Lakeland Industries, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Lakeland Industries Fiscal 2025 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. During today's call, we will make statements relating to our goals and objectives for future operations, financial and business trends, business prospects, and management's expectations for future performance that constitute forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. Any such forward-looking statements reflect management expectations based upon currently available information and are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties that are more fully described in our SEC filings. Our actual results, performance, or achievements may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or developments after the date of this call. On this call, we will also discuss financial measures derived from our financial statements that are not determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, including adjusted EBITDA, excluding FX, and adjusted EBITDA excluding FX margin. A reconciliation of each of the non-GAAP measures discussed on this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is presented in our earnings release. At this time, I would like to introduce you to your host for this call, Lakeland Industries President, Chief Executive Officer, and Executive Chairman, Jim Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fiscal 2025 second quarter results, which ended on July 31, 2024. We appreciate your continued interest in Lakeland Industries. I always want to begin our calls by thanking our customers and distributor partners worldwide for trusting us with your lives and safety. Our customers are heroes, and we never take that trust for granted. Finally, I want to thank our Lakeland team, members across the company for their continued commitment and enthusiasm to as we further delivered on our strategic initiatives this quarter. Lakeland continued to experience significant growth and change during this quarter, and I appreciate the hard work from our dedicated team as we continue to execute our growth strategies. As previously announced, we closed on the LHD acquisition in early July. LHD is a leading provider of firefighter turnout gear, accessories, and personal protective equipment, cleaning, repair, and maintenance, with an annual revenue of approximately $27 million USD. This strategic move enhances our global fire services offerings and footprint and continues our small, strategic, and quick SSQ growth strategy. LAC Group increases Lakeland's ability to serve firefighters in Germany and Australia, two of the largest fire markets in the world, and the Hong Kong region with an expanded range of high-quality and rescue gear, as well as care and maintenance services. LAC's product range includes structural, wildland, and industrial fire and rescue gear, technical rescue equipment, and stationware, and it complements Lake Lakeland's existing fire service offerings. LAC Care provides a holistic approach to protecting clothing maintenance, including laundry services repairs, a software app for tracking the progress of those services, and sample production. As the global focus on firefighter health and safety increases, this offering further protects firefighters from environmental contaminants and helps ensure the longevity and effectiveness of firefighting gear while also introducing an attractive recurring revenue stream that Lakeland plans to leverage and expand. Along with our Pacific Helmets and Jolly acquisitions, LHD allows Lakeland to offer our head-to-toe fire offering to a larger geographic audience. As we have discussed previously, this acquisition reflects our commitment to executing and accelerating the pace of our SSQ M&A strategy. We still have an attractive and robust SSQ acquisitions pipeline, and we will continue to search for opportunities that further position Lakeland to execute our growth strategies and invest strategically to broaden and diversify Lakeland's range of products and markets. I trust everyone has had the opportunity to review the press release and Q2 earnings deck we published last evening. I encourage you to follow along in the earnings presentation as Roger and I review our results. Our earnings presentation gives me the opportunity to introduce Lakeland's fire and safety. This exciting new corporate and brand identity reflects our evolution as a company and reinforces our dedication to provide comprehensive, innovative solutions for the first responder and worker safety sectors. Lakeland Fire and Safety will integrate our existing portfolio of outstanding brands, including Eagle, Pacific, Jolly, and LHD, as well as any future acquisition creating a consolidated safety solution for fire customers. Reviewing our performance, it's clear that while we saw significant revenue growth overall, we encountered some challenges in the second quarter that impacted our results. Nonetheless, we believe that our earnings shortfall for the quarter was a matter of timing and integration, both with our new North American industrial products market representative and newly acquired companies, and we remain confident in our full-year projections. While we remain very optimistic about our relationship with our new North American industrial product market representative, Lion Drive, the transition during the quarter of coverage for certain large North American channel partner accounts resulted in some slippage in Q2 orders. LineDrive continues to build pipeline opportunities with national accounts, and we believe these sales will accelerate in the second half of the year. Additionally, delays in the shipment of fire orders from Jolly and Eagle affected our second quarter revenue. We expect these substantial orders to ship in the third and fourth quarters. Pacific Helmets had a solid sales quarter as we continue integrating their products into Lakeland's sales channels. I'm pleased to report that LAC Germany has resumed manufacturing, and we remain very optimistic about their growth opportunities. Turnout gear production at LHD's German entity had flowed to a trickle due to a lack of liquidity under the previous ownership, and a multi-year backlog was created as a result. Beginning with and even leading up to our acquisition, suppliers resumed LHD credit terms and discounts based on Lakeland's financial strength. We have added new production capacity and are focused on working down the significant backlog by the end of our fiscal year. LHD's Australian operations, including its service business, remain strong. And we remain optimistic that we can leverage and replicate their outstanding service and care model in other parts of the world. We also recently learned that LAC Hong Kong procured a renewal with the Hong Kong Fire Department with committed contract revenue increasing from $3.5 million to $5.3 million U.S. from September 24 to September 25. Looking at our organic business, we were again very encouraged by the growth in our Latin American operations with a 63% increase of sales year over year. LATAM now represents close to 20% of Lakeland's total sales, and they continue to grow. Our outstanding LATAM team is continually identifying and capitalizing on new market opportunities, and we expect further growth in that region. Our LATAM team is having tremendous success growing our woven products. We are working to expand our fire services offering in LATAM. We expect to introduce new industrial products from the Lakeland portfolio into that region going forward. We've also recently put our Mexican sales operation under our LATAM management team, and we are optimistic that they can replicate their success in that country. Even so, our Q2 sales in Mexico were up 58% year over year. We also saw double-digit sales growth year over year in Canada, Asia, India, and the rest of the world. We are very excited about the new sales leadership we have put in place in Asia, and we are encouraged by growth we are seeing both in China and the new Asian markets outside of China. While our US sales were affected by the sales coverage transition that I discussed earlier, our European sales also remain soft in the quarter. We are taking concrete and immediate steps to improve our industrial sales offerings, selling efforts, and customer service in Europe. We see very good sales opportunities in Europe, and we are committed to returning that region to a growth trajectory. From a product perspective, our fire service business continues to grow with a 34% increase year over year. This solid performance was driven by our recent acquisitions and the increased demand in this segment. Our industrials product lines grew 2.4 million, or 10% over the same period last year, led by our woven products, particularly in LATAM, as mentioned earlier. Disposable products declined 2% year over year, and chemical product sales were flat, due primarily to the line drive transition and weakness in Europe, partially offset by growth in Asia, Canada, Mexico, and our rest of world markets. Disposables represented 32% of revenue for the quarter, while fire grew to 31% and chemicals increased to 20%. The remainder of our industrial products, including FRAR high-performance and high-vis, accounted for 17% of sales. Our FRAR high-performance products declined 7% year over year, and high-vis declined 23%. Before turning the call over to Roger, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding work of our two new sales executives and welcome a new member of the executive team. Barry Phillips, our Chief Revenue Officer, and Cameron Stokes, VP of Global Industrial Sales, have now been in place for two months, and they're having an immediate impact across our organization. Barry brings a wealth of experience in the fire services industry, having led sales, marketing, and product development across leading manufacturing and distribution companies, as well as serving on regulatory and advisory boards. Cameron Stokes is a highly accomplished industrial sales professional, having worked for 12 years in industrial sales leadership roles at Ansell, as well as other leading organizations. Both bring a passion for engaging the end-user customer and a commitment to grow and excellence. I'm also pleased to welcome Laurel Yartz to Lakeland's executive team as our new Chief Human Resources Officer. Laurel brings over 30 years of experience in global human resources leadership, primarily in Fortune 500 and private equity companies. Her extensive background includes senior strategic roles leading cultural and business transformation. As our CHRO, Laurel will be responsible for enhancing Lakeland's people strategy and fostering a culture focused on growth, innovation, flawless execution, customer satisfaction, and continuous improvement. Her proven track record of aligning talent to the operational, commercial, and functional vision of the business in the spirit of developing teams and driving revenue growth will be crucial as Lakeland continues to execute on its global fire services and industrial safety growth strategies. So to summarize, after a strong start in Q1 of fiscal 2025, we saw a slowdown in our organic sales in Q2, which impacted our profitability. We remain confident in our growth strategy and expanding market opportunities in fire services and industrial safety products. Our commitment remains unwavering, and I'm excited about the remainder of this fiscal year. So with that, I'd like to pass it over to Roger to cover our financial results and provide an outlook for the rest of the year.

Thanks, Jim, and hello, everyone.

Looking at our second quarter of 2025, Lakeland delivered sales of $38.5 million compared to $33.1 million for the second quarter last year. Organic revenue comprised 85% of our total sales, And 15% of our Q2 revenue came from our recent acquisitions, including one month of sales from LHD Group. On a trailing 12-month basis, Lakeland's TTM revenue as of Q2 of fiscal 2025 is $137.7 million. This is an increase of $18.6 million, or 16%. versus the Q2 of fiscal 2024 TTM revenue total of $119.2 million. Year-over-year, organic sales decreased by $300,000 in Q2, impacted by slightly lower sales in the U.S. and ongoing weakness in European markets, offset by continued robust growth in Latin America, which increased 63% compared to the second fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2024. We were also encouraged to see double-digit growth in Canada, Mexico, Asia, India, and our rest of world markets. Lakeland's domestic sales were $12.4 million or 32% of total revenues and international sales were $26.1 million or 68% of total revenues. This compares with domestic sales of $15.2 million or 46% of the total and international sales of $17.8 million or 54% of the total in the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Regarding product mix for the second quarter, our fire services business grew by $3 million or 34% versus the same period last year as we start to see gains from our head-to-toe strategy. Our industrial product lines grew $2.4 million or 10% over the same period last year led by our woven products, particularly in Latin America. Disposables declined 2% year over year, and chemical products were flat due primarily to the line drive transition, as Jim discussed. We are seeing significant growth in the woven product category, driven by outstanding performances in Latin America. Disposables represented 32% of revenue for the quarter, while fire grew to 31%, and chemicals increased to 20% of our revenue. The remainder of our industrial products, including FRAR high performance and high-vis, accounted for the remaining 17% of sales. Reported gross profit was $15.2 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, an increase of $1 million, or 7%, compared to $14.2 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2024. I recorded gross profit as a percentage of net sales was 39.6% for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, compared to 42.9% for the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Gross profit was negatively affected by 3.8% from the integration of newly acquired companies, including a 0.9% impact from the amortization of acquired assets relating to the purchase accounting step-up of acquired inventory at Jolly and LHD, and by 3.4% due to the impact of profit in ending inventory, partially offset by higher organic gross profit, as we show in slide eight. While our operating expenses increased to $16.8 million for the quarter, $2.4 million of the increase was SG&A from our newly acquired companies, And $2.6 million of the increase was due to acquisition-related expenses, non-cash expenses including higher depreciation and amortization from purchase accounting for acquired companies, non-recurring expenses including restructuring, and Argentina-related FX expenses. The increase in organic SG&A operating expenses was due primarily to professional fees. Lakeland reported an operating loss of $1.6 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 compared to an operating profit of $3.7 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Operating margins were negative 4.1% for the second fiscal quarter, down from 11.3% for the second fiscal quarter of last year. The decrease in operating income is due to previously mentioned margin issues and the increases in operating expenses. Tax impact for the quarter was a benefit of $420,000 resulting in an effective tax rate of 23%. Lakeland reported a net loss of $1.4 million or 19 cents per basic and diluted share compared to net income of $2.5 million, or 33 cents per basic share and 32 cents per diluted share last year. Adjusted EBITDA, excluding FX for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, was $2.7 million, or an adjusted EBITDA excluding FX margin of 6.9%. This compares to $4.7 million, or a margin of 14.3%, for the second quarter of fiscal 2024. As shown on slide 8, the decrease in adjusted EBITDA, excluding FX, was driven by the previously mentioned profit in any inventory, higher manufacturing costs associated with the inventory bill, and increased SG&A. Adjusted EBITDA from our acquisitions were lower than our expectations due to slippages, but are expected to improve in the second half of the year. Also, as we explained in our earnings press release, the profit and ending inventory that affected our gross profit and gross margins in the quarter is expected to reverse and be a benefit in the second half of the year once that inventory is shipped. On a treading 12-month basis, Lakeland's TTM-adjusted EBITDA, excluding the impacts of FX as of Q2 of fiscal 2025, is $14.5 million. This is an increase of $1.3 million, or 10%, versus the Q2 FY24 TTM-adjusted EBITDA, excluding FX, which totaled $13.2 million. Now turning to the balance sheet. Lakeland ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $24.9 million and long-term debt was $29.5 million. This compares to $28.4 million in cash and $13 million in long-term debt as of April 30th, 2024. The decrease in cash was due primarily to debt repayments during the quarter and the net increase in our long-term debt was mainly related to the acquisition of LHD Group in July partially offset by repayments on our credit facility. At the end of Q2, inventory was $67.2 million, up from $56.1 million at the end of Q1 FY25, primarily due to LHD, Jolly, Eagle, and organic sales that are expected to shift in the second half of this current fiscal year. Year over year, we saw a reduction in our organic inventory of $5 million versus the quarter ended July 31, 2023. Capital expenditures for the three months ending July 31, 2024 were $600,000. We still expect FY25 capital expenditures to be in the range of $2 to $3 million as we develop additional in-house fire service manufacturing capacity, and replace existing equipment in the ordinary course of operations. The Monterey expansion, which we discussed last quarter, remains on pause as we continue to assess weather-related damage to our leased building. Looking ahead to the rest of fiscal 2025. Based on our existing backlog and our outlook for the remainder of the year, we are maintaining guidance for our 2025 fiscal year. Please note that these expectations include the announced Jolly Boots, Pacific Helmets, and LHD group acquisitions. We remain confident in our global sales platforms and earning ability for the second half of the year, and we are reaffirming expectations for fiscal year 2025 revenue in the range of $160 to $170 million. Additionally, we reaffirm our expectations for FY25 adjusted EBITDA excluding FX to be between $18 million and $21.5 million. With that overview, I would like to turn the call back over to Jim before we start taking questions.

Thank you, Roger. I'll conclude by saying that our strategy and focus has not changed. Prospects for both our industrial and fire businesses are bright. The value proposition between these two business models continues to be unique and resonates in the market. We continue to expect high single-digit organic growth, and the sales pipeline continues to strengthen. We expect impact of the timing of our sales will reflect stronger second-half sales and growth profit margins. We're making progress on our operational improvements and expect to see productivity improvements in the third quarter. Our operations team is also focused on productivity improvements in the short term in parallel to their longer-term multi-year effort across the organization. We still believe and expect significant margin leverage as operational initiatives progress and our period-ending inventory is sold off. We continue to work on improving the effectiveness and efficiency in our processes, databases, and systems as we look to eliminate redundancy and improve our analytics. Over the longer term, we expect to be even more competitive to take market share and improve our scalability, predictability, and profitability. In other words, we plan to drive a better business model. Acquisitions remain an integral part of our growth plan, and we expect to continue growing our M&A pipeline and methodically pursuing our SSQ M&A strategy. With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator?

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.

One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Jerry Sweeney with Roth Capital.

Good morning, afternoon, evening. Not sure where you guys are, but thanks for taking the call, Jim and Roger.

Hi, Jerry.

I want to start on the revenue side. Obviously, it sounds as though we'll just say core base revenues doing reasonably well, as you said, high single digits going forward. but it also sounds like some of this impact on the revenue miss came from the, I'll call it line drive friction as you sort of transition into that relationship. Is there any way you can sort of segment out how much revenue was impacted by the transition to some of the sales over the line drive?

I'm going to give that one to Roger.

Yeah, we, uh, Jerry, we did, uh, as we did the, uh, first quarter end review with line drive, go methodically account by account, looking, you know, so we know exactly, you know, which accounts were unchanged and which were affected. Obviously, I can't get into an account by account basis. Sure. But we did, you know, we did have the appropriate people on the call and looked at the individual ones and kind of know, you know, kind of know how that unfolded. I guess it's not surprising when you have that 33 or so large national accounts transition, and we had a team on our side that was now redeploying more toward end user engagement in the Black Drive regional and headquarters team start to take over, that there would be some friction in that, and that's certainly what we saw. As we look at... look at the USA sales, USA operations, we were down about $2.8 million year-over-year for Q2. So we think that is the bulk of it having to do with that transition, with that friction. Of course, there are other aspects. The timing of oil and gas turnaround is unpredictable. Sometimes it's a big headwind. Sometimes it can be a tailwind. But we are very bullish still on taking market share, on kind of further developing our value proposition in the U.S. market. Go ahead, Roger. Like I said, in our guidance, we do still expect that to pick up in the second half of the year.

Got it.

Sorry, go ahead, Jim.

Yeah, Jerry, look, we – As the relationship develops with Line Drive, we're starting to get more visibility to their pipeline approach and the way they work their pipeline. And our team's having weekly meetings with them. Roger and I and our sales leaders are having check-ins. I have a monthly call with the Line Drive CEO, and then we have a 90-day sort of look back. So we're kind of laser-focused at this point on ensuring that that that line drive relationship meets our expectations and they have every reason to want to meet them as well. I mean, they, they don't make money if they don't grow this thing. So, uh, I think we're all on the rowing in the same direction right now. And I think as Roger said, you know, maybe started off a little clunky, um, and maybe we should have expected that. But at the end of the day, we're very confident in, uh, in that relationship and where it's going.

Yeah. I mean, that's fair. I mean, I personally probably should have expected some lumpiness and transitions like that, especially with larger accounts. Right. Um, But, Jim, you kind of touched upon it on the pipeline. You know, as you look at the pipeline, their sales process, you know, you, I think it was, what, 33 accounts they took over, plus I think there may be some others. You know, what does that building pipeline look like versus maybe what you were doing in sales previously?

Well, there's a couple changes. Well, I don't want to get into the specifics of the pipeline because obviously pipeline management is something that, you know, can be a little nuanced, right? But I will say that the approach we're taking right now to our pipelines, both with LineDrive and within our sales organization, I believe is a robust process, one that was, you know, obviously different given the two sales professionals that we brought in and with attention to, you know, more interaction with end users, which, you know, when... When traditionally you're used to sort of channel partners giving you information, that information sometimes is not as accurate as it might be from a traditional sort of engagement with an end user. And we're starting to pivot to that. And the more we engage with our end users, the better we feel about the pipeline. And we're in the early stages of doing that. Obviously, Line Drive has visibility to some end users as well between their relationships with their own channel partners and our channel partners. and end users. It's a lot of art versus science in a lot of ways, but I will tell you that I'm feeling a lot more confident about how that pipeline is being generated as opposed to the way it was being done about six or nine months ago.

Okay, that's fair. Switching gears, this may go to Roger as well, gross margins. just want to understand there's probably a couple of different buckets here. We had some impact from integration. We had some, I think profits or inventory end of quarter profit, which I'm probably the least understanding. And then you, there's another bucket, which is probably the few where the raw future opportunities, but optimization, but just want to understand, you know, how gross margins maybe qualitatively, uh, rebound over the next couple of quarters. I mean, some of this sounds like, I'm not sure the purchase accounting kicks back in or the inventory side. And I just, I think it would be helpful for everyone just to understand on an apples to apples basis and what happened in the quarter as well as maybe what the rebound looks like.

Sure. I'd be happy to explain that. And you're right. It is, it gets into... You know a lot of the gap and accounting weeds that it is an important concept you to understand the profit and in the inventory because it it It affects us pretty much every quarter And it can be a benefit as we've seen in past quarters, and it can be a headman as we've seen in past course I'd like to first start off by you know mentioning that as we point out on slide eight of our presentation we actually got a four point four percent margin uplift and from our organic sales mix. And that's very promising to see. So we are continuing to make manufacturing efficiencies and improvements and being able to maintain price on organic. So really, we're looking at two things. The acquired company gross margin, including the purchase accounting. And I won't go off on my rant here, although it takes all I can to hold that back. The way purchase accounting works is when you acquire a company, and we're going to see a lot of this with our acquisitions, is you pay X amount for a company, and then we have to record that on our financials. And the process of how you record it is you kind of re-measure, you kind of re-value all the assets you've acquired up to market value. So you could theoretically have, CapEx equipment had been fully depreciated. It still has value. You kind of reestablish the value and start the depreciation clock over. Where this affected our gross margins in this quarter was that the acquired companies, and particularly Jolly, had raw material, sorry, had finished goods inventory at the time that we acquired them. So if you think about that, the finished goods inventory is written up to fair value. which is what we're going to sell it for, which means that we get zero margin when we sell that product. So what has to happen, and we always talk about needing one year to flush out the noise from purchases, but as that inventory turns, there is essentially no gross margin from it. And again, obviously I don't agree with that statement, That creates more visibility for the user and understanding that. I think it creates more confusion. We certainly had that. We have communicated, I think, pretty clearly that the acquired gross margins of these entities, particularly the ones that don't have their own manufacturing, are going to be lower because of that manufacturing profit. We expected some lower gross margin, but it was certainly impacted by purchase accounting and it was also um, affected by, you know, other things such as the summer shutdown. So, you know, we acquired LHD in July, which is the month that Europe goes on vacation. So, uh, so that, you know, that had some effect. Um, so that was, you know, that was 3.8 margin points of headwind and then the profit and in the inventory. I mean, I, you know, I look at this as a positive really. So that's 3.4 margin points. So if you take the 39.6 and add that 3.4 back to it, you're at 43 right there. The way that 3.4 happens is we've got – the company has really two sets of operations. We have sales entities and we have manufacturing entities. Manufacturing, when they produce product, there is margin built into that. When a manufacturing entity sells it to a sales entity, they have profit that they would recognize, but as a company in consolidation, we can't recognize it until it's sold to the customer. That gets hung up. The good news there is we talked about we built a good deal of inventory. Some of the sales have slipped, but we expect to ship that product in the second half, so that That 3.4 essentially reverses when that inventory is sold and then becomes a benefit. Again, I hope that's not too much detail, but I think it's important to understand that we have that. We have it about every quarter, not always this large because it was a large build, especially at Jolly and for Eagle that's going to have second half orders.

Got it. So that sort of gets to the point of my question. The gross margin is 3.96. The inventory, that happens every quarter, but there was this abnormally large one, so it certainly impacted the gross margin, along with we always get less gross profit dollars because revenues were down because of sales.

That's right.

But that makes sense. Last question. I know these are probably shorter questions but longer answers. The one thing that caught me, well, I don't know if I caught it off the record, but the $2.4 million in acquired, we'll say, SG&A or operating expenses from some of the acquired companies, is that permanent or is some of that going to be transitionary as you integrate some of these companies and how do we look at that?

Yeah, I think we're certainly...

you know, scrubbing that to work that down. So LHD, uh, we have, uh, we have identified, you know, we just, we've just had it a month or so we've identified, uh, you know, certain, uh, SG&A costs that, that we don't think are necessary. I think we, you know, we explained before when we value acquisitions, we don't really build in a big takeout or stripping of costs because more often than not, you know, we bring, um, We may need to add some sales or add some resources. But we see some things there. On the Jolly side, kind of same thing. Jolly has a new manufacturing entity that's relatively new that they had just kind of stood up before we acquired them in addition to the Italian operation. So we're looking for ways to make those more efficient. And then same thing with Pacific. A part of that SG&A was these integration marketing efforts. We've had these teams traveling all around the world to the Pacific people and Jolly people training our LATAM teams, training our U.S. teams, U.S. teams going to trade and sales shows in their markets. So we have seen an increase in selling expense as we work to get these integrated.

Yeah. I mean, Jerry, some of this is an investment in the people that we have some of it to Roger's point of some, we have some low hanging fruit we can fix, but I mean, I'm talking to you from Sydney, Australia. So, uh, my, my, uh, you know, the chief revenue officer is in, is in Argentina right now. So we're, you know, we're trying to, uh, we're growing this thing and there will be some expense associated with that. Um, but we are, I mean, Roger's got guys heading out to Romania shortly, uh, to sort of work, work, uh, work through those things as well. So, I would expect, you know, obviously sales fixes everything, but there are some expenses here that we're looking at to drive down.

No, that's fair. Listen, I'd rather have the infrastructure in place to drive sales than the others. The question was probably more just understanding the model and, you know, progression, et cetera. Sure. But totally understand. So I'll jump back in line. But thanks, guys.

Thanks, Terry. Safe travels. Thanks, Jerry. Thank you.

Your next question for today is from Matthew Galenko with Maxim Group.

Hi, Matt.

Hey, Matt. Hey, guys. Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Can you maybe talk about the pipeline with LHD, I guess the back line with LHD? Is it safe to assume you can convert that? Or is there attrition that you sort of expect to kind of get peeled off from competitors? Or, you know, how do you expect that to go?

So I guess what Roger and I and actually the entire executive team were surprised to learn was that this backlog issue is not necessarily unique to LHD, although obviously the business was not managed terribly well. And, you know, they got cut off from suppliers and that slowed things down. But the competitive environment in Germany is such that the delivery, there are delivery issues that our competitors are facing as well. So there's, I wanted to sort of, that's sort of one issue that we were all surprised about how, you know, it was not necessarily unique to us. You know, there are some, you know, we are looking hard at those backlog opportunities, and we want to make sure that, you know, we're not building something for something that somebody already decided to go walk away and do something else with. By and large, we're not finding that. So, what we're trying to do now and, you know, because we're getting better delivery terms and we're getting discounts on purchases, you know, where we're delivering cash, you know, we're addressing things like what's the margin look like when, you know, an order was made, you know, over a year ago when prices may have gone up. So, we have that delicate, tightwired sort of walk with our customers. But we're finding ways to capture that margin, as I said, in other ways by, you know, perhaps purchasing something, you know, COD and getting a discount as opposed to being on COD prior to our arrival on our balance sheet. So we're winnowing down that. We're aggressively going after it. You know, we are utilizing the gentleman that we acquired Eagle from, you know, turned out to be a very good talent pickup for us. And he's spending considerable time. with our friends at LHD to work that backlog down.

I hope that answers your question.

I would just add that of the LHD revenue that we mentioned in the call, Germany over the last year has only been about $8 million. The bulk of the stream currently is coming from Australia. We have the turnout gear as well as the services. So we see We see very significant upside in Germany because like we said, like Jim said, other competitors are having the same delivery lead time issues. So we're working to bring on additional capacity as well as in housing some capacity for the Asian markets into our China facility. So we think there's a lot of upside there. I've said before that if we just double the German, I'm going to be disappointed with that because I think there's significant upside in the country.

Got it. Terrific. And I guess on the subject of Europe, it sounds like you see opportunities in Europe that you aren't capturing now. What kind of levers can you pull to kind of go after that a little bit more effectively?

So I'll say that on the industrial end, which is where our legacy business in Europe is primarily that industrial business, we almost exclusively relied on our channel partners, on our distributors. And we actually have some very solid distributor relationships, particularly in the Benelux areas and one of our larger distributors in that market. recently merged with a French entity, and that has resulted, we believe, in some potential opportunity for us to expand our market share in Europe. So on the channel partner side, we've got one sort of real significant opportunity with a channel partner to drive that. The other is that our new industrial sales leader, Cameron Stokes, is really preaching you know, end user engagement and, um, you know, the entire executive team spent, uh, some considerable time about a week in Europe about a month ago in Poland with our European industrial sales team. And so the, the opportunities that we see are, it's sort of a different sales style, um, engaging with the end user along with our, our channel partner, uh, to sort of be the, the industry expert, um, when it comes to selling the, the industrial side of the, of the business. And, You know, it's going to take a little bit of time, I think, to do that. But, you know, I think we're starting to get the right people in place. We're certainly getting the right attitude. And then, of course, on the fire end, with Eagle and with LAC and Jolly, you know, there's obviously opportunities for growth in Europe there.

I'd add one additional thing that we're doing there, and this is going on as we speak, is, you know, we've – we're addressing both some customer service delivery time challenges as well as cost challenges. So kind of led by our operations group, we are revamping how we do warehousing, logistics, and distribution to kind of significantly cut down on delivery time. And in the sales team, like Jim said, what we want to do is kind of translate the process approach and model that we have in LATAM into Europe. And I know our sales folks are working hard to get that message across, and not just a message, but the training, the approach, and then having the right products that we can deliver quickly, you know, to get to the customer. So, you know, like we said, I think there is opportunity, particularly with Kimberly Clark selling their PPE business to Ansel. I think that creates some displacement. We're getting that feedback already from our sales team, so we're going to work that hard, as well as make it very easy to work with Lakeland, both in terms of delivery, lead times, product availability, and customer service. Got it.

Thanks. I guess my final question is around... The opportunity to take the service maintenance business from LHD and kind of expand the concept into North America or elsewhere. I think you touched on it in the prepared remarks, but I'm curious now that you've had the business for a few weeks, what do you expect to do it organically or inorganically? And kind of what do you expect from that extension opportunity through the back half of the year?

So, Matt, I'm actually in Sydney. I'm at the largest trade show in Australia, the fire trade show in Australia, AFAC, and I spent considerable time with our friends at LHD. I got a tour of the Sydney facility, and it is impressive. And, you know, I was so excited about it. I was sending, you know, videos to Roger and the team. This is scalable technology. You know, I spent some time with my chief revenue officer who had some experience on this in his prior life. This is something that we would look at both organic and inorganic opportunities. You know, I know for a fact that our friends in Latin America, they're trying to do this, and we've already put them in touch with the LHC folks, and I would expect, you know, a dialogue there in the short term. I don't think, you know, these are not, you know, you don't just add water and poof, it happens, right? It's going to take a little bit of time. But it clearly is on our radar. And it is a, you know, for me, I view this as a significant opportunity in a space that's going to grow by virtue of the fact that that is the way that fire is trending these days and that we have to decontaminate these suits so these guys are not inhaling, guys and gals not inhaling carcinogens on a on a regular basis. And the easiest way to do that is the consistent cleaning of the garment. And so you're going to see that in all of the markets all over the world. And it's still very early in the game on that. And we believe we've got an edge in some pretty interesting markets.

Thank you. We might also want to touch on the software, because the software that LHD Australia has, which we also believe is scalable and deployable, We knew about the services, but this was a really pleasant surprise as you dug into it.

Yeah, I mean, that's another opportunity to monetize, and it's one that I think is probably a little bit longer term, 12 to 18 months before we get our arms fully around that. But right now, it is a total differentiator for LHD within the Australian market, and we want to be able to roll that out in other markets. Got it.

Just a quick follow-up on that. You know, you mentioned more early innings on that, I guess, globally, but can you maybe touch on just, you know, what proportion of the fire equipment TAM is currently kind of entering those sorts of contracts? You know, your best guess of kind of what the penetration of that opportunity is today.

I couldn't, I look, you know, there's, there's, Millions of suits all over the world that got to get cleaned. Each firefighter generally within those markets has two sets of those suits. So I am not in a position at this point, Matt, to give you an actual number, but it is significant. And we've really only got our baby toe in the water right now. And, you know, I, you know, obviously we're going to do this smartly and methodically, but we'll do it with urgency. And I would expect that we would be wading into the water here over the course of the next 12 months in other markets.

Thanks.

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Thank you, operator. Thank you all for joining us on today's call. We appreciate your continued interest in Lakeland. We look forward to building on the strong momentum Lakeland has and sharing our successes with you in fiscal 2025. Have a great day.

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