Mativ Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Record Q2 performance: Net sales reached $532 million, adjusted EBITDA rose nearly 12% to $75 million, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 130 basis points to 14.1%, and free cash flow increased to $60 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: SAS delivered record adjusted EBITDA and margins, supported by nearly 10% growth in tapes and labels, while FAM benefited from double-digit specialty-film growth and improved pricing.
  • Positive Sentiment: Mativ expects modest volume growth in Q3 excluding the Wisconsin tornado, driven by advanced films and a ramping aerospace and defense program; management views the opportunity as a potential new growth channel beginning in 2027 and beyond.
  • Negative Sentiment: A tornado severely damaged a third-party distribution center in Wisconsin, with an estimated $20 million-$25 million Q3 sales impact and an undetermined EBITDA effect, although production assets were unaffected and insurance is expected to offset much of the loss.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management expects Q3 price-to-cost performance to weaken as higher raw-material costs flow through, but remains on track for $15 million-$20 million of cost reductions and targets net leverage in the 2.5x-3.5x range by mid-2027.
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Earnings Conference Call
Mativ Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Welcome to Mativ's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today from Mativ are Shruti Singhal, President and Chief Executive Officer, Scott Minder, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Kuepper, Director of Investor Relations. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. At this time, all participants have been placed in listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. If you require operator assistance, please press star zero. We ask that you please pick up your handset to allow for optimum sound quality. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Chris Kuepper. Sir, you may begin.

Chris Kuepper
Chris Kuepper
Director of Investor Relations at Mativ

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Mativ's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that comments included in today's conference call include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these comments for reasons shown in detail in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Some financial metrics discussed during this call are non-GAAP financial metrics. Reconciliations of these metrics to the closest GAAP metrics are included in the appendix of the earnings release, which along with the accompanying slide deck, is now available on our website at ir.mativ.com.

Chris Kuepper
Chris Kuepper
Director of Investor Relations at Mativ

I will also note that unless we say otherwise, any comparisons we make to prior periods, including references to our performance since Mativ's formation, are on a continuing operations basis, excluding the divested engineered papers business. With that, I'll turn the call over to Shruti.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Mativ's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. I am excited to be speaking with you as this quarter represents a profound turning point in our journey. I'm eager to share the details of our progress. When we established Mativ four years ago, we knew that the company would require fundamental rewiring of how we operate, go to market, and allocate capital. Over the past 18 months, we have transformed our culture, commercial engine, and operating rhythm to manage a set of diversified businesses as one Mativ that delivers value for our customers, employees, and shareholders. Today, I'm incredibly proud to report that our Q2 2026 results represent the strongest quarterly performance since Mativ's inception. We are no longer just talking about transformation.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

The strategic actions we put in motion have fundamentally reshaped our business and are firmly anchored across every level of the organization. The evidence is visible in both how we execute and the strong financial results we are delivering. I want to take a moment to acknowledge our global team of dedicated employees. The macroeconomic environment remains undeniably complex. We continue to navigate shifting demand patterns, geopolitical uncertainties, and dynamic supply chain landscapes. I'm proud of how our teams have executed with relentless focus, agility, and precision. They're actively shaping our end markets through continuous innovation, deep customer partnerships, and a relentless commitment to operational excellence. Before we dive into our segment performance and the strategic initiatives defining our future, I want to unpack the key achievements from this quarter.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

In Q2, Mativ delivered organic growth in a highly dynamic market environment, emphasizing the resilience of our diversified portfolio and the customer-focused efforts of our commercial teams. Our ability to perform in this environment is a testament to how our engineered solutions enable our customers' innovation and are often critical to unlocking their products' ultimate value and performance. Our unwavering focus has been on driving high-quality, profitable growth, structurally elevating our margin profile, and translating that into significant cash flow generation. That focus is noticeable in our Q2 financial statements, where we delivered robust results versus a strong year-ago quarter across multiple metrics, including adjusted EBITDA of $75 million versus $67 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.1% compared to 12.8% in the prior year. Free cash flow of $60 million versus $49 million in the prior year.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

This performance is a result of our proactive value-based pricing strategy, rigorous cost management programs, and strategic footprint optimization. We are successfully capturing the value of the technical expertise we provide to customers while simultaneously driving efficiencies across our operations and cost structure. Switching to our segments, I'm pleased to report that our SAS segment produced record-adjusted EBITDA and margins, with many key product categories showing organic growth. Tapes and labels expanded by almost 10%, led by all finished tape categories and tape backings. Commercial print and packaging outperformed market conditions, delivering flat to modest growth while the underlying market declined. This outperformance reflects the strength of our commercial execution in our SAS segment. Sticking to the SAS segment, I'll provide a quick update on our healthcare category. In Q1, we discussed two discrete events that negatively impacted our volumes, a temporary facility outage in Knoxville and customer de-stocking actions.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

I'm happy to report that the outage was brief and that operations were back to normal in early Q2. The resulting volume recovery successfully offset the ongoing impact from unrelated customer de-stocking in the quarter. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we expect healthcare to remain a minor headwind to our consolidated results. In FAM, growth was driven by double-digit increases in specialty films while we continue to see steady demand for our solutions for industrial process filtration and industrial netting. Clean air and water are global imperatives, and our advanced filtration media remain solutions of choice in these pursuits due to reliability and lifetime ownership benefits. We were honored to be recognized recently by MANN+HUMMEL, one of our strategic filtration customers, with their Supplier Collaboration Award, underlining our decades-long partnership.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Pivoting towards the future, on our last earnings call, we introduced a foundational blueprint for Mativ's future, centered on a unified vision: to be the preferred global partner for customers delivering innovative and sustainable material solutions. Today, we're excited to expand on that framework, detailing the specific elements of our growth strategy that will guide how we compete, deliver value, and drive long-term profitable growth. At the heart of our strategy remains our core purpose. We go beyond supplying products by transforming materials into performance, elevating our customers' innovations. These priorities are underpinned by four distinct competitive advantages. We engineer specialty materials using advanced manufacturing technologies, ensuring their performance in the toughest conditions. With a robust global supply chain, R&D labs, and manufacturing facilities, we are exactly where our customers need us. We make high quality our standard, building reliability into every delivery.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Most importantly, we co-create with our customers and collaborate openly across product categories, partnering closely to drive breakthrough solutions. As we navigate today's dynamic market environment, Mativ's portfolio diversity continues to be a strategic advantage, elevated by cross-company collaboration and knowledge-sharing, which act as force multipliers. We serve as critical enabler for our customers' evolving R&D efforts, providing highly customized materials that drive their innovation, sustainability, and performance requirements. Ultimately, when our customers win, Mativ wins alongside with them. As evidence that our strategy is translating into commercial success, we recently communicated a sizable new commitment within the aerospace and defense market. Today, I'm pleased to share that our partner, a globally recognized leader in space exploration, continues to successfully test our products. This customized specialty film delivers a lightweighting solution that enables deployment of next-generation communication technologies.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Through deep partnership, Mativ co-developed a product with robust performance requirements using our proprietary manufacturing methods in novel ways. Performance and reliability are mission-critical in this end market, making it a perfect match for the quality of Mativ's highly engineered products. This opportunity validates our state-of-the-art product and process technologies and sets the stage for further expansion into the rapidly growing aerospace and defense sector. The program is ramping up as planned and should serve as the foundation for a new growth channel as we look towards 2027 and beyond. Capitalizing on high-value, demanding opportunities requires a keen focus on our core strengths. To further unlock the integrated value of our diverse portfolio and enable prioritized capital allocation decisions, we have clearly defined our three technology platforms. To begin with Coating and Saturation improves material performance by making products stronger, more resilient, and more functional.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

This platform drives innovation in critical applications like engineered films, performance tapes, release liners, advanced wound care, and medical device attachments. Next is Extrusion Manufacturing. Here, we deliver custom solutions designed for precision and performance at scale, supporting essential needs in water filtration, advanced films, HVAC, and erosion control. Lastly, in fiber solutions and specialized assembly, we engineer high-performance fiber-based materials, taking custom solutions from concept through to finished assembly for sectors such as climate control, transportation filtration, consumer wellness, and paper and packaging. These technology platforms represent capabilities where we have a distinct right to win. They leverage our material science and technical expertise and inform our disciplined capital investment process. By adding a technical capability dimension to our existing market and product views, we are elevating discrete capabilities into a cohesive center of excellence network.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

By leveraging our interconnected technology platform simultaneously, we can deliver more comprehensive, complex solutions that address a broader range of our customer needs. This ensures long-term growth opportunities, increased asset utilization, higher margin potential, and maximized capital investment returns. Together, these newly formalized elements provide a well-defined roadmap that builds upon the blueprint shared last quarter. We're working internally and with external experts to focus on top-line growth and to unlock meaningful new opportunities across our end markets. As we continue to refine and execute these go-to-market strategies, we'll keep you informed on the progress and the resulting shareholder value creation. Finally, we're leveraging AI and data analytics to drive significant efficiencies across these technology platforms. We're rolling out pilot initiatives to optimize production scheduling and reduce process waste.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

By replacing manual production sequencing with real-time predictive insights, we will empower our operators to make faster decisions that boost asset utilization and increase yields. As we validate these solutions, we'll scale them across our network, delivering sustainable cost savings, enhancing reliability, and strengthening on-time customer delivery. Before closing, I want to address the impact from a severe tornado that struck central Wisconsin on July 27th. It extensively damaged our primary third-party paper and packaging distribution center located in Menasha. First and foremost, all Mativ and third-party site personnel are safe. Our thoughts are with our people and their affected communities, and we are actively supporting local relief efforts. While the warehouse sustained structural damage and briefly interrupted customer shipments, our response has been swift. We immediately mobilized a crisis management team, optimized manufacturing capacity to rebuild inventory, and secured alternative warehouse space.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

While these recovery efforts continue, we're maintaining transparent communications with our customers to manage fulfillment expectations. I am immensely proud of the resilience and agility shown by our employees and partners. Though we face near-term logistical hurdles, we are highly confident in our recovery strategy. We are deploying all available resources, including working with our insurance providers to mitigate financial impact. We believe that these impacts are manageable and mostly contained to Q3 2026. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott to provide a more detailed overview of our financial performance.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Thanks. Good morning. As Shruti said earlier, we delivered robust Q2 results. I'll provide some additional color on the quarter, a progress update on our key objectives, and our financial outlook. Starting with our Q2 financials, net sales were $532 million, marking Mativ's best second quarter. Sales were up nearly 2% year-over-year on an organic basis and up more than 1% as reported. Favorable selling prices and currency were partially offset by lower volume mix. Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $75 million was a quarterly record and increased by nearly 12% versus the prior year. A favorable price-to-cost ratio was partially offset by higher manufacturing and distribution expenses and somewhat unfavorable volume mix. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.1% increased by 130 basis points compared to the prior year and built on record results achieved in Q2 2025.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Taking a look by segment, FAM net sales of roughly $202 million were largely flat versus prior year on an organic basis and were down 1% on a reported basis. This was driven by lower volume mix from our filtration business and the impact from our exited Wilson, North Carolina facility. These declines were partially offset by favorable selling prices and foreign currency translation benefits. FAM adjusted EBITDA of $35 million increased by 1% year-over-year, while margins of 17.6% improved by 50 basis points. These gains were led by a favorable price-to-cost ratio as proactive pricing actions outweighed general cost inflation within the quarter and lower SG&A expenses. Higher manufacturing costs and lower volume mix served as partial offsets.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

SAS net sales of $330 million were up more than 2% year-over-year due to higher selling prices and favorable currency, partially offset by lower volume mix. Strong tapes and labels growth was offset by lower volumes in other categories. SAS adjusted EBITDA of $50 million was a quarterly record, increasing by more than 18% year-over-year with margins of 15.3% improving by 210 basis points. Earnings benefited from a favorable price-to-cost ratio as proactive pricing actions more than offset general cost inflation within the quarter, including higher manufacturing and distribution costs in SG&A expenses. Looking at corporate items, unallocated expense of roughly $11 million increased by about $1 million versus prior year due to higher advisory expenses. Other expense of $0.5 million compared to other income of $1.5 million in the prior year. 2025's income was due to asset disposal gains.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Q2's tax rate was 47%, driven by our geographical earnings mix and our inability to benefit from losses in certain jurisdictions that carry a full valuation allowance. Interest expense of $19 million increased slightly versus prior year due to higher average borrowing rates on the floating portion of our outstanding debt. Lower Q2 2026 debt balances provided a partial offset. Free cash flow of $60 million marked Mativ's strongest Q2 performance, improving by more than $10 million compared to prior year due to lower restructuring expenses and capital expenditure timing. As expected, we invested in inventory in Q2 to support our strategic growth initiatives. We worked diligently to offset these investments through ongoing efficiency gains. As a result, working capital represented 11.5% of sales, improving by 150 basis points compared to prior year. At quarter end, net debt totaled $908 million, reducing by $61 million sequentially.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

I'm happy to report that our net leverage stood at 3.8x at the end of Q2, improving by 300 basis points versus Q1 2026. Over the past year, we've improved our net leverage by 700 basis points. This substantial progress on a key business metric is ahead of our expectations and reflects ongoing capital allocation discipline. Early in Q2, we refinanced much of our capital structure, making our nearest debt maturity more than three years away and staggering other expected maturities beyond 2029. As part of this refinancing, we right-sized our debt facilities to account for the engineered papers divestiture and footprint optimization actions in prior years. As a result, available liquidity declined versus the Q1 level along with unused capacity fees. We're confident that our revised capital structure gives us the needed capacity and flexibility to manage through the business cycle.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

I'll provide context around the ongoing Middle East conflict's impact on our business. Much of Q2 saw significantly higher prices for crude oil and its derivatives, which affected the cost of many of our raw material inputs. While we can't predict how the conflict will evolve, our expectations are that commodity costs will remain elevated for the rest of the year. We expect 2026's full-year inflation impact to be between $40 million and $50 million, in line with estimates provided on our Q1 earnings call. In response to this outlook, we proactively took pricing actions across our portfolio in late Q1 and early Q2 to offset increases in input, manufacturing, and distribution costs. These expected cost increases are more heavily weighted to the second half of the year due to elongated global supply chain and the timing of our cost recognition methodology.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

We anticipate Q2's favorable price-to-cost performance to contract as we move through the second half of the year. Taking a step back, it's our strategic intent to fully recover cost increases in our business through a combination of product pricing and productivity initiatives over time. Our price-to-cost ratio will vary quarter-to-quarter, but these proactive measures are critical to maintaining a healthy business for our customers, suppliers, employees, and shareholders. I'll summarize and share our outlook. Our strong Q2 performance reflects the decisive actions we've taken over the past 18 months to build a more resilient and agile Mativ. This quarter's robust profitability and cash flow build on record prior-year results and serve to further strengthen our foundation. While geopolitical disruptions have reduced our long-term visibility, we expect the direct impact from the Middle East conflict to be manageable.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

We're deploying mitigation strategies and closely monitoring for any indirect effects on broader market demand. Our new strategic growth blueprint is built to navigate these types of fluctuations. By unlocking the integrated value within our portfolio and prioritizing high-growth, high-return markets, we're actively controlling what we can while effectively mitigating external risks. Excluding the tornado's impact on our paper and packaging category, we expect to pivot to modest volume growth in Q3, driven by our advanced films, leading to higher year-over-year sales. Our Q3 price-to-cost performance is expected to be less favorable than Q2's result due to the timing of price increases and the recognized impact of higher raw material costs. We anticipate continued strong cash generation and focused deployment actions to enable full repayment of our outstanding revolver balance and allow for further debt reduction progress by year-end.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

We expect net leverage to be in the mid-to-high 3x levels by year-end and within our target leverage range of 2.5x-3.5x by mid-2027, ahead of our previous expectations. Stepping back from Q2's results and growing momentum within our business, I want to take a moment to discuss the potential impacts from the tornado in Wisconsin. While we're still working through the details to fully assess the effects on our Q3 financial results, I'd like to provide some facts to help dimension the potential impacts. First, the damaged facility is a leased distribution center housing paper and packaging inventory used to create and ship customer orders. We maintain insurance coverage that we expect to substantially offset inventory losses and business disruption costs. The loss and recovery amounts and their timing are not yet known.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

No production assets were impacted by the storm beyond a short power outage. All production facilities are fully operational. We're working with our labor and product conversion suppliers to quickly resume full shipment capacity. In fact, we began limited customer shipments within 72 hours of the storm's initial impact. Lastly, we're working to increase production and finished goods processing output quickly and responsibly. Our teams are doing a phenomenal job, taking decisive actions to get our distribution efforts back on track and maximize output at our production facilities. In summary, we believe that the business impact from this weather event is manageable and mostly contained to Q3 2026. We expect to largely recover lost sales over time and anticipate our insurance coverage to substantially offset related asset losses and business disruption costs.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

We estimate the resulting Q3 sales impact to be between $20 million and $25 million as our distribution network rebuilds with modest recovery of these sales starting in Q4. This outlook is based on current information. Our view will likely evolve as the team continues to work through recovery plans. Our strong financial performance in the first half of 2026 gives our business momentum heading into the second half of the year. The team is executing well and making solid progress on our strategic objectives, including cost reductions of $15 million-$20 million. Prior to the storm's impact, the business expected to be modestly ahead of last year's record Q3 adjusted EBITDA results of $67 million. Geopolitics and weather events are unpredictable and can negatively affect our revenues, we're taking actions to limit their impact on our earnings and cash flow generation.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

I'll conclude by reflecting on my first six months at Mativ. I'm happy to see the momentum built in 2025 accelerating in 2026. We have great people doing exciting things. We're executing across the organization, innovating and selling products our customers need and value, improving processes and implementing tools to streamline our cost structure, and managing our cash generation and capital deployment efforts to great effect. We're still in the early phases of the journey to make Mativ a best-in-class specialty materials producer, achieving our long-term profitable growth goals and strategic ambitions. There are and will be unexpected challenges. The team is taking these hurdles in stride and building confidence in performance as we go. With that, I'll hand the call back to Shruti for his closing remarks.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Thank you, Scott. As we close today's call, I want to leave you with one key takeaway. Mativ is as strong as it's ever been. Over the past several quarters, we have talked extensively about transformation, building a stronger foundation, improving execution, strengthening our balance sheet, and positioning the business for long-term success. Those efforts remain important. Today, we're increasingly focused on growth. We have a clearer strategy, a stronger operating cadence, and greater confidence in our ability to create value for customers and shareholders. Just as importantly, we have great people doing exciting things across our business every day. Whether it's developing innovative solutions with our customers, improving our operations with next-level technology, or finding new ways to serve the markets we support, our teams are making a meaningful difference and tangible impact on our results.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

What gives me confidence in our future is not just the performance we have delivered this quarter. It's the culture we have built, the momentum we are creating, and the opportunities we see ahead of us. We know there is still work to do, but we are operating from a position of strength, and I believe Mativ is better positioned than ever to capitalize on the opportunities in front of us. Thank you to our employees, customers, and shareholders for your continued trust and support. With that, let's open the line for your questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question, and if you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Daniel Harriman from Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Daniel Harriman
Daniel Harriman
Analyst at Sidoti

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on a great quarter. Shruti, it's really exciting to see the aerospace and defense win progressing, and it's also exciting to hear that it's focused on a space application. I'm curious if you could just kind of give us an update on how you see this evolving over the next few quarters and into the long term. Then Scott, regarding the volume growth that you expect in the third quarter, can you just give us an update on what gives you confidence in that volume growth and how you see this becoming a trend over the longer term?

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Thanks, Dan, for that question, and appreciate your kind words. Yes, I'm really proud of every team member at Mativ on a great accomplishment in Q2. Thank you, everybody. Regarding the aerospace and defense, we talked a little bit about it last quarter. We have received a sizable commitment from a global space and exploration leader. What this is a customized lightweight specialty film, engineered for some very critical performance parameters. I can't really comment on the size of the revenue for 2026 and beyond because of confidentiality. What you should note is that this is a high-value product, and it's a very high demanding performance requirement, which of course is also leading to a high growth opportunity for our company. I'm proud to say and happy to say that we are scaling this as planned in very close collaboration with our customer.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

It's at a very steady and measured pace. We are accelerating as needed by our customer. This is where I say I'm proud of our diversified portfolio. We're really able to leverage our technical capabilities, deep product expertise across our portfolio at Mativ, and this is helping us propel into some lucrative growth sectors. This opportunity also validates our state-of-the-art product and technical and innovation capabilities and how our process and manufacturing enables to bring these technologies to fruition. Lastly, I would say, Dan, it also anchors our expansion into a very new high-growth market, which is the vision we had starting 18 months ago. Our products, and our technical capabilities, and our manufacturing capabilities have presented us with a very attractive value proposition as we're going forward. I'll let Scott comment a bit about the volume and the growth. Scott, go ahead.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Good morning, Dan. I think you're pointing out an important piece of our outlook here. I'm going to answer your question really from a longer-term point of view. I am going to keep the impact from the Wisconsin tornado aside on our paper and packaging business. If you look at our trend toward volume growth has really been taking shape over the past few quarters. We've improved year-over-year top-line performance as we progress throughout the year. In Q1, organic sales were about flat. In Q2, organic sales grew by nearly 2%, with volume growth in some key categories, but really led overall by price. In Q3, again, ex the paper packaging business, we anticipate adding modest volume growth to Q2's favorable organic sales growth. The big difference, as Shruti pointed out, is really the ramp-up in our films business related to that A&D win.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

If you take a step back from the quarterly details, I think what we're doing here is building a business that's designed to grow and sustain itself across the business cycle. In Q3, as we said, we're pivoting to growth on the strength of films for A&D. This win is really the first major proof point for the strategy we talked about. Today, we're better leveraging our material science capabilities along with our advanced manufacturing technologies to serve high-growth, demanding end markets. As Shruti said, we're unlocking the integrated value that's inherent inside Mativ. As a result, our confidence is growing in our ability to generate positive volume growth over time.

Daniel Harriman
Daniel Harriman
Analyst at Sidoti

Perfect. Thanks so much, guys. Then, Scott, kind of similarly, like what you were just discussing, with the strong momentum that you're coming out of in the first half and the volume growth in Q3 that you just discussed, seems like prior to the tornado impact, the business was on track for modest EBITDA growth in the third quarter. To the extent that you can, could you just help us a little bit with the earnings bridge here from 2Q to 3Q? Then Shruti, over the past 18 months during your tenure, we've seen year-over-year EBITDA growth, and obviously second quarter results were fantastic. It seems like you guys are making really great progress in all of your long-term objectives. Could you help us understand how we should think about margin progression over the next couple of years, given the momentum that you've been building?

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Dan, I can start there, Happy to break that down. As you suggested, I'm going to separate my answer here to really cover the business, excluding the tornado impact, then I'll give some thoughts on that impact separately. Kind of as you pointed out, the business has performed well in the first half of the year. This was largely due to our focus on gross margins and costs. Heading into Q3, we talked about this. We have competing factors impacting our EBITDA. Two are structural tailwinds, one is a transitory headwind. I'll start by giving a little more detail on that headwind. We expect a natural tapering of our favorable price-to-cost ratio that we benefited from in the first half of the year. We were very proactive with our pricing actions in Q1.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

That, coupled with our accounting methodology, provided a benefit, particularly to Q2's results. Raw material cost increases, which as we know were elevated further by the Middle East conflict in Q2, were capitalized in the quarter and will largely impact Q3's results. This is a standard accounting practice, it can create temporary timing mismatches in periods of rapid inflation, like we saw in Q2, or deflation. These are temporary. The tailwinds are really structural. First, we're pivoting to growth, as we just talked about in Q3, we expect these additional sales to provide ongoing benefit in the second half of the year and beyond. Second, our continuing cost-out initiatives are fundamentally lowering our cost structure for this business, that will continue to benefit us in the quarters to come.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

In Q3, these competing factors, the long-term benefit from the new business wins and the cost outs, along with the short-term impact from price-to-cost volatility, combined to only give us a small net positive in Q3. Separately, just adding a little bit around the tornado, I want everyone to keep in mind that this event occurred about 10 days ago. We're still working through the impact and recovery details. At this point, we do feel confident that we understand the revenue impact as the team on site has quickly restarted distribution efforts, they're working to get back to the prior shipping pace as we speak. As a result, we expect a top-line reduction of $20 million-$25 million in Q3. I think it's important to reiterate that we believe that the impact here is mostly limited to Q3.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

We're not prepared to provide a Q3 EBITDA impact at this time as we continue to work through the recovery efforts on site. However, I can say that we believe that we can mitigate some of the earnings impact from the delayed sales in the quarter, we should start to recover those sales in Q4. One last point, just to reiterate, we do have insurance coverage here, we believe that we're going to substantially offset inventory losses and business disruption costs over time. Take a step back. The momentum we've built here in the first half of 2026 is durable. It really showcases our execution capabilities, we're layering growth onto that in the second half of the year. We're delivering significantly improved results across the income statement and across the cash flow statement.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

The discipline that got us to this point is now built into our DNA. As we talked about, we're adding growth competencies to our toolbox, and we're starting to find success, we believe one of many to come. As I said in my remarks, I believe we're in the early phases of our journey to make Mativ a best-in-class specialty materials producer, and I think our best days are still in front of us. Shruti, I'll turn it back to you.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Thanks, Scott. Just pivoting from your comment about discipline to your question around margin, Dan. This is a result of a very focused and deliberate effort on behalf of the team. I can tell you the team's really proud on what we have been able to achieve in the last five quarters in a row. I have full confidence in my team, whether it's commercial or finance and the supporting teams, on how we are executing on this initiative. A big driver was, as Scott mentioned before, the combination of our pricing actions that we took. We got ahead of it. Also, our cost savings target that we have set for ourselves. If you recall, that was about $15 million-$20 million of cost out for this year, which by the way, is on track. We are on track to deliver that.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

As you saw in today's result, our pricing strategy on how we capture value to stay ahead of the input cost, that's working. As I've said before, there's only so much we can do with cost out, and I believe strongly that we have set a good foundation for the company. That's why now we are pivoting our focus to profitable growth. We are making very deliberate, very focused choices on where we want to focus and grow, where we can win, and what will drive the highest impact to our company. Where is this growth going to be? How it's going to be accretive to our margins? How are we going to optimize the utilization across our manufacturing network and our assets? All this is a part of how we deliver long-term positive margin evolution. I hope that answers your question, Dan.

Daniel Harriman
Daniel Harriman
Analyst at Sidoti

It does. Thank you, Shruti. Just one final one for me this morning. Back to you, Shruti. Was really sorry to hear about the tornado damage of the distribution center, but very thankful that nobody was injured. I know Scott kind of touched on it a little bit, but is there any more color you can add on the overall impact there and maybe the expected recovery?

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

Dan, thank you for keeping our team in your thoughts and prayers. Really appreciate it. Yes, we are very grateful that everybody at Mativ and our third-party partners is safe. Earlier this week, I was there physically with my team in Wisconsin, and I also visited the extensively damaged third-party distribution center for paper and packaging that we referenced. As I said, all our Mativ and third-party personnel are safe. The tornado impact was very severe. I firsthand saw the havoc that Mother Nature can cause just in 20 seconds. The Mativ manufacturing operations and site was not affected, and all our facilities remain fully operational. The third-party distribution center was impacted and damaged, as we mentioned. We are maintaining a continuous transparent communication with all our customers. They have been very supportive, and we are very grateful to them for working alongside with us.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

As Scott mentioned, that within 72 hours we had started shipments to our customers. I have to say, Dan, at this point that what makes me really proud is the resilience of my teammates. What I saw with my own eyes. We had a war room set up, a crisis management team that was in place, and we were on the phones, on emails with our customers, making sure we get the products to them as quickly and as safely as possible. That makes me really proud of our team and gives me a lot of confidence on the comments that you heard from Scott, that our recovery strategy is very robust, and we will manage this through this very terrible tragedy in Q3 2026 successfully. I'm confident of our recovery process and the tools and strategy we have put in place.

Daniel Harriman
Daniel Harriman
Analyst at Sidoti

Great. Thanks again, guys. I really appreciate it. Again, congratulations on the great quarter and performance.

Scott Minder
Scott Minder
CFO at Mativ

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions. I will now pass the call back to Shruti Singhal, President and CEO.

Shruti Singhal
Shruti Singhal
President and CEO at Mativ

In closing, I want to thank all of you for joining us today. I'm really proud of what we have achieved together as one Mativ and excited about the opportunities ahead. We all look forward to speaking with you again in November. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.

Operator

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

Executives
    • Chris Kuepper
      Chris Kuepper
      Director of Investor Relations
    • Shruti Singhal
      Shruti Singhal
      President and CEO
    • Scott Minder
      Scott Minder
      CFO
Analysts
    • Daniel Harriman
      Analyst at Sidoti
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