Adentra Inc Stock

Good morning. Welcome to the ADENTRA Second Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] With me on today's call are Rob Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer; as well as Faiz Karmally, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. ADENTRA's earnings release, financial statements and MD&A for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and are available on the Investor Relations section of its website and on SEDAR+.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that management's comments today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially due to risks and uncertainties discussed in our public filings. All dollar amounts referenced today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to Rob Brown.

Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter despite continued macroeconomic uncertainty and the demand environment that remains below historic levels.

Our second quarter results demonstrate the strength of ADENTRA's operating model and the benefits of remaining focused on the areas within our control.

We generated low single-digit organic sales growth, achieved a strong gross margin, exercised disciplined cost control and delivered meaningful operating leverage, resulting in healthy growth in both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share.

Importantly, these results reflect the work we've done over the past several years to build a stronger, more resilient business capable of creating value across market cycles.

They also reflect several attributes we believe are important for long-term value creation. Positive organic growth in a soft market, gross margin expansion, positive operating leverage, double-digit adjusted basic earnings per share growth and disciplined capital returns.

Before discussing the quarter in more detail, I'd like to briefly revisit the strategic priorities guiding our decisions. These priorities remain unchanged and continue to be centered on creating sustainable long-term shareholder value rather than reacting to short-term market fluctuations.

The first is advancing an AI and digitally enabled operating model. Over the past several quarters, we've continued developing digital capabilities that support pricing, inventory management and commercial decision-making.

Certain of these tools are now in pilot programs, and we believe they have the potential to improve consistency across our network while driving structurally higher margins, stronger organic growth and higher returns on invested capital over time.

Second is strengthening our global supply chain. We continue to diversify sourcing across more than 30 countries while expanding access to differentiated and proprietary products. Third is maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation and acquisitions. Our balance sheet remains in an excellent position, providing us with the financial flexibility to invest in our business, return capital to shareholders, reduce leverage where appropriate and pursue strategically aligned acquisitions.

Shortly after quarter end, we completed the tuck-in acquisition of Mount Storm in Northern California, which is expected to add approximately $20 million of annualized sales, strengthens our existing platform and is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings.

We also continue to maintain a deep pipeline of acquisition opportunities and we will remain disciplined in pursuing businesses that enhance our platform, generate attractive returns on invested capital and create long-term shareholder value.

Taken together, these priorities are designed to make ADENTRA a stronger business regardless of where we are in the cycle. Now turning to the quarter. Sales increased 1.7% to $607.1 million, reflecting organic growth despite a softer demand environment. Improved pricing more than offset modestly lower volumes, while our price pass-through model continued to support a strong gross margin of 22%.

Just as importantly, we maintained disciplined cost control. Excluding tariff recoveries and other comparable items, operating expenses were essentially flat year-over-year despite an inflationary environment. That discipline generated positive operating leverage, allowed adjusted EBITDA to grow more than 6% with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 40 basis points to 9.5%.

Strong operating performance, lower financing costs and our ongoing share repurchase program contributed to adjusted basic earnings per share growth of more than 11% year-over-year. Our capital allocation strategy also continued to deliver results.

During the quarter, we returned capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, continued to strengthen the balance sheet and maintain significant financial flexibility to execute on our strategic priorities.

Overall, the quarter demonstrates that our strategy is working. While we cannot control the macroeconomic environment, we can control how we operate the business, allocate capital and position ADENTRA to create long-term value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Faiz.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, all figures discussed today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. For the second quarter, sales increased 1.7% year-over-year to $607.1 million.

The increase was driven by a 2.9% improvement in pricing, partially offset by a 1.2% decline in sales volumes. In the U.S., sales increased 1.7% as stronger pricing more than offset lower volumes. Canadian sales increased 1.4% in Canadian dollars, driven by higher sales volumes despite lower pricing.

Gross profit increased to $133.4 million and gross margin expanded 20 basis points to 22%, demonstrating the effectiveness of our pricing strategy and our ability to maintain profitability in a softer demand environment.

Operating expenses increased 2.7% year-over-year. However, this comparison includes differences in tariff recoveries between periods. Excluding these items, normalized operating expenses increased only 0.1%, reflecting continued discipline across the organization and the benefits of our ongoing efficiency initiatives.

Reported EBITDA also benefited from a $7.5 million net recovery of trade duties and tariffs. Because this recovery was nonrecurring in nature, it is excluded from adjusted EBITDA, which better reflects the underlying operating performance of the business this quarter.

This operating discipline translated into strong operating leverage. Adjusted EBITDA increased 6.2% to $57.7 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 9.5% from 9.1% last year.

Net income increased 6.5% to $23.5 million or $0.97 per basic share. Adjusted net income increased 7.8% to $23.6 million, while adjusted basic earnings per share increased 11.4% to $0.98, benefiting from stronger operating performance, lower interest expense and the positive impact of our share repurchase program.

For the first half of 2026, sales increased 2.6% to $1.17 billion, including 0.6% volume growth, demonstrating that ADENTRA has continued to grow despite a market environment that remains below historic levels.

Cash flow from operations before changes in working capital remained strong at $55.7 million. As expected, seasonal inventory purchases resulted in higher working capital investment during the quarter, which is typical for this time of year and supports customer demand heading into the second half.

From a balance sheet perspective, we ended the quarter with a leverage ratio of 2.5x. This continues to provide significant financial flexibility while supporting our balanced capital allocation strategy. During the quarter, we returned approximately $5.6 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

Since July of last year, our outstanding share count has declined by just over 2%, supporting continued growth in earnings per share. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. First, investing in the business to support long-term organic growth; second, maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet; third, pursuing disciplined, strategically aligned acquisitions. And finally, continuing to return capital to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. With that, I'll turn the call back to Rob. Rob?

Thanks, Faiz. As we look to the balance of 2026, the macro environment remains uncertain, and we remain cautious on near-term demand.

That said, our focus remains on disciplined execution and on the areas of the business that we can control. We will continue to manage pricing, costs, purchasing and inventory carefully while advancing the strategic initiatives that we believe will strengthen ADENTRA over time, including our digital and AI-enabled capabilities, supply chain diversification and disciplined capital allocation.

Our balance sheet remains strong, giving us the flexibility to invest in the business, return capital to shareholders and pursue strategically aligned acquisitions where they enhance our platform and create attractive long-term returns.

While the near-term environment is difficult to predict, the long-term fundamentals supporting residential construction remain compelling. We believe ADENTRA is well positioned to continue compounding value through the cycle, supported by organic growth, margin durability, operating leverage, disciplined capital allocation and accretive acquisitions.

Thank you for joining us this morning. Operator, we'd now be pleased to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Kyle McPhee from ATB Cormark.

I'm hoping to get some color on M&A. Nice to see a deal get done in August, but it was small. So curious how active the pipeline is for more deals, maybe larger deals.

I know timing is tough to control, but is it back to the drawing board now ahead of another deal? Or do you have some advanced talks going on and not too far from being able to deploy your very healthy capital position?

On the M&A front, yes, it was very positive to complete the Mountain Storm acquisition. It's a really nice tuck-in, and we got a number of good employees joining the company that I think it's going to be a very nice fit regionally for our business.

With respect to further M&A, yes, we're always active. I think as most people know, we've got a full-time senior VP who's always curating and feeding and developing the pipeline.

So this one got to the finish line just after the quarter ended, but we've always got multiple efforts in motion in parallel. It's -- with respect to your comment about size, there's always going to be a range in there of small, medium and large opportunities that we're pursuing. There's obviously more small and medium than there are large, but there are more scale opportunities that are always also either in play or relationships being managed for when they might be in play in the future.

So I would not describe it at all as a restart now that we've completed Mount Storm.

Got it. Okay. And then on Mount Storm, you disclosed revenue. What can you tell us about the margin profile pre and post integration? I know it's a small moving piece, but it would still be helpful to have some color on that, notably given that I think they have some value add in the mix.

Yes. I would describe the margin profiles, gross and EBITDA as similar to our core business. So nothing -- no big outliers there.

As it relates to synergies, yes, we're bringing a very strong, albeit regional competitor into a larger scale company at ADENTRA that's going to bring certain skills and strengths and synergies to it, which we will capture over time.

We typically describe those as taking 4 to 6 quarters. And we are keeping in mind, of course, the size of this acquisition, but we do think we improve margins over time just by bringing it into the fold of what ADENTRA can bring to the table.

Next question is from Nikolai Goroupitch from CIBC.

Last quarter, I believe you mentioned the pull forward in roofing product demand. Is the volume decline this quarter a normalization of that dynamic? Or is that a function of lower general demand or something else?

Yes. So, the first quarter was slightly unusual in that we did have a lot more roofing sales, particularly just in the month of March that some of those were oriented towards folks getting ahead of a price increase.

I would not describe it as a significant move in terms of pull-forward demand. There's a little bit of timing in there and it related to resulted rather in roofing, which is really only about 5% of our sales being closer to 7% or 8% in the first quarter. That's more normal now in the second quarter, I would say, with respect to your volume comment, I think that's just reflective of underlying demand conditions in -- that we're seeing in the economy.

But we're doing a good job on pricing, price pass-through through the model that more than offset any weakness in that area.

Okay. And then I guess you touched on this briefly, but you're seeing divergent price and volume trends between U.S. and Canada. Could you elaborate some more on the underlying dynamics driving the difference there?

Yes. Some of that just relates to mix and timing, but I would maybe step back from that and just say there's more tariff-related inflation in the U.S. than in Canada for reasons we all understand. And so that's finding its way into the price pass-through in a more meaningful way than we're seeing in Canada.

Next question is from Ian Gillies from Stifel.

I was hoping to maybe start on organic growth. It was obviously a bit better than we thought in the second quarter. It seems to be going pretty well through July. Are you able to provide much in the way of insight on where you think it's heading in August, September or even if you want to step like a little further out like Q3, Q4? Because it feels like the pricing seems to have a pretty good tailwind on it right now.

Yes. I mean it's helpful stepping into the third quarter to be able to describe how July went, and we're encouraged by the 3%. And if you remember back when we reported Q1, at that time, we reported the first month of Q2, and it was actually off a little bit.

And then, of course, we ended up with some growth. So we kind of gained momentum through the second quarter, it's fair to say, through the latter half, I would say, and that's continued into Q3, certainly through July. It's hard to say how that plays out over the full second half, but I think it's encouraging here for now, and it just displays what we described at the business model that we're able to pass through price inflation as it comes to us in cost of sales. That's obviously helpful.

And then I also think we're doing some things to help ourselves around pricing and going to market in a more organized and better fashion than perhaps we were able to achieve in the past. Some of that is digitally enabled, but the teams are just also doing a very good job at the moment.

Okay. That's helpful. There's no great way to do trend analysis on how margins move from 2Q to 3Q over the last few years for a variety of reasons. So with that in mind, can you maybe talk a little bit about the durability of the cost controls you have in place and the impact on margins or whether a whole bunch of stuff maybe went right in the second quarter and it may not hold in future quarters?

Yes. Ian, it's Faiz here. I can answer that. So -- and when you say margins, you're talking about bottom line margins presumably?

Gross or EBITDA because they were both, quite frankly, quite good.

Yes. Okay. I mean on the gross margin percentage line, it was a very good performance at 22%. As you know, by now, there's a number of things in there. There's not one item we've talked about. Price pass-through, you're going to have timing of rebates as an example, which aren't always perfect through the year.

Mix was different in Q2 than Q1, which Rob talked -- we just talked about dynamics in Q1. So a number of things that are really contributing to the gross margin percentage strength. It's not abnormal for us to see that move around a little just depending on some of those things, particularly with just the number of SKUs we sell, as you know, over 160,000 SKUs that can have different dynamics.

So I think we're in a range. The Q2 was maybe towards the top end of the range, I would say. But notwithstanding the mix considerations we talked about in Q1, our business has been in the 21 percentages now for well over 3 years.

So I think we feel very good about the range we performed in. And I think certainly, this quarter was maybe top end of the range. We're very pleased with the performance in Q2. From a bottom line margin perspective, we're really talking about operating costs.

And we've done a number of things on operating costs. A lot of that was done in the prior year. We're seeing the benefits of that now. One example would be we took out certain locations last year where it made sense to do so, either combining or closing down locations.

So our footprint was still 81 locations, but not the 86 we had at the beginning of 2025.

So 5 locations less, I think, has been meaningful. You're seeing some of that now in terms of our ability to control rent inflation. We've also -- we're also down 2 years now in terms of headcount as well.

So really rightsizing the headcount for the level of demand we're seeing today. If you take our rent costs and our people costs, that's about 70% of our operating expenses. So we've done things in the majority of our expenses here to really control how that's unfolding this year.

And I think we're seeing the benefits of that now. Your question around sustainability of those operating costs as an example, I think they're quite sustainable. We've not cut so deep that we're in a position where we need to add more square footage or more people if we continue to see some sort of low single-digit growth here, particularly if that's price, you really don't need those things for price and our model is passing through additional costs now.

So overall, I think you saw in Q2 what the power of a little bit of top line can do in terms of positive operating leverage. And I think you should expect that to continue.

Next question comes from Zachary Evershed from National Bank of Canada.

Congrats on the quarter. As things stand now, any more to come on the tariff front that you're keeping your eye on, either on the recovery front or incremental investigation conclusions?

I mean it's a fairly dynamic trade and tariff environment right now. So I'd probably be safe to say something new will transpire.

I think we saw the big move, though, with the replacement of the Section 122 tariffs with the 301 tariffs. So that gives a lot of operating certainty going forward. For a reminder, call it, 30% of our sales being imported into the United States from countries that would be subject to the tariff, and it ranges from 10% to 12.5%. That's very manageable for us. It's a level playing field for within our industry and frankly, across economies.

And we'll manage that through the price pass-through mechanism as we have in the past. And I don't think those numbers are prohibitive to what we need to do in terms of global sourcing. We'll keep our eye on the other various separate and distinct trade cases that arise from time to time that we note in the financial statements as they come up.

Great color. And then combining the question of price pass-throughs with the strong gross margins in Q2, was there a bit of a tailwind from taking price ahead of cost increases?

Not really. I mean that was something that you saw -- it's a good question. It's something you saw more meaningfully back in COVID times when we topped out, I think, at one time at a 24% gross profit margin.

But I would not characterize that as a thing in Q2. Yes, nothing more to add on that.

Got you. And last one for me. What's the ideal pace for Mount Storm sized tuck-ins? How many of those would you like to do in a year?

Yes. So I mean, I would probably go back to our long-term value creation framework as a stepping back, maybe even not from a year, but a multiyear. We -- in that framework, the intention is to spend between $50 million and $150 million of capital placed into acquisitions on an annual basis. We've done 3 significant acquisitions since 2021 with Novo and Mid-Am followed by Woolf that has us at that pace or close to that pace.

So it's hard to say how many per year and what size per year, but I would probably focus more on that as your long-term guide that we think is still very achievable based on the pipeline of opportunities that we've developed.

Next question comes from Kasia Kopytek from TD Cowen.

One question for me. You've had success at this point with your price pass-throughs and given broad inflationary pressures that escape no one really, to what do you attribute your customers' ability or appetite, if you will, to absorb these increases? It doesn't seem like to this point, there you've seen much, if any, adverse mix changes in the response.

I think that, that's fair. There seems to be, frankly, a base level of demand and activity in the United States, in particular, a floor, if you will, that's just there despite the fact that we still have the 30-year mortgage rate being elevated and some general affordability pressures across the consumer.

So the other thing I would point out is our inputs to the manufactured process, the final good, whether that's a cabinet that's going into a home or finishing millwork or a stair system, et cetera.

We are providing raw materials that are a portion of the overall cost. So we are not the overall driver to the installed solution to the product. And this is a well-trod road for us that -- we're a distributor.

We will get paid for the significant value we're bringing to the channel. And if product prices go up, our intention within a range is to pass those through. And we've exhibited that through a number of cycles and through some shock periods around COVID, et cetera. So our team is quite skilled at this and has so far continued to be successful.

One follow-on, appreciating this may be impossible to answer given how many SKUs you have, but do you have an estimate of what percentage of the final product your cost would encompass for the ultimate consumer?

Well, we'll try not to swashbuckle here too much. I would say that if you think of the manufacturing process, you may have 1/3 of that being raw material costs, 1/3 of that being labor and 1/3 being fixed overhead, et cetera.

So we would be obviously that raw material cost, and we would be a portion thereof. We're providing certain inputs ours are in the architectural building products part of that, but there's going to be other inputs to manufacturing beyond just our core materials. So it would be somewhat less than that would be my answer.

That's very helpful. Another question I had, can you provide a broader update on -- you mentioned diversifying your sources. Obviously, that's not just a Q2 phenomenon, it's having for a while.

But if you could just provide a broad update on that, including how the supply chain has possibly adjusted to this point from the duty and tariff backdrop.

Yes. I mean it's an ongoing process for us. I would describe it, frankly, as a core competency of our business. We are a direct import distributor.

So we're not buying from brokers and others in other intermediaries. We're going around the globe to countries and setting up our own direct-to-mill supply chains and typically following those up with quality assurance people to make sure what we go over and set up to buy as a program ends up what arrives in North America.

So that's a very durable and well-established playbook for us. We continue to roll it out across new countries as they become capable. And I mean by capable, they have manufacturing footprint in fiber that can feed new manufacturing facilities.

So we're always doing that. We're always on a lookout for new product development, things that might be close substitutes to existing products that can open up new supply.

And then within countries that we're already in, we're always prequalifying and in many cases, helping mills develop to the standard that would be a standard that ADENTRA would be willing to be a partner and in some cases, house brand products to bring to North America, the quality aspect is very important.

It is a price quality discussion in all cases. So I would probably describe it that way. It's very core to what we do, and we've got a very good team engaged with that every day.

Next question comes from Christian Reiter from Raymond James.

Just 2 quick ones for me here. Could you provide any additional color on how much of the digital program/AI is already reflected in your current earnings versus what's still to come? Could you share like any medium-term EBITDA target so far? Or is that too early?

I'll answer your second question first, which is too early, but I appreciate you asking. I would say on the digital, digital encompasses many things.

I think sometimes AI is misused or overused, and I probably prefer digital as the broader strategic description of what we're doing. In terms of how much that's reflected in earnings, included in digital would be even things like e-commerce.

And today, that's roughly 20% of our sales are executed through an e-commerce channel across ADENTRA. There's lots of room for that to continue to grow.

And if you look at best practice distributors, in other places like Europe, it's a much higher number than that even within our industry. So we like the potential for that as a way of doing business for customers if that's how they choose to do it.

As it relates to more of the harnessing of the computing power that is basically what AI has brought us in practical terms, we're still very early in that. So the -- we've got concrete business optimization projects that are showing promise, but they're developed and they're now in pilot.

And we need to tweak those, then leverage them over time across the balance of the 81 location system. So I would describe that again as quite early, which is good. It gives us lots of upside to grow, which is why we -- when we talk about the kind of the 3 cornerstones, it's digital, it's supply chain and it's M&A for a reason.

Awesome. That's great color. And then just lastly, obviously, pricing has been a tailwind here. But if you're looking, for example, into some of your customers like Builders FirstSource, they recently cut their guidance. Has that shifted your volume expectations for the back half or not?

Not really. I mean we have a very diversified business by product mix, by geography, but also by customer channel. So BFS is a very good customer to us, but it's a proportion of what we do that's going into the Pro channel. We're doing relatively well with our home center business as well.

And then what we would call our industrial business, which is those tens of thousands of small to midsized fabricators around North America that rely on distributors every day to get them just-in-time product. They've been very resilient, very stable, notwithstanding maybe the macro conditions have not fully released at this point.

But as Faiz noted earlier, this quarter, I think, gives a little bit of a taste that if we get -- when we get some top line help, there's significant operating leverage that can uncoil through the P&L and drop heavy to the bottom line. So we look forward to that in the future. We can't control that.

We can only control what we do around market share and capturing our organic growth opportunities as they present themselves and then, of course, the M&A catalyst on top of that.

We have an additional question from Kasia Kopytek from TD Cowen.

I wanted to come back to Mount Storm. I think you referenced milling capabilities. Can you provide additional detail on that?

Yes. So that would be within their warehouse, they have some light, what we would call light remanufacturing equipment.

So instead of selling random length, random width undressed piece of hardwood lumber, as an example, they would be putting together specific milling packages where they're cutting and preparing packages to length and width and putting a surface on them so they can be more readily consumed by our customers.

So it's a way of bringing some of the downstream work that needs to be done with those products into our own facilities. We like that. It makes us stickier to customers. There's a margin uplift that goes with that and you become more of a solution provider than a product provider. This is not new to us, by the way. We have this in multiple other facilities across the network. But the Mount Storm piece fits really well in Northern California because it adds a capability where we didn't have that previously within that regional footprint before.

And is that a feature that you actively seek out? Or is just sort of nice to have that happens to come along with an acquisition?

It's very nice to have. With our acquisitions, as we've talked about, we cast the super wide net, and we don't kind of narrow the filter. So if the business came without that, that's fine, too. But in this case, it's a super nice fit, and they are very well established with this business in market there. And so we're really pleased that they chose to join with ADENTRA for the company going forward.

[Operator Instructions] There appears to be no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Rob Brown.

That's great. I appreciate everybody joining today. I always appreciate the questions. Do follow up with Faiz or I if there's things we can help with further.

And otherwise, Josh, thanks for hosting the call today, and I hope everybody has a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.

Good morning. Welcome to ADENTRA's First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] With me on the call today are Rob Brown, ADENTRA's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Faiz Karmally, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. ADENTRA's earnings release, financial statements and MD&A for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, are available on the Investors section of our website or and on SEDAR+.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that management's comments may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially due to risks and uncertainties outlined in our filings. All dollar figures mentioned today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated. I will now turn the call over to Rob Brown. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. We began 2026 with solid performance despite an increasingly uncertain macroeconomic backdrop. This morning, I'll speak to how we are managing near-term conditions and how we're positioning the business to drive longer-term value. Before turning to the quarter, I want to briefly frame the strategic priorities guiding our decisions in 2026.

These are areas where we are investing with discipline, where we see clear opportunity to strengthen the business structurally and importantly, where progress is largely within our control. There are three core areas of focus. First, advancing an AI-enabled operating model. Over the past 18 months, we've built a strong foundation in data governance and systems integration.

We're now moving into development of dynamic pricing and sales optimization tools that we believe will help our teams make better, more consistent data-driven decisions in real time. These capabilities are designed to drive structurally better margins, asset utilization and generate incremental revenue through continuous compounding improvements across our network. We're taking a disciplined results-oriented approach, developing tools with clear applications, testing them in targeted environments and then plan to scale what proves effective.

We're focused on speed, accountability and measurable outcomes with the objective of driving sustained margin improvement, incremental growth and stronger returns on invested capital over time. Second area of focus is strengthening our global supply chain. We're continuing to diversify our sourcing footprint and build greater flexibility into our supply network, including developing new capabilities in regions where we had little or no presence just a few years ago.

This work is about more than cost. It is about reducing risk and increasing optionality in an increasingly complex global trade environment. It also supports profitability through access to differentiated and proprietary products while positioning us to support future growth, including acquisitions.

Third area of focus is maintaining a disciplined and active approach to M&A. We continue to nurture a robust pipeline of opportunities and have the balance sheet flexibility to execute when the right business becomes available. Our focus remains on transactions that are strategically aligned, operationally actionable and capable of delivering meaningful synergies.

Taken together, these priorities reflect a consistent approach, investing in areas that strengthen our platform, improve returns on invested capital and position ADENTRA to generate durable longer-term value. At the same time, we are clear-eyed about the macro environment. Demand remains impacted by affordability constraints, and we continue to see pressure from mortgage rates, inflation and broader geopolitical uncertainty.

We're managing the business accordingly with a strong focus on cost discipline, pricing execution and working capital efficiency while continuing to invest in initiatives that will drive longer-term performance. With that context, let me turn to our first quarter performance. In the first quarter, we generated sales of $562.7 million, up 3.7% year-over-year, driven by a combination of higher volumes and improved pricing.

Importantly, this growth was entirely organic, reflecting the strength of our platform and our ability to continue gaining share. We saw particularly strong demand in roofing products, supported by storm-related activity and customer purchasing ahead of expected price increases. Gross margin was 20.2%, remaining above our benchmark of 20.0%, though down from last year, primarily due to product mix.

Roofing products carry lower margins but generate strong returns on invested capital, and we expect mix to normalize. At the same time, we maintained strong cost discipline with operating expenses increasing less than 1% year-over-year, reflecting the benefits of premise and headcount reductions last year as well as a continued focus on efficiency across the business.

Adjusted EBITDA was $38.3 million and adjusted EPS was $0.38, demonstrating resilience in a softer environment. From a cash flow perspective, we delivered a significant year-over-year improvement driven by working capital management. Our balance sheet remains strong with leverage at 2.4x versus 3x in Q1 last year, positioning us well to execute on our capital allocation priorities.

Overall, the quarter reflects the resilience of our operating model and our ability to perform in a more challenging environment. With that, I'll turn the call over to Faiz to review the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, all figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. For the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, ADENTRA generated sales of $562.7 million, an increase of 3.7% year-over-year. This growth was primarily driven by a 2.1% increase in volumes and a 1.3% increase in product pricing. Regionally, U.S. sales increased 3.9%, driven by both volume and pricing improvements.

Canadian sales declined 3%, reflecting softer demand and pricing pressures. Gross profit was $113.7 million or 20.2% of sales compared to 21.6% last year. The decrease primarily reflects product mix, particularly the increased weighting of roofing products as well as other mix changes across the portfolio.

Operating expenses were $100.4 million, up 0.5% year-over-year. The increase was mainly driven by higher leased premise costs and higher LTIP expense. These were partially offset by lower personnel costs as a result of ongoing cost control initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA was $38.3 million, down 4.1% year-over-year. Net income was $2 million compared to $4.1 million last year.

On an adjusted basis, adjusted net income was $9.3 million compared to $10.8 million and adjusted EPS was $0.38 compared to $0.42 last year. Cash flow from operations improved significantly with $6.2 million used compared to $33.5 million used in Q1 2025. This improvement was primarily driven by more efficient working capital management.

We ended the quarter with a leverage ratio of 2.4x, maintaining strong financial flexibility. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged and include maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in organic growth, pursuing M&A and returning capital to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Rob.

Thanks, Faiz. As we look to the balance of 2026, we are operating in a fluid macroeconomic environment. Higher interest rates, inflationary pressures and geopolitical dynamics continue to weigh on demand and consumer confidence. Our April sales were modestly lower year-over-year, and we are managing the business accordingly, maintaining strict cost discipline, actively managing inventory and purchasing and executing on our price pass-through model to protect margins.

At the same time, our long-term value creation framework remains unchanged. We're continuing to advance the strategic priorities I outlined earlier, initiatives that strengthen the business structurally and are largely within our control. In AI and digital optimization, we're building capabilities to drive better decision-making, improve consistency and support organic growth and structurally higher margins.

In supply chain, we're increasing flexibility, reducing risk and expanding access to differentiated higher-margin products. And through disciplined M&A, we're maintaining a pipeline of opportunities to accelerate growth and unlock synergies as conditions allow. These are initiatives that are not dependent on near-term macro improvement. They're designed to compound over time and position the business to perform better across cycles.

At the same time, we remain focused on being prudent stewards of capital. We will continue to prioritize balance sheet strength, apply discipline to investment decisions and ensure capital is deployed in ways that support longer-term returns.

We believe this balanced approach, combining operational discipline in the near term with continued investment in longer-term value drivers positions ADENTRA to navigate uncertainty while building a stronger, more resilient business.

Over the longer term, the fundamentals of our end markets remain supportive, and we're confident in our ability to deliver attractive returns on invested capital and create meaningful shareholder value.

With that, we'll open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Kyle McPhee of ATB Cormark.

One from me. Just regarding organic volume growth, you posted good performance, absolute level and also relatively better versus what we're seeing elsewhere throughout the sector. Is there anything specific to highlight here on how you're pulling off this performance?

I know you called out some pull forward in roofing products, but roofing isn't, I don't think, really a big category for you. So I suspect that's maybe not overly meaningful. So what other sources of this impressive organic growth can you call out for us?

Yes. Kyle, a couple of comments on the roofing. So typically, that's about a 5% of our overall product mix. It's not a lead category. It's complementary in one of the brands that we have because it services rural markets very well, and it positions us with customers. It was a little higher in the first quarter. It was about 8% of the mix.

I would probably characterize that piece as not pulling -- there was an element of pulling forward demand in terms of customers seeking to buy more of that product in advance of price increases that were known to be coming. But I would also say that it's just responding to more demand that came from earlier storm activity.

So I wouldn't characterize the level of sales we did in that category really in March as taking us off market from selling that category into Q2. So just would make that distinction. In terms of the performance generally, and I would agree, if you look at comps across the sector, generally, I think this holds up very well.

It's just our continued work on capturing market share with the things I outlined in my opening comments around investing in resilient supply chains and having options for customers, particularly as there's some pricing variability entering into the channel related to geopolitical events and then investing in other digital tools, which I think is helping our sales force.

Got it. And then second and last one for me, just on the gross margin mix, the lower mix that we saw in Q1, not a surprise and you highlighted it last quarter, and now we see it in the results, you're calling out kind of roofing products as one thing.

Is there anything else kind of worth calling out? Like is there -- is part of this maybe something like trade down into categories where maybe you make less margin, meaning this mix impact might last beyond Q1? Anything worth highlighting?

There's always going to be some quarter-to-quarter variation in the gross profit margin. We will remain above the benchmark number we've got in our long-term value creation framework of 20%. But yes, you've seen us as recently as Q4 into the 22s at times. I think it's going to be within a range.

I would maybe say with our April year-over-year sales result that we said was about -- down about 1%. We have already seen some bounce back on margin into the 21s. So I think you can think about it a little bit that way. The other thing -- and we try not to talk too much about roofing because again, this is a 5% product category for us.

But just to highlight, it's a very high return ROIC product category for us simply because we sold a lot of roofing products in March, but they were all predominantly all direct sales. So they went from the manufacturer straight to our customers' yards, meaning it never enters into our inventory. So the working capital investment is very modest. So we're bringing in margin dollars without having to run it through our cost structure. So just highlight that as well.

Got it. Okay. So what I'm hearing is kind of -- this is just normal course gross margin mix variability for the most part, has nothing to do with kind of the point in the cycle that we're in here?

Yes. I think that's a fair characterization. We've described all along the way that prices will move around, but our model is one that's a price pass-through. There will be a little bit of variability in where the margin falls, a bit of a range, not a specific point, but I think your comment is accurate.

Next question is from Hamir Patel from CIBC.

Rob, you talked about your AI initiatives and embracing more dynamic pricing. I realize it's still pretty early days. But how do you -- do you think there's at least perhaps 100 basis points of gross margin improvement from this initiative? And will that become more apparent later in '26? Or is it going to be more of a 2027 story?

Yes, that's more in the future. It's hard to quantify what it's going to do. I'm not put off by your -- what you're aspiring to. I think that's a reasonable expectation. The framework or the baseline for doing this work for those that are familiar with it is having clean data, and we've been there, done that work, have excellent data governance processes in place and then the infrastructure to start to harness and put it to work.

So we're in build at the moment, which will be followed by pilot, which will be followed by leveraging across the broader system. So I think further down the line into 2027 is when we will be looking for some of those improvements related to that effort specifically to emerge.

Great. Rob, I want to ask about M&A. It's -- last deal was Woolf. Balance sheet is in a better position again today. Are there any product categories or geographies where you see the most opportunities?

Yes, you're right. We also feel really good about the balance sheet. We're not waiting for further de-leveraging. We are just actively working on deals right price, right fit. And we've got a lot of very good opportunities that we're pursuing in that regard.

As I think we've probably discussed in the past, we do cast a really wide net on the M&A. So we are going to look at all geographies, all product categories because to a certain extent, it is a numbers game and the more you look at the higher propensity that, you can get the one that works for you.

That said, we're not out of touch with looking at migration patterns and where higher growth rates may be in the longer term in U.S. markets in particular. So we do quite like expanding into the U.S. South, Southeast and doing more there if we can. We've really built out our Midwest footprint with the acquisitions we've done most recently. There's still room, frankly, in all geographies to add assets if they're the right ones, however.

Next question comes from Zachary Evershed from National Bank Capital Markets.

Congrats on the quarter. So Rob, I think you mentioned that April gross margins had already hit into the 21s. Could you give us some more color on the normalization that you expect and whether you think we can get back into those mid-21s into 22s that you mentioned?

Yes. I probably won't start parsing it into a 50 basis-point increments, Zach, as you understand it well. There's always going to be some mix considerations there. But yes, just to put folks at ease because the margin was a little lower for the reasons we noted in the release around the roofing mix, we can confirm that into April, it's looking more normal. I probably won't go further as to is it going to be a low 21 or a high 21. I think we just need the rest of the quarter just to unfold to understand that better.

Fair enough. And then for the higher return on invested capital that you have with the roofing products because they don't enter into inventory, we did notice a bit of a step-up in accounts receivable and accounts payable. Was that related to roofing as well or more of the spring mix build?

Zach, it's Faiz here. A couple of things on that. So the roofing sales, as Rob described earlier, do have a higher return on invested capital. Generally, if you look at our inventory days this quarter compared to the same quarter last year, we improved by 9 days roughly. And I would say about half of that was just related to more of these direct shipments.

So that just gives you a sense in terms of capital requirements and return, what that can drive. Your comments around just the gross values of the receivables and the payables being larger, yes, some of it is related to that. The roofing dynamic we're talking about, the vast majority of that actually happened in March. And so you're just seeing normal timing cycles of collection there as we came to the quarter end.

Got you. Good color. And then while we're on inventories, you've come down quite a bit from the 90-plus days that you had in 2022 and 2023, but maybe we're still above the pre-pandemic levels around 70 days. And with the tough environment that you've noted with affordability issues and geopolitical tensions, how are you feeling about where your inventory should trend through the year, seasonality allowing?

I think we're in a good spot now, Zach. The kind of low 70 days you're remembering might even have been pre a couple of acquisitions. That I'd have to go back and check. We haven't seen that in some time. When we look at where our inventory is relative to sales pace, I think it's in a very good place. In fact, it looks a little better because of the dynamic I described around those directs, which was a bit of a unique feature in Q1.

But even if you put that aside, we are solidly now into kind of the low 80 days. And once you're kind of at that 80-day number, plus or minus, that's a good level of inventory for our business and the number of SKUs we have today and where our customers sit.

So I think you can expect, again, over -- it will ebb and flow a little on timing intra-year. But when you look back over a couple of quarters or certainly the year, I think we're at the pace we need to be now kind of in that 80 days plus or minus on the inventory.

Next question comes from Ian Gillies from Stifel.

Is there anything worth highlighting on, call it, the cost improvement initiatives this year that we should be thinking about or you think that might be notable relative to what you've done in prior years to continue to try and push EBITDA margin higher?

And I guess the follow-on alongside this also related to costs is eventually, at some point, the housing cycle is going to turn and you have to keep some costs in place for when that turn happens. And do you have any sense on how much that might be impinging on margins right now versus where you think you might be able to be with the current cost structure in place?

That's okay. We'll maybe take [indiscernible] . And we were pleased with the first quarter operating costs being held to 0.5%. And that's reflective of the efforts really that we had in 2025 to control premise expense, and we did some consolidations and then also managing through our headcount. On the EBITDA margin, yes, there's always going to be a quarter-to-quarter seasonality that's going to be included in that.

You'll see Q2s and 3s be better than 1s and 4s generally, although Q4 was helped by some year-end true-ups on rebate programs, et cetera. But I think it's going to be the gross profit percentage. The earlier comment from Hamir, how do we continue to move that up, and we're doing things through digital and other efforts where we see expansion opportunities, including mix over time.

It was held back a little bit this quarter as we've talked about with the roofing component that was a little bit higher. So it's managing that gross profit percentage upward over time. And then it's also what you pointed out, which is eventually, we're going to have a little bit more of a demand release here, and we can drive more through the system without adding proportionately costs, which will help the bottom line EBITDA margin. I probably stole all the good ideas there, but I will look at Faiz, if there's anything he wanted to add.

No, I think you've covered it, Rob. I was just going to elaborate a little on your last point around scalability of our operating expense base. And if you think about our expenses today, just as a reminder, about 50% of that relates to people costs. And as Rob mentioned, through some of our initiatives, we're just becoming more efficient every day with what we're doing in terms of tools for our people in their day-to-day operations.

I think we're going to get good scalability out of our people as volumes increase, you'll need some level of additional workforce in the warehouse, but I think it will be modest. And then from a premise perspective, that's another 20% of our costs. And we have room to scale in our facilities today. So 70% of the cost base, I think it's set up quite well to scale as we start to see some of that demand release you noted in the future, Ian.

That's helpful. As it pertains to M&A, you're looking at some of what I would define as bolt-on targets or tuck-in targets. Can you maybe talk about the delineation you're seeing between a firm of your size and the technology you're using and what you're seeing in some of the smaller firms and how that maybe becomes even more additive from an M&A perspective compared to even maybe 5 years ago?

Yes, I think we would describe that as new and it's an increasing gap. So this will add to the things that we can bring to newly acquired businesses from a synergies perspective. Our observation would be not that smaller competitors that we might buy are not doing a good job, but they don't have the scale and the knowledge base to draw on to build some of the tools that we're either building or contemplating building.

So I think this is a theme we've also seen more generally with some of the other large-scale M&A activity kind of in the building products sector that those that are larger -- we feel they can be better positioned in the supply chain and make themselves more attractive to customers as a distributor partner than a smaller regional competitor. So I think that advantage will continue to probably grow and expand over time.

Okay. If I could sneak in one more and this is -- building products is a space that's been heavily trafficked in by private equity for a long time. There's been a lot of private credit upheaval this year. Have you seen any change in kind of the quantum of deals that might be coming in the market from private equity or the manner in which they are coming to market that may be to your advantage?

Nothing I think that we would call out at this point. Yes, we're aware of the timelines of folks that hold assets that are private equity holders in our space. I wouldn't call it a super deep pool. Remember, we've got a lot of very well-run and accretive family businesses sometimes have gone back for a couple of generations, but maybe don't have succession going forward that are great targets for us.

There is some private equity ownership in some assets we'd be interested in, and we'll always be in those conversations, but I wouldn't describe that as the bulk of the opportunity for our M&A pipeline.

Next question is from Jonathan Goldman out of Scotiabank.

I was wondering, Rob, if you can talk about the cadence of the spring selling season this year, what you've seen so far? I mean you obviously gave the April number, but maybe there's some macro stuff going on in there as well. But just on a year-over-year basis, how are you thinking about spring this year?

Yes. We don't think spring has been canceled. We've highlighted that April number because we like to be factual, and it's just roughly flattish to a year ago, and we had spring seasonality up last year.

So at this point, we're looking at it as a more normalized environment. And albeit it's been a fairly muted one, but nothing out of the ordinary from a seasonal perspective so far, at least from our perspective. We also noted -- and I know there's often revisions, et cetera, but we noted the U.S. new residential starts coming in for March, a very healthy number. So yes, that's kind of where we're at in terms of monitoring the spring season.

Okay. And maybe another one. I was wondering if you can maybe elaborate on the different dynamics you're seeing between the U.S. and Canada kind of different sales trends there? And is there any difference in terms of your share gain strategy or what you're achieving between those two regions?

No. We definitely are operating as one company north and south of the border. So any of the business improvement processes we have are equally applied to both Canada and the U.S. businesses. Yes, I would say that the economic environments between Canada and the U.S., there's some differentiation there. And there's always been some fundamental differences in the housing market just in terms of the mix of single-family versus multi being more 2/3, 1/3 multi to single in Canada and the reverse is true in the United States.

So yes, nothing, I think, that I'd call out specifically in terms of how we're managing those businesses. There's common processes, common vendors and suppliers. We have had a bit more of a regionally challenged housing market, I think, as folks in Ontario would know and B.C. would know.

But we positioned ourselves with what we consider the full basket of products to serve whatever portions of construction market are working best, whether that's commercial or whether that's repair and remodel or new res encompassing both the multi and the single. So that's kind of where we're at on that.

And that appears to be the questions for today. I will now turn the call over to you guys for some closing remarks.

Okay. Josh, great job. I appreciate you hosting the call for us today. And if anyone has other questions, please reach out to Faiz and I directly. We'd love to hear from you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning. Welcome to the ADENTRA Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] With me on the call today are Rob Brown, ADENTRA's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Faiz Karmally, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

ADENTRA's earnings release, financial statements and MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2025, are available on the Investors section of our website and on SEDAR.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that management's comments may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially due to risks and uncertainties outlined in our filings. All dollar figures mentioned today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated.

I will now turn the call over to Rob Brown. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a few comments on our performance in 2025 and the progress we made across our strategic priorities. Faiz will then walk through the fourth quarter financial results in more detail. And I'll return at the end to discuss current trends and our outlook.

Looking back on 2025, I'm pleased with how our team executed in what remained a relatively muted construction environment. Residential activity across North America continued to face headwinds, particularly from affordability challenges tied to mortgage rates and limited housing inventory. Against that backdrop, our focus remains firmly on the things we can control, operating excellence, margin discipline and strong cash generation. That approach, once again, allowed ADENTRA to deliver steady results. For the year, sales increased to $2.25 billion, representing 3% growth compared to 2024, while adjusted EBITDA rose to $187.9 million. Pricing conditions also stabilized during the year after a period of deflation across several product categories, removing a headwind, which helped support our performance.

Importantly, the business continued to generate strong cash flow. We produced over $160 million in operating cash flow, which allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet while continuing to return capital to shareholders. During the year, we bought back 3.5% of our outstanding shares, while returning $29.5 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. At the same time, we continued to reduce leverage, finishing the year at 2.2x net debt-to-EBITDA, which positions us well as we look forward toward future growth opportunities. The consistency of these results reflects the strength of ADENTRA's platform. Today, we operate 81 distribution facilities across North America, connecting more than 2,500 suppliers with over 60,000 customers. We're a vital part of the supply chain, bridging the gap between manufacturers who produce large volumes of specific products and customers who require credit, small volumes of many products and often delivered on a just-in-time basis.

Our model builds on this core function in the supply chain by combining strong local operating brands with centralized capabilities to provide purchasing power, shared services and digital infrastructure. This creates a sustainable competitive advantage. During 2025, we continued to build on our platform in several important ways. First, supply chain excellence remained a focus. Our sourcing network now spans more than 30 countries, giving us flexibility to manage trade dynamics, while continuing to provide customers with a superior suite of products. Supply chain excellence includes stringent compliance, the success of which was underscored by our recovery of $25.5 million of trade duties, including interest, following the successful outcome of the U.S. Department of Commerce trade case related to hardwood plywood products from Vietnam.

Second, we continue to invest in digital capabilities across the organization. Our digital sales platform is increasingly embedded in our operating model, providing customers with 24-hour access to inventory and automated quoting tools, while supporting more than 20% of our annual sales. And third, acquisition-driven growth remains a core part of our long-term strategy. During 2025, we continued integrating Woolf Distributing, which we acquired in 2024. The business contributed $159 million in revenue during the year, expanded our presence in the U.S. Midwest and strengthened our exposure to specialty outdoor living products and the pro-dealer customer channel. Overall, the progress we made during the year further reinforce the competitive advantages of our platform and the strength of our operating model.

With that overview, I'll now turn the call over to Faiz to review the financial results in more detail. Faiz?

Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. As a reminder, all dollar figures mentioned today are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated. For the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, ADENTRA generated sales of $517.5 million, a decrease of 2.5% compared to Q4 2024. The decline was primarily attributable to lower volumes, partially offset by improved product pricing. In the U.S., fourth quarter sales were $477.9 million, down 2.4% year-over-year, reflecting a 4.7% decline in volumes that was partially offset by a 2.2% increase in product prices. In Canada, sales totaled CAD 55.2 million, representing a 3.3% decrease year-over-year, also primarily driven by lower volumes with modest pricing improvements. Despite the softer demand environment, our margin profile remains strong. Fourth quarter gross margin was $114.4 million, representing 22.1% of sales, an improvement from 21.7% in the prior year quarter. This reflects the continued effectiveness of our procurement discipline and pricing strategy.

Operating expenses totaled $94.7 million, essentially flat compared to the prior year. The slight increase reflects higher costs associated with lease premises, which were largely offset by a favorable adjustment related to contingent consideration from the Woolf acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $43.7 million, up 3.7% year-over-year, demonstrating the resilience of our operating model even in softer market environment. On a reported basis, net income was $32.1 million or $1.32 per share, compared to $8.4 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily driven by lower finance expense relating primarily to foreign exchange gains in the quarter, and the recognition of deferred tax assets related to an internal restructuring completed during the fourth quarter. On an adjusted basis, adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.67, an increase of $0.16 compared to $0.51 in Q4 2024.

Turning to cash flow. We generated $41.9 million of operating cash flow before changes in working capital, and working capital reductions contributed an additional $57.8 million, bringing total operating cash flow for the quarter to $99.6 million. The working capital release reflects our seasonal inventory normalization in the second half of the year, reflecting the slower winter construction period. From a balance sheet perspective, we ended the year with a net debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio of 2.2x, well within our target range and providing significant financial flexibility heading into 2026. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We continue to focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in organic growth initiatives, pursuing accretive acquisitions and returning capital to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Rob. Rob?

Thanks, Faiz. As we look forward to 2026, we continue to approach the near-term environment with measuring caution. Elevated U.S. mortgage rates and limited housing inventory remain key challenges for affordability and geopolitical tensions and evolving trade policies continue to contribute to macroeconomic uncertainty. In the first two months of the year, sales were down approximately 2% compared to the same period in 2025, partly reflecting the impact of unfavorable winter weather to start the year. At the same time, we are encouraged by several potential developments that could improve the environment over time.

Interest rates began easing during 2025, and government policy initiatives aimed at increasing housing affordability and supply could support residential construction demand in the years ahead. Over the longer term, the underlying fundamentals of the housing market remain intact. Structural housing undersupply in North America, favorable demographic trends and an aging housing stock continued to support long-term demand for the products we distribute. Within that context, ADENTRA remains well positioned. Our platform is diversified across geographies, products and customer channels, and we continue to benefit from our national footprint, strong supplier relationships and global sourcing capabilities. Our scalable operating model allows us to maintain margin discipline during softer periods, while also positioning the business to capture operating leverage as volumes recover.

Looking ahead, we will continue executing within our full value -- full cycle value creation framework, focusing on operational excellence, disciplined capital allocation and accretive acquisitions in our large and highly fragmented market. We believe this approach will allow us to continue generating strong returns on invested capital and long-term growth for our shareholders.

With that, we'll open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will be from Kyle McPhee at ATB Cormark.

First one for me, just on your OpEx for Q4. It was down meaningfully. I'd looked through all the moving pieces like premise costs being up a bit, that favorable impact of the Woolf contingent consideration change that flowed through your OpEx. And after adjusting for all this, it looks like, you still had additional OpEx decline. So that's probably your ongoing cost optimization. But that is what I want to confirm. Have you been ratcheting down the OpEx levels to match the top line environment you are facing? And are these cuts that we can see implied in these Q4 results durable throughout 2026, maybe even more on the come.

Hi, Kyle, it's Faiz here, good morning. I can take that one. So you're right. When you peel back the noise, operating expenses were down a little more than if you were comparing to the pace we were at the trailing couple of quarters. There's two things there. One, that's just acknowledging the slower volumes that we had in Q4, right? So some of that is just some variable costs coming in lower because top line volumes were lower in the fourth quarter than the previous quarters. Some of that is also what you described, which is we have made some proactive changes to our cost base. We've talked about this previously, particularly around warehouse space. We have less warehouse space today than we did a year ago as an example. And we've done some things around head count as well. So I would describe those things as durable, but are just part of the story. And then as you head into 2026, we will be facing some inflationary increases on larger pieces of our expenses, which, as you know, are going to be really premise and people costs. So that's going to be around leasing costs for our 80 facilities that we lease and inflationary type increases in certain places around wages and benefits. So that might be in the order of magnitude, low single digit, like it might be 2% this year. So that's the color I would offer you.

Got it. Okay. And then aside from lease like premise costs going up, is there an opportunity to eliminate more of your warehouses based on your kind of lease maturity schedule throughout the year. Is that in the cards at all?

That's something we're always looking to do. So we've got 80 leases and in terms of expiry, they're laddered. So every year, you're going to have a handful come up that you're going to make decisions around whether it's to renew it or to take less or more leasing space. So we'll look at that. I think we did a lot in 2025 in terms of just if you look at just the warehouse count, again, this time a year ago, it was more like 86, now we're 81. So I think we've done things there to rightsize for the pace that we are expecting in 2026, if that's different, we'll have opportunities to look at that, as you mentioned.

Next question will be from Frederic Tremblay at Desjardins Bank Capital Markets.

I'm just curious if given the current environment that we're in, are you seeing or are you expecting a meaningful customer rotation within your good, better and best offerings. I guess I'm just trying to better understand if customers moving to lower price items is a possibility? And if so the kind of impact we should expect from -- on a margin perspective from that, if any?

Good morning, Frederic, it's Rob. Yes, possibly. I wouldn't call it out as some big substantial shift, however. We always do have what you said, which is options at different price points for people to participate in any given product set. We've seen a little bit of that, which is reflective also in margin. But I think it's not a thesis that I would overly focus on. It's just part of the overall mix, and there's going to be some moving around within that mix from time to time, but it's not kind of a real theme that we're seeing or talking about here.

Got it. And just on the trend so far in Q1, you mentioned sales being on 2% in the first 2 months of the year. Just wondering if you can maybe break that down a little more? We saw pricing in Q4 being positive. Was that still the case in Q1? And therefore, your volumes are down more than 2% just to the extent that you can comment on just the pricing and volume trends within that 2% decline.

Yes. So a few points, more volume than price. We've not really seen a pullback in the pricing. So this is more volumetric. And then as we also discussed in the release, there were some weather-related impacts in January, February, I think we all tracked the big storm. We don't typically talk a whole bunch about weather, but it was a prolonged event that did cost us some sales days geographically in some parts of the network. January and February are also, as we know, just the entry points into the year, they tend to be the seasonally slowest. So we'll have to see how things transpire through the balance of the quarter through March, which is a longer sales period, if you count the number of days and gets closer to entering to a spring selling season. So I think we have to stay tuned a little bit on that.

Next question will be from Nikolai Goroupitch at CIBC Capital Markets.

Following the announcement of the preliminary antidumping and countervailing duties on hardwood and plywood imports from China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Do you expect these measures to drive up product prices of domestic products?

There's always some interrelatedness between what's going on in import markets and domestic markets. I would say, however, that those outcomes were well telegraphed and understood that will probably be the case, and there's already been appropriate supply chain shift. So we don't view them as those announcements as something that's going to meaningfully shift markets.

Okay, I see. And I guess given the volatile market conditions, could you highlight specific areas of strength and weakness across the various product categories within the business?

We're always selling the mix. I mean, that's the value of distribution. So we're not particularly power focused on any one category. When we're going to a customer, it's with a wide variety of products on that. So the overall product set tends to move not perfectly aligned, but generally in lockstep with one another. I wouldn't call out any specific product categories that are underperforming or outperforming. I would just go back to the earlier comments that I had to Frederic's question around no big movements in pricing that we're seeing so far in 2026.

[Operator Instructions] Next, we will hear from Zachary Evershed at National Bank Capital Markets.

Congrats on the quarter. So just circling back on the pressure around good, better, best. Minor, but gross margins were great despite that. So were there any one-timers that help boost gross margins above that 22% level, or is that fairly sustainable outside of guidance for Q1 here?

Yes. The only thing that is always moves around a little bit more in Q4 as we end up doing our full year true-up on vendor rebates. So that was a little bit of a tailwind to the margin in the quarter. Other than that, it was normal course, Zach.

Got you. And with the reduction in tariff rates, as we switch to S-122, do you think there's going to be any pressure on pricing in the next few months?

No, not really, nothing we would call out materially. I think the Section 122, you saw has eased the burden a little bit in terms of the proportion of our goods that are subject to tariffs and the weighted average rate that's also attached to them. I think it gives us enough certainty to plan the business over the upcoming period. The whole trade landscape remains a little bit of a moving target, but this is where our import supply line can shine because we can pivot between various supply sources, both country and vendor and kind of be nimble to if the goalposts do move that we continue to have very good product options for our customers. We've seen that so far, and we'll continue to bring that to market. But nothing specific around the 122 position that I think is going to move markets around here in the short term.

Got you. On your digital sales platform, it's supporting over 20% of annual sales, is that trending upward generally?

It is, yes. When you've got the USD 2.25 billion sales base, when you add some dollars that you're rather excited about, sometimes it doesn't turn into a big percentage immediately. But the overall trend month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter is for continued penetration of sales through that channel. And that's been very encouraging. We continue to kind of twist the dials on how to utilize our digital sales platform even better.

Good color. Question on your corporate restructuring and tax recovery. Can you unpack the maneuver there for us? And what's your steady state tax rate now?

Hi, Zach, it's Faiz here. Unpacking it, we can probably chat after the call, and I can give you more detail. It was quite complex as you saw we outlined in the note. At a high level, the way I would describe it is in the fourth quarter, we did some things internally to actually simplify our structure, our internal structure. And the rationale for that was really -- and this may sound familiar about a year ago, a little more than that. We had changes in certain tax rules, both Pillar 2, which is a global tax regime that Canada has adopted. And then Canadian specific rules around the deductibility of interest expense. But in response to those changes, it made sense for us to simplify our structure in the fourth quarter. In simplifying our structure, we were able to unlock certain benefits that previously were unavailable to us in terms of tax benefits that, for lack of a better term, were previously stranded. And so that's really what you're seeing here is the recognition of those. Those are expected to be onetime. And so that's also why in our MD&A, you would have noticed we pull those out of the adjusted numbers because we don't expect that to be recurring. I would just mention before I talk about the tax rate, that is still USD 15 million of benefit we're going to get even though it's an adjusted number. So we're very pleased with the outcome there. In terms of the effective tax rate, the way I would describe that is if you normalize for the kind of onetime tax noise, there were some other things to you, but this was the main thing that you're keying on here, Zach. But if you took the onetime items out of the tax noise this year, we would have been very close to the statutory rate of about 27%. So again, notwithstanding any onetime items in 2026, and I don't foresee any at this point. I would say you should expect around 27% is the effective rate for 2026.

Appreciate that. Then just one last one. A bit of an uptick in CapEx in the quarter. What did that go towards? And what are your plans for 2026?

Yes. On the quarter, it can move around a little bit just depending on timing of spend. So if you look at the CapEx on a full year basis, I think it's right in our wheelhouse, as we described it typically. But again, as you go through the year, you can have a couple of quarters where it's lesser than a quarter right a little more, but standing back looking at the full year, that met our expectations around what we were going to spend on CapEx. The nature of the spend, Zach, is exactly what you think it's maintenance CapEx in our different operations, nothing unusual to report there.

And then for 2026?

Same expectation, it's going to be in that kind of $10 million to $12 million range. I wouldn't -- you shouldn't expect anything different than that.

Next is Kyle McPhee at ATB Cormark.

Just a follow-up on some of the color you gave on the gross margin performance. So you mentioned the vendor rebate true-up was a minor impact. I mean how minor are we talking? Can you quantify it for us?

I'm not -- well, here's maybe a way I'll describe it. I'm not sure I want to call out the number, Kyle, but the way to think about it is, if you looked at our gross margin percentage in Q4 compared to Q4 of last year, it wasn't that different. Q4 of 2024 was also a stronger performance. Part of that was also for the same reason. So when we get to the end of the year, that's when you do your final accounting on rebates, we take a bit of a conservative approach on estimates for all those reasons. Some of them are just -- are just cliff in nature. You need to hit a threshold before you get them. They're very meaningful. If you look at our Q4 performance relative to the other three quarters, we were more like mid-21 plus or minus. And then Q4 was 22. And I would describe a lot of that is driven by the rebates. If you think of our gross margin percentage on a normalized basis for 2024, I think the mid-21s would be fair. So maybe that's how I would put some guardrails around it for you, Kyle.

Got it. Okay. So that was one of the moving pieces in gross margin. I see you got your pricing gains to successfully offset the kind of cost of inventory inflation related to tariffs. Was there other tactics you were utilizing as well to deliver gross margin performance, like were you shifting around your supply chain and sourcing by region to optimize that way as well? Was that a meaningful moving part?

I would describe that as normal course that we're always doing that. I wouldn't say there's so many bps of advantage or disadvantage around that, but we are very nimble with the supply chain to provide the most effective sourcing for customers in the market environments that we've got. I would say that the overall approach to margin remains the same, which is we are increasingly putting more data analytics behind how we price. We are being more disciplined around the utilization of price listing. It is fine-tuned very regularly across the entire business. We continue to look at businesses from an acquisition perspective that can be net helpers generally on gross profit margin. And then what you said, our import business generally contributes very well to our margin profile. So that's a strategy that you've heard about for a number of years now that's continuing and is providing support above the numbers that you see in terms of our long-term value creation framework and your expectations how we can run the company from a gross profit perspective.

Got it. Okay. And then last one for me, a different topic. I see you're active on the NCIB fourth quarter in a row. It's a nice incremental source of value creation, but not massively active on the NCIB so in the way you have the capacity to be. So should I read this as ADENTRA has a much better use of capital very near term, probably in the form of M&A, maybe you're close to resuming your M&A playbook in a meaningful way. Your balance sheet leverage position certainly seems to support funding of deals internally now. So is my read-through on time here, anywhere close to accurate?

I think you're bringing a very good perspective. And look, the inorganic growth and our track record in M&A is a real important part of the corporate growth opportunity that we see here. We intend to be back in the market active on M&A. We did a very good deal, as you know, in 2024 with Woolf Distributing. It took our leverage up to closer to the higher end of our normal range, and we spent last year generated $160 million of cash flow that brought that leverage back down to the lower end of our range and sets us up really well to go out in the market and buy businesses to the extent we find ones that are a good fit. And in that regard, we've got an active pipeline. We've got fully staffed M&A capability with a full-time Senior VP of Acquisitions, who's out there, making sure that we've got good corporate opportunities. So the NCIB is a nice kind of participating feature. We were able to take some shares off the table, which is very accretive to shareholders last year without spending a lot of money on it and without moving our leverage up in any meaningful way. So that's how you should think about the balance. The primary focus is growing the business through M&A. And now we've got the balance sheet to go out in the market and do that in the coming year, and we're working hard on that.

Next question will be from Jonathan Goldman at Scotiabank.

Maybe just circling back to the outlook, how many fewer selling days did weather impact in January and February, and is like the total 2% decline quarter-to-date solely due to weather. I guess I'm just trying to parse out here if we were to compare days versus days on a like-for-like basis, would sales have been up year-on-year?

I know what you're trying to do, yes. I think it's -- we're going to leave it a little bit fuzzy because just to be honest, Jonathan, it's always an estimate around weather impacts. We don't actually usually mention it at all. But it was meaningful this time. It affected a portion of the 80 location network, some were closed for a couple of days, some for day and a half, some had residual hangover if customers were open or not. So it's hard to put an exact pin in the numbers. So what we chose to do was just say, "Hey, factually, this is where we're at through January and February." And by the way, there was a big old storm that had an impact in that. So I think we just need to stay tuned to the end of the quarter and see where things settle.

That's a fair comment. I guess, maybe also relatedly, have you seen any change in end market demand given all the macro stuff in the housing market, or things kind of stable-ish from where we were in Q4?

Pretty -- I mean, there's seasonal impacts between Q4, Q1. Q1 is obviously going to be a stronger quarter from a sales perspective, activity-wise than Q4. So keeping in mind that seasonal impact, of course, I would describe the market is still continuing to be fairly steady, stable. We can make good money in this market. And even if we are still in what I would describe as closer to trough conditions. We're really well positioned if there is a pickup. But in the meantime, we can provide very good returns to shareholders. And we hope as we move through the year that we see some loosening in the housing market that gets activity levels to a higher base, but we don't need that. We can continue to do our thing and execute our strategy and put good numbers on the board.

Okay. Fair enough. And I guess one last one, Faiz, maybe a housekeeping one. Working cap expectations for 2026, if Q1 could be a little lower in terms of volume or sales, do we expect maybe working cap to be down a bit year-on-year?

No. So you should expect the same pattern you've seen in previous years, where December is a low point. We do build inventory through the first half of the year in anticipation of a stronger -- and this is sequential, right? My comments are sequential, a stronger spring and summer period. So relative to where we were in December, spring and summer will be stronger. It's a question of how much is our anticipation. So you will see some inventory build through the first half of the year. And again, if sales pace is more muted, you should expect that to come out in the back half of the year like you did last year. And when you get to the end of the year, if sales pace again has been more muted, you shouldn't expect much of an investment for the full year in inventory, which means we would be paying down meaningful portions of debt, again, like we did last year. So that's what you should expect in terms of pattern of working capital through the year in the environment we know today.

And like on a year-over-year basis, like full year to full year, we're thinking maybe flat.

Yes. I mean the market is saying not much is going to happen for the year. And so if you track along with that, that should be your expectation that when you get to the end of the year, we shouldn't have put a lot of dollars into working capital. That was the case for us last year. It was the case the year before as well. And that's really a feature of our business model in years where it is a bit slower. We can control working capital in this way, and we can generate a lot of very good cash flows. So that should be the expectation in this environment, yes.

And at this time, Mr. Brown, it appears we have no other questions registered. Please proceed.

Okay. Thanks, Sylvie, for hosting the call today, and thanks, everybody, who dialed in and appreciate all the questions. If you've got follow-ups, please do reach out to Faiz and I. We're very accessible. We'd be happy to take your call and address your questions. And with that, we'll say, hope everybody has a great day.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Good morning. My name is Joanna, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the ADENTRA Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

With me on the call are Rob Brown, ADENTRA's President and CEO; and Faiz Karmally, Vice President and CFO. ADENTRA's third quarter 2025 earnings release, financial statements, MD&A and other quarterly filings are available on the Investors section of our website at www.adentragroup.com. These statements have also been filed on a entrust profile on SEDAR at www.sedar+.ca.

I want to remind listeners that management's comments during this call may include forward-looking statements. These statements involve various known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements.

Please refer to the tax in ADENTRA's earnings press release and financial filings for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements. All dollar figures referred to today are in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise.

I would now like to turn the call over to Rob Brown. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. We delivered strong results in the third quarter, highlighting the resilience and consistency of ADENTRA's operating model. We grew sales, adjusted EBITDA and maintained strong earnings despite a continued soft residential construction market and an uncertain macro backdrop.

For the quarter, we generated sales of $592 million up 4% year-over-year; adjusted EBITDA of $49.9 million and adjusted EPS of $0.70. Organic sales grew 1.7% as product prices continue to firm throughout the year. Given our price pass-through model, these pricing gains supported gross profit growth even in a steel volume environment. Woolf Distributing, which we acquired in mid-2024, also contributed to our top line performance. Gross margin came in at 21.4%, up slightly from last year, reflecting continued discipline in pricing and procurement.

Operating expenses rose by 5%, driven by inflationary pressures on premises and wages as well as mark-to-market LTIP adjustments related to share price gains. Earnings per share were $0.42, consistent with last year's Q3 results. We also continued to convert earnings into cash, generating $60.6 million of operating cash flow in the quarter. That includes $35 million from operating cash flow before changes in working capital and an additional $25 million from working capital release as we executed our plan to reduce inventory ahead of a seasonally slower fourth quarter.

We returned $7.4 million to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and buybacks under our normal course issuer bid. Since launching the program in March, we've repurchased more than 740,000 shares or about 3% of the outstanding shares at an average price of CAD 29 per share. Our leverage ratio was 2.7x, down from the seasonal peak in Q2, and we expect it to be closer to the mid-2s by the end of the year. That positions us well for capital deployment on potential M&A activity in 2026.

On the strategic front, over the last 5 years, we've acquired companies representing $1.1 billion in acquired revenue. These companies have significantly diversified our product offering and expanded our exposure to higher margin specialty categories. The integration of Woolf, which was acquired in July 2024, continues to perform on plan, broadening our Midwest presence and enhancing access to the Pro Dealer channel.

From a trade perspective, our product mix remains well balanced. Roughly 30% of our products are subject to country-specific tariffs at average rates around 20%. Importantly, the recent U.S. Section 232 review of Wood Products largely excluded our product categories. We continue to manage tariff exposure through our price pass-through model and diversified global sourcing network spanning 30-plus countries, providing us with diverse product options and different price points for our customers.

If tariffs increase product costs, we adjust pricing accordingly to hold gross margin percentage. In addition, our cost-conscious management approach remains a key competitive advantage. We're focused on asset efficiency and continuous improvements in returns on capital deployed. This discipline, combined with a scalable operating model, positions us to benefit from operating leverage as volumes recover.

With that, I'll turn it over to Faiz to walk through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. As Rob noted, third quarter results demonstrate stable performance across our business.

Let me take you through the numbers. Sales were $592.1 million, up 4.1% from the prior year. That includes a 2.4% contribution from Woolf and 1.7% organic growth driven mainly by product price appreciation. In the U.S., sales rose 4.4% to $548 million with wealth accounting for roughly 2.6 points of growth and organic sales adding 1.8 points. In Canada, sales in Canadian dollars were up 1.2%, reflecting higher prices offset by slightly lower volumes. Gross margin increased 4% to $126 million, with margin rate up slightly to 21.4%. That reflects effective pricing discipline and procurement execution across our operations.

Operating expenses were $101.6 million, up 5% year-over-year. The increase was driven by higher premise costs, wage inflation and a $1.4 million mark-to-market adjustment on long-term incentives. Importantly, we continue to invest selectively in our people and infrastructure to support sustainable growth while maintaining strong cost discipline.

Adjusted EBITDA was $49.9 million, up 3.9% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.4%, consistent with the prior year and in line with our target range at this point in the cycle. Net income was $10.1 million or $0.42 per share, broadly in line with Q3 2024. On an adjusted basis, net income was $17.2 million and adjusted EPS was $0.70 compared to $0.74 a year ago. Operating cash flow was $60.6 million compared to $67.7 million in Q3 last year. The slight decline reflects timing differences in tax payments and working capital.

Year-to-date, cash flow from operations totaled $61 million. Leverage stood at 2.7x net debt-to-EBITDA at quarter end. We remain comfortable with our balance sheet position and expect further deleveraging through the end of the year. Lastly, the Board approved an increase in our annual dividend to CAD 0.64 per share, reflecting confidence in our stable cash generation and long-term outlook.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Rob for his closing remarks before the Q&A. Rob?

Thanks, Faiz. As we look ahead, the fourth quarter is typically a seasonally slower period for construction activity, and we expect adjusted EBITDA to be broadly in line with our first quarter performance. Affordability remains a challenge for U.S. homebuyers, given mortgage rates and limited housing supply and trade tensions continue to add macro uncertainty. That said, our long-term view on the residential construction market is unchanged, structural undersupply, favorable demographics and an aging housing stock all point to sustained demand over time.

We will continue to execute within our full cycle value creation framework, focusing on operating efficiency, organic growth initiatives and disciplined execution of our market consolidation strategy. We see ample opportunity to deliver double-digit returns and accretive growth for the long term through continued operational excellence, prudent capital allocation and selective acquisitions in our large and fragmented market. We have a lean, scalable distribution platform with inherent operating leverage and the management team focused on continuous improvement, growth and returns on capital.

With that, we'll open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Kyle McPhee of Cormark.

Everyone. Good update. Thanks for your commentary on quantifying the updated tariff rate exposure now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the updated and higher tariff cost exposure that will trigger corresponding pricing gains on your revenue line on a near immediate basis, and we'll see that in the upcoming results?

And second part to this, to the extent you're taking price and there's no demand response versus the demand realities that prevailed prior to this tariff change, this could actually benefit your profit expectations. Is that playing out right now? Or is it fair to say your organic volume expectations are directionally eroding as you in the sector take price up?

I think we need to see a little bit how it plays out. It's tempting math to, say, 30% of your mix is going up by 20% tariffs because we're price pass-through. That is true, the price pass-through piece. But the playing it out piece, I think you have to -- we have to wait and see what happens in terms of competitors, have all added inventory in advance of tariffs. So I think there's going to be some moving down in terms of inventory in the market, which may take some time, which I think is going to keep prices more orderly. .

I would also say that there is the possibility of suppliers taking some of the costs, and then there's always the possibility of what we do, we carry good, better, best. So there may be some rotation as between -- price points between the highest and the lowest price offering in the mix. So I think all of that, we just need to give a little bit of time.

I would say yes, we will be pricing with new tariffs in mind and passing that through to maintain our margin and tariffs are adding cost to products that we're sourcing. So I think there's definitely upward movement. But the scale and the timing of that, I think we just need to have a bit of a wait and see.

Okay. And then, in Q3, your organic volume performance was pretty good in the context of the demand environment and in the context of what gears the sector have been reporting. Is there anything company specific you can point us to, to help explain your relatively strong performance? I suspect it's a variety of things, but curious what you think is worth highlighting and how sustainable this sector performances for ADENTRA?

Yes. As always, it's typically never one thing, but we are pleased with how we have performed in a relatively muted macro environment. I think that the team has executed very well. We continue to get better at pricing and our use of technology, the sophistication of our supply chain, including global sources, given lots of different options to our customers, all those things contribute to how we perform in terms of share in the market. So it's always difficult to put your finger on market share information, but I would say that our team is doing very well in, again, what we consider to be probably more of a trough market. The business is still finding its way into some very good results.

The next question comes from Hamir Patel at CIBC.

Rob, can you speak to how the M&A pipeline is looking? And are there any sort of product areas that are looking most compelling today? .

Yes, the pipelines looks very good. We've got a large opportunity set that we've continued to kind of nurture here as we've delevered through the course of the year, as commented on where the balance sheet should finish the year. That gives us a significant amount of dry powder to do some things on the M&A front next year, and we've got discussions and opportunities that I would be optimistic about us getting something done on the M&A front next year and getting back to that additional growth.

We've enjoyed the benefit this year. Starting to fall off the table, but of having the acquisitive growth piece of the Woolf deal that we did last year. And we expect that to continue to be a key part of the ADENTRA growth story.

In terms of particular areas that we're focused on. No change there. I think we've said in the past, we cast a very wide net in terms of looking at opportunities. There are some geographies that we think are a little bit more attractive than others. And then there's the theme that we continue to want to add products to our mix that are higher value specialty branded products that continue to improve the quality of the portfolio that we distribute.

Okay. Great. That's helpful. And Rob, I know you're pointing to Q4 EBITDA similar to Q1, which I guess was around $40 million. How should we think about how gross profit margins would fare in Q4 this year?

Hamir, it's Faiz here. I can take that one. I think they'll be fairly consistent, Hamir, with Q3 and Q4. Our gross margin percentage at 21.4% is right in the range. If you look year-to-date, our gross margin percentage performance is actually quite consistent with last year. So I don't think there's any kind of things you wouldn't expect to note on that front. I think they'll be fairly consistent. .

The next question comes from Frederic Tremblay at Desjardins.

Just wanted to ask on the inventory reduction following what we saw in Q3. Is there more coming in Q4? And if you could maybe help us get a better sense of the magnitude of that inventory reduction, if you expect one? .

Frederic, it's Faiz here. So we do expect further inventory reductions into the fourth quarter. We took a good chunk out in the third quarter, and I think there's some more to go. So I think in terms of order of magnitude, it could be another sort of $15 million to $20 million plus or minus, that I think will get out in the fourth quarter. And that, I think, will position us as was mentioned in the comments to bring our leverage closer to kind of to the mid-2s between the cash that we cut of inventory and the cash that the business will just generate -- as you saw in -- well, in Q3 and in the previous quarters, we convert a healthy amount of our adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow, and we'll do that again in Q4 as well.

Great. That's very helpful. I wanted to ask about Canada. We saw a slight volume decrease in the quarter, and it was actually the second consecutive quarter of seeing slight decreases there in volumes. Is that you feel that this is due to some of the pricing initiatives in the market or just general construction market softness? Just trying to get a better sense of what's happening there.

Yes, more general. I mean is like to use the phrase, it's in a range. It's not a massive concern. So I think it's more representative of local market conditions. Our Canadian business has performed. It's star, it consistently performs. And so generally, what we see in that business is representative of the conditions that are available in the market.

The only other thing that we've got our eye on, that's probably worth mentioning is the Section 232 tariffs do include cabinets. And there's 2 applications that tariff for ADENTRA. The first would be, if you look at our U.S. business, that will shut out or making for cabinets more expensive, which will be advantageous to our U.S. customers that are cabinet manufacturers. So we supply, obviously, all inputs to that as a customer base. And if there's tariffs on incoming cabinets from other jurisdictions, that's going to be net helpful to that customer.

And then the second piece is some of those imports into the United States are cabinets that are manufactured in Canada. So that would be a bit of a pullback for our Canadian cabinet customer manufacturing base. The net between the 2 is tilted to our U.S. customer base just because of our representation in that country. But that's the only thing I would point out that's kind of specific to Canadian manufacturing environment going forward.

The next question comes from Zachary Evershed at National Bank. .

Congrats on the quarter. I'll actually take the inverse of Fred's question. Given the stronger pricing that you saw in Canada as well, is there a broader trend back up in pricing even after you adjust for the effect of tariffs? .

I mean things are getting more expensive, I think, is the theme. Even if you think of the impact of tariffs, generally, what we see when we have those types of things happen is you also have domestic producers. And I would just remind that domestic sourcing is the majority of our business. We augment that with import supply solutions for our customers. But the greater bulk of what we're doing is with domestics. But when there is trade disruption that generally forces prices up, lifts all boats, whether it's domestic or import.

And yes, so I mean you saw that in the quarter where we had a little bit of price appreciation. That's really at the beginning of the story around tariffs because you'll recall, up until the recent 232 trade ruling, most of our tariffs were set aside or most of our goods were imported were not tariffed. That number is really doubled now up to the 30% that we disclosed at the average country rate of 20%. So yes, all in all, we're expecting prices over time to be a little bit firmer. And we'll do our pieces we've described around price pass-through related to that.

Great color. And on that topic, how do your customers typically react when you do try to take profit on a visible externality like tariffs? Because I think I heard you mention your dynamic pricing is to maintain gross margin percentage.

Yes. I mean we are a distributor. We're not here to kind of time to market or such we expect to kind of get paid for the service provided. And this is well worn road that that's our role in channel and within the supply chain. We can look back at other exogenous events, cover being the most recent one. And we followed the same playbook. And I would add as did the rest of the industry and the competitor set. So we're not out there on our own. We're a distributor, and we're going to do our piece in channel and take the gross profit margin that's attached to that. .

And on your outlook for CapEx, any pockets of strength that are worth growth investments?

No, nothing stands out most -- I mean, we really characterize our CapEx as maintenance. And we do the occasional things act in terms of expanding some of our light manufacturing in markets where there's good payback to that, but it just doesn't really stand out because it's such a capital-light model that we're operating. It's a $10 million or $12 million spend per year. .

The next question comes from Jonathan Goldman at Scotiabank. .

Could you remind us what's the lag between when you put through new tariffs or higher pricing and it hits your P&L? And then I guess given the higher tariff exposure that you have now, is it reasonable to expect that pricing could accelerate in Q4? Or are the other factors that you mentioned, Rob, maybe like higher channel inventory and competitive dynamics enough to mitigate any sort of higher pricing we might see quarter-on-quarter?

Yes, it's a good question. Jonathan, I think on the pricing acceleration, I don't expect an acceleration in Q4. I think that comments I made earlier, which you just referenced of the wait and see are probably the most realistic scenario. And -- but I mean, we did have some price increases in Q3. That was helpful. But I don't think the rate of change is likely to accelerate at least in the short term here. .

In terms of the lag, that really depends a little bit again on those same factors and what the market is willing to bear. But as our cost of sales or our sourcing costs go up, we don't wait. We start to put those through, but it's really somewhat averaged across the inventory that we've got. There could be a little bit of a delay but I think it really comes down to more what's the magnitude of the price change. And at this point, we don't see a massive short-term magnitude of price change emerging.

Okay. That's really good color. And then I guess maybe switching to the expenses. I appreciate you guys really quantifying the mark-to-market adjustment there. But you did also call out inflationary pressures on wages and facilities. I guess, do you expect that to continue into Q4? And I guess maybe thinking a little longer term, how should we think about your ability to drive operating leverage on a flat demand environment? .

Jonathan, it's Faiz here. On your first question into Q4, I would say probably no significant shifts on a sequential basis. On the premise and the people, I think we've kind of taken those for the year. And we've got some things to manage around those 2. Our head count is down a little bit year-over-year. Our facility count is actually down a little bit as well. We've done some rationalization there where it makes sense to try and offset some of those inflationary increases. So for Q4, I think your assumption kind of Q3 to Q4, it's probably pretty similar on those line items, which are, the majority of our expenses, I think, is probably a fair assumption. .

In terms of how to think about operating leverage in a flat demand environment, I think we've got strategies in place that are working below the top line as well. So in terms of increasing our gross margin percentage over time and continuing to be tight on expenses. Those are things that we just do every year. Year-to-date for operating expenses, if you take out all the kind of onetime things, transaction costs related to acquisitions. We had the trade case recovery. Just the organic expenses are up kind of about 2% year-over-year which is less than the rate of inflation. So we do have the ability to continue to be sharp on costs and manage those down. And I think you'll see us continue to do that into 2026.

But in terms of where -- how the business model is set up today, Jonathan, we've cut, but we've not cut too deep. So the way I would describe it is when we do see -- even if it's kind of a low growth environment, I think a lot of that is going to fall directly to the bottom line. We've kind of set ourselves up from a business model and an expense-based perspective to achieve that.

Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess maybe 1 more for me on the M&A, and you guys talked about that potentially in '26 as the leverage coming down. Have you noticed any change in seller expectations or valuations that you're seeing in the private space maybe relative to public multiples?

Not really, just because the public and private multiples. The headline grabbing public multiples are for businesses that are such substantially different in scale, they don't translate between the two. So I mean, from our perspective, no, we're going to still operate in similar ranges we've discussed in the past. The thing that's to flex is how folks are doing on their EBITDA profile and what we consider to be sustainable EBITDA going forward. We've done quite well this year, I think, in the market environment that's been available. Others maybe not as strong performance. And those are things that enter into the discussions when we are in kind of M&A mode with some of our targets. .

[Operator Instructions] The next question is the follow-up from Kyle McPhee at Cormark.

Can you remind us or explain for us the timing lag for ADENTRA to benefit from a cycle turn as we eventually see new starts up, rates down, home inventory turnover up long until it typically translates to organic volume tailwinds for your business? .

I would say that the -- if you think about new residential construction, so housing starts, that's generally a couple of quarters because we are more in the finishing stages. And if you think of the repair and remodel market, that's more immediate. And our participation, particularly on the home center side, can be quite immediate. So we've got a good mix there that we consider to be quite well diversified.

The commercial segment, which is about 20% of what we do, I would describe as it's always kind of a little bit more in steady state, it may be going up. a little bit or going down a little bit, kind of a rolling hills profile. So that one I would just describe as more stable and is it kind of waiting around and having movements in the way I described the first two. So a long answer to your question. The shorter answer would be it's a quarter to 2 to 3 quarters depending on what sector you're talking about in the economy.

Okay. Appreciate that color. And last one, does the uncertainty with the demand environment, whether or not this is lower for longer, does that impact your willingness to do M&A? I know you have the pipeline, but does it impact your willingness using your balance sheet that's quickly deleveraging here to fund the deal flow? Or does deal flow get delayed or maybe you prioritize smaller stuff or for larger stuff, just waiting for more macro clarity. Any color on that would be appreciated.

No. I mean, from our perspective, our volumes are stable. We've got some price appreciation. Gross profit margin is being well managed. Cost is disciplined, like Fed said, we've got a really high free cash flow conversion rate and our leverage is coming down. And then, by the way, the tariff landscape is visible at least for now. So I don't think any of those things have us on the sidelines. We've said that the pipeline is encouraging. And now we've got the balance sheet back to where we want to be active again. So we're not sitting waiting for some massive change in macro to release us. This will be normal course that we're executing on some M&A opportunities as we go, generate cash flow, put it took.

Thank you. We have no further questions. I will turn the call back over to Bob Brown for closing comments. .

Okay. Thanks, Joanna. Nice job. I appreciate your help today and everybody for joining us. Reach out to Faiz or I If you've got any follow-ups, we be happy to chat further. Have a great day. .

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.