Firan Technology Group Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 9, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: FTG said Q2 2026 was a record quarter across nearly every metric, with record bookings of CAD 86.7 million, record revenue of CAD 52.7 million, record adjusted EBITDA of CAD 10.5 million, and record adjusted net earnings of CAD 5.1 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company’s backlog rose to CAD 193.5 million and book-to-bill was 1.64x, supported in part by orders tied to two large classified defense programs that management said are multi-year opportunities.
  • Positive Sentiment: Profitability improved meaningfully, with adjusted EBITDA margin rising to 19.9% and gross margin expanding to 36.5%, driven by higher volume and operational improvements at several facilities, especially FTG Aerospace Calgary and U.S. sites.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management emphasized continued efforts to debottleneck production through staffing, training, and equipment upgrades, while noting Toronto still faces equipment constraints and that Hyderabad needs certifications and customer approvals before contributing materially.
  • Negative Sentiment: FTG warned that tariffs are raising input costs for its circuits business, with the total impact expected to be in the CAD millions in 2026, while a new union contract at Circuits Toronto is also still under negotiation.
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Earnings Conference Call
Firan Technology Group Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to the FTG Q2 2026 analyst call. All lines have been placed on mute. There will be a question and answer session following the call. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brad Bourne, President and Chief Executive Officer of FTG. Mr. Bourne, you may proceed.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Thank you. Good morning. I'm Brad Bourne, President and CEO of Firan Technology Group Corporation, or FTG. Also on the call today is Drew Knight, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we go any further, I must caution you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the current expectations of management of the company and inherently involve numerous risks and uncertainties, known and unknown, including economic factors in the company's industry generally. The preceding list is not exhaustive of all possible factors. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual events and results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements made by the company. The listener is cautioned to consider these and other factors carefully when making decisions with respect to the company and not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The company does not undertake and has no specific intention to update any forward-looking statements, written or oral, that may be made from time to time by or on its behalf, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Our second quarter was a record quarter for FTG on virtually every metric. We had record revenues, record earnings, record bookings, and record backlog with continued strong end market demand. More specifically, in our second quarter of 2026, we achieved the following. Bookings were CAD 86.7 million in the quarter, our best-ever bookings in a single quarter, and an 89% increase over Q2 2025, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.64 to 1. This included additional bookings on the two classified defense programs we have previously mentioned. To be clear, bookings were strong across our business, not just on these two programs.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The quarter end backlog stood at CAD 193.5 million, a 30% rise from the previous year end. Revenue was CAD 52.7 million, again, our best ever quarter, and an 8.2% increase over Q2 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 10.5 million in Q2 2026, a record high, up 20% from CAD 8.7 million in Q2 last year. Adjusted net earnings were CAD 5.1 million in Q2 this year, an increase of 44% from Q2 last year and another record for FTG. This once again demonstrates that top-line growth drives profitability at FTG. Free cash flow was positive CAD 2.7 million in our second quarter, and we maintained a strong balance sheet with net debt down to CAD 2.9 million or 0.1x trailing 12-month EBITDA. Most of our debt is government loans.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Other accomplishments in our second quarter included, in 2025, our circuits business qualified for two large-scale classified defense programs, significant orders have been placed for these two programs during Q2 this year. Only one of these programs had any revenue in our second quarter, it was not significant. FTG Aerospace Calgary continued to benefit from efforts to certify and sell its product portfolio globally and had profitable results again in the quarter. I will talk more on this later. Our efforts to reduce our exposure to U.S. tariff risks continue, in Q2 2026, our efforts continued to sell outside the U.S. Deliveries to China's C919 program continue. In addition, deliveries to the new De Havilland Canada 515 aerial firefighting aircraft started to ramp up. More deliveries on both these programs are expected to continue in the second half of 2026.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

We also made more progress on moving non-U.S. customer orders to our non-U.S. sites to further reduce our exposure to any tariff risk. Finally, we had some larger orders for circuit boards from a Canadian customer. Offsetting this was continued strong demand coming from the U.S. market. Drew will provide more details on our second quarter results shortly. Let me turn to some external items. Our end-market demand remains strong. Airbus is targeting 870 aircraft deliveries this year, up about 10% from last year. More importantly, they're looking to ramp to over 1,000 aircraft annually in the next few years. Airbus has a backlog of over 8,000 orders, which is over a decade worth of production at current production rates. At Boeing, they shipped 600 planes last year, up from 350 in 2024.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Looking forward, Boeing has plans to ramp their production to over 800 planes annually in the next few years. Boeing's backlog is about 6,000 planes, so also over a decade's worth of orders at current production rates. In the business jet market, Bombardier reported a high single-digit shipment increase last year. They're also pushing hard to add a defense component to their business, they've had some success to date in selling their business jets for defense applications, including a NATO award this week for surveillance mission aircraft. In Q1 this year, Bombardier sales were up 5%. In the helicopter market, Bell Helicopter reported a 20% increase in revenues last year, driven by increased defense programs. In their first quarter of 2026, revenues were up 9%, again, on increased defense activity. All of this bodes well for us as we look to future demand in the coming years.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Defense spending is expected to increase going forward. The U.S. budget request for next year is for a 50% increase in spending to about CAD 1.5 trillion. There are new commitments from all NATO members, including Canada, to ramp defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, with another 1.5% for defense infrastructure. Canada increased their defense spending in 2025-2026 to 2% of GDP. All of this indicates significant increases in defense budgets for all European countries and Canada. The recent creation of a defense investment agency in Canada to accelerate and streamline future defense procurement activity is positive for the industry here. Looking at the longer term, Boeing's most recent 20-year forecast for commercial aircraft shows significant long-term industry growth, it continued to show 20% of all new aircraft deliveries going to China and close to 40% to Asia, as has been the case in all of their recent forecasts.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

A recent business jet market forecast from Honeywell similarly predicts growth in this market of 5% this year and 3% annually over the next decade. As we have said for many years, FTG's goal is to participate in all segments of the aerospace and defense markets as each moves through their independent business cycles. It is not often all segments are growing, as is the case right now. Beyond all this, let me give you a quick update on some key metrics for FTG for our second quarter of 2026. First, as already noted, the leading indicator of business is our bookings or new orders. Our bookings were almost CAD 87 million in the quarter. This resulted in a backlog of over CAD 193 million at quarter end, even after record shipments in the quarter. Q2 sales were CAD 52.7 million, which is up 8% over Q2 last year.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

In our aerospace business, sales were up 21% in Q2 to CAD 17.1 million compared to Q2 last year. Sales in Toronto, Tianjin, and Calgary were up, while activity in Chatsworth was down in the year due to timing of some orders. The growth in aerospace was in spite of some challenges on our C919 program in China, where we had to deal with some sizable customer concerns and returns, including some shipments that arrived at the customer with water damage to the shipping containers. In this case, the good news was when we took the product back and inspected and tested them, none of the product itself was damaged. This took a lot of time and energy for our plants in Tianjin and Toronto to support our customer and get the product returned successfully to them, and still, they had a strong quarter.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Calgary saw strong revenues from hardware sales, which were mostly Satcom radios delivered in Canada and the U.S., but also from our second delivery of Edge+ WQARs in Asia. Data sales were also strong due to Satcom radio data, but also an increase in weather data for NOAA. Licensing revenues were, again, from our Satcom radio, which were very strong in the quarter. On the circuits side of our business, sales in the quarter were CAD 34.3 million, up 1.9% over Q2 last year. Our two largest sites were down slightly in the quarter, but the other sites more than offset this. Circuits Toronto was down to an operational disruption mid-quarter, and Circuits Minnetonka was down due to a product mix shift towards higher technology product and by labor constraints.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

By quarter end, Minnetonka had made strong progress on staffing, which will benefit them in the second half of the year. On the positive side, our Circuits Fredericksburg site almost doubled their revenues in our second quarter with work transferred from Minnetonka and with no change in their staffing levels. They truly had an amazing quarter. While our two largest sites did not grow, Fredericksburg was up over 90%, Chatsworth was up 18%, and our Haverhill site was up 15%. Overall at FTG, our top five customers accounted for 51.2% of the total revenue in Q2 2026. This compares to 52.8% last year. Airlines were three of our top customers in the year due to the FLYHT acquisition. Also interesting to note, of the top 10 customers, five are customers shared between Circuits and Aerospace, and two are former FLYHT customers.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Given the actions of the new administration in the U.S. of implementing tariffs, it's also good to see that two of our top 10 customers are outside the U.S., with one in Canada and one in China, and another six have operations outside the U.S. While on this topic, 70.3% of FTG sales are to U.S.-based customers in 2026. This includes sales by our U.S. sites, as well as sales from sites in Canada or China. This compares to 69.7% last year. While sales grew by 10% in the U.S., they also grew by 4% in Asia and by 44% in Canada, as we benefit from previous efforts to expand globally, including things like our content on C919 aircraft in China and acquiring FLYHT with sales globally. Sales decreased in Europe by 8% in the quarter.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Sales outside the U.S. are helpful in the event of any tariff that the U.S. might impose on our non-U.S.-based sites. Our goal is to continue to grow our non-U.S. revenue for our non-U.S. sites. In Q2 2026, 35.8% of total revenues came from our aerospace business, compared to 32% last year. I'd now like to turn the call over to Drew, who will summarize our financial results for our second quarter of 2026, and afterwards I will talk about some key priorities we're working on. Drew?

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

Good morning, everyone. I would like to provide some additional detail on our financial performance for Q2, starting with revenue and gross margin. On sales of CAD 52.7 million, FTG achieved a gross margin of CAD 19.2 million, or 36.5% in Q2 2026, compared to CAD 15.9 million or 32.6% on sales of CAD 48.7 million in Q2 2025. The increase in gross margin dollars is based on top-line growth, while the gross margin rate increased due to operational improvements in multiple facilities, despite unfavorable FX variances. The improved profitability at FTG Aerospace Calgary and several U.S. sites has a substantial impact on consolidated margin rates. FTG Aerospace Calgary continues to benefit from its ongoing licensing revenue that resumed in 2026, as well as repeat hardware sales of its AFIRS Edge product. The U.S. sales improved margins via increased throughput with limited added resources. Moving on to SG&A.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

SG&A expense was CAD 8.4 million, or 15.9% of sales in Q2 2026, as compared to CAD 6.8 million or 14.1% of sales in the prior year. The increase of CAD 1.55 million during Q2 was primarily due to performance compensation tied to profitability, amortization of deferred financing costs, and some corporate admin costs of the new leadership team. Now speaking to R&D. R&D costs for Q2 2026 were CAD 2.8 million or 5.3% of sales, compared to CAD 2.4 million or 5.0% of revenue in 2025. R&D efforts include product and process improvements at the Circuit segment, as well as Aerospace segment product development and process improvements. Regarding foreign exchange, FTG is exposed to currency risk through transactions, also assets and liabilities recorded in foreign currencies, and finally from foreign subsidiaries translation of financial statements for consolidation.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

The average exchange rate experienced in Q2 2026 was 1.373 on the U.S. dollar as compared to 1.407 in 2025, which equates to a weakening of the U.S. dollar by 2.4%. This hurts results for FTG. Moving on to profitability and EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA, as detailed in the MD&A, was CAD 10.5 million for Q2 2026 or 19.9% of sales, compared to CAD 8.7 million or 17.9% of sales for Q2 2025. As noted with gross margins, the year-over-year comparison of adjusted EBITDA is improved CAD 1.78 million over Q2 2025 as a result of growing the top line organically.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

Operational improvements in the U.S. plants and Aero Calgary revenue streams added in 2026 for Edge+ and licensing. Regarding earnings, for Q2 2026, FTG recorded net earnings of CAD 5.0 million or CAD 0.20 per diluted share as compared to CAD 3.5 million or CAD 0.14 per diluted share in Q2 2025.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

The earnings comparison to prior year was improved by favorable income taxes based on the distribution of profits in 2026 being more widespread. Speaking to income taxes, Q2 2026 was tax inefficient, with a few non-deductible losses unable to reduce taxable income in profitable business units. However, this inefficiency improved year-over-year. FTG incurred a CAD 200,000 withholding tax hit on the repatriation of some cash from a foreign subsidiary. I would like to remind everyone that FTG continues to have substantial tax losses available to offset future income, and the accounting benefit of these losses has not been recognized in our financial statements. These tax loss carryforwards are located in both the U.S.A. and Canada, with the Canadian losses recently acquired in the acquisition of FLYHT in December 2024.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

Regarding our financial position, FTG maintains a strong balance sheet with our net debt position as of Q2 2026 at CAD 2.9 million as compared sequentially to net debt of CAD 4 million as of Q1. This leverage ratio represents 0.09% of trailing 12 months EBITDA. Free cash flow in Q2 2026 was CAD 2.7 million, as compared to negative CAD 5.5 million in Q2 2025. Capital expenditures were CAD 0.9 million, as compared to CAD 1.3 million in 2025. Going forward, we expect CapEx to be closer to FTG's long-term target of 3% of revenue, notwithstanding any significant capacity increases. As of the end of Q2 2026, the corporation's primary sources of liquidity totaled CAD 85 million, consisting of working capital of CAD 61.8 million and CAD 23.3 million of unused credit facilities. FTG has plans to improve cash efficiency and minimize stranded cash in various business units.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

Accounts receivable days were 60 at the end of Q2, up from 55 at the recent year-end due to timing of a couple of customer payments and top-line revenue growth. Inventory days were 112 at the end of Q2 2026, up from 105 at 2025 year-end to address order fulfillment in upcoming months. Accounts payable days outstanding were 57 at the end of Q2 2026, as compared to 58 at year-end. Transitioning to our future outlook, FTG's book-to-bill ratio for Q2 2026 was 1.64 to one. We enter Q3 2026 with a record backlog of CAD 193.5 million, of which approximately 66% is expected to be converted to revenue in the next 12 months. The new business activities in both the aerospace and defense industries are strong and continue to accelerate. Both the circuits business and aerospace business are increasing throughput and winning their share of customer RFPs.

Drew Knight
CFO at FTG

Last quarter, we noted program awards for two substantial classified defense programs. We have since received the opening POs for delivery in 2026, though these orders are only a fraction of the annualized volumes. I should note that FTG's reported backlog only includes POs received and does not include program awards with estimated volumes. As we approach the midpoint of Q3, we are focused on managing cash flow and improving operational efficiency and continuing with the Aero Calgary revenue plan, which is already bearing fruit. I should note that our complete set of quarterly filings are available on sedarplus.ca or on the FTG website. With that, I would like to turn things back over to Brad. Brad?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Thanks, Drew. Let me delve into some important items for the future of FTG that will continue to build on our past accomplishments. We will continue to pursue growth in the defense market. As noted previously, we expect defense spending to continue to grow in Canada, in the U.S., and in NATO. We have seen some good success on some new classified programs in the U.S. last year, we're pursuing more new programs in 2026. We are seeing volumes ramp up in many areas, including electronics for various weapon and electronic warfare systems. Beyond this, we will look for opportunities outside the U.S. as well. The NATO budget was about a third of the U.S. budget a decade ago and is two-thirds today, it's definitely a market of interest to us.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

As Canada ramps its defense spending and its commitment to NATO, we are hopeful that it will create new opportunities for FTG sites outside the U.S. After the U.S. and NATO, the next biggest defense market is India, as we get our site established there, we will look to capture some market share in this market too. We will look to capture more work in the commercial aerospace market and grow as volumes ramp up. As part of this, we will look for ways to increase our activity with Airbus as they are the stronger performer right now. To do this, we will leverage our Canadian and China sites. Given the uncertainty regarding tariffs from the U.S., we will look to continue to diversify revenue streams for our non-U.S. sites.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Some of the items I already mentioned will assist in this, it will remain a priority action for us. We will increase our sales staff outside the U.S. in 2026 to help drive this growth. Tariffs are now impacting input costs in our circuits business. This is because a lot of materials used in our manufacturing processes originate outside of North America. The impact is highest for our U.S. sites, but Toronto's also impacted where materials ship via the U.S. to Canada. We estimate the overall cost impact to be in the CAD millions in 2026. We have started to work with our customers to pass on these increased costs to them and to the end users. For our circuits business, we are seeing significant cost increases on input costs, mostly driven by circuit board demand related to AI data centers.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Costs are moving up fast. Again, we are working towards passing these costs on to our customers, but it is tough to keep up with the rate of cost increases we are seeing. Also, our collective agreement for our unionized staff and our FTG Circuits Toronto facility expires in July. Negotiations are ongoing. We are hopeful of a successful conclusion, but nothing is firm until a contract is ratified by the members. We will continue to take steps to create value from our acquisition of FLYHT last year. As of December 1 last year, we have renamed the business FTG Aerospace Calgary, as we amalgamated it legally into FTG. The amalgamation was done to possibly enable us to use the FLYHT tax losses beyond just our operation in Calgary. To be clear, we do not have certainty that this will be possible.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

In the Calgary business itself, we believe we are now well-positioned to have a strong year as a result of our product certification and STC efforts last year. We are seeing strong demand for all three products. Our pipeline looks robust. The licensing revenue on our SATCOM radio product has returned and should be reasonably consistent going forward. The licensed product ends up on Airbus aircraft. We know the demand is strong. We are working to become the manufacturer of this product for the licensee to capture additional margin from this product. If things proceed as anticipated, this will benefit us in 2027 and beyond. We are looking to manufacture the SATCOM radio product in our Chatsworth, California facility. The production area is set up. Parts are on order. This should help get our Chatsworth facility ramped up going forward.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The AFIRS Edge WQAR has the key STCs in place. With our first few orders or few deliveries behind us, we are quoting many new opportunities in a number of geographic jurisdictions. We are starting to manufacture this product in our Tianjin plant to enable us to capture this margin as well. We expect sales of their weather product to ramp up in the second half of 2026 as well, with our contract with NOAA in the U.S. Our contract with Met Office in England was unfortunately canceled in Q2, not for reasons related to the product. While disappointing, we continue to see strong potential for this product elsewhere, including some military applications. In Q2, we installed our first kit for this product on a WestJet aircraft. We expect to have our STC for the 737 MAX in Q3 this year.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Once approved and installed, there will be a recurring revenue stream as we provide real-time weather and water vapor readings to NOAA. We also expect to install further units with WestJet through the balance of this year, each incrementally increasing our recurring data revenue potential. These actions should enable FTG Aerospace Calgary to be a positive addition to FTG and further mitigate the risks from U.S. tariffs. We opened our aerospace facility in Hyderabad, India, last week. Our decision to expand geographically was partly us looking for an insurance policy against anything negative happening in our China operations, but it was also partly to expand into a new region with growth potential.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

As we analyzed our options, we concluded India was a very cost-effective place for manufacturing, with Prime Minister Modi's Make in India policy, coupled with significant defense spending, it would be an ideal place to operate and a place where we can serve our existing Western customers, but also penetrate the Indian aerospace and defense market. We selected Hyderabad as it has an aerospace hub, primarily focused on manufacturing. After our grand opening last week, we attended an aerospace conference in Hyderabad and came away with some exciting new customer opportunities. While we held our grand opening, we are still sourcing some necessary equipment to be ready to go. Our estimated total investment is forecast to be approximately CAD 2 million to CAD 3 million. While not the original intent, we believe this initiative could also help mitigate any negative impact from U.S. tariffs.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Through the balance of this year, we will be staffing up and training and building some initial products, but as expected, the intercompany activity, no real incremental benefit to FTG before 2027. We continue to assess possible corporate development opportunities that could fit with either of our businesses. We have a few areas of interest, including establishing a footprint in Europe, growing our presence in India, or expanding our technology in a few areas. In our second quarter, three circuit board manufacturing companies were sold in Europe, but none of them to us. TTM bought two companies, but neither had a strong focus in aerospace and defense. Somacis bought Group ACB, which is a multi-site business focused on aerospace and defense, but their operations are primarily in France, and this is not a jurisdiction we are keen on.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Finally, as a reminder, our third quarter is seasonally a bit softer due to increased vacations and lost production days. We estimate about one week or 8% of lost production in the quarter. With a focus on operational excellence in all parts of FTG, our strong financial performance in 2025 and the first half of 2026, our recent acquisitions, and our key sales wins, we are confident we are on a strong long-term growth trajectory. This concludes our presentation. I thank you for your attention. I would now like to open the phones for any questions. Vincent.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that will be star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two. Your first question comes from Nicholas Boychuk from ATB Cormark Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Boychuk
Nicholas Boychuk
Analyst at ATB Cormark Capital Markets

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Brad, you mentioned a lot about the outlook that you have now and this increased booking backlog activity. What's the confidence you have to deliver given the existing footprint and labor availability? Are there any bottlenecks or things that might prevent that from flowing through over the coming 12 months to 24 months?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah, for sure. There's always challenges and bottlenecks and such. It's different across the sites, and I guess all sites but one, it's about staffing and training and getting people operating equipment more hours a day. For every site except FTG Circuits Toronto, it's about that. I tried to allude to it, but one of the keys is FTG Circuits Minnetonka. We've been struggling to make that happen, but we didn't see the result in Q2, but we saw significant improvement in staffing in Q2, which I believe is going to help us going forward in Q3 and beyond. That was really good to see. The other sites, to their credit, Chatsworth grew 18% with a handful, a couple of staff additions. FTG Circuits Fredericksburg grew almost 100% with no staff additions. Haverhill grew 15% with no staff additions.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The sites are really performing well, and we will add staff as necessary to support future demand. Finally, the last one on the Circuits side, our FTG Circuits Toronto, for sure, we have some production bottlenecks that are equipment related. We're already running 24/7, so that's not an opportunity to just run it longer. We're working to address the equipment bottlenecks. We have orders in place for some expansion in our plating line. We have orders in place for some drills to expand our capacity there. Our only challenge, which might delay it a little bit, but it's just the lead time on equipment is pushing it out a bit just given the overall demand in the circuits industry, but everything's on order. We are hoping that we can add CAD 20 million plasting capacity by the end of this year.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

On the cockpit product side, it's all about staffing, and we're doing a good job supporting our demand right now. As I talked about, we just opened our FTG Aerospace Hyderabad facility. That's adding another CAD 20 million of capacity there. I'm giving you the world's longest answer, but at the end of it all, I think we are doing the things to be able to support the demand we see for the coming couple of years.

Nicholas Boychuk
Nicholas Boychuk
Analyst at ATB Cormark Capital Markets

Okay, perfect. No, that's great color. Thank you. As those start to play through, how are you thinking about margins evolving? I know you're obviously adding this extra equipment to remove some of these bottlenecks. Where could either gross or EBITDA margins, as that operating leverage starts to play through, really go here?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. I don't know. There's my challenge. I had a long-term target at FTG. I'm going to say these are mostly internal targets that I could get to a 30% margin, but I've blown way past that, and I have a target of getting to a 20% EBITDA, and we're basically there now. I've run out of targets. I've got to come up with some new targets.

Nicholas Boychuk
Nicholas Boychuk
Analyst at ATB Cormark Capital Markets

Sure.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

At the end of it, we are a manufacturer. We've got a bunch of fixed costs. If we grow the top line, margins expand. That I know for sure. We keep demonstrating that. We can perform efficiently and productively. Obviously, we work on doing that wherever we can. Top line drives bottom line at FTG, so if we can grow the top line, margins will expand. I honestly don't have a target for you today.

Nicholas Boychuk
Nicholas Boychuk
Analyst at ATB Cormark Capital Markets

Okay, that's fair. Then the last one from me. On these classified programs, is there any color you can share? I appreciate that the end application and the use case of some of this hardware may not be even known to you guys, but in terms of either the scale of the contracts, the velocity with which these orders are going to come through, or even the tenure, is there anything that you're aware of that you can share so we can kind of wrap our heads around how impactful these two contracts, in particular, are?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. I guess on the first part, just to be clear, I truly do not know the end application, so can't share anything on that. You didn't ask about that. In terms of the financial impact of these, they are both gigantic. Annual circuit board spend is CAD 50 million-CAD 100 million. Obviously, I cannot support that full spend, nor would the customers spend it all with one supplier. We're going to get a portion of that, basically whatever we can support. We're early days. One of them, we have orders, we've shipped nothing yet. We're actually still waiting for the customer to finalize designs. We built some prototypes last year, but they're doing back-end redesign. We're just waiting. Can't really begin to guess where that one's going to end up. The other one started production, but low numbers, nothing meaningful in Q2.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

That one's in our Toronto facility. I don't know. It's going to depend on how fast they ramp, and to be fair, how we perform. We're working to try to make sure we perform well for both of them and get our fair share of the pie. TBD, the exact timing on how this ramps up, and after that, for sure, they're both multi-year programs, five plus years.

Nicholas Boychuk
Nicholas Boychuk
Analyst at ATB Cormark Capital Markets

Okay. That's really great color, guys. Thanks so much for the time.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Please go ahead.

Steve Hansen
Steve Hansen
Analyst at Raymond James

Yeah, thanks for the time, guys. I just want to follow up on the defense programs, Brad. We obviously saw a step change in the backlog and the bookings. I presume some of that references the new POs coming on from these programs. Is there any sort of color you can give us in terms of how you expect these programs to ramp or at what pace through the back half of even just this year? That'd be the first step.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. As I say, there's a little bit of uncertainty right now. One of them, we're waiting for a redesign. You just never know how fast that will happen. Just starting with the backlog, our backlog ramp, CAD 40 million. Probably half of that was related to these two programs, approximately. It's significant in terms of the orders. They're indicating this would be due basically through this year into early next year. That gives you a bit of timing on it, that timing can move. I have learned this many times. When there's a new program and it's trying to get into production, typically, it doesn't move faster than you expect. Typically, you end up with a handful of delays because something goes wrong or something doesn't work quite the way they expected. They're moving aggressively. The customers are moving aggressively on this.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Clearly, they're being driven to get it to market as fast as they can. Again, there's just a little bit of uncertainty.

Steve Hansen
Steve Hansen
Analyst at Raymond James

No, that's fair. Just switching gears a little bit, I know you talked about the broader corp dev backdrop and some of the transactions that took place in Europe. I know you've been on the hunt there. Could you perhaps maybe just describe how your pipeline looks at this point, or maybe even characterize your efforts to search out potential partners thus far?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. Sure. It depends how you determine a target. There's probably, at the end of it all, I'm going to say roughly 10 companies that are of interest to me in that they're in Europe, they're in possibly a reasonable jurisdiction of Europe, they're focused on aerospace and defense. That doesn't mean they're available. That's kind of the targets I've identified. I don't know. It's the never-ending game of acquisitions, right? Either they're willing to talk or they're not. Are they going to run a process or not? We're seeing some of that happen, and I just don't know how it's going to turn out yet. I don't know how valuations are going to be. That's certainly been a topic in the past of will these valuations be reasonable? Don't know for sure. Time will tell.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The three that sold, I have seen nothing on valuations on those. They were private deals that the details were not announced, it's not helping me on valuations either.

Steve Hansen
Steve Hansen
Analyst at Raymond James

No, understood. That's helpful. Just lastly, and I'll turn it over. I just wanted to go back to the question on capacity and bottlenecks in labor. Are you done, maybe is the first part question, are you done with the shuffling or the shifting of work you described, Fredericksburg nearly doubling production, Chatsworth and Haverhill also taking up production with no-- It sounds like you've been quite successful in shifting and moving work. Is that process largely optimized thus far, or is there more to go? On the second piece is just that you also described you're still searching out some new defense programs over and above those that you're there. Just maybe give us a sense for where you think those can fit into the network, as it stands in terms of your current future capacity pipeline. Thanks.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. Okay. I guess first one, in terms of shifting work, we actually did have some success, which was good. For sure we're not done. It's a never-ending process, I think. We're forever optimizing it. It's remarkably painful, working this through with customers. It's the nature of the business that when you're moving aerospace or defense product around, customers are cautious. They want lots of approvals, and they want to check everything and be very cautious in making any moves. It takes longer than we'd like, but nevertheless, we continue to do it. Some of it is to manage capacity, some of it is to manage tariff-related stuff, trying to move non-U.S. work out of the U.S. or U.S. work in the U.S., that type of stuff. That's ongoing, and we'll continue to work it. Your second question, I don't know.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

You should ask that second question again.

Steve Hansen
Steve Hansen
Analyst at Raymond James

Oh, just in effect, you've got a large backlog of pipeline already today secured, but you're also on the search for some new programs. Do you ultimately have places to stick it or fit it into the network today?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Yeah. Actually, Q2, I talk about lots of interesting things going on. Q2 was a good quarter for us, and the sites really performed. They ramped. I'm really encouraged by that. I believe we have room to continue to ramp. Again, it's just keeping equipment moving more hours a day. In Chatsworth circuits, for instance, I was running one and a half, not even, one and a quarter shifts. If I add some people, the equipment runs more. I think I could do a double in Chatsworth, not overnight, but I could do a double. I think I could do a double in Haverhill, not overnight, but a double. I did a double in Fredericksburg. I think there's a potential to do another double. Again, it's not overnight, but in terms of plant and equipment, I have capacity.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

It's supporting it and staffing it to keep the equipment running. Yeah, I'm happy to chase more work, and put it into those types of sites. Even Minnetonka, they could probably add 30% more capacity with staffing properly. Takes work, takes effort, takes a bit of time, but, yeah, I can find places to put new work for sure.

Steve Hansen
Steve Hansen
Analyst at Raymond James

I appreciate the thought, Brad. Thanks.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Okay. Thanks, Steve.

Operator

Again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Russell Stanley from Beacon Securities. Please go ahead.

Russell Stanley
Russell Stanley
Analyst at Beacon Securities

Good morning, and congrats on the quarter. Maybe a follow-up on the last question, understanding staffing is and has traditionally been the gating factor, debottlenecking in Toronto being a priority, but customer qualifications and any sort of regulatory certifications, those are facility-specific. I'm wondering, can you talk to your current setup? Are there any meaningful qualifications or certifications that you're lacking for any facilities that otherwise preclude you from reallocating work to them? Is that at all a gating factor, or is it really just the staffing in other facilities and of course, the debottlenecking effort in Toronto?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Right. Yeah, I guess the obvious one, for sure, there's a bunch of work we need to do on certifications for our FTG Aerospace Hyderabad facility. It has no certifications. That one is what we're hoping to work on through the balance of this year. It's great we opened it, and we could add some people, but we got to get the certifications in place and the customer approvals in place for it to really contribute to our overall capacity. Other than that, not really. Certifications is not an issue. It comes back to staffing. Truly, I was really happy in Q2 in Minnetonka. It didn't show in their results, but their staffing activity and their staffing success was dramatically positively changed in the quarter. We were +20 people by the end of the quarter at that site.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

The target we had for that site this year was +28. To do 20 in the quarter was huge. We got to keep them, we got to train them. It's not an instant overnight event. Again, they just really hit it out of the park in terms of their success on staffing as compared to what we'd seen in prior quarters.

Russell Stanley
Russell Stanley
Analyst at Beacon Securities

That's great. Just following up on India and your comments around H2, amongst the other efforts, you've got to get the facility qualified. When in 2027 should we envision that facility producing net new orders, so to speak, no longer ramping up with reallocated work from other facilities?

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

I don't know. We'll see. We want to do it as soon as we can. I'd love to be having it positively contribute at the beginning of 2027. That might be a little aggressive. Again, we've got to staff, train, and get certifications. The wild card, we're going to get the standard certifications, kind of industry certifications, AS9100, that type of thing. That for sure, our goal is to get that done this year. The wild card is customer approvals. I don't control those. We're going to start working on that, but, I've said this many times on these calls, a customer approval can be done in a few months, or my worst case was five years to get a customer approval. We're going to work it, but that timeline is more uncertain than not within my control.

Russell Stanley
Russell Stanley
Analyst at Beacon Securities

Got it. Maybe one last question from me. We just saw sort of press releases related to expanded production of missiles, munitions in Europe, and the U.S. Pentagon looking for CAD 21 billion in supplemental funds for munitions. I'm wondering, in circuits, can you talk about what you're seeing with respect to demand, specifically whether you're seeing any sort of replenishment demand come through, given the use of these things in the conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine as well? I'm just wondering if you're seeing that additional tailwind start to filter through at this point as far as your demand picture goes.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

We're definitely starting to see it. I'm going to say it's a bit of a combination of quoting it, but multi-year quotes on this type of thing. Some orders, definitely some of our, I don't know, 80 whatever it was, CAD 80 some million of backlog was initial orders on replenishment of electronics for various weapons and warfare systems.

Russell Stanley
Russell Stanley
Analyst at Beacon Securities

Got it. That's all from me. Thanks again. Congrats.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Okay. Thanks, Russ.

Operator

There are no further questions. Presenters, please continue.

Brad Bourne
President and CEO at FTG

Okay. Thank you all. A replay of the call will be available until Monday, August 17th, at the numbers noted on our press release. Replay will also be available on our website in a few days. I thank you all for your interest and participation. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

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