M-tron Industries Q3 2025 Earnings Call - Defense Orders Propel Revenue and Backlog Amid Margin Pressure

Jale, Conference Operator: Thank you for standing by. My name is Jale, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the M-tron Industries earnings call for the third quarter of 2025. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Linda Biles, EVP of Finance. You may begin.

Linda Biles, EVP of Finance, M-tron Industries: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2025 M-tron Industries Q3 earnings call. Please note that this call will be recorded, and we will make the recording available on our investor relations website, ir.mtron.com, shortly after the call. Yesterday afternoon, we released our earnings for the third fiscal quarter of 2025. Before getting underway, we are required to advise you that the following discussion should be taken in conjunction with our most recent financial statements and notes as contained within our 2024 10-K, which was filed on March 27, 2025, with the SEC. This discussion may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of 27-A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21-E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements contain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in our filings with the SEC.

Although the company believes that the forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions regarding its business and future market conditions, there are no assurances that the company’s actual results will not differ materially from any result expressed or implied by the company’s forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligations to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as the result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Readers are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Cameron Pforr.

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Thank you, Linda. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our third quarter FY 2025 earnings call. We are pleased to discuss our strong results for the first nine months of the fiscal year and our outlook going forward. As a reminder, M-tron designs and manufactures highly engineered RF solutions, including electronic components and subassemblies used to control the frequency and timing of signals on electronic circuits. We’re a global company with three manufacturing sites in the United States and in India. The company’s primary markets include aerospace and defense, commercial avionics, space, and industrials. We’re pleased to report that the company continues to perform well with continued strength in M-tron Q3 sales and backlog. Our revenues continue to be driven by defense-related orders. However, we did see some growth this quarter in other areas as well.

With consistent operating performance, we have been able to continue to make strategic investments in research and development and continue to improve the market profile of the company and prime the pump for future growth. Yesterday, we reported the following Q3 2025 results. The total revenues for the third quarter was $14.2 million, which was a 7.2% increase over the $13.2 million for the third quarter in 2024. This increase was primarily due to strong growth in avionics, space, and industrial product shipments. Gross margins for the third quarter were 44.3%, compared with the elevated 47.8% gross margins in Q3 2024. The decrease was primarily due to product mix and also higher tariff-related costs, which we’ve discussed in the past.

Net income for the quarter was $1.8 million, or $0.63 per diluted share, compared with $2.3 million, or $0.81 per diluted share, for the three months ended September 30, 2024. This decrease was primarily due to a large reversal of a deferred tax asset called for by the tax law changes in the Big Beautiful Bill. That was almost $1 million of expense, or a little bit more than $1 million of expense, plus the P&L, the lower gross margins from the year prior, and also slightly higher OpEx expenses consistent with our growth. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.2 million for the three months ended September 30, 2025, compared with $3.3 million for the prior year’s September quarter. The slight decrease was primarily due to lower gross margins and a relatively small investment in SG&E.

Backlog ended as of September 30, 2025, was $58.8 million, which was an increase of 48% from the $39.8 million for September 30, 2024, and was a 24.5% increase from the end-of-year December 31, 2024 figure of $47.2 million. The increase in backlog from December reflects robust demand across aerospace and defense programs, new program launches, and a recent surge in avionics and space orders. On October 23, 2025, the company announced that the dividend of warrants it granted in April 2025 achieved its early trigger condition and is exercisable through 5:00 P.M. on December 11, 2025. Five warrants are exercisable to purchase one common share of stock. The strike price is $4,750 per share, and the warrants have an oversubscription feature, which allows warrant holders who have exercised all of their warrants to potentially seek and acquire additional warrants if the offering is undersubscribed.

Warrant holders are encouraged to review the warrant agreement and the FAQ page on our investor relations website, which is ir.mtron.com. We continue to execute on our strategy of continually moving into more program business, which now makes up the vast majority of our aerospace and defense revenue. We are involved in over 40 programs of record, and many of these programs are sole-source programs, where we stand to reap many benefits if defense spending in the areas we support continues to grow. Just to give you a little bit of a flavor for that, this year we’ve had some big wins in EW and radar systems, and that’s an area where we expect to double our revenue next year, just reflecting those wins and some of the programs moving to our higher rates of production.

In addition, we’ve been asked to provide plans to dramatically increase our precision-guided munitions production for certain programs, as well as a new UAV program, which we’re very excited about. We continue to innovate, as evidenced by the high rate of revenue from newly designed products. To give you an example of some of this innovation, we and other vendors in this space produce compensated oscillators, which are used in airframes with a great amount of vibration, so usually a helicopter or fighter aircraft. This compensation is done to reduce the drift of the timer. Traditionally, they were externally compensated, and a typical size for a unit like this or a module like this was 16 inches by 16 inches.

We’ve developed an internally compensated oscillator, which is a little bit more than 2 inches by 2 inches and performs the same function, and we’re seeing dramatic demand for this line of products. This type of innovation was really what keeps M-tron at the fore of the industry. I’d like to thank our dedicated customers for their continued business and partnership and our loyal employees for supporting the company and its mission of serving the nation and its capability to defend freedoms. M-tron plays a critical role in the defense of our nation by providing U.S.-sourced, highly engineered components for many U.S. and allied military programs. Having a U.S.-based advanced manufacturing capability to support our joint forces is more important than ever.

Before I open the floor to questions, I wanted to mention that we will be presenting at the Ideas Conference next week in Dallas, Texas, at the Sedoti Year-End Virtual Investor Conference later in December, and at the Oppenheimer Conference in February of 2026. Information for these events will be posted on our investor website, and I hope that many of you can join us for some of those presentations and meetings. Operator, can you please open up the lines now and allow our first question?

Jale, Conference Operator: Of course. Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Your first question comes from line of Angela Spotterstorm of Sedoti. Your line is open.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Hi. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the appointment, Cameron.

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yep. Thanks, Anja.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: You noted the increased spend on research and development. Is there a specific area you are increasing it within? Can you talk a little bit about what you’re doing there?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yeah. No, it’s really bringing on board design engineers. We’ve been spending a lot of—we’re a filter and oscillator company, but every type of filter oscillator we build takes some different expertise levels of areas. That is one area we’re trying to hire. This is really something that helps us drive the revenue because we’re a very engineering-focused company, and our sales teams really get our engineers engaged very early with our customer and prospects to work on a kind of a co-developed solution. It’s really a tiring job.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Okay. Thank you. You mentioned industrials has started to pick up for you. What are your sort of main programs there within industrials?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yeah. I think the biggest area in the short term, that’s an area that we put in several markets. Test and measurement is one of the bigger ones. Oil and gas, like downhole drilling. Telecom also fits into that area. What’s been driving it of recent was some test and measurement revenues.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Okay. You also mentioned the recent surge in avionics. How are you seeing that spending in the fourth quarter?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Right. I kind of mentioned in some earlier calls that we supply through several other primes, really all the Airbus and Boeing aircraft builds. Those companies have really started re-engaging. Their backlogs are increasing fairly dramatically, and they’re moving towards higher production rates. We did see orders from Boeing, for example, earlier in the year, and maybe earlier than we expected, frankly, just kind of given the events there and the inventory we thought they had. We did have a big order and a large contract for commercial aircraft earlier in the year, and we’re starting to see orders against that contract.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Okay. Thank you. Lastly, we’ve been talking about tariffs before, but what can you do there to sort of combat that?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yeah. That’s a great question. It’s kind of an ever-moving target, as most of the people on the line probably figure now at this point in time. We really anticipate probably tariffs remaining in place for the next three years unless the Supreme Court takes some action there. Maybe it’s something we have to live with at this point. It’s costing us about 1-1.5% of revenue in terms of the impact on gross margins. There are a couple of things we’re doing. One is we’re examining with the materials that we order, what has to be shipped into the country and what can be for certain parts we order, can they be shipped directly to customers? We are making some changes in that regard.

We are actively working with our customers to enact a clause of the FAR, which allows us to get tariff relief for defense products that are specifically for U.S. forces. That does not apply to shipments to other NATO countries. We have also passed along some tariff charges, and we think that is fair, and that is kind of part of our contract. We are, at this point in time, looking to incorporate tariff charges in much of our pricing for new orders. That is just a reality.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Okay. When would that become effective then? How much longer does that have to happen?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yes. No, on the FAR exemptions, that’s really just starting to come into effect now, just because the way the program is set up, you need to do it on the front end when you’re ordering materials for a future shipment. For all inventory that we had in stock, we couldn’t use that exemption, but for new orders, we are putting that into effect. On pricing, that’s something that we’re having to factor into our pricing currently.

Angela Spotterstorm, Analyst, Sedoti: Okay. Great. I’ll get back in queue.

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Thank you, Anja.

Jale, Conference Operator: Thank you, Anja. With our next question comes from line of Otto Hang of Farnam Street. Your line is open.

Otto Hang, Analyst, Farnam Street: Hey, Cameron. Congrats on the appointment. Quick question on the Indiana Microelectronics Partnership that you announced. Can you tell how the tunable products, if you will, and integrating their technology into or with MPTI, how do you see that working? What products are we talking about? What can you tell us about that partnership?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yep. We’re actually very excited about it. It’s a company we’ve known for a long time, and we’ve been keen to work with them in the past. We’re glad we’ve come to an agreement about how to do it and how to support each other. They’re a really great design team. They’ve won some very interesting contracts, primarily with the military, but other areas as well. One of the issues, I think, for them was really how do they scale their business. We’ve really formed a partnership where we’ll work with them on the sales and marketing of their designs, and then also working with them once we procure an order on the manufacturability of the product. When we go to market, we provide a quote for someone.

Our engineers, we work with their engineers to make sure that what we’re going to be delivering can be manufactured effectively. They make a number of tunable filters. They’re really kind of software tunable, and the processes are not too difficult. We spent time with their team really understanding that. We think that’s something we can stand up pretty quickly without a lot of CapEx on either party’s side. We’ve already actually had some sales win, so we’re excited about where that can go.

Otto Hang, Analyst, Farnam Street: Do you think this is something where these could turn into rather large orders over time, programs, or is this going to be kind of smaller programs or smaller products, if you will, or runs? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yeah. I mean, we’re obviously very early in the relationship, but we actually think it can grow into some fairly large contracts. They have already made great headway with several customers of their own that would like to scale production. We think that just with the size of our manufacturer rep sales force, we’ll find a lot of other opportunities to work together.

Otto Hang, Analyst, Farnam Street: Excellent. One additional, if I can. Can you give us an update on Connectivity Partners? It doesn’t appear we’ve made any investment there, or what’s happening in terms of them raising capital? Any update on what’s happening with Connectivity?

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Yeah. There’s no investment on M-tron Industries’ part to date. I do know that they’ve been meeting with companies and identifying targets, and so they’re trying to really build up a backlog of opportunities for their fundraising marketing and just prep in terms of standing up the firm. No current news in terms of how it impacts us.

Otto Hang, Analyst, Farnam Street: Okay. Thank you.

Jale, Conference Operator: Thank you, Otto. With no further questions, that concludes our Q&A session. I’ll now turn the conference back over to Mr. Tivy for closing remarks.

Cameron Pforr, CEO, M-tron Industries: Okay. Thank you all for joining, and I appreciate the questions, Anja and Otto. Wishing everyone on the call a great day, and I appreciate your interest in the firm.

Jale, Conference Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.