Knowles Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Pruella and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NOLS Corporation Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sarah Cook. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Sarah Cook, Vice President of Investor Relations, and presenting with me today are Jeffrey New, our President and CEO, and John Anderson, our Senior Vice President and CFO. Our call today will include remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects for NOLS, which constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under applicable federal security laws. Forward-looking statements in this call will include comments about demand for company products, anticipated trends in company sales, expenses, and profits, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company urges investors to review the risks and uncertainties in the company's SEC filings, including, but not limited to, the annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2025, periodic reports filed from time to time with the SEC, and the risks and uncertainties identified in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and Knowles disclaims any duty to update such statements except as required by law. In addition, pursuant to Reg G, any non-GAAP financial measures referenced during today's conference call can be found in our press release posted on our website at NOLS.com and in our current report on Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. This will include a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. All financial references on this call will be on a non-GAAP continuing operations basis with the exception of cash from operations or unless otherwise indicated. We've made select financial information available in webcast slides, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff, who will provide details on our results. Jeff?

Thanks, Sarah. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. We started 2026 with solid financial results in Q1 and great momentum entering the rest of the year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom engineered solutions and then delivering them at scale for blue chip customers in high growth markets that value our solutions is proving to be a powerful combination. We had strong organic growth in the first quarter as we delivered revenue of $153 million, up 16% year-over-year, and at the high end of our guided range. EPS of 27 cents, up 50% year-over-year, exceeded the high end of our guided range, and cash utilized in operations of $1 million was within our guided range. Now on to our segment results. In Q1, MedTech and specialty audio revenue was $68 million, up 14% year-over-year. Our customers' new product introductions, coupled with our position on these platforms, have led to stronger-than-expected growth in the first quarter. Knowles continues to demonstrate our ability to deliver unique solutions with superior technology and reliability our customers have come to depend on. MSA's first quarter revenue grew well above our annual organic growth target of 2% to 4%. However, the hearing health end market is expected to continue to grow at normal historical rates in 2026. Therefore, we are projecting MedTech and specialty audio will grow within the 2% to 4% range for the full year 2026. Beyond 2026, we are positioned well to win next-generation designs for MEMS microphones and balanced armature speakers. As I said during our year-end call, we also see the prospect to increase our content for device in next-generation hearing health products and expand our reach with our microsolutions group, which provides the opportunity in the future to increase growth rates above the historical rates. In the precision device segment, Q1 revenues was $85 million, up 17% year-over-year. With all our end markets we serve, MedTech defends industrial and electrification, growing on a year-over-year basis. Let me share a couple highlights driving growth in our end markets this quarter. We saw strength in the defense market across our product families. Our capacitors were in demand supporting ongoing OEM investments in defense programs, new products starting production, and share gains. We also saw broad-based orders for our RF microwave products as we continue to be a sole supplier on a number of key defense programs. Additionally, we do expect increasing demand in 2027 and beyond, driven by the replenishment of stocks in connection with the Iran conflict. In the industrial market, demand continued to grow with strong order activity across a wide range of our capacitor products, supporting a multitude of applications and industries at both our distribution partners and OEMs. As an example, our ceramic capacitors were in high demand in the semiconductor equipment market and also for use in downhole applications. Additionally, with inventory challenges we saw last year behind us, We believe our distributor partners' orders are aligned with end market demand. In addition to the strong shipments we saw in the first quarter, our book-to-bill and precision devices was very strong at 1.19. This ordering pattern was broad-based, and this marked the sixth consecutive quarter where the book-to-bill was greater than one. We see ordering strength across all our end markets, both at OEMs and with our distribution partners. A robust pipeline of new design wins coupled with favorable secular trends gives me confidence in our ability to continue to grow revenue above the high end of the organic growth target of 6% to 8% for precision devices in 2026. I continue to be excited by the strength of our business and the momentum we exited the first quarter with. We are well positioned for continued strong organic revenue growth and margin expansion through 2026. We believe this momentum is sustainable for two key reasons. First, our portfolio of businesses are well positioned in markets with strong secular growth trends. Whether it be defense, medical, industrial, or electrification, the secular drivers of growth in these markets is forecasted to be positive for the foreseeable future. Second, we design high-performance customized solutions for our customers that have demanding applications, and we have the manufacturing capabilities that allows us to ramp up these solutions quickly and efficiently. This combination differentiates us, allowing us to garner premium margins for the products we produce. This is proving to be a winning combination. Before I turn the call over to John to cover our financial results and provide our Q2 guidance, I would like to reiterate what I've said on previous calls. I believe Knowles has entered a period of accelerated organic growth. With a very healthy backlog of existing orders, We now expect our revenue growth in 2026 to be above the high end of our target organic revenue target of 4% to 6% that we provided at our investor day in May of last year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom engineered solutions and then deliver them at scale for blue chip customers in high growth markets that value our solutions is proving to be a powerful combination driving revenue growth, expanding margins, and strong cash flow to drive shareholder value. Now, let me turn the call over to John for our financial results and our Q2 guidance.

Thanks, Jeff. We reported first quarter revenues of $153 million, 16% from the year-ago period and at the high end of our guidance range. EPS was $0.27 in the quarter, up $0.09, or 50% from the year-ago period and above the midpoint of our guidance range. Cash utilized by operating activities was $1 million within our guidance range. In the MedTech and specialty audio segment, Q1 revenue was $68 million, up 14%, compared with the year-ago period driven by increased hearing health shipments associated with our customers' successful new product introductions. Q1 gross margins were 53.5%, up 480 basis points from the year-ago period, driven by both increased factory capacity utilization and favorable mix. For full year 2026, we expect MSA gross margins to be in line with 2025 margins of 51%. The precision devices segment delivered first quarter revenues of $85 million, up 17% from the year-ago period, driven by broad-based strength across medtech, defense, and industrial end markets. Segment gross margins were 39.2%. of 350 basis points from the first quarter of 2025 as improved pricing and higher end market demand is driving increased factory capacity utilization. These improvements were partially offset by higher factory costs in our specially filmed product line as we ramp up production capacity to support our 75 million plus energy order. While we delivered significant year-over-year margin improvement in the first quarter, I'm confident in our ability to further improve precision device gross margins in the second half of 2026 as we increase production volume in our specialty film line. On a total company basis, R&D expense in the quarter was $10 million, up $1.4 million compared to Q1 2025 on higher project spending in both MSA and PD segments. SG&A expenses were $28 million, up $3 million from prior year levels, driven primarily by higher sales commission, timing of expenses, and additional headcount within the precision device segment to support future revenue growth, including new product initiatives. Interest expense for the quarter was $2 million, $1 million lower than last year due to lower average debt balances. Now, I'll turn to our balance sheet and cash flow. In the first quarter, we utilized $1 million in cash from operating activities, and capital spending was $11 million. Cash from operations includes $8 million in outflows related to the CMM business, which was divested at the end of 2024. Payments related to the CMM business are now substantially complete. During the first quarter, we repurchased 276,000 shares at a total cost of $7.5 million. We exited the quarter with cash of $41 million and $131 million of borrowings under our revolving credit facilities. Lastly, our net leverage ratio based on trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was 0.6 times, and we have liquidity of more than $310 million as measured by cash plus unused capacity under our revolving credit facilities. Moving to our Q2 guidance. For the second quarter of 2026, revenues are expected to be between $152 and $162 million, up 8% year-over-year at the midpoint. R&D expenses are expected to be between 9 and 11 million. Selling and administrative expenses are expected to be within the range of 26 to 28 million. We're projecting adjusted EBIT margin for the quarter to be within the range of 20 to 22%. Interest expense in Q2 is estimated at 2 million, and we expect an effective tax rate of 15 to 19%. We're projecting EPS be within a range of $0.28 to $0.32 per share, up $0.06 or 25% year over year at the midpoint. This assumes weighted average shares outstanding during a quarter of $87 million on a fully diluted basis. We're projecting cash from operating activities to be within the range of $20 to $30 million. Capital spending is expected to be $8 million. We expect full-year capital spending to be approximately 4% to 5% of revenues as we continue to make investments in the first half of this year associated with capacity expansion related to the large energy order we received in 2025. We've started 2026 with significant year-over-year revenue and earnings growth, and we have positive momentum entering the remainder of the year. Our first quarter performance combined with a robust backlog and increased order activity throughout the first four months of the year Give me confidence in our ability to deliver an increase in 2026 adjusted EBITDA above our cumulative annual growth target of 10 to 14%. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A portion of our call. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And if you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Christopher Roland with Susquehanna, please go ahead.

Hey guys, thanks for the question and congrats on the results. um so in your press release i think you mentioned uh numerous design wins across multiple end markets and jeff you might have addressed this fully in your prepared remarks i'm not sure but um if you didn't if you could highlight perhaps those products the applications kind of how you view the

lifetime value just broadly of these these sockets all of that would be uh would be appreciated yeah i mean i chris i wish i could sit there and point to one specific one you know i mean the one obviously that you know that we continue to ramp on or work on is the energy order which you know will be fully ramped up by at the end of q2 so that's not a significant contributor in q1 but it's very broad-based you know whether it be in medical you know we have a lot of uh uh applications relative to wearable type devices. You can go into industrial. We have a lot of things going on in downhole applications. A lot of good stuff going on there. Defense, I would characterize just briefly, orders are up. There's no doubt orders are up. But the level of activity relative to everything that's going on in the globe is really high. And so you're going to see, we think in defense, some strength in 27 or 26, rather, that's probably stronger than we expected. But, you know, 27 looks like a shaping up to be even better for defense. And so overall, you know, I think we were executed on this concept of that, you know, we built out an engineering team that can customize to solve really hard problems across these applications. And then we can scale the production very quickly on these customized solutions. And it's just very broad-based, what we're seeing.

Excellent. And then maybe, John, a question for you. You know, gross margin expansion, you talked about that. I think you talked about pricing, favorable pricing. Maybe if you can talk about pricing increases, whether you put them on or whether you have an ability to increase price from here. And then just more broadly, the drivers of gross margin beyond pricing, I think you talked about ramping the specialty film line, which is great. Any other things to think about on gross margin and drivers there would be great.

Chris, let me take the pricing question, and I'll let John cover the other drivers of gross margin expansion. I think more and more, Chris, what we're starting to realize as we go through this journey is that we have a lot of very strong positions, and we're looking at this on a regular basis, and I would say it's more specific to the PD business. you know, where, you know, we have a lot of different applications, a lot of different customers, and, you know, pricing strategies become a big part of our opportunity every single year. You know, and I would sit there and say, you know, the things that we've done, you know, should lead us in that, you know, you know, 2% to 4% in the PE business on price a year, somewhere in that range, and we should be able to garner. You know, it's a little different in the MSA business. You know, I think, you know, we have... A very limited customer base. We have very strong margins in that business. So we aren't really seeing like pricing increases in that business. Hence why we're sitting there saying that the gross margins are not expected to expand. But I think, you know, John can talk a little more about it. Pricing is one piece, but there's other things as well.

So I talked in my prepared remarks about the MSA gross margins. We kind of expect that to be flat around the 51% level for full year. They were above that in Q1. It's really we were operating near full, you know, maximum capacity. We also had some favorable mix. But MSA, kind of think of it year over year, you know, flattish at, you know, a very attractive 51%. From PD, that's where we think there's margin expansion opportunity. You know, we delivered 39.1% this quarter. And as we look, you know, Q2 will be kind of in that range. But as we enter in the back half of 26th, We see increasing capacity utilization in both the specialty film line as we ramp up production. We'll be kind of ramped up, as Jeff mentioned, as we exit Q2 there. And so we should see some really good improvement in capacity utilization in the back half. But also in our ceramic capacitor line and our RF filters, as demand is increasing, we think there there's opportunity.

Our variable margins are very strong in all of our businesses. And right now, you know, obviously we will probably need to hire more direct labor as this continues to ramp in these businesses. But there isn't a tremendous amount of overhead that's needed in order to support increased volume.

That's great. Thank you, guys. Sure. Thanks, Chris.

And your next question comes from the line of Robert Ladek with CJS Securities, East Ahead.

Hi, this is Will on for Bob. Looking at specially filmed pilot programs, you discussed downhole fracking and energy transmission pilots. Can you give us an update on how they're progressing? What do you know if they may convert to larger programs, and did you win any new pilots in the quarter?

There's a list. We review on a very regular basis of the pilots, and I would say we're due to deliver pilots on 20 different customers over the next year. say, quarter. So just figure, you know, every quarter we're delivering pilot. And again, doing my base application. Broad base application. Downhole. Yeah. I would sit there and say, you know, just a little bit more specific on the energy order. We are on track from a ramp standpoint. We are on track from, you know, a yield standpoint. And so we feel very strongly about that $25 million plus at, you know, pretty good gross margins. for the rest of the year, especially in the back half as it's fully ramped. Bottom line is, I think everything's heading kind of right direction here for the specialty film line. And we see the opportunity, as John kind of laid out, that within the precision devices, this is going to be, especially on a year-over-year basis and a sequential basis,

to help uh drive improve gross margin within the specialty uh within the pd uh yeah i will be surprised a full year we don't improve gross margins within the pd segment by 100 basis points and it's really driven in the back half of 2026. that is super helpful thank you and you talked about the tailwinds from the war in defense uh are there are there any headwinds from the war that you're evaluating You know, just a little bit on input costs. I mean, our transportation costs are fairly low. You think of the size of our components are very, very small. And we manufacture in a lot of the regions that we're selling. So they're fairly nominal. But that's really the only thing we've seen. You know, maybe some resin-based products, some modest increases, but not significant.

I mean, you know, the cost that we're looking at here, you know, if it were to become more substantial, You know, we would, you know, like on the transportation cost, a lot of our customers, you know, take possession at our dock and we're not paying for the shipping anyway. So, I mean, I think, and then there are some input costs like resins and things like that, but it doesn't seem to be a big portion of our bill of materials.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. And once again, if you would like to ask a question, seem to press the star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Stoss with Craig Helen. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Jeff, just getting back to pricing power, because maybe I wasn't following it correctly. It seems like there's a ton of activity, especially on the military defense side. Maybe there's puts and takes at each of the different divisions. Do you, given the nature of activity, do you think it's fair to say that gross margins and pricing in 2027 on average is going to be higher than 2026?

No, I would sit there and say we have a pretty strong cadence of how we do pricing at this point. I wouldn't sit there and say that we're going to sit there and see pricing. If I say it's in PD 2% to 4% per year, maybe it gets toward the higher end of that range. I'm not seeing that. I mean, you're right. The demand, I mean, just more than defense, the demand across the board is pretty high. You know, I looked... And we talked about the book to bill being 1.19. That's on top of 16% growth, right? So that book to bill represents, you know, a fair amount of orders. And I just, you know, got off the phone with our sales team. The order rate in April is already strong again. We're looking at another strong month of bookings in April. You know, I think we're starting to spend a little bit more time, obviously, analyzing, you know, pricing and things like that. But just remember, you know, We don't have huge amounts of cost in order to get these units out. They're very profitable already, you know, in the PD segment. And so I think we're going to continue to follow our kind of, you know, what I would say playbook of increasing price on a somewhat regular basis, you know, by market, by product, by customer, you know, to cover any cost, input cost increase, and, you know, and some more where we can.

I would add, Tony, I do think from a gross margin standpoint, there is some opportunity in 27 to be above 26, just because think of the trajectory through 26. We're increasing gross margins as we – 27 margins should be similar to what the margins we exit 26 at, which will be, again, higher than we're delivering right now.

Got it. That makes sense. And then two last questions on the energy – ramp, is there any technical hurdles or either production setup or hurdles that you still need to overcome before the end of Q2? Or is it pretty much blocking and tackling?

I think it's a lot of blocking and tackling, you know, and I would sit there and say, you know, we're in the process. All the equipment is on site. It's a matter of bringing it up, fully qualifying it, and then running, you know, high volume through it. I mean, there isn't, I would sit there and say, like, we're waiting for a piece of equipment that may not arrive on time. I mean, everything's in place, and so it's a matter of just bringing everything up. You know, I would sit there and say, you know, in Q1, they were slightly ahead of what they had projected in terms of output and getting things qualified. You know, I'm not committing that we're going to be ahead for the first half, but, you know, I think everything seems to be, you know, I was just down there a week and a half ago at the facility. I mean, everything was great, and so I think we're in pretty good shape.

Okay, last question. know your group that you don't talk about that often the rf side quite a few of the rf power amp folks are all talking about just huge orders and satellite do you have any products that are exposed to satellite or can you tweak anything that you could gain exposure to huge satellites i mean if you think about our i mean here's the thing if you think about our line we do have some satellite business i wouldn't say you know it's a huge driver um you know i think what what we have what we provide

is these super, super high-performance RF filters. And hence why we can garner great gross margins, and we make good money in this space. I would say there's more of a mix in the satellite business of using more commercially available RF filters versus specialized stuff. To the extent, and I would almost say this to the satellite businesses like where we are with EV, where we can be differentiated, we'll sell into that market But when they come to us and say, we want something really low cost and we want it to be at a very low price, we tend to say, there's other guys who are willing to do that kind of stuff. So we do have some, but it's usually where they need something very unique and special where we can garner very good gross margins.

And Tony, I would just add, we talked about 17% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 in the precision advice segment. RF was a big contributor to that. Yeah, they grew. You're right. It's smaller as far as percent of the total, but their growth rate was in the double digits.

Yeah, I guess my point being is we're just not going to deviate from the idea here. We don't really want to be in the commoditized portions of the market. And there are some commoditized portions of the market. And I would say my take is satellite is a little bit more mixed in terms of what they're looking for.

Got it. Thanks for all the color, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Tristan Garrow with Beard. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon. In precision devices, could you give us a sense of where your front-end utilization rates are? And as ultimately utilization rates, you know, go to full utilization above 90 percent, what type of gross margin would that imply? And then are you also able to quantify the impact on gross margin currently from the energy order production ramp? And when does that headwind go away?

So first let me just cover on capacity utilization. It is different from product to product. We have our filters. We have ceramic caps. We have film caps, which is the old Cornell acquisition. It's a little different from product to product. But generally speaking, we have done a lot of capacity planning for the mid to longer term in the last quarter. And what we're seeing, you know, with the growth rate that we're having, at least within 2026 and in probably the first half of 27, we're going to need more direct labor. We're not going to need a lot more, I would say, equipment. There may be some selective places we need equipment. We're probably running, on average... in the 80 range right now across the pd business that's probably where we're running and we we have some room to still you know bring up output without adding a lot of expensive capacity um so i think again the stuff that's going to our variable margins are very strong we expect we're going to drop a lot of this growth the the revenue to the bottom line as far as the energy order you know i think How I kind of see the energy order is this. It is definitely weighing on the PD segment. We really haven't quantified to the extent that it is at this point, but, you know, I think it is going to be a driver of margin expansion in the back now.

Just directionally, Tristan, think of maybe 200 to 250 basis points better than we're doing today as it relates to the PD segment, and that's driven heavily by this energy order. Yep.

Okay, great. That's very useful. And then given lead time expanding and all types of shortages, you know, happening in the industry, are you seeing appetite from customers to try to secure capacity into 27? And have you done LTSs in the past? Is that the type of discussion that customers are coming to you with, or is it mostly... you know, short lead time type of orders?

I would sit there and say, you know, in our distribution business, for the most part, it's been short lead time orders. In our OEM business, I would sit there and say, there is a lot more discussion specifically in the defense area about larger orders. We're starting to see more people come to us saying, we would want to place an order with you for, instead of a year, which would be more typical for defense, We want to place a three- or a five-year order in defense. So there's a lot of negotiations and discussion going on about that right now. I would say industrial and medical, we have very long-term customers. We get regular forecasts from them, and we are prepared to make sure we meet their requirements. But I think defense is the area where we're starting to see at least more discussions about bigger orders. But I will add that book-to-bill of that 1.19, We did not have any real, like, big orders that were scheduled out more than a year. So there's nothing in that book to bill that would be an anomaly that drove that book to bill up to 1.19. I would say 97% of that book to bill will be shipped within 12 months.

Great. That's very useful. Thank you.

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.