10/31/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

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. To ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Greg Piantek. You may begin.

speaker
Greg Piantek
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to the NPK International Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. Joining me today is Matthew Lanigan, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before handing over to Matthew, I'd like to highlight that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements regarding future business and financial expectations. Actual results may differ significantly from those projected in today's forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties, including the risks described in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. Our comments on today's call may also contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our quarterly earnings release, which can be found on our corporate website. There will be a replay of today's call, and it will be available by webcast within the investor relations section of our website at mpki.com. Please note that the information disclosed on today's call is current as of October 31st, 2025. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our president and CEO, Matthew Lennigan.

speaker
Matthew Lanigan
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Greg, and welcome to everyone joining us on today's call. We are very encouraged by our third quarter performance that continued to showcase the robust outlook for our served markets and our ability and agility in responding to our customers' needs. The quarter produced very strong year-over-year growth that reflects the strengthening demand for our products and services. We also saw modest quarter-over-quarter growth, a result of our purposeful focus on maximising our rental asset utilisation during a traditionally slower seasonal quarter. Our total third quarter revenues of $69 million is very pleasing given Q3 has traditionally seen a more meaningful pullback in utility activities during the warmer summer months. On a year-over-year basis, our total revenues improved 56%, while rental and service revenues improved 37%. Focusing on our rental and service activity, which we believe represents the stickiest and highest long-term driver of returns, we recently achieved our highest rental fleet utilization on record as we responded to multiple short notice project extensions and expansions. As we have mentioned in the past, we are proud of our fleet scale and our operational flexibility to be able to meet these changing customer demands. However, the combination of short notice, accelerated start times and high utilization does lead to certain transportation inefficiencies as matting inventory is relocated. While we expect some level of this inefficiency due to changing customer demands, the timing and extent experienced late in the third quarter led to approximately $1 million of elevated costs that negatively impacted our gross margins in Q3. We anticipate some carryover impact of these elevated costs in early Q4. However, we believe they will be recovered over the project term, allowing us to maintain our typical gross margins over the longer term. Product sales activity also remain robust, generating $25 million in revenue, reflecting continued strength in demand from multiple utility customers. Given the continued demand and robust outlook across our served markets, we maintain our commitment to the expansion of our rental fleet. investing a net $12 million in the third quarter and increasing our full year fleet investment by $10 million to meet the anticipated demand growth as we approach 2026. I also wanted to highlight that with the strengthening market outlook underpinned by continued upward revisions in forecasted utility transmission spend, as well as a strengthening midstream and general infrastructure outlook, we accelerated our manufacturing capacity expansion planning efforts during the quarter. We expect these efforts to continue into early 2026 before moving on to procurement and construction activities. We are also making progress with our previously mentioned de-bottlenecking activities at our plant, which are being executed in parallel with the manufacturing capacity expansion planning. Notably, we recently completed process modification achieving roughly 5% increase in production levels, which further supports our growth plans and operational efficiency objectives. Finally, I wanted to touch on cash flow generation and capital allocation during the quarter. We are once again very pleased with the strong cash generation in the third quarter, with cash provided by operating activities of $25 million and free cash flow of $13 million. During the quarter, we used $3.4 million to repurchase more than 400,000 shares at an average price of $8.45, while also building our cash balance by $10 million. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Greg for his prepared remarks.

Disclaimer

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