Atlas Engineered Products Ltd.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining Atlas Engineered Products Q2 2026 earnings call. I am Jake Boma, an IR Consultant for AAP. Today on the line discussing AAP's Q2 2026 financial results and company highlights are the company's President, CEO and Founder Hadi Abassi and CFO Melissa MacRae. Following their remarks, we'll open up the call for an analyst Q&A session. Before handing over the call to Hadi, please note that information we present today could contain forward-looking information that is based on management's expectations, estimates, and projections. Please consider the risk factors, including those in the filings made by AP on CDAR when reviewing this information. Also, all amounts discussed will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Hadi, please proceed with your remarks. Thank you, Jake.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The second quarter of 2026 reflected the strength and resilience of our team, delivering a stronger financial performance over the prior year and the first quarter of 2026. While the market conditions in Ontario and British Columbia remain competitive, Coating and order activities continue to be encouraging, and we are seeing benefits from the investment we have made in sales management and operational capabilities. We have made important progress in our first robotic truss manufacturing facility in Clinton, Ontario, with equipment installed and commissioning underway as of late this July. We anticipate delivering our first truss orders from this facility in September 2026. We continue to report high quoting volumes from the beginning of 2025 and continuing in 2026 up to the end of July 2026. Quotes exceeded $176 million compared to roughly $159 million and $125 million up to the end of July 2025 and 2024. respectively because of the coating activities has been significantly higher in both 2025 and early 2026 than the previous years. Order volumes have also been increasing up to the end of July 2026. Orders total over $49 million up from more than $33.7 million in the same period of 2025. However, While orders are being placed and we are noticing that there are more need time on these orders than during a higher busy market and deliveries. Maybe in the subsequent quarters instead of within the same quarter as the order was received. We are also seeing typical seasonal recovery in the market. for the summer and anticipate discontinue to in the fall of 2026. We remain cautiously optimistic that the HST relief on new housing in Ontario seeks to have a spark some market recovery but anticipate signs of long-term recovery will become more evident to the winter and early 2027 during a typically slower construction season. AEP continues to drive organic growth to expand its focus on wall panel manufacturing and offering customer complete project packages that include roof, floor trusses, wall panels, and engineered food products. Additionally, we are assessing the benefits of adding loose lumber material and wall panel installation to its offering to customers. These strategies can help reduce our exposure to recessionary pressures by increasing potential sales volume per order. In addition to its organic growth strategy, we continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities across North America. Each potential acquisition is evaluated based on its geography, results, and growth potential. With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Melissa MacRae, CFO of EAP, to provide further commentary on the financial performance and position through Q2 2020. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Hadi, and welcome everyone. Results for our Q2 3 and 6 months ending June 30, 2026 include revenues of $16.2 million for the quarter and $25.5 million for the year to date, gross profits of $2.8 million for the quarter and $3.1 million for the year to date, normalized EBITDA of $1.7 million for the quarter and $1.2 million for the year to date. Revenues increased due to the expansion of sales team for market growth and the acquisitions of Trustworthy and Pinterest later on last year. Gross profits increased in the quarter, driven by the increase in revenues. For the year to date, gross profits are still decreased due to the results of the first quarter, which were driven by winter weather conditions and industry market conditions in Ontario and BC. Through the winter, the company has maintained certain costs, which drive gross profits down unfortunately. But the company will typically work to offset these costs with as much winter work as possible and the ability to increase margins later in the year as seen by the increase in gross margins from 3% in the first quarter to 17% in the second quarter. These are typical seasonal trends in our industry. Normalized EBITDA continued this positive trend moving from the first quarter 2026 to the second quarter and for the second quarter of 2026 compared to the second quarter of 2025. This increase in normalized EBITDA dollars was driven by increased revenues, consistent margins, and slightly reduced operating expenses, along with the add-backs related to one-time costs of the new facility, of the new automation facility. Still, not all expansion costs have been added back if they are anticipated to be ongoing costs that are needed to scale up with an automated facility, such as the sales team and some management support. The decrease in normalized EBITDA for the year-to-date results is driven by first quarter results, the same as gross profits. The winter work costs and seasonality of our business can be seen in normalized EBITDA results already moving from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2026. Q1 2026, we had a negative 9% normalized EBITDA margin, whereas the natural seasonal increase along with organic growth moving into quarter two resulted in an 11% normalized EBITDA margin. While moving forward, the remainder of the year is typically seasonally stronger than both the first two quarters of the year. I'd now like to open up the call for your questions. Operator, please provide the appropriate instructions.

Thank you, Melissa, and thank you, Hadi. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session from our analysts. Please raise your hands if you have a question, and we'll address each analyst in order. If there's any outstanding questions at the end of this call, the company will be happy to take them all by email. And it looks like our first question is from Russell.

Russell from Beacon Security.

You can go ahead, Russell.

Good morning and thank you for the questions. Maybe first around the loose lumber materials and the wall panel installations. Can you elaborate on how far down the road you are in evaluating those opportunities and perhaps what you think the margin profile might look like relative to your other businesses?

Hi Russell, hope you're doing good. So based on a full total lockup package, like that's minus the doors and windows, we actually implemented that across the certain provinces in the country, like especially Ontario and BC. New Brunswick, we already do it. The only thing we don't do in New Brunswick is we do not do the installation down there and the loose material. We do the walls, floors, and trusses. It's the marketplace there and the demand and the way the geography is. That's what we do there. In Ontario, with the certain clients, long-term clients, we have started to do the total package as trusses, floors, walls, installation, and loose materials. And we have done that in British Columbia, started to do that in British Columbia where we had delivered the wall panel. So really, what we first we did was also face-by-face. First, we set up the wall panel and the floor cassette manufacturing to deliver those full components to the clients. Now, the next stage is we are adding the installation to it. And we have case study that it works and is successful, and we are in progress of building our team, building our sales up to move that direction. The organic growth percentage is great. Plus, it gives the contractor and us a full control of the job. So if some delays happen, it's either them or us. There is no in-between person. And the contractors find it is cost-effective, very efficient. And that's one way to address the labor shortage we have in the country.

Thank you. And maybe around government efforts to support or accelerate home construction, you talked about the HST relief. We've recently seen some announcements around infrastructure, for example. I'm wondering between that and whatever other efforts might be in the pipeline, how impactful you expect this kind of support to be?

Well, anything they do and any initiative they take is really impactful. And one thing I've learned is I guess once you start paying more and more attention to the announcements, sometimes you get disappointed because it doesn't happen tomorrow morning. And then what I've noticed in the bureaucratic system is the governmental system, everything that they've got to go through the due process and the announcements they've made in the past and stuff, and some of it has come into fruition. And it's because even despite all the headwinds we have, every five minutes you get a new thing about tariffs or whatever is out there in the world. It's a crazy world out there. And still, the construction in Canada, in my opinion, the two biggest provinces, Ontario and B.C., it bottomed out, completely bottomed out. And there is no way to go up. And it's recovering on its own strength. and just strength of all these small or big initiatives the government's talking about, the infrastructure, the HST relief. So there are all those conversations that it is starting to help, but it's not an overnight remedy that, hey, let's inject billions of dollars and fix it overnight because everything happens overnight, it will disappear overnight too. So I actually like it. It's brought a certain toughness and resilience to our business, to many, many businesses in Canada. So after that, this is it. And Big Daddy is now going to take care of it. We'll make it happen.

Thanks on that. Maybe one last question for me, and I'll get back in the queue. Just around Clinton and understanding the target for shipping in September, I'm wondering if you can talk about how commissioning has progressed thus far. We know there were delays in actually getting the shipments, but now that the equipment's been on site for a while, has commissioning progressed as expected, or any hiccups you'd call out?

The commissioning is going as expected. It's a little bit slow. and the hiccups or the bug fixing of the last stages that is happening right now. And it's just because every time you run an amazing machinery and automation like that, it's 300 feet of long assembly robotic automated line. And there are so many switches and stuff. And like anything else, you will expect some bugs to be worked out. and we are going through all that last stages, one here, one there, any moment right now in September, we will be producing orders there also.

That's great. Congrats. Thanks on the questions. I'll get back in the queue.

Thank you. Thank you, Russell and Hadi. And the next question is from Nick, Nick from ATB. You can proceed with your question, Nick.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Hadi, in the prepared remarks, I think it was in the press release, you mentioned that some of the quoting and order activity was quite strong, but you're seeing some terms get extended out such that if you have an order received this quarter, it might not be delivered in that quarter. I'm curious if there's any change in the nature of those contracts or the bids themselves that would either be a change in the business or the change in the quality of what you are bidding on.

It's really, Nick, there is no, I don't know if there is any significant change. The one thing I know is, and you know it, like usually in the past, in an operation, when you have weight overflow, and then you start juggling orders, and you start doing everything, and you hope somebody is going to bump their order because of your past capacity. But right now, because of capacity, the increase of capacity and of orders are so in parallel to each other. and then when there is a bump or a delay in the construction and I guarantee you in construction business because of so many things involved you're always going to get the delay from the weather to the inspection to the red tapes to everything. Now we're eliminating a lot of that stuff from the foundation to the lockup by producing a total install package and the contractors invite that a lot and they love it because then you're cutting a lot of delay factors and inefficiencies out. Plus, the one thing there is, the moment things slow down, there is a labor pool out there, but the moment Everything picks up, just as I'm talking about a small percentage of the dial to move, then that labor in the construction that the ground flow labor unit, the delays will start happen because of the shortage of labor we have in this country. That's why even we were so adamant about need to go to robotics, make the investment automation, not to replace human beings, but to make up for not having A lot of labor available. So then the solution will become patiently and diligently you start doing the component manufacturing in construction that way you do everything automated inside the factory that you eliminate all the delays and everything so it's not a it's not a set of equipment you set up just because the market demand was there oh there is a market then let's go buy no these equipments are set up for the future because you've been in business for so many years you will see the same challenge over and over and over again there is a time and a place you got to deliver a house fast and affordable to the client and we are part of the solution in the country doing that. And behind that, I do like what government, how they work with us and how they support us and how they follow that vision. Like that is a very, very positive sign. But make most people look for everything overnight, home run. There is no home run. This is a long, long game, longevity game that you learn your process and you move on and you do it. It's the same as us doing a fully lockup package for a client. We dreamed about that two years ago. We talked about it, we did it, and we were scared. No, we could do it. We might even do four or five a week right now, and we don't even know what we're doing. We just will grow that. So it's a combination of everything there. I gave you a long answer, Nick, but there's a combination of everything's happening.

Okay, no, I appreciate the color, Hadi. And with the new Clinton Robotics Facility, what does the cost profile for you to manufacture a truss on the robotics line look like, either comparable to the old manual human labor Clinton facility or to some of your peers in that local market?

In that local market, the cost saving, it will show on the labor side, you will save, it's quite significant. And the cost saving, actually, if you ever measure your efficiency at the bottom dollar, like, for example, for a line of this automation to produce about 6,000 on an average, on a very conservative number per day, 5,000 to 6,000 gold feet per shift, sorry, the amount of labor you need is three. Two running the machinery and one loading and unloading. On a usual setup, you will need about eight, seven to eight people to do that. Now, there is a saving on cost of labor and efficiency. And then you got to look at all the costs you spent on HR, on training people, hiring 10 people, so one will stay. All of those costs, if you measure it, it's huge saving, plus it gives you the capability. If you want to add a second shift, all you need is two more persons that are machine operators. You don't need to have eight or nine people. And to find eight people, you've got to go through about 30 people. Right now, we have ads out in the country. We could hire 40 people tomorrow. And we have our HR team, agencies, everybody, foreign workers, everything, working hard to find those people.

But they're not knocking on your door.

That makes a lot of sense, Hadi. Thank you for the call.

Thank you. Thank you, Nick.

So it looks like there's no more in the list of questions. And this marks the end of our Q&A session. The company is available to post call to answer any questions you may still have. With the contact information that's on the screen right now, you can either email us or go to our website and submit a contact us form. and we would like to thank you for your interest in Atlas Engineer Products for participating this call and at this time you may now disconnect and have a great day.