Mativ Holdings, Inc. (MATV) Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you. Welcome to Madoff's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On the call today from Madoff are Shruti Singhal, President and Chief Executive Officer, Scott Minder, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Cooper, 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 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. If you require operator assistance, 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 Cooper. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for MADF'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. 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 gap 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.mative.com. I will also note that unless we say otherwise, any comparisons we make to prior periods, including references to our performance since MADF's formation, are on a continuing operations basis, excluding the divested engineered papers business. With that, I'll turn the call over to Shruti.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss MATIPS second quarter 2026 financial results. I am excited to be speaking with you as this quarter represents a profound turning point in our journey. and I'm eager to share the details of our progress. When we established MATIF 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 MADF that delivers value for our customers, employees, and shareholders. Today, I'm incredibly proud to report that our Q2 2026 results present the strongest quarterly performance since MATF's inception. We are no longer just talking about transformation. 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. In Q2, MATA 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 product's 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 adjustments. adjusted EBITDA of $75 million versus $67 billion in the prior year. adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.1% compared to 12.8% in the prior year. and free cash flow of $60 million versus $49 million in the prior year. This performance is a result of our proactive value-based pricing strategy, rigorous cost-managed programs, and strategic footprint optimization. We are successfully capturing the value of our technical expertise we provide to customers, while simultaneously driving efficiencies across our operations and cross-structure. Switching to our segments, I'm pleased to report that our SAS segment produced record adjusted EBITDA and margins, but 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 outperform market conditions, delivering flat to modest growth while the underlying market declined. This outperformance reflects the strength of our commercial execution in our SaaS 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 destocking actions. 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 destocking 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. Pivoting towards the future, on our last earnings call, we introduced a foundational blueprint for MATF'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 to ensure 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. 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, MADF'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 drive their innovation, sustainability, and performance requirements. Ultimately, when our customers win, MADF 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 technology. Through deep partnership, MATIF 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 Mattis 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. 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. 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 maximize 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 market. 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. 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 27. It extensively damaged our primary third party paper and packaging distribution center, in Menasha. First and foremost, all MATIF 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. 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.

Thanks and 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 MADF's best second quarter. Sales were up nearly 2% year over year on an organic basis and up more than 1% as reported. Leverable selling prices in currency were partially offset by lower volume mix. Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $75 million was a quarterly record and increased by nearly 12% versus 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 prior year, and built on record results achieved in Q2 2025. 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 outweigh general cost inflation within the quarter and lower SG&A expenses. Higher manufacturing costs and lower volume mix served as partial offsets. SAS net sales of 330 million were up more than 2% year over year due to higher selling prices in favorable currency, partial to the U.S. 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 and 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. 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 MADDIS 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. I'm happy to report that our net leverage stood at 3.8 times 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 paper's 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. Next, 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 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 These expected cost increases are more heavily weighted to the second half of the year due to elongated global supply chains and the timing of our cost recognition methodology. As a result, 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. Now 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 MADDV. 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. deploying mitigation strategies and closely monitoring for any indirect effects on broader market demand. Ultimately, 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. As a result, we expect net leverage to be in the mid to high three times level. levels by year end and within our target leverage range of 2.5 to 3.5 times by mid-2027 ahead of our previous expectations. Stepping back from Q2's results in 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 damage 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. loss and recovery amounts and their timing are not yet known. 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 in 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. We estimate the resulting Q3 sales impact to be between $20 and $25 million as our distribution network rebuilds with modest recovery of these sales starting in Q4. This outlook is based on current information, and our view will likely evolve as the team can 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 to $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. While 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 flows. flow generation. I'll conclude by reflecting on my first six months at Mattis. 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 MADDiv a best-in-class specialty materials producer, achieving our long-term profitable growth goals and strategic ambitions. There are and will be unexpected challenges, but 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.

Thank you, Scott. As we close today's call, I want to leave you with one key takeaway. ADDIF is as strong as it's ever been. Over the past several quarters, We've 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, but 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. 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 MATEP 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?.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 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 Sedoti. Please go ahead.

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 wind 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 few quarters and into the long term. And 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 in that volume growth and how you see this becoming a trend over the longer term?.

Thanks, Dan, for that question and appreciate your kind words. Yes, I'm really proud of every team member at MADF 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 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, but 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. The, I'm proud to say and happy to say that we are scaling this as planned, in very close collaboration with our customer. It's at a very steady and measured pace, and we're accelerating as we move needed by our customer. Now, you know, 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 Mative. And this is helping us propel into some lucrative growth sectors. Now, 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. And lastly, I would say, Dan, is it also anchors our expansion into a very new high growth market, which is the vision we had starting 18 months ago. And 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 WIESNER- 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, so I am going to keep the impact from the Wisconsin tornado aside on our paper and packaging business. So, 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've progressed throughout the year. You know, in Q1, organic sales were about flat. Q2 organic sales grew by nearly 2% with volume growth in some key categories. but really led overall by price. So in Q3, again, X the paper packaging business, we anticipate adding modest volume growth to Q2's favorable organic sales growth. And the big difference, as Shruti pointed out, is really the ramp up in our films business related to that A&D win. So 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. So in Q3, as we said, we're pivoting to growth on the strength of films for A&D. But this win is really the first major proof point for the strategy we talked about, which Today, we're better leveraging our material science capabilities along with our advanced manufacturing technologies to serve high growth demanding end markets. And as Shruti said, we're unlocking the integrated value that's inherent inside Mative. So as a result, our confidence is growing in our ability to generate positive volume growth over time.