Conferencia de resultados del 3T de 2026 de Perimeter Group (PRM): el EBITDA aumenta un 20%

Perimeter Group (NYSE: PRM), anteriormente Perimeter Solutions, registró un aumento en las ventas y en el EBITDA ajustado del tercer trimestre de 2026, ya que el sólido crecimiento generalizado en Fire Safety y las recientes adquisiciones compensaron los mayores costos vinculados a mejorar la fiabilidad del suministro de PDI.

Puntos clave

• Las ventas netas del tercer trimestre aumentaron un 24% interanual hasta los 389,9 millones de dólares, mientras que el EBITDA ajustado creció un 20% hasta situarse en 223,5 millones de dólares.
• El beneficio neto alcanzó los 304,5 millones de dólares, o 1,74 dólares por acción diluida, frente a una pérdida neta de 90,7 millones de dólares, o 0,62 dólares por acción diluida, del año anterior. El BPA diluido ajustado aumentó a 0,85 dólares desde los 0,82 dólares previos.
• Tanto los ingresos como el EBITDA ajustado de Fire Safety crecieron un 14%. El segmento se benefició de una solidez geográfica generalizada, la reanudación de las entregas de espuma a la Agencia de Logística de Defensa y la contribución de Monaco Enterprises a partir del 30 de julio.
• Los ingresos de Specialty Products crecieron un 84% hasta los 77,3 millones de dólares, mientras que el EBITDA ajustado se multiplicó por más de dos hasta alcanzar los 21,9 millones de dólares. La dirección prevé que los costos a corto plazo de PDI sigan siendo elevados mientras la empresa desarrolla fuentes de suministro más fiables.
• El flujo de caja libre del tercer trimestre fue de 150,4 millones de dólares. El apalancamiento neto se redujo a aproximadamente 2,7 veces el EBITDA ajustado de los últimos doce meses frente a las 3,1 veces registradas al término del segundo trimestre, a pesar de haber financiado la adquisición de Monaco.
• La dirección prevé que el EBITDA ajustado de Specialty Products en el cuarto trimestre se sitúe solo ligeramente por debajo de su promedio trimestral de los primeros nueve meses de 2026, respaldado por el desempeño fuera de PDI.

Resultados financieros clave

En el acumulado del año, las ventas netas aumentaron un 32% hasta los 728,7 millones de dólares y el EBITDA ajustado creció un 25% hasta los 370,3 millones de dólares. El beneficio neto ajustado alcanzó los 212,9 millones de dólares, con un BPA diluido ajustado de 1,27 dólares frente a los 1,24 dólares del mismo periodo del año anterior.

Desempeño comercial y operativo

El margen de EBITDA ajustado de Fire Safety fue del 64,5%, prácticamente sin cambios interanuales a pesar de la reducción escalonada de precios del primer año estipulada en el contrato federal de retardantes. Las ventas internacionales de retardantes estuvieron lideradas por Europa y Australia, mientras que las operaciones de retardantes en Norteamérica también crecieron. El área de supresores se benefició de mayores ventas de espuma fuera de Norteamérica y de la reanudación de los envíos a la DLA.

La dirección describió la temporada de incendios de Norteamérica hasta el tercer trimestre como situada en el rango alto de su nivel habitual. La actividad fue más severa de lo normal en julio y agosto antes de ralentizarse bruscamente en septiembre, mientras que en Canadá se mantuvo por debajo de los niveles habituales durante todo el trimestre.

La empresa continúa reorientando la estructura económica de los contratos federales hacia tarifas de servicio fijas y bases aéreas de servicio integral, reduciendo la sensibilidad de las ganancias a los volúmenes de retardante y a la actividad estacional de los incendios. La dirección identificó la capacidad de los aviones cisterna —y no la producción de Perimeter— como el principal cuello de botella durante los periodos de mayor actividad de incendios forestales.

Specialty Products se benefició de MMT e IMS, compañías que cuentan con productos patentados, amplias bases instaladas y una demanda recurrente en el mercado de posventa. MMT está invirtiendo en el desarrollo de nuevos productos para ampliar su base instalada y los futuros ingresos de posventa. Por su parte, IMS continúa integrando las líneas de productos adquiridas y evaluando oportunidades adicionales.

PDI continuó siendo el principal desafío operativo. Perimeter está ampliando la producción en sus propias instalaciones e incorporando fuentes de suministro alternativas, inicialmente a un costo promedio más elevado. La dirección señaló que estas inversiones tienen como objetivo brindar un control sustancialmente mayor sobre la fiabilidad del suministro.

Monaco Enterprises, adquirida a finales de julio, da soporte a sistemas de protección y seguridad contra incendios en más de 200 instalaciones militares de Estados Unidos en todo el mundo. Prácticamente la totalidad de sus ventas proviene de repuestos, reparaciones, ampliaciones, actualizaciones y servicios para su base instalada. La dirección afirmó que el desempeño del negocio se ha alineado con las expectativas previas a la adquisición o incluso las ha superado ligeramente.

Previsiones de la dirección

La dirección prevé que el EBITDA ajustado de Specialty Products en el cuarto trimestre se sitúe solo ligeramente por debajo del resultado trimestral promedio del segmento en los tres primeros trimestres de 2026. Esta perspectiva asume que el sólido rendimiento fuera de PDI compensará un periodo de EBITDA ajustado deprimido en dicha unidad.

Perimeter prevé que los gastos de capital en 2026 se sitúen en el extremo superior de su rango anual de entre 30 y 40 millones de dólares. El gasto incluye bases de retardantes, infraestructura para bases aéreas, la ampliación de las instalaciones de Green Bay, capacidad vinculada a la DLA e iniciativas para mejorar la fiabilidad del suministro.

La compañía mantuvo sus estimaciones a largo plazo de aproximadamente 75 millones de dólares en gastos anuales por intereses en efectivo, entre 60 y 65 millones de dólares en depreciación y amortización deducibles de impuestos, y una tasa impositiva efectiva en efectivo de aproximadamente el 20% o mejor a lo largo del tiempo.

Se prevé que la inversión en capital de trabajo en 2026 supere la estimación a largo plazo de la compañía, situada entre el 10% y el 15% del crecimiento de los ingresos. La dirección espera absorber para el segundo trimestre del próximo año el exceso de inventario de retardantes acumulado tras la ralentización de la actividad en septiembre.

Riesgos y factores clave a vigilar

• El suministro de PDI en Estados Unidos no ha cumplido con los estándares de fiabilidad de la dirección. La transición hacia una mayor producción interna y fuentes alternativas aumentará temporalmente los costos y presionará a la baja el EBITDA ajustado.
• La actividad de incendios experimentó un cambio drástico durante el trimestre, pasando de condiciones severas en julio y agosto a condiciones moderadas en septiembre. Dicha volatilidad afecta tanto a la demanda como a los requisitos de inventario.
• La limitada capacidad de los aviones cisterna puede restringir el despliegue de retardantes durante los periodos de máxima actividad de incendios forestales.
• El incremento de inventarios en los negocios de retardantes, PDI y Solberg está aumentando la inversión en capital de trabajo a corto plazo.
• La reducción escalonada de precios del primer año del contrato federal de retardantes sigue vigente, aunque los márgenes de Fire Safety en el tercer trimestre se mantuvieron estables en términos interanuales.

Puntos destacados de la sesión de preguntas y respuestas con analistas

La dirección señaló que la solidez de Fire Safety en el tercer trimestre fue generalizada en todas las líneas de productos y en la mayoría de las regiones geográficas, en lugar de estar impulsada por un único factor.

En cuanto a PDI, la dirección indicó que la rentabilidad normalizada puede evaluarse en comparación con los periodos en los que el segmento Specialty Products estaba compuesto únicamente por PDI. La empresa considera que la rentabilidad podría superar eventualmente esos niveles históricos si logra un mayor control sobre el suministro, aunque no ofreció un cronograma para dicha normalización.

La integración de MMT fue descrita con un progreso favorable. La dirección destacó su amplia base instalada, los ingresos recurrentes del mercado de posventa y una cartera revitalizada de desarrollo de productos, aunque mantuvo su política de no desglosar el EBITDA a nivel de negocio individual dentro del segmento.

Perimeter también destacó el crecimiento de los programas contra incendios forestales a nivel estatal. La dirección afirmó que cada vez más estados complementan los recursos federales de extinción con sus propias bases aéreas, aeronaves y contratos de retardantes, lo que genera nuevas oportunidades de contratación estatal.

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press *0, and a member of our team will be happy to help you. With us today are Haitham Khouri, Chief Executive Officer, Kyle Sable, Chief Financial Officer, and Seth Barker, Head of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference call is being recorded and your participation implies consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree with these terms, please disconnect at this time. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Head of Investor Relations, Seth Barker. Please go ahead.

Seth Barker

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Perimeter Group's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Speaking on today's call are Haitham Khouri, Chief Executive Officer, and Kyle Sable, Chief Financial Officer. We want to remind anyone who may be listening to a replay of this call that all statements made are as of today, November 5, 2026, and these statements have not been nor will they be updated subsequent to today's call. Today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements made today are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs about our business and the environment in which we operate, and our actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied on today's call.

Please review our SEC filings, particularly any risk factors included in our filings, for a more complete discussion of factors that could impact our results, expectations, or assumptions. The company would also like to advise you that during the call, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, LTM adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow. Reconciliation of and other information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings press release and presentation, both of which will be available on our website at ir.perimetergroup.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Haitham Khouri, Chief Executive Officer.

Haitham Khouri

Thank you, Seth. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin with our new name. As we announced last month, Perimeter Solutions formally became Perimeter Group yesterday, the same day we moved our headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. Our shares continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the same ticker, PRM. The new name reflects what Perimeter has become, a group of 6 market-leading businesses across our 2 reporting segments. In Fire Safety, our businesses are Perimeter Solutions, our fire retardant business which keeps its name, Solberg Fire, our fire suppressants business, and Monaco Enterprises, our life safety and incident management systems. In Specialty Products, our businesses are PDI, our P2S5-based lubricant additives business, MMT, our medical manufacturing equipment business, and IMS, our proprietary aftermarket electronics business.

Our new name also reflects how we run the company. As companies grow, many centralize decision-making in pursuit of scale. We have chosen a different path. Each of our 6 businesses operates under its own brand and is led by its own president and management team, all responsible and accountable for its results. Our aim is for each business to have the focus, speed, and agility of an independent company with the capital and support of a larger group behind it. Decisions about how to serve customers are made inside each business by the teams who know those customers best. Our corporate team is small by design.

Its role is to support our businesses, not to run them, to develop their leaders, help them solve problems when they arise, and allocate capital, both to our existing businesses and to acquisitions. We work hard to avoid bureaucracy. We keep layers of management to a minimum, and we have no group-level heads of sales, engineering, or operations imposing a single approach on different businesses. That keeps each business agile and close to its customers. The autonomy we afford our businesses comes with a small number of foundational and non-negotiable standards that apply to every business in our group. Each business consistently and rigorously applies our operational value drivers. Each leadership team is held to the common set of attributes we expect of every Perimeter leader, and each business is focused on delivering for its customers and driving returns for our shareholders.

We believe this model leads to faster and better decisions for customers and better outcomes for shareholders. This is why we have chosen not to combine businesses simply to reduce costs on paper. In fact, we've done the opposite. A few years ago, we separated our retardant and suppressant businesses, which had previously been managed as a single centralized organization. The 2 businesses sell to different customers with different needs, and those customers are better served by separate dedicated teams. Our suppressants business shows what this approach can achieve. Since becoming a standalone business with its own leadership team, Solberg has made the most, excuse me, of the 2 biggest opportunities in its recent history.

The first is the global transition to fluorine-free firefighting foam. FAA-regulated airports and other customers that historically relied on fluorinated foams are now replacing them with fluorine-free alternatives. For these customers, the change is far more than a product swap. The new foam must perform in high-consequence situations and work with each customer's equipment. Because our suppressants team works directly with these customers, they understood early what the transition would take. With the authority and the resources to act, they invested in fluorine-free products designed for these applications and in the technical and service support each conversion calls for. As a result, Solberg Fire has gone from a challenger in fluorinated foams to a global leader in fluorine-free foams.

The second came from the Defense Logistics Agency. Not long ago, Solberg did almost no foam business with the DLA. The Solberg team listened closely to the agency's needs and made a series of decisions to earn its business, investing in products developed specifically for the agency's requirements, expanding our Green Bay, Wisconsin facilities to add capacity and redundancy, and building a vendor-managed inventory service around how the agency operates. That led to the 5-year contract we announced earlier this year with a maximum value of $500 million. In both cases, the team closest to the customer saw the need first and had the authority to act and the capital of the group behind them. In a centralized organization, those decisions would have been made further from the customer and more slowly, if at all. Accountability works best when leaders share in the results.

We tie our business leaders' compensation to performance so they do well when our shareholders do well. Autonomy, accountability, and alignment. Together, these 3 principles define how we run the company, and they are what the Perimeter Group name is meant to reflect. While our name has changed, our approach remains consistent. Our goal is to fulfill our critical mission by providing our customers with high-quality products and exceptional service while delivering our investors private equity-like returns with the liquidity of the public market. Our strategy is built on 3 pillars. First, we own exceptional businesses. These are niche market leaders that play critical roles in solving complex customer problems, qualities that support high returns on invested capital and durable earnings power.

Second, we rigorously apply our 3 operational value drivers to the businesses we own. We drive profitable new business, achieve continual productivity improvements, and provide increasing value to customers, which we share in through value-based pricing. Third, we operate our businesses in a highly decentralized manner, granting our business unit managers full operating autonomy, with the accountability to deliver results with a tightly aligned incentive structure for our managers to think and act like owners. We believe that these 3 pillars will optimize our durable long-term free cash flow. We then seek to maximize long-term per share equity value through a clear focus on the allocation of our capital as well as the management of our capital structure.

Turning now to our third quarter results. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $223.5 million, up 20% year-over-year, and year-to-date adjusted EBITDA was $370.3 million, up 25%. Fire Safety delivered a strong quarter with adjusted EBITDA up 14%. This was the first full season under our 5-year federal retardant contract, which boosted service levels and reliability while lowering costs for our customer. In one of the most active weeks of the season, our crews staffed and supplied air tanker bases across the country. We also invested significantly on our customers' behalf. We converted additional federal bases to our full-service model, in which we staff, equip, and maintain each base, and we invested our own capital into airbase upgrades so that air tankers can be reloaded even more quickly and reliably.

In Specialty Products, adjusted EBITDA more than doubled year-over-year. Our 2 more recent acquisitions in Specialty Products, MMT and IMS, share the qualities we look for in businesses: proprietary products, large installed bases, and recurring aftermarket demand. These qualities continue to prove themselves at both businesses, and we are confident that both will be strong contributors to our results. I'd like to spend a moment on PDI, our third Specialty Products business. PDI is a strong business with one weakness, which we are now fixing even at a near-term cost. PDI's customers consistently tell us that they value its product quality, its logistics, and its customer service. As in all of our businesses, the PDI team listens closely to customer needs and meets them, whether that means adapting to changes in their logistics or partnering with them on safety and reliability.

The PDI team routinely goes beyond supplying product, whether repairing customers' equipment, arranging emergency shipments ahead of severe weather, or providing on-site technical support hand-in-hand with customers' engineering and operations teams. PDI's one weakness has been reliability. Our U.S. supply has not been as consistent as our customers require. We are taking the necessary steps and making the necessary capital investments to permanently fix this. We are willingly accepting lower near-term results at PDI because when short-term results and the right long-term decisions point in different directions, we will always choose the long-term.

Moving to our next slide and touching on Monaco Enterprises. Our first months of owning Monaco, which joined us at the end of July, have confirmed the qualities that attracted us to the business. Monaco's systems protect people and mission-critical assets on more than 200 U.S. military installations globally. Nearly all of Monaco's sales come from supporting its large installed base through spare parts, repairs, expansions, upgrades, and service. Our acquisition framework is designed to find businesses like Monaco, and we continue to evaluate other opportunities with similar qualities. With that, I will turn the call over to Kyle to review our financial results and capital allocation.

Haitham Khouri

Thank you, Haitham. Reviewing Perimeter's third quarter results, net sales increased 24% to $389.9 million, while adjusted EBITDA rose 20% to $223.5 million. In the quarter, we reported net income of $304.5 million, or $1.74 per diluted share. This compares to a net loss of $90.7 million, or a $0.62 loss per diluted share in the third quarter of 2025. Adjusted net income was $144.3 million versus $125.5 million, translating to adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.85 versus $0.82 in the prior year quarter. Year-to-date, net sales rose 32% to $728.7 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 25% to $370.3 million.

Our year-to-date net income was $195.8 million, or $1.14 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $66.1 million, or a $0.45 loss per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted net income increased to $212.9 million from $186.8 million last year, while adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.27 compared to $1.24 in the prior year period. Consolidated results reflect the ongoing execution of our operational value drivers, continued secular tailwinds, and our acquisition strategy. The 2 reporting segments are unchanged under the Perimeter Group name.

Turning to the first of those segments, Fire Safety. Revenue for the quarter rose 14% to $312.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA also rose 14% to $201.6 million from $177.2 million in the prior year period. Year-to-date, Fire Safety revenue rose 13% to $487.1 million, while adjusted EBITDA rose 13% to $299.1 million from $265 million. Fire Safety results include Monaco Enterprises from July 30. In our second quarter call, we said that our second quarter Fire Safety margins reflected 2 temporary factors: the first-year pricing step-down under our federal retardant contract, and the pause in foam deliveries to the Defense Logistics Agency. We also said we expected margins to be more in line with their historical averages in the second half.

In the third quarter, foam deliveries to the DLA resumed, and Fire Safety's adjusted EBITDA margin was 64.5%, essentially flat year-over-year, even with the federal step-down in effect throughout the quarter. Several factors contributed to the strength of the quarter. Our International retardant business delivered a strong quarter led by Europe and Australia. Our North America retardant business grew, and our suppressants business had a strong quarter, with stronger foam sales outside North America and DLA deliveries underway. Year-to-date, the North America fire season has been toward the high end of the range we would consider normal. The season progressed at a more severe pace than normal through July and August, while September was very mild. Canada remained below normal throughout the quarter.

We've also continued to reduce our sensitivity to fire activity. As we've renewed contracts, we have shifted sales towards fixed service fees, away from revenue tied to volume. And full-service bases, as Haitham described, give us steady recurring service revenue. These steps make our earnings more stable from one season to the next. Over the longer term, the drivers we have described remain in place: rising fire activity, and growing aerial firefighting fleets as customers invest in new aircraft and airbase infrastructure.

In Specialty Products, revenue for the quarter rose 84% to $77.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $21.9 million from $9.1 million in the prior year period. Year-to-date, revenue rose 103% to $241.7 million and adjusted EBITDA rose to $71.2 million from $30.8 million. As Haitham noted, our focus at PDI is on supplying our customers reliably. To that end, we've expanded production at our own facilities and are using new alternate supply sources and resources, at least in the near term and at higher average cost. We are willing to bear these costs to reach a durably reliable supply position. Our goal is for PDI's supply reliability to match the high standard we already deliver to our customers in product quality, logistics expertise, and service.

Across the segment, MMT continues to invest behind its innovation pipeline to accelerate new product launches, while serving its large installed base of consumables, spare parts, and services. Finally, at IMS, it keeps customers' equipment in service with proprietary replacement electronics. We continue to integrate the acquired product lines and to evaluate additional product lines that fit our strategy. Looking forward, we will willingly accept a period of depressed adjusted EBITDA from PDI while we keep our customers supplied through the transition to reliable long-term sources.

Despite these expenses, we expect Specialty Products fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA to be only modestly below its average quarterly results so far this year, due to strong segment performance outside PDI. Specialty Products is comprised of 3 different businesses where our approach is the same in each: listen to stakeholders and customers, invest to serve them better, and apply our operational value drivers. That approach is not specific to any one business, which positions us to replicate it with confidence as we expand the group.

Turning to our long-term cash flow assumptions, which are unchanged. Starting with interest, the framework contemplates annual cash interest expense of approximately $75 million. To that end, we paid $20.4 million of cash interest this quarter. Tax-deductible depreciation and amortization is expected to be $60 million to $65 million annually. This quarter, that came to $11 million. We expect our cash tax rate to be approximately 20% or better over time. We paid $4.3 million in cash taxes this quarter, below the $15.4 million we paid a year ago. Our annual capital expenditures are expected to remain at $30 million to $40 million.

In 2026, we expect to get to the high end of that range as we accelerate investments across our business in support of our customers' missions. We invested $12.7 million in the third quarter, which brings our spending so far this year to $31.2 million. Our long-term expectation for working capital is unchanged, approximately 10% to 15% of revenue growth over time. In 2026, we expect to invest more than that. An important driver is the inventory we hold for our federal customers. For July and August, the most active part of the season, we kept producing so that we would have enough retardant on hand as severe activity continued into the fall.

Instead, activity slowed sharply in September, which left us with extra inventory that we expect to work through by the second quarter of next year. Our ability to build and hold large inventories through sharp swings in activity is a critical part of the value we provide our federal customer. We've also invested in inventory at PDI to improve the reliability of supply, and at Solberg to support DLA deliveries. The third quarter is seasonally our strongest quarter for cash generation, and this year was no different, with $150.4 million of free cash flow in the quarter.

Turning to capital allocation. Year-to-date, we have deployed approximately $830 million of capital, including approximately $682 million to acquire MMT, approximately $117 million to acquire Monaco, and $31 million of capital expenditures in our existing businesses. Our first capital allocation priority remains reinvesting in our businesses on behalf of our customers. This year, that includes new retardant bases and airbase infrastructure, including the airbase we're building in Texas, the expansion of our Green Bay, Wisconsin facility, which is well underway, and additional staffing to serve the DLA. Building dependable sources of supply for Perimeter customers and investments in Perimeter's service capacity and innovation. Each of these investments is under tight return standards, driving future EBITDA growth.

Once the reinvestment needs of our business are met, our primary focus remains M&A. Our acquisition framework remains consistent. We target businesses that provide a small but essential component within a broader solution to critical customer needs, that operate in niche markets with sustainably differentiated solutions, and exhibit characteristics such as recurring revenue, strong returns on capital, and opportunities for reinvestment and add-on acquisitions. We remain active in evaluating a robust pipeline of opportunities, and the cash our business generates each year gives us the capacity to act when the right opportunity arises.

The capital structure remains long-dated and fixed-rate, consisting of $675 million of 5% notes due 2029 and $550 million of 6.25% notes due 2034, with a blended coupon of 5.6%. During the quarter, we fully repaid the revolver borrowings we used to fund the Monaco acquisition. Our $200 million revolving credit facility was undrawn at quarter-end. At quarter-end, net debt was approximately 2.7x LTM adjusted EBITDA, down from 3.1x at the end of the second quarter. That reduction came in a single quarter, even as we funded the Monaco acquisition. It shows how quickly our cash generation rebuilds our capacity to invest as we remain below our target leverage level. We ended the quarter with approximately $116 million of cash and total liquidity of approximately $316 million, including the more than $150 million we described following the Monaco acquisition. We ended the quarter with approximately 163.7 million basic shares outstanding.

Our third quarter reflected strong execution in Fire Safety, where we completed our first season under the federal retardant contract and began foam deliveries to the DLA under its new contract, and continued reinvestment across our 6 businesses. From new airbase infrastructure and the expansion of our Green Bay facility to more dependable supply for PDI's customers. With leverage down to 2.7x and approximately $360 million of liquidity, we have ample capacity to keep investing. We remain focused on applying our operational value drivers across the group, boosting investments to better serve our customers, and allocating capital to compound long-term per share value. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Josh Spector with UBS.

Preguntas y respuestas

Gaurav Sharma

This is Gaurav Sharma sitting in for Josh today. I guess it's a good fit when thinking about the contribution from higher retardant volumes of suppressants and then Monaco, just trying to get a sense of what the key drivers were.

Haitham Khouri

Thanks for the question, Gaurav. We had a pretty strong quarter across all of our product lines in Fire Safety this year. It's actually spread quite well geographically as well. So as we look at that, and you'll see the details when the Q hits later today, we had strength across every one of those product lines and across most of our geographies. It really was a quarter where the Fire Safety business was operating on all cylinders across the full spread of the entire business.

Gaurav Sharma

Thanks. Can you talk about the MMT integration and how that's progressing? If you can give me a sense of what the EBITDA run rate is today relative to acquisition?

Haitham Khouri

Yes, hey, morning, Gaurav. It's Haitham. Integration is going very well. Pleased with the business, pleased with the team. As far as the, you know, as you know, we report very consistently on a segment level. We don't go below that. That said, if you look at my comments and Kyle's comments on the call around minimal PDI EBITDA contribution in Q4, yet Specialty Products Q4 EBITDA only modestly below what we've done in the first 3 quarters, I think there's a pretty clear and powerful inference you can make from that as to the performance of businesses in the Specialty Products segment outside of PDI.

Gaurav Sharma

Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Will Gildea with CJS Securities.

Will Gildea

So just in PDI, can you expand on some of the investments you're making to enhance long-term results and what is the timeline for results in PDI to normalize?

Haitham Khouri

Yeah, hey there Will, it's Haitham. You know, for normalized, you can look back a couple of years when that segment was only PDI. That's the best data point out there. We think it's possible that we do even better than that long-term with the supply source we control, and therefore we're quite optimistic about the future of that business and profitability levels we can get to. As far as the near term, our entire operating model at Perimeter is predicated on very consistently delivering and delivering with tremendous quality for our customers. We understand that PDI has fallen short of that standard, and we're not at all happy about it. We've been clear that we are going to take the decisive and necessary steps to fix that, and get PDI delivering consistently for our customers, just like all of our other businesses.

There is a path where we could have solved this within the contractual framework with our existing supplier. That clearly has not happened. We have been preparing for and are prepared to fix this outside of our contractual framework. We're not quite ready to provide all the details on that, although hold tight, we certainly will when it's done and dusted. This transition requires a temporary period of elevated expenses while we keep our customers supplied as we make this transition. Again, we've prepared for this, we feel good about this, and we are willingly living with higher near-term costs to keep customers supplied to get to the other side of this. Because as both me and Kyle said on the call, we will always make a short-term tradeoff to A, take care of our customers, and B, drive better long-term outcomes, which is exactly what we're doing at PDI.

Will Gildea

Thank you for the color, Haitham. And just can you give us a broad update on Monaco? Has anything surprised you since you closed, either good or bad?

Haitham Khouri

I would say no surprises, Will, although directionally very much good. We spent a lot of time up in Spokane with the team since close. The business is what we believed it was, frankly, if not even higher quality. And we've really, really enjoyed our interactions with the leadership team there. Just a very capable, humble group, and it's really been a privilege to interact with them so far, and we feel excellent about Monaco. I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Tomohiko Sano with J.P. Morgan.

Tomohiko Sano

Good morning. This is Ethan on for Tomo. Just to go a little bit more into PDI on the investments, were those within the quarter or are those looking for more Q4 on a run rate going forward? And then on the expanded production and alternative supply sources, is this bringing it more in-house?

Haitham Khouri

Good morning, Ethan. Kyle, thanks for the question. Absolutely. We're making those investments both within the quarter and prospectively. And it's a path that we're very committed to. As Haitham alluded to, this is a really high-quality business. We really like this business. We think we're differentiated here. We think it has a great ability to drive long-term value. It's just one piece that's missing.

So we're going to spend the money, and we have already started spending it, and we've been spending it, frankly, for a number of quarters now in preparation for this to make sure that we're going to get that full value out of it overall and ultimately. The key thing for us is we need to have reliable supply. We need to have substantially more control over the reliability of that supply than we have historically. So yes, we are going to have some expanded production at our existing facility, as we mentioned. We have some other sources that we're bringing online in very near order that will complement that.

Tomohiko Sano

Thank you for the additional color. And then just going to go back on MMT as well. With the additional investments that you're making in innovation and running the playbook, it's been really around 10 months, just under 10 months since you acquired MMT. How would you view it now versus maybe 10 months ago?

Haitham Khouri

No, not a whole lot different. And again, similar to the comment I made on Monaco, the business is largely what we expected and hoped it would be, primarily with a very large installed base of critically important long-lived machines into which there's a very, very high quality aftermarket revenue stream that is driving really significant profitability. We expected to and have reinvigorated new product development with the goal of increasing the growth rate and the size of the installed base in order to increase the size and profitability of the addressable aftermarket stream. And the team is executing, and we feel good.

Tomohiko Sano

Thank you. I'll hop back in the queue.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll move next to Daniel Kutz with Morgan Stanley.

Daniel Kutz

So I wanted to ask, between the federal retardant contract and the CAL FIRE contract you guys announced over the last year, that covers the majority of Lower 48 acres burned and retardant demand, but there were big markets out there, and you flagged building a base in Texas. I think the question is, if you invest in more wildfire fighting assets, Oregon had a historically severe wildfire season. How do you think about more contracts, or are there contracts in place with the state wildfire fighting agencies in those markets or any other big markets in the U.S.? How do you think about contracting relationships with those last couple of big customers in the United States that you haven't necessarily press released on them being in the federal contract or outside of the federal contract?

Haitham Khouri

Yes, I'll take it. We've seen a very clear and very positive trend over the past several years where various states decide to take wildland firefighting increasingly into their own hands. They still very much rely on the federal agencies for firefighting resources, but they have been supplementing and enhancing their federal partnerships by building out their own robust programs, be that air bases, be that air tankers, be that retardant contracting, et cetera. And we are an absolutely critical and fulcrum part of every one of those processes and have nicely bulked up and will continue to nicely bulk up our individual state contracts. Again, as more and more states supplement the support they get from their federal partners with their own programs.

Daniel Kutz

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe on the third quarter, I know that when you're in really severe periods of wildfire activity, assets can spread pretty thinly. And it seems like the third quarter of this year was among the most severe on record, but if you isolate just July and August, that might be record-high wildfire activity and acres burned in the Lower 48. Can you talk about how bottlenecks that are upstream or downstream of Perimeter might have factored into the quarter? Back in July of '24, you flagged that Perimeter is almost never the bottleneck in wildfire fighting. You've been investing more in streamlining your operations and the full-service infrastructure model. Were there any periods in this quarter where you guys were running into bottlenecks? Just asking about how the quarter's historically severe wildfire activity and any bottlenecks in firefighting efforts came into play. Thanks a lot.

Haitham Khouri

Hey Dan, Kyle, thanks for the question. I think you highlighted a couple of key points in here I wanted to reiterate. First of all, this was a very different wildfire season in July and August than it was in September. Let's talk about the first 2 months first. You have it exactly right that within these periods of months where there's elevated wildfire activity, the bottlenecks are a couple of things: do you have wildfire activity in the right geographies, which there was, and do you have timing where it's in a peak season where we're ready to step in, and there was.

And really during those periods, what we look at is air capacity. This is always the case. As you alluded to, it's not us and frankly never will be. The biggest bottleneck will be air capacity. This is why we spend so much time working with our partners in the air tanker community to help educate stakeholders, the government, and the firefighting agencies about the importance of air tanker capacity and making sure we're stabilizing and expanding that fleet over time. There are just times at these peak wildfire moments where there's not enough air tankers to deliver the product we need. That's July and August.

For September, as we've highlighted, it was a pretty steep decline. So this was a very steep decline going from August to September. And there you shift back to looking at, okay, now it is just the number of fires. And there were substantially fewer fires in September. And so really the bottleneck shifted from being air capacity to just how many fires were out there that needed to be fought with air tankers.

Daniel Kutz

It all makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer period. I would now like to turn the call back to Haitham Khouri for closing remarks.

Haitham Khouri

Thank you, Chloe. Great job hosting the call today. Thank you to analysts for your attention and excellent questions. And as always, thank you to our shareholders for the tremendous support. Speak again early next year.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today's third quarter 2026 Perimeter Group Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.

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