Star Equity Holdings, Inc. (STRR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Star Equity Holdings' second quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised that the discussions on today's call may include forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to Star Equity's most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and other findings to refer to for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please also note that on this call, management will reference non-GAAP financial measures including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted earnings per share, which are all financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. If you did not receive a copy of the earnings release and would like one after the call, please contact Star Equity at 203-489-9500 or its Investor Relations Representative, Lena Cady of the Equity Group at 212-836-9611. Also, this call is being broadcast live over the Internet and may be accessed at Star Equity's website via www.starequity.com. Shortly after the call, this call is being recorded for a replay that will be available on the company's website. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jeff Eberwine, Chief Executive Officer of Star Equity. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everyone. We greatly appreciate your interest in Star Equity Holdings, and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin by reviewing some highlights from our second quarter results at the holding company level. After that, Jake Zabkiewicz, CEO of Hudson Talent Solutions, will give us an update on the performance of that business, which is inside our business services division. Rick Coleman, our COO, will provide some insights into the performance of our building solutions and energy services divisions. And I'll discuss some of the key points in the merger with Hart Hanks that we announced this morning. One item I'd like to point out just to get started is slide five from our earnings deck where you can see the progress we've made on the cost synergies. You may recall that a year ago when we announced the merger with Hudson, we projected approximately 2 million of merger synergies, and we believe we've achieved approximately 3 million of merger synergies at this point in time. And we measure that from the adjusted EBITDA table, which you can find on pages 10 and 12 of our earnings release, in that table, you'll see that for the first half of the year, our Corporate costs, if you look at the corporate column, were $3.6 million. That's down from $5.1 million on a pro forma basis. So that's savings year over year of $1.5 million for six months, and that's how we get to the $3 million merger synergy number. When we look at the division results for Q2, business services had modest revenue growth. Gross profit was down slightly year-over-year, reflecting some pressure in the professional talent market. We did have growth investments of $1.5 million, and just a reminder that rolls through our income statement, so that shows up as an expense and the benefit will come in future periods. Our building solutions division had results below our expectations. That's due to market softness and the timing of some contracts when the project started, and in particular when the revenue gets recognized. We'll come back to this issue, but we had a large project that was mainly completed in Q2, but most of the revenue for that project will be recognized in Q3. Energy Services posted very strong year-over-year gains in revenue, gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA, and that's due to higher utilization of our tools and some new client wins in the geothermal and mining industries. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the second quarter with $8.9 million in cash. That does include $2.1 million of restricted cash. And our working capital, excluding cash, was $21.5 million, which compares to $22.4 million at the end of the year. So we've made a little bit of progress on more efficient cash. capital management. We have continued to repurchase shares. We repurchased about 0.2 million in Q2 and we have 1.6 million remaining on our authorization of 3 million which the board approved last September. We continue to believe our stock is undervalued and we view share repurchases as a very attractive allocation of capital. Across the company, we remain focused on disciplined execution, cost management, and we are continuing to invest in growth initiatives that we believe will enhance our competitive position and drive improved financial performance over time. Now I'd like to turn it over to Jake to discuss our business services division.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning. As Jeff mentioned, our business services division delivered solid performance in the second quarter, with revenue up modestly year over year despite continued macroeconomic uncertainty and sustained pressure in the professional talent market. As Shown on slide 11, second quarter, 2026 business services revenue was 36.4 million, up 2% from 35.5 million in the prior year quarter. Our gross profit was 17.8 million, down 4% from 18.6 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA for the division was $1.6 million compared to $2.2 million in the prior year quarter. That decline largely reflects deliberate growth investments in the second quarter, as we invested $1.5 million within our digital solution, Hudson Fusion. And so, we're going to look at the growth in the second quarter. entering into new geographies and also related initiatives, compared to $0.8 million in the second quarter of 2025. Regionally, as shown in slide 13, the Americas performed well with gross profit growth of approximately 10%, while the EMEA and the Asia-Pac regions' gross profit declined 10% and 13% respectively, reflecting more challenging conditions in those markets. Asia Pacific remains our largest region at 62% of the divisional revenue and 43% of the gross profit in the quarter, with the Americas contributing 39% of the gross profit and EMEA at 18%. We have maintained a strong focus on innovation and operational efficiencies, including the expanded development of our agentic AI and automation tools to enhance recruiter productivity, improve our candidate matching, and deliver greater value to our clients. These initiatives help limit the year-over-year gross profit decline to less than 5% despite mixed regional backdrop. folks on technology and able delivery and deep client relationships position us to capitalize on the improving market conditions over time. Turning to slide 12, on a rolling fourth quarter basis, RPO new business total contract value was $122.5 million, comprised of $8.3 million in new logo wins and $114.2 million in renewals and expansions with our existing clients. The trailing 12-month gross profit of $72 million has been relatively stable over the past four quarters, while our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.4% down from 7.9% a year ago, again, reflecting the growth investments I mentioned earlier. Importantly, we've seen an uptick in new customer conversations and robust new local interest in recent months, supported by enhancements in our geographical footprint and digital offerings. We continue to execute on our land and expand playbooks, including leveraging our recent acquisition with ACG in the Japanese market. Looking ahead, we continue to take a disciplined approach and execute our playbook for the remainder of the year with a focus on creating a more resilient, agile, and growth-oriented business over the longer term. Now I'll turn the call over to Rick, who will discuss the financial and operational performance of our building solutions and our energy services division.

Thank you, Jake, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with an overview of our Building Solutions Division highlighted on slide nine. As Jeff mentioned earlier, second quarter performance was below our expectations as both residential and commercial construction markets remain challenging. Our results were further impacted by project timing and revenue recognition as one large project that was largely constructed in the second quarter will be completed and recognized in the third quarter. Second quarter building solutions revenue was $14.6 million, gross profit was $3.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA was a half a million. On On a pro forma basis for the second quarter of 2025, building solutions revenue was 20.4 million, gross profit was 5.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA was 2.3 million. As shown on slide 10, quarter end backlog for building solutions was 10.6 million, up from 8 million at the end of the first quarter. And our trailing 12-month book-to-bill ratio was 0.77, up from 0.72 last quarter. orders in the quarter were 17.3 million, our highest quarterly order intake since the second quarter of 2025. While these metrics still reflect market softness, we continued to add attractive work to the backlog, including the previously announced $4.2 million multifamily housing project in New Hampshire, serving the senior community. We've also gained traction in the workforce, affordable and assisted living, and senior housing markets and expect these sectors to be significant business drivers as market conditions improve. Consistent with the strategy we've outlined previously, we remain focused on disciplined project selection, operational execution, and margin management, which we believe will position the business for stronger performance as market conditions improve. Turning to slide 14, the Energy Services Division delivered another strong quarter, continuing the momentum we highlighted earlier this year. Second quarter 2026 energy services revenue was $3.9 million, up 19%. Gross profit was $1.9 million, up 75%. And adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 million, up 126%. On a pro forma basis, second quarter 2025 energy services revenue was $3.3 million. Gross profit was $1.1 million, and adjusted EBITDA was a half a million. The business continues to gain share in core markets with especially strong performance in mining and geothermal applications. These results reflect disciplined execution and the benefits of our diversified exposure across drilling applications, which continues to differentiate the platform and support consistent growth. We continue to invest in new tools to support this growth while working closely with our largest customers to align our investment decisions with their specific needs. We see significant opportunities to continue expanding our presence and capabilities in the geographies and markets we serve. I'll turn the call back over to Jeff now for closing remarks. Thank you, Rick.

I'd like to transition now and talk a little bit about the merger with Hart-Hanks that we announced this morning. Last night, late last night, we signed a merger agreement to merge with Hart Hanks. The acquisition will be for $5 per share. And on a fully diluted share count, that implies that the acquisition will be about $30. million and we will pay for this acquisition half in cash half in preferred stock so one way to think about it is out of the $5 in consideration two $250 of that will be in cash and $250 of it will be in Star's preferred stock, so 0.25 shares of our preferred for every one share of Hart Hanks. In terms of where will the cash come from, I would point you to the cash we have on our balance sheet, the cash that Hart Hanks has on his balance sheet, and importantly, Hart Hanks has a $25 million revolver in place with a well-known... financial institution that we also have a relationship with and those three sources will be how we fund this acquisition. So we don't believe we'll need to raise any external capital in order to close this deal. Also importantly and keep in mind. keeping with our thought that our stock is undervalued, we're not using any common shares as part of this transaction, and our plan is to continue buying back shares. Going back to how the merger is structured, the Hart Hanks shareholders will have a right of election, so those shareholders who choose to get all preferred stock can make that election shareholders who choose to get all cash, they would get $5 in cash. That is subject to proration. It has a cap where 50% of the consideration is cash, and that's capped at $19.2 million. So that's a maximum cash outlay. But the preferred is uncapped. So in other In other words, if say 60% of the shareholders wanted to get preferred stock, they would get preferred stock and the cash percentage of the total would go down to 40%. any questions on that, feel free to give us a call. So both boards have approved this transaction. It does include a 30-day go-shop period where Hart Hanks is allowed to... receive any other offers that might be out there. After that period ends, we'll file an S-4 and that's got to be approved by the SEC and then after that's approved, we will start soliciting votes from Hart Hanks' shareholders. We don't need any vote from the star side. So no vote is required by our common shareholders and no vote is required by our preferred stockholders. So those are the hurdles that we need to get to in order to get to a closed deal. Our best guess is that the deal is going to close in the fourth quarter. sometime. So the way we're thinking about it is by year-end we think we'll have a closed deal. And it would be great if it was earlier than that. It's possible it could be later than that, but our best guess is before the end of the year. And then when we think about the company on a combined basis, Hart Hanks' businesses are all in the category of business process outsourcing. Our business services division, which holds our Hudson business, is is also in a way business process outsourcing. Our business is focused on the talent and HR segments, while theirs is focused on customer care, revenue solutions, and fulfillment logistics. Importantly, we both serve Fortune 500 And so we think this business makes a lot of sense inside of STAR. There's definitely cost synergies that we believe we'll realize we're – estimating initially that we will be able to get to 10 million of cost savings. And so combining these two companies, we think revenue will be around $400 million. And the adjusted EBITDA, this is a pro forma number, including $10 million of cost energies, we think that'll be approximately $30 million once those costs increase. synergies are achieved. And so we're very excited about it. We think this is accretive on any metric, accretive to our shareholders, and we look forward to getting to a closed deal and being one company. So with that, operator, why don't we open it up for questions?.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question today is from Joe Gomez with Noble Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. Of course. Jeff, I want to start off, you talked about the business solutions. It was kind of a disappointing quarter. It was below your expectations. What were your expectations for that business for the quarter in terms of revenue and, you know, jessity-ba-dah?.

Yes, what I would point you to, Joe, is slide 12 of our earnings deck. We've done a very good job maintaining what we have. So we had quite a few significant contracts that have come up for renewal in the last 12 months. So we've done a good job getting those contracts renewed and in some cases expanded. What has been disappointing, you know, way below our expectations is the new logo side. So if we look at, let's just take a year to date, you know, new logo, you know, 2.1 million, that's annual contract value. Our expectation for the the year is much, much higher than that. And our expectation for the first half is higher than that. I guess the best thing we could say about that is it's not like there's a lot of new business to win and we're losing it to competitors. It's really just a symptom of continuing to be in the low hire, low fire, and I would even add low attrition environment. And we're particularly seeing that in professional oriented companies, white collar type of companies. They're very slow to make decisions. There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty out there with everything going on in the world. And then add on top of that, That is the number one thing our clients want to talk about is how is AI going to change our business? How is it going to change our talent management? How is it going to change our talent acquisition? And it's just creating an environment where they're very frozen environments. There's still new business to win out there. It just keeps getting pushed to the right. And then when we do win something and it starts, it typically starts much slower than it otherwise would.

Okay. Actually, Jeff, my question is on building solutions, not the business service. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were talking about business service. I appreciate the insight into that also. Yes.

Yes, on building solutions, if you look at our backlog slide, this is on slide 10, we really want to see new orders of $20 million a quarter. and we want to see revenue of 20 million a quarter, that's what we view to be a normal run rate, a mid-cycle run rate, if you will. We have lower than normal capacity utilization at our factories. Probably the best thing we could say there is that new orders of 17 million in Q2 were the highest number, highest quarterly number we've seen in a year. Okay. orders where the new order, new orders were below 20 million, they continue to be below 20 million. So our backlog is low. And I would just describe, just zooming out a minute, I would describe the environment And real estate, construction are very local markets. We're in two markets, as you know, the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. And we're in two markets, as you know, the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. Those markets in general are lower growth than some other parts of the country. also have there's less competition there people aren't itching to enter those as markets but Single family is weak. There's a lot of press about that. Commercial multifamily, I would say, is very weak. And where we have traction is in more of the specialty areas, like anything to do with workforce housing, affordable housing. There's some healthcare and education-oriented. housing, and then assisted living senior housing. You know, there are projects to win. And when I look at what we've won year to date, the biggest project was a senior living project in New Hampshire. And then the projects in our backlog, you know, it's not with the traditional housing. commercial builders of multifamily and single-family a lot of things in our backlog are in that theme of affordable housing workforce housing senior housing. So it's just a weak environment. We're managing through it. But when you ask, you know, what do we view a normal run rate to be? I would say it's 20 million in revenue a quarter, 25% gross profit margin. And over time, we think an adjusted EBITDA margin should be 10 to 15%. So that implies 8 to 12 million of EBITDA per year. for a year, which is, you know, two plus per quarter. And we've been running below that.

Okay, thanks for that. Then one more for me, if I may. So congrats on the announcement of the acquisition of Hart-Hanks. But two things on that. If I took a quick look at Hart-Hanks and I see they've been shedding revenue over the past five years and Justin V. Bata they've been shedding. I think it's six million trailing 12 months roughly adjusted EBITDA. and if I take your equity value and add in their debt, it's about 10 times multiple there. I guess the big point is how do you see yourself bending that curve that's been going on for a while at Hart Hanks where they've been shedding revenue and adjusting EBITDA, number one. And number two, what does this impact impact, if anything at all, the G group investment that you had made, an offer you had made for.

Yes, a lot of questions in there, Joe. So when we look at Hart-Hanks, we strongly think that So the investment community should look at things on an apples to apples basis. So when we look at their balance sheet, we don't see any debt. look at the Q1, for example, they had four to five million of cash, I believe, nothing drawn on their revolver. Yes, there's some leases, and yes, there's some pension, but that EBITDA number you cited is after lease expense and after pension expense. And that's the way we look at it. So if you're looking at an EBITDA number that's after lease, after pension, I think you should take leases and pension out of the liability stack. And when you look at it that way, you take the EBITDA number, you cite it, add $10 million to it. I think you're getting into the mid-teens in terms of the pro forma EBITDA and we're buying it for less. less than 40 million. We think that's a pretty attractive multiple that's less than three times EV to EBITDA on our math. Your question The first part of your question is the most important question. What will we do with this business once it's inside of STAR? And any acquisition... in our opinion, this is true for any acquisition. You have to buy it right. If you overpay, that's something that lives with you forever. So we have a lot of value discipline around that. We think we're getting Hart Hanks for an attractive multiple. But it only makes sense if we're able to do something with it after it's inside STAR. And initially, focusing on the cost energies is going to be the main focus. But we do have aspirations to... invest in it and grow it. And we see them making some progress on, On that topic, Joe, I would kind of point you to their announcement in October where they put out news talking about winning Samsung, you know, great logo. That's a company they used to do business with that they won back. That's a significant new business. that is ramping up. And so... Our goal will be to stem those declines, stabilize it, and ultimately grow it. And then with respect to G Group, I would just say stay tuned on that. We did make them a proposal. They've hired an investment banking firm to explore strategic alternatives, and that process is underway. And when there's something to announce, there'll be something to announce.

Okay. I appreciate the insight, Vince. Yes. Okay.

I'll be back in queue. Thanks. Thanks, Joe. Next question, please. The next question is from Theodore O'Neil with Litchfield Hills Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks very much. I was the I'm struck by how well energy services is doing and Rick, I wonder if you could talk about, you know, it's up year over year, but it's also up sequentially. Can you give us some more detail on what's going on there? Go ahead, Rick, and I may add to it after you're done.