GPGI, Inc. Class A

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GPGI Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 1 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference has been recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Dave Marshall. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to GPGI's second quarter conference call. This morning's remarks will include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those disclosed in our SEC filings available at SEC.gov and on our IR website. Additionally, definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures used today appear in today's press release and earnings presentation, which are available in our SEC filings and on our IR website. As a reminder, following the Resolute Holdings spinoff, GPGI accounts for GPGI holdings, including our CompostSecure and Husky businesses, under the equity method of accounting in accordance with GAAP. With that, I will turn over the call to Executive Chairman Dave Cody.

Good morning, everyone. GPGI continues to execute with discipline and focus with our customers at the center of everything we do. In the second quarter, we continued to see progress across the platform and delivered results that were consistent with both our expectations and the guidance range we introduced last quarter. The results were driven by continued strength at Compass Secure and some indications of relief as we continue to navigate transient market headwinds at Husky. Starting with Composecure, we're seeing the continued transformative impact of ROS on growth and operations, delivering record sales, strong operating performance, and both year-over-year and sequential margin expansion. With robust demand from a broadening base of customers, Composecure is well-positioned to continue accelerating organic growth and improving profitability in the second half of the year. Composecure is one year ahead of Husky in the deployment of ROS. and we are seeing how cultivating a high performance culture and making strategic investments enable a sustained inflection in financial performance. Turning to Husky, we're navigating through transient market headwinds caused by volatile resin prices and shipping disruptions related to conflict in the Middle East and continued tariff uncertainty. The macro environment has improved marginally since we last spoke to you as oil and resin prices have come off their previous peaks set in late April. and our customers are beginning to have a bit more confidence in making purchase decisions. However, the second quarter was still impacted by macro uncertainty and we're beginning to see pockets of demand recovery and continue to expect a strong second half that is consistent with historic seasonal trends. In addition to demand gradually returning, we expect improved operating leverage and discrete cost actions to drive margin expansion, both sequentially and year over year through the second half. Importantly, we're starting to see initial signs of ROS taking hold at Husky and are aggressively accelerating its implementation to drive durable organic growth and sustainably higher margins. As a reminder, ROS is the cornerstone of how we operate GPGI. It represents an end-to-end commitment to grow sales, control costs, and generate the cash necessary for seed planning, accretive investing, and compounding returns for investors. Our OS is how we translate strategy into results, be it operating metrics, financial performance, or strategic breakthroughs. I'll let Graham and Rob provide specific examples of how our OS is moving the needle at CompoSecure and Husky, but we'll note how this daily mindset compounds performance over time and builds the next generation of world-class operators. Look at Compose Secure, we clearly see the inflection of growth and profitability enabled by our investments in Salesforce and R&D over the past 21 months. This demonstrates the multifaceted focus of ROS well beyond just managing costs. The ROS flywheel specifically requires cultural change to catalyze operational change. That is why I'm so pleased we announced the appointments of Muhammad Kanaan as Chief Financial Officer and Karen Stone as Chief Human Resources Officer of Husky. Muhammad and Karen are proven leaders with significant global experience. It will accelerate the cultural transformation Rob is leading across the business, and both will be integral to our next phase of growth. Change agents make a difference. I also want to highlight how we think about GPGI's long-term growth algorithm. Specifically, we're focused on delivering mid to high single-digit annual organic growth, over 100 basis points of annual margin expansion through the deployment of ROS, double-digit plus annual EBITDA growth, and 90% to 100% free cash flow conversion over time. This is happening while we are strategically investing in the businesses, doing the seed planting today that is necessary for them to achieve their potential tomorrow. The plan is simple. We intend to grow GPGI's earnings and cash flow faster than the market to deliver superior, durable, through the cycle returns for our investors. To conclude, we're extremely focused on execution, remain well positioned to deliver in the second half, and are reiterating our full year guidance. We're also continuing to pursue critical seed planning initiatives to deliver in 2026 and accelerate into 2027. This includes strategic investments and operational improvements that position GPGI to capture incremental sales and margin as Husky's markets rebound. Overall, our thesis remains firmly intact, and we're excited about the path GPGI is on. So with that, I'll turn it over to Tom Knott, our CIO.

Thank you, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Going to slide 4, GPGI delivered pro forma adjusted net sales of $473.2 million, down approximately 4% from the prior year, pro forma adjusted EBITDA of $113.9 million, down approximately 13% from the prior year, and pro forma adjusted EBITDA margins of 24.1%, down approximately 230 basis points from the prior year. Despite the market headwinds at Husky, GPG also generated approximately $63 million in pro forma adjusted free cash flow in the second quarter, significantly higher than the prior year. As Dave mentioned, these results were in line with our expectations. Turning to slide five, we are reiterating our full year revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow guidance. We continue to expect pro forma net sales between $1.95 and $2.1 billion. Proforma Adjusted EBITDA between $550 and $610 million and Proforma Adjusted Free Cash Flow between $275 and $325 million, which we define as cash from operations, less capital expenditures, adding back one-time Husky transaction expenses on a full-year Proforma basis. While these guidance ranges remain the same, we are adjusting our Proforma Adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to between 27% and 29%. to reflect terrorist pass-through revenues and the potential mixed impact at Husky from stronger system performance through the remainder of the year than we anticipated last quarter. Our full-year 2026 guidance translates into roughly flat year-over-year revenue and approximately 7% pro forma adjusted EBITDA growth at the midpoint, even with the market-driven weakness at Husky, highlighting the resilience of the combined GPGI platform. Relatedly, I want to address the key components for the second half's performance. Starting with Composecure, we expect strong revenue growth and margin expansion to continue through the rest of the year. For Husky, we expect a second half consistent with historical seasonality, coupled with improved labor and fixed cost absorption and ROS-led efficiency gains, and full realization of savings from discrete cost actions to support anticipated sequential and year-over-year margin improvement. With respect to our capital structure, we remain focused on debt pay down and are still targeting three times leverage by the end of 2026. Our long-term leverage target at GPGI is between two and two and a half times, excluding potential one-time step-ups for strategic acquisitions. We continue to view 2026 as a critical year of cultural change, ROS implementation, and strategic seed planting at both businesses to position us for best-in-class top-line growth Margin expansion and free cash flow generation across GPGI. This remains our focus and we are confident in the work that is underway. Moving to slide six, I want to take a moment to discuss our philosophy regarding capital allocation at GPGI. First and foremost, we are focused on acquiring and operating companies with great positions in good industries, as the company's name suggests. These businesses, like CompaSecure and Husky, should all generate high returns on invested capital because that is what results from having a great position in a good industry. We then aggressively deploy the Resolute Operating System into each owned business, taking a systematic approach to operational improvements that both accelerate growth and drive margin expansion. This results in even higher returns on capital and accelerating growth in earnings and cash flow. With this cash flow, we first prioritize organic investments and bolt-on acquisitions, as these investments usually have the highest returns on capital and serve to further bolster the competitive moats of each owned business. This is how we are building Compass Secure and Husky today. We are aggressively deploying ROS, actively making significant organic investments, and consistently evaluating bolt-on acquisitions for both companies. While early days This is the organic flywheel we expect will create compounding returns at GPGI. We are excited about the prospects for GPGI with just the two businesses we own today. Composecure and Husky each have their own high return investment opportunities, and we have the luxury of not needing to acquire any new platform businesses. As you know, we have no deployment targets, no fund constraints, or any other artificial requirements to buy new platforms. and we see opportunities to continue making high return organic investments to drive the earnings power and cash generation capability at GPGI meaningfully higher than it is today. We are interested in acquiring a new platform only to the extent it meets our six acquisition criteria, a list designed to screen for durable high ROIC businesses that can benefit from ROS deployment and if that platform can be acquired at a fair price that will generate attractive returns on your capital. The organic flywheel will spin faster as we add more platforms to GPGI over time, because with more platforms, we will have more organic and bolt-on investment opportunities to drive earnings and cash flow, which in turn translates into higher intrinsic value of GPGI. The key enablers for this compounding flywheel are threefold. First, our permanent capital base enables GPGI to make sound business decisions and invest with a long-term view. Second, ROS deployment is based on a proven operating playbook that we have refined across multiple companies over multiple decades. And finally, our corporate structure frees operators to exclusively focus on growing their businesses without the distractions of being a public company but with the oversight that ensures the business is on track to achieve both near-term and long-term results. Finally, to conclude my comments, I want to briefly describe what we are seeing in the marketplace. While we are interested in companies with great position in good industries generally, in the current environment we see a large and growing backlog of the most scaled businesses owned by private equity firms that need to access the public markets. This group of assets are too large for most sponsors to acquire, leaving a regular IPO as the primary exit path. but that path is suboptimal as it typically results in limited proceeds to the private equity sponsor, an over-levered public company, and an overhang from excessive insider ownership, all of which results in an orphaned security. This creates a lose-lose situation for the private equity sellers and for public shareholders. It is a topic that is beginning to get some coverage in the news, but it's a phenomenon that we have been watching develop for almost 10 years at this point. Starting when Dave and I began the process that ultimately resulted in our acquisition averted. Private equity firms are increasingly facing pressure to monetize their investments to return capital to their investors, while at the same time facing a traditional IPO market that, in our opinion, does not work for almost all the highly leveraged sponsored-backed businesses. GPGI can address this problem in a compelling and unique way and the list of available assets in need of our solution is growing. Said simply, we believe the market is structurally moving in our direction, which adds to our confidence in the opportunity ahead, while at the same time enabling us to be very disciplined in our assessment of new platform investments. With that, I'll turn the call over to Graham Robinson, the CEO of Composecure.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Going to slide 7, we delivered another outstanding quarter at Compass Secure, continuing to expand upon our commercial and operational momentum. We achieved record adjusted net sales of $133.6 million, up approximately 12% compared to the prior year, underscoring both the robust demand for premium metal cards and the effectiveness of our commercial execution across markets. This trend is translating to several new program wins and accelerating issuer activity across a broadening and diversified customer base. We're also seeing continued adoption of Arculus capabilities. In parallel with the rise in penetration of premium metal cards, Our risk continues to have a compounded impact across our business. We're realizing meaningful improvements across all functional areas, including manufacturing efficiencies to increase yield and drive record output, reinvigorated go-to-market strategy to effectively penetrate international markets, and non-manufacturing to ensure efficiency gains extend beyond the factory to the office. These ROS-led initiatives directly helped us to deliver record-adjusted EBITDA of $55.2 million this quarter, up approximately 14% from the prior year. A few of our recent high-profile program launches include Samsung, US Bank's Amazon Business, American Express Delta Sky Miles Reserve, Kleiner, Dollar App ARQ, and CAST. These signature program wins reflect the breadth of demand for premium car solutions and our differentiated value proposition, combining advanced design, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities to reinforce our position as the partner of choice for issuers launching high impact car programs. And in recognition of our market leading car designs, Compass Secure has won five prestigious Elon Awards of Excellence at ICMA's 2026 Expo, including Best Personalization Product, Unique Innovation, Unique Innovation Prototype, Metal Feature Card, and Best Regional Card in North America. While encouraged by our progress, we maintain a relentless focus on investing in our future and executing on our three pillars of growth, which include, one, accelerating organic growth, two, driving international expansion, and thirdly, increasing Arculus momentum. Select initiatives to support these strategic priorities include penetration of the debit card market, an introductory metal card for issuers waiting for plastic, the opening of a new design center in London to better serve international customers, tokenization to provide an integrated activation experience, and active evaluation of new verticals beyond payment cards. Moving to slide eight, let me revisit the strength of our model and industry fundamentals. We're seeing continued adoption of payment cards globally. Increase in the total addressable base of cards in circulation. Additionally, new issuers in international markets and the fintech segment are launching their first metal card programs. And existing customers are expanding their programs through tiered card stacks to further drive improved customer acquisition, spend, and retention. The recent wins I mentioned highlight the trust issuers place in Compass Secure to deliver their signature programs, an increasing breadth of our diverse customer base that features over 200 active card programs. Compass Secure is well positioned to further capture share with this expanding base. All of this supports a durable recurring revenue model as new cards are introduced, reissued, refreshed, and upgraded over time. Turning to slide 9, I want to highlight a few incremental points regarding our financial performance. Specifically, ROS-led initiatives continue to translate into improved profitability as we saw adjusted EBITDA margins increase 70 basis points year-over-year to 41.3%. The sequential and year-over-year margin expansion is a result of consistent incremental efficiency gains that we expect to continue going forward. At the same time, we are strategically investing some of these gains to add capacity to support our next phase of growth. Overall, our results highlight the operating leverage and tangible benefits we continue to unlock from a high-performance culture and the systematic deployment of RRS. We are operating from a position of strength and are confident in our ability to capitalize upon the significant opportunity ahead. With that, I will turn the call over to Rob Domodossola, the CEO of Husky.

Thanks, Grant. Turning to slide 10, Husky delivered adjusted net sales of $339.6 million, down approximately 9% from the prior year. performed adjusted EBITDA of $64.9 million, down approximately 23% from prior year, and performed adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.1, down approximately 330 basis points from prior year. Our performance was in line with expectations and reflected the demand environment characterized by macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical tension, elevated oil and resin prices, and evolving tariff policies. These factors resulted in deferral of certain capital investment projects Encouragingly, we began to see signs of stability during the quarter, including improvement in resident availability, stronger engagement across our system pipeline, and the initial benefit of discrete cost actions that we expect to continue through the second half of the year. As sales improved sequentially, we expanded margin by approximately 590 basis points quarter over quarter through better labor and fixed cost absorption. We expect this trend to continue as we move into the seasonally stronger second half. consistent with historical performance. Year-over-year margin performance was primarily impacted by lower volume and foreign exchange headwinds. Looking ahead, we expect revenue to be flat to slightly up year-over-year in the second half, while margins improve as operating leverage strengthens and the benefits of our cost and productivity initiatives are realized against the higher cost base established in the second half of last year, which was in anticipation of higher revenues than what was materialized this year. Let me now address what we're doing at Husky to help navigate the current macro-environment. A significant cultural and operational transformation is underway across the organization. I'm particularly excited about the recent additions to our leadership team. Mohamad Brith brings significant financial and operating expertise, and Karen is helping accelerate our cultural transformation that is underway with added focus on accountability and engagement. We also recently promoted Benoit Jean-Jo, the Senior Vice President of Operations, Bemba rejoined Husky in 2025 and brings deep operational expertise to drive ROS deployment faster and deeper through our global footprint. Our transformation is anchored on the ongoing deployment of ROS, which is fundamentally changing the way we operate, particularly in periods of uncertainty. ROS provides discipline, structure, and visibility needed to drive continuous improvement throughout the organization. To give you a sense of ROS in action, a few examples include daily cross-functional SME meetings to improve factory loading, reduce lead times, and increase production outputs. We are also strengthening the commercial effectiveness to continue to grow our aftermarket business, while identifying and rationalizing indirect spend through procurement discipline. At the same time, continue to make investments in innovation and product development. We are still in the early stages of ROS, but we use it every day to drive measurable improvements in growth, operations, and financial performance. Moving to slide 11, I want to take a moment to revisit the fundamental characteristics of Husky's business model. Husky's products and services support the production of essential, non-discretionary packaging needs for beverage, food, and medical applications. Those end markets have demonstrated resilience across economic cycles. Our installed base of approximately 13,500 systems worldwide, split between PT and packaging, provides strong foundation for reoccurring aftermarket revenue. Approximately 30% to 35% of our revenue is generated from new systems. Another 40% comes from aftermarket tooling, including molds, hot runners, and controllers. And the remaining 25% to 30% comes from service, including our aftermarket parts and our Advantage Plus Elite remote monitoring solution, This diversified revenue profile provides stability across economic cycles while positioning us to grow alongside the long-term structural trends when customers resume capital investments. Starting with systems, which typically have a sales cycle of approximately 6 to 12 months, we have good visibility into pipeline activity, orders, and backlog. Customers are engaging in long-term capacity planning discussions and we're beginning to see a selective move forward with investment decisions. While near-term system demand can be volatile, over the long term it remains the closest proxy for the health of the industry fundamentals. Beverage consumption trends remain healthy, and our customers continue to focus on securing capacity and the production needed to meet future demand. In addition, Husky's systems deliver industry-leading efficiencies. and lower total cost of ownership, making our value proposition even more compelling during periods of elevated resin and operating costs. Aftermarket tooling, which includes molds, hot runners and controllers, generally has a two to three month sales cycle and is primarily driven by customer brand decisions to change form factors or introduce new products, along with necessary maintenance refurbishments. During periods of high and volatile resin prices, like we're seeing now, Customer brands put product launches on hold until there is more certainty around resident price outlook. This creates a temporary period of order deferral, a phenomenon we are still seeing impact our aftermarket tooling business. However, we are confident that demand is being deferred rather than cancelled, as evident by a robust and growing pipeline. Over the long term, trends such as lightweighting, sustainability, and package optimization remain powerful demand drivers for our tooling solutions. Across both systems and aftermarket tooling, our opportunity pipeline continues to expand. This gives us confidence that we are maintaining our market leadership position through periods of volatility and reinforces our belief that our technology and innovations continue to differentiate Husky in the marketplace. On the service side, which is primarily driven by required maintenance, we observe year-over-year improvement in spare parts as customers prioritize productivity across their existing install base. Our revenge plus lead solutions continues to gain traction with customers, supported by strong renewal rates and expanding adoption. These solutions help customers maximize uptime, improve productivity, and reduce the total cost of ownership through proactive monitoring and predictive maintenance capabilities. We continue to see significant opportunity in our service business with our existing install base. As we connect more systems to our digital platform, we expect to accelerate recurring revenues. We are also supporting additional aftermarket parts sales through practical maintenance recommendations. At Husky, our focus is on what matters most for our customers, high uptime, high throughput, and lower cost of ownership, which supports their growth and in turn ours. Taken together, we continue to view the current softness as a point-in-time demand deferral, rather than structural. We have seen this before, and when customers' confidence inevitably improves and input cost volatility subsides, deferred investment activity typically returns, and often at an accelerated pace. The underlying growth drivers across our end markets remain intact, including growing customer demands, sustainability initiatives, light-weighting requirements, and the ongoing need for greater manufacturing efficiency. Going to slide 12, our technology and focus on innovation that delivers industry-leading efficiencies for our customers that positions us to capitalize on the rising global demand for PET and other attractive substrates. A few specific examples include our new packaging machine platform, advances in our aftermarket tooling technology portfolio and a new tiered service model that gives customers increasing flexibility in how they engage with our Advantage Plus digital service platform. We are particularly excited in how these innovations work together to create multiple growth opportunities for Husky. Our new packaging platform expands our presence in attractive packaging applications and creates a foundation for future aftermarket and service opportunities. Our tooling innovations allow us to capture a greater share of aftermarket spending by helping customers improve the performance of existing assets and upgrade legacy toolings already operating in the field. and our Advantage Plus Elite platform provides critical insights through data across our global installed base, which strengthens customer relationships and in turn expands recurring opportunities for Husky. Collectively, these initiatives highlight our continued investments in innovation, new product development and digital capabilities that will strengthen our competitive position, expand market share and support long-term profitable growth. Lastly, The growing awareness of PT's superior carbon footprint versus other substrates, global regulatory push for plastic circularity, and an aging installed base all provide further tailwinds for Husky. Overall, Husky is well positioned to capitalize on favorable long-term demand drivers across its highly durable end markets. Turning to slide 13, I want to provide additional context around this directory of our financial performance. We began implementing a series of discrete cost actions during the second quarter that already generated savings, with a greater benefit expected in the second half of the year. These actions focus on improving productivity, optimizing labour utilization, reducing discretionary spending, and driving greater SG&E discipline across the organization. Importantly, there is an intentional strategy behind these initiatives. We are focused on enhancing efficiency and profitability while preserving Our ability to respond quickly when demand fully recovers. This balance is critical as we want to ensure Husky remains positioned to capture growth opportunities as market conditions improve. Consistent with historical first and second half seasonality, we expect margins to continue improving sequentially through the remainder of the year. Margin expansion in third and fourth quarter is expected to be driven by fixed cost absorption in the seasonally stronger second half. Ongoing cost saving initiatives and operational improvements resulting from our ROS transformation efforts, partially offset by higher capital costs from Q1 and Q2 being realized in the second half of the year. Turning briefly to tariffs, while the evolving trade environment continues to influence customer purchasing timelines, as noted in the first protocol, we did not expect tariffs to have a direct material impact on the overall financial performance. Our global manufacturing footprint provides flexibility to adapt to changing trade conditions, and we remain well positioned to manage tariff-related impacts. In summary, while market conditions remain dynamic, we believe Husky is well positioned. We see some signs of stabilization, continued customer engagement and we are advancing our operational transformation and executing targeted cost actions. At the same time, we continue to make disciplined investments in R&D and innovation with several new products and technology advancements progressing through our development pipeline These investments reinforce our technology leadership and position us to capture additional growth opportunities as market conditions improve. Taken together, these factors support our confidence in improved performance in the second half of 2026 and over the long term. I will now hand it back to Dave for some closing remarks.

So Compost Gear and Husky are both aggressively driving cultural transformation and advancing in their deployment of ROS. A gradual evolution that improves processes and behaviors to drive sustainable compounding returns. You can clearly see this inflection in results of Compost Secure, and you can expect the same at Husky over time as we effectively manage through market-induced volatility. As I've often said, we never let a good crisis go to waste and are fully using 2026 to set up GPGI for an acceleration in 2027. Our strategy is simple. We combine operational excellence with disciplined underwriting to create a home for high-quality businesses led by great operators. Our permanent capital base and long-term ownership mindset position us to deliver superior returns for our shareholders. This is our focus today, tomorrow, and even further into the future. So with that, let's open it up to questions.

Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star, one, one, on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star, one, and one again. Please remember we'll compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question. And it comes line of Brendan Shea from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. If I could, I'd like to start with Husky. So, you know, you characterize the demand as deferred rather than canceled. You have visibility via orders and pipelines. Just can you quantify that pipeline conversion? So what portion of the deferred system and tooling orders are already booked versus still in discussion? And then What kind of leading indicators of KPIs are you watching that would tell you whether or not that deferral thesis is breaking down for a second half acceleration versus being pushed out further into 2027?

Tom, why don't you start with an overall and then Rob, all yours.

Sure. Yeah, Brendan, thanks. So this is Tom. I'd say we're not giving specific numbers on pipeline and orders, but what I would tell you is we saw acceleration in Pipeline, relative to when we last talked to you, Pipeline's growth is up double digits. We feel very good about that. I think similar, seeing good growth in orders. We mentioned briefly, we're actually seeing even better performance in systems than we thought last quarter. And so while I wouldn't be declaring victory on the market in general, we're seeing pockets of strength and we're seeing machines particularly which happen to have the most visibility for us as we look through the rest of the year and into 27. They're performing better than we thought last quarter. So I think generally we're seeing things move in the direction we want and I think the company's managing that well and it's a result of a lot of focus by the commercial team. Rob, I don't know if you'd add to it.

Maybe just some color on some of the mix in the pipeline on your side, but definitely we're seeing Good pipeline growth for systems, and that's PT systems and packaging machines globally. And it makes us fairly even globally, which is a good sign. And just recently, in the past few months, we've seen an acceleration as well in the pipeline growth of our aftermarket tooling, including both our PT tooling and our hot runner business. So that's a good sign for things to come.

Thank you, Brendan. Do you have any further questions, Brendan?

Yes, please. So just kind of, if we could, we just stay on Husky here for a second. You've talked about the deployment of ROS there a little bit behind Composacura just in terms of what you've accomplished so far. Can you talk to what has been done, what still has to be done, and then whether or not these, you know, the transient market headwinds, is that impacting the pace of deployment of ROS at Husky at all? I'd love that question. Thank you.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, Rob, if I could up front, there is a lot left to do. And that's one of the things that excites us about the place because all those things that we need to work on are opportunities for us. So I'm pretty psyched about where the team is going and what's possible here. Rob, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt all yours.

That's a great intro. Look, it's been hugely impactful in such a short period of time. And I break it into three big buckets. First is the strategic deployment. You know, there's a select initiatives that matter most for the organization, a handful of initiatives that matter most for the organization in terms of prioritizing what needs to change. And ROS helps with strategic deployment through resource allocation, through The best resources assigned to it and transparency and communication right through from top to bottom of the organization. So, focusing on what matters most and having that discipline to drive that execution has been hugely impactful. Secondly, the lean daily management has been a bit of a cultural change at Husky where Everyone is looking within their own functions and end-to-end for waste and variability to improve processes, both again within their function across end-to-end processes. And then we've established tools like Kaizen Events that bring cross-functional teams together, subject matter experts, to work collaboratively towards continuous improvements. And that behavior, that combined behavior, is what creates culture. That cadence is what matters. And so, yeah, those things have been hugely impactful in a very short time to help us focus on what matters, to help reduce waste and variability, and to bring subject matter experts together on a regular cadence to drive continuous improvement.

Thanks. And then one last one on Husky for me. Just kind of underlying macro expectations around the maintained guide. I guess it's more of a total company question. You highlighted that conditions are improving within Husky, better oil and resin prices, etc. Can you speak to the assumed macro conditions within the guide? Can you hit those targets if the macro were to stay as is, or are they dependent upon some further improvement from here?

Yeah, Brendan, I would say consistent with what we said last quarter is the same this quarter, which is I don't think you should impute into our comments that we're seeing material improvements from where we were. I mean, I think there's we feel confident in delivering the guide, what we put out with what we're seeing in the business, but we're not anticipating things getting better from here. I think we talked about that last quarter. We see some marginal improvement today, but it's not like we see things back to normal or and any workflows to where we would expect them ultimately. I think what you should take away is we do have real confidence in the underlying business and the quality of it and the opportunities we're addressing, like Dave mentioned and Rob mentioned, and you can be sure we're doing the things today to set us up for that long-term return, but the guide does not assume things will materially improve.

Okay, thank you. And then if I could squeeze in just a couple of related strategic questions. You've mentioned adding platforms over time, assuming they fit required criteria. Can you talk to the pipeline of opportunities as you see them? What's the ideal portfolio look like in terms of how many franchises you think is an ideal number to own at any one time? Lastly, how do you prioritize between doing things like implementing ROS at acquired companies versus pursuing additional transactions, assuming they fit your required criteria.

Sure. Dave, you want to start, and I'll go to the pipeline and the rest?

Yeah, actually, we're very active in looking at everything you just said, bolt-ons, new platforms, and it's going to depend on the business. Some businesses may already be running pretty well and ROS is not going to be as essential because they're already doing things pretty well. And it's the growth characteristics that we're going to focus ROS on. Others are going to be more in a case where you just got to focus a lot more on the ops in the beginning while still supporting growth in order to make it happen. But we feel pretty good about both bolt-ons and new platforms for all the reasons that Tom mentioned in his comments. Tom?

Yeah, Brendan, I would just say, I mean, we've been looking at this for a very long time. I think that the pipeline of opportunities is large and growing. I think that we're going to be really disciplined in what we look at and the businesses that we Evaluate must be great positions in good industries and I think you know we feel really good about what we see in front of us with Husky and with Compo and so we're not in a rush to do anything we don't have to we don't need to and we see a lot of earnings power growth and cash flow growth from these businesses and we see a lot of opportunities for bolt-ons and for organic investments That being said, I can talk with anyone about it. I believe there's a real structural problem facing large cap private equity firms because I don't think that the regular way IPO is actually a credible path for a successful exit. And so we don't have to go look at all those. We know them. We spend time thinking about it. As Dave said, we're active, but we're going to be disciplined in what we look at. There's a big stable of very high-quality businesses that are stuck, and we think we can be a very good solution for those, but we're not required to go do that. We don't have to do it. We're going to do it when it makes sense and fits with the overall platform.

Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time this morning.

Yep. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from the line of Kurt Matheson from Locust Wood Capital. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions, and good job delivering on your commitments and showing some clear progress during the quarter. In mid-March, you called out an elongation in the sales cycle. So what are you seeing so far in early 3Q and has the expected timing from pipeline to orders and then to sales begun to shorten as bottle grade pet resin prices have become more stable in recent weeks and months?

Sure, I can answer that. Yeah, we have seen some changes to the pipeline. So we measured quantity through the pipeline, the conversion rates, and the time it takes to actually flow from an opportunity to an order through the pipeline. and we have seen some improvements in both our system timeline through the pipeline and our aftermarket tooling pipeline. Both have increased opportunities in the pipeline and the conversion rates have remained more or less the same.

Great. And then what actions are you seeing Husky's customers take to navigate the current macro conditions? You know, particularly with, you know, still elevated resin prices and logistical challenges related to the closure in the Strait of Hormuz.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think a lot of them were a bit surprised early on in the quarter, but most of them now have secured larger range resin purchases and or have looked for alternative sources.

Great. And then last one. Probably for Dave or Tom, it does sound like the pipeline of potentially attractive acquisition candidates is only growing. Can you just share some thoughts on GPGI's current readiness and willingness to act when the right opportunity comes along? And what goes into that factor when you think you would be willing to take action?

Sure. I'll start and then turn it over to Tom. We're ready to act. And if we see the right kind of opportunity at the right kind of price, it's got to be fair to the seller and fair to our investors. We will proceed. So it's just a question of, you know, discussion with the seller and their kind of being willing to understand that the upside for their business is significantly greater with us than it is with anybody else. because of the transformation that we can affect in a business, then we'll proceed. If it doesn't make sense for our share owners, of course, we're not going to proceed. So it's all a question of individual cases. With that, Tom?

Yeah, Kurt, I mean, I think you've heard us talk. You know Dave and me and the whole team here. We're incredibly focused on executing with what we've got, and you can hear that in the comments here, and it's really happening at both businesses, and I think You'll see that. I think we're focused on accretive transactions. We have the benefit of Dave and I and the team at Resolute have been looking at these businesses that are now stuck for almost 10 years. So we know them. We know how they performed. We know the quality of them. We know what we think we can do with them. And we know what we think fair prices are for them. And so it's like Dave said, we're going to keep executing with what we got. We're going to Deliver on what we say and we're going to really go and focus on making these businesses as good as they can possibly be. And if there is another great position in a good industry, a real market leader, that we can acquire accretively. We will do so if we can do it at the right price. And like I said, accretion is going to be important. And I mentioned in my comments what we like about that is we have lots of organic and bolt-on opportunities to invest for each of these businesses, for Compo and for Husky, and we're evaluating those. Those are right in front of us. We're spending time on them. We're thinking about it. And they're intended to make the businesses better. If we have a third and a fourth business that is a great position in a good industry, The organic and bolt-on opportunities for the platform grow even more. And so that's why we like the position we're in. We don't have to do anything, but we're ready and we're looking and we're spending time with that discipline framework in place. Great. That's all for me. And again, oh, go ahead, Dave.

I was going to say, Kurt, if I could just add to that. I mean, we said this last quarter also, but the investment thesis is very much intact here. I'm quite excited, as is Tom and our CEOs about what's possible here and what we're going to be able to do. It truly is unfortunate that with Husky, which had hit all the six criteria and is in the middle of a great cultural transformation under Rob's leadership, as you can see that he's changing and adding a lot of change agents into his organization and promoting them. It's unfortunate that the market timing, you know, we got hit with it when we did. That being said, we're going to turn this into a powerhouse, and I couldn't be more excited about what we're going to do with GPGI and where it's going with the businesses we have and the businesses we're going to add.

Great. Excited to see this unfold over the next quarters. Good job moving the ball forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Thanks for joining us.

I've kind of included my concluding remarks in my last answer to Kurt's question, it seems, but I really am pretty pumped up about where this is going and what we're going to do with it, with the businesses we have and the businesses we're going to add. Thanks, folks.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.