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Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (CMTL)

Q2 2026 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 16, 2026

$3.51

-7.63%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Comtech Telecommunications Corp.'s Conference Call for the Second Quarter of Fiscal 2026. 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&A 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 our Allerium segment. Before we get started, please note we have a detailed discussion of the quarter in the press release and 10-Q we issued this afternoon, which are 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 plans, 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'm going to discuss some key trends, and Mike will discuss our financials in more detail. Comtech continued on its positive trajectory of improvement as we delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of positive operating cash flow and ended the quarter with approximately $50 million of total liquidity. With net bookings of $175 million in the quarter, we've achieved a book-to-bill ratio of 1.64x, increased our backlog to $732 million and maintained our revenue visibility at approximately $1.1 billion. As previously disclosed, we've streamlined our product lines and are more selective in the customer orders we accept. As a result of these deliberate decisions as well as the temporary impact of the U.S. government shutdown, consolidated net sales decreased from $127 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 to $107 million this past quarter. But importantly, we increased gross profit from $34 million to $36 million, increased our gross profit percentage from 27% to 34% and increased adjusted EBITDA from $2.9 million to $9.1 million. These improvements are due to the initiatives we have implemented to enhance operational efficiency, reduce the cost structure and focus our product development and sales efforts on strategic higher operating margin products. As a result of our improved performance and stronger financial position, we continue to see increased support and enthusiasm from both current and prospective customers, vendors and employees. Now I will provide some commentary on our business units. Our Satellite and Space Communications business continues to improve as a result of our transformation initiatives under Daniel Gizinski leadership. As anticipated, net sales in the Satellite and Space segment declined by 31% as a result of the company's decision to phase out and eliminate certain low-margin and working capital-intensive revenues as…

Michael Bondi

Management

Thank you, Ken, and good afternoon, everyone. Overall, the successful turnaround continues to take root. We are pleased to be delivering another quarter of improved profitability and operating cash flows relative to our recent past. Now let's turn to the financials. Net sales for the second quarter were $106.8 million. This compares to $126.6 million in the second quarter of last year. As Ken just referenced, net sales reflect the impact of the decision to phase out certain low or no-margin revenues in our Satellite and Space Communications segment as we continue to streamline our product lines and focus on strategic, higher-margin opportunities while optimizing cash flow. Timing delays as a result of the recent but prolonged U.S. government shutdown also impacted S&S orders and net sales this past quarter. As for Allerium, Allerium's growth continued this past quarter with Allerium reporting higher net sales in all 3 product areas as compared to the prior year period. Gross profit in the second quarter was $36.2 million or 33.9% of net sales, representing an increase from $33.7 million or 26.7% of net sales in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. This improvement demonstrates the progress we are making in improving our product mix, including our ongoing shift back to higher volume production orders in our satellite ground infrastructure solutions product line. The improvement in our quarterly gross profit percentage builds upon the improving quarterly trend achieved throughout all of fiscal '25 and the first quarter of fiscal '26. In our second quarter of fiscal 2026, we reported an operating loss of $1.2 million, which compares to an operating loss of over $10 million in the second quarter of last year. Our second quarters for each year reflects several noncash and onetime charges as further discussed in our Form 10-Q filed earlier…

Kenneth Traub

Management

Thank you, Mike. To sum up briefly, Comtech has executed a successful transformation and is now a much stronger company. Our revitalized financial health is increasingly reassuring to our current and prospective employees, customers and vendors. I believe this creates a positive flywheel effect as our recent strengthening of our financial position is reassuring to employees, which aids in retention, recruitment and motivation, reassuring to customers, particularly those that rely on us for mission-critical technologies and services and reassuring for vendors who now see us as a reliable partner ready to deepen critical relationships. As a reminder, Jeff and Daniel will be joining us for Q&A. With that, operator, please open the call to any questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take a question from Keith Housum with Northcoast Research.

Keith Housum

Analyst

Ken, as we look at the revenue in the quarter, how much of that revenue decline was due to the fiscal discipline you guys are showing versus prior quarters? And perhaps how much was from the federal business? And is that federal business that kind of lost or pushed out to later quarters?

Kenneth Traub

Management

So first of all, Keith, welcome. Nice to have you. And if you compare this year to last year, pretty much all of the decline in satellite and space is the result of phasing out old legacy business that was very low margin and not good business to have. That's the GFSR, the VSAT contract and the legacy troposcatter. In addition, we did have delays due to the government shutdown. That was offset by new revenue, particularly in the launch of the next-generation troposcatter products as well as the digital ground modem.

Keith Housum

Analyst

Great. Great. As we look forward, is there any more of that low-margin business that still has to be worked off just because of prior commitments or anything of that nature?

Kenneth Traub

Management

No. We phased that revenue out.

Keith Housum

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then this is kind of new to the story here. Just trying to understand the 2 modems that are hopefully going to reach production sometime here in the second half of the year. Is there any way to kind of dimensionalize the opportunity just as kind of we think about the opportunity for the end of the year and perhaps outwards as well?

Kenneth Traub

Management

Keith, can you repeat the question?

Keith Housum

Analyst

Yes. Just on the 2 contracts that were going towards hopefully to production here in the second half of the year. I'm just trying to understand if I can -- if you guys can dimensionalize here or provide some context about what the true opportunity is for Comtech. How do we think about it perhaps in revenue or number of units or anything? I'm just trying to get my hands around what the opportunity might be.

Kenneth Traub

Management

We want to be careful in the specifics. But Mike, you want to give them some guidance on that transition?

Michael Bondi

Management

Sure. Keith, in terms of the 2 -- there's multiple modems that are coming online actually. One is already in low rate production, and we are expecting that to kick in, in the second half. This is a platform that we think will survive for many years. The other program, which we refer to as the EDIM program. We're just about finishing up with development and gearing up for production towards the tail end of the fiscal year. And that's another, I would say, very long-term program. It's the successor to the EBEM modem that was sold by Viasat, and that was like a 10-year program. And I want to say tens of thousands of modems were sold over that period of time. So that's like if you think about the installed base that we're going to likely upgrade, maybe not every one of those systems, but there's a good quantity out there to upgrade.

Keith Housum

Analyst

Great. Okay. I appreciate that. And if I can get one more in here, if you guys don't mind. Jeff, nice to meet you here over the phone. In terms of Allerium, I understand in the PSAP space, AI is being introduced quickly amongst yourself and competitors. Can you perhaps provide a little bit of color about how you guys are embracing AI with your product portfolio? I guess, this is the first part. And the second part, how far along are you guys in the transition to the cloud for your customers? Or are you guys already there?

Jeff Robertson

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Keith, both great questions. So as it comes to AI and the PSAPs, which are the 911 and dispatch centers, it's -- where it's mostly coming into play is they're being bombarded with many different forms of information during an emergency request for help. And we're using AI to kind of collect all the different sources of data and paint a simple emergency response picture so that they can dispatch the right emergency personnel and first responders to appropriate scene. So that's where we're seeing most of the work being done with AI. But throughout our company, we're also using it in other areas for productivity enhancement, whether it be for development and coding or other just administrative tasks. But from -- I think your question was more on the product. But where we're seeing it early on is in the gathering of the information during a request for help or emergency. On the second part of your question as it relates to cloud, I think we're a good ways away. I would say we're 3 quarters of the way down the road in moving our products to cloud. You're seeing announced last year a new product called Mira, which is coming out shortly, is our cloud-based 9-1-1 call handling platform. We've had some really good feedback in the market for that. But we're also moving many of our services we provide in the NextGen 9-1-1 core services, we'll be moving to a private cloud infrastructure. So I'd say we're 3/4 of the way through.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And at this time, there are no further questions in queue. I will now turn the meeting back to Ken for any additional or closing remarks.

Kenneth Traub

Management

Well, thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you all. Have a good evening.

Michael Bondi

Management

Take care.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.