Exchange Income Q1 2026 Earnings Report

Exchange Income EPS Results

• Actual EPS: C$0.61
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Exchange Income Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $866.58 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Exchange Income Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/11/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Exchange Income (TSE:EIF) is a diversified acquisition-oriented company, focused in two segments: Aerospace & Aviation and Manufacturing. The Corporation uses a disciplined acquisition strategy to identify already profitable, well-established companies that have strong management teams, generate steady cash flow, operate in niche markets and have opportunities for organic growth.

Exchange Income Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Exchange Income said Q1 2026 was a record quarter, with revenue up 30% to CAD 867 million and adjusted EBITDA up 27% to CAD 166 million; free cash flow and EPS also reached first-quarter highs.
• Positive Sentiment: Management raised full-year confidence and now expects results to land near the upper end of its CAD 825 million to CAD 875 million adjusted EBITDA guidance range, citing strong momentum across the businesses.
• Positive Sentiment: The company highlighted a stronger balance sheet after obtaining an investment-grade credit rating and issuing CAD 600 million of oversubscribed unsecured notes, leaving it with more than CAD 2 billion of liquidity and low leverage.
• Neutral Sentiment: Aerospace & Aviation was a major growth driver, helped by Canadian North and MACH 2 acquisitions, strong passenger loads, medevac and ISR activity, and robust demand in aircraft leasing, parts, and whole-aircraft sales. Management said fuel volatility is being monitored, but it has not materially affected customers so far.
• Neutral Sentiment: Manufacturing momentum improved sharply late in the quarter, with record orders in areas like composite matting, stainless steel fabrication, and precision manufacturing, while the new U.S. composite mat plant stays on time and on budget. Windows remained soft, but management sees eventual recovery and noted tariff pressure is manageable due to U.S. manufacturing capacity.

Presentation

[Operator]

Morning, everyone. Welcome to Exchange Income Corporation's First Quarter Conference Call to discuss the financial results for the three months ended March 31st, 2026. The corporation's results, including the MD&A and financial statements, were issued on May 11th, 2026 and are currently available via the company's website or SEDAR+. Before turning the call over to management, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements.

[Operator]

For additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements, please consult the quarterly and annual MD&A and the Risk Factors section of the annual information form and EIC's other filings with Canadian securities regulators. Except as required by Canadian securities law, EIC does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Such statements speak only as of the date made. Listeners are also reminded that today's call is being recorded and broadcast live via the internet for the benefit of individual shareholders, analysts, and other interested parties. I would now like to turn the call over to the CEO of Exchange Income Corporation, Mike Pyle. Please go ahead, Mr. Pyle.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us in today's call. With me today are Richard Wowryk, who will highlight our financial results, along with Jake Trainor and Travis Muhr, who will expand on our outlook. Yesterday, we released our first quarter results for fiscal 2026. Our collective performance for the period was incredibly strong. The results continue to demonstrate the importance of our resilient and stable business model. Looking at the macro environment, the quarter was marked by volatility, high geopolitical activity and trade uncertainty, and rapidly rising fuel prices. Yet our businesses set records in every key metric. What is even more encouraging was the momentum that was generated within our business lines as we exited the quarter. We saw significant strengths across virtually all our business lines.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Having a strong Q1 with accelerating momentum gives me significant confidence in updating our guidance. While we did not change our goalposts for the quarter, as they remain from CAD 825-CAD 875, we now anticipate that we will be near the upper end of the range, which is a very positive signal. Should current strength continue, we may revisit the top end of the range in future quarters. On the balance sheet front, we advanced key initiatives that further strengthened our balance sheet. During the quarter, we announced our investment-grade corporate credit rating and issued CAD 600 million of 4.324% unsecured notes. Originally, we had planned to do an issuance of CAD 400 million, but due to strong demand, we upsized the offering to CAD 600 million.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The notes were also issued on March 13th, which was right in the middle of the geopolitical conflict with Iran. The timing of our issuance, coupled with the demand, is external validation of our business model, the dependability of our results that we talked about each quarter and at year-end. At the end of the year, we had over CAD 2 billion in available liquidity. Liquidity is important in our business model, as it allows us to act decisively when attractive opportunities arise, both on the acquisition front or for organic growth capital investment. I don't want Adam and his team to be constrained by market conditions or have deal execution risk. To be clear, this additional capital does not change our conservative view on leverage or change our disciplined acquisition metrics and strategies. The available liquidity allows us to be incredibly opportunistic in the marketplace.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Our leverage continues to be at or near 15-year lows. Having the five-year unsecured notes provide us with significant real cash interest savings when compared to available swap rates. Based on today's yield curves, the savings are even more material. EIC is a shining example how a diversified and resilient business can navigate periods of uncertainty and continue to thrive. Our overall results were driven by a 30% increase in revenue at CAD 867 million in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased at 27% to CAD 166 million. The increases are even more impressive when you consider the translation impact of U.S. dollar results declined by approximately 5% when compared year-over-year.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

In our Aerospace & Aviation segment, the increases were driven by the acquisitions of Canadian North and MACH 2, stronger passenger loads, solid Medevac performance, growth investments in the fleet, stronger tempo flying under our ISR contracts, and the addition of a two aircraft to the U.K. Home Office contract. Canadian North has continued to meet our expectations of profitability and culturally is a great fit with our other air operators. Our maintenance CapEx continued to be elevated in the first quarter and will remain elevated for the next quarter or two. That was expected and previously communicated to the market. Excuse me. Our aircraft sales and leasing business continues to see robust demand and increasing rental rates for leased aircraft and engines. Parts sales and whole aircraft sales continue to be very strong, with significant aircraft monetization occurring during the first quarter based on opportunistic sales.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

There has been a lot of news about airlines adjusting schedules in response to the price of jet fuel, which was driven by the supply-related uncertainty tied to Iran and other geopolitical events. The customers leasing our aircraft and engines have not been materially impacted to date. Management is proactively monitoring the market and engaging customers to manage any risk. That being said, market volatility also creates several opportunities for our business line, and we may remain ready to execute on any opportunistic transactions that may result from parts purchases or the purchase of engines or aircraft. Lastly, we continue to receive a strong level of inbound interest from governments around the world regarding our world-class ISR capabilities. We recently announced that our proposed ISR bid in Australia was not selected.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We have not received detailed feedback regarding our submission or received confirmation who was the successful bidder. As I previously commented, the Australia contract is just one of many that we were actively pursuing. We were very excited to announce that Air Greenland contract for two missionized surveillance aircraft is nearing completion. This contract was a directly sourced opportunity. The PAL Aerospace team had been working hard at securing the project based on a long-standing relationship with Air Greenland. The contract with Air Greenland is one of many solutions that our team has been actively pursuing. We continue to pursue other multiple opportunities, Canada and Europe. We remain confident in our solutions and put forward nationally and internationally and will provide updates as information becomes available. Our manufacturing segment declined from a revenue and profitability perspective.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

However, when you look beneath the hood, the real story emerges. The first quarter for the manufacturing segment was all about momentum, and that was gained in both the environmental access solutions and precision manufacturing and engineering business lines. Towards the end of the quarter and after the end of the quarter, we saw customer inquiries being booked into firm fixed orders and record amounts of orders at some of the individual businesses. For example, our stainless steel tank manufacturer recorded its largest-ever order for stainless steel tanks for a data farm in the United States. The order was in a magnitude of twice their previous largest single order in their long, successful history. Our environmental access solutions business continued to see step-based improvements in the number of mats on rent and in the Canadian operations as we exited the quarter.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The demand backlog for our U.S. operations composite mats remains extremely robust, with the majority of our existing production capability being sold out for 2026. The second state-of-the-art plant in Saltillo, Mississippi is progressing on time and on budget. The facility will significantly increase our manufacturing capacity so that we can meet demand for the best-in-class composite mats. From a broader industry perspective, there have been numerous announcements regarding transmission and distribution expansion, along with potential new pipelines in oil and gas development. In the medium longer term, we see significant tailwinds for the business line and remain very bullish about the business returning to historical highs like we experienced in 2022. Our multi-story windows business line moderated consistent with our expectations. We are seeing some positive indicators at various levels of government when they talk about speeding up approvals and reducing development fees.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The demand for affordable housing continues, and we are seeing some successes in various geographies around North America. However, the supply and demand imbalance hangover driven by investor-focused condo development in Toronto and Vancouver continues. We have also been impacted by tariffs in the year-over-year comparatives. Although the quantum of tariffs is not material to EIC overall, it is less than CAD 10 million on an annualized basis. During the anticipated moderation in our business, our teams have executed on key initiatives, including reducing the physical footprint of our manufacturing and improving efficiencies within the plants and aligning our capabilities in Canada and the U.S., all of which are now virtually complete. When the demand inevitably rises, we will be in a position to produce more windows at a lower cost. I remain very confident in this business line.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

As we return to historical norms in the future, the increase in revenue and profitability will fall directly to the bottom line, as all of the investments have been made with the exception of investment in working capital when sales rise. Rich will highlight the key metrics for the three months ended March 31st. Before I turn the call over, I wanted to talk to the additions at the C-suite level at head office. My mantra for EIC has always been that culture isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing. The culture at EIC is very unique, and maintaining that culture long into the future is important for our continued success. The additions to the executive team of Carm, Marley, and Garth are important as they understand what makes EIC successful and they will help us grow and expand.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

All three have been with EIC for a number of years and are top performers. We welcome them to the executive ranks, and they will continue to drive the EIC culture as we continue the growth trajectory that has made us successful in achieving a 20% return per annum returns for our shareholders over the past 21 years. In addition, Travis and Darwin have accepted expanded roles within the C-suite. Jake and Travis will focus on the outlook for our segments for the second quarter and the remainder of the year. I will now pass the call over to Rich, who will talk about some of the key highlights from the MD&A and its financial statements.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, revenue was CAD 867 million. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 166 million. Free cash flow was CAD 120 million. Free cash plus maintenance CapEx was CAD 41 million, and adjusted net earnings and net earnings were CAD 34 million and CAD 28 million respectively, which represented increases of 139% and 287% respectively. Earnings and adjusted net earnings per share were CAD 0.50 and CAD 0.61 respectively, which were increases of 257% and 118%. Free cash flow per share increased by 33% to CAD 2.14, while free cash plus maintenance CapEx increased by 46% to CAD 0.73 per share.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The per share metric increases were even more impressive as the weighted average shares outstanding increased by 11% compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to the conversion of convertible debentures in 2025 and acquisitions executed. All the absolute key performance indicators were first quarter high water marks. The Aerospace & Aviation results were driven by strong profitability at each of the business lines due to the acquisitions of Canadian North and MACH 2, strong load factors at our various air operators, strong demand for leases, parts, and whole aircraft and engines at our aircraft sales and leasing business line. The impact of the second aircraft for the U.K. Home Office and PAL Aerospace that started in the fourth quarter of 2025, along with higher tempo flying under various ISR contracts. Our Manufacturing segment revenues and profitability decreased.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

As Mike noted, it was a period of accelerating momentum as the quarter closed and continued strengthening after quarter end. In our Canadian environmental access solutions operations, we saw strong results for mats on rent. However, profitability was similar to the prior year as 2025 had strong demobilization in mat movement operations, which were unusual with the normal seasonality of the business. In our U.S. operations, there was continued robust demand for our composite matting solutions. The accelerating demand trends, strengthening Canadian rentals and strong U.S. composite sales continued subsequent to quarter end. During the quarter, we incurred CAD 2.5 million in growth capital expenditures on the new U.S. composite mat manufacturing plant. The project is on time and on budget based on the estimated CAD 60 million budget.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Our multi-story window solution business line continued to moderate as expected. The moderation of the business is related to our past project delays and deferrals associated with developer uncertainty. Our teams have completed initiatives which will increase the efficiency of the plant. Affordable housing continues to be a theme, and when volumes ramp back up, we will be in a position to produce more windows at a reduced cost compared to our prior operations. Precision manufacturing engineering had a first quarter whereby results and activities gained more and more momentum as we exited the quarter. While first quarter results were relatively consistent with the comparative, the positivity amongst the group is as high as it has ever been due to the significant customer orders at the end of the quarter and into the second quarter.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Maintenance capital expenditures for the first quarter were CAD 79 million and were higher than the comparative period by CAD 23 million through the addition of Canadian North, increased utilization at the aircraft sales and leasing fleet, and general increase in fleet size within our Aerospace & Aviation segment. Growth capital expenditures during the first quarter were CAD 40 million and were primarily driven by three King Air aircraft deliveries for the BCEHS contract in our essential air services, coupled with investments made by Air Canada or made for the Air Canada Expanded Commercial Agreement and aircraft modifications and other investments for the Newfoundland and Labrador Medevac contract. From a cash flow and working capital perspective, we had a very strong result as the investment in working capital was nominal when compared to the growth in our financial results. Corporation's aggregate leverage remains near historic lows.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

During the quarter, we announced that EIC has achieved an investment-grade corporate rating with a BBB low rating and a stable outlook from DBRS. We issued CAD 600 million of bonds, which were significantly oversubscribed at 4.324%, which provides significant interest savings compared to other financing products, including five years money at through interest rate swaps at the time of issuance. With the further increase in risk-free rates, the savings today are even more significant. With over CAD 2 billion in available liquidity, we have significant dry powder to execute on acquisitions and invest in our current businesses for future growth. Having available liquidity is critical for EIC as it lets us be an opportunistic acquirer while minimizing deal execution risk for Adam and his team.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Our philosophy for acquisitions and growth capital investments has not changed. Having a strong balance sheet and available financing means that we can execute on sizable transactions when the opportunities arise. Our M&A pipeline remains very strong. Adam and his team executed on a strategic investment in the first quarter with MACH 2. We've always wanted to diversify our cash flows and provide another avenue for growth for Regional One. Regional One has built the data infrastructure and architecture that is capable of scaling into other aircraft types. Now with the Canadian North 737 data and the narrow body and wide body data from MACH 2, along with the experienced personnel at MACH 2, we can realize on significant opportunities in that space.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

737 and narrow body business is the world's largest aftermarket parts and leasing business, and therefore, we have a unique opportunity to leverage our strengths to create meaningful returns for that business line long into the future. In terms of other acquisition opportunities, our pipeline includes opportunities in both segments which are similar to our existing businesses. We have a great foundation of businesses, and to the extent that we find ancillary opportunities to expand our competitive moats, we are always interested in those accretive opportunities. As a reminder on the seasonality of our business, the first quarter is our seasonally slowest quarter because of the impact of winter roads and weather-related impacts for our air operators, coupled with reduced demand for our environmental access solutions business line in Canada, as the ground is frozen and doesn't require the same level of matting protection.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The third quarter experiences the highest level of activity across our businesses, and the second and fourth quarter would approximate the average for the year. The first quarter set a solid foundation for the remainder of the year. I will now turn the call over to Jake, who will provide an update for the second quarter and remainder of 2026 for the Aerospace & Aviation segment.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thank you, Rich. Overall, we're expecting another strong year of growth from our Aerospace & Aviation segment, as the trends highlighted in Mike and Rich's sections are expected to continue through fiscal 2026. The growth investments made in the past, including the second aircraft for the U.K. Home Office, the acquisition of MACH 2, the commencement of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medevac contract midway through 2026, and the expansion of the Air Canada commercial agreement will all contribute to the increase in revenues and profitability. I will specifically focus on the growth factors by business line. Our essential air service business line will see growth driven by a multitude of factors when compared to the prior period. The most significant impact will be the inclusion of Canadian North for the second quarter with no comparative in the prior year.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

We expect that the strong load factors experienced in Q1 and growth across our network will continue into the second quarter and throughout the remainder of the year. Other increases include the expansion and extension of the Air Canada commercial agreement, which will see the aircraft starting to fly midway during the year. Lastly, we expect continued growth in our Medevac business, including the start of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medevac contract, which is anticipated to start operations in mid-2026. Offsetting some of these gains is the continued inflationary pressures on labor, aircraft parts, consumables, and overhead costs.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

The aerospace business line is expected to see growth due to this continued strong flying tempos for the second quarter and for the remainder of the year, along with the financial impact of the second aircraft for the U.K. Home Office, which will have quarter-on-quarter effects as that aircraft started operations in the fourth quarter of 2025. As Mike mentioned, we're excited about our work with Air Greenland and the Danish government. Building on our relationship with Air Greenland, we have been selected as their missionization partners. There are still some details to be worked out with the Danish government when it forms, we're planning a two-aircraft surveillance program complete with an integrated ground center based on CarteNav's AIMS-C4 mission system.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Obviously, subject to sovereign negotiations, this creates an exciting opportunity where we now have much of the Arctic and North Atlantic covered by nations using the CarteNav system. I'm trying to paint a picture here where we have Canada, Greenland, the U.K., and the Netherlands in the North Sea environment covered by the CarteNav system operating for friendly nations. This concept falls directly in line with our Prime Minister's message of collective defense, shared security, and resilience with other Arctic and Nordic nations. Separate and aside from this, we're also actively engaged with a number of opportunities emerging in Canada, Europe, the U.S., and Asia. Our aircraft sales and leasing business is also expected to experience growth as the investments made in aircraft and engines during 2025 are leased to customers. As Mike commented, there is a potential risk of fuel shortages impacting our lessees.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

However, to date, we're not aware of any material impacts. Wherever there is volatility in the aviation market, history has shown that it does create unique opportunities. Aircraft sales and leasing remains an opportunistic buyer and stands ready to complete transactions that are accretive to our portfolio. The demand for Regional One and MACH 2 remains robust, as evidenced by increasing lease rates and shortages of critical parts across the industry, and we expect that trend to continue. On a long-term basis, we expect maintenance capital expenditures to increase consistently with the increases in the adjusted EBITDA in our Aerospace & Aviation segment, which is the biggest driver of our consolidated maintenance CapEx. We anticipate an increase over Q2 2025 due to the inclusion of Canadian North, coupled with increased flying due to our recent investment in aircraft over the past few years.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Lastly, we continue to invest in deferred maintenance at Canadian North and anticipate those investments to continue for 2026. Growth capital expenditures are expected for the second quarter and for the remainder of fiscal 2026. We anticipate receiving the last King Air for the BC EHS contract around June or July of this year. There will be CapEx related to the modifications of aircraft for the Newfoundland and Labrador Medevac contract, along with the acquisition of aircraft for the Air Canada expanded commercial agreement during the second quarter. Regional One is always working on opportunistic aircraft and engine acquisitions, which may result in growth investments being made in the aircraft sales and leasing business. I'll now pass it off to Travis to provide some commentary on the manufacturing segment.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thanks, Jake. Looking at the second quarter and the remainder of 2026 from the manufacturing point of view, we saw significant momentum in our business lines, as discussed by Mike in his introductory comments. We expect that Q2 manufacturing results will be stronger from a revenue and profitability perspective, and that trend will continue for the remainder of the year. Our multi-story windows business line continues to experience strong levels of inquiries. As we expected, performance has moderated during 2026, and that will continue throughout the year on a relative basis with the comparative periods. Tariffs impacted Q1 2026 versus the 2025 comparative. It's important to highlight that the recently announced U.S. government changes about how tariffs are calculated will add additional costs for goods shipped from Canada to the U.S.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Previously, it was based on aluminum content and now is computed based on the value of goods shipped. We're able to mitigate the tariffs with our capability to manufacture windows in the U.S. We're starting to see positive commentary from various levels of government to encourage development of affordable housing through reduced or frozen development charges and faster approval processes. Further, we continue to see positive signs in various regions around the U.S. and in Western Canada. However, developers remain on the sidelines due to excess supply of small investor-focused condo units, especially in Toronto and Vancouver. Our Environmental Access Solutions business line is expected to generate stronger returns for the second quarter and for the remainder of the year.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

We saw continued step-based improvement in the number of mats on rents as we exited the quarter, and the demand for our composite matting remains robust, and the plant continues to operate at maximum capacity, with the vast majority of 2026 output already sold. Our Canadian operations are expected to be a major driver for the business as we started to see strong results in the fourth quarter from a rental perspective, and that continued during the first quarter of 2026 and will continue into the second quarter. Further, we anticipate that long linear projects will commence in the latter half of 2026 or into early 2027 across several industries, including transmission and distribution, pipeline, and oil and gas.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

The medium and longer-term prospects of the business are very robust, as there will be material investments in transmission and distribution across North America due to growing electricity demands from homes, vehicles, and more importantly, AI and data farms. The precision manufacturing and engineering business line is expected to improve from a revenue and profitability perspective for the second quarter and for the remainder of the year based on significant momentum achieved. This business line is very diversified with exposure to the defense industry, technology industries, including data farms and telecommunications. Those specific industries are driving the growth vectors of this business line. As Mike had mentioned, we've been receiving record forward bookings in certain of the businesses. That will drive the year-over-year results for the remainder of 2026.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

The anticipated maintenance capital expenditures are expected to be higher than the prior year due to the timing of replacement activities because of the demand profile for the business line. We're also anticipating growth CapEx to be incurred for each of the business lines, but they should be relatively consistent with 2025, with the exception of Environmental Access Solutions. Growth capital expenditures will be outlaid for the new state-of-the-art composite plant, as well as further investment in the Canadian rental fleet based on expected market demand. I'll now pass the call back to Mike.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thank you. The first quarter of 2026 was a very strong start to the year and has allowed me to update our guidance to be near the high end of our previously disclosed range. I'm extremely confident in the future of our company. EIC is at the intersection of a number of critical themes and trends. We have remained true to our principles and our business strategies, and those will continue to drive our long-term success. Thank you for this time, your time this morning, and we would now like to call open the call for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you do have a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised, and your questions will be pulled in the order that they are received. Please ensure that you leave the handset if you're using a speakerphone before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Lee from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity]

Hi, guys.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Good morning, Matt.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity]

Thank you for taking my question. Hey, morning. I know it's a bit early to have this conversation, but just given the momentum you're seeing in A&A and the fact that it sounds like manufacturing should improve sequentially each quarter. Did you guys have any conversations about raising that guidance beyond the 875 range? Is that just conservatism or maybe something I'm missing?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

If you got bugs in our office, Matt. Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about what the right number was for our guidance. At the end of the day, we decided to move our sort of guidance to the top end of the range and not move the range. The reason for that was really simple. The uncertainty in Iran is causing jumps and starts with oil supply and with oil prices. While it has had no impact on our Regional One business to date, and we see no nothing imminent, we didn't wanna increase our target and then have something dramatic happen there and then have to back it back down. You're bang on.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The trends you're seeing with our business, it's not hard to add up to a number that's higher than 875. We'll promise that once the world situation settles down just a little bit.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity]

Okay. That's, that's helpful. In my understanding that you guys generally pass across field costs. If that's the case, kinda what's the biggest area of risk that could prevent you from reaching that 875 or exceeding that? Then maybe what businesses do you think could be most impacted?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. You're bang on, Matt. We really don't have much of an impact on our business from increasing fuel prices. We have the ability to pass those on to our customers. The fact that we're an essential service, demand doesn't change much with fuel price surcharges. I think our biggest concern would be if fuel shortages got so bad in certain parts of the world that they stopped flying or flew less, that would reduce demand for parts. It's really more a matter of fuel supply in certain parts of the world. North America really doesn't have a potential fuel shortage. We make enough in North America to look after ourselves. We don't see that as an issue. It's more just of a worldwide aviation potential issue if there were a shortage of fuel.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. Matthew, it's Jake. Keep in mind, Regional One leases aircraft across the globe.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity]

Right

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

that's the exposure.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

To be clear, we've had no issues thus far.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Exactly. There's no indication, but again, just out of conservatism.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity]

Okay. That's helpful, guys. I appreciate it. I'll pass the line.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question goes to the line of Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Hey, Steve.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

Good morning, guys. Thanks for the time. Mike, I wanted to go back to your comments around the accelerating momentum on manufacturing. You know, you and Travis had some good commentary there, and there's some mention of record orders. I mean, just wanted to ask specifically, like, what do you think is driving that? I think the bigger question is: Do you think that's a sustainable thing through the balance of the year? The overall commentary seemed to suggest that they're trying to understand the underlying drivers a bit better, and maybe if you could just give a little bit of additional context around, you know, how you're seeing that from the customer side. Thanks.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing, windows aside, we're seeing it across the board in all of our manufacturing. In the matting business, in the U.S., it's clearly driven by transmission and distribution. The utilities needs to increase capacity. We're just in the beginnings of that. That's gonna go on for years, if not decades. I have no concern about the long-term nature of that. In Canada, we're probably a year and a half behind the Americans, we're starting to see those projects, particularly in Eastern Canada. There isn't a day that doesn't go on without discussion of a new pipeline, whether it's the President of the U.S. talking about expanding the pipeline there or us going to the coast with natural gas or bitumen.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

That's very strong. When we look at some of the other manufacturers, like our stainless business, that's never really had a role in data centers before. All of a sudden, the farms they're building are so large that they need actual refrigerant. They used to cool them with air, now they're cooling them with water. We're getting massive orders to deal with that. We're actually at a stage where we're sharing production capacity because we can't keep up in our existing plants. The window companies have shared some space, both in Canada and the U.S. with our manufacturing guys to allow us to keep up with the demand. You also see it in our precision metal guys in Ontario, Ben Machine.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

They're building some stuff that's super high precision that, driven by space demand, if you can believe that. We're building satellite equipment. It's across the board. The interesting thing is it's accelerating, not, it's not like it's been good. To be honest with you, in January, I thought it was a little bit slow, and I was a bit concerned about our manufacturing business, with the exception of matting. It's been strong all year. Since then, it's just one thing after another, and we're busy trying to find enough equipment and enough geography to put the equipment into.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Maybe, Steve, I'll add on top of that. You know, we've talked over the last year or so about the strong level of inquiries. What we were just seeing is, you know, customers were punting that decision down the road. I think recently in the U.S., there was a small and large business survey where you saw capital goods orders

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Increase in March. To be honest, that's what we really saw. Those historical inquiries and decisions are now coming to fruition. We believe that, you know, it's gonna continue throughout 2026 because there is a built up pent-up demand for the goods and services provided by those business lines.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Steve, got couple other dynamics driving this. One of them is I'd call it reshoring of some of the production, and that's in line with what Mike was talking about, some of the space work we're doing. It's also with some of the aircraft manufacturers. We're making more aircraft parts domestically than we have in the past. The second driver is again, we've mentioned about the data centers and some of the manufacturing, but part and parcel with that is some of with our wireline services, we're seeing more uptick in plowing fiber and installing long distance fiber, which again, is the connectivity between the data farms.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

Super helpful, guys. Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes on the line of James McGarragle from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning, James.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Good morning. Thanks for having me on. Garth, Carmine and Marley, great to see the promotions for you guys. Yeah, I just wanted to ask on how you're thinking about growth into 2027. You know, not asking for 2027 guidance, you know, on the aerospace side, we have, you know, Skyline, Greenland, you know, further Canadian North integration, you know, higher returns from the BC aircraft. Can you just kinda help us frame, you know, how should we be thinking about the growth there? On the manufacturing side, you know, we've got the new plant, new projects in matting, a potential re-recovery in Windows.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Just trying to, you know, try to piece all those things together and, you know, just trying to frame how we should be thinking about the 2027 outlook.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I'll do my best to avoid numbers here 'cause we haven't given 2027 guidance. We're really bullish on 2027 simply because of the capital we've already invested. You're gonna see, as an example, the Newfoundland Medevac contract give us a full year of revenue. You're going to see the continued growth of the matting business. I think that's super exciting in Canada. We have great visibility when you, when you start to bid the projects in advance. We're a big player in the market. We don't win all of them, but we certainly win our fair share.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

With the amount of stuff we're bidding, I'm highly confident we'll have more mats on rent in 2027 than we do in 2026, and we'll have more in 2026 than we did in 2025. I see growth there. You've got the fact business that will add in the future in 2026, or 2027, I'm sorry. The continued integration of Canadian North is going to continue to help as we move forward with our Combi aircraft model and the things we're doing there. I think the other thing that maybe we should talk a little bit about, and I'm a bit surprised we're seeing it already, but our passenger loads in Nunavut are growing, and they're growing faster than the birth rate, which is not normal.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think that's the very beginnings of, as the government's investing in the North, that people are traveling up, whether it be professionals or construction workers or all those things, the way up there is on our aircraft. We're seeing a bump there, and I anticipate that will continue on. Then we've expanded our work on the Medevac business. As that grows, we'll have all the planes in place in BC. We're in discussions with them to grow the number of routes we're flying for them in addition to what we're already doing. There's a whole bunch of things. Then, of course, the Air Canada contract as well. Those routes will all be flying by then.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We're in a position where there's a whole bunch of what I would call structural growth that's already paid for. Adam doesn't sit on his hands for very long, so I'm pretty sure we'll have some other stuff come from that. While I'm not promising anything, that billion-dollar number isn't far away.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Yeah, appreciate the color. Just one quick follow-up here. On the contingent consideration gain from Canadian North, can you just kinda talk about what drove that downward revision to the earnout estimate? You know, anything there from the growth trajectory change versus your original deal assumptions? You know, I guess we usually see that when something's going wrong. Any color you can provide there.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah, I really appreciate the question because unequivocally, the progress at Canadian North is well in excess of even our most rosy forecast when we bought the company. Things are going great. We had an earnout number based on resigning a contract for the Northern Charter business related to the natural resource part of their business. One of the projects has been delayed, as a result, the company wasn't able to enter into the new contract, which meant that we didn't have to pay out under the under that piece of the earnout. It was something that our acquisition team identified as a risk. I don't think that business has gone anywhere.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We talked about when we bought the company. We had to make sure we were making money in the charter operations. I'd say we've made great progress there since we started. The gain relates to one payment we don't have to make simply because there was a contract that couldn't be signed within the timeframe it needed to be signed within for us to have to pay the vendor. It was a pickup based on the delay of that contract. In no way does it reflect a disappointment or any underperformance of the acquisition. Quite the opposite.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

I appreciate it, and I'll turn the line over. Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Krista Friesen from CIBC. Please go ahead.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC]

Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Hi, Krista.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC]

Morning. I was just wondering if we could dig in a little bit more, just on the jet fuel side. Based on the contracts that you have where you, where you can pass it through, what's the sort of lag that we should expect there?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I mean, it's less than a month. In places like Manitoba or the Maritimes where it's largely done, at market, we can pass it on as quickly as we can go tell the customer. There's pre-sold tickets, so there is some impact, but it's nominal. In most of our Medevac contracts or our Nunavut contract, this month's fuel is next month's price. You get a 30-day lag on some of that stuff. Conversely, when it stabilizes or ticks down, we get a 30-day pickup. You could see in the first quarter, even though fuel ran up pretty hard in the back end of the period, like from the end of February to the end of March, the margin compression was minimal.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC]

Perfect. Thank you.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

On the ISR business, most of that is billed straight through to the government. We don't even actually pay the fuel bills. The government pays the fuel bills direct, so there's zero lag on that.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC]

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Maybe just wondering if you can give us a little bit more color on the integration of MACH 2. It seems like it's been off to a pretty good start just despite you having only acquired it very recently. Any additional color there and the demand that you're seeing? Thank you.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. We just finished, in fact, yesterday, an expansion of our offices at Regional One, which will allow MACH to join them in the same facility. We're busy entering MACH's data into Regional One's proprietary database that we've built, which will help us pick our spots. It's really important to understand as we dip our toes in the 737 market, we're not getting into leasing long term, those kinds of things. Those are finance games for banks. We're taking aircraft at the edges that are nearing the end of their life, and we'll start by parting them out, and ultimately, we'll lease out pieces of them. It's Regional One's model combined with MACH's industry knowledge and EIC's access to capital.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Plus, we're a natural consumer for some of those parts with our Canadian North business. They fly 737s, and so the more we buy from ourselves, the more we learn the market.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC]

Thanks. I appreciate the color. I'll pass the line.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Cameron Doerksen from National Bank. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning, Cam.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank]

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Mike, you talked a little bit earlier about starting to see a pickup in some of the passenger activity into Nunavut. My question, I guess, is, you know, how you see things evolving there over the long term as far as demand for air and aviation into the North. I mean, we've seen the federal government, I think since the last call, announce a fairly significant investment in new infrastructure. We've seen some support for some new resources projects in the North. Are you at the stage yet where you're actually having some conversations with governments or with potential resources customers about supporting some of the growth there?

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank]

You know, do you have any kind of, like, timeline where you might to see, you know, more of a pickup in activity? I mean, obviously, you're seeing it already, but maybe a more substantial pickup in activity based on some of these investments that are going into the North.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I mean, there's a wide range. The government stuff is underway. We're in discussions with them on a number of things, whether it be surveillance work, whether it be other projects. There's gonna be things that we don't directly do, like building military bases, those kinds of things. We've seen an increased demand for charters up there already. We're in discussions for the iron ore development in Baffinland. There's a increased exploration for critical minerals on Baffin Island out of Iqaluit. It's pretty pervasive across. It's hard for me to give you a, "Well, this is the second quarter of 2027," or anything. There'll be things. It's building. I'm shocked that we saw it in our passenger numbers this fast. We did not anticipate this.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Because we fly in enough different places where it's an essential service, we can take a look at its volumes compared to, say, the First Nations in Manitoba. When we see a marked difference in increase in revenues, we know what it's tied to. We're at the beginnings of that. They haven't started building the new runways they promised. They haven't started building the new buildings they promised or the military bases they promised. We're not even in the first inning. They might have thrown out the ceremonial first pitch, but that's about where we are in the baseball game.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank]

Okay. No, that's helpful. If I could just quickly follow up, I guess, just on the, you know, executive appointments and some of the realignment with roles at the senior management level. You know, obviously congratulations to everybody for that. I'm just wondering, I guess, what, you know, from a realignment of roles, with Darwin and Travis, like I guess, what's the objective, what's their mandates with, I guess the sort of the new roles that they have?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

As we grow, there's more and more as we add new businesses, there's more financial oversight required on budgeting, forecasting, and those kinds of things. Travis has a remarkable background in that area, so he'll take on additional responsibilities on that part. Darwin is really our acquisition whisperer, bringing people into EIC and teaching them how to function in a new conglomerate. He has been remarkable in his period here, and he will continue to focus on that. He'll still have operational responsibilities, but we're asking him to do more on the integration side, and Travis will do more on the numbers, budgeting, forecasting side. The bigger we get, the more Richie gets grumpy if he gets numbers he doesn't expect. We're working on the forecasting to keep Richie happy.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank]

Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks very much for the time.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Fenwick from ATB Cormark. Please go ahead.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Hi, good morning, everyone.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning, Jeff.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Mike, wanted to start off first on the CapEx, maintenance CapEx. You provided some good commentary there at the beginning of the call. When I look at the last couple quarters here, bit of a step down into Q1 versus where you were at Q4. I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, what's the right, or maybe those are the goalposts we should be looking at for this year. Have you kinda settled into maybe a more normalized maintenance CapEx now that Canadian North is in, you know, more settled in the mix now? Or how should we think about that?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I would say that Q1 was lower than I would have anticipated. The slots we could get for engines and some of those things resulted in less stuff getting done in January. I think that's a little bit of an anomaly. The rolling 12s are really the better forecasters of what's going. Q4 was higher. Q2 is gonna be higher again. We do have some stuff that will roll through this year that was kind of deferred things in Canadian North, it'll remain elevated through the balance of the year. Q1 was just, probably abnormally light just because there were a couple of engine events that got pushed because we couldn't get slots. They're sitting on our floor waiting to get overhauled.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. Then just wanted to ask about the Air Greenland agreement there. You said that you had a pre-existing relationship with them. Was that on the leasing front? Or maybe you could just characterize that for us, and was this like a cross-sell opportunity because of that relationship?

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thanks, Jeff. It really was a cross-sell opportunity. PAL, just given the proximity to Greenland on the East Coast, has done the heavy maintenance for Air Greenland's Dash 8 fleet for years. You know, it's that pre-existing relationship and whether it was parts, technical expertise over time, and that's how that conversation started.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Okay. I did wanna ask, I saw an announcement on PAL Aerospace's website about receiving some funds from the Regional Defence Investment Initiative. Wasn't a huge amount, but maybe you could just articulate, you know, how that fits in with the ongoing discussions, what the dollars there were for and how that was how that came to be.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Sure. you know, that was through the, as you said, the Defense Initiative, and that was really to support the research and development with regards to CarteNav, some of the modifications to the Dash 8-400 that we're looking at, obviously, within Canada and some other jurisdictions around the world. you know, again, that's the federal government's efforts to try to develop capacity in our country, both for internal and export purposes.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Yeah. I guess we should read that as a strong indicator that they wanna work with you on larger contracts going forward, fair to say?

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Well, absolutely. They recognize, obviously, we're, you know, PAL is a huge employer in Atlantic Canada, a world leader in technology. A lot of positives that the De Havilland Dash 8 obviously is a Canadian aircraft, so tons of Canadian content in there, Pratt & Whitney engines. Again, you know, it's just that global attempt at the Canadian government to reinforce Canadian competitiveness and generate the capability at home.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think the other thing I just wanna jump in here on is, I'd be honest if I didn't say I wasn't a little bit frustrated when we announced Australia, that we weren't successful there, but we'd won in Greenland. I think there's a few people who didn't understand the ISR market is huge. We're not gonna win every one we bid on, but we're gonna win some of them, and we're building a beachhead in Europe and the Nordic countries that provide tons of growth. With us working now with the Danes in Greenland, in the Netherlands, in Great Britain, hopefully in Canada, there's other countries that are gonna be tied into that joint defense and Canada's new tighter relationship with Europe.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

While we are in discussions now that I'm under NDAs that I can't describe who with. I think there's very much a trend emerging here as us as a leader in that marketplace and working with different parts of the government. I mean, the irony is in Canada, our contracts with the fisheries department, notwithstanding most of the work we do isn't for the fisheries anymore. In the Netherlands, we're working with the Coast Guard and the Marines. In Britain, we're working with people trying to limit illegal immigration through homeland security. It's different departments in each of these governments, but as they start talking more and more, the ability to have software that talks to one another and them share their data with their partners in other countries puts us in a great spot.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

That's why I'm so bullish on the longer term version of ISR, not what we win this month or next quarter. We might do something like that, but it's more about the longer term market we're developing. Where we are now compared to where we're five years from now is remarkable, and that's going to continue to grow.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Yeah, that's great color. Then maybe just one last one, bigger picture here on the M&A front. With so much balance sheet capacity now, does that change the lens or the focus of where you're targeting opportunities? I mean, you can obviously write much larger checks on the back of that. Do you start to look outside of even North America if you saw, like, an interesting airline that fit your parameters or something like that? Like how is that evolving now?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The short answer to that is yes. The slightly longer, I think more relevant answer to that is that we're not the highest payer for acquisitions. We're competitive. We never pay enough to convince someone to sell just 'cause of what we're gonna pay. We pay market. We want to make it easy to deal with them. Liquidity has always been a huge part of our strategy. Rich has done a great job with our bond deal and with our new bank deal. We've got the capital available. I wanna be clear that we're not changing our parameters of what we're paying. The ability to pay doesn't mean you should pay more. The fact that we're trading higher doesn't mean we should pay more.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

If we found a great company that was really large, was accretive, something we wanted, would we pay right down to our 15% return? Sure. We're not gonna do 12% deals just because we have capital. I want to assure people that we've gotten a 20% return for 20 years by sticking to what we do, and we'll stick to what we do. We've added people to Adam's department, and it probably means we gotta do more CAD 100 million deals. I'd love to do CAD 500 million deals. There aren't that many of them. We will remain active, and we'll stick with what's made us successful. Hopefully just do more of it. Then the other piece, quite frankly, is investing in our business.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

If we had won Australia, that could easily have been a CAD 500 million dollar investment. If we win in Canada, that could be in the hundreds of millions. Like, you gotta have the liquidity to be able to back your opportunities.

[Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark]

Appreciate the color. That's all I had. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Konark Gupta from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning, Konark.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Morning. Morning, Mike and team, and congrats on everybody's appointments here. Maybe the first one, I guess, going back to the matting business. In the first quarter, seems like the U.S. matting business was up from last year. The Canadian demand was flattish. The EBITDA in that business line, matting, was flat. I'm trying to understand what is the real mix issue here.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's even a touch more nuanced than what you talked, let's start with the U.S. It did about the same as it did last year in round numbers, that is actually a stronger performance than you think because coming into 2025, we had material inventory on the ground of finished goods. This year, we had no inventory going into the year. We had sold it all in Q4. We were able to reach the same number simply by tweaking the plant and getting a little more production out of it. The team at Spartan have done a remarkable job of maximizing what we can produce. The rate determining step right now in Spartan is just how many mats can we make. We can sell everything we can make.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We can sell more than more than what we've got now. I can't wait to open that second plant so we can keep up. In Canada, while the number, the aggregate return looks similar, that's very misleading. We had a bunch of decommissioning work, which by its nature doesn't continue. It strengthened Q1 of last year, but the number of mats on rent was much lower than it is now. We know where our revenue is going forward, and we know the other stuff we've bid going forward. While the quality of earnings is what I would say is in Northern Mat was much better this year-over-year, even though the numbers are very similar.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It makes us bullish going forward because I'm not going to use real numbers for competitive reasons, but say we had 20,000 mats on rent at the end of last year, in the last first quarter, I had 40,000 now, day one of Q2 starts much stronger than where we started last year. That is why we are confident in talking about growth. Now there is lots of room to grow. We got lots of mats, we talked in our outlook that we are probably going to build some more. We think we are going to need more inventory for our rental pool, I think you will see us invest in that in Q2 and beyond. When you look at the results, notwithstanding EBITDA is flat, the business is not flat.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think the other thing to point out is that the U.S. or the Canadian dollar was materially weaker this year or sorry, yeah, materially weaker this last year. The translation of Spartan's results, which make up a larger portion because of the seasonality for the Canadian operations in Q1, were impacted this year by foreign exchange rates.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Which was millions of dollars just in that business.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Okay. No, that's very helpful color. Thanks so much. Just on the guidance for this year, you know, I wanna understand the key puts and takes, I guess. The CAD 25 million increase from the midpoint to the high end, call it, is it mostly coming from the large asset sales? I mean, it seems like they are doing very well. They're obviously lumpy too, right? You know, how would you parse out the large asset sales versus underlying strength in some of the other areas of the business?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I would say that I think the large asset sales disproportionately affect your revenue, and they give you some EBITDA, and it's a part of how we make money. The core parts of the business are parts and leasing. Our leasing revenue makes up most of the growth in terms of EBITDA, and that's why it's a higher quality growth. I always caution people about worrying too much about revenue in the aftermarket business because of large asset sales. The key driver of the business is parts sales, which are remarkably predictable, and our leasing revenue. The reason the leasing revenue is going up is because we invested a bunch of money last year, we're putting those planes into service, and we anticipate them staying there.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Quite frankly, if there is any uncertainty in the business going forward, we've told Hank the checkbook's ready to be aggressive and go get the stuff because it's very hard to buy equipment in a bull market. If there are any slowdowns in certain parts of the year, we'll be glad to step in and build our company on that weakness.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Okay. That's clear, Mike. Thanks. Last one, if I may. On the S 232 tariffs, I just want to understand it a little bit more. The change that was implemented by the U.S. government on April 6th was there will be a 25% duty on full customs value of derivative products. Previously, it was just 50% duty on the metal content. What parts of the businesses would be subject to this tariff? I think seems like window business, you have some transaction cross-border. I don't think you have much stainless business cross-border from Canada to U.S. at least. Any sense on the S 232 implications for your businesses?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I think I can really simplify this. The basic thing is Windows is the only business that's impacted by it. Virtually everything else we do is CUSMA, they transfer back and forth on a tariff-efficient basis. In Windows, there's no doubt that change costs us money. We used to be able to ship windows across the border and pay tariffs based on the metal part of the window. Now, under the new rules, is we pay the tariff based on the entire value of the window. It makes it virtually impossible to make money manufacturing in Canada and selling in the U.S. Now, fortunately for us, we've got plants in both countries, we just have simplified our production. American windows are built in the U.S., Canadian windows are built in Canada.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Even with that, the, that tariff program creates some challenges because virtually all of the aluminum starts in Canada and gets extruded in Canada. So whether we build a window in Canada or the U.S., the extrusions come from Canada, not because we're having aversion to buying aluminum in America. It's 'cause they don't have any. So when it crosses the border, even when we build in the U.S., we're still paying tariffs on our raw material, the aluminum. Having said that, so does everybody else. It's not a competitive disadvantage. We actually have a competitive advantage against our Canadian competitors, like State, who are big sellers into the U.S. They gotta manufacture it in Canada, so they have a way bigger problem than we do.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

All that being said, the tariffs still cost us money, and they still make the business less efficient. We're looking forward to when that gets straightened out, even though it does give us a competitive advantage in the U.S.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for the time, Mike. Thank you.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gary Ho from Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning, Gary.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins Capital Markets]

Morning. Sorry I jumped on the call late. Just wanna put a finer point on the data center discussions. We're seeing data center build out green shoots across multiple industries. There's some mention in your MD&A and I think Q&A so far. Maybe can you elaborate on what you're seeing across the portfolio companies, and do you see this as a bubble at all, or is there long-term opportunities that you can potentially pursue on the M&A side?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I'll take the last question first about the, whether it's a bubble. I think unequivocally it's elevated. We've gone through surges in businesses before. I think at some point, whether it's five years from now or seven years from now, we will see this business mature, and that's why I think it's so fundamental. We see some of our competitors abandoning their core areas to jump both feet into this, and while we're growing and taking advantage of the data center business, in each of our businesses, we're making sure we don't lose track of our core customer. In terms of the areas we're seeing the opportunity, there's four main areas we're seeing it other than the growth of the electrical grid, 'cause the growth of the electrical grid grabs our matting business.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

That notwithstanding, 'cause the growth of the electrical grid is more than data centers. It's electric cars. It's all kinds of things, and that's gonna keep going. We don't see that as a bubble at all. Excluding the matting business, we are doing cooling systems for these massive server farms. You know, I said earlier in the call we had an order, the biggest we've ever had in stainless fabrication, north of $8 million for one facility. We're doing fiber plowing, where we're digging and burying big, massive fiber cables. Not like the sort of baseball-size cable you see going into people's houses and those kinds of things.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

These are a foot or more wide, and we're building long trenches of these and burying the stuff from Northern Alberta down to the U.S. border. We're building rack to put computers on. We're also, strangely enough, they're actually using some of our FODS at the construction sites, some of the matting. We see it across a number of our businesses. Guys, did I miss anything maybe?

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. Maybe I'd add on, like, it also creates opportunities for our hydronic heating company as odd as you may think that is, but, you know, for concrete curing, as well as commissioning the chillers. You know, you have to test the chillers, you have to put a load on the chillers, that creates opportunities for that business line. As Mike had mentioned, you know, we also see, you know, others putting, you know, realigning their customers and focusing on data centers, which creates ancillary opportunities for us to continue grabbing market share in more traditional areas as well. You know, it's a net positive we see, from an overall perspective across our portfolio companies.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. There's also, we're actually doing a job for the first time, I think it was the first building cladding that we're doing, the window guys are doing, but without glass. We're putting up obviously, metal cladding on buildings, which again, is just pivoting a little bit our windows team into other lines of business. We're seeing that as well.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

That's part of the technology we've put into our window factories that let us build. It started with high rise apartments or condos where they've got to make things interesting. They're using aluminum largely or ceramic cladding to make the building look interesting instead of using stone. Well, we can take that and actually clad an entire building in it.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Right.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's one of the new areas, we're working on.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins Capital Markets]

Okay, great. My second question. AI's been very topical. It's now even trickled into industrials and manufacturing companies. Management teams talking about AI helping with dynamic pricing, et cetera. Just curious if your team has spent time on this and how we can improve operations and/or efficiencies, whether that's in head office or within your portfolio companies.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We have groups of teams within our various businesses looking at how it's applicable. I would say that we probably have at the lower end of most companies of what we can do with AI. It's very human being centric, whether you're flying a plane, doing maintenance, building pipelines. Like the things we do all require people. Where we do see some of the AI capabilities in is in places like CTI where we can build better, faster training systems by utilizing AI to help us do it or in our ISR systems. There's a lot of stuff where AI can provide better, stronger, faster data, so it's buried inside. Really what we see AI as in most of our cases is improving the quality or the speed or the capability of our product.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's not the cost reduction that you see, some other people talking about. I mean, you could fly airplanes today without pilots. That technology exists, but we don't think that's happening anytime soon. It's really not impacting the operations. Do we use AI to work on parts and what things we could change the schedules for repairs and stuff? Absolutely. It still requires people to go turn the wrenches. For us, it's not as big a driver as it is in some businesses.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I would say it's not disrupting our businesses. It's, it's improving our businesses sort of at the forefront on the administrative side, whether it be, you know, in the windows companies with quoting and making things more efficient. You know, our businesses are durable.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

You know, they will not be disrupted by AI.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's ancillary and a net positive for us. We are, you know, we are looking at it from an administrative perspective and how to do things more efficiently and better.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah, I mean, it's the first time I think one of the investing acronyms has really fit us. The whole HALO investing idea of high assets, low obsolescence really speaks to almost everything we do outside of ISR and training.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Essential demand.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah, all three.

[Richard Wowryk, CFO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think the other area where we see the benefit of it, and we've been doing it for a number of years, is just using the predictive abilities of AI to help with safety and, you know, developing our own internal safety management system on the aviation side to, you know, really ensure that we're doing everything we can, and we're at the forefront of safety. And, you know, making sure that anything that we can do to make sure our people are safer, we're investing money in. That was probably our first foray into it.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins Capital Markets]

Okay, great. Okay, thanks for those comments. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tim James from TD. Please go ahead.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD]

Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. My first question just regarding the M&A environment. Mike, I'm just wondering if you could comment what you're seeing in terms of competition out there for M&A. Is there any sort of retrenchment in the number of companies that are competing for businesses? Are buyers, you know, more inclined to pay up here, or is the opposite happening and they're getting a little bit less aggressive? I'm just wondering sort of from a pricing standpoint what you're seeing in the market.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's hard to make this comment across every segment 'cause it's very product area specific. Generally speaking, we still see less deals than we saw pre-COVID. There's less lower quality transactions, the top of the funnel is smaller. Having said that, the quality of the things we're looking at is better. I think Adam and his team have done an exceptional job on improving our capabilities, working with our subsidiaries to kind of find our own acquisitions, looking at competitors, looking at suppliers, looking at geographic expansion, and approaching people who may have thought they were for sale and working on transactions. MACH 2 is a good example. Canadian North is a good example, where those are businesses that we found determined were a good fit with us.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Where the issue of pricing really comes in is where we get something that's unrelated to us. Private equity is aggressive, but I would say no more or less aggressive than they have been for the last two years since we've come out of COVID.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD]

Okay, thank you. My second question, just turning to Multi-Storey Window Solutions. You know, it's a long lead business. Can you look towards 2027 and just provide any kind of early thoughts on, you know, with the book of business you've got today, and I realize that the kind of interest rate environment and everything can kind of impact things. As you look at that year, given what you know today and what's in the backlog, I mean, could 2027 be another down year? Could it be flat? Could it be up? Just what are your early thoughts there?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think it's most likely to be flat to marginally better. This year, this last quarter, if you strip out the difference in the exchange rate, our book-to-bill was flat. That's progress. We're really starting to see little pockets of strength in the U.S. It's getting better faster than Canada. I think we will see improvements in the bookings. We'll talk again in three months, and we'll see whether we're above even on the book-to-bill, which is the best indicator for the future. Because bear in mind, like, when we take an order, it's generally 12 to 18 months before it's in our numbers in terms of revenue. The slower part, quite frankly, is still Toronto.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Like, the glut there is slowing development, but there's still big demand for multi-bedroom apartments. The developers have to get their head around how they build those. We're really bullish about the government's plans with HST and development fees. Because that can add up to a 20% difference in their building costs, and that's a real difference in building a long-term asset.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

The one other thing you're seeing, and we mentioned that with the data centers, is just a mix of both the moving towards more commercial and institutional style buildings, plus some product mix in terms of, we talked about the panels for the data centers. Again, we're diversifying away from pure residential high-rise build into some other areas that is certainly, you know, gives us a little bit more brighter horizon.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Razi Hasan from Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Morning.

[Razi Hasan, Analyst at Paradigm Capital]

Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Most have been answered, just two quick ones here. On the aerospace side, Mike, could you maybe just talk about other contracts that are up for bidding? I think in the past you mentioned Great Britain. Any color on anything that's actively up for bidding at this point?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

This is difficult now because there's a lot of the countries are trying to avoid the Australia situation where it's very public and they aren't comfortable with that process, particularly in places where they aren't RFPs. What I would say is that there's opportunities. The greatest spot is in Europe. It's not the only spot, but I would say the most active and the farthest along discussions would be European and Canadian. Although there is some stuff in Asia, but less developed. Jake, anything?

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

You mentioned just briefly about the U.K. Home Office, and that's something we have disclosed that, you know, they responded to an RFP in 2025. We're expecting the results of the RFP in kind of mid to later part of 2026, and we're the incumbent there. Again, you know, that's a great partnership with the U.K. Home Office and we're, again, feeling good about our position, but anything can happen.

[Razi Hasan, Analyst at Paradigm Capital]

Okay, that's great. Then maybe just one for Travis. I just wanted to confirm I think for the growth CapEx for 2026, did you say it was gonna be in line with 2025 levels? Just wanna get that right.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

No. Likely to be higher. That's really driven by, in the manufacturing side, by the new Spartan plant, the composite plant in the U.S. Then as we talked about with the accelerating demand profiles for the Canadian operations for environmental access solutions, there'll likely be investment in the fleet, just because of the demand signals we're seeing.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

The growth CapEx in the aviation, there's less projects than there were last year. We've got the Air Canada project. We're buying planes, but we're coming finally to a close on the.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

BC Medevac

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

On BC Medevac contract. I wish I was in the plane manufacturing business where I could deliver things three years late and people would still love you. We're coming to the end, so those CapEx have ended. I don't know if everyone noticed, but we put out a press release in Kuwait, a few days ago, they finally were certified on all types of King Airs in our full-movement simulator. That's gonna be great for our own pilots, but also for other Canadian pilots so that they don't have to go down to Texas or Kansas to get their training done. It's also great for CapEx because I get to stop paying for installing it. That's exciting for the future piece as well.

[Razi Hasan, Analyst at Paradigm Capital]

That's great color. Thanks. I'll leave it there.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your last question comes from the line of Michael Goldie from BMO. Please go ahead.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Good morning, Michael.

[Michael Goldie, Analyst at BMO]

Morning, thank you for the question. To the extent that you can you unpack Australia a bit more and share what you learned through that process? Were there any capabilities or solutions that you realized could be valuable to add to the portfolio over time?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I think you were in my board meeting yesterday because I got the exact same question from my board chair. The short answer is I can't because they haven't even made it public who won yet or what they've awarded, whether they awarded a whole contract, part of the contract, whether they extended a piece. We just don't know. By the time we get to our Q2 meeting, I'll be able to answer that a lot more intelligently because all what we've gotten from Australia, and this is not exaggeration or hyperbole, is a three-line letter saying, "Thank you for your bid. We will not be proceeding at this time. If you'd like to meet with us, please let us know." We've let them know, and that's really all we know. We believe we know who won, but it's conjecture.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

It's not fact. It's hard for me to answer that for you. We will know, and we will share the issue once we have it, but I don't wanna guess.

[Michael Goldie, Analyst at BMO]

Okay. For my second question, within R1, has the macro started to impact the value of assets yet? Like, how much longer do you think energy prices need to remain elevated for discounted opportunities to start appearing? How have asset values performed in past energy shocks?

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

So far there's been no impact. We've seen nothing. There's a worldwide shortage of engines on many of the planes we use, the CF34 and stuff, and that has not changed at all. As airlines like United wanna move into the 550 model and things like that, the demand is super high. I don't see anything in the near term. I think you'd have to see a fuel shortage. I don't think prices will do it. I think it's fuel shortages that would cause a problem where people can't fly and then levered airlines have trouble, and then that would create assets purchasing opportunities. We're not there yet, and it's part of the reason we're still bullish on the rest of the year. We see no deterioration in our lease portfolio at all.

[Jake Trainor, President at Exchange Income Corporation]

Just to make one comment. In the past, historically, energy shocks will typically drive or shrink purchases of new aircraft which drive demand for used aircraft, which is our portfolio. Used aircraft, solutions for engines and whatnot. Again, that further adds color to Mike's comments here.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

Maybe one other thing. In this market, it is also a very relationship-driven market. You know, Hank has very strong relationships with numerous fleets around the world, and coupled with, as Rich and Mike talked about, our liquidity that we have available. Like, we're able to execute on transactions on a moment's notice, which gives us a massive strategic advantage compared to some of our other competitors in that regional market.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

And we're pre-

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Exchange Income Corporation]

We stand ready.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

We're prepared to buy without knowing what we're gonna do with them yet. The one of the great trades the company made was during COVID, an airline wanted to get rid of all their Q400 series. Hank brought me the deal. I went during COVID. I think we really want to put this much money out during this much turmoil. He talked me into it. We bought 'em. I only wish I had told him to go find some more. We bought planes for the price of, what, half an engine today. When those opportunities come, that's where that liquidity risk provides, helps a ton.

[Michael Goldie, Analyst at BMO]

If I can squeeze in one more. Like, are you using AI yet in R1 data? I imagine there's just so much information at and there's an opportunity to better sort through it with this technology and find opportunities.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Yeah. I mean, the whole piece on AI is you have to have the right data to mine, and it's not a third-party process with them. We built a massive, our own proprietary system, which is I mean, it was we didn't call it AI, but it's effectively AI that we built, where we build the data. I mean, our guys literally know where every engine on a Bombardier 700, 900 is in the world. We know roughly when they're gonna need to be overhauled. We know where all the ERJs are and what the parts value is, and that is what drives the why we can get the returns we get in Regional One. It's also the reason why we bought MACH 2, I'm sorry.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

They've got access to information on other models that we have never been smart enough yet, didn't have the data to participate in. Well, that'll let us grow ourselves into those and grow the effective size of the swimming pool we can compete in.

[Michael Goldie, Analyst at BMO]

Awesome. Thank you very much.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Pyle for any closing remarks.

[Mike Pyle, CEO at Exchange Income Corporation]

I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. It was fun to talk about a quarter like that, and I really hope I get to see a lot of you in a couple hours at our AGM. A couple videos and some fun stuff to talk about. I'll either see you this morning or we'll talk again when second quarter is done. Have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Jake Trainor, President
• Mike Pyle, CEO
• Richard Wowryk, CFO
• Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer

Analysts

• Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank
• Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins Capital Markets
• James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Jeff Fenwick, Analyst at ATB Cormark
• Konark Gupta, Analyst at Scotiabank
• Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC
• Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity
• Michael Goldie, Analyst at BMO
• Razi Hasan, Analyst at Paradigm Capital
• Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James
• Tim James, Analyst at TD