Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

I would now like to turn the conference over to Nick Nelson, Investor Relations for Quest. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for Quest Resource's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or future performance of the company. Use of words like anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, believe, and other similar expressions are intended to identify those forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the company's current expectations, estimates, projections, beliefs, and assumptions and involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual events or the company's results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, which are discussed in greater detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements and to consult SEC filings for additional risks and uncertainties. The company's forward-looking statements are presented as of the date made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update such statements unless required by law to do so. In addition, this call may include industry and market data and other statistical information, as well as the company's observations and views about industry conditions and developments. The data and information are based on the company's estimates, independent publications, government publications, and reports by market research firms and other sources. Although Quest believes these sources are reliable and the data and other information are accurate, we caution that Quest has not independently verified the reliability of the sources or the accuracy of the information. Certain non-GAAP financial measures will be disclosed during this call. These non-GAAP measures are used by management to make strategic decisions, forecast future results, and evaluate the company's current performance. Management believes the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors' understanding and assessment of the company's ongoing core operations and prospects for the future. Unless it is stated otherwise, it should be assumed that any financials discussed in this call will be on a non-GAAP basis. Full reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Perry Moss, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Nick, and thanks, everyone, for joining this afternoon. Our third quarter results reflect the progress we've been making in building a more balanced and diversified business. Improved performance across our broader portfolio, combined with the continued benefits of our operational excellence initiatives, drove adjusted EBITDA growth both sequentially and compared to the prior year. While revenue was relatively flat, gross profit increased sequentially and flowed through to the bottom line. I'm incredibly proud of the entire Quest team for staying focused on what we can control. We're pleased with the quarter and will stay disciplined as we move into a seasonally softer period. Through the first half of the year, our progress came from two sources: stabilizing volumes within our industrial portfolio and growing contributions from new customer wins and wallet share expansions, many of them outside the industrial sector. In the third quarter, our performance was more balanced. Industrial revenues softened modestly, which led to the slight sequential decline in total revenue, but we saw meaningful margin improvement with several of our industrial customers. Meanwhile, the non-industrial portion of our portfolio grew sequentially and continues to perform across markets like food service, retail, hospitality, and more. That's exactly the type of balance our diversification strategy is designed to deliver, and it is encouraging to see it in our results. During the quarter, we renewed contracts with four customers. These renewals reflect the value we deliver and the trust we've built, and those relationships make it easier to grow with our customers and continue to expand share of wallet across the portfolio. Over the past year, we've also onboarded several new customers outside the industrial sector. As those accounts and our recent wallet share expansions mature, they contribute to both revenue and margin. We are optimistic about our sales pipeline, and trends so far in October have been consistent with our expectations. Several of our discussions with large national brands are now well advanced, a number of them in markets where Quest doesn't operate today, and winning them would add another counterweight to industrial seasonality. Adding brands of this caliber would also bring additional credibility in the market as we pursue other national accounts. While the timing of the conversion is difficult to predict, we believe our value is being recognized more broadly than ever. Gross margin was 17.8% in the quarter, a meaningful step up from the second quarter. This improvement was driven by ongoing optimization of our service network, disciplined pricing, and maturing margins from recently onboarded accounts, and several of our industrial customers contributed to it. Compared to the prior year, gross margin was down slightly from 18.1%, reflecting margin pressure from certain industrial customers that was partially offset by improvements across the rest of the business. We believe the drivers behind our sequential improvement can be sustained, and we'll keep working to build on them. Operationally, we continue to execute well, and our operational excellence initiatives are delivering real results across the business. Brett and his team continue to do a terrific job optimizing our cost structure and improving our cash cycle, and he'll walk through those details shortly. On the cost side, diesel prices remain elevated amid ongoing geopolitical events, but the impact on our results has been limited to date. While we've seen attempts to push through surcharges, we've been successful at fighting them on behalf of our customers. As a reminder, our contract structure continues to allow us to pass through certain costs where needed. Having made significant progress building a more efficient operating foundation, we are now investing in our team and capabilities to capture the opportunities in front of us. We recently welcomed Vignesh Lal as our Senior Vice President of Technology. Vignesh is a proven technology leader who already knows our business well, and we are thrilled to have him on the team. We are excited about what this addition will bring as we continue to enhance our technology platform and the data capabilities we deliver to our clients, and strengthening our ability to scale as we add larger national accounts. Looking ahead, we remain cautiously optimistic about our customer portfolio, though we are mindful of the typical fourth quarter seasonality, which is most pronounced within our industrial base. We believe the continued growth and diversification of our non-industrial business will help counterbalance these dynamics. As we head into the fourth quarter, we will stay focused on converting our pipeline into new wins, expanding share of wallet with existing customers, building on this quarter's margin gains, and continuing to strengthen cash generation and our balance sheet. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Brett to review our third quarter financial results in greater detail. Brett?

Thanks, Perry, and good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the third quarter was $63.8 million, a slight increase of approximately 1% from one year ago, and essentially flat compared to the sequential second quarter. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by net new business of approximately $1.7 million from new client wins and wallet share expansions with existing customers. This was partially offset by a decline of approximately $1.2 million in revenue from certain clients in the industrial end market. Sequentially, solid growth across the broader non-industrial portion of the portfolio were offset by softer industrial volumes. Coming into the quarter, we had expected another quarter of sequential revenue growth, which we achieved across the majority of our business, but the improved industrial volumes from Q1 to Q2 did not carry over into Q3. While revenue was slightly softer than we expected, we continued to do a nice job driving margins and profitability. In the third quarter, gross profit dollars totaled $11.4 million, essentially flat compared to the prior year, but sequentially up approximately 10%. This resulted in a gross margin of 17.8% compared to 18.1% in the prior year, and up sharply from 16.3% sequentially. The slight year-over-year decline in gross profit dollars and gross margin is isolated to margin pressure with select industrial clients. This was partially offset by improved gross profit across the remainder of the business, where our operating initiatives and wallet share expansion continue to take hold. Sequentially, we saw meaningful and broad-based margin improvements across most of the portfolio from the ongoing optimization initiatives. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we would anticipate gross profit and margin to be up solidly compared to the prior year. However, it is a good time to remind everyone that our business does experience seasonality in Q4, so sequentially, revenue and gross profit will decline. However, we will be well-positioned entering 2027 as we build off the momentum gained in 2026. Over time, we will continue to support our margin profile by focusing on what we can control, growing in non-industrial markets, optimizing service levels across the portfolio, winning incremental wallet share with existing customers, and executing our land and expand strategy to grow margin levels at recently onboarded accounts. Moving on to SG&A, which came in at $8.5 million, amounting to an 8% reduction compared to the prior year. The year-over-year decrease was driven by lower bad debt expense and facility rent, as well as the accumulation of cost savings initiatives across multiple departments. On a sequential basis, SG&A was up modestly from the second quarter, primarily due to higher business expenses during the period. Year to date, SG&A is down 16% compared to the prior year, which amounts to almost $5 million in cost reductions as we have right-sized the business and improved operating leverage. Looking forward, we do expect that total SG&A will likely be up slightly next year as we begin to reinvest in growth. But we expect to offset much of that through additional efficiencies and new business wins, which will demonstrate improvements to our operating leverage. GAAP net loss for the quarter was $0.5 million, an improvement from a net loss of $1.3 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.4 million, up from $2.9 million in the third quarter of 2025, and $2.8 million in the second quarter, reflecting the strong flow-through of our sequential profit gains. Moving on to a review of the cash flows and balance sheet. We ended the quarter with approximately $1 million in cash and approximately $17.4 million in availability on our ABL credit facility. Cash used in operating activities was $0.3 million as of the third quarter, with the timing of collections with a few specific clients impacting the quarter. Year to date, we have generated $4.4 million of operating cash flow, which we have used to reduce the balance of our higher-interest term debt by approximately the same $4.4 million. Debt reduction remains a key priority, and with interest expense already down roughly 9% year to date, each payment further improves our cash generation in the future. Our DSO finished the quarter at roughly 71, essentially flat with the second quarter, and our working capital days were also flat sequentially. During the quarter, we worked through three unique and short-term collection challenges with a few specific clients, including one large client that saw temporary payment interruptions as it brought its payment processing in-house. All of these three issues have since been resolved. However, for the quarter, they led to a brief pause in our progress towards our previously stated target for DSO, and largely masked the additional improvements in billing efficiencies and collection gains that were made across the rest of the portfolio. To reiterate, we remain confident in our path to our near-term DSO target of the mid-60s. Overall, as Perry noted, we are encouraged by the more balanced performance across our portfolio. The organic initiatives we've taken to diversify the business and increase productivity across the organization are driving improved profitability, even as volumes from the industrial portion of the portfolio remain uneven. Our financial priorities are unchanged, investing in our talent and growth opportunities, optimizing our cost structure, leveraging our operational excellence initiatives to drive cash flow, and paying down debt. On the cash cycle, we were able to quickly resolve the one-time issues, and we have already moved past this quarter's timing headwinds. We believe that positions us for stronger cash generation and further debt reduction as we close out the year and head into 2027. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Perry for some closing comments before we open it up for Q&A. Perry?

Great. Thank you, Brett. In the third quarter, the more balanced and efficient business we've built delivered a sequential step-up in gross margin and adjusted EBITDA growth both year-over-year and sequentially. Looking ahead, we're encouraged by the quality of opportunities in our pipeline and the investments we're making in our team to capture them. While we remain mindful of seasonality and the broader macro environment, we are cautiously optimistic that our increasingly diversified portfolio, combined with the initiatives within our control, positions us for future growth. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our operator to move us to Q&A. Operator?

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. If at any time your question has been answered and you'd like to withdraw from the queue, please press star then two. The first question is from Aaron Spychalla with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, Perry and Brett. It's Aaron Spychalla. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first, just on the pipeline, it sounds like continued confidence, just tough to call timing, but some opportunities late stage. Could you maybe give a little bit more detail? You kind of talked about some new markets. Anything you can share there as you look to further diversify the end markets in the business?

Sure. I will address that one, Aaron. We are talking about some late-stage large national brands, and these large national brands are certainly a bit more complex to sell through. When I refer to late-stage, it is about as late as we can get in the stage. I do not want to get ahead of myself, but we feel very confident and bullish about some of these opportunities that essentially are right on the goal line. I cannot predict when they will convert, and I would not attempt to. But we are right where we expect to be, and hopefully we will be able to at least make some announcements next quarter.

All right. Any details you can give on where some of these end markets might be, or just curious if there is any other color there?

Yeah. It is consistent with our strategy to continue to diversify our portfolio. I do not want to get too specific, but they are in non-industrial sectors. As we have said, we are focused on retail, food service, hospitality, restaurants, transportation, and logistics. They are all within those four categories.

Okay. Great. Thanks. On some of the contract renewals, any kind of wallet share gains that are noteworthy there? Did not hear anything, but any concessions or kind of customer attrition that you might have seen there or-

Yeah.

-anything?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, we do not get specific on contract terms, but I will tell you, the renewals did not come with concessions. We felt very good about it. What I think it reflected is the confidence that these customers have, both on our service execution and our model. We continue to grow the business through share of wallet opportunities. I did not mention any this quarter. It is a timing issue. We did not really close any what I would consider significant share of wallet in Q3, while we did have some smaller opportunities added to the book of business. I will not mention every single share of wallet opportunity because some of them are not material, but they reflect the confidence that our customers have in our service execution. Like the new sales pipeline, the share of wallet pipeline is also looking really healthy.

Great. Good. Thanks for that color. On the margin gains you saw in industrial, can you just talk about some of the drivers behind that and initiatives you have there, where you are at with some of those?

Hey, Aaron, this is Brett. I will take that one. As a reminder, what I think we are most excited about with the quarter is not just the gains in the industrial side. We really saw broad-based gains on margin across the portfolio. That came with some increased pricing, but through better efficiencies gained and some improvements on the vendor network side as well. It was really broad-based. Some of those industrial volumes are just the timing of bringing on additional performances to those clients. We have talked about that in previous quarters, that we would expect to see some margin improvements overall with those. Just like Perry talked, it is just about executing what we have committed to.

Good. Thanks for the color. I will turn it over.

Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question is from Gerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Brett and Perry. Thanks for taking my call.

Yeah.

Just to follow up on the margin side, it sounds as though these gains are sustainable, all things being equal. I mean, obviously, pricing is pricing. You're working with your vendors, you're optimizing that, and then I guess there's probably some internal efficiencies. But suffice to say, these are sustainable improvements.

Gerry. The other thing I didn't mention is, what we've talked about all along is the land and expand approach, right? Get in, those margins are going to be lower over time. That's another factor that's played into this margin improvement that we've made across this year, is optimizing that book of business, that new book of business that we brought online. But certainly, we look at this more confidently from a margin standpoint. There's always going to be mix. We've talked about if industrial volumes come back meaningfully, those can weigh down overall margins. But we've got some mixed things on the other side that can help bring those up as well. We are confident in, within a range, these margins continuing.

Got it. The other aspect is you did highlight maybe next year going into reinvestment mode. With the sales pipeline and everything else, was that a little bit of a hindrance in driving sales in the short term as you were a little bit more focused on expenses and adding to that group? Would that potentially accelerate some sales or help uncork that? What should we think about on that front?

Yeah. That's a really good question, Gerry. I would tell you that this was really part of our strategy. I don't know if you recall the very first earnings call I was on, but I made a comment and I said, "If you have water trickling through a pipe, you probably don't see any leaks, but once you pressurize the pipe, that's when the leaks will spring." It came at a time when we onboarded a number of customers. Our intention was to build a strong foundation and an efficient foundation before we pressurize that pipe again. Partly to address the cost reduction initiatives that we had, we had some sales resources that just weren't performing. We moved them out, and we intentionally did not replace them. We kept our best team in place. Yeah. We now have a very sound foundation. We've got our processes defined. We can take on that new business. There's a lot of things at play. Yes, we intend to invest in growth. We also intend to invest in technology. But we think those two things can really offset a large portion of any incremental cost. The technology will help us to automate, become more efficient, do a lot more with fewer resources, and we certainly expect that added resources on the sales team will pay for themselves, or they probably won't be long-term members of the team.

Got it. No, and I-

That's kind of how we look at it.

That's helpful. I know, listen, business isn't linear, so I get that and respect that. Maybe one for Brett. On the cash flow or collections, this sounded like discrete issues in terms of, especially one of them sounded like they brought payment system in-house, and this was more of an operation function on the other end as opposed to bad payments. Secondarily, if those payments had come in or those collections had come in, what potentially could have been the cash flow this quarter?

Yeah. You're right on. These were not self-inflicted issues with collections or anything that's at risk of collections. We've resolved those, as I mentioned in the script earlier. That was a positive that we were able to get those resolved before we got on here and talked on them. We're in a good position to really end the quarter and the year strongly there. In terms of what could have been, without speaking to a specific dollar range, I can tell you we most likely would have been at our target of mid-60s DSO. I'm really proud that we were able to hold DSOs relatively flat given those real short-term challenges, and it really speaks to what the team has been able to do in terms of billing efficiencies, other improvements broadly across the clients with pulling in collections and getting more current. Continue to be really impressed of what we've been able to accomplish.

Okay, great. I appreciate all that detail. Thanks, guys.

Yeah.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Perry Moss for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Thank you, and thanks to everyone for joining this afternoon. We really appreciate your continued support and interest in Quest, and we look forward to updating everyone next quarter. Thank you.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.