TechPrecision Corporation (TPCS) Q1 2027 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the TechPrecision Corporation Fiscal Year 2027 First Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Brett Maas, Managing Director of Hayden IR. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you. On the call today are Alex Shen, Chief Executive Officer; and Phil Podgorski, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements as contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties in the company's financial filings with the SEC. In addition, projections as to the company's future performance represents management's estimates as of today, August 13, 2026. TechPrecision assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements. With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to Alex Shen, Chief Executive Officer, to provide opening remarks. Alex, the floor is yours.

Brett, thank you. Hello, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us. Fiscal 2027 first quarter consolidated revenue was $9.1 million, 23% higher when compared to $7.4 million in the fiscal 2026 first quarter. Consolidated gross profit totaled $1.4 million or 36% higher when compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2026, primarily due to higher revenue and gross margin. Fiscal 2027 first quarter Ranor revenue was $5.5 million, 27% higher when compared to the prior year first quarter results. Fiscal 2027 first quarter revenue at Stadco increased by 22% to $4.1 million as we executed on our strategy to improve both customer project mix and gross margin expansion. We remain highly focused on aggressive daily cash management, a critical piece of risk mitigation. We continue to manage and control expenses, capital expenditures, customer advances, progress billings and final invoicing at shipment. Our tactical execution focus and success enables us to continuously resecure strategic customer confidence at both subsidiaries. Our Ranor segment continues to execute and install new equipment, funded by the $24 million plus in grants from our U.S. Navy submarine programs-related customers. This sustained cadence of new equipment procurement, delivery and installation is enabling and will continue to enable a reliable, robust and resilient manufacturing capacity dedicated to submarine programs at Ranor. At both Stadco and Ranor, our air defense and submarine defense customers have expressed their strong confidence as we continue to maintain on-time delivery of quality components. With strong customer confidence, both subsidiaries continue to experience meaningful new capture of business awards from these same customers, adding to our strong $52 million backlog. This $52 million only includes the funded portions of customer purchase orders with an additional approximately $22 million of unfunded purchase orders. In addition, our delivery performance is leading both Stadco and Ranor to new quoting opportunities in air defense and submarine defense sectors. The quoting opportunities are twofold with the same customers that already know and trust our capabilities and with new customers in the air and submarine defense sectors. New quoting opportunities enhance our potential to improve our throughput. For first articles and new work scopes, we are mindful of the uncertainty around the development and prove-out of the manufacturing approach and the fabrication and machining execution. From time to time, when necessary, we submit pricing adjustment requests, and equitable adjustments are adjudicated and approved by our customers. Regarding our backlog, we expect to deliver our $52 million backlog over the course of the next 1 to 3 fiscal years with gross margin expansion. We remain on track to meeting our fiscal year 2027 guidance provided in June 2026. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Phil Podgorski, to continue with the review of our fiscal 2027 first quarter results. Phil, to you.

Thank you, Alex. As Alex just mentioned, our fiscal 2027 first quarter consolidated revenue increased by 23% to $9.1 million compared to $7.4 million in the same period a year ago, driven on higher revenue at both Ranor and Stadco. Consolidated cost of revenue increased by 21%, in line with our revenue growth, resulting in consolidated gross profit increase of $400,000 in Q1 fiscal 2027 to $1.4 million, primarily due to higher revenue at both segments. Consolidated SG&A decreased by 3% to $1.4 million, primarily on a decrease in professional fees and services. Interest expense decreased by 21% due to lower interest incurred on our loans as well as lower amortization of debt issuance costs. Net loss was approximately $153,000 for the first quarter, or $0.02 per share on both a basic and fully diluted basis. Moving on to our financial position. As Alex mentioned, we continue to actively manage our cash flow daily. Net cash flow provided by operating and investment activities totaled $1.9 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026. Net cash used in financing activities totaled $2 million, primarily to pay down principal under the revolver loan and term loans. As a result, our total debt was $5 million even on June 30, 2026, compared to $7 million on March 31, 2026. Cash balance on June 30 was $279,000, compared to $431,000 on March 31. Now taking a little deeper dive into the segment performance for the quarter. For Ranor, first quarter revenue was higher by $1.2 million year-over-year, or 27% increase, primarily driven by favorable project mix. The revenue increase resulted in $1.6 million of gross profit for the quarter. For Stadco, Q1 fiscal 2027 revenue increased by $700,000, or 22% increase compared to the same period last year as we continue to execute on our strategic project mix change at Stadco. Stadco experienced Q1 year-over-year gross margin improvement as gross profit increased by $300,000 or 65% improvement, mainly due to higher revenue and throughput improvement. As Alex mentioned, we continue to actively work with our customers to reduce the wait times and improve throughput. With that, I will turn it back to Alex.

In closing, for those on the call who may not be very familiar with our company, TechPrecision is a custom manufacturer of precision large-scale fabricated components and precision large-scale machined metal structural components. The components that we manufacture are customer-designed. We sell to customers in 2 main industry sectors, defense and precision industrial markets, predominantly defense. We do most of our work in industries that are highly sensitive to confidentiality, which preclude us from speaking publicly about many things that a company not operating in TechPrecision's specific environment might discuss. Please understand there are real limits as to what I can discuss, and sometimes those limits do change. TechPrecision is proud and honored to serve the United States defense industry, specifically naval submarine manufacturing through our Ranor subsidiary and military aircraft manufacturing through our Stadco subsidiary. We aim to secure and maintain enduring partnerships with our customers. As noted earlier, the total of completely funded grant money of more than $24 million from our U.S. Navy submarine programs reflects this strong partnership. This commitment represents more than 50% of TechPrecision's market cap of $48 million. Overall, at both Ranor and Stadco, we continue to see meaningful opportunities in the defense sector as evidenced by the strength of our backlog. We are encouraged by the prospects for growing our revenue and increasing profitability in future quarters. We are showing progress. We have more work to do with our Stadco subsidiary to get into the black. We are targeting to build and sustain a trend. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Ross Taylor from ARS Investment Partners.

Well, first, congratulations, gentlemen. I cannot remember a time when you actually reported your earnings before the last date required. So I think it's a big change and part of the shift in direction in the company. Could you talk about -- last call, we talked about the -- getting a handle on the parts and programs that were costing you money at Stadco. Can you give us an update on where we stand with regard to have we made any progress on taking contracts or parts of contracts that were losing money and turn them into breakeven or profitable in the last quarter?

We have made great progress. It's good to be able to say this with some facts behind us. Yes. I'm not going to be able to pinpoint the specific programs, but it's not just one program, Ross. It's across the board. We continue to take a look at what our manufacturing costs and our approach is and see where from time to time, we do go back to the customer and look for -- look to submit price adjustments. And when they're warranted and adjudicated as such, they do come back with resolution in our favor. And that has happened well the last quarter.

When you look at the kind of the percentage of business or the business you do at Stadco, what percentage do you think is operating under this impingement in this kind of environment?

Now?

Yes.

After we got done through scouring everything, I think it's -- well, it's definitely less than 50%. I don't know that I can put a percentage number on there because the mix tends to change quarter-to-quarter. I think on our new orders that we secure other than new first articles and new work scopes that are added to current orders, the new orders coming in, we're pretty focused on making sure we really work with our customers much closer so they understand, hey, there's a lot of development, manufacturing development work in this new contract you've given us. Phil on his side is providing financial oversight early. On our side, from the quoting stage all the way through to execution and delivery, we've put in gates so that we see where we're at with these gates. So when we reach a certain milestone with the customer on a project -- on a new project, especially, that's the time to gauge, not wait until the end. And really, it starts off with a quoting process that has more rigor in it that we've ever had before, especially the legacy Stadco. So I think as we correct the contracts that are the legacy and the new ones really have a lot more rigor in them built in from the very beginning. I'm not trying to avoid answering your question on percentage. It's just hard to pinpoint a percent. I think it's more characterized by the new contracts, they're getting a lot of scrutiny before the pricing submitted. And even after the pricing submitted, there are things that we put in place to mitigate our risk.

And I think I'll add to that, too, Alex, that Alex talked about the quoting process. And as we hit milestones reviewing, we have now a robust estimate-to-complete process in place that's going to help us avoid any surprises and get back to the customer much earlier than what we've had in the past. So it will help us identify and address any issues, particularly on first articles as we move forward. So positive improvement in the process as well.

Yes. And so it seems like part of the problem has been is older contracts, as those older contracts roll off or are addressed, we should be looking at a situation where there are fewer and fewer parts numbers that you produce at Stadco that have losses. And eventually, that should go other than first articles because we understand the difficult nature of first articles. But that as we push forward, then we should really be seeing fewer and fewer drags on performance out of Stadco as the parts -- the older contracts roll off and are replaced by newer contracts. Correct?

Yes, that is correct, and that's the goal and what we're driving towards. Absolutely correct.

Okay. Is part of the problem then that the quality of work you're receiving because at times, you received my understanding or having long ago walked through Ranor's facility, some stuff comes to you partially worked or in my words, partially worked and you have to finish it, you have to take it from a mildly worked lump of metal and turn it into something actually meaningful. Is part of the problem that you -- the work that comes to you has been substandard?

That definitely is part of the problem, yes. Absolutely. That -- not by itself is the problem, but that contributes to problems because it interrupts our manufacturing, the plan doesn't go accordingly. We didn't expect -- let's just talk about some specifics on metal, some metals formed by castings. Castings have inherent porosity that process is subject to it. So when that happens and you have expected porosity in unexpected places, that causes a blip. And sometimes the blip turns into it needs to go on hold and wait for material disposition by our client side.

Which increases cost and reduces efficiency. So it basically hits you 2 ways when that happens.

Absolutely. We're addressing each one of those with each of the customers as well. So...

Can you talk about your ability to bringing in new business customers? I mean, you've talked about how satisfied they are with your work efforts. Have you -- are you finding them bringing you more work? It seems that in this situation where the primes and the subprimes are struggling to use their limited resources that they might be eager to push more work towards you so that you can effectively make their job easier, both in Ranor and Stadco. Are you finding that?

Yes, we are. And thank you for asking the question. This is something I did want to find a way to expand on during our discussion during the Q&A. Because we are performing successfully with the contracts that we have and by and large, delivering on-time quality components, that confidence level translates not only into more POs on stuff that we have repeated in the past that we're still competing for every time. But new quotes are hitting us from 2 ways. One is the very same customers that are confident in us. But there's new customers that also want to try a piece of the pie. We have certain capabilities, and we are becoming known for those capabilities, the ability to deliver, for example, there's electron beam welding capability at Stadco. Not everybody has that capability, not every fabrication house, very few fabrication houses, as a matter of fact, has that capability and the size of the electron beam welding unit that we have. What happens is we got new quotes. We got a lot of new quotes. It's not like we can land every single new quote, perhaps for every double-digit handful of quotes, 10 to 12 to 15, perhaps we can land 1 or 2 of those. But if we don't do any new quoting for those parts, we'll certainly not get any. But we are being given opportunities. We are actively searching and making sure we ask for the opportunity to quote more business with our current cadre of customers that trust us, but also the ones that are perhaps adjacent or competitors with our current customers. We're getting some traction, and we are getting -- well, let's first deal with one thing. We want to improve our throughput. So as we talked just a little bit earlier, Ross, with you just now on interruptions, how some customer-furnished material might have defects. Okay. Well, we need stuff in the background to fill the gap. And that's really working quite nicely. We have quotes that are turning into business and new awards of new parts. And those do have a tendency to fill in the gap when it coincides and the mix is right. We've started to experience some of that. It's very encouraging. And yes, so to answer your question in a long-winded fashion, we are seeing new opportunities, both from the current customer set and some new customers as well.

Okay. And we talked last call about the potential you've seen and you highlighted the money that's been given to you by whether it's the government or the primes to help out build capacity at Ranor. And we talked about the potential for that at Stadco. Has any progress been made? Are you seeing any shifts in that side where -- I mean, it strikes me as quite honestly an editorial comment with the U.S. Air Force looking at possibly replacing the F-15E with the EX as well as a much bigger EX build, the fact that we are selling the advanced air-to-air missile, I think the 130 to Australia, which would make sense that they move away from their current platform to perhaps a more robust platform, perhaps like an EX. You need to really meaningfully increase production. The Air Force probably needs to go from 24 to 48 or more aircraft a year. Have you seen any willingness or any interest in people like Boeing or Sikorsky or others to provide the capital needed or the equipment needed for you to meaningfully increase production?

We are in active pursuit aggressively from our side to the customers. I think that I have a clamp put on me on how much I can speak about it. So I think that in itself is going to answer your question as in the incremental progress is being made, and I'm not at a point to speak of it yet. But I think that's an answer in itself because if there was nothing going on, I would tell you that there's something going on that I can't really talk about on the specifics. Yes. So we're making progress. That's what I can tell you. The progress is not visible yet. So hopefully soon.

But we could see that. And look, I think it is. It's quite clear that you guys have turned a corner. You've gained a level of confidence you haven't had as a business in a long time. And I think that's starting to show in the back-to-back $9 million-plus quarters in revenues sets a strong base. And hopefully, we'll see you guys start to meaningfully break into the free cash flow positive level. Along those lines, I would like to say one thing is when your stock sells for less than a latte, it would be really nice to see insiders buy stock. You had 2 directors sell stock years ago at $7, $8 a share, I think. I haven't seen an insider buy stock since Hector was a pup. So it would be really nice to see some people show support for the business. As I said, literally, I think it probably costs you more to get your coffee in the morning than to buy a share of stock. So it'd be really nice to see -- starting to see some releases talking about Board members and senior management members actually buying stock.

Okay. Right. Agreed.

And congratulations on getting the release out early and also even though you dropped it into a day when I have 5 calls at the same time. But on top of that, the progress you guys have made in the last couple of quarters, both financially, but even more importantly, I think, culturally and how you come to the Street is really important and is really appreciated.

Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I will now hand the conference back to management for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, everyone. Have a great day.