is something we have been very focused about in creating the portfolio we have today. And as a result, we have done 1 to 2 deals a year for a fairly long time now, irrespective of macro conditions or the like. So we remain a very active and consistent acquirer of assets and fully expect 2026 to be another active year. In fact, since going public less than 2 years ago, we've invested over $1.1 billion of capital in M&A, which is far and away our greatest use of free cash flow and along with strong organic growth, has resulted in us doubling the size of the business in 2 years as a public company when you include our latest announced deals. To Dirkson's earlier point, we feel very confident in a business model that through organic means and acquisition-related growth can at least triple every 5 years, and we are certainly ahead of that pace since becoming a public company. Our newest family members, LMB and Harper, both represent the type of businesses that we want in the portfolio. We obviously haven't had the chance to speak since announcing the closures of either LMB or Harper, but we're really excited about both. I think these companies represent what I was mentioning earlier, 2 very different product lines, serving different end markets and customers, but both right down the middle of the types of businesses we want to own, proprietary content in niche markets with meaningful aftermarket opportunities. Just to review two of the names that are on this page here. LMB, I think most of you know because that's a business that we announced many, many months ago. We're very glad to finally have closed that, I think, in the last week of December. LMB is a business located in the southern portion of France. It's a great business that manufacture what we call engineered cooling devices and solutions. Said another way, think customized and ruggedized fans and motors and systems that go into niche applications in military content, whether it's an aircraft or a ground vehicle. It's 100% proprietary product portfolio with what we think is a very, very meaningful opportunity to increase the aftermarket side of the business today, which is less heavily weighted towards currently. It also serves an end market that we haven't really had a lot of exposure to, but it has a lot of headwinds today -- excuse me, a lot of tailwinds today, which is the European defense market. So we think that's going to be very strong for the next couple of years. And it's a business that today is margin accretive to overall Loar, and it has a real growth opportunity to enter the world's largest military market here in the U.S., which it does very, very little of. So we're very excited about the opportunities in front of us. Harper, as Dirkson referenced, is actually a business that we've been familiar with since our days at McKechnie. This is a business that, again, we call -- has interior securing components, but think interior latching mechanisms and the like. We are familiar with it through McKechnie because we had a latching business called Hartwell back in the 2007 to 2010 time frame, and we are very familiar with Harper due to its stellar reputation, high-quality products and excellent, excellent relationship with Boeing. So Harper serves a completely different market than LMB, in that it primarily serves the commercial market. Like I said, it has an excellent, excellent representation with Boeing. They have been recognized as one of Boeing's most trusted suppliers. And we think that relationship can foster further cross-selling opportunities with Boeing, with other parts of the commercial market and really be a value-added piece of the portfolio. We're really, really excited about both LMB and Harper, and we could already see the collaboration with other business units as we think these new products are going to be value-added to the overall portfolio, which Ian will tell you about next.

Every quarter, we share this slide about highlighting our products, but the real power of this portfolio isn't just any one of these products. It's the combined capabilities that Dirkson spoke about earlier. We've added 2 new capabilities, interior latching assemblies, as you can see in the top right, hyperfans and cooling devices with our acquisition of LMB. This product offering with over 25,000 SKUs, of which no one more -- makes up more than 3% of our overall revenue brings our customers something that is incredibly unique, a set of capabilities that can serve them and can be adjusted to meet their needs. I'll now pass the call back to Glenn.

Thank you, Ian. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by discussing sales by our end markets. This comparison will be on a pro forma basis as if each of our businesses were owned as of the first day of the earliest period presented. This market discussion includes the acquisition of Applied Avionics in Q3 '24 and Beadlight in Q3 '25. It does not include our latest acquisitions of LMB Fans and Motors and Harper Engineering. We achieved record sales during calendar year '25. In total, our sales increased to $500 million, which is a 15% increase as compared to the prior year. Our Q4 sales were also a record, increasing 17% versus the prior year quarter. These increases were driven by strong performances in commercial, aftermarket, commercial OEM and defense. Our commercial aftermarket sales saw an increase of 19% in calendar year '25 versus '24. It increased 34% in Q4 '25 versus Q4 '24. This is primarily driven by the continued strength in demand for commercial air travel and an aging commercial fleet. Our total commercial OEM sales saw an increase of 11% in calendar year '25 versus '24. It increased 8% in Q4 '25 versus Q4 '24. This increase was driven by higher sales across a significant portion of the platforms we supply, along with an improving production environment for commercial OEMs. The increase of 19% in our defense sales in calendar year '25 versus '24 and 14% in Q4 '25 versus Q4 '24 was primarily due to strong demand across multiple platforms and an increase in market share as a result of new product launches. Defense sales will continue to be lumpy given the nature of the ordering patterns of our end customers for our products. Let me recap our financial highlights for the fourth quarter of '25. Sales increased 19.3% or 16.9%, excluding acquisition sales over the prior period. Our gross profit margin for Q4 '25 increased by 320 basis points as compared to the prior year period. This increase was primarily due to our operating leverage, the execution of our strategic value drivers as well as a favorable sales mix. Our increase in net income of $9 million in Q4 '25 versus Q4 '24 is primarily due to lower interest. Adjusted EBITDA was up $10 million in Q4 '25 versus Q4 '24. Adjusted EBIT margin -- adjusted EBITDA margins were 38.7% (sic) [ 37.8% ] due to our operating leverage, the execution of our strategic value drivers and a favorable sales mix. This was partially offset by additional costs associated with being a public company, including Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and additional organizational costs to support our reporting, governance and control needs. For the full year of '25, sales increased 23.2% or 12.7%, excluding acquisition sales. Our gross profit margin for the full year was 52.7%, which is up 330 basis points as compared to the prior year period. Our net income increased $50 million in calendar year '25 versus '24. This was driven by lower interest expense and higher operating income. Our adjusted EBITDA was a record $189 million in calendar year '25. This is up $43 million versus '24. Adjusted EBITDA margins were up 180 basis points due to our operating leverage, the execution of our strategic value drivers and a favorable sales mix. This was partially offset by the additional costs associated with being a public company. We do not see an increase in these type of public company costs going forward. We believe the run rate of these costs are fully reflected in our calendar year '25 results. Our free cash flow conversion, which is defined as cash flow from operations less capital expenditures, was 138% for calendar year '25, and it's 160% if you exclude a onetime $10 million tax benefit we received from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Let me now turn the call back over to Dirkson to share our outlook for '26.

Thanks, Glenn. Look, we are extremely excited to share upward revision to our 2026 outlook. As I said earlier, each of our end markets are experiencing strong demand tailwinds. So our focus is on executing our value drivers to continue to position us to at least, as Brett said earlier, at least triple adjusted EBITDA every 5 years, including acquisitions as we've done consistently since our inception, except during COVID. As always, our view is on a pro forma basis, assuming we own all of our business units since the beginning of 2025. With that said, we still expect commercial OEM and aftermarket growth will be low double digits in 2026 for all of the reasons I highlighted earlier, While our defense end market sales will be up mid-single digits as we come off a fantastic year of 19% growth in 2025 over 2024. As we've always said, growth in the defense end market will be choppy. These market assumptions, along with the additions of LMB and Harper to our family of companies and our continued execution of our value drivers will allow us to meet or exceed the following for calendar year 2026. Net sales between $640 million and $650 million, adjusted EBITDA between $253 million and $258 million, adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 40%. Once again, we demonstrate our ability to continually improve margins. Net income between $59 million and $63 million, while adjusted EPS between $0.76 and $0.80 per share, which is a reduction in our guide only because of the incremental noncash depreciation and amortization related to the acquisitions of LMB and Harper as well as the interest associated with funding those acquisitions, as we discussed earlier. Capital expenditures will be in line with our historical rate of approximately 3% of sales at $19 million. We have increased full year interest expense to $80 million because of the funds we borrowed to fund the acquisitions of LMB and Harper. We expect both acquisitions to meet our investment hurdle of doubling adjusted EBITDA in 3 to 5 years and to be accretive to earnings in calendar year 2027. Our effective tax rate, 25%, depreciation and amortization of $75 million and noncash stock-based comp of approximately $17 million. Share count remains the same, 97 million. So look, please note that all of the amounts I've just outlined for you relating to calendar 2026 performance assume no additional acquisitions. However, as Brett said earlier, our drumbeat is to complete 1 or 2 acquisitions each year. We just cannot predict the timing of such acquisitions. And I will add that the activity around acquisitions is even at a higher level than it was when we chatted last quarter. So we're excited about that also. Okay. With that, operator, let's turn it over for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from John Godyn of Citi.

I have one clarification and one kind of more real question. The clarification is, obviously, we see the revised outlook and across all the metrics that I think drive the stock most, it's gone up, margin, EBITDA, et cetera. And I think the analysts that are close to the name kind of understand what's going on here. But I wanted to just give you a chance to spend an extra second on the adjusted EPS kind of revision lower and what's driving that and just make sure that it's super clear for everybody.

Yes, John, look, thank you for asking the question. I really appreciate that because we realize that can be a little bit confusing for folks. Look, when we gave our guide last quarter, we didn't have the acquisitions included in it, right? So that did include LMB and it did not include Harper. As happens always, when you do an acquisition, you incur accounting, legal fees and the likes. We call those transaction expenses, right? That's incurred -- that affects EPS. In addition...

Those are onetime in nature, though.

Yes. In addition, we are required for accounting reasons to write up the assets and also write-off some of the intangible assets through amortization, all noncash that gets charged against net income. All of those is what's driving the change, including the additional interest to the EPS. So noncash mostly is the biggest driver.

Got it. Sorry, I was on mute for a second there. That's very helpful. My sort of more real question is, you sounded very optimistic about the M&A pipeline. And that's something we've heard from other companies as well, and we've seen it in rising deal activity across A&D. You mentioned 1 to 2 M&A deals a year. I wanted to just sort of press on that. And the question is, could we see an elevated rate above that range for a bit? Could we see deal size go up? How do you think that this kind of more active and maybe more interesting deal environment manifests itself for more versus historical norms?

The short answer, John, is yes and yes, meaning we're seeing more deal flow. We're seeing more active sellers. We're just overall seeing a more active market in this space, given what we see as good visibility, good performance and quite candidly, good valuations, which makes for active sellers. Like I said before, though, is that also means that we need to have more discipline because we need to make sure that we see the requisite returns in anything we do. So we talk about 1 to 2 deals a year simply as a proxy given the historical trends. In any given year, it could be significantly more. It really just depends on the opportunities in front of us. And we will always, always be opportunistic and always, always be disciplined such that if prices get too high or quality of assets for sale are too low or there are things that we don't see the return in, we're not going to do it simply and exclusively because it's an "active market." We've been very, very consistent over, I think, a relatively long period of time now. And I think our track record kind of speaks for itself. So I use the 1 to 2 deals as a proxy and nothing more, and we're going to be opportunistic as we go here in 2026.

The next question is from Kristine Liwag of Morgan Stanley.

Thanks for all the color you provided. In the quarter, you guys called out 17% organic sales growth. I was wondering if you could talk about the building blocks of that organic growth. It's pretty robust, above industry market. So if you were to look at on a same-store apples-to-apples volume, what would it have been? And then also, how much of this growth was from your new product introduction? And how do we think about this throughout 2026?

Kristine, thanks for asking the question. In terms of what's driving our -- I'll use your terminology, organic growth. Look, I think I've said this before. Prior to the most recent time, I would say volume was the biggest driver, if you break it up between volume, price and new business. But as we think about 2026 and going forward and 2025, the new product introduction is really the largest driver of our organic growth and which is where we think we actually differentiate ourselves from others because that $600 million of opportunity that I talked about earlier, we're actually at the cusp now of really starting to get the benefit of that. So in 2026 and beyond, so think 2026, 2027, we expect that, that will be the largest driver of organic growth going into the next 12 to 24 months.

And just to add something, for the calendar year 2025, I think our "organic growth" is actually better than is represented as the number we put in the Q, and you saw it on one of Glenn's slide, pro forma growth, which really is the more appropriate measure to measure organic because it gives us credit for the organic growth and the acquisitions we did was actually closer to 15% relative to the 12.9% as reported. So 15% organic pro forma growth as if we had owned all the businesses at the beginning of the initial period, I think, is really, really spectacular and something that we're very proud of.

Thanks for the colors. I mean these are standout numbers. And following up on the deal dynamics, being able to close LMB fans and motor being a French asset, I think it seems like a pretty incredible way to close that kind of deal, especially the French government ownership. When you're looking at the pool of available assets, how much more interest do you have in expanding out international capabilities? Is there more of a potentially like roll-up fragmented pool you can pull from in the European market? And how does your ability to close LMB give you confidence that maybe, hey, you've got another rich pool to pull from.

Yes. Excellent question. So look, as you guys know and you know particularly, Kristine, it's a global industry, aerospace, that is. And so I think over time, you will see us continuing to do more and more outside the borders of the U.S. specifically. That being said, the opportunity set remains huge, particularly for the size deals that we are looking to acquire. We have more opportunities than we'll ever get to. I've said that many, many times. And in Europe, in particular, now that we have 4 businesses over there, which really serve as a base of infrastructure and management talent and resources that we never had before, it exponentially increases our ability to build off those things to own more assets. So Europe, obviously, is a very big market. We're just getting started there. So whether it's Europe, the U.S. or elsewhere, I think you're going to continue to see us expand internationally and mirror the footprint of the overall industry.

Super helpful. And if I could sneak a third one in. We mostly focus on your commercial aerospace business, but defense has been also seeing significant increases. Dirkson, you talked about the potential $1.5 trillion. And look, in Europe, if they want to increase to 5% of GDP, you're seeing fairly large numbers across the board. What we've seen is that the concern about the ability of the supply chain and the industrial base to support this growth has been a priority. When you look at your role as a supplier in this environment with strong operational skills and you look at your margin and your ability to deliver to your customers, how do you see yourself in that ecosystem? What problems could you incrementally solve? And could you see outsized growth in your defense business versus what top lines are just from that vertical integration in the supply chain and your ability to be able to get product in the hands of your customer. So not to lead the witness, but -- and maybe I did a little bit, it would be helpful to understand how you think about that defense growth.

Yes. I mean, Kristine, this is Ian. We always view defense growth as lumpy, right? But I think that actually, given that fact, we have a very strong operational mindset that we can react when our customers need us to react. So I think that's positioned us well because you're right. I mean, across the global environment, everything is pointing to strong tailwinds in defense. And our team is ready to meet that need should it be there or when it's there. So I think we're well positioned to capture those things. And I think to Dirkson's point on that $600 million list of opportunities, right, defense opportunities are in there. And so we're focused on helping support our customers in the way they need it, and we welcome any new opportunities as they come.

Yes, if I can add. And by the way, Kristine, that's another really, really great question. Just want to piggyback a little bit on what where Ian was leaving you. So yes, we think that we could solve a lot of the supply chain, I'll use your terminology issues relative to the plethora of capabilities that we have, right, which is why we think about our toolkit. And I will tell you that we've had numerous conversations with customers that lead to opportunities that's not adding to that $600 million at this point. So I'll just give you an example. LMB, there are a number of opportunities where we could solve issues on this side of the pond that's not being solved overseas because of the lack of the customer synergies that LMB had existing by itself, right? So we'll be able to solve a lot more issues relative to supply chain because we can now introduce that capability to customers on this side of the pond. That's just one. There's a plethora of others. And so I wouldn't be surprised if -- I'm giving a little bit of guidance here, if that $600 million went up significantly by the time we get to the next quarter in terms of the opportunity set, driven by your question, there's going to be a number of defense opportunities that we can be helpful with adding those capabilities. So great question. And by the way, congratulations on the promotion I heard.

The next question is from Sheila Kahyaoglu of Jefferies.

I have 3 questions, if that's okay. So maybe I'll start on the acquisitions, Harper and LMB. I know you guys have given lots of color, and I appreciate it on LMB, what it does and Harper, too, given it's such a great supplier to Boeing. Maybe can you clarify the 100% proprietary products? How much of the process do you own the manufacturing, the IP at all? I've been asked a few times, and I think there's some misconceptions around the type of assets you guys buy and what proprietary means. And then as you think about the scope, I think LMB makes a lot of sense as you answered to Kristine on expanding it. How do you think about other markets Harper or other suppliers Harper could get into?

No. Another really good question. Let me start from your last, and I'll go through your initial question, okay. Let's start with Harper. 100% proprietary, 99.9%. Some of them are listening. So I'll be totally straight. 99.9% proprietary. And the way we think about proprietary, I'll use this terminology. I know there's lawyers listening, but we think of it as where you are the primary source, I'll use that terminology of the product that you supply. It's your design, 99.9% for Harper, their design, their name is on the drawing, you cannot go anywhere else to get that part than to go to Harper. So let's take that definition and expand it to the total portfolio of Loar because we get this question a lot. When we did our S-1 2 years ago, we said 85% of our portfolio was proprietary. I will tell you this today because we just recently did that math. 85% is now 89%. So it's all heading in the right direction. And the reason being is because that's where the growth is coming from, our proprietary products, and that's where we are investing our capacity, not just inorganically, but also organically. So that has grown tremendously. And the other place you can see it and check and you can check the box as to whether or not you have a business or a portfolio that's really proprietary is to look at margins. That's one of the reasons we don't talk about it a lot, but it's one of the reasons why our margins continuously goes up and to the right, right, because we're investing in the proprietary nature and products where we're solving issues for our customers using those proprietary products. So it is increasing tremendously. Now I'll go back to Harper. Harper is 1 of 4 companies, 4 out of thousands of suppliers to Boeing that has a collaborative agreement. Now what does that mean? That means they're joined at the hip. That means they're partners. That means if Boeing has an issue, they pick up the phone and they call Harper relative to capabilities that Harper has. Here's the beauty of what we've just done by adding them to the Loar platform. They now pick up the phone and call Harper. Harper calls the group and says, can you solve any of these problems? So we're just expanding that collaboration with Boeing to include all of the Loar business units. That's the way we think about it. So no, we're excited about LMB for the reasons I just answered Kristine's question on, but I'm super, super excited about Harper and the relationships and the synergies we're going to get from adding the company, its reputation, its capabilities and most importantly, the talented folks in that building to our team.

No, it makes a lot of sense. I'm going to ask another one. On these 2 deals, how do we think about the pathway to accretion on EPS? And how do we think about accretion on cash EPS?

Well, it's very simple, growth. And growth is a function of all the things that Dirkson just spoke about. So in every deal we do, as I think you know, and we've said many, many times, we look to see a path to doubling EBITDA at least in no more than 3 to 5 years. Quite frankly, in certain cases, and I'll use one that you all know since it was the first deal we did going public, Applied Avionics is well ahead of that schedule. We think for LMB and Harper and quite frankly, for any deal going forward, which we use debt financing for, which by definition, will make it dilutive to net income, we think most of these deals, but in particular, Harper, because you asked about it, will be accretive within a year. So in 2027, on a net income basis, we think Harper will be accretive. And that's a function of growing the earnings, growing the EBITDA and doing all the things that we do to add value for these businesses. Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. And then last one, the 34% commercial aftermarket growth was pretty stellar. Any way to parse that out?

Yes. Let me start with this. So I'm going to share a little bit of who I am. So my lucky number is 13. Everybody is going to go, why are you saying this? I'm saying that's one reason. I was born January 13, so 13 is my lucky number. The only time I don't like 13 is when I have to report earnings every 13 weeks. That's the only time I don't like 13. So there's good and bad to reporting 13 weeks at a time, right? The great news is we produce proprietary products in the aftermarket that's a high demand, right? We have customers who -- I'll give you an example, distributors, who want to be exclusive. And we 100% say no, right? But again, the demand exists. What we saw in the fourth quarter, tremendous demand for our parts, folks placing orders. I -- it actually, I would say, positively surprised me. Again, it's only 13 weeks, right? Because usually, at the end of the calendar year, most people are trying to manage inventory. In this case, we have customers who want to distribute our products, and we're just seeing more of it. Now going forward, as I said earlier, where we see growth and where we have really put our foot down on growth is our new business introduction. And I'll use 2 examples, the only 2 I ever use. Brakes, we got about a dozen programs that we're working on. Half of them are now certified. The other half, we hope to have done by the end of the year. That's why I'm excited about the second half of the year growth rate. I'll go back to Harper one last time. Harper makes the locking mechanisms that go in the cockpit door barrier for Boeing aircraft. Now you always hear us saying we're so sourced on Airbus. Nobody ever asks about Boeing. Boeing, yes, I did say so. Boeing, now having Harper as part of us, it gives us the opportunity in the aftermarket to really chase those parts, right, in terms of cockpit door barriers. So as we think about growth in 2026, commercial aftermarket will continue to be low double digits for the year, maybe a little choppy, but really, really strong given the strength in the fourth quarter that we've seen this year. So Sheila, if I can just say this because -- thanks for asking the question, we see no slowdown in demand for commercial aftermarket. And I think it's reflected in our numbers.

And I think it's reflected in our numbers.

The next question is from Ken Herbert of RBC Capital Markets.

As I think about -- just to follow up on that point, Dirkson, maybe as we think about, call it, low double-digit organic growth in your commercial markets in the guide for '26, can I interpret what you're saying that new business will be the largest contributor to that growth relative to volume and price?

Yes. Can I -- that's the right short answer. So let me just say something relative to that, right? Because we say this all the time, and it's probably a good time to really send this message across. Brett always says, I listen to him say it all the time, that we use price as just the filler...

Discretionary.

Right? It's discretionary. Could we increase price significantly? 100% every day of the week, all day long. That's what proprietary means going back to the previous question. We want to grow up. 5 years from now, we will be 3x the size, check, check, check that box. We want to grow up to be a company that people don't point at and go, you are gouging me, right? You are chasing price above everything else. We want to truly partner with our customers, right? And so yes, Ken, the answer to your question is yes. We are focused on new business, and that's going to be a big driver.

Yes. And just as it relates to price, again, with the caveat being that we want to drive margins only one way. So I think there is a slide in our investor deck that we put in the appendix that shows you over the last 5, 6, 7 years, margins have only gone one way. We will have our margins start with a 4 in front of it. I think everybody on the IPO roadshow had asked us, when are we going to reach 40% EBITDA margins? And of course, at the time, we can't give specific guidance in that regard. But here we are just 2 years later, and I can tell you unequivocally, margins are only going one way, and that's up.

Appreciate that, Brett. Maybe just -- yes, just to clarify one other point. The up 34% in the fourth quarter, I think Dirkson, was any part of that from like new distribution agreements or maybe any pull forward ahead of either price increases or inventory build in the channel? I just want to make sure there wasn't not anything unusual, but understand the dynamics of that 34%.

No, great question. The short answer again is no. No pull forward, no special distribution agreements. I will tell you that we have distributors that are fighting over their end customer and wanting to be good suppliers to them. And again, whether it's a kit that they're trying to put together and our parts are included or they want to be able to say, I can sell that part that no one else can, right? We are just seeing more demand, Ken. But no pull ahead, none of that.

Okay. Perfect. And just one final question. On the '26 guide, do you have any -- how would you frame the risk around the commercial aftermarket versus OE growth? And to what extent maybe have you sort of derisked the guide relative to what could be choppiness on the OE side versus what sounds like pretty consistent sort of aftermarket performance?

Great question. So let's start with OE. So on the OE side, what we've done, if you take Boeing to Airbus' build rates, depending on the product line that we're producing, we have discounted it anywhere from 10% to 20%. 10% is the low end, 20% is at the high end relative to the build rates that people are projecting. So could there be upside there? Absolutely. With regards to the aftermarket, yes, I do agree with you that we believe that, that's going to continuously grow significantly double digits. Again, the only problem I have is reporting every 13 weeks, right? Can we have a period of time where it's 14% and then the next quarter, it's 9.5% or whatever? Absolutely. But over the year and the long term, double-digit growth is what we see, Ken.

There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Dirkson Charles for closing comments.

Look, thanks, everyone, participating on today's call. I love it when we can share our story. We're super, super excited about our future. I'll say for the third time, maybe the fourth given what we've done over the last 14 years, we expect to continue to do the same, which means adjusted EBITDA goes from $1 today to $3 5 years from now. That's our focus, and that's how we want to build this business. And we want to build it in a very special way. We want to have great mates, living in a great environment, not being gougers to our customers, but growing the business consistently. We want to build this aerospace and defense cash compounder for a very, very long time. So look, with that, I have 2 things to say. One, happy birthday, Ellen. Thanks for participating on the call. You know where you are. And two, I look forward to talking to you guys in 13 weeks, even though it's 13 weeks. Thanks, guys.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference.