Elmet Group Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 29, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Revenue rose 20.7% year over year to $56.0 million in Q1 2026, while gross profit increased 37.5% to $11.8 million and gross margin expanded to 21.2% from 18.6%.
  • Positive Sentiment: Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $9.2 million, and adjusted net income increased to $4.7 million, helped by operating improvements and a favorable mark-to-market gain on the company’s tungsten mining investment.
  • Positive Sentiment: Backlog reached a record $113.3 million at quarter-end, with ADG backlog up 133.9% year over year and supported by missile, radar, aerospace, and other defense programs.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The IPO strengthened the balance sheet: Elmet raised $125.5 million in net proceeds, repaid $17.8 million of term debt, and ended with about $99.4 million of cash from the offering to fund growth initiatives.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management expects continued growth from higher-margin products, operational efficiency work in CMC, more defense demand, and selective M&A, while noting tungsten pricing and raw-material supply remain key variables.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Elmet Group Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Speaker 5

Good morning, and welcome to the Elmet Group Co.'s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's Chairman and CEO, Peter V. Anania, CFO, Mike Lee, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Scott Knoll, and General Counsel, Chris Chandler. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I'd like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via link available in the investor relations section of the company's website at investors.theelmetgroup.com.

Speaker 5

Before I turn the call over to Elmet's chairman and CEO, the company would like to remind all participants that statements made by management during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. securities laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events, and are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those risks identified in the Risk Factors section of the company's registration statement on Form S-1, and in its other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participants on this call are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's belief not only as of the date hereof.

Speaker 5

The company expressly disclaims any duty to update or correct any forward-looking statements. Further, management's remarks today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are calculated by management and do not have any standardized meanings under US GAAP. These non-GAAP measures supplement GAAP measures but should not be viewed as substitutes for GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to these non-GAAP financial measures is available in the company's quarterly report and its earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Elmet's Chairman and CEO, Mr. Peter V. Anania, for his comments. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Welcome everyone, thank you for joining us on the Elmet Group's first earnings call. We are a company with many valuable attributes focused on helping to secure the U.S. critical material supply chain. We have built the Elmet Group to what it is today by growing the business organically and through strategic M&A. Together, we are a team of seasoned executives who have decades of experience in critical materials and high-power systems industries. As a sole U.S.-based provider of precision engineered refractory metal components and high-power microwave systems, we serve the U.S. government and top blue-chip customers, including Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, and a major healthcare company in key end markets such as aerospace and defense, as well as industrial, medical, semiconductor, and energy sectors. We operate our business through two divisions, Critical Materials Components, or CMC, and Engineered Microwave Products, or EMP.

Speaker 6

CMC is a fully integrated manufacturer of critical materials specializing in tungsten and molybdenum, which provides a wide range of products from powder to machine goods to fine wire thinner than human hair and used in robotic surgical instruments. EMP is a provider of highly engineered microwave components used in larger systems at a very high level. The EMP division manufactures high-power components for military and demanding industrial applications and systems. As it relates to our strategy, we believe there are several key themes which will contribute to our success. First, we are at the nexus of several mega trends taking place right now, from defense fortification to U.S. reshoring and overall focus on U.S. material independence. We believe this will drive future growth.

Speaker 6

Second, as mentioned a moment ago, we are the sole U.S.-owned supplier of highly engineered critical material components, making us invaluable as a supplier for key end markets and for our customers. Third, our vertically integrated operations, supported by a dedicated engineering team, puts us at an exceptional position where we maintain strong control throughout the engineering to production process, from material processing all the way to final machining. Fourth, we have developed a difficult-to-replicate asset base over several decades, estimated to be worth more than $1 billion, paired with our specialized production capabilities, it creates a naturally high barrier to entry. Finally, our team has a proven track record of growing the business organically while also integrating synergistic acquisitions, which helps drive sustainable long-term growth.

Speaker 6

We feel we are in a prime position to capture the current strong growth opportunities and deliver value for our customers and shareholders. We are operating at a time of unprecedented realignment which presents a significant opportunity for us to grow the business given our exceptional positioning. We have seen stringent restrictions and outright bans on sourcing key critical materials from restricted countries, which have made it significantly more difficult to source tungsten and molybdenum without a reliable non-China supply base. Due to these new export controls, the price of critical materials like tungsten have dramatically increased over the last year, which is further complicated by steep tariffs on these same critical materials.

Speaker 6

For more than a decade, we have sourced more than 95% of our tungsten and molybdenum from outside of China, which largely shields us from major supply chain disruptions related to export controls. The current focus on replenishing stockpiles and general increase in global defense spending presents further opportunities for those with specialized manufacturing capabilities like ours, which can serve the broader Aerospace, Defense and Government market. Over the last few years, we have been increasing our focus on growing this ADG revenues by growing our sales organization, as well as investing in our capabilities to serve new defense programs. Bottom line, there are several positive macroeconomic trends in our favor, which will propel the business forward. Last month, we reached a critical milestone by taking the company public and successfully raising capital.

Speaker 6

Financially, we believe our performance both to start 2026 and on longer term horizon demonstrates the resilience and diversification of our operating model and our competitive strategic positioning within key growth markets. Looking ahead, we have built significant momentum as evidenced by our record backlog and with the proceeds from our public offerings now have a fortified balance sheet to make opportunistic investments which will further support our long term competitive position. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CSO, Mike Lee, to go over our results for the first quarter.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to present a strong Q1 performance for fiscal year 2026. Before we get into the details, I want to highlight how we plan to present the business going forward. Today, we generate approximately 85% of our revenue from CMC and the remaining 15% from EMP. From an end market perspective, most of our revenue comes from ADG industrial and medical end markets, with the remainder split between semiconductor and electronics, and energy. In terms of actual product mix, approximately 60% of our sales are related to molybdenum components, followed by 15% microwave components, 16% tungsten components, and the remainder in other materials and services. Geographically, we supply approximately 83% of our products to the Americas, followed by 12% into Europe and 5% rest of the world.

Speaker 4

One of our key financial priorities going forward is to expand our gross margin. As we plan ahead, we've identified three key pathways to accomplish this goal. First, we are aggressively pursuing manufacturing cost improvements. To that end, we recently hired a supply chain and operations consulting firm to help accelerate throughput and effectively increase margins within our CMC division. Second, we expect our product mix to improve as we continue to grow our ADG revenues, which have been higher margin relative to our other end markets. Finally, we expect to enjoy significant economies of scale as we grow the business. Altogether, we're confident in our ability to expand margins as we scale the business and look forward to sharing updates along the way. We plan to provide a review of our financial performance, both on a quarterly and trailing 12-month basis.

Speaker 4

It is our belief that our business performance can be more accurately measured when we review over a longer period of time given our dynamic product and services offering. I will now review our results for the quarter. All numbers have been rounded for ease of presentation. Our financial results for the quarter can be found in our quarterly report being filed with the SEC today. Revenue in Q1 increased 20.7% to $56 million, compared to $46.4 million in Q1 2025. The increase in revenue was primarily due to a $9.1 million increase in our CMC division, which includes strong growth from an ADG end market. Gross profit in Q1 2026 increased 37.5% to $11.8 million, or 21.2% gross margin compared to $8.6 million or 18.6% gross margin in Q1 2025.

Speaker 4

The increases were driven by the growth within our CMC division from the ADG end market. Operating expenses for Q1 2026 increased 73.6% to $10 million, compared to $5.8 million in Q1 2025. Within the quarter, we incurred approximately $1 million in one-time IPO and restructuring related expenses. The balance of the increase was primarily due to increases associated with public company compliance, equity compensation, and sales and marketing expenses associated with growth. Turning to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q1 2026 total $1.8 million, compared to $1.8 million at the end of Q4 2025. As of both dates, our primary revolving debt facility sweeps cash on a daily basis, which keeps our cash on hand relatively steady.

Speaker 4

Inventories grew from $69.7 million in Q4 2025 to $75.0 million, or an increase of $5.3 million in Q1 2026. This is driven by tungsten pricing increases. However, this is offset by related customer prepayments. Free cash flow from continuing operations was $4.6 million in Q1 2026 compared to $5.5 million in Q1 2025. Decrease was driven by changes in accounts receivable during the comparable periods. To supplement our financial results presented in accordance with GAAP, we use certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, because we believe these metrics provide investors with additional meaningful methods to evaluate certain aspects of our results.

Speaker 4

We define adjusted net income as net income less stock-based compensation and one-time non-recurring costs such as tax impacts of our reorganization, discontinued operations, the costs associated with the IPO, certain acquisition and transaction costs, severance and restructuring costs, and other non-recurring costs, and the income tax effects of such adjustments as applicable. Adjusted net income for Q1 2026 was $4.7 million, or $0.24 a share, compared to $1.9 million or $0.10 a share in Q1 2025. It is worth noting that a majority of the adjustments are associated with one-time reorganization related tax expense, IPO-related expenses, equity compensation, and the impact of discontinued operations. We define adjusted EBITDA as our net income plus interest, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and, as applicable for each period, stock-based compensation expense, and non-cash gains and losses on the sale of assets.

Speaker 4

Adjusted EBITDA also excludes certain non-recurring costs, such as costs associated with the IPO, certain acquisition and transaction costs, severance and restructuring costs, and other non-recurring costs. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2026 increased 105.7% to $9.2 million compared to $4.5 million in Q1 2025. The increase was driven by approximately $1 million in operational performance improvements and $3.7 million adjustment related to the change in fair value in mark-to-market of our company's strategic investment in tungsten mining company, EQ Resources Limited. Our investment originated as part of a multi-faceted strategic offtake agreement, and we're happy to report it has acted as an indirect hedge for the rapid price increases in the tungsten market. A full reconciliation between GAAP and adjusted net income, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, can be found in the quarterly report and our earnings release. I will now review our results from trailing 12 months, or TTM.

Speaker 4

For clarity, the following comparisons we've made between 12-month period ending April 3, 2026, and December 31, 2025. Revenue increased 4.8% to $211.3 million compared to $201.6 million in the prior TTM period. The increase was driven by growth from our CMC division from the ADG market. Gross profit increased 7.9% to $44.3 million, or 20.9% gross margin, compared to $41.0 million or 20.3% gross margin in the prior TTM period. The increase in gross profit and gross margin was driven by an increase in total revenue, primarily as a result of growth from our ADG market. Operating expenses increased 14.6% to $33.2 million compared to $28.9 million the prior TTM period. The increase was primarily related to expenses associated with the IPO, ongoing public company compliance, equity compensation, and sales and marketing expenses associated with growth.

Speaker 4

Net income was $4.0 million or $0.20 per share compared to $5.5 million or $0.28 per share in the prior TTM period. Adjusted net income increased to $16.2 million or $0.81 per share compared to $13.4 million or $0.67 per share in the TTM period. Adjusted EBITDA increased 19.8% to $28.6 million compared to $23.8 million in the prior TTM period. Subsequent to the end of Q1 2026, we completed a successful initial public offering of an aggregate of approximately 9.9 million shares of common stock at a public offering price of $14 per share. The aggregate net proceeds from the offering were $125.5 million. The company subsequently retired $17.8 million in term debt and paid $8.3 million in transaction-related appreciation rights costs, resulting in $99.4 million cash on hand from proceeds.

Speaker 4

Following the transaction, our plan is to put the money towards high return investments to drive organic growth and expand margins. Specifically, we're going to prioritize selling higher margin products, pursue operational improvements, expand our customized capacity, and secure additional long-term raw material supply. We also are going to pursue strategic M&A as opportunities arise to augment our organic growth, with a focus on growing our footprint, expanding our product portfolio, and adding new capabilities. Lastly, we're focused on maintaining a healthy balance sheet by keeping total leverage below 3.0, and at the same time, we plan to maximize our liquidity for growth and minimize debt servicing costs. Beyond investing for growth, we plan to help manage the recent surge in raw material pricing, in particular, the recent increases in tungsten prices.

Speaker 4

This has driven an increase in our inventories, and while we have had success securing customer prepayments to offset much of this impact, there's no guarantee this will continue, and pricing uncertainty remains in the critical material supply chains. I'd like to touch base on our backlog, where we've seen significant growth. Our firm order backlog grew to approximately $113.3 million at the end of Q1 2026, compared to $96.3 million at the end of Q4 2025, and approximately $74.7 million at the end of Q1 2025. Our ADG market backlog was up 133.9% at the end of Q1 2026 compared to the end of Q1 2025, driven by a series of new and growing programs such as CERN, strategic missile systems such as PrSM, Next Generation Interceptor, Hellfire, Javelin, and a mix of commercial and defense-related aerospace and radar programs.

Speaker 4

We also attribute approximately $13.4 million of the $38.6 million of backlog growth between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 to tungsten pricing impacts. While this has a meaningful impact on the business, tungsten revenues remain under 20% of the total business, and we have strong supply chain processes to help protect us from recent market pricing volatility. As global military spending increases, we expect our backlog to continue growing. Furthermore, we have yet to see the impact of the recent molybdenum import restrictions and expect to see further expansion of our backlog in the future. I'd like to wrap up by discussing revenue by segment and markets. Our CMC division revenue came in at $48.2 million and 20.3% gross margin in Q1 2026 compared to $39.1 million, 15.1% gross margin Q1 2025.

Speaker 4

While all end markets grew, ADG had the most significant growth, growing from $13.2 million to $19.3 million period-over-period, which drove a richer margin mix. Our EMP division revenue came in at $7.8 million and 26.4% gross margin in Q1 2026 compared to $7.3 million in 37% gross margin Q1 2025. The increase in revenue and reduction in margin percentage was driven by a mix shift towards industrial end market. Looking at our total business from an end market perspective, we saw the ADG market grow 26.6%, from $18 million in Q1 2025 to $22.8 million in Q1 2026. This led to ADG representing 40.7% of our total revenue in Q1 2026 as compared to 38.8% in Q1 2025. Growth was driven by increased sales volumes with key defense programs including Hellfire, Javelin, Sidewinder, Patriot missile system, KC-135 Stratotanker, and defense radar programs.

Speaker 4

Our industrial market saw 11.1% growth from $15.9 million in Q1 2025 to $17.6 million in Q1 2026, driven by higher sales of industrial microwave systems for tempering and drying, along with favorable pricing impacts associated with tungsten products. Our medical end markets have grown to 4.9%, from $10.2 million in Q1 2025 to $10.7 million in Q1 2026. The growth is driven by demand recovery from a long-term medical wire customer. Our smaller markets of semiconductor and electronics and energy both more than doubled in revenues from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, with the combined revenue increasing from $2.3 million to $4.9 million, with growth driven across multiple end customers. This concludes our prepared remarks. I'd like to now hand it back to the operator for questions and answers. Operator?

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our first question today is coming from Colin Canfield from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now live.

Speaker 2

Hey, thank you for the question. Maybe focusing on tungsten, if we can talk a little bit on tungsten demand signals and maybe talk through where the team is finding the best traction in broadening their defense prime relationships. Essentially, how should investors think about the company's ability to both add additional primes and the timing of that, as well as their ability to land and expand within defense primes and gain additional content on things like warheads and interceptors and the like?

Speaker 6

Thank you for the question. It was broken up a little bit, but I think you were asking mostly about tungsten, related to the primes and the sub-primes. We have seen a real increase in quoting of tungsten as the tungsten market really gets tight in terms of sourcing. One of the things we've been able to do over the recent few years is to find sources of tungsten and keep up with the actual demand of our customers. What we're doing presently is we are taking quotes, then sourcing the tungsten itself, and then once we lock that up, we go back to the customer to acknowledge the sales order, and we get a prepayment to help us cover the cost of that tungsten related to that.

Speaker 6

In terms of the missile systems and so forth for defense, a lot of that is molybdenum at this point, for Javelin, Hellfire, PAC-3. Those are mostly using molybdenum, and we have quoted source of material for that coming out of the U.S. Did you want to add anything to that, Blake?

Speaker 4

A few points here. Colin, you asked about the impact on demand. As of the end of Q1, of our $113 million backlog, roughly $44 million of it was tungsten business, which is up compared to prior periods. We've definitely seen a behavior of certain customers wanting to lock in price now to mitigate their risks, which has driven some of that. We've seen some of the increases from the price itself. We think of that $44 million, about $13 million is just price increase. As a reference point in 2025, our revenue for tungsten was $32 million, and we now sit at $44 million in tungsten backlog at the end of Q1. I think that covers it.

Speaker 2

Great. Okay. Thank you. Then maybe lesser focus, but if you can just talk a little bit, remind investors on your satellite exposure, and essentially where materials are getting pushed through the supply chain, what types of materials are getting pushed through the supply chain, and how you think about your ability to scale to essentially kind of the scaling infrastructure on orbit compute constantly. A lot of focus has kind of been geared towards maybe less so kind of the end product state, but where folks could play picks and shovels on satellite growth. Maybe if you can just do a quick refresher of what that looks like, what that growth curve looks like, and how that growth curve looks like, especially as we think about your ability to bid on the large on-orbit compute efforts that are being undertaken.

Speaker 6

Yeah. I'm not sure that we have seen a lot of orbit-to-compute quotes as of yet. A lot of what our materials are used for in satellites is for shielding of electronics. We have several programs that we're on where the molybdenum is used, I would call it, as a box to shield the electronics from electromagnetic pulse or from just gamma rays and so forth from the sun. We are on several programs with that as the case. Excuse me. We also have been doing quite a bit in additive manufacturing, 3D printing of metal for the satellite industry. We are currently doing prototypes for different types of thrusters, engine rockets, and so forth. We also have received recently an order from a couple of satellite companies to actually 3D print engines for satellites. Some of these satellite taxis, as they call them.

Speaker 6

That is something that is new and growing, and we see that as a real positive for us in the future. Do you have any additional on that, Mike?

Speaker 4

I think you hit it. Satellites are a new and growing emerging market for us. You're right. How you explained the products themselves is correct.

Speaker 2

Great. That's great. A lesson for me, but maybe if we could talk about kind of longer form M&A and essentially kind of how we think about what the business looks like over perhaps a 10, 15, 20-year roadmap. Then perhaps maybe talk about kind of how you think about your ability to identify, synergize well, not just with the microwave electronics business, but also the metals business. Essentially, where could you basically lengthen from soup to nuts, all the way from essentially powder to kind of end form state of kind of chips and other pieces of the microwave electronic package?

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. First, on the EMP side, on the microwave side, it's a very fractured industry. We are looking at several companies that we've been in touch with over 10 years, meeting with the owners and so forth, to get a relationship so that we are the acquirer of choice, if you will, when they're ready to do something. Like I said, it's a very fractured industry. We're most interested in niche-type technology that they would have or complementary higher frequencies, which we focus mostly on high power, low frequency. We are moving into a higher frequency, if you will, which is smaller form factors and so forth. If we can get those kind of capabilities, it'd be great. We're also looking at solid state technology, which we think will replace the magnetron tubes sometime in the future.

Speaker 6

Right now, I think it's more economical for the magnetron tubes, but as the solid state comes down, that is an area that we want to make sure we focus on. In terms of the CMC division, we're looking to add, on the front end, some capabilities in terms of processing concentrate into BTO, which is blue tungsten oxide, which is the chemical that we start with to make our tungsten powder. There's a gap in between that we need some processing capabilities on. We're focusing on that right now and how to add that to our quiver, if you will. On the other end of the process, once we have that powder and we've worked it and we've shaped it and we've done everything to it, we need to do final machining and fabrication.

Speaker 6

That's always, excuse me, our most constrained capacity is at that what we call last mile. Adding machining capability, fabrication capability, with people who are experts in tungsten and molybdenum, which is a rare thing to find, that is something that we're looking at also. In addition to all that, on both sides, we're looking to try to increase our footprint geographically, to perhaps have a foothold in Europe, which would benefit both divisions of the company. We're looking hard at that also. I think lastly, I just want to point out that the most recent acquisition we did was on the microwave side, where we acquired Symphony Microwave, which brought in some new technologies around drones.

Speaker 4

Radar detection.

Speaker 6

Radar detection of drones, anti-drone if you will, to help protect pipelines, military installations, and so forth from drone attacks. That particular technology has grown dramatically for us since we did the acquisition. Mike may have the actual numbers for that for you.

Speaker 4

Yeah. That's adding between $2 million and $4 million potential, on an annual basis alone on that drone technology with that one customer.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 4

We have other opportunities presenting themselves as well in the same space because of the technology.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks for the color.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Jim Mushidi from Needham & Company. Your line is now live.

Speaker 3

Hi. Thank you. Good morning. Hey, Mike, I may have missed it, but did you give the breakdown in backlog that came from ADG and commercial? Again, I may have missed it.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Sorry, Jim, let me get right to that. I apologize. I don't think I said that specifically, but I have it here for you. Yeah. The $113 million of backlog in Q1, $83.5 million was ADG, $29.7 million was our other markets, compared to $71.7 million and $24.6 million in Q4.

Speaker 3

On the ADG portion of the business, are you seeing concrete signs of activity increasing, of coming from munitions replenishment, or is that something that you anticipate you'll see as the year unfolds?

Speaker 4

Yeah. It's a good question. We've seen a little bit of that, and particularly with PrSM. I think it's quite public, the usage of the interceptors and some of the kinetic missiles in the last several months. PrSM being, I think, if I recall correctly, one of the most depleted in the recent months. We received the order for the 2026 production in December. We received the follow-on order for 2027, in March, which we would expect it to be towards the end of the year. Besides that, and to that point, tungsten almost tripled in that same time frame. From our perspective, our customer used their available funds and just had a fixed amount, and as the price went up, they got less units in the order. Definitely what looks like a very rapid response to the current situation.

Speaker 4

The actual replenishment, the appropriations, and budget process, we haven't really seen much of that yet. Even on the ordering side, it's been very limited. I think our impression is we're going to see some of this stuff start to bubble up later in the year, at least on the ordering side. Because we're not the long pole in the tent in the supply chain, again, a lot of these missiles take four years plus to build. We can typically produce our part of that in months. We don't anticipate to be at the forefront of the mad dash, but it will come our way. It's hard for us to predict exactly when it's going to come and in what fashion. We have seen a little bit of the Lockheed seven-year Patriot missile contract from last year just start to show up now.

Speaker 4

It really hasn't been full force. There's definitely a lag time in there. Given our position on the designs, it's coming our way. Pinning it down is very difficult.

Speaker 6

I will add that as Mike talked, actually, Raytheon's portion of the Patriot missile, which is a longer pole in a tent for us, we are getting orders on that for the ground-based radar detection systems that they employ. We've received two orders recently and expecting another larger order in July.

Speaker 3

The commercial business, my sense is that there's probably a lot of noise in the overall bookings activity that you're seeing there just as a result of the sharp rise in tungsten. I'm wondering, what are you guys seeing in terms of underlying demand in the various commercial markets that comprise that business?

Speaker 4

It's a good question. In semiconductor, on both sides, while again, it's a small piece of our business, from a percentage standpoint, we're seeing an increase both on the semi cap side of the business with a couple of key customers, as well as on the semiconductor component side of the business, where we're providing material sort of things such as heat sinks. We're seeing it on both sides of the business of the semiconductor market. Medical for us has been higher than anticipated this year, coming in with a couple key customers. You don't have necessarily a discrete demand signal that would explain why besides maybe the procurement forecast is a little bit low. We're seeing uplift there as well in both medical and semi.

Speaker 4

On the energy side, we're definitely starting to see some opportunities present themselves in where you would anticipate, which is the plan build out of some reactors that are going to take a few years to actually get put in place. With the end customer being Westinghouse, we have them direct on some MRO now. We're starting to see some of the suppliers for their next nuclear build that they've announced. They're coming in looking for some material quotes and specs on behalf of some component builds that are going into the reactor. We're starting to see that show up more in, I'd say, not necessarily orders and backlog now, but that nuclear opportunity for us is starting to manifest at least in pretty serious inquiries.

Speaker 6

We're also seeing an increase in industrial on the microwave side.

Speaker 4

Yeah

Speaker 6

systems, microwave generators that are being ordered. I think orders are up almost.

Speaker 4

Yeah

Speaker 6

what they had been last year. We think that that electrification of manufacturing-type processes is continuing to grow, and I think we're well-positioned on that.

Speaker 4

Yeah, to that point, our revenue mix has been 85/15 CMC/EMP, but our backlog mix is actually 80/20 at this point. Reflecting what Peter just referenced, that we're seeing some of our investments around sales and the impacts of the acquisition of Symphony are driving the backlog faster for EMP, which positions that business for a pretty strong year.

Speaker 3

Question from me. Given what you're seeing in the business coming out of Q1, we're pretty far obviously into Q2, any thoughts on the seasonality of the business second half versus first half that we should be thinking about in terms of the activity level in the business now?

Speaker 4

Yeah, that's a good question. Our outlook for the year is similar short of, we expect upside because tungsten pricing and things are very dynamic there, so it's hard to pin down how much people have ordered ahead versus it's really going to be ongoing demand for the balance of the year. From at least our first half of this year, we expect to be very consistent what we anticipated, maybe slightly above. I'd say consistent Q1, Q2, relatively speaking. Of the backlog that we have now, of the $113, about 95% of it is scheduled in the year. Considering what we've done in revenue in Q1, what we have for backlog in place now, we're in a pretty good position for the year. I think that puts us somewhere in the 60%-70% range. We're at our initial expectations going through the year.

Speaker 4

Seasonality, I wouldn't call it driven by a particular procurement cycle. We do have some customers and some products, such as when we get into some of our forgings for the aerospace market. Those have some pretty high price tags on them that they're not consistent quarter to quarter. We would expect to see some variability just driven by, we may see $2 million-$3 million one quarter and $1 million the next, and then back $3 million again. Very valuable business, but it is not a steady stream quarter to quarter. I think we're in pretty good position for the balance of the year at this point.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Austin Lola from Kenicor Ingenuity. Your line is now live.

Operator

Hi, good morning. Just my first question here. I think that you mentioned in the remarks the plan to introduce higher margin products. On the CMC side, I was just wondering what those types of products might be. Are those 3D printed parts? Are those parts made out of niobium C103? Any color there would be helpful.

Speaker 4

Quick answer is yes to both because they're one and the same, at least in some recent orders we've seen.

Operator

Yeah.

Speaker 4

I think one way to think about the margin shift and higher margin products for us is really what type of products are we producing. The more we get into machined and near net shape type products, the higher the margins go up, creating more value for our customers. That has a high correlation to the ADG markets as it does with energy as well. We see that additional higher margin product sales coming from us continuing to penetrate into the defense supply chain, having success there, and in growing our mix of business to where we're doing more customized work, be it engineering services leading into an end product from the microwave side or us building to a material and physical spec for a defense or aerospace or energy end market product.

Speaker 4

It is a reflection of both our sales strategy and the nature of the end product that we'll be making for our customers.

Operator

Okay. Just between the two businesses, do you expect a more significant revenue step up in Q2, Q3 from EMP? Are there specific deliveries there that you expect? Do you expect more significant revenue growth within CMC?

Speaker 4

In Q2, we expect EMP to have a higher relative growth versus Q1 than CMC. This is part of our expectation for the year, in part by how the backlog profiled out late last year. It's not anything new for us internally that we have this step-up coming in Q2 and the out quarters.

Operator

Great. I'll pass it back there. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Chip Moore from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now live.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question and congratulations on getting to this call. I guess for me, maybe you could talk about the gross margin expansion opportunity a little bit more, those key levers you discussed. Maybe walk us through that a little bit more and timelines of some of those benefits rolling through. I think you called out some efforts here to increase throughput for CMC, and Mike, you just talked about some of that accretion potential as you mix to higher value solutions. Just maybe help us frame out where margins could go and over what sort of time frames. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yeah. We have internal plans to get close to 30 points in margin within five years or at five years. That requires roughly a 10% increase for average margins coming off our 2025 baseline for both divisions. How we get there is different by division. On the EMP side, it's going to be a mixture of new product introduction and more products that have engineering services tied to the front end of it. We think that something's very achievable. The business has had time periods in the past where it's been achieved, and mix has played a big part in that. We think with the defense replenishment of the missiles and other aspects of the defense anticipated budget increases, that that will feed into EMP as well as the continued and increased expected investments into nuclear fusion and fission. On the CMC side, a bit different.

Speaker 4

We think we have a fair amount of gains in just operational performance. We're already starting to see that, saw a little bit in Q1. We're pretty confident we'll see some more progress throughout the year. As I referenced, we've brought in a pretty talented third party to help us accelerate throughput. Specifically, they're working on one of our factories that happens to have a lot of the missile growth around NGI tied to that size production. To the extent that we don't have design timeline pushouts or things of that nature, what we'd see there is just the speed of production going up and our average cost per widget going down in simple terms. We do think that there's just on that aspect of it's speeding up the line, we'll get some operating leverage.

Speaker 4

I think we'll see some of that this year, as well as the mix of those products are expected to be a little bit heavier in terms of margin. That's kind of near term, but overall, our investments in both staffing and third-party investments around improving operations in our CMC factories have been significant. We brought on at least three key talented personnel from multinational manufacturers in metals and semiconductors and so forth. We're seeing quick wins with these folks influencing the operations. We think we're going to get some traction there faster than probably anticipated. Volume will be volume. As it comes, we'll get some leverage. The mix we've seen so far has been in line with what we expected.

Speaker 4

As we go from 40% ADG to 60% ADG, we'd expect to see three to four points of gross margin lift just from a mix shift. Hope that helps answer the question.

Speaker 1

Yeah. No, that was great. Very thorough. Appreciate it. Very helpful. For my follow-up, maybe around capital allocation and the balance sheet, I guess now that you're in a nice net cash position, any organic investment areas maybe quicker hitting that you've held back to think about, and then any actions to think about in terms of refinancing or debt facilities?

Speaker 4

Yeah. To start with investments. Our business is dynamic. While we're proud of growth in backlog, some of our opportunities are shifting a bit. We've already committed to investing additional capital for some space opportunities, specifically in 3D printing with C103, that we hadn't planned on in the year, but did manifest here in the last, I think, 90 days. I think it's $2.5 million of additional CapEx spend with a very rapid return. Other areas we're starting to see manifest against mix specific. We may end up investing a little more than we had planned just for reallocation of capital towards machining. Those are just normal ebbs and flows of managing capital. We haven't seen a large change in our capital plan so far. Again, we're 37 days from an IPO, we've been a bit focused there.

Speaker 6

Yeah. We are exploring more and more offtake agreements for tungsten, source tungsten around the world, which will require some prepaying. We are allocating some of that cash for those purposes to either help expand the amount of concentrate will be available to us or prepayment for concentrate on those mines in particular.

Speaker 4

Yeah. I think you had a question about debt in there as well.

Speaker 6

Refinancing.

Speaker 4

Yeah, refinancing. As I referenced, we paid down $17.8 million of term debt from proceeds. Our term debt right now is, well, I think $9.5 as of now, after we've paid those down. We're going to refinance that later in the year. One large consolidation of our banking relationships. Right now, we have some fragmented banking and debt relationships. The $9.5 is spread around a few spots. We're starting that process here in June, with expectation by year-end to, A, consolidate what term debt we have left. B, give us some efficiencies in our treasury functions.

Speaker 4

While we have what we think or feel like is a fair amount of flexibility today, see if we can expand that as well to help navigate any kinds of ebbs and flows in the critical materials market and/or us executing our strategy long term. That will be happening here in the back half of the year. We don't anticipate taking on any additional debt from that. Just to optimize interest expense, we have paid down our revolving debt, but we can draw upon that at any time. We think that net will save us about $2 million of interest payments just by having that paid off until we need to pull on it. Of course, we have some additional cash in the bank that we're accruing some interest, which will be helpful on interest, at least in the near term. Yeah, we have a strategy.

Speaker 4

We're executing that and going to kick it off here in June. Hopefully, have to have it done sometime in Q4.

Speaker 1

Excellent. Thanks. Sorry if I could sneak one last one in. Just any update on government grant opportunities? Anything percolating out there, newer? Thanks.

Speaker 6

We are in discussions on a regular basis with different departments of the government. They have slowed things down, especially on the grant side. We don't have anything anticipated at the moment. As I said, we are in discussions with a number of different departments.

Speaker 1

Thanks very much.

Speaker 5

Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. If you have additional questions, you may contact Elmet Group's investor relations team at elmt@gateway-grp.com. Now I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Anania for his closing remarks.

Speaker 6

Thank you again, everyone, for joining us today. Before we wrap up, I just want to reiterate some previous remarks regarding our opportunity and why we're excited to have our business in the public markets. As a U.S.-owned supplier of highly engineered critical materials and components and high-power systems, we are happily positioned to benefit from several market forces. We have leveraged our difficult to replicate asset base to support key U.S. defense programs over the last decade, which will continue to grow as we qualify on additional Department of Defense programs, given the robust A, D, and G market today. We are also one of the last remaining U.S.-based facilities with capabilities and capacity to provide key components for mission-critical systems, with most of our competitors owned by foreign entities.

Speaker 6

As export restrictions on tungsten and molybdenum, particularly from China, which controls most of the world's supply, make it significantly difficult for players without a dedicated non-PRC supply chain to source critical materials at a reasonable cost like we have at the moment. We are seeing increased activity across all our end markets, driven by multiple mega trends from increased global defense spending to reshoring of critical manufacturing. Finally, I'd like to say thank you to all of our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. Operator?

Speaker 5

Thank you for joining us today for the Elmet Group Co.'s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.

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