Jeffrey A. Hochstadt
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Let's start on Slide 9 with the second quarter highlights. Our second quarter net sales reflect organic growth from our Debit and Credit business, the addition of Arroweye and as noted in our press release, the one-time non-cash impact from an accounting change regarding revenue recognition timing for work-in-process orders. Reported net sales increased 9% in the quarter to $129.8 million or 15% excluding the impact of the accounting change, with organic growth led by increased sales of contactless debit and credit cards and strong growth from Card@Once instant issuance. Arroweye also delivered strong performance, contributing approximately $10 million of revenue in less than 2 months since the May 6 acquisition. Gross margins in the quarter were pressured by various factors, which I will discuss shortly, and net income was also impacted by various nonrecurring items. Adjusted EBITDA increased as the Arroweye contribution and sales growth helped offset gross margin pressure. The sales impacts of the accounting change on the second quarter and year-to-date can be seen on Slide 10. The accounting change essentially moves us away from recognizing revenue from certain work-in-process orders at the end of the quarter as was done historically to primarily recognizing revenue only at time of shipment. We made this change after a review of our current business practices with customers and to align with Arroweye. Practically, this means the second quarter does not reflect any revenue for work-in-process orders at the end of the quarter or prior quarters would have included such revenue. This resulted in a one-time negative transition impact of approximately $8 million on sales in the second quarter. Excluding the net impact of work-in-process orders in current and prior periods, net sales increased 15% in the second quarter. The accounting change only affects the timing of revenue recognition and does not impact cash flow. Other than the second quarter of next year, there will not be any significant quarterly comparison issues from this change going forward as the net work-in-process impacts have typically been relatively small each quarter. There was approximately $3 million of gross profit associated with the $8 million sales impact. As a result, our net income in the quarter was affected by the accounting change, but there was no effect on adjusted EBITDA as the impact was treated as an adjustment item. We can review the detailed quarterly results on Slide 11. The overall 9% sales increase reflects a 16% increase in the Debit and Credit segment and a 19% decrease in the Prepaid segment. The accounting change had the most significant impact on the Prepaid segment, which tends to have larger amounts of work-in-process due to the nature of the business. Excluding the impact of the accounting change, Prepaid net sales increased 4%, while Debit and Credit sales increased 18%. As mentioned, Debit and Credit growth was led by the addition of Arroweye and increased sales of contactless cards, including metal cards and Card@Once instant issuance, partially offset by a decline in personalization services. The gross profit margin in the quarter decreased from 35.7% in the prior year to 30.9%, driven by 2 main factors: sales mix, which has been weighted towards larger volume issuers this year, including a decline in our personalization business and increased production costs, which include higher tariffs, depreciation and incremental costs related to our Indiana production facility transition. Tariffs, which are expensed when inventory is received, were slightly more than $1 million in the quarter. Based on the latest rates and projections, including Arroweye, we now expect tariffs of approximately $5 million in 2025 with a slightly lower profit impact as we are partnering with our customers to share the impacts where possible. Depreciation expense and cost of sales was $1.3 million higher than last year, reflecting the addition of Arroweye and depreciation related to the new Indiana factory and other new capital equipment. And we continue to have incremental costs associated with operating 2 production sites in Indiana while we transition to the new facility. We are working to alleviate margin pressures for 2026 through supplier negotiations for key components, synergies from the Arroweye acquisition, better contribution from our emerging digital solutions as those businesses scale and expected efficiencies from our advanced machinery investments. We should also see improvement next year as our new Indiana production facility becomes fully operational, and we move past the higher costs and other inefficiencies we are incurring this year, operating duplicate facilities during the transition. For this year, we expect incremental costs related to Indiana to affect adjusted EBITDA by approximately $3 million, impacting both cost of sales and operating expense, and we expect that amount to decline by approximately half in 2026. We should also benefit from incremental operating efficiencies from the new state-of-the-art facility as the Secure Card business grows in coming years. SG&A expenses in the second quarter, including depreciation and amortization, increased approximately $3 million from the prior year, primarily due to the inclusion of Arroweye operating expenses and acquisition and integration costs of $1.6 million. Our tax rate for the quarter was 61% on a relatively low pretax income amount, which brought our first half rate to 32%. The increase in our current rate compared to prior year primarily reflects impacts from the Arroweye acquisition, including nondeductibility of certain Arroweye acquisition costs, and we now expect a full year rate of approximately 30%. We expect cash NOL benefits of around $5 million from the Arroweye acquisition in the coming years, which will benefit cash flow but will not impact our reported effective tax rate. We also expect approximately $3 million to $5 million of cash benefits from the recently passed U.S. Reconciliation Bill over the next 12 months. Net income decreased 91% in the quarter, which was also affected by Arroweye acquisition costs, restructuring charges related to the cost-saving activities, the impact of the accounting change and higher interest expense. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to $22.5 million as sales growth and the addition of Arroweye were partially offset by lower gross margins, including the impact of approximately $1 million of tariff expenses. Adjusted EBITDA margins declined from 18.4% to 17.3%, primarily due to sales mix and increased tariff expenses. The second quarter margin would have been slightly lower, excluding the accounting change impact on sales. First half results and variance explanations can be found on Slide 12. The first half generally reflects the same factors as the second quarter. Segment results can be found on Slide 13. Income from operations for the Debit and Credit segment decreased 9% in the second quarter and 7% in the first half as sales growth, including the addition of Arroweye, was offset by lower gross margins. Gross margins were impacted by the same factors discussed for the company as a whole, namely sales mix, increased depreciation expense and higher production costs, including tariffs, which primarily impact the Debit and Credit segment. Prepaid Debit segment income from operations decreased 40% in the quarter and 22% year-to-date, which was a direct result of the revenue recognition accounting change. Excluding work-in-process impacts, Prepaid income from operations increased slightly in the quarter with a stronger increase for the first half. Turning to the balance sheet, liquidity and cash flow on Slide 14. We generated $9.9 million of cash from operating activities in the first half, which was an increase from $4.1 million in the prior year, driven by lower working capital usage. We increased capital spending investment from $2.7 million in the prior year period to $9.1 million in this year's first half, which resulted in free cash flow of $800,000 this year, down slightly from $1.4 million in prior year. The increased capital spending supported the build-out of our new Indiana secure card production facility as well as additional advanced machinery for other facilities. In May, we completed the Arroweye acquisition for $45.6 million, with final cash settlement dependent on working capital adjustments. The initial net cash outlay was $42.4 million, which appears as an investment item in our cash flow and reflects Arroweye cash balances at the time of acquisition and funds held in escrow. On the balance sheet, at quarter end, we had $17.1 million of cash, $30 million of borrowings on our ABL revolver and $285 million of senior notes outstanding. Following the end of the quarter in July, we exercised an optional redemption feature on our 10% coupon senior notes and retired $20 million of notes at a redemption price of 103% of par value. We also increased the size of our asset- backed lending facility from $75 million to $100 million, and we utilized short-term borrowings to retire the notes. Our net leverage ratio at quarter end was 3.6x, up from 3.1x at the end of the first quarter due to the funding of the acquisition. We expect to utilize free cash flow to pay down our ABL borrowings and bring net leverage down over time, although ABL borrowings increased early in the third quarter to fund the senior notes redemption. Before we move on to our 2025 outlook, we have provided the latest U.S. cards in circulation trends from Visa and Mastercard on Slide 15. For the 3 years ended March 31, cards in circulation in the U.S. increased at an 8% CAGR. The latest earnings reports from large issuers continue to indicate card growth, and we'll now turn to our 2025 outlook on Slide 16. We have updated our 2025 outlook primarily to reflect the Arroweye acquisition, increased tariffs and changes in sales mix. Our current net sales outlook is low double-digit to mid-teens growth, which compares to our previous outlook of mid- to high single- digit growth. The increase from the previous outlook is a result of the addition of Arroweye sales, partially offset by the impact of the accounting change for revenue recognition timing. Although there were puts and takes among our businesses, our overall organic growth outlook has not significantly changed. Our adjusted EBITDA outlook is unchanged from the prior outlook as we continue to project mid- to high single-digit growth. Compared to the prior outlook, we have added contribution from Arroweye, but this is expected to be offset by increased tariffs and unfavorable sales mix. Our current outlook reflects existing tariff rates and does not reflect potential impacts from the proposed semiconductor chip tariffs announced by the administration on August 6. At this point, details on implementation timing and exemption criteria have not been announced. You will recall that during and after COVID, we gained significant share as we leveraged our strong chip supplier relationships, making significant investments to ensure we always had chips on hand for our customers. We have continued that practice. And while chip types vary, we have ample chip supply inventory currently. So we have some flexibility to manage supply chains in the near term. Additionally, any final implications from chips would be an industry-wide impact for which we would work not only with our chip providers, but also with our customers on how to manage in the best possible manner. Since this is real-time news, we are not including any impact in our outlook this morning, and we'll share more when appropriate. From a quarterly standpoint, we expect the third quarter to face similar margin pressures as Q2, including costs related to further ramping up the Indiana plant before seeing accelerated sales growth and margin improvement in Q4. As we mentioned last quarter, we expect net leverage to be temporarily higher this year compared to 2024 due to cash flow being utilized for the Arroweye acquisition and increased capital spending. I will now turn the call back to John for some closing remarks.