TAT Technologies Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 12, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 revenue grew 18% year-over-year to $43.1 million, gross margin expanded by 320 bps to 25.1%, and adjusted EBITDA increased 41.9% to $6.1 million (14% margin).
  • Positive Sentiment: Long-term agreement value and backlog rose by $85 million to $524 million, driven by new contracts on recently certified platforms and customer expansions.
  • Positive Sentiment: Trading and leasing revenue tripled year-over-year, helping offset near-term MRO intake softness and showcasing operational flexibility.
  • Positive Sentiment: Completed a $45 million public equity offering, welcomed new U.S. institutional investors, and enhanced financial flexibility to pursue accretive acquisitions.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management expects ongoing quarter-to-quarter MRO volatility due to discretionary airline maintenance but remains confident thanks to diversified revenue streams and real-time capacity shifts.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
TAT Technologies Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Speaker 4

My name is Matt Chesler, and I'm a partner with ICR, a U.S.-based investor relations firm supporting Eran Yunger, TAT's internal Head of Investor Relations. Hosting today's call is Igal Zamir, our President and CEO, and Ehud Ben-Yair, our CFO. Before getting started, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that certain matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other provisions of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call and, except as required by law, TAT Technologies assumes no obligation to update or revise them.

Speaker 4

Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of how these and other risks and uncertainties could cause TAT Technologies' actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements, please see our annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, and other filings we make with the SEC. The financial measures discussed today include non-GAAP measures. We believe investors should focus on non-GAAP financial measures in comparing results between periods and among our peer companies that publish similar non-GAAP measures. Please see yesterday evening's Form 6-K, our earnings release, and the investors' section of our website at tat-technologies.com for a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures.

Speaker 4

Non-GAAP financial information should not be considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to GAAP financial information, but is included because management believes it provides meaningful information about the financial performance of our business and is useful to investors for informational and comparative purposes. The non-GAAP financial measures that we use have limitations and may differ from those by other companies. With all that, I would now like to turn the call over to Igal.

Speaker 2

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the second quarter earnings call. I appreciate your interest and continued support as we review TAT Technologies' performance and discuss our strategic direction moving forward. Q2 marked another quarter of double-digit revenue growth for TAT, reflecting the impact of the strategic initiative implemented over the last few years. We continue to outpace the industry peer group averages, and we are doing it organically through market share gains, delivering solid revenue growth, margin expansion, and driving sustainable profitability. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of sequential growth, margin improvement exceeding 25% for the first time, and demonstrating our improving operational efficiencies and the management focus on expanding margin. Importantly, we also enhanced long-term visibility by increasing our long-term agreement value and backlog by $85 million to $524 million.

Speaker 2

This growth reflects both new contracts win, including programs tied to more recently certified platforms, and continued expansion within our customer base. We achieved this 18% year-over-year revenue growth and even greater growth in the long-term agreement and backlog, even as we experienced some weaknesses in MRO intake. This production is due to strategic diversification of our revenue between trading, MRO, and OEM. I'd note that during the last month, MRO intake began re-accelerating, which is reinforcing our near-term confidence. In parallel, with strong commercial performance, we further strengthened our financial position and simplified our capital structure. During the quarter, we facilitated a successful public offering and welcomed a new group of institutional investors, a majority of which are located in the U.S. At the same time, we increased our financial flexibility to pursue potential creative acquisitions that enhance our growth profile.

Speaker 2

With this fundraising complete, we are well prepared to execute the next phase of our strategy, adding new business lines to related categories to our targeted M&A to expand our addressable market and accelerate growth. In parallel to this, under the leadership of our Chairman, we focused on strengthening our Board of Directors with an overall goal to align our board composition with our growth strategy and new challenges, including M&A, capital markets, U.S. market background, and industry experience. Now, let's turn into our financial performance. Second quarter revenue increased by 18% to $43 million, up from $36.5 million in the same period last year. For the first six months of the year, revenues were up more than 20% in comparison to the first six months of last year.

Speaker 2

While we increased revenue in a double-digit pace, strong booking led to an even larger increase in our long-term agreement value and backlog, which expanded by $85 million to $524 million. This progress validates our belief in growing customer demand and reinforces our business strategy of expanding our addressable market by adding new capabilities. Our gross profit increased by 35%, and our gross margin expanded by 320 basis points to 25.1% compared to 21.9% in the second quarter of last year. This improvement is an outcome of our ongoing effort to optimize cost structure, improve operational efficiencies, and enhance our product mix. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 41.9% to $6.1 million, translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.0%, a notable improvement from 11.9% margin in the same period last year. TAT continued to deliver operating leverage as a result of our disciplined expense management.

Speaker 2

I'd like to note that we continue to believe that there are opportunities to further improve our profitability, expanding both our gross margin and EBITDA margin as we scale. We also generated approximately $7 million in positive cash flow from operation in the quarter, which is a further testament to the progress we are making and to the strength of our business model. Our strong performance comes at a time when the aviation sector is facing a range of macroeconomic and operational headwinds. While we are not immune, we believe that our business is well positioned to manage through them. It is not uncommon for airline fleets to adjust discretionary maintenance activities based on evolving budget and operational needs. This creates a period of softer intake followed by surges in demands, which adds complexity and impacts short-term visibility. We've seen this dynamic more clearly in the recent months.

Speaker 2

What differentiates us is our ability to shift capacity in real time. This quarter, that agility helped us offset softer MRO volumes by capitalizing on trading opportunities and to protect our profitability. While the level of market volatility does not appear to be dissipating, we believe that our model remains durable. Our growing traction with customers and OEM partners, combined with our operational flexibility, supports our long-term strategy and ability to execute in a dynamic environment. Growth in APU work in the second quarter increased 12% year over year, but decreased slightly on a sequential basis, reflecting this increasing volatility. The sequential APU revenue dip reflects a short-term shift in customer behavior, not a change in long-term fundamentals. In response to the broader macro environment, carriers proactively deferred non-critical maintenance to preserve cash and to better manage operating expenses.

Speaker 2

The reality is that with aircraft utilization remaining very high, especially among the aging fleets, the need for services that are not discretionary is sometimes delayed but is not diminished. Offsetting the sequential APU dip was a tripling of our revenue from trading and leasing. This segment showcases our operational flexibility and synergies. With modest MRO intake in the quarter, we identified the immediate market needs for exchanges programs, enabling us to maintain productivity and profitability while servicing real-time customer needs. Long-term, our robust and growing backlog positioned us well to continue and outperform the industry. We expect ongoing quarter-to-quarter volatility, including potential short-term fluctuations in MRO intake in the near term. As we continue to scale, we expect these variations of quarter to quarter to be less of an impact, but this is the reality of the aviation industry in general and MRO business in particular.

Speaker 2

We have constructed our business to be as resilient as possible to these factors. From our position of strength and in line with our strategic growth plan, we continue to seek opportunity to expand our capabilities. This includes exploring strategic acquisitions. There are opportunities to make active board-owned acquisitions that would increase the addressable market and open additional natural adjustments. Our goal is to enhance the value that we provide to our strategic customers, and the more services we can provide to our customers, the more valuable we will be for them. In summary, TAT Technologies continues to deliver performance that outpaces the industry. Our strategy is working, providing the scale to position us as a meaningful provider to the aviation industry and governments, and the diversification to navigate supply chain and other challenges common to the industry. Longer term, my optimism remains, even though my short-term outlook remains cautious.

Speaker 2

We are generating encouraging demand to our products and services, strong interest from both new and existing customers, and we have the potential to achieve long-term growth rates that significantly outpace the broader industry, as well as continuing to expand margin. In closing, before I turn the call to Ehud, I want to take a moment to thank our dedicated employees for their professionalism and hard work. Our achievement would have not been possible without their effort, and they continue to set the standard for the industry. Thank you, and with that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Ehud Ben-Yair, to provide further insights into our financial performance and business outlook. Thank you, Igal, and good morning, everyone. Good afternoon for those who joined us from Israel. I will review some financial elements as well as cash flow and balance sheets.

Speaker 2

We continue to see growth in revenue and improvement in profitability elements, quarter after quarter, for already nine quarters in a row. Revenue in Q2 of 2025 grew by 18% to $43.1 million compared to $36.5 million in Q2 of 2024. The revenue in the first six months of 2025 grew by 21% to $85.2 million compared to $70.6 million in 2024. Year over year, the growth was driven from all product segments, mainly MRO activity on the commercial side of the business. Revenue growth in Q2 of 2025 was achieved despite the slowdown in MRO work that happened during the quarter. Looking into the second half of the year, we see again strong demand for MRO work, mainly on the APU and landing gear. As we indicated in the past, our growth is mainly dependent on overcoming supply chain issues from the larger OEMs.

Speaker 2

In the second quarter of 2025, gross profit was $10.8 million and reached the 25.1% gross margin. This is an important milestone that we indicated at the beginning of the year. Crossing the 25% gross margin put us on the same game field with the best industry leaders. The gross margin in the second quarter of 2025 grew by 36% compared to the second quarter of 2024, which is exactly doubling the increase in revenue year over year. In the second quarter of 2025, operating income increased by 62% to $4.4 million, which is a 62% increase year over year, again almost doubling the increase of the gross margin. This was achieved mainly from the growth in revenue, our operational efficiencies program, and despite the increase in SG&A expenses, which further emphasize our operational leverage.

Speaker 2

During the second quarter of 2025, we suffered from the strength of the Israeli shekel compared to the U.S. dollar by 10%. This resulted in an increase of the cost of exchange differences by over $0.5 million. This is a reevaluation of over $10 million of loans which were taken four years ago, marked in Israeli shekel. As a result, we saw a reduction of $400,000 on the net profit in Q2 of 2025 compared to Q1 of 2025. Despite everything that I mentioned, net profit increased during Q2 of 2025 by 25% compared to Q2 of 2024, and by 53% year over year in the first six months of 2025. Please note that our normal average quarterly interest rates are about $0.5 million on a quarter. All the rest are fluctuations of exchange rate differences, mainly on the loans.

Speaker 2

The company does not hedge the balance exposure and the cash flow. I also want to emphasize that it is a non-cash expense, and as it looks right now, we are not expecting any additional expenses of this nature in Q3 of 2025. EBITDA continued to grow to $6.1 million in Q2 of 2025. This is a 39% increase year over year, and by 47% year over year in the first six months of 2025. May I draw the attention of the audience to the 14% EBITDA margin in Q2 of 2025? We are on the right direction to achieve the 15% EBITDA margin that we indicated at the beginning of the year. On July 2024, the one big beautiful bill was approved in the U.S. This bill has some positive impact on our tax exposure. From learning this bill together with our U.S.

Speaker 2

tax advisor, and we are still carefully learning it and waiting for more instruction from the IRS, it looks like we will not pay taxes in the U.S. this year, and this bill further because this bill further increases our carry-forward losses that can be utilized in the short term. My indication about the Israel tax exposure remains the same, and I still believe that we will start paying taxes by the end of this year in Israel. On the cash flow side, in Q2 of 2025, cash flow from operational activity was positively strong and was $6.9 million. It was also positive by $1.9 million during the first six months of 2025, and this is compared to a negative cash flow of $5 million in the first quarter of 2025.

Speaker 2

The main reason for the positive cash flow were better collections from our customers and improving payment terms from our suppliers. During June of 2025, the company completed the financing round of $45 million. We closed short-term loans of close to $10 million in order to save about $200,000 a quarter on interest expenses. This will bring down the interest expenses to an average of $300,000 on a quarterly basis. As indicated on the prospectus and during the roadshow, the money will be used in order to strengthen our balance sheet, provide working capital to support the growth of our operations, and mainly provide funds for strategic deals that will further accelerate the growth of the company in the near future. By the end of June, total loans are at the level of $12.4 million and cash at the level of $43 million.

Speaker 2

Debt-to-EBITDA ratio is very low and currently at 0.5. TAT's shareholder equity is $166 million on a balance of $214 million, leading us to a very strong equity-to-balance ratio of 78%. The strong balance sheet, together with the minimal debt, open opportunities to leverage more debt, together with our cash to be used for strategic deals in the near future. In terms of the revenue by product line, looking at the revenue per product line, all our strategic line of product grew double-digit year over year. This is perfectly aligned to our strategy and expectation.

Speaker 2

During the second quarter, we saw some slowdown in intake of MRO, mainly on the APU due to the volatilities and uncertainties that existed in the commercial aviation industry, by the way, by the same way that the volatility impacted the share and the stock market during April and May, mainly driven from the uncertainty of the tariff impact. The operational capacity on the MRO was switched to repair APU and landing gear for exchanges, which resulted in a higher revenue indicated under the trading line of product. Starting from mid-June, the market stabilized, and we are now seeing an upward trend in intake for MRO. Therefore, I strongly recommend investors, when coming to analyze the revenue by product, to look at the 12-month trend per product and not to focus on small fluctuations between the quarters.

Speaker 2

During the last quarter, we announced a major win on the APU side of business, which further strengthened our mid-term approach to the organic growth of the APU segment. We are certain that both APU and landing gear segments will grow, will show growth year over year and align with our strategy. With regards to the backlog, backlog and LTA value continue to grow constantly. It is at the level of $524 million by the end of 2025, an increase of $85 million compared to last quarter. During the second quarter of 2025, we announced a major win with one of the major cargo carriers in the world for a contract value of $40 to $55 million, which is now under the APU segment on our LTA value.

Speaker 2

This one and some other small size contracts are a major contributor to the increase in the backlog and LTA value, which will secure the organic growth of the company in the coming years. The total backlog and LTA of the APU and landing gear has grown to $204 million compared to $170 million at the end of Q1 of 2025. It is also important to emphasize that by the end of Q2 2025, the APU backlog contains multi-million contracts for the 777 APU, which are new and were not part of our backlog in Q1 of 2025. This further emphasizes our go-to-market approach for the new engines that are expected to be a major organic growth engine for the years to come. Also, when talking about growth opportunity, the overall cycle of the E170, the Embraer 170 landing gear, is starting now.

Speaker 2

We are well positioned with a signed contract to serve the largest world fleet and with some other initiatives. By this, I have concluded my report, but before handing over to the organizer, I want to use this opportunity and thank all of the existing investors and new investors that took part in the last capital raised in the secondary round for the trust and confidence in TAT and its management and believing in all of the good that is yet to come. I want to thank my team that diligently worked on the deal for the last five months, and a great thank you for the underwriters, the legal advisors, auditors, IR firms, and everybody that supported us. By this, I hand over to the call for final remarks and questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Ehud. We're now going to open up the call for the Q&A session. To ask your question, please either raise your hand and we'll call on you for a live question or use the Q&A widget for a written question, and you can type that in and submit the question that way. Additionally, if you'd like to send the question in Hebrew, please do so, and we will translate. With that, we'll now begin and pause for a moment to build the queue. Okay, the first question is going to be from Josh Sullivan at The Benchmark Company. Josh.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning. Can you hear me?

Speaker 4

Yes.

Speaker 3

Hey, congratulations on the results. Can we just dig into the MRO acceleration comments that you mentioned? I know the quarter started off with a little uncertainty, just given the macroeconomic uncertainty, but can you just talk a little bit about where the reacceleration is happening in the MRO market? Is it broad-based or any specific markets showing outsized recovery at this point?

Speaker 2

Oh, Josh, it's Igal. If you remember, last quarter I indicated that we should expect some volatility at the end of last year. I'm in the company for nine years, and what we are seeing this time is not different than what we saw several times in the past. We have to remember that in most cases, the services that we provide on the MRO are discretionary, meaning that the airlines are not forced to send the components for overall repair by schedule or by flight hours, but it's more up to their discretion. Also, they have a large spare inventory that they maintain. In most cases, the first time when they see uncertainty is they send less MRO work and they try to save cash by leveraging the spares.

Speaker 2

It lasts for several months until they are out of spares, and then you see a recovery, and then you see an acceleration because, as I mentioned in my statements, the aircraft keep on flying. Nobody is reporting on any reduction in flights, so the fleet is flying. A big portion of the fleet is really old, as the airlines are waiting for new aircraft that are way behind schedule, and eventually it comes. We were telling ourselves that it will come in the fourth quarter last year. If you recall, we spoke about it as we expected to see the seasonality of the fourth quarter. It didn't happen. In the first quarter, we spoke about it and we thought that it would come. It didn't happen. It did come in the second quarter. I don't see anything, any drama here.

Speaker 2

There was a dip for a few months, and after a few months, we see the increase in intake. It's not specific, if I may say.

Speaker 3

Okay, got it. On the nice cash flow in the quarter, what was the largest driver there? With this type of cash generation, how are you looking at working capital growth going forward?

Speaker 2

I think, and again, we had three phases up until now in the company. The first phase started in 2022. We wanted to grow. We spent the years of COVID getting ready for the growth, and the real focus was on revenue growth. Then about a year later, a year and a half later, we added a real focus on profitability. Not only to grow the revenue, I spoke about it many times in the last year and a half, our biggest initiative and focus is on growing revenue. I want to, personally, I would like to build value and not just revenue. Increasing the margin is an ongoing concern with major initiatives across all TAT companies, and we are seeing the result quarter after quarter.

Speaker 2

In parallel, if you remember, we spoke about the need to drastically increase inventory to overcome the volatility in the market and the challenges in supply chain, which still exist. We wanted to make sure that we can serve the customers and that we can provide good service. It had impact on cash. We feel that we are in a good position now to continue supporting the market. We feel that we have the right inventories and despite the challenges in the industry, with few exceptions, I would say, as a general saying, we are in the right place. Therefore, we added a couple of months ago, we added a third tier in our evolution to really start focusing on our cash flow. I'm pleased with the results of the quarter.

Speaker 2

With tighter controls, with improving collections and other aspects, we have opportunities to continue and do so in the next few quarters by better managing our inventories. We feel that this is just the beginning.

Speaker 3

Right. Maybe just one last one on the APU strategy. You know, you winning smaller deals, then moving up market as you understand the process and your capabilities, then moving on to larger deals. How do you feel about that transition? Is that strategy coming together as you had planned? Thank you for the time.

Speaker 2

As I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, so far it's going well for us. We are capturing more and more market share on the APUs that we've been doing historically for the 767 and 757 fleets, and we are gaining more and more market share, where we have huge advantages over competition. On the new platforms, we decided to start with smaller fleets and smaller RFPs. As I mentioned, we won several of them since the beginning of the year and are working on several more. It looks promising. It's not, you know, it will take its time, but it's going very nicely and it's reflecting in the growth of the backlog and the value of the LTAs.

Speaker 4

Next question will come from Mike Ciarmoli at Truist. Mike, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Can you hear me, guys? I don't know if I was muted or not, but thanks for taking the question. Maybe just on the APUs and the current dynamic out there, I was thinking more that those are flight-critical offerings and obviously airlines wouldn't really have the ability to defer. Maybe just what else are you seeing there? Is some of this weakness more domestic U.S. carriers? Is it global carriers? Do you have a sense as to what kind of spares, spare APUs are out there in the system? Are these airlines maybe just doing kind of the bare minimum maintenance on those units, replacing whether it's kind of life-limited components and parts to extend the life? Maybe just any more color on the dynamic you're seeing there.

Speaker 2

Sure. Hi, Mike. First of all, I think that we see it on global fleets. It's not necessarily related just to the U.S. The second thing, you need to remember that we have a heavy concentration of cargo carriers. You know, when the tariffs started and the cargo carriers started feeling, you know, they were really concerned about what will happen with their shipments and freight needs and whatever. It had an impact on their decisions. I don't know, a typical airline, if I'm looking at our customers, will keep anywhere from 10 to 15 spare engines on the shelf at their shops. Typically, you asked about do they do any just light repairs. I'm not familiar with such behavior. I cannot say that I ever saw such a behavior. When they actually send the engine to repair, they expect a full scope.

Speaker 2

They want the engine to be brought to full operation. What they do is they can, you know, I have 15 spares. It's enough to last for a couple of good months. I'm not going to sell. I'm going to sit on it. I'm going to sit on the, as removed the engines for a couple of months. By the way, I'm not saying that is specifically what happens with each and every one of them. I personally talked with top executives at several of our large customers about it. We saw it several times in the past. They sit on it until they feel that their spare pool is getting to a too low level, if you will. Then they send us everything. You see a major spike in intake.

Speaker 1

Okay. Perfect. That's really, really good color. Maybe shifting just on the commentary in the press release, you obviously did the equity raise and maybe looking for, you know, to grow the portfolio through M&A. Are there any specific capabilities or products you would look to target to maybe expand your kind of capability set, or are you kind of staying in the wheelhouse of APUs, landing gear, and the thermal management solutions?

Speaker 2

I would say, you know, we want to stay close to our existing capabilities and DNA, as a general saying, but definitely looking to expand into more mechanical systems and components rather than just expanding within the current segments that we have. At the end of the day, the key goal on the MRO side, when it comes to acquisitions, we also have some ideas relating to OEM and geographic expansion, which we discussed during the roadshow. When it comes to the MRO, to your question, our strategy is to remove headache to our customers. We want to be meaningful to our customers and to provide them with not, it's not just the service and cheap price. We want to help them consolidate their vendor list. We want to be more meaningful and to add more capabilities.

Speaker 2

As we think about acquisitions, we are looking at any company that will be related to what we do in the sense of our understanding of the business and our understanding of how to manage it and sell to the customer, especially when it comes to the first acquisitions where we want to be more on the conservative side and go more safe, if you will. Definitely expanding behind just APUs, landing gear, and heat exchangers.

Speaker 1

Got it. Just the last one for me, I know the trading business and activity could be a bit lumpy, but if I just look at your core MRO from the APU landing gear, that was down about 7% sequentially. What should we think about those revenues going into 3Q and 4Q? I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2

I would just repeat what I stated, that we see a large increase in intake in the last month and a half. I will keep it at that.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Mike. The next question is from Ben Cleve at Lake Street. Ben, please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 3

All right, thanks for taking my questions. Can you guys hear me okay?

Speaker 5

Yes, hi Ben.

Speaker 3

Perfect. Congratulations on a good quarter. A couple of follow-up questions here. One, great to see the 777 APU in the backlog now. Can you elaborate at all on your outlook for the APU pipeline specifically within the 737 or A320 airframes?

Speaker 2

At this point, we are still performing the work on them on a one-off base, and we haven't announced any, we have very small RFPs that we won, not meaningful enough to publish as a separate deal, but we haven't published any meaningful win yet. Still working on it.

Speaker 3

Got it. Very good. A follow-up question on your M&A commentary. Can you talk a bit about how comfortable you are with multiples in the areas that you're looking at? Are there parts of the market that are getting a little frothy for your comfort, or are you still pretty comfortable kind of with valuations across the board?

Speaker 2

Maybe I answer it in a different way. I plan to be extremely disciplined in our approach to acquisitions. Looking to acquire, we are not going to acquire for the sake of acquiring. We will acquire if it makes sense, if it adds value to our customers, but also if it adds value to the shareholder of the company. The multipliers will have to be right, and you know, if a certain acquisition will be out in the market for a bid, then prices will not be reasonable. We are not going to go for it.

Speaker 3

Got it. Very good. One last one for me. The trading and leasing business, as you noted, saw a near tripling here year over year. I know that's a lumpy business and probably pretty difficult to forecast, but can you kind of give us any expectations on the relative year-over-year growth here that you're looking at in the second half within that segment?

Speaker 2

Yeah, so there are two aspects here. The first aspect is the leasing side of the business. Everything, every asset that we own is leased. We have nothing that is sitting and waiting. There is huge demand, and I wish that we could have had more assets for the leasing activity. Over there, you know, it's not going to grow substantially because everything that we have is deployed. It is steady and continues, and as long as the supply chain challenges in the industry continue, I feel that we will keep on enjoying very strong demand on the leasing side. On the trading, it's a little bit more challenging. There are two factors here.

Speaker 2

First of all, our trading business is based on finding as-removed assets, assets that were removed from all the aircraft, from all fleet, buying them, then bringing them to the shops, overhauling them, and exchanging them with exchange programs to customers that are out of inventory, or in other cases, on the landing gear, selling them to customers that need landing gear sets. There are two factors here that make this a little bit more spotty. There is no real ongoing flow of deals that you can look at. Therefore, the answer in the question is very difficult. The first factor is that, as a general saying, because of the fact that airlines keep on flying very old platforms, there is much less teardown activity of old airplanes compared to what it used to be in the past, up until a year and a half, two years ago.

Speaker 2

It's much harder to find assets for as-removed assets from teardowns to purchase. There are lots of companies like us that are dealing with trading, as you know, that we are all fighting on the same fleet. One challenge is to put your hand on the right assets and to buy them, typically very fast deals that go away within a couple of days. The second factor is operational efficiency. Let's assume that you purchased the asset. Now you need to overhaul it, and you want to balance it with the MRO intake that we have. First of all, we need to take care of our customers on the MRO side. What I had mentioned before is where we leveraged it in the second quarter. We had a softer intake than usual, which basically opened up some capacity.

Speaker 2

We immediately leveraged the capacity to overhaul assets that we purchased since the beginning of the year and to put them out, to put them on the shelf for sale and to sell or to exchanges, APUs, exchanges, and landing gear sales. You see it in the results. This factor of ability to find the assets in the market and the capacity that you need to reserve to take care of your customers is going to continue, creating fluctuations on the trading deals, almost like a countercycle, if you will, that can change from quarter to quarter. Having said all of this, we have a team, a great team of employees and leaders in the trading department that are working very hard to bring more and more deals and to find more and more assets. We definitely want to increase this business.

Speaker 3

Very good. That's a very helpful commentary. Congratulations again on a nice quarter and really great backlog growth. Thanks for taking my questions, and I'll get back in queue.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Ben. I appreciate the comment.

Speaker 4

To your questions, Ben, the next question will be from Jonathan Sigman at Stifel. Jonathan, please go ahead.

Operator

Good day. Thank you for taking my question. Just on the margins, I was impressed to see them rise sequentially despite some of the segments not having sales growth sequentially. Was there any one-off benefits there that helped you that might not be sustainable, or any other color you can expand on what drove that impressive margins? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hi, Jonathan. I stated it every quarter in the last, I believe, six, seven quarters. My goal is to improve to have a strategy that results in improving profitability. For me, improving the margin and improving the profit is more important than just improving revenue for the sake of revenue. Behind this nice slogan, we have meaningful initiatives across the board in all the sites. I'm talking about initiatives to improve operational efficiencies, automation, improving equipment, initiatives around the workforce itself, how to make the employees' life easier, how to improve productivity, how to improve utilization of employees. I can say that with all the improvements that we have achieved, we have still many of these initiatives underway. This is why we feel that we have more room to continue and improve.

Speaker 2

I wouldn't say that there was any specific element, one-time element that contributed because if you look at the overall trend over the last two years, it's consistent improvement. The second thing that we do to improve the EBITDA is we make sure that we manage our expenses. We are all, you know, we are running the business very lean, and we are not, we are paying a lot of attention not to increase our operating expenses more than what the business can afford and make sure that we always increase revenue more than what we increase expenses and spending to verify that we will increase the margin. The last major effort that we have is on the purchasing price, continuing substantial effort in our supply chain to reduce costs, to find alternative suppliers, to improve quality, and to reduce waste in production.

Speaker 2

All of this resulting in what we see. I believe that we have still more to do in the coming few quarters.

Operator

Thank you. Slipping another one on freight, you mentioned that being impacted by tariffs. Specifically, is that end market one where you're seeing some strengthening the last month? Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Yes, definitely. I'm not sure that they had, by the way, I'm not representing the freight companies, the cargo carriers, but there was a concern when the tariff came. I know they were expressing serious concern about potential impact on their business. I don't know if at the end of the day they reported a slowdown or not, to be honest. They act based on the concerns. You know, if you say discretionary spending is the first time that you act and that you cut when you have concern about the outlook of your business. That's our interpretation of the situation.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Now we're going to move to any written questions that were submitted using the Q&A widget. Here's a question around the backlog. The question is, how long is the backlog in terms of years ahead or how much of it is for next year? Maybe talk about how the backlog converts into revenue over time.

Speaker 2

Yes. The backlog includes two types: it's backlog and long-term value of MRO. On the OEM side, it's backlog. These are confirmed POs that we received from our customers. On the MRO, when every contract that we sign has, based on the customer forecast, we assign the value that we expect, the revenue value that we expect to see from the customer. We actually update this value on an annual basis based on the actual performance of the customer. That's the methodology that we are using. MRO deals are typically signed between three to five years. When we sign, if we announce, I don't know, the $40 million deal, if it's based on five years, it's going to be $8 million a year for the coming five years. The range is between three to five years. On the OEM side, you can split it again between two types.

Speaker 2

One is shorter-term projects, like accessories, air conditioning systems, and such. They're typically orders that we receive today, and we're supposed to supply them by the end of next year. On the thermal components, I think that we are full. We have all the POs already for 2026. Behind that, we are using, if we have an exclusive agreement with an aircraft manufacturer where we supply the thermal components, we are calculating the value that they will have to purchase from us in the following years based on their production plan of aircraft. It's not an easy answer, and it's definitely not just for next year. MRO, three to five years; OEM on fleets that are going to continue being produced over the next couple of years, we look at the value based on the production.

Speaker 4

Thank you for that response, Igal. There are additional questions, but as I read through them, there are questions that have already been answered by you. I respectfully appreciate the submission of those questions, but hopefully you got the answers you needed. If not, please feel free to reach out to the IR team after the call, and we'll follow up with you. At this point, I'd like to turn the call back to Igal for concluding remarks.

Speaker 2

Basically, just as a conclusion of this call, first of all, thank you for joining us. This quarter was another milestone for TAT Technologies Ltd., reflecting the benefits of our diversified offer to our customers and the growth prospect that it provides. Our increasing strength enables us to pivot our capital market transaction that strengthens our balance sheet and optimizes our capital structure. This positions us to advance to the next stage of our strategy, adding acquisitions alongside continuing the organic growth that we enjoy. We head into the second half of the year with a strong momentum while remaining mindful of ongoing industry-wide challenges. I believe that we are now better positioned than before, and I am more confident than ever in our long-term prospects. Again, thank you very much for the confidence in us and for joining us, and have a good day.

Speaker 4

This concludes the earnings conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.

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