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RF Industries, Ltd. (RFIL)

Q1 2026 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 16, 2026

$13.92

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the RF Industries, Ltd. First Quarter Fiscal 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Now I would like to turn the call over to our host, Donni Case, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Donni Case

Analyst

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the RF Industries, Ltd. First Quarter Fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. With me today are RF Industries, Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer, Rob Dawson; President and COO, Ray Bibisi; and CFO, Peter Yin. We issued our press release after the market today, and that release is available on our website at rfindustries.com. I want to remind everyone that during today's call, management will be making forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Please note that information on this call today may constitute forward-looking statements under the Securities Exchange laws. When used, the words “anticipate,” “believe,” “expect,” “intend,” “future,” and other similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect management's current views with respect to future events and financial performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the outcomes contained in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these forward-looking statements to differ from actual results include the risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. RF Industries, Ltd. undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Additionally, throughout the call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. Today's earnings release and related Current Report on Form 8-Ks describe the differences between our GAAP and non-GAAP reporting. With that, I will turn the conference over to Rob Dawson, Chief Executive Officer. Go ahead, Rob.

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Thank you, Donni. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our First Quarter Fiscal 2026 conference call. I will lead off with highlights from the quarter, Ray will provide a progress report on sales and operations, and Peter will cover our financial results before we open the call to your questions. I am pleased to report that we are off to a great start in fiscal 2026. Net sales were $19 million in the quarter. This was just shy of our record first quarter last year in absolute numbers, but for totally different reasons. Last year in fiscal Q1, we had a large project that created a welcome anomaly and produced increased sales in what is historically a seasonally softer period. Net sales for Q1 this year, however, reflected a far greater diversity of products, customers, and end markets, which I believe will set the stage for upcoming quarters. That said, for me, the big takeaway for this quarter was the meaningful expansion in profitability. Compared to the first quarter last year with similar net sales, gross profit margin improved 250 basis points to 32.3%. Operating income tripled to $177,000, and adjusted EBITDA increased—would not be positive if I said decreased. Increased—EBITDA increased 22% to nearly $1.1 million. To our long-term shareholders, thank you for your patience and confidence we would deliver on what we promised: a more diversified sales base and increased profits from our significant operating leverage. What is exciting to me is that our entire team is feeling the momentum. And in our business, momentum does not just happen. It is earned when strategy and execution move together in lockstep. Over the past few years, we have worked hard to reach this inflection point where we have a clear line of sight to scale both our business and…

Ray Bibisi

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. As Rob highlighted, the momentum we are feeling across this organization is real, and it is earned. I would like to take a few minutes to walk you through how we are actively managing the key levers across our business to drive growth, reduce vulnerability, and create lasting shareholder value. I will take you through sales, product management, engineering, and operations, and the levers driving our strategy forward. Let me begin with the commercial momentum and market position. With the focus and execution of our team, we can maintain momentum even when specific opportunities take longer to close—something that in prior years could have had a significant impact on quarterly results. This resilience comes directly from the diversification we have deliberately built across markets, product areas, and customers, which allows us to manage possible softness or delays in one area with strength in others. Revenue and bookings are, without question, the scoreboard, but they do not tell the whole story. Equally important is how we achieve these results. A big part of that answer is diversification. As Rob mentioned, this diversification is real, and it is working. Today, we are actively serving and winning business across aerospace, telecommunication, industrial, medical, data centers, and government and military markets, amongst others. And the strength of that diversification showed in Q1, where strong performance in our custom cable segment helped offset timing delays in integrated systems. This is not accidental. It is the result of our strategic and deliberate effort to broaden RF Industries, Ltd.’s addressable market and reduce concentration risk. We are also seeing a resurgence in previously delayed opportunities, which is strengthening both our pipeline and our backlog. This improved visibility gives us real confidence heading into upcoming quarters and positions us well to capture growth, manage risk,…

Peter Yin

Analyst

Thank you, Ray, and good afternoon, everyone. As Rob mentioned, we are pleased with our first quarter results. First quarter sales were relatively flat at $19 million compared to $19.2 million year over year. As expected, sales were down 16% from $22.7 million on a sequential basis, reflecting our seasonally slow first quarter. Our gross profit margin increased 250 basis points to 32.3% from 29.8% year over year. This improvement reflected our team's strong execution to drive price realization and operational efficiencies while also focusing on cost control. As a result of this, we see improved operating income, consolidated net loss, non-GAAP net income, and adjusted EBITDA. First quarter operating income was $177,000, up from the $56,000 we reported last year. First quarter consolidated net loss was $50,000, or $0.00 per diluted share, and our non-GAAP net income was $659,000, or $0.06 per diluted share. This compares to a net loss of $245,000, or $0.02 per diluted share, and a non-GAAP net income of $397,000, or $0.04 per diluted share in 2025. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $1.1 million, or 5.6% of net sales, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $867,000, or 4.5% of net sales in Q1 2025. We continue our focus on delivering adjusted EBITDA of 10% or greater as a percentage of net sales. Moving to the balance sheet. As of 01/31/2026, our balance sheet remains healthy with a total of $5,100,000 of cash and cash equivalents and working capital of $14,600,000. Our current ratio was approximately 1.8 to 1 with current assets of $33,000,000 and current liabilities of $18,400,000. As of 01/31/2026, we had borrowed $7,100,000 from our revolving credit facility as we continue to manage our working capital to strengthen our liquidity and overall capital position. Our net debt was reduced by $4,800,000 compared to Q1 2025 and down $744,000 compared to Q4 2025. Our inventory remained relatively consistent at $13,800,000 compared to $13,700,000 last year, reflecting a prudent approach to inventory management that balances discipline with customer demand. Moving on to our backlog. As of January 31, our backlog stood at $14,400,000 on bookings of $17,900,000. As of today, our backlog currently stands at $18,600,000. While we are pleased with the increase since quarter end, as I have mentioned before, our backlog is a snapshot in time and it can vary based on when orders are received and when orders are fulfilled. We view backlog as a general gauge of health. We know that it can swing significantly between reporting periods and, therefore, may not accurately indicate our near-term sales outlook. Overall, we are excited to start fiscal 2026 with an upbeat quarter that builds upon the operational momentum that we achieved in fiscal 2025. We are heads down on execution, and we believe we are well positioned for the periods ahead. With that, we will now open for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to join the queue to ask a question at this time, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. We do ask if listening on speakerphone this afternoon that you pick up your handset while asking your question to provide optimal sound quality. Once again, please press 1 on your keypad at this time if you wish to join the queue to ask a question. Please hold a moment while we poll for questions. And the first question today is coming from Josh Nichols from B. Riley Securities. Josh, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Matthew

Analyst

Hi. This is Matthew on for Josh. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess to start off, coming off of breakout fiscal 2025, with revenue up 24%, you ended the year with a double-digit EBITDA margin. I am wondering, how are you thinking about the full year growth trajectory for fiscal 2026, and where do you see the most meaningful drivers?

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Thanks for the question. I think, as I tried to share in my comments, we expect the trajectory of growth to be the similar sort of quarter-to-quarter movement as we had last year. And it is important to note last year, our first quarter was actually a few hundred thousand dollars larger than our second quarter. So I think this year, we expect to be more sequential in the growth that we have and sort of our normal trajectory starting with Q1, which is always seasonally an interesting quarter to navigate. So we expect to accelerate through the year. The backlog increase is obviously a nice sign to show the support of that—that it is not just words, but we are actually seeing the orders and the items that have been in our pipeline for some time starting to print through as actual orders and going into our system with timing and an expected time frame for shipment. So we expect to accelerate in Q2 versus Q1, and then we think it is going to continue going from there, similar to what we saw last year. The drivers of that really are across the various product lines. Our diversity, I think, is starting to not just print through as Ray talked about in some detail, but it really helps to smooth out the interesting periods where there may not be projects in one market that are seasonally driven or CapEx driven. We are starting to see that get a little more consistent throughout the year. And with that, the product lines that are coming from different customers in different markets give us a lot of comfort that the pistons can all be running at different speeds and paces, but it will start to smooth out those results, make them predictable, and make it much easier to manage the supply chain and give us some visibility certainly as we get into the later part of the year.

Matthew

Analyst

Excellent. Thank you. And gross margin came in especially strong this quarter. I am wondering how durable are the factors driving that improvement, and how should we see that flowing throughout the rest of the year?

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Great question on gross margin. The big thing for us is sales compared to last year's first quarter were roughly flat—down a little bit, not surprising—but with that, our margins went up almost three full points, which is great to see. And I think there were a lot of questions on the last earnings call about how sustainable the 30-plus margins are. We feel pretty good about those and our ability to stay there. The things that have gotten us consistently above that 30% level really are things like being good at pricing for the value that we believe we are providing to our customers. The mix of products a lot of times helps us—some of our items have a higher value maybe than the historical, more fragmented product lines that we are selling. And then lastly, the higher the sales number, the better those are going to be. We have a pretty simple P&L when you break it down with a lot of operating leverage below the line that is largely driven by what happens on the top line and then the gross margins that go along with it based on pricing and mix and just overall efficiency of building things.

Matthew

Analyst

Got it. And you mentioned the backlog, how it bounced post quarter. It is sitting around $18,600,000 today, and that is mainly a timing thing based on contracts. But I am wondering if you can give us an idea on the composition of that backlog and what is driving most of that replenishment, especially after the quarter?

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Sure. The backlog usually has a pretty healthy mix of different items in it. I think the increase that we have seen is especially healthy. You have four different pretty significant product lines across several customers. So we are seeing it in our integrated systems and our custom cabling, which are the two areas that we expect larger percentage growth than what we get out of our interconnect products. Those are largely distribution-friendly on the interconnect side, and we expect growth there, but a lot of times those are not project-based and things that are going to show up in a backlog increase. They may come and go in a short period of time. So the increases we have seen—you have some small cell in there, you have some DAC thermal cooling, you have some custom cabling in the aerospace market, you have some custom cabling in the industrial market—where we continue to see some great blue-chip customers ordering from us that have been with us for years. So it is a good healthy mix across the different product lines that drove that increase in backlog.

Matthew

Analyst

Great. I guess just one last question, mainly regarding DAC thermal cooling. I am wondering if there is an update on how that is progressing in terms of customer interest in the NEMA 4 product.

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Thanks for that. The DAC thermal cooling product is one that we have seen significant growth. We saw significant growth in 2025 compared to prior years, so we continue to see that trajectory increase. And we are seeing a lot of interest. We are starting to see customers making installations and trials to see how well it works in their various systems. In a lot of cases, these are edge data center applications. The systems are performing great, whether that is the NEMA 4 or some of the other versions. We are basically producing exactly what we say we are going to do—significant savings—and the equipment runs flawlessly without having to use air conditioning all the time, which is expensive and high maintenance as well. We are seeing some early stages of newer in cable and edge data centers that are new markets for us or new customers for us. I expect that will be a meaningful part of our growth, not only later this year, but in subsequent years.

Matthew

Analyst

Got it. Great. That was it for me. Thanks for taking my questions.

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And as a reminder, if anyone would wish to ask a question at this time, you may press 1 on your keypad to join the queue. Once again, that will be 1 to join the queue to ask a question. And there are no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back to Rob Dawson for closing remarks.

Rob Dawson

Analyst

Thank you, Tom. I appreciate it. I was hoping for a lot more because I have a lot of other answers, but I will save those for the next call. I want to thank everyone for participating in today's call. We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing our progress on our Q2 earnings call in June. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you once again for your participation.