CEMATRIX Corporation

So thanks to all of those who are attending today. My name's Grant Howard, president of the Howard Group. And with me today is Randy Buhmauer, who's the CEO of Sumatrix. Marie-Josie Cantin, who is the CFO. And from the big city of Chicago, we have Jordan Wolfe, who's the president of Mix on Sight, a division of Sumatrix. First, congratulations on the record. Second quarter, best ever. Purchase of another 700,000 shares under the normal course issuer bid, which is great to see. And I know you have a lot to talk about. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Randy, MJ and Jordan.

Thank you, Grant. Appreciate the introduction. Thank you everybody for attending our webinar on an earnings call. Really proud of our Q2 as we stated in our news release. Just a quick forward-looking disclaimer. We will sometimes make forward-looking statements and you can see what those mean here and what they could mean in the future. So every time we do these presentations, we're always conflicted in whether we try to make it something new and snazzy or we repeat the story. And unfortunately, not much changes quarter to quarter in terms of what we're doing in the overall strategy. So it is going to be a bit of a repeat for those of you who have been on past earning calls. But we think it's important to cover these things so people understand the company and the opportunity. So from an investor, the key highlights are we're an innovative cellular concrete solutions company. We're a leading provider of lightweight, cost-effective, durable cellular concrete for infrastructure projects. We have a strong competitive advantage that I'll discuss later. And we work primarily as a subcontractor for major North American general contractors. We are in a position of overall financial strength. And we've also demonstrated an overall growth trend that I think sometimes can get missed when people are looking at just the last year or quarter to quarter. If you look at our 2024 revenue, it was $35 million and we had adjusted EBITDA of $3.3 million for the year. Our 2024 cash flow from operations was almost $5 million. At the end of June 30th this year, we have $8.6 million in cash and no long-term debt. And we've been saying this for a while, but we're forecasting a record year in 2025. We have a significant market opportunity in front of us. We're an industry leader in Canada and the US or the North American market. The overall global cellular concrete market is estimated somewhere between $4 billion to $27 billion with steady growth. Now, that number, of course, is for all applications across all countries in the world. Obviously, the markets that we operate in, the opportunity size is going to be smaller than that, but nonetheless, it's a big opportunity in front of us. Then lastly, there's just increased infrastructure spending in both Canada and the U.S. provides a very strong tailwind for our business and for the opportunity. In terms of the team and the corporate timeline, the three key executive members of the team are here on the call. It's myself as CEO and President, Jordan as the President of MixOnSite, our biggest business and where we have our biggest growth opportunities, and MJ Canton as our CFO. On the board, we have Manaz, Patrick, Steve, and Anna, and John. Very strong board. Insider ownership, we have about 150 million shares outstanding. Fully diluted, it's 167 million shares. That's options, RSUs, and warrants. Insider ownership is 15.4 million shares, or roughly 10% of the company. And the two largest insiders are Jordan and myself. I always like to show this company timeline. Some people say I shouldn't show it because it shows we haven't had success, but success isn't instant. It's not overnight. Success is an accumulation of a lot of hard work and a lot of effort that's put in over time, and then you reach an inflection point. And in 2023, we reached that inflection point when we went from a startup company that needed to raise capital to survive to a company now that's growing and is consistently profitable and consistently generating cash. For those of you who don't know much about cellular concrete, cellular concrete is made by mixing cement, water, and a foaming agent together. The foaming agent creates bubbles in the mixture which results in a cellular structure, hence the name cellular concrete, when the concrete sets. This mixture has some key properties including being cost effective, it's low density and lightweight, has a high bearing capacity, is extremely pumpable, it's highly flowable and self-leveling, it's self-compacting, it has some thermal insulating properties, it's durable, but it's also excavatable. So all these properties actually lend it to multiple applications in the construction industry, especially geotechnical. The primary applications that we pursue commercially is lightweight engineered fill, MSE or retaining wall fill, a lightweight insulating road sub-base, flowable or self-compacting fill, pipe or culvert abandonments, tunnel or annular grout, and shallow utility and foundation insulation. So in terms of our customers and our competitive advantage, our customers are almost always a sub, we're almost always a subcontractor to a general contractor. Very occasionally we'll work directly with an owner, usually on smaller scopes of work. And we've worked with many, if not all of the largest general contractors in North America. I won't go through the list of names there, but you can see those are many of the bigger names in North America. From a competitive advantage point of view, we believe it's our reputation. We've been successfully delivering cellular concrete solutions on time and on budget for over 25 years. We have our team and expertise, over 200 years of in the field experience, which just can't be replicated. Our equipment, we have a large fleet of mobile, technically advanced equipment for producing cellular concrete with lots of capacity to grow. Our size and scale, we've got multiple locations from coast to coast in the US and Canada. And we believe we're more sustainable generally and generally more environmentally friendly than the legacy products that we replace. So I've talked about this already in terms of customers and market opportunity. We've tried to get some third party data on how big the overall market size is. You can see we've got as low as $4 billion from market research future to as high as $27 billion. They all agree that the market for solar concrete is large and growing. And the market for lightweight fill, which includes competitive products, is a multiple of this size larger. Infrastructure spending in general is increasing as the infrastructure in Canada and the U.S. is aging. Infrastructure needs to be replaced and repaired. Populations continue to grow, which requires new infrastructure and places additional loads on existing infrastructure. So as a result, we see spending on infrastructure is expected to grow and continue to grow into the future. So MJ is going to get into the specifics of our record quarter, but there's some overall financial concepts that we think are important for shareholders and our stakeholders in general to understand, regardless of what may happen in a quarter or the year to date. So one of the ones that's really important is we have a top line growth trend. So despite the step back in 2024 overall revenue, the overall trend line is one of growth. So we had revenue of 22.6 million in 2021 and 35.6 million in 2024. And we're forecasting this year to be a record year We have a positive bottom line and we're generating cash. So in 2024, EBITDA was 3.3 million. And then we had positive cashflow from operations of 4.9 million in 24. And again, MJ will talk about our results in 25. And we have a healthy balance sheet with low leverage. So we have 8.6 million in cash and we have no long-term debt as that Q2 of 2025. So some key points to understanding our business, it's really important because whenever I talk to investors or stakeholders, all they want to see is a staircase of growth where growth grows by 10% a quarter. But we're not a system as a service type business. Our revenue doesn't grow like that. It's going to be lumpy. And it's going to be lumpy based on when large projects start and stop. Construction is also a seasonal business, and so we're going to have higher revenues in warmer months. So our average revenue over the last five years has been 18% in Q1, 18% in Q2, 36% in Q3, and 28% in Q4. So you can see we're heavily weighted to the second half of the year in terms of our revenue. We're a specialty contractor. So margins are going to tend to be higher than general contractors, but we have more bench time and more fixed costs because we spend a lot of time to train our operators and our supervisors and we can't afford to lose those. So we have to keep those people on site, even if we don't have the work for them at that time. Project size definitely impacts margins. Larger projects have more competition, and as a result, the margins are going to be lower in those projects. And we have excess capacity, which will enable us to do significantly more revenue with our equipment and our staffing levels. We have more capacity and equipment than staffing levels, but we can basically significantly ramp up revenue on both. So with this, I believe I'm going to turn it over to MJ, who's going to go through our 2025 Q2 results.

Thank you, Randy. So as you've heard, we have a record Q2 in the first six months revenue. So revenue for the quarter was 10.6 million versus 6.4 million in 2024. That represents a 66% increase. And for the first six months of the year, we had revenue of 17.3 million compared to 14.9 million in 2024, a 16% increase. Gross margin as a percent of revenue was 39% during the quarter compared to 17% in 2024. That's a 22% gross margin increase. And year to date, we had 32% gross margin compared to 24% in 2024. That's an 8% gross margin increase. We have positive operating income for the quarter in the year at 1.8 for Q2 compared to a loss of 1.1 last year. That's a $2.9 million increase. And for the first six months we had 1.1 million. compared to a loss of 0.8 million in 2024. That's a 1.9 million increase. Adjusted EBITDA is also positive for both the quarter and the year. So 2.4 million in Q2 compared to a loss of 0.5 in 2024, a 2.9 million increase. And 2.4 million year-to-date compared to 0.5 million in 2024, a $1.9 million increase. Cash flow from operations also positive. This is cash flow before non-cash working capital changes. So for the quarter, we had $2.4 million generated compared to an investment of $0.5 million in last year. That's a $2.9 million increase. And for the first six months, $2.3 million compared to $0.4 million in 2024. That's a $1.9 million increase. Randy talked about the cash balance. We had $8.6 million of cash at June 30th, and last year at the same period, we had $5.5 million. Looking at the graph, Randy talked about the trend line trending as a growth. You can see that like from 2017, our compound annual growth rate is about 24%. And just so you know, in orange is the year to date revenue and the teal boxes are all full year revenue. But you can see the 17.3 for this year is almost as much as we did for full year in 2018. So pretty pleased with that progress. On the right hand side, you have our gross margin, 32% year to date for this year, definitely tied to our increase in revenue. And the dip that you're seeing, as we mentioned in the past presentations, is due to COVID, supply chain issues, cement shortages. So year to date, 32%. On the left-hand side for the debt and interest, we have come a long way since 2017. The only debt we have right now is our equipment finance loan. And on the right-hand side, you have the shared structure. So as Grant mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, We've repurchased for the first time in the history of the company some shares, so we reduced our account. We purchased just over 700,000 shares. Then at the end of the quarter, we had 150.2 million shares outstanding, 6.1 million options outstanding, RSUs of 2.5, warrants of 8.2. That tallies up to a total of 167 million instruments outstanding. Now we can talk about our backlog. Our backlog went up despite our record revenues. So it continued to grow with sales success. So since the beginning of the year, we announced 31.7 million in new project awards. That's for various applications for our product. So backlog at the end of Q2 was 76.4 million and it's compared to 69.6 million at the end of the year. I'm now going to pass it on to Randy for some closing remarks.

Thank you, MJ. So we just always want to end on this last slide, which is just why invest? And it's really just a chance to recap the highlights. As one, we're an industry leader. We're well positioned to capitalize on the large opportunity in front of us in the growing infrastructure construction segment market. We are a growth company. Revenue is growing. We have positive adjusted EBITDA, positive cash flow from operations and a strong balance sheet. In fact, the other day I went looking for a company that has A market cap of under 50M, revenue of over 50M with positive cash flow and positive adjusted EBITDA. I could only find one in Canada. It's the matrix. As a result, we believe that we're currently undervalued based on traditional valuation metrics. Whether you want to take a forward multiple of revenue or forward multiple of EBITDA, we believe that we're undervalued. We don't need any new capital raises to fund a burn rate. The only new capital should be in support of an accretive acquisition. So we shouldn't be diluting shareholders again. And we have capital to deploy. So as MJ mentioned, we have $8.6 million in our balance sheet. We're looking for an opportunity to deploy that capital to grow, help grow our company in the future. On the right hand side is our investor relations contacts, the Howard Group for the retail side, the Bristol Group on the institutional side. And of course, we have one analyst following the company, which is Russell Stanley at Beacon Securities. So that's in a nutshell why to invest. Just before we get in the Q&A here, I'll just remind our audience that we don't provide guidance. So if there's questions about what the revenue is going to be next quarter or the next year, we don't answer those questions. The only guidance that we'll provide is the general guidance that we expect to have a record year this year. And with that, I'll turn it over to Grant, who will help moderate our question and answer period.

Thank you, Randy and MJ. Just a reminder that at the bottom of your screen, there's a Q&A button. Submit your questions through there, please. And as we move through the Q&A session, if you happen to ask a specific question, I may not read it because at times I will aggregate similar questions just to get to one answer. Randy mentioned Russell Stanley, the analyst at Beacon Securities. And we're going to start with Russell, who has a series of questions. So his first one is, congratulations on the Q2 results, understanding that scale economies on a higher revenue base contributed to strong gross margins. Can you elaborate on the role of revenue mix in the quarter? For example, large projects versus small and how you expect second half revenue mix to compare.

Yeah, that's a really good question, Russell. And as a basic answer, we're trying to get across more often. And the key concept there is that small to midsize projects, we can generally achieve a higher margin because there's less competition, because sometimes the mobilization fees to move into an area can prohibit some competitors from going in. um and then on a larger project the mobilization fee is a much smaller percentage overall cost so uh competitors can come from all over the place all over the place basically chase those projects so the margins and the competitions tends to be much higher on the lower or on the higher uh higher revenue projects. So when we think about Q1 or first half and second half, we do expect the second half to have more of our revenue made up by larger projects. And as a result, we expect to see our margins drop a little bit, but that'll be offset by we'll have higher revenue, which means we'll be over our fixed cost hurdle quicker. And so we should have more of that project margin fall into the bottom line. So even though our project margin and gross margin may drop a little bit, we expect our EBITDA margin to increase.

Russell's next question is on contract wins year to date. How would you describe the overall demand relative to a year ago? Understanding you have little to direct tariff exposure, are related macro headwinds impacting decisions by customers and project owners?

Yeah, so I think overall we are seeing the market continue to grow. And I think it's growing for a number of reasons. One, because infrastructure spending is growing, but I think it's also growing because the awareness and understanding and acceptance of cellular concrete is growing. And that's growing in part because of our efforts, but it's also growing in part because of the efforts of other players in the marketplace. So the entrance of new competitors in the marketplace I view as positive because it's just more people helping to grow the overall market. So I expect that to continue. The second half of the question, Grant, sorry, I forgot it.

Is it... Sorry, it just disappeared on me.

That's okay.

I'm sure if I... It was in regards to tariffs, yes. And whether or not that's impacting decisions on your customers, speeding them up, slowing down projects, whatever it may be.

Yeah, it's a really good question. So again, we don't have a lot of direct tariff exposure. Very little of what we do crosses the U.S. border. There's a little bit of purchasing from vendors that might be in Canada or in the U.S. and we're crossing the border, but very, very little. What we are seeing on a macroeconomic basis, if a project's been green lighted or underway, we haven't seen tariffs stopping those projects from proceeding. I do think it's adding some overall uncertainty to the market. So if there are projects maybe in the planning stage, you might see that project go a little bit slower as they try to wait for some more uncertainty on the tariff side. But I think generally people view the tariffs less as a policy decision by the Trump administration and more as a negotiating tactic. And I think wherever we end up in tariffs in the end, it won't be prohibitive to doing business. And in general, the infrastructure requirements are going to have to move forward regardless of tariffs.

Russell's next question is in relation to a couple of projects, large ones. First is on North Carolina. Has the work proceeded as planned since the start? And how about the large tunnel grouting project in the Midwest that was started back in June?

Yeah, so I think for the North Carolina project, it has more or less gone as planned at the start. There's always hiccups when you first start a project, especially a large one. That's sort of normal. And I don't think it's really fair to evaluate success or status kind of early on. You look at back in the end, but all the signs indicate that that's going to be a very successful project for us. And most importantly, our customer is happy with their progress and they're happy with the work we're doing. At the end of the day, our company's success is founded on our customer being happy. That has to be where everything starts. And in terms of the grouting project we're doing there in the Midwest, that project's going very well and is on track. And again, our customer is very happy with the work we're doing there and the progress we've been making.

So as a comment says, congrats on the stocks recovery. And in fact, I'm just going to have a quick look at that. So obviously the results been well received well through half a million shares already. The stocks moved up a few pennies to 33 current market caps, about 46, but everything's positive. The bids are strong. Bids have been building very nicely based on these results. And we'll get to Russell, the rest of Russell's question. How does the M and a environment look in terms of attractive targets and and willing sellers?

Yeah, so another good question here, Russell, for sure, is there's definitely attractive targets out there that the ones that would be top of our list would be the large cellular concrete players in the US market. Whether they're willing sellers, that's a different question. We're starting to begin conversations with those to see if they're willing targets, but if they're not, we have a plan B. in terms of where we'd go next. And that would be some kind of complimentary business, like maybe a chemical grouting or some other type of grouting in a market that we're interested in, maybe Florida, maybe Texas, maybe California. So I think there's lots of ways for us to try to find an accretive acquisition that will add value to the company and our shareholders.

Questions from some other individuals. What drove the year to date increase in gross margins?

Yeah. So whenever we chat about this question, I think people always want to drill down into margins on specific projects, but we just don't talk about that for competitive reasons. So it really just boils down to what's the, what's the mix of projects that we're going and how many of them are small to midsize versus large. And then at the end of the day, we have to have enough revenue to clear our fixed cost hurdle. And once we do that, then the gross margin tends to go up. So it's a bit of volume and it's a bit of project mix.

It's questions on warrants, what they are priced at. Obviously, this comes from the slide with the cap table.

Yeah, MJ, I think I know the answer, but I'm guessing you know the exact answers. Can you answer?

It's $0.45 and $0.60, and it's also part of our no-sort financial statements if you want to go have a peek there.

Yeah, and I think there's about 800,000, MJ, that are at $0.45, and then the rest are at the $0.60.

That's right.

Would you happen to have the expiry date on those handy?

Yep. It's July 29 of next year. So just under a year to go.

No problem. Next question. Could you describe the top of the funnel or the pipeline, the sales funnel, I presume he's referring to in regards to new business now versus a year ago?

Yeah, so we kind of chatted about this already is overall, I think the overall funnel is growing and that's because the cellular concrete market is growing and that's because overall construction market is growing, but there's also aging infrastructure and new infrastructure and we're doing a better job as an industry and as a company in terms of getting the word out where cellular concrete can be used and the applications it can be used for.

So Matrix involved in the Calgary Green Line project, the LRT project.

Yeah, so we don't comment on specific projects, unfortunately.

Does being branded Simatrix in Canada mix on site in the US dilute or change the perception of the size and capabilities of the company? Would being a single branded company open up more opportunities?

So the short answer is no, it doesn't change the perception of the size of the company. And in fact, in this environment where there's a lot of sort of nationalism going on, having the separate brands is actually helpful. So many people perceive Symmetrix as a Canadian brand and Mixed Onsite and Pacific International Grout are perceived as US brands. And so that actually helps in terms of when we run into a buyer that has some nationalistic concerns or style. So we actually think that the multiple brands is helping us right now.

That's the fact that mix on site is a well-known name and has been around for many, many years. I think it might get a little confusing if you suddenly change it to some matrix. Jordan might have something to say about that.

Yeah. There are pros and cons, right? I can understand the argument for, for going under one or one under one brand, but we've chosen to have multiple brands for the reasons I described.

Yeah. Um, the Carolina highway project has finally started, um, Is it a lengthy one? How will revenue be booked as the project progresses over the months?

Yeah, this is a really good question, actually. I'm glad that David asked this because I do read the chat boards every now and then, and there's lots of misinformation in those chat boards about this project. So the way we record revenue is as we place product in the ground. And so this project is going to stretch out over at least 12 months. And so that revenue is going to be recorded over the next 12 months as we put product in the ground. You don't do $15 million project and record all the revenue in the first month. That's just not how it works.

In the past you talked about specification challenges being an issue in Canada. Do you have any updates on spec progress in Canada?

Yeah, so I think that's just referring to the different qualifications or permits you have to get to use the product on, in particular, usually transportation related projects in different provinces or states. So we continue to make progress with the provinces or states that we're active in, and we don't really see that as a hurdle right now. So much work has been done in the past to get those qualifications in place. So when we see a new opportunity where that makes sense, we pursue that. But because of all the work that's been done in the past and all the other players in the market, that's becoming less and less of a challenge.

How much bigger than your next largest competitor are you? Which could be a little difficult because I think all of them are private.

Yeah, Grant, it's no fair if you answer the questions for me, but you're absolutely right. It's a good question by Paul. I would love to know the answer to that, but I truly don't because they're all private. My best guess is the next biggest one is probably similar in size to us, and then the others would be a fraction of our size, maybe half or to a third, but it's truly hard to tell.

I think there's several questions on this next one. First, congratulations on the great results. Are you expecting to win more projects from North Carolina? That's the first one.

So, yes, absolutely. Like I say, like when we successfully do a project for our customers and we deliver it on quality, on time and on budget, it creates a success loop because the next time we talk to that customer, they know about us. They've seen us do our work in the field and they know that we can do what we say. So absolutely. When we successfully deliver the North Carolina project, I do expect it will generate more business for us. Will it be as big as that project? Probably not. But it will definitely generate more business for us in the future. There's no doubt.

Second question within the body of this is what is your all in cost per quarter? I'm not quite sure what that's referring to.

Yeah, I'm not sure either, but it's not information that we disclose unless it's already in our financial statements. So I think we just pass on that one grant.

Next one is the size of the current bid pipeline.

Yeah, that's a number that we've also stopped disclosing because it's a very hard number to track and get right. So we basically fine-tuned our disclosure to be numbers that we can track and get right consistently. I will say, though, the overall bidding pipeline is bigger than what it's been in the past for the reasons I've already talked about.

Gentlemen, the question was directed towards Russell Stanley, and he said... Russell, your target price was 45 cents based on Q2 revenues of 6.8 million. Now that the company beat that quite handsomely, will you raise the target price higher, which we think is too low? Thank you. I'm not sure if Russell wants to answer that. If he does, it'll show up in a note that he'll send through.

Yeah, and I would just say, Grant, Russell's not going to answer that question, right? That's not the purpose of this call.

Backlog, 76 million as of June 30th.

Yes.

From Kia at Centurion One Capital, congrats. To the team on a great quarter, please talk about your capital allocation strategy in more detail, M&A and organic growth, and share buybacks.

Yeah, I mean, we're a small company, right? So our capital allocation is more general than specific is we're actively looking for an M&A opportunity. But if it doesn't present itself, we're not going to do it just to do it. So the capital allocation strategy could be we could sit on that money until we find the right opportunity. In terms of share buybacks, we're likely done the share buyback for 2025. And then we're going to re-look at that share buyback again in 2026. I personally am supportive and a fan of the share buyback. I think it's important to not dilute shareholders and to find a way to basically grow shareholder value.

So from Centurion1, are you in LOI? A letter of intent or due diligence on any targets? Is there a pipeline that you can put some and share light on?

Yeah, I mean, if we were, I wouldn't be able to tell you, but I can tell you right now that we're not. So... We just can't comment on that. And then there is a pipeline, and I've kind of talked about it generically. Our first set of targets would be large cellular concrete players in the U.S., and then it's going to be companies that are one step out in key markets that we like. And those are really the targets that we're looking at.

What's the status of the Glavel investment?

Yeah, so the global investment, you know, foam glass aggregate is a great product. It has a space in the marketplace and it will continue to grow Glavel itself is a private company, so we're not really in a position to comment on how they're doing other than my sense is that they're doing well. They're growing their business. They've got some issues like all companies they're trying to work through, but it's been a lot of progress for them over the last year. We are a minority shareholder in that company. The path to us becoming a majority shareholder, I think, is closed, at least for the foreseeable future. But I'm still hopeful that at some point in the future, we're able to exit that investment and make some money on it.

There were some questions on the normal course bid, which we've deleted because they've already been answered. But any comments on cellular concrete being ripe for a private equity rollup?

um yeah i don't i don't know if ripe is the word i would use there's always opportunity for private equity roll up i've been surprised at the number of industries where that's occurred where i didn't think it would be possible you know things like veterinarian hospitals automobile dealerships dentist office so yeah there's always opportunities for roll-ups i would say we actually hope to be the person doing those roll-ups right that would be part of our strategy to get to our ultimate end goals is we want to be the player that's rolling those up.

At this point, the last question, what benefits the company more, working one $5 million contract or five $1 million contracts?

yeah it's an interesting question um and i would say the answer is it really depends and you know people hate when i use that answer but this the specific matters right and so the advantage of one five million dollar contract is you could probably do that with one crew and one piece of equipment over a period of time and so that has some benefits but as i mentioned before the larger the contract the more intense the competition is so the margins on a larger contract like that are probably going to be smaller five $1 million contracts is probably going to have a higher margin profile because mobilization costs in a $1 million contract are more material. So it really depends. But to do five contracts, depending on when they're spaced out, if they're all at the same time, you could, in theory, need five crews and five pieces of equipment to do it. So it really depends. What I would go back to is what I said earlier in the... the highlights of the company is we have capacity. So what I'd say to that person is I'll do both things. I'll do the $5 million one and I'll do the five $1 million ones.

No further questions. So with that, Randy, MJ, any closing comments?

Yeah, Jordan, do you have any final thoughts before we sign off? No, I don't. I think you guys handled it very well. Thank you. MJ? MJ?

I'm good. Thank you, Randy.

And I just say lastly, Grant, you know, when things go well, people tend to give us too much credit. And when things go bad, they tend to give us too much blame. I think kind of being more even keeled about our results is really important. We're on track for a record year. We're really proud of our Q2 results. And we're just really focused on running a good company. That's the most important thing for us.

Thank you very much. And thank you to the participants. And with that, we are going to conclude this webinar and we'll speak to you next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Grant. Thanks, everybody.