3/6/2025

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Good morning, my name is Sarah and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to Savaria Corporation's Q4 2024 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question please press star 1 and 1 again. This call may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to the disclosure statement contained in Savaria's most recent press release issued on March 5th 2025 with respect to its Q4 2024 results. Thank you. Mr. Barassa, you may begin your conference.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you, Sarah and good morning everyone. Today we start with a small recap of our Q4 and 2024 results. Then Steve will update us on financial, GP on Savaria 1 and then we will do a small Q&A session. First I need to say that I am very proud of our Q4 and 2024 results as they were exactly in line, especially on Nibidda with their expectations during this transformation and they show again that we are stable at this four good quarters in a row. So thank you to all the team of Savaria. Some of the key highlights of Q4 and last year. First, very good performance on the patient care in the fourth quarter. It's their best quarter ever at .1% of Nibidda. So good job to the team. Good growth of 20%. Every quarter they were telling me it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, but they're very good fourth quarter. For sure in 2025 we prefer to be a bit more stable each quarter but a good end of the year. And it shows again that we have the right structure to do 50 million dollars a year. So good job. In North America, good year, .4% of growth during the year. Yes, Q4 was more flat but a very strong Q1, Q2, Q3 and again we have worked very much in 2024 to improve our operation so that we can take more volume in the future. So quite happy with the change. A solid performance from each division from Europe to North America to patient care to improve our AIDDA of .1% for the full cooperation. So that's a good achievement. Debt ratio of 1.63. So again we have improved our working capital, we have improved AIDDA and that gave us some available fund of 242 million which put us in good position for acquisition or investment, especially when there's a bit of turbulence. That can be good for the future. So we're happy to have a good balance sheet. The growth in 2025 for sure is going to be a key focus in the Savara one and R&D. Right now we're launching a -the-floor lift, a Luma elevator that we call. It's going to be set worldwide, it's cut compliant and we're starting manufacturing this week. So I think in the next few weeks we'll be able to ramp up the sales. So quite positive about the organic growth in the future on that. And I know that I really like these products. So today we'll try to be proactive and talk right away about tariffs before coming to questions in the Q&A. So this is very fresh and it happened officially last week. Let's do it this week. The rules are still not super clear of what's happening one side to the other. Is it going to affect us on the very short term? Yes. But let's reassure you know we are proactive. We have done some good planning in the last few weeks and we're going to act quickly on this. Our operation and supply chain has always been a strength at Savara and I think we have demonstrated in the last five years from COVID to supply chain issues, containers, inflation. So I'm feeling quite good about it and to the Savara one. I think our team just got better so I think we're ready to overcome those challenges. First, in the coming week there will be some small price increase to our customer dealer that we do in a fair way as our dealer has always been a strength of Savara for the last 35 years and it will continue under family leadership. We'll take care of our customer and then we'll be as we're there for the long term. Second, we are very lucky. We have some footprint already in the U.S. We have two factories, one in Greenville, one in St. Louis and the one in Greenville has 60,000 square foot available empty that we can use to make some assembly lines and finish products. So definitely we're going to put that in exercise to use this extra capacity. We can even expand the building because we want to create a big land in Greenville. Fourth, as I said earlier, we have the right balance sheet with 242 million available so we can make investment to go to the small challenges or opportunities that might come because opportunities can come and there's kind of a turbulence a little bit. And finally, you said that we revised our guidance for the 20-25 years. We knew that with the sale of the car division last year that we did not replace the sales last year in 2024. We choose to go for EBITDA in a wrap over sales growth. So all this to say that that's why we have revised the volume to 925 million of sales and we're feeling good about that. And the EBITDA, we have put a bracket from 17 to 20 percent because on the short term we need to be just on the tariff but I'm feeling comfortable. The target still we want to make 20 percent but we need to be realistic. That's why we put the bracket. And as you know, just to finish, we know we are a very agile organization. We can overcome some challenges. I think we are the right team, the right employees. So again, thanks for all your effort that you did last year and thanks for your effort that you did last year. And we're looking forward to the 20-25 and I'm sure we'll get through these challenges together. Steve, small update on financial please.

speaker
Steve
Financial Executive (CFO)

Thanks, Sebastian, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'm excited to share with you today some remarks and highlights regarding our Q4 and full year 2024 financial metrics. So the key highlights for the quarter include firstly, as Sebastian mentioned, organic growth of 20.6 percent in patient care, consolidated gross of 20.6 percent, a net average margin of 37.7 percent, which is an increase of 340 basis points versus last year, mainly due to improvements generated under SEVERIA 1. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.2 percent, which marks now three quarters in a row of margin at 19 at least or above. Strong cash flow and working capital performance resulting in a reduction of our leverage ratio to our leverage ratio of $1.6 million, a net debt to adjusted EBITDA to 1.63 as Sebastian noted at the end of the year. Starting with consolidated revenues for the quarter, we generated revenues of 223.3 million, which is an increase of 3 percent versus last year. That growth is driven by 0.9 percent organic growth and a positive foreign exchange impact of 2.1 percent. As previously stated, we had very strong organic growth in our patient care segment of 20.6 percent due to increased medical bed frame sales and mattress revenues as well as ceiling lift packages from increased projects closing in the long-term care markets. Our accessibility segment had a contraction of 1.9 percent in the quarter, driven by 7.8 percent contraction in Europe and flat growth in North America. Europe continues to be focused on higher margin sales and we expect to see a return to positive growth in 2025 as we deliver on our customer win-back strategy as well as introduce new products to the market. North America had growth of 8.4 percent for all of 2024 and we saw very strong growth in Q1 through Q3, which was tempered in Q4. The North American backlog remains strong as we look forward to continued sales growth in 2025, aided by the introduction of the Luma, as Sebastian mentioned, which is the new through the floor lift, as well as continuing to drive sales of the Maytop branded dumbwaiters and material lifts, which we acquired earlier in 2024. On a full year basis, the lost revenue from the divestments of Ben Action and Freedom, which were our manufacturing vehicle divisions, was greater than the benefit that Maytop brought to us in 2024, hence driving the overall negative net acquisition investment impact of a minus 1.4 percent for the year. Looking now at gross margins, our consolidated gross margin for the quarter was 37.7 percent and 37.1 percent for the full year. As previously stated, this is a significant improvement over a prior year as we continue to see benefits under the Severe 1 program in all of our segments. The main drivers of the improvements are lower material costs from procurement improvements, improved pricing, and increased operational efficiency as well as leverage as we were able to hold our cost base relatively stable while increasing sales. Adjusted EBITDA was 42.9 million for the quarter and reached 161.2 million for the year. Q4 represents the third quarter in a row above the $40 million threshold. The resulting adjusted EBITDA finished at 19.2 percent for the quarter and 18.6 percent for the entire year. And on a full year basis, this represents a significant improvement of 310 basis points over 2023, something that we are very proud of internally. We are clearly well on our way to our goal of 20 percent. Both accessibility and patient care saw good improvements and adjusted EBITDA margin. And to provide more detail on accessibility, North America finished with 23.2 percent margins for the year and Europe improved by a whopping 480 basis points to finish at almost 15 percent for the entire year. Improvements in adjusted EBITDA margin in all segments and divisions are driven primarily from improvements in gross margin that I previously mentioned, which was powered by Severe 1. We incurred $5.5 million in strategic initiative expenses for the quarter and 21.6 for the year in line with our expectations. And these fees are mainly consulting costs as we've been noting all year long. Finance costs were $2.4 million for the quarter and 18.5 for the year compared to $4.8 million and 21.8 respectively last year. The main drivers of the quarterly and yearly decreases is lower interest rates on our debt as well as the lower overall debt balance as we repaid that debt throughout the year driven by our strong cash flows. Net earnings was $14.3 million for the quarter compared to $11 million last year. And for the full year net earnings was $49 million versus $37.8 million in 2023, which is a large improvement of approximately 30%. I'm now going to provide commentary on our balance sheet and cash flow. And cash flow from operations in Q4 was $34.2 million, including a reduction in working capital of $1.2 million compared to Q3. We were able to reduce inventory by $6.3 million in a few of our key manufacturing facilities as well as increase our payables globally. Our trade AR increased in the quarter but finished below last year. Overall we improved our working capital by 11 days versus 2023, which is above our internal target for the year. CapEx for the year finished at $20.1 million, which equates to .3% of sales and is in line with our guided range of $2.2 million. Free cash flow after debt related costs and dividends was $34.9 million for the year, which is $43.2 million better than 2023, a significant improvement. The strong free cash flow helped us to repay debt and reduce our leverage ratio to 1.63 and helps us ensure a strong balance of revenue. We are going to continue to work with the government to achieve to start 2025 so we can be prepared for any opportunities or challenges that come our way. And for 2025 guidance, due to uncertainties around tariffs and retaliatory tariffs, we did revise our guidance. As Sebastian noted, we are going to be guiding to approximately $925 million of revenues with an additional $1.7 million. And with that, this completes my prepared remarks and I'm now going to turn the call over to John to provide further details on how we're progressing with Savaria 1.

speaker
Unidentified Executive
Savaria 1 Operations Leader

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. While the U.S. tariffs situation will certainly trigger actions and set new priorities for the months ahead, the plan we're executing with Savaria 1 is still highly relevant. The tariffs will increase pressure on our results for some time while we adapt, as Seb mentioned, but our business is diversified both geographically and in terms of market segments, and the majority of our business is not affected by tariffs. Therefore, the impact on Savaria 1 will be limited and involve only a handful of colleagues who must now put in place mitigation measures while the rest of us carry on our work. In the long run, Savaria will succeed because of its great products, an excellent dealer value proposition, a sound customer experience, a competitive supply chain, and safe and reliable manufacturing facilities. Those are all things that we are focusing on with Savaria 1. So expect us to remain focused and diligent in making Savaria fundamentally better and stronger through 2025. 2024 was our first full year in Savaria 1 as we launched the effort towards the end of 2023. I'm happy to report that we reached the objective we had set for ourselves and delivered more than 30 million of in-year EBITDA improvements in 2024 through a combination of commercial, operational, and supply chain improvements. In fact, I was recently looking back at our Investor Day presentation from April 2024 to review the plan as we communicated it then, and I was happy to see that we implemented pretty much everything we had line of sight on at that time. For example, we talked about cross-selling and in fact we grew sales of Garaventa Platform lift products to hand care dealers in Europe and we also grew acute care sales in the US and we also grew sales of services across accessibility businesses with new commercial offers for maintenance and modernization of existing lifts, both in North America and in Europe. We expanded the capacity of our main facilities like Brampton and Surrey for elevators, but also reorganized the Kingsman Fert facility in the UK to a one shift work schedule and that was a big success as we now produce as much with one shift in a day as we used with two in the past. We nearly doubled the throughput of our Mexico facility which now supplies Brampton and Surrey, but also Beamsdale, our best manufacturing facility. We're also now set up to assemble a new product, the Luma, all in Mexico and for all markets around the globe. We completed just north of 50 procurement RFPs or price three negotiations in 2024. We're experiencing negative cost inflation in most our businesses thanks to those efforts. In patient care, we added new reps to expand the geographic footprint of our acute care business. Those reps generated even more than what we had planned for in the first year. Finally, we scaled up the reconditioning line for use stair lifts in the Netherlands and this allows us to reduce our environmental footprint while also addressing the needs of local authorities. We are now setting up a similar reconditioning line in the UK so we can better serve that market too. Those are just a few examples and in total we implemented about 200 distinct initiatives since starting Savario 1. In terms of impact, we estimate that about half of the gains realized to date relate to commercial actions and the other half to operational and supply chain optimization ones. The one place where we can still do better is in growing the top line, either by growing share of wallet with our dealers or expanding our network of dealers or growing our direct store operations around the world. In 2024 we made conscious trade-offs of volume for better margins, which we believe were appropriate to set the business on stronger economic foundations and instill discipline in our pricing. Yet our goal in 2025 is to cautiously re-energize the top line, especially in Europe where we have the most room to grow in the short term, while preserving those strong profitability foundations. I will caution us all that it is unclear what kind of growth we may experience in North America in the very short term given our elevator business is correlated with economic growth, new house starts, and at the moment given all the changes happening in the US it's hard to predict where those drivers are going to be headed. Also, we continue to have momentum. It's important to remember that we will have tailwinds from our 2024 initiatives through 2025. For example, all the recurrent cost reduction measures implemented in the second half of 2024, whether they relate to process changes, headcount reductions, material cost reductions, or other levers will only give us full year benefits in 2025. Furthermore, we continue to add new ideas to our pipeline. Only in Q4 of last year, for example, we added $6 million worth of new ideas, almost all of those related to cost reductions. Through our monthly and quarterly business reviews, we continue to identify new opportunities and add initiatives to our pipeline. Finally, we plan to launch another round of ideation involving all divisions in Q3 of this year. So all this to say that putting aside the disturbances and financial impacts of terrorists will certainly have on our business in the short term, we are continuing to make strong progress with SEVRE-1 and are expecting to sustain improvements through 2025. I will be repeating what SEVRE said before, but even in SEVRE-1, we are adopting a long-term perspective on our business and continue to make choices that support the long-term growth and the long-term success of SEVRE-1 as a global leader in the accessibility space. We're excited to see all the progress made and the roadmap ahead of us for 2025 and look forward to see the results materialize in our business numbers. Thank you for your attention. Seb, any closing remarks?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you, JP and Steve. Very good overview of what's happening in SEVRE. Again, we are lucky. Good industry, aging population, tariff on up. This is not going to change. And as you mentioned, JP, Europe is not related to tariff. This is not going to change. You can complete the same game plan. The patient care manufacturing in the USA could be a positive thing for them. So, again, I'm feeling good about what's happening in the business. So, I think, Sarah, we are ready to have some questions from our analysts, which are making a fantastic job to cover SEVRE. You did some good report yesterday. You understand well the business. So, let's see if you have some questions about last year or just some tariff, but we are ready.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to answer which or your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Thank you. We'll now go ahead with our first question. First question today is from Derek Lassard from TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

Yeah, good morning and first off, great quarter, everyone. An absolutely great year. Too bad about the political climate. But I did want to, I guess, address the elephant in the room right off the bat and fully realize that the situation is fluid and every company in Canada is trying to assess the impact. But maybe I'll frame the question a little bit differently. Are you aware of any advocacy groups or lobbyists or lobby groups for that matter in the accessibility industry? And maybe, can you just talk about what you're hearing from them on the ground and maybe from some of your US clients and maybe your partners and dealers?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you, Derek. So for sure, again, it's very, very new. It has been officialized this week that there will be tariff from Canada going to the USK and a very small return on the other side. But again, we have the FDA, we have medical industry for many of our products. So, yes, hopefully people will do their job. But again, it's very new. And I think this is definitely on our list of to do to work with them to see how we can make a big impact on that area. We saw yesterday they have removed something for 30 days on the car industry. They started with that, but definitely they did some of the agenda to review. But as of right now, we try to do what we control in our hands.

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that's fair. So just maybe switching gears. I just want to dig in a little bit more on sort of residential and commercial demand in North American accessibility. You did mention in your remarks that it was flat this quarter and that you said it was a more difficult US market. Could you just maybe talk about some of that, what you're seeing in terms of near term demand, obviously irrespective of tariff implications?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you. So for sure, like the person that has started the house a few months ago, again, the tariff situation, they are continuing to build. So I think, again, I don't see any impact on the short term. We are busy. We're building home elevators. The orders still come in. It's quite good. It's good that sometimes our growth from one quarter to the other is, again, can be challenging. We have some deadline on price increase. We can have a spike in our backlog. We did a lot of effort last year, okay, to push, push, push our production to understand again what is our capacity to free up some volume for the future. So yes, we have a little bit of a backup in Q1, Q2, Q3. That's why Q4 was a bit more flat in terms of residential and commercial accessibility. It's not necessarily because there's no permits or there's no construction. I think it's just the results of our all web executor backlog last year. And Steve, you want to add maybe something?

speaker
Steve
Financial Executive (CFO)

Yeah, I just want to add, Derek, there is a little bit of lumpiness on the overall business in North America, but one really strong indicator that we have is the backlog in our direct stores. So our direct stores are the entities that are installing products, whether it's residential or commercial. That backlog is actually at an all time high. So we've been growing that backlog. We feel good about what that means for the future. Typically our direct store backlog is anywhere from within a few weeks, but that can reach out to a year and a half to two years depending on the construction timeline. So the really positive sign for us is that backlog has never been higher. So good indicator for us for 2025 and going forward.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

And I think we saw a new product, Fruit of Flower, the Lumar. This is a growing segment. This is something our dealer, we're requesting, hey, why don't I have a Fruit of Flower? And this product is going to be installed in a day, very fast to install. So this is going to add to generate some growth. So again, we're feeling quite good about the future in North America and in New York.

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

I appreciate the color. That's a great color. And maybe just one housekeeping for Steve in terms of your expectations for, I guess, working capital in 2025 and maybe a word on your CapEx plans.

speaker
Steve
Financial Executive (CFO)

Sure. Yeah. So working capital, we did very well in 2024. We reduced our working capital days by 11. That was over and above our budget to be transparent. We're likely not going to get another 11 day reduction in 2025, but we are still targeting a reduction. We still think there's a few pockets where we can do better on inventory. AP days are pretty good and AR days are pretty good, but we still think we can do a little bit better there as well. So there will be improvement. We'll see on a dollar basis. It depends on how much we actually grow sales, but on a working capital days basis, 2025 should be better than 2024. Your second part of the question around CapEx, we've historically always been the 2 to 2.5 percent. 2024 was 2.3 percent. 2025, depending on what happens with operations in the US, we're probably going to be closer to that 2.5 percent, Mark, Derek. If you're putting in your model, I would say 2.5 is probably a safe way to go.

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

Okay. Thanks for that. Again, great year, everybody. Congratulations.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

you,

speaker
Steve
Financial Executive (CFO)

Director

speaker
Derek Lassard
TD Cowan

Chou.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. We'll now move to our next question. This is from the line of Frederick Trombley from Le Jardin Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Frederick Trombley
Le Jardin Capital Markets

Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to start with the margin range provided for 2025, just on the 17 percent, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what the main assumptions are there. Specifically, I know in prepared remarks you mentioned a small price increase. Is that included in there? Is there any other mitigating actions that are in that 17 percent? Just a bit more color on that,

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

please. Bonjour, Fred. Yeah, for sure we have with wider the range from 17 to 20. Again, you see that with the results we had towards the end of the year, we're really turning towards 20 percent. So I think that was happening. But yeah, the tariff could bring some short-term challenges. And again, we have solution and we're going to act quickly in a price increase, we need to reduce tariff by assembling locally. I think we have a good game plan. But again, all this is very fresh. We don't like, we do not want to remove our guidance and have nothing for an investor that's not our style. So that's why we're sitting from 17 to 20. Again, 17 is probably the worst case scenario. Again, because we're doing action, it's hard to quantify everything. And for sure towards the second half of the year, could we have a full year where we're guided as 17 to 20 because the cities are on something right and left. But unless we are sure we're doing things quite quickly because we don't like surveillance.

speaker
Frederick Trombley
Le Jardin Capital Markets

OK, that's helpful. And then just, I guess, maybe as a follow up to that, you mentioned the 20 percent with the scenarios and the plans that you put together, do you feel that you have that you will have what you need to get to that 20 percent level? Maybe I think you said maybe potentially late 2025, but certainly in 2026 is that would that be the goal for potentially for 2026 to get to that 20 percent?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think you saw a bit how we finished the year. Again, we have improved by three points last year from 15 and a half to 18 and a half for the full year. Again, many divisions have done many times over 20 percent. Yes, we need to cover their office costs. But at the end, I think we have a good game plan. The server one, the KGP is still present, is still there, is pushing, pushing with the team. So I think we're feeling good about that. And all this procedure, I did not change the discussion with my team. We still talk about 20 percent. I'm not going to change the speech to 17, but it's just because after we have to moderate our guidance. But definitely the mindset did not change. Fred is 20 percent.

speaker
Frederick Trombley
Le Jardin Capital Markets

OK, great. And maybe last one before I get back in the queue, just on competition. How do you feel about, you know, Sabara's competitive positioning in the current environment? I'm thinking obviously about US based competitors. You feel like you're still well positioned to keep your market share and potentially improve market share in the coming years.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you, Fred. But again, I know Sabara, we have 12 factories, close to one million square foot of manufacturing. It's the biggest in the industry, in the small industry. So I think we're again inflation or the tariff. It's a bit for everybody, right? Because even the US manufacture, they import some parts from right and left from Asia, from Europe. It was a worldwide economy. So definitely they will be impacted and they will need to do some price increase as well. Canadian companies export to the US. Yeah, everybody will need to do some. So I think I'm feeling quite good about their position and I don't think this will change anything. And even we'll probably find some way to be stronger. And I think we have always been good with our dealer. They have been good with us. And I think that will just continue.

speaker
Frederick Trombley
Le Jardin Capital Markets

Thank you, Sebastian.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from Zachary Evershed from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

speaker
Zachary Evershed
National Bank Financial

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

speaker
Steve
Financial Executive (CFO)

Good morning. Good morning.

speaker
Zachary Evershed
National Bank Financial

Really impressive growth, organic growth out of patient care. And I heard you mentioned more reps serving the acute care market. Do you think you can continue pushing the patient care segment to grow at a similar organic rate in the quarter's head?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think again, Zach, we have to say it. No, and we saw the patient care after COVID. They had two good quarters, Q1, Q2, 20%. Again, they did a 20% again in Q4. And I wish we would do 20% each quarter, but it's not realistic. I think everybody knows that we're targeting 8 to 10% growth. So it's just that it was an accumulation of project and everything has happened so long. Q4, delivery, to send some quick turnaround products. So I think definitely for the year we're expecting a modest growth as all the other divisions do. Hopefully, they will surprise us again and do the same thing. But I think we have to say it was a very special quarter because Q1, Q2, Q3 was flat.

speaker
Zachary Evershed
National Bank Financial

Good color. Thanks. And then I was kind of surprised to hear that you're experiencing lower raw material costs in both segments again. Any color on what's driving that and how sustainable you think it is?

speaker
Unidentified Executive
Savaria 1 Operations Leader

Yeah, so it's not happening. It's not happening out of luck or because just the commodities are going down because we took a lot of proactive action. So you can imagine, as I mentioned, we had 50 different price negotiations or RFQs. We went through all of our bill of materials, anything that we could challenge because it's not been challenged for a long time. We did. So I think at the end of the day, when we did negotiate prices, we got very steep reductions. And if you add up all these reductions in average, that's why we see some negative inflation. So mind you, suppliers will always come and try to get some price increases. But I think our procurement team is doing an excellent job to both counter this but also sometimes reduce the costs. So it's some of all these efforts that allowed us to reduce our raw material costs.

speaker
Zachary Evershed
National Bank Financial

Excellent, thanks. And then if you're thinking you can get back to 20 percent adjust EBITDA margins in the back half of the year and guiding towards 17 to 20 percent for the full year, does that mean that you're looking at a pretty substantial drop in Q2 before your actions can work to raise that EBITDA again?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think it's a tough question, Zach, again, just happened yesterday that the tariff are official. I think we in the next, and again, January, February there was no tariff, but I think we're going to turn around in the next few weeks. So could we have a tough March and April? Okay, we will see what we are going to turn around quickly. And again, we're there for the mid-long term. We're not just for one month or one quarter. And we have been in business for 35 years. So we target over 70 percent for the full 2025. But to do the exact what would happen in each quarter, we have never really done that. We don't do guidance per quarter.

speaker
Zachary Evershed
National Bank Financial

Fair enough. And just one last one for me. How did January and February go so far in the quarter?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

My lawyer wouldn't be very happy for looking guidance. We don't like it. But again, we'll just continue a bit. We're planning to have a good year this year. Things need to be split over four quarters. So I think we're happy with the beginning of the year. And now we see what's happened in the next few weeks. But we're going to turn around quickly as I said on the tariff. We will have a good year. We are busy. So I'm feeling good about it. Thank you. I'll turn it over. Thank you,

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Zach. Thank you. We'll take our next question. This is from the line of Julian Hung from Steele. Please go ahead.

speaker
Justin Kiewit
Steele

Hi. Good morning. It's Justin Kiewit. Just some additional questions on the tariffs. So we understand there's significant U.S. capacity, 60,000 square feet where production could potentially shift if needed. What are some of the parameters there where you would increase investment into the U.S. or perhaps price increases is the appropriate route. How do you balance those options?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think, Justin, if I understand correctly your question, how we mitigate that is a mixed bag. A bit of price increase to a customer after that. A product that we have tariff. How can we mitigate that and maybe do the final assembly in the U.S. How can we find a different supplier in the exact country where we need to do the assembly? So I think it will be a mixed scenario that will give us some results and be assured that in the next few quarters I think we'll be able to give you some color on the size of tariff we got on each quarter. What are we doing? How we see things. But again, it's very fresh. It just happened yesterday. So now all the scenario we have done in the last few weeks, we're going to fine-tune it and where we put that into execution.

speaker
Justin Kiewit
Steele

Understood. Thank you. And then the balance sheet is in pretty good shape. 1.6 times levered. The valuation, it's at a 20-20 low right now. We're calculating it at 8 times the guided EBITDA. What are some of the capital allocation priorities? Is buybacks or an M&A? Is it an inquisitive in the past? Are there any M&A opportunities perhaps in the U.S.?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think, again, good question. We are very lucky. We have a good balance sheet and you see balance sheet is important when there's a bit of more turbulence. The guy that doesn't have a good balance sheet makes it much more difficult. So again, M&A, our friend Nicola is still working with us. He's doing some phone calls. So for sure, we are still looking at that. Again, there's a bit more some talking and some major acquisition. We need to close one this week. I think we still want to see what happens with the tariff. But definitely this is on the plate. I think Steve said earlier, CAPEX, and we will continue to make investment in our R&D because it's important to launch some new products, to buy equipment, to improve our factories, to become more productive. So definitely we're going to continue at the same rate we were doing in the last few quarters. Great.

speaker
Justin Kiewit
Steele

Just one final one. On Europe and Handicare, are there any sales into the U.S.? Or is that contained?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Since we did the acquisition, we brought back everything to manufacture in North America. So now the Handicare doesn't ship from Europe to the U

speaker
Justin Kiewit
Steele

.S. Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Thank you.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

We'll take our next question. This is from Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jonathan Goldman
Scotiabank

Hi. Good morning guys and thanks for taking my questions. A lot have been asked already. I guess a couple from me on tariffs. The first one, Seb or whoever wants to take this, the last time there was a tariff on tariffs in North America, specifically on steel and aluminum. Were any of your products exempt at the time? Was there a special carve out for medical devices? And were your products classified that way?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Last time again, it's really the first time that we have really had an impact from Canada going to the U.S. Before was always a little bit of a new impact. But this time it's really the first time we have to review what we are doing.

speaker
Jonathan Goldman
Scotiabank

Okay. Makes sense. And I guess my second question, how easy is it for a dealer to switch between elevator brands or stairlift brands?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Again, a dealer, many of our dealers work with us for many, many years and they invest some time to train on several products. After that, we always talk about the one stop shop. It's one phone number for the sales, for the tech support. Should make it very easy for them to make business with us. They can go in our configurator to buy their products online to see the status of their order. Yes, they can always switch, but they will need to retrain their sales team, their admin team, their installer. Again, I would think it's a bit more difficult to change. After that, sometimes you're successful in one area because you sell one brand. Maybe next door you have a dealer that sells a different brand. So it doesn't mean that the next day you have access to the other brand. So I think again, we're comfortable and we'll work with this with our dealer and everything will be okay.

speaker
Jonathan Goldman
Scotiabank

Okay, makes sense. And maybe one more going back to the MA question. How would you think about either shifting production from where you are to excess capacity in the US or maybe buying capacity through a deal? How would you balance the two options versus the financial commitment and the timing of those, which would make more sense?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think again, we'll go with two. I do an M&A of a competitor. He's not going to manufacture my server product. My dealer wants to buy the server product. So again, for me to shift production into an empty factory where I have patient care management or to just shift it to M&A for me is the same effort. So I think right now again, we want to continue with the one step shop. That's one of our strengths. So we'll see how we need to balance things in the next few weeks.

speaker
Jonathan Goldman
Scotiabank

Okay, thanks for the cover.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from Michael Glenn from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

speaker
Michael Glenn
Raymond James

Hey, good morning. Just maybe a couple of questions for me. So you gave some outlook, some outlook commentary for the elevator segment in North America. I'm just wondering if you can give some thoughts on the stair lift outlook in North America, industry level type numbers in terms of what we should think about for industry organic growth in 2025.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Okay, now, for sure we don't really disclose it for products. For sure, the food family, we're targeting approximately 8% growth. So, but definitely stair lift, this is an area that since we brought back the manufacturing from Europe, North America, early time are fantastic. If you want a straight stair lift, I ship it the same day or within 24 hours. A straight stair lift early time is like five days. So I think we are in a very good position with our manufacturing, but definitely this is something and we hope that we can continue to grow. But again, if you look at new products, the LUMO, again, the stuff from scratch, we have a fantastic growth. But plus it's a mixed bag. One product goes a bit, not as good, the other one goes better, but the success of SAVERA is at the diversity.

speaker
Michael Glenn
Raymond James

How would you characterize, I recognize this might be a tough one to answer, Sebastian, but how would you characterize your competitors manufacturing footprint in the stair lift market? Is it primarily domestic based or there's a lot of import products associated with the US stair lift market?

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

I think again, there's a lot of factories established in the US that manufacture locally, but again, global supply chain. So some people might bring some parts from Asia or from Europe, but again, I think it will be in relation for everybody and not just for SAVERA.

speaker
Michael Glenn
Raymond James

Okay, that's it for me. Thanks for taking the questions.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if there are any further questions, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That's star 1 and 1 to ask any further questions. There are no further questions coming through, so I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

speaker
Mr. Barassa
Company Executive (CEO)

Okay, thank you all the questions for analysis. Again, you're doing a fantastic job to cover SAVERA. Thank you again. And Sarah, I would say it was a good call. Thank you very much. And we will try to give the best color we can and I'm sure we will succeed in the next few weeks, few months to work on those short-term challenges. So thank you very much, Sarah. Thank

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.

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