David A. Dunbar
Thank you, Chris. Good morning, and welcome to our fiscal fourth quarter 2025 conference call. Fiscal year 2025 was a turning point for Standex. We are a different company than we were even a year ago. We've been laying the groundwork for years, and our growth drivers have now crossed the threshold. They are scaling. They have reached an inflection point and are beginning to move the needle in a meaningful way. I'm very excited to share with you what we are seeing and how it is shaping our outlook. I would like to thank our business and corporate teams for navigating this past year and achieving a record profit generation in fiscal 2025. Now let's look at the results beginning on Slide 3, key messages. In the fourth quarter, sales increased 23.2% with contributions from acquisitions, partially offset by a slight organic decline. Electronics grew slightly on an organic basis with a book-to-bill ratio above 1 and organic orders up 16% year-on-year. This represents the first quarter of organic growth since 2023 and signals strong momentum into 2026. Our fiscal fourth quarter sales into fast growth markets increased to 28% of total company sales. New product sales added approximately 2.8% to sales, ahead of our goal of 2%. Our Grid Technologies business continues to perform ahead of our expectations. To support strong global demand for electrical equipment, we are expanding Amran/Narayan capacity with lean projects and additional shifts in the core facility. I am also excited to announce that in the quarter, we established a site in Croatia to serve European customers. We expect to be shipping product from Croatia within 4 months. Operating performance was very strong in the quarter. We achieved record adjusted operating margin of 20.6%, up 120 basis points sequentially and up 350 basis points year-on-year. This operating performance, along with our cash generation and cash repatriation, enabled us to lower our net leverage ratio to 2.6x. Following record profitability in fiscal 2024, we again achieved record milestones in adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating income and adjusted earnings per share. In fiscal year 2026, barring any unforeseen economic global trade or tariff-related disruptions, we expect revenue to grow by over $100 million with continued adjusted operating margin expansion. This will primarily be driven by mid- to high single-digit organic growth in Electronics, double-digit organic growth in Engineering Technologies and the contribution from recent acquisitions. In fiscal year 2026, we expect new product sales to contribute approximately 300 basis points of incremental sales growth, and we anticipate releasing more than 15 new products. Sales from fast growth markets are expected to grow approximately 45% year-on-year and exceed $265 million. On a year-on-year basis, in fiscal first quarter 2026, we expect significantly higher revenue, comprised of contributions from recent acquisitions and organic growth and significant operating margin expansion. On a sequential basis, we expect slightly lower revenue as the impact of recent acquisitions, higher sales in fast growth end markets and realization of pricing initiatives are more than offset by project timing in Engineering Technologies and the impact of seasonality in Europe within Electronics and Engraving. We expect slightly lower adjusted operating margin due to lower sales and less favorable product mix. Please turn to Slide 4. Our growth drivers have reached an inflection point. There are 4 sources of growth that will help deliver above-market increases in 2026. In fact, they will deliver growth even without a general market pick up. First is new product sales. As you know, we began ramping our R&D spending in 2020. New products began to be released in 2023, accelerating to 16 product releases in 2025. Sales of new products increased from $38 million to $55 million in FY 2025, exceeding our internal expectations. We expect their sales to continue to ramp and to be joined by more than 15 new products to be released in 2026, giving us confidence that incremental new product sales will add about 3% to our sales in 2026. New products, once released, take time to reach full commercial impact. In our customer intimacy business model, success depends not only on product innovation, but in deep collaboration with our customers. Our products are often designed into our customers' own systems, which require internal approvals, engineering validation and their own development time line. This results in a natural delay between product release and peak revenue. But once adoption begins, momentum builds and endures. Products introduced in prior years continue to ramp even as we launch additional new offerings. This layered effect creates a compounding engine of organic growth that is both durable and scalable. It has taken a while to get this momentum, but we are building a long-term new product capability in this company. And as it used to be engineer, I think it is beautiful to watch. The second source of above-market growth is our presence in end markets with long-term secular tailwinds and above-average growth. This has been a focus for some time, and our 2 acquisitions in FY '25 increased our presence in electrical grid, space and defense market, ramping our total fast growth market sales to $184 million. All of these businesses are expanding capacity to serve our customers, and we expect sales to grow to greater than $265 million in fiscal 2026. This is also beautiful to watch. A third source of momentum is the support we are giving to recent acquisitions to maintain their growth rate. We are now bringing up a new site in Croatia for Amran/Narayan and are positioned with McStarlite to win new applications that the combined Standex McStarlite capability is better positioned to win. Last but not least, is success at the blocking and tackling of winning new awards in our business through commercial excellence. Two noteworthy areas stand out. Engineering Technologies has been awarded applications on next-generation missile programs, which are moving to production. Engraving has successfully expanded into niche production of parts requiring our proprietary know-how. Based on the above, you can see that the incremental contribution from new products, sales into fast growth markets, successful acquisition integration and new program wins lead us to our fiscal year 2020 outlook of over $100 million in incremental sales. I will now turn the call over to Ademir to discuss our financial performance in greater detail.