Perimeter Solutions Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
October 30, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $186.3 million (YTD $295.7 million), driven by execution of the company's operational value drivers—notably international retardants, suppressants, and IMS—which expanded margins and reduced sensitivity to North American fire season swings.
  • Positive Sentiment: Perimeter signed a material five‑year U.S. Forest Service contract that lowers year‑one retardant pricing but shifts federal bases to a full‑service, all‑powder model, delivering taxpayer savings while improving predictability, logistics efficiency, and long‑term profitability.
  • Negative Sentiment: The Flexsys‑operated Sauget, IL plant experienced recurring unplanned downtime and significant safety incidents that materially depressed Specialty Products results; Perimeter is pursuing litigation to assume control and warns of continued financial drag until resolved.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company generated strong cash flow (Q3 free cash flow $193.6 million, YTD $197 million), maintains ~1x net leverage with ~$340.6 million cash and an undrawn $100M revolver, and invested ~$12M in IMS product‑line M&A this quarter to drive future EBITDA growth.
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Earnings Conference Call
Perimeter Solutions Q3 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to the Perimeter Solutions Q3 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participant lines are in the listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone requires operator assistance during the conference, please signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host for today, Seth Barker, Vice President. Please go ahead.

Seth Barker
Seth Barker
Head of Investor Relations and VP of Financial Planning and Analysis at Perimeter Solutions

Thank you, operator. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Perimeter Solutions third quarter 2025 earnings call. Speaking on today's call are Haitham Khouri, Chief Executive Officer, and Kyle Sable, Chief Financial Officer. We want to remind anyone who may be listening to a replay of this call that all statements made are as of today, October 30, 2025, and these statements have not been nor will they be updated subsequent to today's call. Today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements made today are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs about our business and the environment in which we operate, and our actual results may materially differ from those expressed or implied on today's call. Please review our SEC filings, particularly any risk factors included in our filings, for a more complete discussion of factors that could impact our results, expectations, or assumptions.

Seth Barker
Seth Barker
Head of Investor Relations and VP of Financial Planning and Analysis at Perimeter Solutions

The company would also like to advise you that during the call we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures including Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, LTM Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EPS, and Free Cash Flow. The reconciliation of and other information regarding these items can be found in our earnings press release and presentation, both of which will be available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Haitham Khouri, Chief Executive Officer.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Thank you, Seth. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We're pleased to report Perimeter's third quarter and year-to-date results. Third quarter Adjusted EBITDA was $186.3 million, and year-to-date Adjusted EBITDA was $295.7 million. The three primary drivers of these results were, number one, execution on our operational value drivers with particularly strong results in our international retardant business, our suppressants market, and IMS. Two, the impact of our efforts to drive more consistency and predictability in our retardant business with reduced dependence on the North America fire season, and number three, a more proactive initial attack strategy by our customers which drove greater retardant use. We continue to deploy capital during the third quarter, investing nearly $17 million across capital expenditures and the purchase of product lines at IMS. I will provide a summary of our strategy, followed by an operational update, then discuss our new

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Forest Service contract. Kyle will then walk through our financial results and recap our capital allocation in the quarter, starting on slide three with a summary of our strategy. Our goal is to fulfill our critical mission by providing our customers with high-quality products and exceptional service while delivering our investors private equity-like returns with the liquidity of the public market. Our strategy is built on three key operational pillars. First, we own exceptional businesses. These are niche market leaders that play critical roles in solving complex customer problems, qualities that support high returns on invested capital and durable earnings growth. Second, we rigorously apply our three operational value drivers to the businesses we own. We drive profitable new business, achieve continual productivity improvements, and provide increasing value to our customers which we share in through value-based pricing.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Third, we operate our businesses in a highly decentralized manner, granting our business unit managers full operating autonomy paired with accountability to deliver results. With a tightly aligned incentive structure for our managers to think and act like owners, we believe that our operational pillars will optimize our durable long-term free cash flow. We then seek to maximize long-term per share equity value through a clear focus on the allocation of our capital as well as the management of our capital structure. Turning now to our financial results on slide four and starting with Fire Safety. Fire Safety's strong third quarter and year to date results were driven by three key factors. First is continued progress on our operational value drivers. We grow our sustainable earnings power through the rigorous implementation of our three value drivers. This improvement is evident in our Q3 and year to date 2025 results.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Sales increased as we drove profitable new business and earned the right to share in the customer value creation across both retardants and suppressants. Margins expanded as we improved the efficiency of our operations via productivity initiatives. Excuse me. Revenue and margins benefited from our increased operating investments and capital expenditures. We expect the impact of our value drivers to compound over time and drive sustainable growth in our earnings power. Looking across our products, our international retardants business and our suppressants business continued their momentum in the third quarter with particularly strong volume performance from our profitable new business initiatives and meaningful top and bottom line impact from our productivity and value pricing efforts. Our U.S. retardant business also saw contributions across all three operational value drivers driving top and bottom line growth despite a relatively mild North America fire season.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

The second driver of our financial results are the structural changes we've made towards greater consistency and predictability in our retardants business with reduced dependence on the severity of the North America fire season. We renewed substantially all of our key retardant contracts over the past two years and in doing so, prioritized contractual adjustments to drive greater consistency and predictability in our business and financial results. These adjustments were well-received by our customers who, like us, benefit from greater consistency and predictability. While the correlation of our Fire Safety results with the North America fire season is not eliminated, we believe it is notably reduced relative to history, as is evident in our 2025 financial results. The third driver of our 2025 results is a shift in our customers' approach to wildfire response. Our key U.S.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

customers adopted a more proactive approach to wildfire management this year, which we believe contributed meaningfully to lower acres burned and to significant associated cost savings. With support from Secretary Brooke Rollins of the Department of Agriculture and Secretary Doug Burgum of the Department of the Interior, Tom Schultz, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, issued a wildfire Letter of Intent in May which directed the Forest Service to suppress fires as swiftly as possible and to focus on safe, aggressive initial attack. This directive from Chief Schultz called for a greater mobilization of resources, including aerial resources deploying retardant to quickly attack nascent fires. By quickly getting retardant on fires, agencies were able to limit their spread and mitigate the devastation they cause in our communities. This more aggressive initial attack posture helped limit acres burned despite the increase in fire starts while driving meaningful use of retardant.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

The actions taken this year by Secretary Rollins, Secretary Burgum, Chief Schultz, and the men and women of our agency partners undoubtedly saved lives, property, and our environment. As always, Perimeter is proud to play a part in our customer success. Moving on from this year's operational developments and looking to the future, we were pleased to have signed a new contract with the U.S. Forest Service during the third quarter. This contract, among the most significant in our company's history, builds on Perimeter's 60-year legacy of working with the Forest Service to protect lives, property, and the environment by combining our customers' unwavering commitment to the mission with the best of private sector efficiency. This contract delivers a win-win outcome by first, delivering substantial savings to the U.S. taxpayer, second, driving Perimeter Solutions' continued financial momentum, and third, enhancing our national wildfire preparedness and response capability.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

A key element of the contract is the savings it provides to the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and ultimately the American taxpayer. The contract lowers the price of retardant in its first year and delivers additional savings by expanding the services Perimeter can efficiently deliver over the contract's five-year term. One example of the contract's mutually beneficial outcome is the transition to our full service model. Substantially all federal bulk bases which we serve with product will transition to our full service model, which we serve with our comprehensive solution spanning product, service, staffing, equipment, and maintenance. We capture meaningful operating efficiencies by incorporating these bulk bases into our full-service network and simultaneously drive savings for the customer as well as profitable new revenue streams and incremental productivity opportunities to Perimeter.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

In a similar win-win, federal bases are transitioning from a mix of liquid and powder product to an all-powder footprint. Our powder product is lower priced and more efficient to handle than our liquid product, which drives direct customer savings. Simultaneously, powder conversion enhances our profitability through a lower cost and complexity manufacturing, distribution, and logistics footprint. Finally, this new contract enhances national wildfire preparedness and response. The contract's unprecedented five-year term allows Perimeter and the Forest Service to jointly plan and invest behind meaningful multi-year initiatives such as the all-powder product conversion to safeguard future air tanker fleet uptime and reliability. Perimeter has also committed to aiding the Forest Service on the development of retardant testing standards that ensure all retardant products match Perimeter safety standards developed over the past 60 years.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Building off of the supply chain resiliency advanced by our new Sacramento facility, Perimeter is working to build that same continuity further up the supply chain by enabling more domestic supply of raw materials. Together, these features deliver the safest, most resilient, and best performing retardant solution our nation has ever had. We'd like to acknowledge and thank our agency customers for the collaborative engagement on this landmark contract. We look forward to continuing our successful 60+ year collaboration over the next five years and beyond. Switching now to our Specialty Products segment. During the third quarter, the significant operational and safety events that have plagued our Sauget, Illinois plant since One Rock Partners purchased the Flexsys assets in 2021 not only continued but escalated. There was once again a substantial amount of unplanned downtime, which significantly impacted Specialty Products' financial results in the third quarter.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

While that was disappointing, significant safety events during the third quarter are of greater concern. These events demonstrate the urgent need to get these assets out of Flexsys control as soon as possible for the safety of workers at the plant. Unfortunately, Flexsys and their parent One Rock continue to fight our efforts to take operational control of the plant despite their clear contractual obligation to do so. Recently, Flexsys made a bad faith proposal that we lease the land under the plant for more than 10x-20x the cost to purchase identically zoned and similarly configured and resourced land in the same general vicinity. We will not capitulate to these tactics. We will continue to doggedly pursue our rights under the contract in court as our previously disclosed litigation progresses.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

We know that it may take an extended period before there is a resolution, and we caution our investors to expect a continued financial impact until this issue is resolved. Regardless, we remain fully committed to taking over the plant, no matter how long it takes or how difficult the path is. We are doing this not only for the benefit of our shareholders and customers and the community where we operate, but also for the safety of the employees at the plant. We are confident that we will eventually operate the plant and consistently and safely produce the highest quality product. Lastly, IMS, the business continues to perform well and we again acquired new product lines during the third quarter. Our IMS acquisition team remains active and we expect to continue to drive IMS' profitability through enhancing our operating value drivers on both existing and newly acquired product lines.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle for a more detailed review of our financials, earnings, power, and capital allocation in the quarter.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Thanks, Haitham. I'll begin on slide eight where growth figures are shown versus the prior year comparable period, starting with Fire Safety. Revenue for the quarter came in at $273.4 million, reflecting the 9% year-over-year improvement, and $430.8 million year to date, a 15% gain. The segment's Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $177.2 million, representing a 13% increase over last year, and $265 million year to date, marking a 24% gain. Our operational value drivers were the primary driver of the year-over-year increase, with strong performance across our various products and geographies. Our suppressants team was successful expanding sales, booking new volume wins at attractive pricing, with overall suppressants revenue increasing $12.4 million from the prior year quarter. We continue to make excellent progress in windy airport conversions to our newest products while building a base of replacement volumes sold into the installed base.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Meanwhile, our retardant products were strong in our markets outside North America, growing sales $5.5 million from the previous year. Historically, larger markets such as Australia and France had robust performance, while our team made progress on expanding into more nascent markets such as Italy, where the team focused on new applications for retardant products deployed along rail lines. In the U.S., our retardant revenue grew modestly despite the pronounced decline in U.S. acres burned. We saw a strong performance across all three OBDs in our retardant business, driving new business as we extend our footprint to new bases and faster loading, equipment productivity across a variety of sources and logistics areas, and value-based pricing where we've earned the right to share in the value we create for our customers. As Haitham noted, we worked to decouple our revenue from fire activity as we renewed contracts.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

We have purposely shifted sales toward fixed services revenue and proportionally away from variable product revenue. The net effect is to make our revenue less sensitive to volume movements as was historically the case, thereby improving the quality of our revenue base and contributing to Q3's strong performance. Finally, the increasingly aggressive initial attack strategy employed this year by our customers, coupled with an even distribution of acres over time and geography, almost fully offset the decline in volumes from fewer acres burned. The resulting adjusted EBITDA growth demonstrates how the many levers of growth across the business, along with improved contract structures, can effectively reduce our sensitivity to acreage burned in any given year. In our Specialty Products segment, Q3 net sales came in at $42.1 million, representing 15% growth from the prior year quarter.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

This performance reflects a $10.8 million contribution from IMS acquisitions, which was offset by a $5.3 million decrease from the base business. Year to date, net sales reached $119.3 million, up 20%, driven by $27.7 million from IMS acquisitions, partly offset by a $7.6 million decline attributable to ongoing unplanned downtime at the Flexsys-operated Sauget plant. Specialty Products Q3 Adjusted EBITDA fell to $9.1 million compared to $12.9 million in the prior year quarter and slightly declined year to date, down to $30.8 million compared to $34.5 million. Q3's operational challenges are a continuation of the issues initially discussed in Q1, and the ongoing downtime contributed to lower sales and higher costs in the business and dampened Adjusted EBITDA. While it's impossible to predict the plant's performance under Flexsys and their parent One Rock's control, we anticipate a continued drag from operational issues until we assume operational control deployment.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Our IMS business continues to progress well with four product lines acquired year to date. The business continues to outperform our expectations from the time of the initial deal, and the add-on product line acquisition process has already shown to be effective at converting its pipeline into closed transactions. We expect to implement our operational value drivers to drive Adjusted EBITDA on existing product lines as well as continue to expand into new product lines via M&A. Viewing the segments together, consolidated third quarter sales grew 9% to $315.4 million, while Adjusted EBITDA also improved 9% to $186.3 million. Year to date, consolidated sales reached $550.1 million, up 16%, and Adjusted EBITDA rose 20% to $295.7 million, finally bringing our Adjusted EBITDA down to EPS. For Q3 2025, our GAAP loss per share was $0.62 versus GAAP loss per share of $0.61 in the prior year quarter.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Q3 2025 adjusted EPS was $0.82 compared to $0.75 in Q3 2024. On a year to date basis, GAAP loss per share was $0.45 compared to a GAAP loss per share of $1.03 for the same period last year. Year to date, adjusted EPS was $1.24 as compared to $0.99 for the same period in the previous year. Turning to our long-term assumptions, as shown on slide nine, our assumptions are unchanged from Q2 and with normal quarterly variation. Q3 is consistent with those expectations. Q3 interest expense was $9.9 million while taxable depreciation, amortization, and other tax deductions totaled $5.8 million. Cash paid for income tax was $15.4 million in Q3 as compared to $27 million in the prior year quarter. Note that the variation in taxes is typically timing related in any given quarter and our full year tax expectation is unchanged.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Capital expenditures for the quarter were $5 million. Our working capital needs fluctuate seasonally and Q3's working capital levels and the associated source of cash are consistent with our expectations given the level of activity in Q3. Our year end net working capital outlook is unchanged. We ended the quarter with about 147.9 million basic shares outstanding. We define free cash flow as cash flow from operations plus capital expenditures. In total, we had free cash flow in Q3 of $193.6 million and free cash flow of $197 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025. 2025's cash flow generation seasonality is in line with our expectations and consistent with history, where we invest significantly in working capital in the first half of the year in preparation for the fire season and convert those investments into cash in the second half.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Our full year Adjusted EBITDA to cash generation conversion is consistent with the assumptions shown on this slide aside from potential cash tax timing differences. Finally, I will reiterate that we expect our business to remain well-insulated from policy and economic shifts. Trade policy effects are tracking at or below our initial expectations, amounting to less than 2% of consolidated Adjusted EBITDA. At the same time, our business has seen minimal government funding disruption since it's tied to essential federal emergency response initiatives, and more broadly, our portfolio continues to show resilience against economic conditions given the non-discretionary nature of most of our products. Turning from operations to capital allocation, we invested nearly $17 million of capital in the quarter, the returns at which we expect will exceed our minimum targeted equity returns of 15%.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

We continue to reinvest in our business organically with $5 million allocated to capital expenditures in the quarter. The majority of these capital expenditures supported our growth and productivity initiatives. Our pipeline of projects continues to build and is an important element supporting our long-term organic Adjusted EBITDA growth trajectory. Moving to M&A, as discussed previously, we invested $12 million in Q3 to acquire product lines for IMS. Consistent with IMS' original investment thesis, the acquired product lines are being integrated into our manufacturing footprint and our team is working to implement our operational value driver strategy. IMS' product line acquisitions will continue to be an important avenue to deploy capital at attractive IRRs and we believe we can deploy tens of millions of dollars of capital into IMS product line acquisitions annually for many years to come.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Our M&A capacity far exceeds what we expect to allocate to IMS and we are actively evaluating larger M&A targets. As Haitham outlined at the beginning of the call, our plan is to own a portfolio of high-quality businesses where our operational value drivers drive meaningful post-acquisition improvement in financial performance as has occurred at Perimeter's portfolio of businesses over the past few years. Our portfolio is not industry-specific but rather strategy-specific. Business quality and the applicability of our operational value drivers are what tie our portfolio together. Having a chemical, fire, or safety aspect of the business does not make a business a potentially good fit for Perimeter, and we expect future deals will come from new sub-verticals within the broad industrial space. Let me reiterate the strategic characteristics of the businesses we expect to add to our portfolio.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Our first and most important characteristic is that the business produces a small but essential component of a larger solution. We begin by evaluating whether that broader solution addresses a critical, complex problem for customers. We further assess whether the target serves a narrow need within that broader solution, creating the niche market. Lastly, we confirm that no alternative offers comparable value to the customer. Together these qualities align with our value creation strategy: solve customers' most important challenges better than anyone else while sustainably sharing the value created between our business and our customers. This allows us to drive profitable new business, seek out efficiencies that drive productivity, and earn the right to share in value creation through value-based pricing.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

In addition to the primary criterion of shared value creation, we prefer companies with recurring revenue, secular growth, high free cash flow generation, and correspondingly high returns on capital and the potential for add-on M&A. Successful M&A at Perimeter demands finding targets with these characteristics, confirming the applicability of our operational value driver strategy, and diligence in closing the transaction. Then the real work begins as we work to implement our operational value drivers and strive to replicate the same success we've seen in the businesses we acquired four years ago. Our team is actively working to source and diligence new targets that meet these criteria, and we are committed to expanding via M&A as a key part of a long-term value creation strategy. Turning to slide 11, the second half of our capital strategy is to maintain moderate leverage that amplifies equity returns.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Here we benefit from a favorable debt structure, a single series of fixed-rate notes at 5% maturing in the fourth quarter of 2029 with no financial maintenance covenants. As of Q3, we were levered 1x net debt to LTM Adjusted EBITDA, driven by $675 million of gross debt, $340.6 million in cash, and nearly $329 million of LTM Adjusted EBITDA. We also have substantial liquidity with an undrawn $100 million revolver as of quarter end in addition to our cash. Before we wrap up, I will share that the company plans to participate in Baird's Industrials Conference in November, where we will webcast our presentation for the benefit of our shareholders. To conclude, our purpose as a company is to fulfill our mission and drive shareholder value. The U.S.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Forest Service's decision to extend its trusted Perimeter for another five years stands as a testament to our colleagues' unwavering commitment to fulfilling our mission. Simultaneously, our increased earnings power in Q3 stems from our team's disciplined execution of our operational value drivers combined with continued improvement in our contracts, which combined to generate enough improvement to more than offset the headwind from a milder fire season. We are deeply proud of how our team continues to embrace both our mission and the mandate to drive value with enthusiasm, discipline, and pride, and we look forward to building on this momentum in the quarters ahead. With that, I'll hand the call back to the operator for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Josh Spector
Josh Spector
Executive Director of Chemicals Equity Research at UBS

Hey, good morning, guys, and congrats on a strong result. What I wanted to try to ask first was really, what do you think is the normal, I guess, earnings power within the Fire Safety segment overall? Understanding kind of the more aggressive tactics hold more gallons into a weaker fire season. If we think next year would be normal, which would maybe be a 30%-40% increase in acres burned, would you have any increase in your gallons as you go to that level, or are you tapped out in terms of capacity?

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Josh, it's Kyle. Thanks for the question. I think there's two in there, so let me take them one at a time. When we think about the earnings power of the Fire Safety business, this year is pretty indicative of what the earnings power should be in more or less a normalized environment. That's the first piece, and there's puts and takes to that as you've highlighted. Our volumes had a headwind obviously from the acre side that was, as we said in the script, almost entirely offset by this more increasingly aggressive tactics. As we translate to next year and think about the second half of your question, we would get an additional benefit if acres were to rebound from this year's levels, but with two caveats. One, that that acre's benefit wouldn't be as strong as it otherwise would have been because of the initial attack posture.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Two, we don't know exactly what that posture will look like. Last year it was very highly successful. This year we hope that we see a continuation of that trend. Obviously don't know what that's going to look like quite yet.

Josh Spector
Josh Spector
Executive Director of Chemicals Equity Research at UBS

Yeah, I guess, I mean, related to that, did you benefit in terms of the amount that you were able to load because of maybe a more dispersed and less chaotic fire season? In that, if we have more unplanned fires, it becomes harder, or has your ability to load increased enough where, again, if the activity is maybe slightly more unpredictable, you could load similar to more gallons?

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Hitting on exactly the right factors here, Josh. Disaggregating them is tough. Yes, we definitely benefited from a more even dispersion of acres burned across both geography and timing. There was less large fires concentrated in a very tight band where our resources were fully utilized. That said, there is a benefit coming from both the growth in the air tanker fleet, which obviously comes from the agencies and our partners and the air tanker community, as well as our own ability to load more retardants out of our bases. There is a tailwind from that fact. Disaggregating those out into being able to quantify them for you is pretty difficult to do just because they all interact with each other.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Josh, to be clear, we were not tapped out on capacity this year and wouldn't expect to be tapped out on capacity in a stronger fire season.

Josh Spector
Josh Spector
Executive Director of Chemicals Equity Research at UBS

That makes sense. If I could ask just one more broad one, just on the new USDA framework that you have for next year, I don't know if you can give a little bit more framing on two components of it. First, between the price down and services up, how do you think about the net impact to your earnings potential 2026 versus 2025? Second, with that in terms of a split between services, which would maybe be more of a fixed fee versus a dollar per gallon type charge, how has that transitioned in this contract? Does the makeup look materially different in 2026 on versus what it's looked like over the last few years?

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

On the first part, Josh, we expect to grow our various financial metrics, certainly EBITDA in our North America fire business in a like for like acre season in 2026 inclusive of this contract. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, this contract continues our positive financial momentum. As far as your second part of the question, this contract further moves our business towards consistency, predictability, and stability by increasing the proportion of revenue and EBITDA that comes from services and other fixed components, and due to the year one price cut, decreases the proportion that comes from pure gallons.

Josh Spector
Josh Spector
Executive Director of Chemicals Equity Research at UBS

Okay, thanks. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Kutz with Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Please go ahead.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hey, thanks a lot. Good morning, and congrats on the results.

Kyle Sable
Kyle Sable
CFO at Perimeter Solutions

Thanks, Dan.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

I wanted to talk about another kind of government update that we got a month, month and a half ago. That was around the plans to form the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, which would effectively combine the USDA's U.S. Forest Service and then all of the DOI wildfire agencies. Just wondering, you know, I know it's early stages, but just any initial thoughts on the implications of this, I guess merger, for lack of a better term, and two customers that I think just based on acres burn data, they each kind of represent 1/3 of the Lower 48 market. Those two organizations coming together would love any thoughts on potential for debottlenecking and maybe more resources or efficiency, which could lead to more robust firefighting efforts and increased retardant demand.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

The other question we've been getting on this merger is that they mentioned in the press release that one of the goals is joint contracting and procurement. Been getting questions around whether the contract that you guys inked with the USDA could potentially extend to the DOI agencies as these organizations combine. Thank you.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Good morning, Dan. In many ways, our existing federal contract is the template for this new new Wildland Fire Service. What I mean by that is our contract has historically and continues in a new contract to combine all five federal firefighting agencies into one contract. We refer to it as a Forest Service contract, but it really applies to all five federal firefighting agencies equally and will continue in that way going forward.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

The merger, as you call it, of these agencies is very much in line with the spirit of what our contract has always done. We view that as a material positive for the industry, certainly for the air tanker companies, certainly for us, and most importantly for national wildfire preparedness and response and our wildland firefighters. It's just much more efficient, effective, and streamlined to have one empowered agency and have the industry and our federal partners speak with one voice. We are very supportive of this change.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Awesome. Thank you. That's really helpful. Maybe just a broad question on contracting in general, because it seems like across several of your product lines, you have some large customers or customers that kind of represent a big portion of demand for your products. You have the USDA, and it sounds like it's actually more broadly the U.S. wildfire agency's contract. You had the PFAS-free U.S. Military contract for the suppressants business. The question is, in the same way that you kind of target economic criteria and operational value drivers that inform your M&A and operational strategies, any general thoughts or tactics or, you know, items that you prioritize when you're negotiating big contracts with customers, just kind of the puts and takes between stability and hedges and durability versus contract term and cost pass-through pricing.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Maybe there's some markets where, or product lines where flexibility or spot pricing or cost exposure could make more sense. Yeah. Just wondering if you could kind of walk us through generally some of the puts and takes that you think through as you're negotiating contract. Thank you.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

I'm going to have to give you a bit of a high-level answer, Dan, just because there are so many contracts in the different parts of our business. What I'll say is contracting is remarkably important. You can drive or frankly destroy a very significant amount of value through optimal versus sloppy contracting. We take it really seriously, and we always approach contracting and train our folks to approach contracting in a highly, highly collaborative manner. The first thing you do with contracting is you understand the customer's needs, the customer's pain points, the customer's constraints, and you try to present them with an optimal outcome for them. That at the same time touches on what we care most about as far as the stability, predictability, growth, etc. of our business. Those principles are extrapolatable across contracting in all of our businesses.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

When you look at our financial results in 2025 and the general, I would call it, outperformance of revenue and EBITDA versus various end market metrics, that reflects two years of applying that contracting attitude or approach across our businesses.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Also, really helpful, and maybe if I could just sneak one more quick one in. A couple of comments you guys had about the international retardants business being strong. I think it was a year to date comment, but just wondering if you could kind of unpack the international business results a little bit this year. Just kind of relative strength year to date versus 3Q, and just remind us what the key markets are in the Northern versus Southern Hemisphere, and kind of the relative strength of those markets and Perimeter's results this year. Thank you.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Yeah, international has been strong for us for the past several years, and given where international retardant is in the very long-term maturity curve, we would expect international retardant to remain very strong for us for the foreseeable future. Both 2025 year to date and Q3 were a continuation, Dan, of that trend. Our business in Europe was excellent in Q3. Our business in the Middle East was excellent in Q3. Our business in Asia was strong in Q3. Our business in the Southern Hemisphere, both Australia and South America, was strong in Q3. Our international retardant business really is firing on all cylinders. Part of that is self-help and strong execution. Part of it is it should be very strong. It's very early in the adoption cycle. The economics of adoption make a whole lot of sense, and we're riding that wave.

Dan Kutz
Dan Kutz
Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great, thank you. Thank you very much. I will turn it back.

Operator

Thank you. A reminder to all participants to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Haitham Khouri for the closing comments.

Haitham Khouri
Haitham Khouri
CEO at Perimeter Solutions

Very good. Thank you for the nice job hosting today, [Elrick]. Thank you everybody for taking the time to join us. As a reminder, as Kyle mentioned, we'll be at the Baird Industrial Conference in a couple of weeks, and we'll webcast our presentation. Thank you all for the support.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference of Perimeter Solutions has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Executives
Analysts
    • Josh Spector
      Executive Director of Chemicals Equity Research at UBS
    • Dan Kutz
      Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley
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