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Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (CMTL)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 10, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Comtech Telecommunications Corp.'s Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year of Fiscal 2025. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Maria Ceriello, Senior Director of FP&I of Comtech. Please go ahead, Maria.

Maria Ceriello

Management

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I'm here with Ken Traub, Comtech's Chairman, President and CEO; and Mike Bondi, our CFO. After Ken and Mike's remarks, they will be available for questions together with Daniel Gizinski, President of our Satellite and Space Communications segment; and Jeff Robertson, President of Allerium, formerly known as the Terrestrial and Wireless segment. Before we get started, please note we have a detailed discussion of the quarter and year in the press release and 10-K we issued this afternoon, which is available on our website as well as the SEC's website. Certain information presented in this call will include, but not be limited to, information relating to the future performance and financial condition of the company, the company's plans, objectives and business outlook and the planned objectives and business outlook of the company's management. The company's assumptions regarding such performance, business outlook and plans are forward-looking in nature and always involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from such forward-looking information. Any forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by cautionary statements contained in the company's SEC filings. With that, I will turn it over to Ken. Ken?

Kenneth Traub

Management

Thank you, Maria, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. I am proud to report how much stronger Comtech is today, financially, operationally and strategically. This is the result of the ongoing successful execution of the transformation initiatives that we announced when I started as CEO in January 2025. As a testament to our improving financial health, the company no longer has uncertainties regarding its ability to continue as a going concern, and this disclosure has been removed from our financial statements. We have executed a successful turnaround of our Satellite and Space business, which is now revitalized and our Allerium business, formerly known as terrestrial and wireless has continued to deepen our presence in the public safety market while securing long-term customer partnerships. We expect the company's significantly improved operational and financial health to be reassuring to our current and prospective customers, vendors, employees, investors and partners. The early success of our transformation initiatives and the positive trajectory of the business are evident across numerous key metrics. Let me provide some examples. First, operating cash flow. We reported $11.4 million of positive operating cash flow in the fourth quarter, which follows the $2.3 million of positive operating cash flow in the third quarter. These are the first quarters of positive operating cash flow for Comtech since fiscal 2023. These operating cash flow numbers are after taking into account the payment of cash interest expense and fees on our debt as well as restructuring activities, including payments to resolve legacy issues we inherited from former management. The significant improvement in operating cash flow is the result of a cultural shift, emphasizing optimizing cash flow, improved process disciplines, better working capital management as well as the timing of and progress of completion on contracts that enabled us to…

Michael Bondi

Management

Thank you, Ken, and good afternoon, everyone. Before getting into the detailed results, I would like to first summarize this past quarter. Sequentially, our consolidated GAAP operating results were better than our third quarter of fiscal 2025. We continue to grow net sales and improve gross margins, further reduced our operating expenses, generated positive GAAP operating income for the first time in over 5 quarters, further increased our adjusted EBITDA and achieved our second consecutive quarter of positive cash flows from operations. The Allerium segment continues to perform well, securing several large multiyear contract extensions from key customers. Our Satellite and Space Communications segment has been rejuvenated and improvements are evident with sequential growth in net sales, gross profit, operating income, adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flows. We were also successful in reducing corporate unallocated operating expenses during the more recent fiscal year quarter. While there are always opportunities for greater efficiency, the transformation plans that Ken described earlier have not only stabilized our business, but have also strengthened our financial condition and opportunities for further growth. I'm going to review our financial results for fiscal 2025 first, then discuss results for the fourth quarter. In fiscal 2025, Comtech had consolidated net sales of $499.5 million compared to $540.4 million in fiscal '24. The change in sales reflects the anticipated wind down of certain legacy troposcatter contracts, lower sales of EEE space components and antennas, including those related to the CGC divestiture that we initiated in our fourth quarter of fiscal '24 and the divestiture of our high-powered solid-state amplifiers product line in November of 2023. These items were offset in part by higher sales of our Allerium's NG911 emergency communication, call handling and location-based solutions and SATCOM solutions in our Satellite and Space segment, primarily satellite ground infrastructure solutions…

Kenneth Traub

Management

Thank you, Mike. To sum up briefly, Comtech has been successfully executing the transformation plan that I announced in January, which has not only helped to drive Comtech's significantly improved operating and financial performance, but also has enabled us to improve relationships with current and prospective employees, customers, vendors and creditors. I believe this leads to a flywheel effect in which improved relationships create a healthier dynamic for the business going forward and ultimately, further improvements in operating and financial performance. As a reminder, Jeff and Daniel will be joining us for the Q&A. With that, operator, please open the call to any questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Matthew Maus with B. Riley.

Matthew Maus

Analyst

Matthew on for Mike Crawford. I guess to start off, regarding the $130 million carrier contract, I'm assuming it hits 2Q '26 bookings. Can you help us model some of the economics in terms of the contract duration, how it's -- how the revenue is expected to ramp and whether you think it kind of represents a meaningful step-up in Allerium's growth trajectory?

Kenneth Traub

Management

Thanks for the question, Matthew. So it's -- we're not going to give a lot more specifics for commercial and competitive reasons. We'll say that it's at least $130 million contract. It is a long-term commitment with a major customer, and we believe it gives us an opportunity to build significantly around that. Jeff Robertson is on the call. Jeff, do you want to add anything?

Jeff Robertson

Analyst

No, Ken. I think you covered it well. We're just encouraged by this customer, and it's the long-term backlog that it represents gives us some confidence in the future. That's all I would add to that.

Kenneth Traub

Management

So I do want to clarify, Matthew, that this is an existing customer that is making a going-forward long-term commitment. And -- but it is -- it's a very significant milestone for us, right? This locks in a long -- one of our most important customers in the Allerium business, and it's an anchor of stability that we will be building around.

Matthew Maus

Analyst

Got it. And you provided some preliminary first quarter '26 guidance. I guess, given the government shutdown impact and the pull forward you mentioned, how should we think about the quarterly cadence through fiscal '26?

Kenneth Traub

Management

Okay. So we're a company that doesn't give guidance. We did for Q1 because Q1 is already complete. So what we can tell you is we do believe that business will continue to improve throughout fiscal 2026 and beyond. We've now -- we've achieved a lot of improvements that I've detailed in my remarks, and we do anticipate improvements in the quarters following Q1.

Matthew Maus

Analyst

Got it. All right. And so bookings and the book-to-bill ratio both improved sequentially. I'm just wondering if you can lay that out one more time. What's kind of driving that improvement towards getting that above 1 in fiscal '26? And like where -- which segment specifically do you see the most strength of that?

Kenneth Traub

Management

Mike, do you want to handle that question?

Michael Bondi

Management

Sure, Ken. In terms of our book-to-bill ratio, just always keep in mind that as you just heard us announce today, we had a very large contract, a multiyear contract award that was booked in November. So that's something that we would not expect to repeat. But overall, I think we're very excited about our progress in Allerium's success in international markets. That's been a focus of ours, and it's nice to see that we're getting some bookings there as well. And I think working through the government shutdown, we don't think it's going to be permanent. And I would think that the cadence will pick up once we get past this shutdown period.

Matthew Maus

Analyst

And last one for me, just quickly on -- I think previously, you mentioned the EDIM certification was expected prior to calendar year-end. I'm just wondering where things stand now. Are you through the certification and what would the ramp look like?

Michael Bondi

Management

Matthew, could you clarify your question? What was it that you were asking about a certification?

Matthew Maus

Analyst

Yes, the EDIM certification in terms of it being -- it was previously expected prior to year-end. I'm wondering if there's an update on that.

Michael Bondi

Management

Okay. I think you're referencing the EDIM program, we referenced it as EDM.

Matthew Maus

Analyst

Right, EDIM.

Michael Bondi

Management

Yes. Maybe that's a question best answered by Dan Gizinski. But yes, I'll start off by saying that, that program has been progressing. We definitely are excited that we're getting towards the tail end of our nonrecurring engineering phase and moving to production, which is in our wheelhouse, but I'll turn it over to Daniel.

Daniel Gizinski

Analyst

Yes. Thanks for the question. So high level on the EDIM program, I think the expectation that we had communicated is that we would be delivering initial prototype equivalent products to begin the certification process prior to calendar year-end. We are still expecting to see that final certification phase that we're going to work through collaboratively with the U.S. government certainly will be dependent on the delivery of those units as well as coordination with various different government entities to conduct that final certification, and that will take place over the earlier parts of calendar '26 with, I think, some flexibility in the schedule. We are continuing to make good progress and are still expecting to have those units delivered in place to begin the certification process prior to our calendar year-end.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We show no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Ken Traub for closing remarks.

Kenneth Traub

Management

Well, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. And as a final message, in anticipation of Veterans Day tomorrow, I would like to express our gratitude to all those who have served our country. Thank you all very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And this does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time. Thank you.