NYSE:PRM Perimeter Solutions Q2 2025 Earnings Report $29.76 -1.87 (-5.92%) Closing price 09/22/2026 03:59 PM EasternExtended Trading$30.00 +0.24 (+0.82%) As of 04:21 AM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Massive. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast Perimeter Solutions EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.39Consensus EPS $0.28Beat/MissBeat by +$0.11One Year Ago EPSN/APerimeter Solutions Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$162.64 millionExpected Revenue$108.91 millionBeat/MissBeat by +$53.73 millionYoY Revenue GrowthN/APerimeter Solutions Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2025Date8/7/2025TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call DateThursday, August 7, 2025Conference Call Time8:30AM ETUpcoming EarningsPerimeter Solutions' Q3 2026 earnings is estimated for Thursday, October 29, 2026, based on past reporting schedules, with a conference call scheduled at 8:30 AM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)SEC FilingEarnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by Perimeter Solutions Q2 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 7, 2025ShareShareShare This ReportLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Positive Sentiment: Second quarter adjusted EBITDA reached $91.3 million, up 41% year-over-year, on consolidated sales growth of 28%, highlighting strong overall execution. Positive Sentiment: Fire Safety segment revenue rose 22% to $120.3 million, driven by normalized U.S. wildfire activity and robust international retardant and suppressant market performance. Negative Sentiment: Specialty Products results were hampered by safety and operational disruptions at the Flexus-operated Saje plant, with ongoing litigation and no clear resolution timeline delaying performance improvements. Positive Sentiment: The IMS acquisition is outperforming underwriting assumptions, leading to a more than three-fold production capacity expansion and positioning the business to exceed Perimeter’s 15% IRR target. Neutral Sentiment: Perimeter deployed nearly $62 million of capital in Q2—including $12.8 million in CapEx, $32 million in share repurchases, and a $20 million litigation settlement—demonstrating disciplined allocation. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallPerimeter Solutions Q2 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xThere are 6 speakers on the call. Speaker 500:00:00Greetings and welcome to the Perimeter Solutions second quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Seth Barker, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:27Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Perimeter Solutions' second 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, August 7, 2025, and these statements have not been, nor will they be, updated subsequent to today's call. Also, 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. Speaker 100:01:21The 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. Speaker 200:01:50Thank you, Seth, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report Perimeter Solutions' second quarter and first half results. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA reached $91.3 million, and first half adjusted EBITDA reached $109.4 million, reflecting: number one, execution on our operational value drivers; number two, normalized first-half fire activity in the U.S.; and number three, strong performance in our international retardant markets, our suppressants business, and our specialty products businesses. We continue to deploy capital during the second quarter, investing nearly $62 million across a range of priorities, including increased capital expenditures, continued share repurchases, and the purchase of assets to support our retardants business. Before getting into details on the quarter, I'll provide a summary of our strategy, give a brief operational update, and discuss the settlement of our litigation with Compass Minerals. After that, Kyle will walk through our financial results and capital allocation in more detail. Speaker 200:03:03Starting 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 customers, which we share in through value-based pricing. Speaker 200:04:01Third, we operate our businesses in a highly decentralized manner, granting our business unit managers full operating autonomy, paired with the accountability to deliver results, and 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 to development in the quarter on slide four and starting with fire safety. As I remarked at the outset, fire safety's financial results were driven by execution on our operational value drivers, normalized first-half fire activity in the U.S., and strong results from our international retardant markets and our suppressants business. Speaker 200:05:06We continue to invest in our fire safety businesses to best support our customers' mission to save lives and protect property and the environment, including the opening of a 110,000 square foot retardant production facility in Sacramento, California. Our network of manufacturing facilities, logistics and distribution systems, and airbase infrastructure has a six-year track record of performance reliability. With the addition of the Sacramento facility, we pair our never-fail delivery network with fully duplicated infrastructure that leaves no doubt about the supply chain resiliency of our solution. The cost of the facility, along with other investments we're making in our business, is reflected in our first-half capital expenditures, which nearly equal our capital expenditures for the entirety of 2024 and which exceed our total capital expenditures in any full year prior to 2024 over our company's history. Capital expenditures are the most visible sign of our internal reinvestment. Speaker 200:06:18However, we're also investing into several areas less visible to investors but highly visible to customers, including research and development, field service, and customer support. We concluded our trade secret litigation against Compass Minerals during the second quarter, culminating in a settlement that returned our intellectual property and allowed us to acquire surplus assets for our retardant business. Compass Minerals announced the wind-down of the retardant business in the first quarter, which provided an opportunity to resolve our intellectual property dispute, which centered around phosphate-based formulations that we maintain were developed using misappropriated trade secrets from Perimeter Solutions. Relative to the time and expense of litigation, and combined with the excess assets of the shuttered business, which we acquired in conjunction with the settlement, we believe the $20 million paid to resolve this matter is a fair outcome. Speaker 200:07:23With our trade secrets resecured, we can continue to invest in the R&D innovation that jointly drives our customer success and our performance. Switching now to our specialty products segment. For the past two decades, our primary North American phosphorus methysulfide plant in Sauger, Illinois, has been operated by a third party under a tolling agreement. In 2021, a private equity fund called One Rock Partners purchased a collection of assets, which they renamed Flexis and, as part of the transaction, assumed the tolling agreement to operate the Sauger plant. There has been a marked degradation in the plant's safety standards and operational performance since One Rock's acquisition. To illustrate the magnitude of this degradation, the Sauger plant experienced more unplanned downtime in the first quarter of 2025 than our P2S5 plant in Germany, which we own and operate, has experienced over the entire last decade. Speaker 200:08:37To reiterate, the Flexis-operated plant experienced more unplanned downtime in a single quarter this year than the Perimeter Solutions-operated plants have experienced in an entire decade. As a result of escalating safety and operational issues, we exercised our contractual right to assume operation of the Sauger plant. Unfortunately, and in what we believe is a clear violation of our contracts, One Rock and Flexis have prevented us from taking over the plant. After exhausting all options, we filed a complaint in Illinois State Court in June to enforce our rights. Given that Flexis maintains operational control over the plant while our complaint is litigated, we expect to encounter ongoing operational and financial challenges. Speaker 200:09:30We are committed to taking back operational control of the Sauger plant per our rights under the tolling agreement, and when we do, we will implement the necessary operational improvements and restore the consistency, safety, and quality of production that our customers rightly demand. Finally, a brief update on our IMS acquisition. IMS is performing well, and the introduction of our value driver strategy is proceeding quickly with strong early operational and financial results. IMS is performing ahead of our underwriting assumptions and is poised to deliver returns that meaningfully exceed our targeted IRR threshold. In support of IMS's recent growth and reflective of our confidence in IMS's future organic and inorganic growth, we recently expanded our production capacity by executing on a new 87,000 square foot lease, more than tripling IMS's space. We look forward to investing significantly more capital behind IMS, primarily through additional product line acquisitions. Speaker 200:10:42We consider IMS to be an excellent template for our future acquisitions, where one, acquired a niche market leader that plays a critical role in solving complex customer problems, two, introduced our cultural principles of business unit autonomy, accountability, and alignment, three, implemented our operational value drivers to sustainably boost operating and financial performance, four, ramped investment into the business in order to offer our customers the best product, services, and overall value proposition, and finally, launched an inorganic growth initiative, including the $10 million we spent in the first quarter to acquire new product lines. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle for a more detailed review of our financials and capital allocation in the quarter. Speaker 400:11:40Thanks, Haitham. I'll begin on slide five, where growth figures shown are versus the prior year comparable period. Starting with fire safety, revenue for the quarter came in at $120.3 million, reflecting a 22% year-over-year improvement, and $157.4 million year to date, a 27% gain. These results were primarily driven by our retardant products and related services. U.S. fire retardant volumes benefited from a more typical wildfire pattern in Q2 compared to a milder season last year, while our international operations, including Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, gained from ongoing contributions from our value drivers alongside more severe conditions. Our suppressants product lines resumed their growth in the second quarter. Recall that after nine consecutive quarters of growth, our suppressants revenue declined on a year-over-year basis in Q1, primarily due to an unusually strong product introduction benefiting the prior year period. Speaker 400:12:40In the second quarter, our fire suppressant sales returned to growth, increasing $2.7 million from the prior year quarter. Fire safety's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $77.7 million, representing a 40% increase over last year, and $87.7 million year to date, marking a 58% gain. U.S. wildfire activity was approximately normal in the six months ending June 30, 2025, and wildfire risk conditions across our footprint are also within a range we would consider normal. Having observed normal activity levels through Q2 and into early Q3, we believe it's unlikely that the full season will be exceptionally mild. That said, conditions for the remainder of the year could still vary above or below average, and we remain prepared for the full range of potential scenarios. In our specialty products segment, Q2 net sales came in at $42.4 million, representing a 47% lift from the prior year. Speaker 400:13:40This performance reflects a $9.3 million contribution from the IMS acquisitions and a $4.4 million uplift from the base business. Year-to-date net sales reached $77.2 million, up 23%, driven by $16.9 million from the IMS acquisitions, partially offset by a $2.3 million decline attributable to the previously noted unplanned downtime at the Sauger plant in Q1. Specialty products Q2 adjusted EBITDA rose to $13.7 million, compared to $9.3 million in the prior year quarter, and remains approximately steady year to date at $21.7 million. While Q2's operational challenges were less severe than those in Q1, ongoing downtime contributed to elevated costs in the business and dampened EBITDA. While it's impossible to predict the plant's performance under Flexis's control, we anticipate a continued drag from operational issues until we assume operational control of the plant. Speaker 400:14:39Viewing the segments together, consolidated second quarter sales grew 28% to $162.6 million, while adjusted EBITDA improved 41% to $91.3 million. Year to date, consolidated sales reached $234.7 million, up 26%, and adjusted EBITDA rose 42% to $109.4 million. Moving below adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2025, our GAAP loss per share was $0.22 versus GAAP earnings per share of $0.14 in the prior year quarter. Q2 2025 adjusted EPS was $0.39 compared to $0.25 in Q2 2024. On a year-to-date basis, GAAP earnings per share was $0.16 as compared to a GAAP loss per share of $0.42 in the same period last year. Year-to-date adjusted EPS was $0.41 as compared to $0.23 in the same period in the previous year. Turning to our long-term assumptions, as shown on slide six, we're increasing the high end of our assumptions for capital expenditures from $20 million to $30 million. Speaker 400:15:46This increase reflects our success in finding capital expenditures that align with our investment criteria, namely that investments improve our ability to serve our customers and generate returns that exceed our minimum targeted return threshold. Our new production facility in Sacramento, California is a clear example of this investment in action, but it's far from the only one. Last year, we shared how upgrades at several of our airbases significantly boosted throughput. Building on that momentum, we continue to implement these enhancements across our network. The result? Higher returning volumes that help our customers achieve their mission while delivering strong returns on the capital we've deployed. As we build on these initiatives, we will continue investing in airbase infrastructure while seeking new opportunities with comparable potential. Aside from CapEx, the remainder of our assumptions are unchanged, and with normal quarterly variation, Q2 is consistent with those expectations. Speaker 400:16:40Q2 interest expense was $9.9 million, while taxable depreciation, amortization, and other tax deductions totaled $5.4 million. Tax paid for income tax was $12.3 million in Q2, as compared to $3.6 million in the prior year quarter. Here, I will note that variation in taxes is typically timing related in any given quarter, and our full-year tax expectation is unchanged. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $12.8 million. Our working capital needs fluctuate seasonally, and Q2's working capital levels and the associated use of cash are consistent with our expectations, given the level of activity in Q2. Our year-end net working capital outlook is unchanged. We define free cash flow as cash flow from operations less capital expenditures. In total, we had free cash flow in Q2 of negative $15.6 million, primarily due to the seasonal build in net working capital, as well as purchases of property and equipment. Speaker 400:17:39We generated free cash flow of $3.3 million for the six months ended June 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 these investments into cash in the second half. Our full-year EBITDA to cash generation conversion is consistent with the assumptions shown on this slide, with the vast majority of cash generation occurring over the next few months. We allocated nearly $62 million of capital in the quarter, the returns on which we expect will exceed our minimum targeted equity returns of 15%. We continue to invest in our business organically, with $12.8 million allocated to capital expenditures in the quarter. The majority of these capital expenditures supported our growth and productivity initiatives. Speaker 400:18:34Our pipeline of projects continues to build and is an important element supporting our long-term organic EBITDA growth trajectory. Moving to M&A, as discussed previously, we invested $20 million in select Compass Minerals assets, comprised of $1.7 million of raw materials and $3.1 million of property and equipment, with the remainder allocated to intangibles. More broadly, we continue to search diligently for acquisitions that meet our investment criteria. Finally, we repurchased 2.9 million shares for approximately $32 million in Q2. While many companies have systematic share repurchase programs, our view is to repurchase shares when we believe our equity trades meaningfully below intrinsic value and when repurchases would not preclude higher potential IRR investments, notably in M&A. Both conditions were true in Q2. Speaker 400:19:24Turning to slide eight, I'd like to highlight our 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 Q2, we were levered 1.7 times net debt to LTM adjusted EBITDA, driven by $675 million of gross debt, $141 million in cash, and nearly $313 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. We ended the quarter with about 145.9 million basic shares outstanding. To conclude, Perimeter Solutions' second quarter reflected our team's execution of our strategy combined with normalized end markets. Despite the solid start, we remain disciplined in our approach to the full year, continuing our work to deliver for our customers and apply our operational value drivers across the business. Speaker 400:20:21With that, I'll hand the call back to the operator for Q&A. Speaker 500:20:26Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Dan Cox with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:20:53Hey, thanks a lot. Good morning. We wanted to ask, I think you guys have kind of quantified this in the past, but when you think about when you speak to kind of a range of normal wildfire activity or acres burned, can you help us? Can you remind us how you guys think about that? Is it kind of over the course of a year? I think I remember like a 6 to 7 million U.S. lower 48 acres burned range on one of your past slide decks, or is it kind of a % versus a trailing five or ten-year trend? Just hoping that you could, you know, as we're trying to think through what it means when you say within a normal range, was just hoping you could share a little bit more color on how you guys think about that. Thank you. Speaker 200:21:50Yeah, you bet, Dan. It's Haitham. Thanks. Thanks, of course, for the question. I'll refer back to a slide we presented in our Q4 2024 earnings call where we tried to break down for investors exactly how we think about what a normal fire season is. To recap the message from six or so months ago, you're right. We think a normal fire season is roughly in the range of 6 to 7 million acres burned in the U.S., excluding Alaska. Given that there's secular growth in acres, we think that range will creep up slowly yet steadily over time. Speaker 200:22:39We describe 2024 as a fairly normalized acreage year because if you exclude the Smokehouse Creek fire, which occurred in Q1 in Texas and Oklahoma, and which used almost no retardant, acres burned in 2024 were right about 7 million, excluding Alaska. That is near the top end of what we would consider normal. I'll note that if you take our year so far and look at acreage burned through early August, then assume normalization through the balance of the year, which of course is an unknown, what happens year on out, we're again looking like we're going to be in that roughly 6 to 7 million normal range. Speaker 200:23:31Awesome. Super helpful. Maybe a question has come up. If you look empirically, there does seem to be somewhat of an inverse relationship between revenue per acre burned or, you know, EBITDA per acre burned. If you did try and isolate just, you know, the U.S. lower 48 components of those revenue streams versus the U.S. ex-Alaska acres burned, there does seem to be somewhat of an inverse correlation over time. Now, you know, the direction of travel for those metrics has been higher, has been an improvement over time in terms of the, you know, the dollar number of EBITDA or revenue per acre burned. Still, there does seem to be somewhat of a negative correlation. Speaker 200:24:23I was hoping if you could help us understand, I mean, A, confirm if that phenomenon is true or just kind of noise in the data, and then B, what, if so, what some of the drivers are that drive that relationship. Thank you. Speaker 400:24:41Yeah, absolutely. Dan, it's Kyle. A couple of things on this. I'll make two points on acres. One is that when we look at the acres data, we believe that it's a good indicator of our activity over longer term timeframes. It is a more challenging metric to use at short term timeframes. The related piece of that, which you've identified here, is that particularly large swings in acres will result in smaller changes in our retardant usage for a number of factors. Let me walk through so you can understand what those are. When you think about the factors that go into retardant usage for any acre, there's a number of things that go in. First, you have to have the acre itself and fire activity. It also matters where that acre is burning. Speaker 400:25:21In a remote area, there's less likely to be retardant usage than when it is closer to structures and has a near proximity to lives and property. The second piece that comes into this is both the ability to fly, so the weather, and in particular, the one that drives a lot of the variability you're seeing here is resource availability. For instance, if you saw a very large spike in fire activity, what will happen is that all the resources can oftentimes be in utilization, right? That means that all the planes are busy. When another call comes in, there's simply not a plane to dispatch to that incremental call. When we see these spikes, that's a big reason why we are a big proponent of supporting our air tanker partners and expanding the fleet capacity. Speaker 400:26:08We believe that there's an amazing ability to drive ROI for the government, for the agencies, for our air tanker partners, and most importantly, perform the mission, protecting lives and property through an expansion of the air tanker fleet. You also see the inverse of that when there's a large decline in acres. When there's a decline in acres, the availability of planes for any given fire is much higher. You're exactly right. When you look at this, there is a muted impact where big spikes will see less retardant usage because of the availability of aircraft, and the inverse is true when it falls. Does that make sense? Speaker 400:26:43Yep, that makes a ton of sense. Maybe if I could squeeze one last one in on the resource availability point, we've seen a ton of different headlines on, you know, higher fire suppression spending, budget allocations lower. I've seen some headlines about California getting some, I believe, new air tankers. I was wondering if you could just kind of, you know, you guys are obviously super close to this. I was wondering if you could kind of give us some of the highlights of how some of the upstream factors that would drive resource availability have evolved maybe since last quarter or the year to date. Thank you. Speaker 400:27:31Yeah, Dan. There are two pools of resource availability to think about here. One is the government-owned assets, and as you've highlighted, California has done a really good job of expanding their air tanker fleet through the acquisition of a number of C-130s, which are pretty large aircraft and dump a fair bit of retardant on each run. That's one piece that's going on, and we continue to see that progression as states think more and more about owned resources. The second piece, as I alluded to before, is the typically contracted resources that the federal government tends to use. In those, what we're really trying to support there, what really helps provide more availability is both the funding, but also the structure of the contracts. Speaker 400:28:12We always work with our industry groups to help provide the best structural contracts where they have availability and guaranteed contracts that allow them to invest in that fleet, that allows them to bring more resources into the ecosystem, that allows them to be more available when they're needed. Speaker 400:28:29Awesome. Really helpful. Thank you both very much. Congrats on a great quarter, and I will turn it back. Speaker 200:28:37Thanks, Dan. Speaker 500:28:39Next question, Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:28:44Yeah, hey, good morning, guys. I was wondering if you could talk about kind of the sustainability of what you did in 2Q in fire safety. I mean, the margins are kind of, you know, above what we've assumed for peak margins in 3Q. The incremental margin looks like it was pretty much 100% year on year. Just as we think forward and we're saying, you know, 2Q was kind of a normal-ish fire season in terms of acres burned, is this something you build off of, or is there anything you would call out as maybe one time helping you within the quarter? Speaker 200:29:21Yeah, hey, good morning, Josh. It's Haitham. It's something we build off of. There was nothing notable in Q2 in fire safety that is unsustainable. Speaker 200:29:39How would you help us think about what you should be doing in a peak quarter in 3Q? Is the incremental margin much higher than in the past? Should you be much higher than the mid-60% margins? Any help there? Speaker 200:29:56Yeah, as much as I'd like to, Josh, I'm going to hold back and ask you to wait 90 days on that one. Speaker 200:30:06I'd expect nothing less. Shifting gears, on the specialty side, honestly, I don't know if we would have really known about the outages unless you talked about them, considering what the performance was in the quarter. I was wondering if you could pick apart the moving pieces there. In terms of the $5 million-ish growth in EBITDA you've had year over year, what was the impact that you had from the outages and the poor operating performance at that one facility? How much was growth in base specialty and how much is like the build-out of IMS, if you could help us kind of frame that? Speaker 200:30:45Yeah, I'll try to be directionally helpful here, Josh, although I don't want to get into too much quantification. The IMS acquisition is purely incremental on a year-over-year basis, and IMS had a hell of a second quarter. That's clearly part of it. Our base P2S5 business, which is a combination of the U.S. plant and our owned and operated European plant, did well. Those are on the positive side. On the negative side, the ongoing operational issues and, in excess, way in excess of normal unplanned downtime at the Flexis-operated Sauger, Illinois plant was a headwind in Q2, and those netted out to a good overall result with puts and takes there. Speaker 200:31:42Okay. I mean, I guess if I could try again just on the Sauger impact, I mean, is it a $1 million, $2 million impact? Just trying to think about what we should be baking in when you say going forward, there's going to be an impact the next couple of quarters. Speaker 200:31:55There has been, so first of all, it's a significant impact. This situation we take very, very seriously. It is harming our financial performance. It is impacting our customers, and most importantly, it is creating safety issues for the plant's employees. I don't want to underplay its significance from an operational safety or financial perspective. That said, this underperformance at Flexis has been ongoing really since One Rock Partners acquired the business in 2021, and therefore, unfortunately, it's in the run rate numbers you've been seeing. Until we resolve this dispute, take control of the plant, address safety, and address quality, what you've been seeing, which includes, again, the negative impact of their operating, is going to continue to be reflected in the financials. Speaker 200:33:01Okay. No, thanks for that. A couple of other follow-ups if I can go through them. I guess first on the $20 million payment to resolve the dispute with Compass Minerals. Is that primarily just intangibles and the ability to maintain your formulations? Is there any assets or anything there you'd call out as part of that? Speaker 400:33:21Josh, it's Kyle. Yeah, there are actually assets that we acquired in this that we would have otherwise had to purchase from a normal CapEx transaction or a normal inventory purchase transaction. There's about $5 million of booked value of those two buckets of assets that came with the transaction. Speaker 400:33:42Okay. Thanks for that. Last, just another follow-up around kind of the U.S. wildfire management tactics here. I mean, you talked about helping with plane availability and that being a factor. I know for years you guys have been talking about trying to maybe change how you're paid on some of your suppressants, you know, make sure you guys get more of maybe a fixed payment in the slower parts of the year to start, or you have a sliding scale, I think, in place now to help you maintain your profitability. Is there any changes you foresee with your basically contract structure with the government around this to help enable more investments, profitability, etc., through any of this? Are you thinking about it more in terms of the aerial fleet as where you see potential changes? Speaker 200:34:33Kyle did a very clear job addressing the opportunities for the aerial fleet, where we're very involved primarily through the Industry Association, UAFA. Separate from that, we have for the past couple of years been working, I would say, slowly and steadily with our customers around the world to mutually beneficially de-variabilize our business and make it so we have more predictability on our cash flows and our customers have more predictability on their spend with us, which mutes, it doesn't eliminate, we'll never be able to eliminate, I don't think, but mutes the impact of fire season seasonality. It is not a step function change with a single customer. It's something we've been increasingly doing over the past couple of years. You pretty clearly see evidence of it in our financial results. We're very happy with it. Our customers are very happy with it. Speaker 200:35:39You'll see, and you'll find that we will continue to push for these mutually beneficial changes going forward. We'll continue to see our financial results de-variabilize going forward. I emphasize, we'll never quite be able to decouple from acres burned. Speaker 200:36:01Understood. Thank you very much. Speaker 200:36:05Thanks. Speaker 500:36:05Thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Haitham Khouri for closing remarks. Speaker 200:36:10Thank you, everybody, for the time and support. We'll speak in 90 days or so. Speaker 500:36:16This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.Read morePowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) Perimeter Solutions Earnings HeadlinesPerimeter Solutions Inc.September 9, 2026 | marketwatch.comPerimeter Solutions Inc (PRM) Stock Down 4.4% but Still Overvalued -- GF Score: 51/100August 28, 2026 | gurufocus.comSmall Colorado Company (Backed by Sam Altman) Could Save U.S. Power GridA small Colorado company has secured rights to technology that could prevent the U.S. public power grid from collapsing — and billionaire Sam Altman is now an investor. This under-the-radar firm is drawing serious attention from those watching the energy infrastructure space closely. | Altimetry (Ad)Perimeter Solutions, Inc. 2026 Q2 - Results - Earnings Call PresentationAugust 4, 2026 | seekingalpha.comPerimeter Solutions, Inc. (PRM) Q2 2026 Earnings Call TranscriptJuly 31, 2026 | seekingalpha.comPerimeter Solutions Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial ResultsJuly 31, 2026 | globenewswire.comSee More Perimeter Solutions Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Perimeter Solutions? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Perimeter Solutions and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Perimeter SolutionsPerimeter Solutions (NYSE:PRM), Inc. is a specialty chemicals and fire-safety company that develops, manufactures and supplies products used in wildfire control, industrial fire protection and chemical applications. The company serves customers across North America and international markets through a portfolio of fire-safety and specialty chemical products. Its fire-safety business provides firefighting foams, fire retardants and related solutions for wildland firefighting, aviation, military, industrial and municipal applications. Products are marketed under brands including SOLBERG, which offers firefighting foam concentrates and other fire-protection technologies, and PHOS-CHEK, a provider of wildfire retardants and delivery systems used by firefighting agencies. Perimeter Solutions also produces specialty phosphorus-based chemicals, including phosphorus pentasulfide, which is used in the manufacture of lubricant additives and other industrial products. The company was formed through the combination and development of businesses assembled by private investment firm SK Capital Partners and became a publicly traded company in 2021 through a business combination with a special purpose acquisition company.View Perimeter Solutions ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Latest Articles Meta’s Muse Highlights Arm’s Growing Role in AI InfrastructureNucor and Steel Dynamics Just Pulled Back—The Steel Story Still Looks Strong5 Dividend Stocks That Combine Income, Earnings Growth, and Wall Street SupportDespite Record Sales, Texas Roadhouse Has Beef With Beef CostsEncore Capital Group Has Doubled—But Its Best Tailwind Won’t Last ForeverCoach’s Momentum Powers Tapestry Despite the Stock’s Sharp Pullback3 Retail Stocks Getting Crushed and the Long-Dated Options Trade on Each One Upcoming Earnings Costco Wholesale (9/24/2026)Micron Technology (9/30/2026)NIKE (10/1/2026)Accenture (10/1/2026)PepsiCo (10/8/2026)Delta Air Lines (10/9/2026)America Movil (10/13/2026)BlackRock (10/13/2026)Citigroup (10/13/2026)The Goldman Sachs Group (10/13/2026) Unlock superior investment research and tools. Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools and reports. Get MarketBeat All Access MarketBeat All Access Features Best-in-Class Portfolio Monitoring Get personalized stock ideas. Compare portfolio to indices. Check stock news, ratings, SEC filings, and more. Stock Ideas and Recommendations See daily stock ideas from top analysts. Receive short-term trading ideas from MarketBeat. Identify trending stocks on social media. Advanced Stock Screeners and Research Tools Use our seven stock screeners to find suitable stocks. Stay informed with MarketBeat's real-time news. Export data to Excel for personal analysis. Sign in to your free account to enjoy these benefits In-depth profiles and analysis for 20,000 public companies. Real-time analyst ratings, insider transactions, earnings data, and more. Our daily ratings and market update email newsletter. Sign in to your free account to enjoy all that MarketBeat has to offer. Sign In Create Account Your Email Address: Email Address Required Your Password: Password Required Log In Email Me a Login Link or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google Forgot your password? Your Email Address: Please enter your email address. Please enter a valid email address Choose a Password: Please enter your password. Your password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least 1 number, 1 letter, and 1 special character. Create My Account (Free) or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google By creating a free account, you agree to our terms of service. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
There are 6 speakers on the call. Speaker 500:00:00Greetings and welcome to the Perimeter Solutions second quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Seth Barker, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:27Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Perimeter Solutions' second 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, August 7, 2025, and these statements have not been, nor will they be, updated subsequent to today's call. Also, 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. Speaker 100:01:21The 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. Speaker 200:01:50Thank you, Seth, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report Perimeter Solutions' second quarter and first half results. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA reached $91.3 million, and first half adjusted EBITDA reached $109.4 million, reflecting: number one, execution on our operational value drivers; number two, normalized first-half fire activity in the U.S.; and number three, strong performance in our international retardant markets, our suppressants business, and our specialty products businesses. We continue to deploy capital during the second quarter, investing nearly $62 million across a range of priorities, including increased capital expenditures, continued share repurchases, and the purchase of assets to support our retardants business. Before getting into details on the quarter, I'll provide a summary of our strategy, give a brief operational update, and discuss the settlement of our litigation with Compass Minerals. After that, Kyle will walk through our financial results and capital allocation in more detail. Speaker 200:03:03Starting 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 customers, which we share in through value-based pricing. Speaker 200:04:01Third, we operate our businesses in a highly decentralized manner, granting our business unit managers full operating autonomy, paired with the accountability to deliver results, and 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 to development in the quarter on slide four and starting with fire safety. As I remarked at the outset, fire safety's financial results were driven by execution on our operational value drivers, normalized first-half fire activity in the U.S., and strong results from our international retardant markets and our suppressants business. Speaker 200:05:06We continue to invest in our fire safety businesses to best support our customers' mission to save lives and protect property and the environment, including the opening of a 110,000 square foot retardant production facility in Sacramento, California. Our network of manufacturing facilities, logistics and distribution systems, and airbase infrastructure has a six-year track record of performance reliability. With the addition of the Sacramento facility, we pair our never-fail delivery network with fully duplicated infrastructure that leaves no doubt about the supply chain resiliency of our solution. The cost of the facility, along with other investments we're making in our business, is reflected in our first-half capital expenditures, which nearly equal our capital expenditures for the entirety of 2024 and which exceed our total capital expenditures in any full year prior to 2024 over our company's history. Capital expenditures are the most visible sign of our internal reinvestment. Speaker 200:06:18However, we're also investing into several areas less visible to investors but highly visible to customers, including research and development, field service, and customer support. We concluded our trade secret litigation against Compass Minerals during the second quarter, culminating in a settlement that returned our intellectual property and allowed us to acquire surplus assets for our retardant business. Compass Minerals announced the wind-down of the retardant business in the first quarter, which provided an opportunity to resolve our intellectual property dispute, which centered around phosphate-based formulations that we maintain were developed using misappropriated trade secrets from Perimeter Solutions. Relative to the time and expense of litigation, and combined with the excess assets of the shuttered business, which we acquired in conjunction with the settlement, we believe the $20 million paid to resolve this matter is a fair outcome. Speaker 200:07:23With our trade secrets resecured, we can continue to invest in the R&D innovation that jointly drives our customer success and our performance. Switching now to our specialty products segment. For the past two decades, our primary North American phosphorus methysulfide plant in Sauger, Illinois, has been operated by a third party under a tolling agreement. In 2021, a private equity fund called One Rock Partners purchased a collection of assets, which they renamed Flexis and, as part of the transaction, assumed the tolling agreement to operate the Sauger plant. There has been a marked degradation in the plant's safety standards and operational performance since One Rock's acquisition. To illustrate the magnitude of this degradation, the Sauger plant experienced more unplanned downtime in the first quarter of 2025 than our P2S5 plant in Germany, which we own and operate, has experienced over the entire last decade. Speaker 200:08:37To reiterate, the Flexis-operated plant experienced more unplanned downtime in a single quarter this year than the Perimeter Solutions-operated plants have experienced in an entire decade. As a result of escalating safety and operational issues, we exercised our contractual right to assume operation of the Sauger plant. Unfortunately, and in what we believe is a clear violation of our contracts, One Rock and Flexis have prevented us from taking over the plant. After exhausting all options, we filed a complaint in Illinois State Court in June to enforce our rights. Given that Flexis maintains operational control over the plant while our complaint is litigated, we expect to encounter ongoing operational and financial challenges. Speaker 200:09:30We are committed to taking back operational control of the Sauger plant per our rights under the tolling agreement, and when we do, we will implement the necessary operational improvements and restore the consistency, safety, and quality of production that our customers rightly demand. Finally, a brief update on our IMS acquisition. IMS is performing well, and the introduction of our value driver strategy is proceeding quickly with strong early operational and financial results. IMS is performing ahead of our underwriting assumptions and is poised to deliver returns that meaningfully exceed our targeted IRR threshold. In support of IMS's recent growth and reflective of our confidence in IMS's future organic and inorganic growth, we recently expanded our production capacity by executing on a new 87,000 square foot lease, more than tripling IMS's space. We look forward to investing significantly more capital behind IMS, primarily through additional product line acquisitions. Speaker 200:10:42We consider IMS to be an excellent template for our future acquisitions, where one, acquired a niche market leader that plays a critical role in solving complex customer problems, two, introduced our cultural principles of business unit autonomy, accountability, and alignment, three, implemented our operational value drivers to sustainably boost operating and financial performance, four, ramped investment into the business in order to offer our customers the best product, services, and overall value proposition, and finally, launched an inorganic growth initiative, including the $10 million we spent in the first quarter to acquire new product lines. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle for a more detailed review of our financials and capital allocation in the quarter. Speaker 400:11:40Thanks, Haitham. I'll begin on slide five, where growth figures shown are versus the prior year comparable period. Starting with fire safety, revenue for the quarter came in at $120.3 million, reflecting a 22% year-over-year improvement, and $157.4 million year to date, a 27% gain. These results were primarily driven by our retardant products and related services. U.S. fire retardant volumes benefited from a more typical wildfire pattern in Q2 compared to a milder season last year, while our international operations, including Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, gained from ongoing contributions from our value drivers alongside more severe conditions. Our suppressants product lines resumed their growth in the second quarter. Recall that after nine consecutive quarters of growth, our suppressants revenue declined on a year-over-year basis in Q1, primarily due to an unusually strong product introduction benefiting the prior year period. Speaker 400:12:40In the second quarter, our fire suppressant sales returned to growth, increasing $2.7 million from the prior year quarter. Fire safety's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $77.7 million, representing a 40% increase over last year, and $87.7 million year to date, marking a 58% gain. U.S. wildfire activity was approximately normal in the six months ending June 30, 2025, and wildfire risk conditions across our footprint are also within a range we would consider normal. Having observed normal activity levels through Q2 and into early Q3, we believe it's unlikely that the full season will be exceptionally mild. That said, conditions for the remainder of the year could still vary above or below average, and we remain prepared for the full range of potential scenarios. In our specialty products segment, Q2 net sales came in at $42.4 million, representing a 47% lift from the prior year. Speaker 400:13:40This performance reflects a $9.3 million contribution from the IMS acquisitions and a $4.4 million uplift from the base business. Year-to-date net sales reached $77.2 million, up 23%, driven by $16.9 million from the IMS acquisitions, partially offset by a $2.3 million decline attributable to the previously noted unplanned downtime at the Sauger plant in Q1. Specialty products Q2 adjusted EBITDA rose to $13.7 million, compared to $9.3 million in the prior year quarter, and remains approximately steady year to date at $21.7 million. While Q2's operational challenges were less severe than those in Q1, ongoing downtime contributed to elevated costs in the business and dampened EBITDA. While it's impossible to predict the plant's performance under Flexis's control, we anticipate a continued drag from operational issues until we assume operational control of the plant. Speaker 400:14:39Viewing the segments together, consolidated second quarter sales grew 28% to $162.6 million, while adjusted EBITDA improved 41% to $91.3 million. Year to date, consolidated sales reached $234.7 million, up 26%, and adjusted EBITDA rose 42% to $109.4 million. Moving below adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2025, our GAAP loss per share was $0.22 versus GAAP earnings per share of $0.14 in the prior year quarter. Q2 2025 adjusted EPS was $0.39 compared to $0.25 in Q2 2024. On a year-to-date basis, GAAP earnings per share was $0.16 as compared to a GAAP loss per share of $0.42 in the same period last year. Year-to-date adjusted EPS was $0.41 as compared to $0.23 in the same period in the previous year. Turning to our long-term assumptions, as shown on slide six, we're increasing the high end of our assumptions for capital expenditures from $20 million to $30 million. Speaker 400:15:46This increase reflects our success in finding capital expenditures that align with our investment criteria, namely that investments improve our ability to serve our customers and generate returns that exceed our minimum targeted return threshold. Our new production facility in Sacramento, California is a clear example of this investment in action, but it's far from the only one. Last year, we shared how upgrades at several of our airbases significantly boosted throughput. Building on that momentum, we continue to implement these enhancements across our network. The result? Higher returning volumes that help our customers achieve their mission while delivering strong returns on the capital we've deployed. As we build on these initiatives, we will continue investing in airbase infrastructure while seeking new opportunities with comparable potential. Aside from CapEx, the remainder of our assumptions are unchanged, and with normal quarterly variation, Q2 is consistent with those expectations. Speaker 400:16:40Q2 interest expense was $9.9 million, while taxable depreciation, amortization, and other tax deductions totaled $5.4 million. Tax paid for income tax was $12.3 million in Q2, as compared to $3.6 million in the prior year quarter. Here, I will note that variation in taxes is typically timing related in any given quarter, and our full-year tax expectation is unchanged. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $12.8 million. Our working capital needs fluctuate seasonally, and Q2's working capital levels and the associated use of cash are consistent with our expectations, given the level of activity in Q2. Our year-end net working capital outlook is unchanged. We define free cash flow as cash flow from operations less capital expenditures. In total, we had free cash flow in Q2 of negative $15.6 million, primarily due to the seasonal build in net working capital, as well as purchases of property and equipment. Speaker 400:17:39We generated free cash flow of $3.3 million for the six months ended June 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 these investments into cash in the second half. Our full-year EBITDA to cash generation conversion is consistent with the assumptions shown on this slide, with the vast majority of cash generation occurring over the next few months. We allocated nearly $62 million of capital in the quarter, the returns on which we expect will exceed our minimum targeted equity returns of 15%. We continue to invest in our business organically, with $12.8 million allocated to capital expenditures in the quarter. The majority of these capital expenditures supported our growth and productivity initiatives. Speaker 400:18:34Our pipeline of projects continues to build and is an important element supporting our long-term organic EBITDA growth trajectory. Moving to M&A, as discussed previously, we invested $20 million in select Compass Minerals assets, comprised of $1.7 million of raw materials and $3.1 million of property and equipment, with the remainder allocated to intangibles. More broadly, we continue to search diligently for acquisitions that meet our investment criteria. Finally, we repurchased 2.9 million shares for approximately $32 million in Q2. While many companies have systematic share repurchase programs, our view is to repurchase shares when we believe our equity trades meaningfully below intrinsic value and when repurchases would not preclude higher potential IRR investments, notably in M&A. Both conditions were true in Q2. Speaker 400:19:24Turning to slide eight, I'd like to highlight our 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 Q2, we were levered 1.7 times net debt to LTM adjusted EBITDA, driven by $675 million of gross debt, $141 million in cash, and nearly $313 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. We ended the quarter with about 145.9 million basic shares outstanding. To conclude, Perimeter Solutions' second quarter reflected our team's execution of our strategy combined with normalized end markets. Despite the solid start, we remain disciplined in our approach to the full year, continuing our work to deliver for our customers and apply our operational value drivers across the business. Speaker 400:20:21With that, I'll hand the call back to the operator for Q&A. Speaker 500:20:26Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Dan Cox with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:20:53Hey, thanks a lot. Good morning. We wanted to ask, I think you guys have kind of quantified this in the past, but when you think about when you speak to kind of a range of normal wildfire activity or acres burned, can you help us? Can you remind us how you guys think about that? Is it kind of over the course of a year? I think I remember like a 6 to 7 million U.S. lower 48 acres burned range on one of your past slide decks, or is it kind of a % versus a trailing five or ten-year trend? Just hoping that you could, you know, as we're trying to think through what it means when you say within a normal range, was just hoping you could share a little bit more color on how you guys think about that. Thank you. Speaker 200:21:50Yeah, you bet, Dan. It's Haitham. Thanks. Thanks, of course, for the question. I'll refer back to a slide we presented in our Q4 2024 earnings call where we tried to break down for investors exactly how we think about what a normal fire season is. To recap the message from six or so months ago, you're right. We think a normal fire season is roughly in the range of 6 to 7 million acres burned in the U.S., excluding Alaska. Given that there's secular growth in acres, we think that range will creep up slowly yet steadily over time. Speaker 200:22:39We describe 2024 as a fairly normalized acreage year because if you exclude the Smokehouse Creek fire, which occurred in Q1 in Texas and Oklahoma, and which used almost no retardant, acres burned in 2024 were right about 7 million, excluding Alaska. That is near the top end of what we would consider normal. I'll note that if you take our year so far and look at acreage burned through early August, then assume normalization through the balance of the year, which of course is an unknown, what happens year on out, we're again looking like we're going to be in that roughly 6 to 7 million normal range. Speaker 200:23:31Awesome. Super helpful. Maybe a question has come up. If you look empirically, there does seem to be somewhat of an inverse relationship between revenue per acre burned or, you know, EBITDA per acre burned. If you did try and isolate just, you know, the U.S. lower 48 components of those revenue streams versus the U.S. ex-Alaska acres burned, there does seem to be somewhat of an inverse correlation over time. Now, you know, the direction of travel for those metrics has been higher, has been an improvement over time in terms of the, you know, the dollar number of EBITDA or revenue per acre burned. Still, there does seem to be somewhat of a negative correlation. Speaker 200:24:23I was hoping if you could help us understand, I mean, A, confirm if that phenomenon is true or just kind of noise in the data, and then B, what, if so, what some of the drivers are that drive that relationship. Thank you. Speaker 400:24:41Yeah, absolutely. Dan, it's Kyle. A couple of things on this. I'll make two points on acres. One is that when we look at the acres data, we believe that it's a good indicator of our activity over longer term timeframes. It is a more challenging metric to use at short term timeframes. The related piece of that, which you've identified here, is that particularly large swings in acres will result in smaller changes in our retardant usage for a number of factors. Let me walk through so you can understand what those are. When you think about the factors that go into retardant usage for any acre, there's a number of things that go in. First, you have to have the acre itself and fire activity. It also matters where that acre is burning. Speaker 400:25:21In a remote area, there's less likely to be retardant usage than when it is closer to structures and has a near proximity to lives and property. The second piece that comes into this is both the ability to fly, so the weather, and in particular, the one that drives a lot of the variability you're seeing here is resource availability. For instance, if you saw a very large spike in fire activity, what will happen is that all the resources can oftentimes be in utilization, right? That means that all the planes are busy. When another call comes in, there's simply not a plane to dispatch to that incremental call. When we see these spikes, that's a big reason why we are a big proponent of supporting our air tanker partners and expanding the fleet capacity. Speaker 400:26:08We believe that there's an amazing ability to drive ROI for the government, for the agencies, for our air tanker partners, and most importantly, perform the mission, protecting lives and property through an expansion of the air tanker fleet. You also see the inverse of that when there's a large decline in acres. When there's a decline in acres, the availability of planes for any given fire is much higher. You're exactly right. When you look at this, there is a muted impact where big spikes will see less retardant usage because of the availability of aircraft, and the inverse is true when it falls. Does that make sense? Speaker 400:26:43Yep, that makes a ton of sense. Maybe if I could squeeze one last one in on the resource availability point, we've seen a ton of different headlines on, you know, higher fire suppression spending, budget allocations lower. I've seen some headlines about California getting some, I believe, new air tankers. I was wondering if you could just kind of, you know, you guys are obviously super close to this. I was wondering if you could kind of give us some of the highlights of how some of the upstream factors that would drive resource availability have evolved maybe since last quarter or the year to date. Thank you. Speaker 400:27:31Yeah, Dan. There are two pools of resource availability to think about here. One is the government-owned assets, and as you've highlighted, California has done a really good job of expanding their air tanker fleet through the acquisition of a number of C-130s, which are pretty large aircraft and dump a fair bit of retardant on each run. That's one piece that's going on, and we continue to see that progression as states think more and more about owned resources. The second piece, as I alluded to before, is the typically contracted resources that the federal government tends to use. In those, what we're really trying to support there, what really helps provide more availability is both the funding, but also the structure of the contracts. Speaker 400:28:12We always work with our industry groups to help provide the best structural contracts where they have availability and guaranteed contracts that allow them to invest in that fleet, that allows them to bring more resources into the ecosystem, that allows them to be more available when they're needed. Speaker 400:28:29Awesome. Really helpful. Thank you both very much. Congrats on a great quarter, and I will turn it back. Speaker 200:28:37Thanks, Dan. Speaker 500:28:39Next question, Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:28:44Yeah, hey, good morning, guys. I was wondering if you could talk about kind of the sustainability of what you did in 2Q in fire safety. I mean, the margins are kind of, you know, above what we've assumed for peak margins in 3Q. The incremental margin looks like it was pretty much 100% year on year. Just as we think forward and we're saying, you know, 2Q was kind of a normal-ish fire season in terms of acres burned, is this something you build off of, or is there anything you would call out as maybe one time helping you within the quarter? Speaker 200:29:21Yeah, hey, good morning, Josh. It's Haitham. It's something we build off of. There was nothing notable in Q2 in fire safety that is unsustainable. Speaker 200:29:39How would you help us think about what you should be doing in a peak quarter in 3Q? Is the incremental margin much higher than in the past? Should you be much higher than the mid-60% margins? Any help there? Speaker 200:29:56Yeah, as much as I'd like to, Josh, I'm going to hold back and ask you to wait 90 days on that one. Speaker 200:30:06I'd expect nothing less. Shifting gears, on the specialty side, honestly, I don't know if we would have really known about the outages unless you talked about them, considering what the performance was in the quarter. I was wondering if you could pick apart the moving pieces there. In terms of the $5 million-ish growth in EBITDA you've had year over year, what was the impact that you had from the outages and the poor operating performance at that one facility? How much was growth in base specialty and how much is like the build-out of IMS, if you could help us kind of frame that? Speaker 200:30:45Yeah, I'll try to be directionally helpful here, Josh, although I don't want to get into too much quantification. The IMS acquisition is purely incremental on a year-over-year basis, and IMS had a hell of a second quarter. That's clearly part of it. Our base P2S5 business, which is a combination of the U.S. plant and our owned and operated European plant, did well. Those are on the positive side. On the negative side, the ongoing operational issues and, in excess, way in excess of normal unplanned downtime at the Flexis-operated Sauger, Illinois plant was a headwind in Q2, and those netted out to a good overall result with puts and takes there. Speaker 200:31:42Okay. I mean, I guess if I could try again just on the Sauger impact, I mean, is it a $1 million, $2 million impact? Just trying to think about what we should be baking in when you say going forward, there's going to be an impact the next couple of quarters. Speaker 200:31:55There has been, so first of all, it's a significant impact. This situation we take very, very seriously. It is harming our financial performance. It is impacting our customers, and most importantly, it is creating safety issues for the plant's employees. I don't want to underplay its significance from an operational safety or financial perspective. That said, this underperformance at Flexis has been ongoing really since One Rock Partners acquired the business in 2021, and therefore, unfortunately, it's in the run rate numbers you've been seeing. Until we resolve this dispute, take control of the plant, address safety, and address quality, what you've been seeing, which includes, again, the negative impact of their operating, is going to continue to be reflected in the financials. Speaker 200:33:01Okay. No, thanks for that. A couple of other follow-ups if I can go through them. I guess first on the $20 million payment to resolve the dispute with Compass Minerals. Is that primarily just intangibles and the ability to maintain your formulations? Is there any assets or anything there you'd call out as part of that? Speaker 400:33:21Josh, it's Kyle. Yeah, there are actually assets that we acquired in this that we would have otherwise had to purchase from a normal CapEx transaction or a normal inventory purchase transaction. There's about $5 million of booked value of those two buckets of assets that came with the transaction. Speaker 400:33:42Okay. Thanks for that. Last, just another follow-up around kind of the U.S. wildfire management tactics here. I mean, you talked about helping with plane availability and that being a factor. I know for years you guys have been talking about trying to maybe change how you're paid on some of your suppressants, you know, make sure you guys get more of maybe a fixed payment in the slower parts of the year to start, or you have a sliding scale, I think, in place now to help you maintain your profitability. Is there any changes you foresee with your basically contract structure with the government around this to help enable more investments, profitability, etc., through any of this? Are you thinking about it more in terms of the aerial fleet as where you see potential changes? Speaker 200:34:33Kyle did a very clear job addressing the opportunities for the aerial fleet, where we're very involved primarily through the Industry Association, UAFA. Separate from that, we have for the past couple of years been working, I would say, slowly and steadily with our customers around the world to mutually beneficially de-variabilize our business and make it so we have more predictability on our cash flows and our customers have more predictability on their spend with us, which mutes, it doesn't eliminate, we'll never be able to eliminate, I don't think, but mutes the impact of fire season seasonality. It is not a step function change with a single customer. It's something we've been increasingly doing over the past couple of years. You pretty clearly see evidence of it in our financial results. We're very happy with it. Our customers are very happy with it. Speaker 200:35:39You'll see, and you'll find that we will continue to push for these mutually beneficial changes going forward. We'll continue to see our financial results de-variabilize going forward. I emphasize, we'll never quite be able to decouple from acres burned. Speaker 200:36:01Understood. Thank you very much. Speaker 200:36:05Thanks. Speaker 500:36:05Thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Haitham Khouri for closing remarks. Speaker 200:36:10Thank you, everybody, for the time and support. We'll speak in 90 days or so. Speaker 500:36:16This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.Read morePowered by