Materion Corporation

Greetings, welcome to the Materion Second Quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Kyle Kelleher, Director of

Investor Relations and Corporate FP&A. Before we begin our remarks this morning, I would like to point out that we have posted materials on the company's website that we will reference as part of today's review of the quarterly results. You can also access the materials through the download feature on the earnings call webcast link. With me today is Jubal B.J. Varghia, President and Chief Executive Officer of the B.J. Varghia Company. I would like to welcome you to our conference call. Our format for today's conference call is as follows. Jubal will provide opening comments on the quarter. Following Jubal, Shelley will review the detailed financial results for the quarter in addition to discussing expectations for the remainder of 2025. We will then open up the call for questions. Let me remind investors that any forward-looking statements made in the presentation, including those in the outlook section and during the question and answer portion, are based on current expectations. The company's actual performance may materially different from that contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors. Those factors are listed in the earnings call press release issued this morning. Additionally, comments regarding earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, depletion, and amortization, net income, and earnings per share reflect the adjusted gap numbers shown in attachments 4-9 in this morning's press release. The adjustments are made in the prior year period for comparative purposes and remove special items, non-cash charges, and certain discrete income tax adjustments. And now I'll turn over the call to Jubal for its comments.

Thank you, Kyle, and welcome everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today to discuss our second quarter results and provide an update on our outlook for the remainder of 2025. Our business performed very well in the quarter, delivering record second quarter margins and strong pre-cash flow. Although sales were down 2% organically, we experienced solid growth in aerospace and defense and energy, as well as in semiconductor outside of China. EBITDA was strong at $56 million, and we continue to deliver margins above 20%, despite some pockets of softness still moving through our top line. I am particularly proud of our electronic materials team as they delivered an all-time high EBITDA margin of 23.4%, demonstrating the power of the work that has been done to optimize the cost structure and improve operational efficiencies in that segment. We have reached a new level of performance with EM, and I expect the business to deliver very good margin expansion for the full year. Precision optics also showed a significant improvement in the second quarter as the transformation continues. Sales improved 14% sequentially, and EBITDA increased more than $2 million, marking the second consecutive quarter of improvement. Beyond the cost structure improvements that have been implemented, the business is making excellent progress on new business initiatives that should begin contributing by the end of the year. As we have discussed over the last few quarters, cash flow generation remains a key focus for us, as evidenced by our Q2 results. We generated $36 million in pre-cash flow, the strongest we've seen in any second quarter. Our disciplined approach to managing working capital and pacing capital investments is driving the performance. Earlier this month, we acquired the manufacturing assets for Tantrum Solutions from Conosal, a Korean manufacturer serving the semiconductor and adjacent markets. This acquisition expands our semiconductor footprint in Asia, allowing us to better serve the large tier 1 chip manufacturers in that region and insource more of the target manufacturing value chain. This move expands our position as a leading global supplier of deposition materials. The integration is progressing well, and we have begun producing samples for customer qualifications. While the results for the quarter were very strong, what is perhaps more encouraging are many positive signs we're seeing in order rates, signaling promising momentum as we move through the back half of 2025 and into 2026. As the broader semiconductor market is showing signs of improvement, with wafer starts up and customer inventories coming in line, our order rates are improving, especially within data storage, power, and communication devices. Sequentially, our order rates improved double digit, excluding China, where the customers are still showing terra-filater hesitance. Defense is an area that is getting a significant amount of attention globally, and this is leading to many new opportunities for Materion. Our pipeline of new business opportunities is rapidly accelerating, with over $100 million of requests for quotation received in the second quarter alone. In the first half of 2025, we saw record bookings of $75 million, and our initiative to grow our defense business outside the U.S. has resulted in a 60% -on-year sales increase. I expect the pace of defense-related activity will continue picking up for the back half of the year. In space, we continue to win new applications and expand our reach. Our order backlog has more than doubled in the last year, and we recently won a new application for ground station equipment for the leading U.S. space customer. Leveraging our larger space proposal systems win in the U.S., we also secured an order for the same application for the customer in Europe. I also want to highlight our business activity in the energy and market. Our sales are up 28% -on-year for the first half of 2025, as we are growing new and existing business to meet the world's increasing energy demands. We have a particular focus on initiatives in new energy, where our first half sales have exceeded the full year sales of 2024. As our business is well aligned to this global mega trend, we expect this area to be a growth driver for the company for the foreseeable future. When we released our first quarter earnings in late April, there was considerable uncertainty surrounding the tariff environment, which we noted as a qualifier to our guidance. While much remains to be finalized, we are more confident affirming our initial full year earnings guide despite the risk that remains, thanks to our strong -to-date performance, new business wins, and the increased order activity we are seeing. I would like to thank our global team for their unwavering commitment to driving our business forward while navigating the current environment. Now, let me turn the call over to Shelley to cover more details on the financials.

Thanks, Jubal, and good morning, everyone. During my comments, I will reference the slides posted on our website this morning, starting on slide 10. In the second quarter, value-added sales, which exclude the impact of pass-through precious metal costs, were $269 million, down 2% organically from prior year and up 4% sequentially. This -over-year slight decrease was largely driven by lower precision clad strip shipments and semiconductor demand from China. Excluding the impact of these items, value-added sales would have been up 2% versus the prior year. Strength in aerospace and defense, energy, and semiconductor sales outside of China are driving the -over-year sales increase. When looking at earnings per share, we delivered quarterly adjusted earnings of $1.37, down 4% from prior year but up 21% sequentially. Moving to slide 11, adjusted EBITDA was $55.8 million, or a second quarter record of .8% of value-added sales, down 3% -over-year with 10 basis points of margin expansion despite the lower volume. This decrease was driven by lower volume, partially offset by strong operational performance and structural cost improvements. Favorable pricing was realized in the quarter, offsetting unfavorable mix from hydroxide shipment timing. Moving to slide 12, let me review second quarter performance by business segment. Starting with performance materials, value-added sales were up 168.5 million, down 3% -over-year but up 5% sequentially. The -over-year decrease was driven primarily by lower precision clad strip shipments as the expected inventory correction continues. Excluding precision clad strip, sales were up 3% driven by strength in energy and aerospace and defense. Adjusted EBITDA was 41.5 million, or .6% of value-added sales, down 4% compared to the prior year period. This decrease was driven by lower volume and unfavorable mix, partially offset by strong operational performance. Looking out to the second half of 2025, we expect to see continued strength across the aerospace and defense and energy and markets. In addition to higher volume, we expect to see continued strong operational performance and cost management. Now turning to electronic materials on slide 13. Value-added sales were 76.1 million, down 6% from the prior year, driven by lower semiconductor sales to China. Excluding this impact, the remainder of the semiconductor market was up 6% from prior year, signaling market strength with improving demand across many subsectors. EBITDA, excluding special items with 17.8 million, or a record .4% of value-added sales in the quarter, up 4% from the prior year with 230 basis points of margin expansion. This record margin and -over-year increase was driven by continued operational performance, including the impact of our cost improvement initiatives and strong price mix despite lower volume. As we look out to the remainder of the year, we expect the semiconductor market to improve in the second half and continue the momentum seen during the quarter. While some uncertainty remains around our semiconductor sales to customers in China, we are confident that our balanced and global semi-portfolio will help offset some softness there. And as demonstrated so far this year, we expect to deliver considerable margin expansion as demand increases and the impact of our improved cost structure takes hold. Turning to the precision optics segment on slide 14, value-added sales were 24.4 million, down 5% compared to the prior year and up 14% sequentially. The -over-year decrease was driven largely by order timing in the defense market. EBITDA, excluding special items with 2.2 million, or 9% of value-added sales in the quarter, approaching double-digit margin with 950 basis points of improvement. The increase was driven by improving performance and the impact of the structural cost changes. This quarter brings the second consecutive quarter of improved results and we expect to continue this trend as new business initiatives advance and we continue to improve our business performance. Moving now to cash, debt, and liquidity on slide 15, we ended the quarter with a net debt position of approximately $413 million and approximately $257 million of available capacity on the company's existing credit facility. Our leverage remains below two times as cash flow generation is an important focus. We delivered approximately $36 million of free cash flow during the quarter, bringing our -to-date conversion to more than 70% of adjusted net income. While continuing to invest organically, we also repaid $26 million of debt and repurchased 100,000 shares at an average of $78 per share, further demonstrating our balanced and disciplined approach to capital allocation. As we look out to the remainder of the year, we are well on our way to deliver free cash flow that exceeds 70% of adjusted net income with strong first half cash generation and second half cash initiatives on track. Lastly, let me transition to slide 16 and address the full year 2025. We are pleased with our business performance in the first half of the year, having delivered strong results despite a volatile macro environment, and we are encouraged by improving market dynamics and new business opportunities won as we look to the second half of the year. With that, we expect Q3 will be similar to slightly better than Q2, and we are on track to deliver a strong Q4 with improving demand and the timing of defense shipments. As a result, we are affirming our initial guide of $5.30 to $5.70 adjusted earnings per share for the full year. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handsets before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. The first question today is coming from Phil Gibbs from KeyBank Capital. Phil, your line is live.

Hey, good morning.

Morning, Phil. Hi, Phil.

So really strong performance in electronic materials in terms of their margins. Jugal, you mentioned a new level of performance and you expected some upside there for the full year. How sustainable do we think the recent quarters EM margins are? And then I also noticed there was a pretty solid sequential pickup in consumer electronics. I know that at times can have a nice mix impact for you because I wouldn't think intuitively it would have been a pickup in the cloud because I know that's in that piece. But maybe talk about that holistically.

Yeah. So Phil, electronic materials, as you know, we've been talking about that for the last year, year and a half. As the market has been down, our team has done a really nice job of driving operational performance, adjusting the cost structure at the levels that we had. What that has done now, of course, is that as the volumes are starting to pick up, we are starting to see a significant benefit of that. We started with volumes picking up in the logic and memory section, but now volumes are starting to pick up in power. They're starting to pick up in our data storage. And I think that's giving us confidence and it's leading to these improved margins that we saw here into two, certainly .5% type margins are not necessarily the type of margins that we think we see every quarter, but it's very, very encouraging for us to see this. And I think the improvement is going to continue. I believe that we're going to have a good year over year performance and margin expansion in this business, especially as the market continues to improve. So we're very encouraged by where electronic materials is and very encouraged with, I think, where it can go the rest of the year. But I think also importantly in 26 and 27, as we would expect the market to continue to rebound. I think with consumer electronics, one of the reasons that the uptake took place is a little bit more shipments for our PMI business. We have, as we've indicated, that our full year is in line with what the customer has communicated to us in the past. So there's no real changes on a full year basis, but there certainly is always timing issues that happen between quarter to quarter. So nothing abnormal, I would say, there, but we're continuing to drive performance, of course, across all of our markets.

Thank you, Jugal. Appreciate that. And then on energy, you talked a bit about that in your prepared remarks. It looks up a decent bit, half on half versus last year. And I know that there's a couple, excuse me, of subsegments within your energy business and maybe talk a little bit about, talk a little bit more about what you're seeing there and what has you excited.

Thanks. Yeah. So as you know, we've had traditional energy. We're an impactful player in the oil and gas market. Our content for RIG has continued to improve. We provide, in fact, more content, especially as the new drilling technologies come on board and more and more electronics and more AI is implemented on the traditional energy side. So that makes us feel good, I think, in terms of that side of it. But last couple of years, we've talked a lot about alternate energy, new sources of energy, in particular, clean nuclear energy. We've talked about our partnership with Kairos, but in addition to that, we have a number of other initiatives that we're involved in that we're not able to talk about the customer names, but we are involved in those here in the US as well as globally. And we're excited about that. We're excited about where that can take us over the next three, five, seven years, because as we know, the trend and the world's expectations of energy is increasing. The demand is increasing at a rapid rate, and the world has to be able to conform to that demand. And I think we're a key player with our materials in the energy sector. So not only are we excited about our content on the traditional energy side, I think we're even more excited about the role that we can play on the new sources of energy that I think are coming forward with the number of different projects that we have.

Thank you. And then lastly, for me, clearly outline the tariff risks or potential tariff risks associated with China last quarter. Looks like you've essentially believe you've fully mitigated that in the existing outlook. And just curious from your perspective holistically, what has changed and what has given you confidence in the landscape other than just the cyclical pickup in the SEMI's business overall? Thank you. Good luck.

Yeah. Well, as you know, at the time that we did our Q1 earnings, there were substantial tariff rates, both for material coming into the US and material going from the US into China. Changes happened during the quarter where those rates were reduced significantly. As a result, we were able to get some product out still in Q2 that, you know, initially we had forecasted that we may not be able to get out. We never really stopped producing. We wanted to make sure that we were prepared in case if there were changes to the tariff environment, and certainly there were, and we were able to take advantage of those. Now, we still had some level of impact in Q2, not to the level that we had initially expected. And we expect that there will still be some level of impact in the back half of the year as well. However, I think I'm really, really proud of our team for driving operational improvements, commercial improvements to our business so that we can make sure that whatever impact that we think we may still have in the second half of the year, we're going to be able to offset that impact and deliver our original guide. You know, our incoming order rates are up 4% from the first quarter to the second quarter. Non-China Semi is up 15% sequentially. We have record defense bookings of $75 million. Our space backlog is double what it was at the same time last year. New energy sales, which I just talked about, you know, are up. We've had more new energy sales in the first half of this year than we had all of last year. So all those types of things, I think, give us encouraging signs of where things are headed in the second half of the year, and I think that's a good way to be positioned for 26. So certainly a lot of hard work by our team. We're in no way out of the woods because there is a lot of uncertainty that's still out there, but certainly encouraging to see the results for the second quarter and what it may do for us then in the back half of the year.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question will be from Daniel Moore from CJS Securities. Daniel, your line is 25.

Good morning, Jugal. Morning, Shelley. Congrats on the results and thanks for taking the questions. Thanks,

Dan. Morning.

Maybe just talk a little bit more about ConnoSol. Tell us a little bit more about the facility and the capabilities you're acquiring relative to your deposition capabilities here in the US, and how do we kind of think about either current revenue EBITDAs or the scope of the opportunity set over time?

Yeah, I think this is a great move that our team has been able to make. As you know, we've been talking, Dan, for the last few years about continuing to gain more capacity and capability outside the US, particularly in our semiconductor business. The largest semiconductor suppliers tend to be in Asia. We want to make sure we're local and we're providing the local support to those customers. ConnoSol fits right in for that. It's a facility in Korea. We're able to support not only the Korean chip manufacturers, but also chip manufacturers in Taiwan, in China, in Japan, etc. It really gives us a full value stream for our tantalum business, but it also gives us a facility that we can build on for our other semiconductor business as well down the road. We were able to close on that here in the second quarter. Now we're really, really excited and busy about making samples and qualification products that we can give to those many customers in the Asia region. As you know, in this space, of course, it takes a little time to get the qualifications done. So perhaps in some cases, it's six months, other cases, it may be 12 months. We would expect to see some level of sales starting in the 26 timeframe and the associated EBITDA with that. But it positions us very well for, I think, the general growth that we see, that we talk about for the semi space over the next three to five to seven years.

Very helpful. And just sticking with semi, obviously, you described very well some of the green shoots and improvements you're seeing here or at non-China. Maybe talk about what you're seeing or hearing in China specifically and any confidence in a return to growth as we think about the 26 and beyond.

Yeah, well, first of all, to your point about the green shoots, yeah, we started to see the green shoots in the logic and memory side maybe a couple quarters back. But what's really encouraging to us, I think, is the growth and sort of the green shoots that we're starting to see on our data storage business, on our power semiconductor business, our communications devices business, because that's at the heart of our business in the electronic materials business. It contributes good, obviously, on the top line, but also very good on the bottom line. So we're very, very encouraged with where things are starting to develop. I mean, we really think that that trend can continue here in the back half of the year. With regard to China, China, as you know, has been developing their own semi supply chain for a number of years now. They've put a lot of effort into it and I think they've made great progress along with, of course, the full manufacturing, our final manufacturing for the semi side. They're also doing a great job of putting their own supply chain in place. So certainly we want to be involved in that China semi manufacturing over the long term. But we also recognize that there will be competition from the local players as they gain speed. So I think for us, we're looking at the global market, the investments that are going on in the US, the investments that are going on in Europe, and of course, the investments that are we believe that semi will continue to be, you know, mid single digits, a high single digits growth market for the foreseeable future.

Super helpful. Last for me and I'll jump back. It just kind of, it sounds like Philip Morris or PMI, no changes to the kind of full year outlook. Any update on potential timing around phase two of the precision cloud strip project and what you're hearing in terms of, you know, from the FDA, etc. Thanks again.

Yeah. So the full year, I mean, we like we indicated, you know, we expect the full year to be in line with what we have communicated before. We're on track with that. Typically, we sit with the with them in Q3, sometimes maybe early Q4 to start talking about the following year. So we'll do that in our meetings with them and start to have an understanding of what their expectations are for the next year. Yeah, they announced last week, I mean, in the earnings call that they are continuing to work with the FDA to gain approval, whether they're able to get that this year or next year is obviously, you know, discussions that they're having, you know, with the FDA and what they can do regards to that. But certainly, we are very well prepared so that once they do get the approval, then, you know, we're able to support them as needed.

Very good. Appreciate color. Thanks again.

Thanks,

Dan.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Mike Harrison from Seaport Research Partners. Mike, your line is live.

Hi, good morning. Congrats on a nice quarter.

Thanks,

Mike. Thanks, Mike. I wanted to go back to the margin performance in the electronic materials business. It kind of sounds like while you're expecting some improvement, maybe Q2 is kind of a high watermark. And I guess I just wanted to understand, you know, what kind of temporary or unusual factors could be playing into the margin performance? And specifically, I was curious, is the strength outside of China something that is a positive for mix, meaning that, you know, some of your inside China business is actually lower margin business than outside?

Yeah, Mike, let me start with that one. So, you know, you're hitting on some good points there with electronic materials, you know, the performance has definitely been improving. But as you know, it's not really consistent quarter to quarter within a very small band as to what those margins are. And there's different factors that mix certainly is one of the larger ones. You know, as you know, sometimes we talk about our precious metals business versus our non-precious metals business as those carry different margin profiles. But regionally as well, China is does tend to be a lower mix item. So when our strong, when our sales are stronger on the other items, that would be a positive mix, positive mix item.

All right, that's helpful. And then within the performance materials business and that precision clad strip business, I think we just kind of touched on it, but I was hoping to get an update on that, that new precision clad strip facility and kind of where we are in terms of phase two being fully up and running, and kind of what that looks like in terms of capacity and utilization. And then the other piece of that is the old precision clad strip facility. Is that still producing anything for PMI? Or maybe just give us an update on where you are in the process of filling that old facility with maybe some new clad strip business?

Yeah. So first of all, let me just talk about the old facility, the legacy facility. As you know, that facility produces some level of material for PMI, but it also, in fact, majority of the facility is non-PMI. We produce material and products there for automotive customers, consumer electronics customers, various other types of markets, and we've been doing that for years. So we are still producing material there. And the reason for that is there's little different nuances on the type of material and that facility is better equipped to produce one type of material versus another type of material. And so we are still doing that. And then with regard to, I think, the new facility, like I indicated, our discussions with PMI will take place over the next three to six months in terms of what they're looking from us for next year. We will be prepared at whatever level that they want. Certainly if they are able to enter the U.S. market or if they're able to enter other markets and they have an increased set of volume, we will be fully prepared to do that. You know, if they want the same level of product from us for some other reason, we'll be prepared to do that. I think, you know, our position with them is, you know, we have the facility, we have the capacity, we have the people, and we'll be prepared to support them as they would like, you know, once we have the discussions with them over the next, you know, three to six months.

But just to clarify, is the equipment associated with the Phase II of that new precision clad strip facility, is that equipment in place already or is that, are there some pieces of equipment or lines that you would need to add if, in fact, the orders from PMI were expanding in conjunction with an FDA approval?

No, the facility is fully ready. We have the equipment, it's qualified, and we would be prepared to produce, you know, as we got orders from

them. Perfect. And then last question for me is just on the precision optics business. You had really nice sequential earnings improvement there and kind of some recovery there. Just curious, do you expect that better performance to continue and can you maybe give us a little bit more color on how you've engineered a turnaround, what seems to be relatively quickly?

Yeah, we're really, really pleased with, I think, the progress that this business has made. As you know, we've had some challenges in this business, we acknowledge that, and I think we've taken strong action, including leadership change, along with, I think, a number of different other, structural cost changes, portfolio adjustments, and so on. And we're very, very pleased with the progress that this business has made over the last few quarters, reaching almost double-digit EBITDA margins in Q2. We've indicated that we continue to expect sequential improvement, and so that's what we're going to strive for here in the back half of the year, is to drive continuous improvement in Q3 and then in Q4, and of course, into next year. I just want to remind you, Mike, and I know we've talked about this, is that just a few years back, this business was 20% plus EBITDA margins for us, and our goal has not changed. Our goal is to return the business to that level of EBITDA margins. Certainly, it'll take some time, but we're very, very pleased with the level of turnaround that this business has given to us

so far. All right, thanks very much.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Dave Storms from StoneGaze. Dave, your line is live.

Morning. Thank you for taking my questions.

Hi,

Dave. Morning, Dave. Just wanted to dig into a couple of that markets here. It's noted that automotive saw a strong sequential quarter from, you know, Q1 low point, but you're still seeing some continued market softness. Just would love to get your thoughts on what your outlook is for that market for the rest of the year. Should we continue to see maybe sequential growth, or is this maybe a plateau before the next leg up?

Yeah, auto, I think as a market, you know, for us has been quite challenging the last couple of years, and certainly, you know, Q1 was the low point for us. We saw encouraging signs here in Q2, sequentially of 15%. We would expect that in the back half of the year, we would be somewhere in the flat to probably slight increases in the back half of the year. I think this market continues to be a bit choppy. There are still some headwinds, I would say, in the European market, and certainly in the US, and changes have happened between EV and hybrid and traditional ice. And so, I think the choppiness in the auto market could continue for us, but at the same time, it's a, it's become a smaller market for us. And so, I think the impact to our company from the choppiness is much less. You know, we're very encouraged with what we are seeing on defense and on space, on commercial aerospace, the semiconductor market, the energy market. I think we are very, very impressed and pleased with where those markets can go over the next three to five years, and automotive will just monitor and support as needed.

That's perfect. And that actually brings me to my next question around the defense backlog. Just hoping you could give us a little more, maybe, texture, timeline and burn rate around that, maybe what the margins look like compared to current margins. Anything like that would be very helpful.

Well, the defense market is a very positive mix market for us. So, we enjoy improved performance, I think, on a margin level from the defense market and perhaps some of the other markets. Like we indicated, we have $75 million of bookings approximately in the first half of this year. That's up about almost 30% on a -over-year basis for defense. And then, we see a tremendous number of new inquiries, much more than what we have seen in the time that I been here in the company for defense. There's increased level of activity from US defense, increased level of spending that's happening in Europe, and that's resulting in, I think, higher activity and certainly increased activity from some of the countries in Asia as well. Our non-US portion of the defense business continues to grow based on all these initiatives. So, I think the level of activity we expect to continue to increase in the back half of the year and our expectation is to be able to make sure we're capturing as much of this business as possible and supporting our customers.

Understood. Thank you for the commentary.

Thanks, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. And the next question will be a follow-up from Phil Gibbs from Key Bank Capital. Phil, your line is live.

Thank you. Just curious in terms of the big, beautiful bill, if you've got any cash-tax savings associated with that either this year or next year?

Yes, good question. So, we've been going through that, as you can imagine, in some detail and taking a look initially at where we think the benefits are and maybe where we won't have as much benefit. We get a lot of questions around the bonus depreciation. On the bonus depreciation itself, it's possible that could give us some benefit, but it's intertwined with our FDII deductions, our foreign intangible income deductions. So, we've got to model that out and really decide where we may want to take the 100% bonus versus a lower amount, but that could be beneficial, as you said, from a cash-tax perspective. But there's other areas around the deductions we can take there that are beneficial. And then, as you know, the production tax credit that we enjoy is currently now scheduled to wind down by 2031. That item could change administration to administration, but right now, before it had no end in sight, and now it's showing that it would wind down by 2031.

Thank you. And then you've talked a lot about the strength and defiance. Obviously, it's a critical imperative for this administration. Has there been any discussion around repletion of the strategic stockpiles of beryllium in the country by the government? I don't know where those inventory levels stand, but I would imagine, given the activity we've seen globally the last few years, they probably have not gone up. So, just anything you have there in terms of your comments or your views. Thanks.

Yeah. Bill, as you know, a large part of our defense business does rely on our beryllium capability and what we're able to do. And so, I can tell you that we are actively involved in discussions with the Defense Department, but really all parts of the defense area in the country, as well as I think with the primes and beryllium supply and overall stockpiles and other types of, let's say, things that are related to this without going into a lot of detail that I can't get into, but we're involved in really all the discussions that are there on defense.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Kyle Callagher for closing remarks.

Thank you. This concludes our second quarter 2025 earnings call. Recorded playback of this call will be available on the company's website, materion.com. I'd like to thank you for participating on this call and your interest in Materion. I will be available for any follow-up questions. My number is -383-4931. Thank you again.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.