Cadre Holdings, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to Kadri Holdings' third quarter 2025 conference call. Today's call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute. If you would like to ask a question at the end of the prepared remarks, please press star key, then the number one on your touchtone phone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Matt Berkowitz of the IGB Group for introductions and the reading of the Safe Harbor Statement. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and welcome to today's conference call to discuss CADRE's third quarter results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, we'll be making several forward-looking statements, and we make these statements under the state proper provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimates and assumptions based on our understanding of information known to us today. These forward-looking statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that face CADRE and the industries and markets in which we operate. More information on potential factors that could affect CADRE's financial results is included from time to time in CADRE's public reports followed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please also note that we have posted presentation materials on our website at www.cadre-holdings.com, which supplement our comments this morning and include a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures. I'd like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through November 19, 2025. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in yesterday's press release, as well as on CADRE's website. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to CADRE's Chairman and CEO, Warren Kanders.

Good morning, and thank you for joining CADRE's third quarter earnings call. I am joined today by our President, Brad Williams, and Chief Financial Officer Blaine Browers. This continues to be an exciting time for CADRE, marked by outstanding execution, disciplined growth, and meaningful progress against our strategic objectives. The CADRE operating model is driving improvement every day, which is clearly reflected in another quarter of strong results. In addition to delivering financial performance above expectations in Q3, which Brad and Blaine will outline, we continue to capitalize on CADRE's robust M&A funnel. With the agreement announced last week to acquire Tier Tactical, a leading manufacturer of mission critical protective equipment, we again delivered on our commitment to expand our portfolio and enhance CADRE's market leadership across categories. TIR Tactical brings world-class engineering capabilities and global reach, which importantly includes relationships with key military customers in Northern Europe that we believe will help CADRE unlock new growth opportunities in high-value end markets. Under the leadership of Jason and Jane Beck, TIR has seen impressive growth since its founding in 2010 and shares with CADRE a long-standing commitment to innovation, quality, and a lifesaving mission. We are excited to partner with Jason and Jane and welcome them both as significant shareholders. For CADRE, this agreement marks our sixth and largest acquisition since going public. Along with our recent deals in the nuclear and robotics markets, it underscores our relentless focus on disciplined M&A that strengthens our diversified platform of durable safety businesses. In total, Over the past 24 months, we have deployed more than 400 million consistent with this strategy. Looking ahead, we continue to see robust acquisition pipelines in both the public safety and nuclear markets. We will remain patient and disciplined in our approach to identify high quality, high margin businesses that align with our operating model and can deliver sustainable growth and strong cash flow generation over time. Before I turn it over to Brad, I want to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication in upholding our mission. Together, we save lives. The results this quarter once again demonstrate the strength of our culture, the resilience of our businesses, and our team's ability to deliver consistent execution. We are confident that the foundations we have built will continue to drive long-term value creation for our shareholders. With that, thank you for being with us today, and I will turn the call over to Brad. Brad, over to you.

Thank you, Warren. On today's call, Blaine and I will provide a Q3 update in business, including recent trends, financial performance, and full-year outlook, followed by a Q&A session. We'll begin on slide five. During the third quarter, we again delivered on our strategic objectives, advancing Cadre's track record of consistent and stable growth despite a dynamic operating environment. We continued to successfully implement our pricing strategy, which reflects both the strength of our brands and the value our customers place on our mission-critical products. Third quarter mix was positive, driven by strong demand for EOD, and favorable product mix in our nuclear categories. Importantly, our organic backlog increased by $20 million sequentially, reinforcing our confidence in the outlook for the remainder of the year. Based on our discussion last quarter, you'll recall that we saw a higher mix of large opportunities that have been delayed. This significant backlog growth is a very promising sign reflective of our progress looking some of these previously delayed opportunities. I will speak more about this progress shortly. In terms of capital allocation, CADRE's strong free cash flow generation enables the company to make dividend payments while also supporting core organic growth and M&A objectives. Our November dividend will mark our 16th consecutive since our IPO. As you heard from Warren, we also delivered on our commitment to enhancing CADRE's market leadership through discipline to M&A. Our agreement to acquire Tier Tactical represents a significant step forward in advancing CADRE's strategic focus on mission-critical products with high margins, strong cash flows, and compelling growth tailwinds. It further opens the door to international markets and provides access to new customers based on longstanding relationships that drive demand. Blaine will speak more about the deal shortly. specifically about TIER's differentiated customer base and highly unique manufacturing capabilities. Overall, TIER is exactly the kind of high-quality, strategically aligned business we seek to add to our platform, one that enhances our leadership, accelerates growth, and delivers long-term value for our shareholders. Turning to slide six, I'd like to highlight another major win for the company. In September, CADRE's EOD business, Med-Eng, was awarded the BMO contract, known as the Blast Exposure Monitoring System, by the U.S. Department of Defense. This is a $50 million IDIQ contract signifying a major achievement for our team and a significant milestone in our work with the U.S. military. Those who have followed us since our IPO know this award has been a part of our long-term roadmap and something that we have been working towards since 2019. While the formal press release has been delayed due to the government shutdown, the award information has been made public through SAM.gov and the DoD website. Links are available in the materials we shared yesterday. The BMO award builds on MedEng's legacy as the global standard in bomb suits. with market share of approximately 90%. Its reputation as the most trusted brand in the industry is based on decades of experience evaluating blast effects on personnel and protective equipment. For the last 20 years, the team has been designing, manufacturing, testing, and commercializing several generations of wearable blast sensors, culminating in this latest technology. We're incredibly proud to win this award, which is a testament to CADRE's long-term commitment to innovation and also positions Med-Eng at the forefront of efforts to better understand and mitigate blast exposure in the field moving forward. Next on slide seven, we lay out industry tailwinds supporting CADRE's long-term growth opportunity across both our core, LE, and nuclear safety sectors. On the law enforcement side, we see rising safety threats globally, coupled with resilient and growing spend on protection equipment. In both the U.S. and in Europe, support for public safety is bipartisan. Turning to nuclear, long-term demand continues to be driven by policy and commercial tailwinds across our free market segments, environmental management, national security, and nuclear energy. Support across these markets continues to build both in the public and private sectors, with the government clearing the path and private investments going in. Landmark announcements dominate the headlines from federal partnerships to state-level investments, all reinforcing the recognition that nuclear must play a central role in achieving energy security and reliability in this years ahead. Combined with nuclear material waste processing and expanding national defense initiatives, Cadre Nuclear Group is strategically positioned at the forefront of a rapidly evolving industry with large-scale and collective capabilities to support the full nuclear lifecycle. On slide eight, I'll take a moment to zoom in on a couple of market trends and their impacts on our core law enforcement business. Trends in North America law enforcement remain positive, highlighted by significant federal investment in government agencies, including substantial focus on recruitment. Looking at another market trend highlighted on the slide, new products and innovation drive everything we do at Cadre. We continue to hear enthusiastic feedback about new products launched over the past 24 months, including our tactical carrier system HyperX and the Safariland SX HP package, the thinnest, lightest, and most protective hybrid ballistic armor on the market. Before I turn it over to Blaine, I would like to briefly address the macro environment. Last quarter, we spoke about how our full year outlook was slightly affected by our higher mix of large opportunities that have been delayed. There was a level of uncertainty related to timing and whether these opportunities would be booked this year or early next year. We are pleased to report that we have made considerable progress in the third quarter booking some of these, reflected in the significant backlog growth that I referred to earlier. One of those opportunities is the blast sensor five-year IDIQ that the U.S. Department of Defense has disclosed on its website, as well as SAM.gov. We received our first BMO purchase order for approximately $10 million, with shipments being planned throughout 2026. Additionally, we received large duty gear, armor, craft control, and EOD purchase orders in Q3. Our expectation has not changed that other larger opportunities will book in the coming quarters as we continue to track well on these opportunities. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Blaine Browers, to speak to more about M&A, CADRE's Q3 financial results, and 2025 outlook.

Thanks, Brad. I'll kick off my comments with a review of our latest acquisition, as well as our M&A strategy more broadly. As Warren and Brad discussed, we've agreed to acquire Tier Tactical a specialty provider of high-performance advanced tactical gear, including soft armor, hard armor, and tactical nylon products to US and allied militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world. It is a business that fits squarely within the strategic criteria that define our disciplined approach to M&A, outlined on the right side of the slide. Key attributes include a leading market position, strong brand recognition, differentiated manufacturing technology, well as exceptional product quality and commitment to innovation a key point to underscore is that tier tactical is that the tier tactical customer base has minimal overlap with cadre's existing safari land armor business on slide 11 we show tier and cadre's global armor revenue by customer channel which illustrates how complementary the two brands will be in the marketplace tier serves a worldwide customer base including top tier special ops units government agencies and militaries You can see that 66% of its revenue is derived from international customers, while U.S. federal and U.S. military total 27%, both areas where Safariland does not have a major foothold today. In addition, TIER brings significant hard armor capabilities via their large presses and autoclaves that will be a significant resource addition to the CADRE armor business. We are excited about how the strengths of both companies will complement each other and enable new growth opportunities. In particular, we believe the CADRE operating model will unlock significant value for both brands. Taking a step back in terms of M&A strategy, this latest transaction demonstrates that we are not done building upon our leadership positions and our core law enforcement military categories, despite our long-term vision to launch multiple new verticals. We continue to see attractive opportunities to broaden our product range enter new markets, and increase customer wallet share. Overall, the M&A market remains strong, and we're excited about the prospect of add-on opportunities across both nuclear and core law enforcement targets moving forward. Turning now to a summary of CADRE's financial performance, slide 13 details our third quarter results. Q3 net sales of 155.9 million increased 42% year over year. Of note, third quarter gross margin improved 610 basis points year-over-year and 180 basis points sequentially. Year-over-year, it's driven by favorable pricing, the absence of inventory step-up amortization in the prior year, and the cyber incident in 2024. Illustrated on slide 14 is net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth year-over-year, including our 2025 guidance, which I'll discuss more in a moment. Our full year outlook implies a year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 10.5% and 8.7%, respectively, at the midpoints. On slide 15, we present our capital structure as of June 30th, 2025, prior to the agreement to acquire Tier Tactical. Our pro forma net leverage will be around 2.7 times when the deal closes. We believe Cadre's strong free cash flow generation, coupled with the strength of our balance sheet, gives us ample financial flexibility to continue to pursue organic and inorganic opportunities ahead. We are reaffirming our 2025 guidance on slide 16. Net sales are expected to be between $624 and $630 million. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance is between $112 million and $116 million, implying adjusted EBITDA margins of 18.2%. I'll now turn it back to Brad for concluding comments.

Thank you, Blaine. We're excited. We're executing well against our strategic priorities and our strong Q3 results underscore the effectiveness of the CADRE operating model and the dedication of our talented teams around the world. Complementing our core organic growth initiatives, we're particularly happy about the recent progress we have made on our M&A program with the agreement to acquire our tiered practicals. We can't wait to get started and begin the integration process following the expected close in the first half of 2026. Supported by CADRE's entrenched positions and favorable industry trends across our law enforcement, first responder, military, and nuclear end markets, we're excited to continue to build our platform and further enhance our market leadership moving forward. With that, operator, please open up the lines for Q&A.

At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Larry Sofo with CJS Securities.

Great. Good morning, guys. Congrats on a good quarter. Really nice margin improvement sequentially, I think I was just looking at, because I guess year over year is a little tough to look at because of the cybersecurity comp. But I don't know. Any thoughts, any color just on the nice sequential improvement? It looks like the gross margin was up almost 200 bps, which dropped to EBITDA. I imagine the operating model can't work that fast, so I'm just curious, any thoughts on that and just color on how CARS is progressing under that operating model, which you obviously only have for a few months, but any thoughts on that would be great.

Yeah, appreciate the question, Larry, and When we look at the margin improvement, I'd say the really positive piece we see is it's pretty broad-based. This isn't margin-driven by one particular business. So sequentially, we saw improvement really in all our major categories. And kind of within that, you're going to have some price sequentially. A lot of that's driven by productivity and then some positive mix in the quarter as well. But again, kind of going back, it is very broad-based. This isn't a case where one particular business Brad Warren – Business was driving that improvement, but it's what we really like to see, which is everyone really executing well and seeing those margins drop through.

Brad Warren – And then hey Larry it's Brad on the on the car side of things you're asked about the operating model and kind of where we're at on that really good progress we've actually had. The gentleman that leads our Cadre operating model has been over to Germany and also the UK, meeting with Bindels and also the Wally Schmiller businesses and taking a look at the progress they've made with the initial tools and operating model. And as of the week before last, the team reported just exceptional progress. So culturally, they're excited about the tools. They're adopting the tools.

you know it takes a while to to learn these tools and master them as you go forward but uh we're really excited about what's going on and the progress that's happening great i just switch the gears if i can just on the med engine i know you discussed this a little bit more at your analyst day uh 50 million dollar idiq um i imagine i suppose this could expand significantly over you know as a longer term um it's a much larger market opportunity and i think this is an exclusive award for you too So just color on that longer term opportunity there.

Yeah, absolutely. So if you remember back in IPO days, we had this listed as one of our kind of longer term opportunities. And, you know, like a lot of, you know, bigger R&D projects like this with, you know, with U.S., Department of Defense, things get pushed around and delayed. So that's where we kind of ended up at this point. But the good news is, you know, at this point, it looks like, you know, that award, the $50 million IDIQ and then the initial $10 million purchase order, which is great, by the way, for those that know IDIQs. you know, sometimes those initial purchase orders aren't that large. So that just shows you the commitment that's behind the program at this point from the DOD. We're going to take one of these at a time. So this obviously gives us an upper hand on, you know, any competitors out there in the marketplace that, you know, I've been looking at blast sensors or working on blast sensor technology because now with this adoption for us, It gives us that opportunity, you know, to take this technology to other countries. I won't disclose which countries have already reached out, but we've had other countries reach out asking for sensors, having meetings with our technical teams, et cetera. So, you know, we'll see where it goes, but we feel like it's a good future forward with the blast sensor program.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate all that. Thanks, Larry.

Your next question is from the line of Jeff Van Cenderen with B Reilly Securities.

Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to touch on or circle back to, I guess, gross margins, SG&A leverage. As we're thinking about Q4, anything in the expected mix of business that's likely to impact gross margin, also realizing it's early, and you haven't closed the tier acquisition yet, but assuming the closure of tier and then second half contribution from tier next year, among other business inputs, would you expect gross margin to increase next year? Just thinking about all that together.

Yeah, I appreciate the question. You know, for gross margins in Q4, you know, We expect them really to land somewhere between Q2 and Q3 rates, maybe a little bit on the higher end range based on what we've seen in Q3 and the backlog makeup for the rest of the year. And then, yeah, I think as you've seen before, if you look back to Q4 last year, the operating leverage can be pretty powerful with bigger volume quarters. And that's what we kind of look out as the rest of the year. So very positive outlook for the remainder of this year. you know, when we layer in tier, you know, keep in mind we'll have, you know, inventory step-up amortization as well as some intangibles amortization, which will, you know, impact the gap gross margin that we'll report. So there's probably, you know, a little bit of pressure there into next year, but that's really only at that gross margin line as we move down to adjustity. But yeah, as we've said, it will be, you know, accretive on the bottom line. So we're You'll get very excited about that and really bringing those two businesses together as we talked about. We think there's tremendous value on both sides of the business. I'm looking forward to having the tier business join the Cadre family and really the opportunity for both sides to learn from each other.

Okay. And I know you touched on this a little bit at the analyst day, but maybe you can kind of speak to the manufacturing capabilities of TIER, and on that side of the business, how close will you be to vertical integration in manufacturing once you have TIER in-house?

Yeah, great question, Jeff. So, you know, just to kind of go over, you know, the capabilities that TIER has and kind of contrast that to what our, I'll call it our our Safariland brand and a couple other our armor brands have. So first of all, the pressing capability, that's the biggest one from the equipment standpoint. So as raw materials become more advanced in the armor market from suppliers like Honeywell and DSM and others, as those become more advanced, they require a higher level of pressing capacity. And the reason you need that is to press materials so that you can elongate molecules and the raw materials so that you can continue to have strengthened materials within that process. So just to give you an idea, Safariland capabilities from a pressing tonnage standpoint is anywhere from 250 to we max out around 500 tons of pressing capacity. two large presses at 7,000 tons. So at this moment, what we've been having to do with our hard armor business, I'm talking plates and shields with some of the newer materials, is we have to go externally with a few other companies to press some of these materials so that we can get to the level of pressure that's needed. So we're very, very excited about these capabilities that the tier folks have in the Peoria facility there. And, you know, as we go forward, you know, that pressing capability will be used by both companies. All right. And then your last question was in terms of vertical integration, Jeff, you know, we will be known Our vertical integration will not be any more than what it is today, right, because we pressed today, tier presses today. In the armor business, if we were going to go additional vertical integration in the supply chain, that would be into the raw material side of things, ballistic materials, for example, nylon materials and that side of the supply chain, which we're definitely not in that space.

Okay, excellent. I appreciate that. It seems like overall it gives you a pretty nice competitive advantage in manufacturing capabilities. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll take the rest offline.

Okay. Appreciate it, Jeff.

Your next question is from the line of Egan McNermot with Jefferies. Thanks for taking the question.

Organic growth in the quarter. armor and duty gear. Do you have a sense of how much of that is a step up in demand for these end markets versus easier cyber comps?

Yeah, you were a little tough to hear, but I think you were asking about organic growth for armor and duty gear and on a year-on-year just because of the tough cyber comp. Is that correct? That is. Sorry if I'm not coming in clear. No, that's all right. That's all right. Yeah, the, you know, when we look at, and it's a difficult number, let's maybe start with that, trying to adjust out the cyber and spread it out. And when we look, you know, year on year, you know, or sequentially, you know, we did see growth and, you know, the armor business. Um, and when you kind of spread out prior year for duty gear, our run rate, you know, is up from last year. Um, so we're, you know, we look at that and say, we're in a pretty good position. And then based on the bookings and large orders that have come in and outlook for the year, we're pretty confident we'll have organic growth in those businesses. So very excited about kind of where they positioned and Q3 makes it very difficult to kind of unpeel them. Appreciate the question.

You know, I would just add to that by saying just underscore, you know, last quarter we talked about the, you know, higher number of large opportunities that we had in our funnel that teams were working on. You know, we got to ask quite a few questions about our confidence level in those. And, you know, I think we've shown that, right, with our increase in our backlog, you know, backlog increase of 20 million, 10 million of that's BMO, and then another 10 million are these larger orders that we're tracking and doing really well on. So, you know, the team's lining up those orders, knocking them off one by one. and grabbing those wins. And as we get into, you know, the rest of the year, we've got additional opportunities that fall in that large order bucket that we spoke up last quarter. And we're still in that lead position and really excited about those when they do come through. And some of those are very noteworthy type opportunities that we can't wait to talk about externally if we win those.

That sounds great. And thank you. That's helpful. If I could maybe ask a follow up, you know, the offset, I guess, in the quarter was order timing in the nuclear business. And with, I think, six and a half million taken out of the nuclear backlog last quarter, would you call it any risk in that end market in terms of demand or funding, whether it be U.S. or international?

No, great, great question. And this is you're going to be part of that. I also say if you think about that nuclear business with large opportunities, because it is more concentrated on fewer large opportunities, just naturally we're going to see some timing around that backlog build and then backlog bleed as they execute on projects. But when we look ahead and look at the funnel of opportunities for both the Zircaloy businesses as well as the cars businesses, formerly cars businesses and alpha, We're still very bullish on that look for next year and beyond. Good. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Matt Caranda with Rob Capital.

Hey, guys. Maybe just attacking sort of the growth question, because I know the comparison is a little wonky from last year, attacking it from a different angle. What was the nuclear contribution, I guess, to product revenue in the third quarter between cars and alpha?

The cars businesses would be you know, kind of write what you'd expect based on what we disclosed for revenue. If you kind of split it out so that gets some, you know, just a little bit under $20 million and, you know, alpha was slightly less in the quarter than you'd expect on a run rate basis.

Okay. All right. That helps. And then maybe just switching gears and thinking about the guidance that's implied for the fourth quarter. Just curious how the government shutdown might impact things if the shutdown drags on deeper into the fourth quarter, is there any impact that's contemplated in the guidance or how should we just be thinking about sort of delivery schedules and disruption that could happen.

Hey, Matt, Brad. Hey, appreciate the question. We have considered that in the guidance overall. You know, there's a couple of our business units and a couple of our product lines that we're watching closely. They're connected more to, you know, government being open and whether that's You know, sign offs on various shipments that need to go out or just the fact that, you know, with the government shut down, if folks aren't doing training and doing work to then pull through some of the shorter cycle type businesses that we have. So those are contemplated in the Q4 side of things. We're going to keep watching them. We've got our teams. We've got our hit list of which ones those are. The teams go through those on a weekly basis when they go through their daily management sessions, daily and weekly. And they're on top of those to continue to push those as we go forward. So at this point, we're optimistic that we've got it covered in there.

All right, great. And then maybe just, if I could sneak one more in, great to see the PO on the blast sensor for $10 million. I know we're always asking for more detail here, but any thoughts on sort of the cadence of how that could be delivered? Is it going to be like a lumpier within one or two quarters next year, or should we just be kind of thinking about a rateable delivery on that PO throughout next year?

No. Matt, I think we expect it to be a bit lumpier. You know, there's kind of two, I wouldn't say challenges, but two things you got to think about. I mean, we have the, you know, the first PO and the IDIQ. You know, we'll work to deliver those as, you know, as soon as possible to the end user, which likely kind of weights it towards the kind of front half to middle of the year. What we don't know yet, right, and certainly the government shutdown isn't helping, is kind of visibility on any you know, follow-on orders, and that's when we'll just have to wait and see. Totally fair. All right, I'll leave it there. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Matt.

Your next question is from the line of Jordan Martinez with Bank of America.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for leading the question. I just want to ask, on your guide, is there any downside risk just on this the government remains shut down through the rest of either the quarter or just late into November. And then two, how are you guys thinking about opportunities for next year with the DHS funding from the reconciliation bill starting to go out for the World Cup?

Hey, I'll take the first part of that. You know, that's a similar question to what Matt just asked in terms of the, you know, what's going on from a government shutdown perspective and what's affecting us. So, you know, again, you know, we feel like we've got any of those potential slippages covered in the Q4 guidance side of things, the full year guidance side of things. But when you look at some of those opportunities within some of the business units, they do exist, potential delays, but we feel like we're covered at this point.

And then on your question about the DHS and World Cup, we would likely expect some uptick in spending around security. I think it's difficult for us at this point to really point to particular products or opportunities just because it hasn't kind of gone through the funnel. But the great news is the teams are out there staying close to our end users, our customers, our distributors. and just making sure we're in a position to fulfill those needs if and when they ask. But at this point, really difficult for us to put an estimate out.

I'd just add to that. When you think about security when it comes to those kind of larger scale events like that, there's... Any federal folks involved, state and local, when you go head to toe, when you look at those folks, right, with the tier acquisitions, safari land products, whether it's holsters, body armor, you know, there's helmets involved, shields involved, crowd control products, you name it, that type of stuff. That's why we continue to build out in our public safety side of things. You know, we've been in it for a long time, very comfortable with public safety. who's out there, who's in the market, opportunities to go after. This is squarely within what we do. So, you know, I'm sure when that contends to move forward as it firms up, you know, with the breadth of products we have, we're going to be right in the mix of that.

Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next question is from Mark Smith with Lake Street.

Hi, guys. I wanted to ask about input costs and inflation. Is there anything that you see going up significantly? And similar with that, has anything changed in your outlook or ability to take price at and above inflation?

No, thanks. Great question. Our inputs have tracked pretty consistently what we've seen recently. Obviously, there's some variability coming into the year with tariffs and the likely impact. But we haven't seen any price come through from destocking from any of our suppliers. So it's one we're staying close to, but that has not been anything unexpected at this point. And we don't have any indications that next year is going to be significantly different. So we're comfortable there, staying close to it. The other pieces, we kind of look to kind of the two pieces to counteract any of that pressure, if it was to occur. Right on the price side, as you asked, nothing's changing the dynamic. It is one, a tool we need to be and will continue to be thoughtful in the application of it, right? No difference in how we always approach it that we want to be thoughtful, make sure we're getting the value that the products deserve based on the performance in the field. The second piece is really that model, right? And making sure we're leveraging those tools to offset, whether it's material or labor inflation or drive increased throughput or better margins. So as we kind of look at it, we feel pretty good about that material inflation environment as we see it today. We also feel really good about the tools we can leverage to counteract that and really maintain the business and the margins.

Okay. and then i also want to ask about new product mix and i know this is tough with you know nuclear and acquired business and and maybe not as much on a year-over-year comp but just as we think about the legacy business you know how have new products mixed here recently versus kind of historical uh averages and then i'm curious similar to that with with tier if if there's a history or legacy of, of innovation and new product mix that drives that business.

Yeah, no, it's a, it's a tough number, you know, for us to track, but I can tell you when we look at a couple of the business specifically, you know, compared to what we've historically done, you know, our portfolio is significantly refreshed in the last few years, you know, we're seeing, you know, gains in those markets with those new products. So that's, you know, very exciting for us. And, you know, on the tier, the tier was really, you know, built on innovation and, you know, Jason and Jane and the rest of the team have done a fantastic job of innovating both, you know, around the tactical, that the carrier, the nylon, as well as the body armor. So, you know, we expect as we, you know, bring these two teams together, that we'll really get the best of both worlds and continue that innovation journey for both of us. So very excited about the future. Great.

Thank you. Thanks, Mark.

At this time, there are no further questions. I will now hand today's call over to Brad Williams for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone again for joining us on today's call and for your continued interest in contract. Have a great day.

This concludes the conference call. Thank you and have a great day.