Cadre Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to Qadri Holdings' fourth 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 prepared remarks, please press the star key and 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 fourth quarter results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, we will be making several forward-looking statements, and we make these statements under the safe harbor 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 filed to 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 March 25, 2026. 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 earnings call to discuss our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. I am joined today by our president, Brad Williams, and Chief Financial Officer Lane Browers. Fiscal 2025 was another year of steady progress for CADRE. Our focus remains consistent, building a company that delivers mission-critical technologies for professionals operating in demanding environments while generating disciplined and sustainable growth for our shareholders. Throughout the year, we made progress in three areas, strengthening our portfolio, integrating our businesses, and continuing to build demand across our core markets in public safety, defense, and nuclear safety. First, we expanded our capabilities with the acquisition of Kars Engineering. Kars is a well-regarded provider of engineered solutions serving the nuclear safety market. The business brings deep technical expertise and longstanding customer relationships. And that fits well with our strategy of investing in specialized companies that operate in highly demanding environments. During the year, we also signed an agreement to acquire Tier Tactical, a company widely recognized for its advanced protective equipment and strong reputation with military and law enforcement customers. That transaction closed earlier in 2026, and we are excited to welcome Tier to the CADRE platform. We believe their capabilities and product portfolio are highly complementary to our existing businesses and further strengthen our position in mission critical safety solutions. At the same time, we continue integrating the businesses we have brought into CADRE over the past several years. Building a strong portfolio is only the real first step. Real value comes from operating as a cohesive platform, aligning leadership sharing engineering capabilities, and strengthening how we go to market. We made solid progress on that front in 2025. Operationally, we also saw strong demand across many of our end markets. Our team secured a number of meaningful contract wins during the year, particularly in advanced sensor technologies and blast mitigation seating, areas where performance and reliability are essential. These programs reinforce the trust our customers place in our technologies and in the Cadre brands. As a result, we continue to build backlog, providing increased visibility as we move forward. That backlog reflects both the strength of our portfolio and the long-term nature of many of our customer relationships. Importantly, we enter the new year with a strong balance sheet. That financial strength allows us to remain disciplined. but also opportunistic. Continue to invest in your businesses while pursuing acquisitions that expand our capabilities and market reach. We maintain an active M&A pipeline and are focused on opportunities that fit our strategy and meet our return thresholds. Stepping back, what's encouraging is the consistency of our progress. Year after year, we've continued to strengthen the platform, expanding our capabilities integrating our businesses, and serving the markets where our technologies truly matter. I would like to thank our employees across the organization for their commitment and expertise, as well as our customers and partners for their continued trust. And I want to thank our shareholders for their ongoing support. With that, thank you for being with us today. 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 Q4 update and business overview, including recent trends and financial performance, as well as our 2026 outlook, followed by a Q&A session. We'll begin on slide five. We delivered on our strategic objectives in the fourth quarter, driven by strong and recurring demand for our mission-critical safety products combined with the continued implementation of our operating model. Favorable mix in the quarter reflected higher duty gear volume and lower distribution volume. Orders backlog was up significantly. 2025 order growth plus the addition of cars engineering division in April resulted in a nearly 50% increase in our backlog versus last year. This includes the blast exposure monitoring system, or BMO, contract that we discussed last quarter. As a reminder, this is a $50 million IDIQ contract and represents a major achievement for our team and key milestone in our work with the U.S. military. Based on the expectations we'd previously outlined for 2025, you'll recall that we saw a higher mix of larger opportunities that had been delayed. In fact, our Med-Eng, I-Corps technology, duty gear, Defense technology and armor categories have been extremely busy and successful, winning larger opportunities in South America, Eastern and Western Europe, UAE, and parts of Asia. Large opportunities typically bring challenges around visibility of closing and booking the opportunity. With that said, we continue to have additional larger opportunities that are still in play that we have not closed that we expect continued progress on and throughout 2026. Turning to M&A execution, as you heard from Warren, we completed the acquisition of Tier Tactical last month. Its addition to our portfolio advances Cadre's strategic focus on mission-critical products with high margins, strong cash flows, and compelling growth tailwinds. It also opens the door to international markets and provides access to new customers based on long-standing relationships. The integration process is underway, and we have started over 40 our first 100 days of functional integration activities, which have included initial states, site visits by both TIER and CADRE teams. Based on our initial diligence, we've kicked off two projects to evaluate product opportunities to use TIER capabilities within two different CADRE businesses. TIER has shown an impressive dedication to manufacturing processes that deliver customers best-in-class solutions. We look forward to leveraging their engineering capabilities as well as employing core CADRE operating model tools to unlock additional opportunities across the organization. While TIER is our latest acquisition and our teams are focused on integration, we are certainly not done when it comes to M&A, and we are actively evaluating a robust funnel and high-quality, strategically aligned businesses to add to our portfolio. Critical to our success is CADRE's ability to generate significant free cash flows through cycles, which enables us to both pursue acquisitions and make strategic investments in core organic growth, while also returning capital shareholders. We've paid 17 consecutive quarterly dividends since going public, and recently raised our dividend to 40 cents per share on an annualized basis. Turning to slide six, we continue to operate in two markets defined by durable long-term demand drivers. On the law enforcement side, we see rising safety threats globally, coupled with resilient and growing spend on production equipment. There is bipartisan commitment to public safety in the US and across Europe supported by growing defense budgets. On the nuclear safety side, long-term demand is tied to policy and commercial tailwinds across our three market segments, environmental management, national security, and nuclear energy. I'll speak more about some of the dynamics we are seeing in the nuclear market in a moment. The next two slides outline more current developments in our business environment. Trends in North America law enforcement remain positive, highlighted by significant federal investment in government agencies. From a geopolitical perspective, global conflict is on the rise, underscoring the importance of the work that we do. As we have discussed previously, however, the opportunity for CADRE to play a more meaningful role generally comes when hostilities end and we can provide various EOD offerings to address unexploded ordinance. In our consumer channel, while overall consumer demand is down, we have benefited from the strength of the Safariland brand and new product introductions. During 2025, we saw growth in this channel of 7% for the full year and 15% growth in the second half of the year, both versus prior year. Turning next to the latest market trends affecting our nuclear vertical on slide eight, we continue to see multi-directional support driven by expanded government and commercial programs. On the national defense front, expanding government mandates for weapons modernization and production are driving consistent and growing demand. The broader nuclear power space also continues to support growth opportunities for CADRE, and the momentum in this market segment has only grown greater. Based on our follow the fuel strategy tied to the expanding nuclear fuel cycle, we are seeing stronger than expected opportunities in our funnel related to nuclear ventilation and containment systems and criticality alarm systems. Our third nuclear market segment is environmental management, where we support nuclear material processing, handling, and remediation. A development to call out in this area has been a recent executive order aimed at repurposing the U.S. plutonium stockpile to fuel nuclear reactors. Historically, alpha safety products were used to transport stabilized plutonium to sites where it was downblended with uranium and ultimately packaged in a criticality control overpacks for shipment. Following the executive order, this downblending program has slowed, which has directly reduced demand for some alpha safety products. Additionally, we've seen a shift in priorities at multiple nuclear sites toward PIP production programs. With resources heavily focused on rebuilding plutonium production infrastructure, waste disposition programs are currently receiving less operational focus, and as a result, plutonium material movement has slowed. While this will have a near-term financial impact, keep in mind this development pertains to only one subsegment of the nuclear group. Blaine will discuss this in greater detail, but overall, the broader Cadre Nuclear Group outlook remains positive. Before I turn the call over to Blaine, I'd like to highlight another major win for Cadre's Med-Ins subsidiary that Warren alluded to in his introduction. Earlier this week, we announced that Med-Ins has been awarded $86 million in contracts by General Dynamics European Land Systems, or GDELS. to provide blast attenuation seats. Designed to protect occupants from mine and roadside explosive threats, these are lifesaving seats that highlight our differentiated expertise in blast physics and integration into military vehicles. We are honored to be awarded these contracts, which mark an important endorsement of MedEng's breadth of engineering and product development capabilities. Production and first delivery of the larger of the two programs will begin in 2026 and continue until 2031, while the second contract will run in parallel beginning in 2026 and continuing through 2029. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Blaine Browers, to speak more about M&A, CADRE's Q4 financial results, and 2024 outlook.

Thanks, Brad. I will kick off my comments by spending a moment to underscore CADRE's M&A track record and the momentum we expect to carry into 2026. As you can see on slide nine, the acquisition of TIER completed in February marks our sixth acquisition since going public. Each of these transactions has been in line with our thoughtful and patient approach and met our highly selective key criteria focused on strong margins, leading and defensible market positions, recurring revenues, and cash flows. Looking ahead, we maintain a robust acquisition pipeline in both the public safety and nuclear markets, and intend to grow our diversified portfolio of mission-critical safety businesses through disciplined capital allocation. Turning to slide 10, we highlight the criteria that guides our process when evaluating potential transactions. Overall, we anticipate additional M&A in 2026 and continue to see attractive opportunities to broaden our product range, enter new markets, and increase customer wallet share. On the next two slides, we have provided a broader overview of the tier acquisition which represents another step forward in the strategy we have articulated over the last several years. As Brad discussed, we have begun the integration process and look forward to the beginning of this next phase of growth together. TIER brings significant hard armor capabilities via their large presses and autoclaves that will be a significant resource addition to the CADRE armor businesses. We're excited about how the strengths of both companies will complement each other and enable new growth opportunities. Another key point to highlight is that the tier tactical customer base has minimal overlap with Cadre's existing Safariland armor business. On slide 11, we showed tier and Cadre armor revenue by customer channel, which illustrates how complimentary 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 totaled 27%. Both areas where Safariland does not have a major foothold today. Turning now to a summary of CADRE's financial performance, slide 14 details our fourth quarter and full year results. Fourth quarter top and bottom line results were down versus last year's record Q4. Our full year net sales, net income, and adjusted EBITDA increased significantly year over year. In Q4, duty gear and armor product lines saw revenue and margins in line with our expectations, but we did experience revenue timing shifts in our nuclear businesses and EOD product lines, some distribution softness and run rate, and a slight impact in our chemical luminescence product due to the government shutdown. Notably, 2025 adjusted EBITDA of $111.7 million marked a record for the third consecutive year, and 2025 gross margins improved 140 basis points. Similar to what we've seen in the past, irrespective of party, there can be uncertainty as a new administration gets their footing. We have seen similar impacts in the past, but these impacts have been short-lived. We've also seen the resiliency of our business as we exit these transition periods. I would like to reiterate that we've had two significant wins in public safety that reinforce our optimistic view of the future with the blast sensor contract and the blast attenuation seat contract, both of which have multi-year horizons for our life-saving products and are two of the biggest contracts in our history. I would also like to highlight the fact that the gross margins for the full year 2025 for public safety products, excluding distribution and nuclear, were up 188 basis points on a full year basis, which further reinforces the strong execution of the teams and sets the stage for strong EBITDA margins as we see more typical growth. Illustrated on slide 15 is net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth year-over-year, including our 2026 guidance, which I'll discuss more in a moment. Our full-year outlook implies year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 22% and 24%, respectively, at the midpoints. You can see that over the last several years, CADRE has delivered consistent and stable growth. Our resilience is a key differentiator with the businesses that are largely unaffected by economic, geopolitical, and other cycles. On slide 16, we present our capital structure as of December 31st, 2025. After completing the acquisition of Tier Tactical, our net leverage is just under three times, not including tiers earnings. If you adjust for tiers adjusted EBITDA contribution, our leverage drops to about two and a half times. 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. We provide 2026 guidance on slide 17. Net sales are expected to be between 736 million and 758 million. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance is between 136 and 141 million, implying adjusted EBITDA margins of 18.5%. The guidance indicates organic growth for both public safety and the nuclear businesses to be in the 3% to 5% range, as well as continued implementation of our pricing strategy of 1% price increase net and material inflation. Brad discussed near-term headwinds for one of our nuclear businesses, which is reflected in our guidance. From a profitability perspective, these declines represent negative mix and that impact is considered an outlook. We believe over time, as we realize these commercial nuclear opportunities in our funnel, that our nuclear mix will return to what we've seen in the past. As we look at the quarterly cadence of revenue, similar to the past, we expect the second half of the year to be heavier with a lighter Q1. Our public safety businesses have their larger opportunities timed for later in the year. For example, the blast sensor order isn't expected to ship until later in the year as the team ramps up production on this new product line. We expect Q1 to be up year over year, driven by Zirkle and TIER, but organically down in the quarter, driven primarily by armor project timing combined with armor material constraints. lower distribution revenue, and alpha project timing. We expect Q1 to be very similar to Q3 of last year on the revenue line with margins around 39% due to volume and mix as we've discussed. We do expect margins to climb as we exit Q1 as the mix improves and volume increases and EBITDA margins in the low teens in Q1 for the same reason. This doesn't include impact of the inventory step-up for tier or amortization as part of the purchasing accounting. Overall, our businesses are performing well and we expect continued strong demand in 2026 across our core markets in public safety and nuclear safety. I'll now turn it back to Brad for concluding comments.

Thank you, Blaine. We continue to execute well against our strategic priorities, and our strong 2026 outlook reflects our confidence in the businesses, fundamentals, and the effectiveness of the CADRE operating model. We believe the combination of CADRE's track record of superior execution resilience in the face of economic, political, and geopolitical and other cycles, as well as the dedication of our talented teams around the world, will continue to drive strong results moving forward. Beyond our core organic growth initiatives, we are actively evaluating compelling M&A opportunities and remain committed to targets with strong financial profiles, durable competitive advantages, and structural growth drivers. In conclusion, we're excited to continue to build our platform and further enhance our market leadership, supported by CADRE's entrenched positions and favorable industry trends across our law enforcement, first responder, military, and nuclear end markets. With that, operator, please open up the lines for Q&A.

Thank you. I will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you're called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Excuse me, again, it is star one if you'd like to ask a question. And our first question comes from the line of Larry Solo with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. First kind of question, Brad, very encouraged to see the kind of organic outlook returning to a somewhat normalized rate there in the 3% to 5%. So if I do my math somewhere correctly, it looks like you were down about 2% organically in 25, and you kind of outlined a bunch of larger orders pushed out I'm just curious, like in this environment, or is it kind of a domino effect where some of the things that were pushed out from 25 into 26 or, you know, then you're seeing stuff go from 26 to 27 or doesn't, is there any catch up? Just kind of curious on your visibility. Obviously, you know, with geopolitical stuff, you know, Iranian conflict, all that other stuff, eventually stuff like that probably should be good, but in the short term, government shutdown, partial shutdown. Does some of this stuff also kind of impact your visibility for the current year?

Hey, Larry, it's Brad. Thanks for the question. You know, the good news is when you look at when there's large opportunities within this business or quite frankly, many other businesses I've been been in. you have good visibility to those. So, you know, that mix of large opportunities that we talked about last year, we've closed a lot of those opportunities. They're sitting in our backlog now. We talked about blast seats we announced earlier this week. We just talked about it. That was something that we were expecting more toward the end of last year, but we've got that one in the bag now. We also have the sensor program, which was the other one that – You know, we thought we would get earlier in the year last year, but we ended up having more toward the end of the year last year. And then we have other ones that, you know, we can't disclose the customer base for competitive reasons, but there's other larger opportunities within multiple categories that, you know, they're funded, but there's various details around those orders that have kept those orders from getting booked at the moment. So we continue to work those, work them hard. And I'm also proud to say, I mentioned in the prepared remarks that our international teams have been closing a lot of various orders within many different countries, within not just a single business unit, but multiple business units. And, you know, we're really proud of the traction that we've been making there.

Right. It certainly sounds like a temporary thing, right? I mean, it feels like your backlog continues to grow. Question just on the nuclear front. So I guess kind of that shift in prioritization, less cleanup on the plutonium side, more focused on plutonium build-out. I guess in theory, you know, you're taking it from one hand and giving to the other hand, but that giving to the other hand may take a little bit longer, so you have a, you know, plutonium build-out, so you have a temporary short-term negative impact. Is that kind of a good way to look at that in terms of how you view it?

Yeah, I think there's, you know, a timing difference when we think about, like, an existing revenue stream for nuclear, you know, Mike Schubert- related around that down blending and then the pickup on the commercial nuclear side there, there is a timing lag just because of the size and significance of those projects for it to pick up. Mike Schubert- You know it's kind of point one and then the second point which brad brought up is really just the mix change and impact and margins that has that you're down blending is a very highly technical. uh, side of the business with, you know, margins that go with the kind of technical expertise required. So you kind of have this twofold, you know, kind of impact, you know, what we are excited though, is how robust that commercial energy, nuclear energy funnel has become since acquisition, right? If you kind of rewind back when we started, and I think this is the great thing about the platform is we have, we play in all three of these end markets. So over the long run, we're comfortable. There's plenty of revenue opportunities, not only to offset that loss, but really to continue to drive growth in that segment.

Gotcha. And just margin outlook, it looks like the implied kind of midpoint is slightly up, pretty flattish. And I know tier is creative. So is that most of that impact just on the mix side of nuclear, which is kind of dragging the margin that's coming here?

That's really it. Yeah, it's that mixed impact. Gotcha. Okay, great. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

And our next question comes from the line of Egan McDermott with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, and thank you guys for taking the question. You know, it sounds like some of those bigger orders are still being pushed to the right, and we've seen some recent wins, but For the remaining contracts, what gives you confidence that they're delayed and not lost at this point?

100% confidence that they're delayed and not lost at this point. That's the type of visibility that we have to those. Can't go through the details for those specific ones, but the visibility is 100% there, especially one to actually larger orders in one of our business units that you know that's in our it's been awarded to us let's call it right so when we look at the the products that we have that have been specified no issue there so definitely no losses high confidence in those it's just a timing situation and they're both two different specific situations taking place

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" understood that's helpful Thank you, and maybe if I could follow up on capex guided in the 10 to 14 million range for 26 is obviously a. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" step up from recent years and maybe just some some commentary on that, if you could be thinking of that as you know, going towards capacity expansion or focused on any specific area of the business.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Really, that the uplift from historical is around capacity. in particular in the nuclear area or the nuclear businesses where we had some site build-outs. And you go back in history, we have had periods where we get closer to not quite 2% of revenue, but closer to 2% revenue as we talk about. And generally what drives that is capacity expansion, buildings, and that's the case for this year. Outside of that investment in one of our sites, The CAPEX is very, very typical for the rest of the businesses.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Matt Carondo with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Appreciate the detail on the organic components of the 26 outlook. What are you factoring in from tier from a revenue contribution standpoint? It sounds like it's still going to be accretive on EBITDA margin, but wanted to hear a little bit more about revenue and then cadence of revenue from tier throughout the year. Yeah, yeah.

You know, our outlook with tier out of the gates is a conservative approach, as we do with all acquisitions. So we have them laid in at about $100 million on a full year basis. Given that we closed in February, that would put them in the high 80s, low 90s for baked into guidance, and then EBITDA margins right where we talked about in that 20% range. As we move forward in the year and get a little closer to the team's process and develop more confidence in the funnel, we'll adjust accordingly from there, but we feel comfortable with where we're starting with them.

Okay, and then on the Blassie contract, I was curious how that ramps up. I know you said there's contribution in 26. It sounds like probably later in the year. Maybe any color on how you're thinking about the ramp up and contribution to sales in the back half of 26. And then just on a go-forward basis, I guess, is it kind of a run rate type deal through the two contracts terms that you gave in the press release? Any additional kind of thoughts on the way to thread that into the model would be helpful.

Hey, Matt, it's Brad. So think of it this way. New program. We wanted to get it out as soon as possible to actually getting the $86 million PO in our hands. So what the team's working on now with GDLS is the production planning side of things, you know, for 2026. So we actually have just started that here in March. so that we can begin, you know, ordering parts and begin to get the supply chain cranked up. And then there's some sample deliverables as we go into the fourth quarter, as we go into that phase of the project overall. So, you know, most of this revenue will be tying, you know, into 2027 and beyond per the schedule that I've mentioned earlier.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, Casey.

Yep.

And our next question comes from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen with B Reilly Securities. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to circle back to down blending for a moment if we could. Would you expect down blending funding to increase again at some point? Or might down blending be replaced by some other sort of disposal process? And is that one that CADRE could be involved with?

Jeff, overall, it's hard to tell. What we're referencing is an executive order that went out last year. It was directed from the DOE to decrease the downblending of excess plutonium, except in areas that are required by law. So you can go read the executive order, but that's roughly what the executive order says. And then what we've seen about working with some of our customers like LANL and Savannah River and those folks is things have shifted more toward pit production programs, like we've been talking about, within our verticals with the goal of increasing pit production since the U.S. has, you know, quite frankly been producing zero pits. over many years since the Cold War ended. So that seems to be the focus at the moment. That does drive additional opportunities. There are different opportunities compared to what cleanup activities would look like with our high-end containers that Blaine had already mentioned that bring higher margins within that product category for us. And what it's shifted to is from a commercial nuclear standpoint and more of the nuclear ventilation and containment type systems that we have within the alpha safety business unit, and then also criticality alarm systems, which is also within the alpha safety business unit. You know, the good news is the funnel for those two product categories have been growing significantly since this shift has been happening. You know, we've got various companies that are in the enrichment side of things and also fabricators. that we have an extensive list of quotes that are going on with them that we're pursuing at the moment for these offsetting type opportunities.

Okay, good to hear. And then, can you tell us a little bit more about the General Dynamics seat attenuation product? What all you're supplying there? Maybe a little more about the vehicles that the seats are going into. And also, is there potential for follow-on orders from General Dynamics? And just maybe what the overall outlook is for mid-inch, given the recent winds.

Yeah, great question. It's not a category that we've talked a lot about in the past. you know, it is a category that, you know, we have, you know, approximately install base 13,000 plus seats are out there that we've designed and manufactured over time across 15 to 18 different distinct configurations. So, you know, we've been doing this for about 18 years. So the team at Med-Eng has a lot of experience on the crew survivability side of things. So think of it as the product is a It's a purpose-built blast attenuation type seat that's engineered to protect occupants of tracked and wheeled combat vehicles, and then also other vehicles within, you know, militaries. So these vehicles, anytime there's a blast that happens, you know, it could be under the vehicle, it would be close to the vehicle, this is a way to protect the occupants that are sitting in these seats in the vehicle. We do have field proven performance with various situations where vehicles that experience those type of blasts and lives have been saved due to the blast seats that we have. So hopefully that gives you a little more detail and a little more color around what we do in this category. The team, very proud of this team. They've been working really, really hard to continue to build up the funnel and land some of these projects as they come about in these programs. And we're proud to be working with GDLS on this. It's a customer that we have a lot of experience with, whether it's General Dynamics USA, General Dynamics Canada, General Dynamics Europe, obviously, the UK. We have experience working with them overall. So we're happy to have this program.

Good to hear. Thanks for taking my questions. You're welcome.

And our next question comes from the line of Mark Smith with Lake Street. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. First question for me, just wanted to ask about tier kind of synergies as we think about, you know, their facility and opportunities maybe with some of your current Safari Land products. You know, what's maybe built into the guidance, what opportunities there are, as well as maybe, you know, cross-selling opportunities and if there's anything built into the guidance for that.

Hey, Mark, it's Brad. Great question. The short answer is there's zero built into the guidance related to tier synergies. As you know, our first 100 days as we get out of the gates, we focus on all the functional related activities, IT, finance, accounting, tax, treasury, compliance, you name it. That's the immediate focus with the teams as we bring people into the cadre organization. We have kicked off a couple projects. I can't go into details of those projects because it would bring up some potential competitive type situations out there. But we've kicked off two projects that I've approved within actually two separate business units. One is within our armor business unit. Another is within our mid-inch business unit to work with the tier folks together on looking at how tier capabilities can be used within those two parts of those businesses. So we're really excited about those two projects. We think they're very, I would call them, lower complexity projects that have higher opportunities of success as we go forward to get our feet wet with the tier team working with our CADRE business units.

Perfect. And the second one for me is just kind of housekeeping and maybe for Blaine, just can you just walk through a little bit more on the Q1? You gave some numbers around maybe Q1 on revenue margin. If you just kind of review that and then curious if there's some continued transaction costs that roll over into Q1.

Yeah, absolutely. So we said revenue really in line with Q3 of last year, which was right at $150 $55.8 million gross margins around 39% with EBITDA margins in the low teens. And there will be some carryover on transaction costs into the year as we close the deal. Perfect.

Thank you. Absolutely.

And our next question comes from the line of Jordan Lioness with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. On the organic backlog decline, is it fair to think that most of that should be from the environmental cleanup work inside of the nuclear business and then two for 26? The verticals that we should see this 3% to 5% organic growth, if it's commercial versus true defense, What P1 do you guys have around the commercial side coming through that gives you the confidence we'll see that shift to make up for the environmental down?

And when you're talking backlog, Jordan, sequentially is the question, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of as we expect. There were a number of larger projects, right? Our backlog had increased, you know, coming into or at the end of Q3. And then as those large shipments went out, so it's, you know, duty gear had some large orders, Brad mentioned on some international ones that got shipped in Q4 that lowered their backlog. You know, nothing, nothing alarming, but it's kind of a little bit spread amongst a lot of the businesses, you know, just calling attention to year over year, right? If we look back to where we were, you know, December of 24, you know, we're still up organically pretty significantly. So I think kind of use that as a base point just to ground on that backlog growth year-on-year basis. And then, you know, on the commercial nuclear side, you know, we've always had these products, right, that we're talking about. So I think the, you know, how do we come from the P win is really relative to our past track record in this area. You know, the real difference here is not, that it's new products or new uses, it's just the sheer number that we're seeing. So if you think about ventilation containment as an example Brad mentioned, that's something the business has done for many, many years, both in fuel production as well as in remediation. So this isn't a new application. When you think about the competitor set, it's the same competitors they've competed about in the past, very similarly with the criticality accident alarm systems. Same set of circumstances, same competitors, same application. And that's what gives us comfort around those future wins. This isn't a new market for us by any means.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Jordan.

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Brad Williams for closing remarks.

I'd like to thank everyone for joining our call today and your continued support of Cadre Holdings. Operator, that'll conclude the call.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.