UFP Technologies, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the USPT second quarter 2026 earnings call and webcast conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ron Lataille, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us on our 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call is our President and CEO, Mitch Rock. Today, we will make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 the accuracy of which is subject to risks and uncertainties. Wherever possible, we will try to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast, and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements are based on our estimates and assumptions as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our estimates or views on any subsequent date. Please refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information and the risk factors in our most recent 10 and 10 , including disclosure of the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which include organic sales growth, adjusted operating income, adjusted SG&A, adjusted EPS, and adjusted EBITDA. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures discussed in this call is contained in the associated press release and is available in the investor relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Mitch.

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. Before discussing the quarter, I want to briefly acknowledge my first earnings call as President and Chief Executive Officer of UFP Technologies. Having spent many years helping build the company and the platform we operate today, I view this transition as a continuation of the strategy that has driven our success. Our priorities remain unchanged, supporting our customers, investing in our team and capabilities, pursuing disciplined acquisitions, and creating long-term value for shareholders. Our second quarter and first half results reflect solid execution across the platform and continued progress towards our long-term growth strategy. During the second quarter, sales increased 15.1% to $174 million. Gross margins increased to 29.3%. and operating income grew 15.5%. We also delivered adjusted earnings per share growth of 16.8% to a company record of $2.92. These results were driven by contributions across the UFP platform and demonstrate the strength and diversity of our MedTech business. Growth remained broad-based throughout the portfolio with our top five customers growing 14.7%, while the balance of our MedTech business grew 19.7%. One of the most important aspects of the quarter is that growth was not dependent on any single customer, product category, or end market. Rather, performance was driven by a diverse set of customer programs, the breadth of our businesses, and the continued execution of our teams across the organization. We continue to invest in the Dominican Republic to support customer driven growth initiatives, expand capacity and enhance our cost structure over time. These investments are generating early operational benefits and strengthening our ability to support future growth. While the full realization of those benefits is taking longer than originally anticipated, we remain confident in the long-term value of these investments and the opportunities they create for our customers and our business. We also continue to strengthen our organization during the quarter. Recent additions in business development, operations, and legal increased our leadership capacity and support our next phase of growth. As we grow with existing customers, launch new programs and evaluate acquisition opportunities, we believe investing in organizational capacity is just as important as investing in facilities and equipment. These investments also position us to onboard additional companies into our decentralized operating model as we continue to expand the platform. Our acquisition strategy remains unchanged and our pipeline of opportunities is robust. We continue to evaluate businesses that can expand our capabilities and strengthen our position in attractive medtech markets. As always, we remain disciplined in our evaluation approach and committed to deploying capital in ways that create long-term shareholder value. Looking ahead, We continue to see meaningful opportunities to grow with existing customers, support new program launches, pursue discipline on acquisitions, and invest in our people and capabilities. We believe the combination of our customer relationships, manufacturing footprint, robust acquisition pipeline, and strengthened leadership team position us well for continued growth. The markets we serve remain attractive, our customer relationships remain strong, and we remain focused on discipline execution and long-term value creation for our customers and shareholders. Most importantly, I want to thank our team members around the world for the continued dedication to our customers and each other, their commitment, expertise, and execution remain the foundation of UOP's success as we enter the next chapter of the company's growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ron to review our financial results in greater detail.

Thank you, Mitch. Before reviewing operating results, I'd like to give a brief update on the impact of the conflict in Iran on our raw material input costs. Given that a portion of our raw material input costs is petroleum-based, We continue to face inflationary price increases due to the impact on oil prices from the conflict in Iran. As was true at the end of Q1, it is difficult to estimate the ultimate impact as the news changes daily and therefore the price of oil has been volatile. It remains our expectation that we will pass through these increases to the market in kind. Moving to operations, as Mitch mentioned, overall sales for the second quarter were up 15.1% fueled by strength across our platform, more specifically within the surfaces and support, cardiovascular, infection control, and orthopedics submarkets. Organic sales growth for the quarter was strong at 12.4% as our launch programs accelerate and we continue to build capacity at AJR. With regard to customer concentration, sales to our top five customers comprise 61% of our overall year-to-date sales, but are diversified into a broad range of programs consisting of hundreds of SKUs, each subject to validation and qualification requirements. Gross profit as a percentage of sales or gross margin increased to 29.3% from 28.8% last year. This improvement was despite continued margin pressure at AJR as programs scheduled to be transferred to the DR continued to be contingent on customer qualification. SG&A expenses for our second quarter of 2026 increased by $4.1 million to $22.8 million. This is largely due to approximately $1.9 million in wages and benefits for back office investments made at various times to support our larger organization. The increase also reflects growth of our senior management team, as well as approximately $1 million in additional non-cash equity compensation caused partially by CEO transition costs. Adjusted operating margin for the second quarter was 17.6% of sales, and adjusted earnings per share outstanding was $2.92, up significantly from last year. We generated approximately $15.6 million in cash from operations during our second quarter. Capital expenditures were $1.2 million during our second quarter, and we ended with a leverage ratio of under one time. With that, I now turn it back to the operator for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you were using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. First question comes from Brett Fishpin with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Ron. Good morning, Mitch. Thanks so much for taking the questions. It's a really strong quarter, especially on the revenue growth front. I was hoping you could just unpack a little bit more some of the strength that you saw. I know you called out surfaces and cardio infection control and orthopedics as a few areas that did really well, but maybe just if you could just dive a little bit deeper into some of the trends that you saw this quarter and what got better.

Good morning, Brett. Thanks for the question. So we continue to see growth across several of the core markets, including cardiovascular, infection prevention, patient handling, orthopedics. We specifically called out that the robotic surgical market would be flattened down this year, and that was true.

All right, maybe just following up on services and support. I know there's been a little bit of a conversation about a backlog with AJR. and you guys have been ramping capacity and activities in that area. Maybe if you could just expand a little bit on if you saw any benefit specifically from the backlog or if there was anything else in services and support that made it a strong end market this quarter.

We've moved through the backlog. The discussion with regard to what's going on with our customer's business where we won't address What we can say is that business continues to grow significantly, and so we continue to see opportunity as we move forward.

All right, and then maybe just one more on the revenue front. I think, like, in past quarters, you guys have talked about, you know, four or so new programs that were expected to start ramping this year. So I was curious how, like, those new programs have progressed and how you're thinking about the contribution at this point for 2026.

Good question. I know we've discussed these new programs in prior quarters. What I would say is that the new program activity contributed to the quarter as expected. However, I would not characterize the quarter as being driven primarily by launches. Most of the growth came from existing customer relationships, existing product families, and the continued expansion of The broad base of customer applications we have across the portfolio.

And Brett, it's Ron. To elaborate and clarify, it's really only three programs. The fourth program that we referred to in previous calls is an internal transfer. So it's not net new. There's three actual net new programs that are being transferred into us from outside.

All right, great. Thanks so much, Ron. Appreciate the answers.

The next question comes from Justin, aged with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, morning all. Morning, Justin. Morning, Justin. You know, it seems like the investments that you're making are paying off even in the short term with the growth that we're seeing. Can you give us an indication whether we're at a new, you know, normal level for SG&A going forward?

I'll tackle that one, Justin. The answer is yes, we have made investments. I think that there's ultimately a little cushion in there because there's temporary costs that will cycle through due to the CEO transition from Jeff to Mitch. So we'll get some relief in midway through 2027. But the current level is approximately where we should be going forward.

Thank you. And then, you know, you mentioned leverage and being disciplined in your approach. Can you give us an indication of the pipeline? You know, how many are you looking at in what, you know, platform services and support infection control or any, you know, indication there?

What I can say is we are looking at anywhere from five to 10 opportunities that range from five to 30 million of EBITDA. As stated, the pipeline's robust, so we're excited about it.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you for taking the questions.

The next question comes from Andrew Cooper with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for the question. Maybe just a double click on the AJR frameworks. I guess as a takeaway here, you commented that you've resolved the backlog. So is it safe to assume that the labor issues feel pretty fully resolved at this point? And then I think the last backlog number we had gotten was around 8 million and that it had grown a little bit from there. So Is there any normalization we need to think about from these two Q levels back towards a rate that's maybe closer to end market pull through versus that backlog work down?

So, Andrew, what I would say about that is go back to Q2 of 25. So that's a low point, right, as far as a comp goes. We are through the backlog. So we would no longer talk about the backlog We are through the labor issue, so we are fully ramped in St. Charles, and the platform continues to grow. Our only challenge is that we continue to have activity in St. Charles that we plan to put in the DR.

Okay, helpful. And maybe just a little bit more flavor for, you know, it sounds like the customer is, you know, controlling the timeline there, but, you know, what percentage of product you expect to transfer to the DR is transferred at this point? And of the remaining sort of phases, you know, how many are waiting on that sign-off from the customer versus needing more work to be done before you're able to move those down to the Dominican Republic?

Good question. So the original thesis, when we go back a little over a year ago, we have three programs that transfer to the DR. Two of them have transferred, and a third one is still in process. And that is played.

Okay. I will stop there. Thank you.

The next question comes from Max McAllis with Lake Street. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the great quarter. Just one from me. When we talk about sort of outside the top five MedTech customers growing 20%, can you kind of go into a little bit more detail on sort of those new programs ramping? And can you remind me, are one of those The two new robotics programs you guys announced last November. Just kind of give us a little bit more detail on how that's kind of tracking in 2026 and where you expect that to kind of go in 2027.

Okay, Max, good morning. Two parts to the question. The broad growth across the platform really demonstrates the durability and diversity of UFP's exposure to multiple products in multiple markets. Outside of our top customers, we grew close to 20% in the MedTech space. So that addresses that question. As relates to The two programs that are in the robotic assisted surgical space, those are all, they have launched, they're ramping, and we expect to see more meaningful contribution as we move into 27.

Okay. I mean, I can't remember if you did the last time when you guys talked about those programs, but did you give any sort of expected contribution or revenue outlook in 2026?

So as we move into 27, it's an eight-figure contribution and growing.

Okay.

Thank you.

There's a follow-up question from Brett Fishbin. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Just had one more quick one to kind of tie this together. Just thinking about the rest of the year, UFPT usually talks about 6% to 9% organic growth as kind of the long-term target. So just given the higher trend in 2Q, how should we think about the rest of the year directionally from a modeling perspective? And any color on direction from here would be really helpful. Thank you so much.

Hey Brad, it's Ron. So you and I will chat later today. We will not obviously provide guidance for the rest of the year. The second quarter organic growth was impressive, but you have to remember that second quarter of last year was kind of the low point for the labor inefficiencies that we had. So I think as we go out through the rest of the year, The comp from a year ago will begin to improve. So I think we will be in our target range for organic growth, but I don't think you'll see the same double digits that you saw in Q2.

All right, super helpful. Thank you so much, Ron.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mitch Rock, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thank you. If there's one takeaway from today, it's the strength of the UFP platform. Our growth is broad-based, our end markets remain attractive, and our operating businesses are deeply embedded with customers across multiple medical applications. Combined with our disciplined approach to investment and acquisitions, we believe UFP is well positioned for the next chapter of growth. Thank you.