Heico Corp-class A Stock

Welcome to the HEICO Corporation Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. My name is Samara, and I will be your operator for today's call.

Certain statements in this conference call will constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and contingencies. HEICO's actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by those forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include, among others, the severity, magnitude and duration of public health threats, our liquidity and the amount and timing of cash generation; lower commercial air travel, airline fleet changes or airline purchasing decisions, which could cause lower demand for our goods and services, product specification costs and requirements, which could cause an increase in our cost to complete contracts; governmental and regulatory demands, export policies and restrictions; reductions in defense, space or homeland security spending by U.S. and/or foreign customers or competition from existing and new competitors, which could reduce our sales; our ability to introduce new products and services at profitable pricing levels, which could reduce our sales or sales growth; product development or manufacturing difficulties, which could increase our product development and manufacturing costs and delay sales.

Cybersecurity events or other disruptions of our information technology systems could adversely affect our business; and our ability to make acquisitions, including obtaining any applicable domestic and/or foreign governmental approvals and achieve operating synergies from acquired businesses; customer credit risk, interest foreign currency exchange and income tax rates and economic conditions, including the effects of inflation within and outside of the aviation, defense space, medical, telecommunications and electronics industries, which could negatively impact our cost and revenues. Parties listening to this call are encouraged to review all of HEICO's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, filings on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law.

I now turn the call over to Eric Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, and good morning to everyone on this call. Thank you for joining us, and we welcome you to this HEICO Third Quarter Fiscal '26 Earnings Announcement Teleconference. I'm Eric Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-CEO. I'm joined here this morning by Victor Mendelson, HEICO's other Co-Chairman and Co-CEO; and Carlos Macau, our Executive Vice President and CFO.

Before getting into our results, I would first like to thank HEICO's nearly 13,000 outstanding team members around the world. Once again, your dedication to our company, our customers and your fellow team members produced yet another exceptional quarter for HEICO. We are tremendously grateful for everything you do and remain excited about HEICO's future and the opportunities ahead. One of the most asked questions by investors and analysts is what is HEICO's secret sauce and how does HEICO continue to report exceptional earnings growth. Not only quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year, but decade over decade for nearly 37 years. And the answer is always simple. Good markets, solid businesses and even greater people. HEICO succeeds because we simply try harder and our customers don't have to come to us in general because they have no other alternatives. Customers buy from HEICO because they want to buy from HEICO.

For our highest quality with the shortest turn times at the most competitive price and most importantly, from who we believe are the best people in our industry. HEICO team members who possess a certain HEICO DNA developed over decades, not just the last up cycle. So when you want to thank Victor, Carlos or me, please note that we're just simply the proverbial tip of the iceberg. And we, in turn, will thank Team HEICO for all of their hard work, technical excellence and most importantly, HEICO comradery. And of course, there's HEICO's team members never-ending focus on cash flow. As one of our close friends told us many years ago and as we always say at HEICO, earnings or opinion, cash flow is fact. In this quarter, I'm proud to announce there was $345 million of it. $345 million of cash generated from operations, which is almost 150% of our net income. Thank you, Team HEICO.

We are immensely proud of our third quarter results, which shows continued margin expansion, robust organic growth and strong cash generation. We remain very bullish and optimistic about HEICO's opportunities and our ability to continue our long-term growth and profitability. To summarize the highlights of our third quarter fiscal '26 results. Consolidated net income, operating income and net sales in the third quarter of fiscal '26 represent record results for HEICO, increasing by 33%, 34% and 23%, respectively, compared to the third quarter of fiscal '25. Consolidated net income increased 33% to a record $235.4 million or $1.67 per diluted share in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from $177.3 million or $1.26 per diluted share in the third quarter of fiscal '25.

Consolidated operating income increased 34% to a record $355.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from $265 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. Consolidated net sales increased 23% to a record $1,413.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26 up from $1,147.6 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. The Electronic Technologies Group set all-time quarterly operating income and net sales records in the third quarter of fiscal '26, increasing 55% and 36%, respectively, over the third quarter of 25%. Wow. These increases principally reflect strong 18% organic growth driven by an improved demand for most of the Electronic Technologies Group's products as well as contributions from our fiscal '26 and '25 acquisitions.

The Flight Support Group also set all-time quarterly operating income and net sales records in the third quarter of fiscal '26, improving 24% and 18%, respectively, over the third quarter of fiscal '25. These increases principally reflect strong 12% organic growth from increased demand across all of our product lines as well as the contributions from our fiscal '26 acquisitions. Consolidated EBITDA increased 31% to $415.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26 up from $316.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved to 1.57x as of July 31, '26, down from 1.6x as of October 31, '25. Cash flow provided by operating activities increased 49% to $345.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26 up from $231.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25.

During the third quarter, we issued $1.2 billion of senior unsecured notes further strengthening our balance sheet and used the proceeds to repay outstanding borrowings under our revolving credit facility. At the same time, we entered into an agreement to amend and extend the maturity date of our revolving credit agreement by 3 years to June 2031, and to increase the committed capital to $2.2 billion. Furthermore, our credit facility now includes a feature to increase the capacity by $800 million to become a $3 billion facility through increased lender commitments and can be extended for 2 additional 1-year periods. We are very pleased with the execution of the bond offering and credit facility amendments, which further enhances our liquidity and financial flexibility.

And positions HEICO to continue pursuing our long-term growth objectives. We would like to thank Truist, Bank of America, PNC, Wells Fargo, Credit Agricole, TD, Huntington, JPMorgan, M&T and RBC for their long-term support of our growth capital needs. In July 2026, we paid our 96th consecutive semiannual cash dividend since 1979 at the rate of $0.13 per share representing an 8% increase over the prior dividend paid in January of 2026. And then in June, we completed 2 acquisitions. Our Flight Support Group through an 80% owned subsidiary, acquired 100% of the stock of Cook Defense Systems Limited, William Cooks, Denholm Limited and William Cook, Intermodal Limited, Collectively, we call Cook Defence. Cook Defence designs and manufactures track systems mobility solutions and armored steel components for military fighting vehicles. The purchase price was paid in cash principally using proceeds from our revolving credit facility.

And then the Electronic Technologies Group, Exxelia subsidiary acquired 90% of the membership interest in CalRamic Technologies, LLC CalRamic designs and manufactures high voltage ceramic capacitors for high-reliability applications primarily serving the aerospace and defense markets as well as select industrial niches. The purchase price was paid in cash using cash provided by operating activities. We expect both of these acquisitions to be accretive to our earnings within the year following the acquisition. In addition, we have an excellent acquisition pipeline consisting of great potential transactions, both large and small.

I now turn the call over to Victor Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, to discuss the third quarter results of our Flight Support and Electronic Technologies Groups in greater detail.

Eric, thank you very much. Before getting into the details, I'd also like to recognize and thank our outstanding team members around the world. The results we're discussing today reflect your continued dedication, your discipline and your commitment to serving our customers and to strengthening our company. We are incredibly grateful for everything you do. And we are as excited as ever about HEICO's future and the opportunities ahead for all of us.

Turning now to details of the operations. The Flight Support Group's net sales increased 18% to a record $947.8 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from $802.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. That sales increase resulted from strong organic growth of 12% as well as the impact from our fiscal '26 acquisitions. Of course, the organic sales growth reflects increased demand across all, I emphasize all of our product lines. The Flight Support Group's operating income increased 24% to a record $245.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from $198.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. That operating income increase was principally derived from the previously mentioned net sales growth as well as an improved gross profit margin and SG&A expense efficiencies that were realized from the net sales growth.

The improved gross profit margin principally reflects a more favorable product mix within our specialty products and our aftermarket replacement parts product lines. Flight Support Group's operating margin improved to 25.9% in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from 24.7% in the third quarter of fiscal '25 And that operating margin increase arose chiefly from the previously mentioned improved gross profit margin. Given by the way, that acquisition-related intangible amortization expense consumed approximately 200 basis points of our operating margin in the FSG in the third quarter of fiscal the FSG's cash margin, which is the way -- by the way, we judge businesses, and we believe businesses should be judged.

So before amortization, we call it EBITDA, was approximately 28.5%, which has been consistently excellent and in absolute terms is as far as I'm concerned, spectacular. And that is 110 basis points higher than the comparable FSG cash margin of 27.4% and in the third quarter of fiscal '25. To achieve these margins at these levels, while continuing to deliver meaningful cost savings, outstanding service and exceptionally fast turnaround times to our customers, is a strong reflection of the value our team members continue to deliver.

Turning to the ETG. The Electronic Technologies Group net sales increased 36% to a record $483.5 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from $355.9 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. And that reflects robust organic growth of 18% and the impact from our fiscal '26 and 25 acquisitions. The organic net sales growth is mainly attributable to increased demand for, and I'll add sales up our other electronics, defense and aerospace products. Electronic Technologies Group operating income increased 55% [ a year to ] a record $125.6 million in the third quarter of fiscal '26. That is up from $81 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25. Operating income increase principally reflects the previously mentioned net sales growth, our SG&A expense efficiencies realized from the sales growth and an improved gross profit margin, that improved gross profit margin, by the way, it was mainly fueled by the previously mentioned higher net sales of our aerospace products.

The Electronic Technologies Group's operating margin improved to 26% in the third quarter of fiscal '26, up from 22.8% in the third quarter of fiscal '25. That margin increase resulted from decreased SG&A expenses as a percent of net sales, primarily driven by the previously mentioned SG&A expense efficiencies and as well as the improved gross margin that I mentioned before. Importantly, just like with the discussion in the FSG before acquisition-related intangible expense, our operating margin was 29.9%, virtually 30% as intangibles amortization and amortization consumed about 390 basis points of the margin. This compares to 26.6% ETG cash margin in the third quarter of fiscal '25, an improvement of 330 basis points. Again, I can't emphasize enough. This is how we judge our businesses as that most closely correlates to cash generation. And I think you know and have known for many years, our predominant focus is on cash and cash generation. HEICO is a real company that generates real cash. It's not just accounting figures coming out of the machine, we make money.

And on a true operating basis, no matter how you look at it, those are great margins, and we are very pleased with the continued expansion of these margins, of course. So at this point, I will turn the call back over to our operator, Samara, to entertain the questions that we may have.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Larry Solow with CJS Securities.

Great. Congrats on a really great quarter and like you said, the printing money there. I guess a question for you -- just on the really strong organic growth, 18%, I think back-to-back quarters and year-to-date mid-teens. Maybe this level is not sustainable, but certainly, much better than it was a couple of years back. Just curious, can you help us just -- is it -- it sounds like all your categories are really -- having on all cylinders between defense, aerospace and electronics. Is there any one particular category that's really just -- I know defense has almost halved your revenue. So is that really driving this exceptional growth? Or just any more color there would be great?

Thank you for asking, Larry. Yes, it is very broad-based. I mean I guess our highest percentage growth increase came out of and we're -- people now seem to be calling industrial technology markets. But I can say that defense and commercial aviation or aerospace, we're also extremely strong. I mean, in fact, every one of our verticals, if you look at it that way, every one of the markets, the verticals showed positive signs this quarter. But there were ones that were more standouts than others, but I'm certainly proud of all of them.

How about just trends in bookings behind these categories? Any color there?

Yes. Listen, the trends in bookings are very strong. We have a record backlog again both organically and with acquisitions in the ETG, just very strong backlog, extremely strong orders, particularly in that kind of industrial tech space. A lot of customers are coming in and asking us to expedite where possible. in a number of instances. And then they're following up with orders beyond that. Filling up the backlog. It doesn't so far seem to be all right, where pulls forward for us and then it creates a gap somewhere later. We do everything we can, by the way, to satisfy our customers to do it cost effectively, and to honor their request where we can.

It's not always possible. But it just seems there's very strong orders there. And I will say a similar situation in defense. There's a lot of requests for pull forward, the same in commercial aviation and some of the other markets. Right now, it seems to be a moment where customers are saying, how quickly can you get this to us? Can you get it to us faster?

Right. Okay. Last question just for Carlos, just on the margins. Obviously, you think to discuss the EBITDA margins above 28%, now 2 consecutive quarters consolidated. I don't want to get ahead of you, but just any thoughts as you wrap up the year and then as we look out over the next couple of years?

I mean, from my perspective, we still expect in that segment, the 22% to 24% really equate to something like 26% to 28% EBITDA margins. We've had a strong couple of quarters. Of course, our first quarter was a little light on the operating margin side. So for the full year, we still expect that range. I -- we're still in the process now of doing budgets and thinking about next year and -- we'll see how things play out, Larry. I don't want to get too far out ahead of us on that topic. But right now, the tailwind that we're getting from aerospace defense space really, all the verticals that Victor mentioned, is very positive. And as long as that mix holds in, this segment always surprises us to the upside. So that's kind of how I'd like to answer that and rather not elevate expectations at this point.

And we'll take our next question from Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs.

Carlos, maybe just a quickly follow-up there on the ETG margin. The 2 -- the last 2 quarters, '26 and change versus that 22 to 24. Is that entirely 'mix? It sounds like you're also referencing efficiencies, which I think would be longer lasting? And then presumably, just as you continue to grow revenue, there's an overhead absorption impact as well.

Yes. No, you're 100% right, no. I mean this segment you've known us for a long time, the segment is quite mix sensitive. And the challenges particularly in ETG with our fourth quarter going into what our most calendar year filers last quarter, the mix can get a little chaotic. And so I don't want to set expectations too high. I don't feel like there's -- I can't give you a good or bad reason why the margins would not remain strong given the setup with our end markets. But at this moment, I don't want to plant a flag and sort of change our internal expectations or what we talk about publicly related to the margins until we get another quarter or 2 under our belts.

Okay. Makes sense. You guys have talked about the cash flow strength. It's looking like it will be a second year where the free cash conversion from EBITDA is around 70%. And I don't know if you could talk about where you expect the year to wrap up around the $1 billion mark on free cash? And just -- is there something that you've -- that's changed structurally in the business to have a little bit higher conversion from the P&L than you've had in the past?

No, there hasn't been any structural changes. I think that what happens here at HEICO as we incrementally add sales to the business and grow, we don't have a commensurate growth in what I would call as corporate overhead and BS, right? It truly is. The dollars we spend to grow the business are done at the subsidiary levels. And that is the most efficient way to spend our money to grow the business. It's not a big corporate overhead monster. So we do get a lot of lift to your point, in our cash flow, to these sales growth. There's nothing structural that's changed is I do expect this year to be quite high in free cash generation. And so nothing -- there's no leads to add to that [ 3, 4 ] as far as any structural changes.

Okay. And then lastly, on its deployment. Since Wencor, it's been many quarters of a few hundred million dollars deployed towards smaller acquisitions. As we look to your '27 and '28, are we more likely to see that continue? Or are we more likely to see something closer to the size of Wencor again?

So I'll let Eric and Victor jump on that one, but I will point out that we spent a lot of time during the third quarter, redoing similar to our capital structure to sort of reshuffle the deck and create liquidity so that we could -- so I can make sure that when Eric and Victor go to the grocery store and buy their businesses, they have plenty of cash to do it with. So right now, as Eric mentioned in the opening remarks, we got with our accordion, we got close to $3 billion in capacity right now off our line that we could deploy. And so we're set up to continue a nice string of acquisitions here.

Now the question for you, too, guys, I'm talking to Eric and Victor in the table here, do we have those opportunities to do it?

Yes. So no, our pipeline is incredibly full. We've got an incredible M&A team, and they are out beating the bushes looking at all sorts of proprietary deals, various processes. As you know, we've worked very hard to be the buyer of choice. And I really believe that we are the best home in the industry for businesses, the way we treat people, what the expectations are going forward, the network that they're plugged into.

And I would say, Victor and I are very optimistic on continuing our track record. With regard to smaller medium-sized businesses versus larger businesses, I would say that HEICO is very comfortable with all of those. We're comfortable with small acquisitions. We understand that the small deals work, small businesses work and we provide a great home likewise with the medium and likewise with the large, the Wencor combination has been an absolute home run for HEICO as well as for Wencor. It's gone exceptionally well. We've got a phenomenal team there. And it's given us a lot of confidence to execute on larger deals should they become available. The issue is not whether there are targets out there that it's more whether the culture really fits like it did with Wencor and if the price works for everybody. So I can promise you we're very busy on all fronts.

And I just might add to that, that Wencor was our largest acquisition, but we have also done some of considerable size as well. And all of those have performed exceedingly well. We've been very happy. So the deals of all sizes have worked nicely.

I think just to put a fine point on all of that, I just -- just remember, our goal is to grow the company 15% -- the net income growth in the company goal is just to continue to grow 15% to 20% annually. And I think between our organic growth and the capacity we have to fund deals, we should be in a good position to continue that track record. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Peter Arment with Baird.

Eric, Victor, Carlos, nice results. Victor, ETG growth kind of accelerating. I wonder if you could maybe just give us an update on kind of what the demand pull is from Europe. Obviously, we know those budgets are firming up and just thinking about Exxelia and some of your other European footprint. Maybe you can give us a little more color on Europe.

Yes. That's -- thank you for asking. Europe has been very strong for us, both here in the U.S. shipping to Europe, by the way, and from within the European market itself. And, I was alluding to that in my answer to Noah's question, Exela is doing extremely well, both in Europe and here. I should add. But Europe, our strategy in Europe has been to grow there. We've added some acquisitions. You've seen recently over there. I think we have a pretty strong appetite for it. And we're excited about that future. And not just on defense, for the obvious reasons of their rising defense budgets. But also on commercial aviation as well as the industrial tech.

Appreciate that. And then just maybe a high-level 1 vote for Victor. Just on the right to repair legislation, a lot of things going on. Obviously, there's been things kicking around since the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act, Section 349. If the language stays in for the fiscal '27 NDAA, just wondering how you're thinking about the tailwinds or how quickly that could impact your business, both on the commercial and defense side of things.

Yes. This is Eric, Peter. I can tell you that HEICO is approximately 100 operating businesses are all very knowledgeable about what's happening out in the field, and they are going to take opportunity of whatever presents itself. So I think that there are some very good opportunities for HEICO in that area. I don't want to get out in front of it. We'll see what happens with the final outcome of all this. But I can promise you that our folks are really going to be on top of it. And we think there are a number of areas of opportunity. Without going into specifics, obviously, for competitive reasons, we think we're in a very good position to basically help save the government a lot of money.

We'll take our next question from Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Maybe I'll -- Eric, I'll start with you if that's okay. Can we just chat about the different parts of FSG growth to lead to the 12%? And what you saw within aftermarket replacement, repair and then specialty products?

Sure. So the parts business, you're talking on the organic side was 15% growth, organic growth. And by the way, I should mention, I know that it's sort of standard for the industry to talk about organic revenue growth. But again, just to focus at HEICO, the thing that we really care about is operating income growth, organic operating income growth, and that's really the key driver for us. And let me start out by saying that the 12% organic growth, which we're very happy with on revenue, pales in comparison compared to approximately 20% organic operating income growth. And that's what our people are focused on.

And if they can trade lower-margin sales for higher value-add sales where we can drive margin I can tell you nobody at HEICO is compensated based on revenue. Revenue doesn't really matter. It's the obviously, the earnings. But to answer your question, the parts and distribution, 15% specialty products is 14% and the component repair was 5%, which obviously is lower and brought down the average. But you also have to understand that in the component repair business, we have a number of businesses where their value proposition is to develop alternative repairs and use alternative parts. And that brings down the revenue. So it increases the value to our customers. It frankly can increase the profitability to HEICO, which is what we all care about, but it can bring down the revenue. So now we do also have a number of businesses within component repair that are OEM aligned and where there is no use of alternative material and no plans to do that.

And there is a market for that on those products with those customers, and we continue to go ahead and do that. But we do still have a chunk of our business focused on the alternative space. and that does bring down the revenue. But I can tell you that the profitability is definitely higher than the organic revenue growth in that space.

No, that's great color. And maybe if I could double-click on those 2 items, Ben, just on the component repair and also specialty products. How is make adoption going? Does the component repair work help in that process? It seems like it does? And then within Specialty Products, if you could, in any way, give us color on that 14% what your defense business is doing relative to commercial?

Yes. So the -- so with regard to component repair, yes, the PMA penetration is going extraordinarily well. In the in the markets that want. Again, we're very careful. We have multiple subsidiaries and multiple product lines, whereby we don't even offer alternatives with certain products because those are our agreements, and that's what the customers want. But in the areas where the customers are asking for alternatives and we're generating them, yes. The PMA penetration is doing extremely well and the high propriety DER penetration is doing equally as well. With regard to specialty products, that is largely driven by defense. And our organic growth in defense is very large. It's probably -- I mean, well up in the upper 20s. And we anticipate continued growth in specialty products in the defense area.

We'll take our next question from John Godyn with Citi Group.

Obviously, HEICO has a long heritage in PMA aerospace aftermarket, but more and more -- the other exposures that the company seem to be expressing themselves and really showing through in the numbers. I was just hoping we could spend an extra minute on the outlook for HEICO's exposure to other fast-growing themes that are out there that are not aerospace aftermarket, things like missiles, space, the [ IGT ] last couple of quarters is something that came up around the edges, maybe drone components or anything else you'd flag. It just feels like we're entering a world where some of the other business lines in HEICO that are historically small may be really starting to see dramatic growth that actually moves the needle

Absolutely. And those areas are ones that we've been focused on for quite a long time. And we talked about drones, for example, and we've been serving in various ways the drone market in a serious way, by the way, in very serious ways. Going back to, I don't know, probably before 2008, 2007, before they were kind of a household name. And we've continued to evolve with that in both sides, both the ETG and the FSG and with both electronic components, electro-optical components as well as structural components like composites and others. And I'll add that has expanded. It's not just the historical mainstays of the market, which do remain strong for us. But now we're serving the newer defense tech space and that is a growing business for us. I would say Defense Tech represents for us probably what Defense Tech as a proportion, Defense Tech represents to the overall market and revenues at this point. But we're there, and we're on those, and we're very proud and excited. Obviously, I can't tell you which ones, I don't want to get into that for competitive reasons.

In terms of missiles and missile defense, we've seen -- I think I mentioned in our last call, and we're on a lot of different programs they are both, again, in ETG and FSG have been historically, and we have instances where our customers have come to us and asked us to prepare to 10x our production, in some cases, contracted with us already and said, "Okay, you need to double or triple or even 4 times. It's kind of all over the place, but a lot of growth in those markets. And then adding on the industrial tech side. We're definitely seeing an effect from AI, data center construction and so on. how long that goes on, our sense is it has legs that this is not just a 1-year blip. And we have a lot of components that we make in a number of subsidiaries that are used in various quantities there.

So we feel like we're participating in that as well. And of course, space, commercial space, defense space is embedded within our defense markets. And -- but just first talking about commercial space. We all read the same things that market is growing tremendously. There's a great deal that's happening there. Our components are on those. We're staying, I believe, ahead of the curve with that. And even in defense space opportunities like gold and dome. There are instances where we suspect we're on Golden Dome hasn't been confirmed. And in some instances, we feel certain that it's golden dome related. So if you look at HEICO, final comment, we don't look for the single magic silver bullet. It's mixing metaphors here, singles and doubles. And it's this very steady growth rate. We're looking for that 15% to 20% bottom line growth each year. And we're not looking, frankly, it's a controlled growth strategy. We're not looking to grow 50% 1 year and then only 5% the next and have a volatile situation. So we manage it, we manage it very carefully.

Yes. And then also just to add with regard to the IGT area, of course, you're aware of the Ethos acquisition that we made earlier this year, and we're very excited about their repair capabilities. for the IGT market. And we think that there's a lot of potential there for obvious reasons. And then we're also seeing we're seeing orders not only in our Ethos IGT repair business, but we're also seeing orders for IGT products within our other parts business.

That was great color. And I certainly don't expect you guys to break out organic growth for each of those business lines.

But at a high level, is it fair to say that the organic growth of behind those themes is leading HEICO. I'm just trying to understand kind of what you guys are seeing and if we're hitting that S curve in some of these businesses, it seems like we may be. Yes. I think that there's a lot of potential, as I mentioned in Sheila's answer, the Sheila's question that our defense revenue organic growth, for example, over in the flight support side was extremely strong in the upper 20s. So that's leading the way right now, but we see strength across all of the markets.

Similar in ETG, defense and aerospace seem to be leading the way of growth.

And we'll take our next question from Ron Epstein with Bank of America.

A couple of quick ones for you. everything is kind of coming up roses right now, which is great. But is there anything that worries you? Are there any areas where you're spending a little more time just making sure that kind of everything is lining up the way you want? How are your supply chain ring? How is your labor front? Is there anything else like Canada and what's going on there? That you're just trying to have a strategy around in case something goes rig. So what are you spending your time on trying to solve? It seems like everything else is going [ discrete ].

Yes. Ron, this is Victor and Eric will answer it as well. But in terms of where we're spending our time, I would say it's in the traditional ways and the traditional places. There's nothing that particularly stands out that's unusual. I'd say it's somewhat prosaic, but the basic blocking and tackling in the business and making sure that we're doing all the things we should be doing on taking care of customers and our people and acquisitions and capital structure, et cetera, et cetera.

But the areas that are ones we watch, but don't really have much control over, of course, like the geopolitical ones, right, where is there a spike, a short-term spike in oil prices? Or is there some short-term issue that we may have to deal with, where it's hard really to plan for, and we generally look at it that it's we're not going to run the business for those short-term interests, and we're going to keep running it for that long-term view. Hiring wise, I would say it's about the same as it was it's been challenging hiring great people and bringing great people into an organization, and it hasn't gotten easier, but I don't think it's gotten worse.

And right now, with AI and things like that, our anticipation is that labor situation shouldn't be a problem. There is inflation in input costs, and we have to be able to pass those on. And I think a lot of that is driven by the AI market. We do notice anecdotally that they are just kind of a broad smattering of parts and components and subcomponents and raw materials that are pushing out in lead times and becoming more expensive. So the challenges our companies are facing a little more are planning for those. So they're getting out a little longer on orders. for their materials to make sure that doesn't impact them. It's nothing pronounced yet. But I would say that something at least I'm kind of keeping an eye on because I hear these stories anecdotally, but very proud of the way our companies are dealing with.

And Ron, the other thing that I would add is that we've got a very mature team. We've been doing this for a long time, and we've seen a lot of market locations, and we've learned from that. whether it's 911 in SARS or the global financial crisis or COVID, we know what happens. We've seen this movie before, unfortunately, where things can go wrong or no one expects it. And that's why we work very hard to set up this organization that we've got, which is a decentralized organization where people really understand their markets very well, and they're close to their customers.

And if you look at any of those dislocations, HEICO has been far more resilient and bounced back quicker than typically other than the industry. And I believe it's, again, due to the HEICO people, the HEICO structure, our which causes the business to be very resilient. And Victor spoke about the various geopolitical events. I think that's the -- obviously, the greatest risks, which they always are. But I feel very, very confident that the HEICO team is well prepared for whatever the future may bring. And frankly, when we look at the numbers and the projections going forward, we're extremely optimistic.

Yes. Maybe just another follow-on. How are you guys thinking about -- or do you not at all, but just curious if you do see that you've been so good at traditional M&A. How do you think about corporate venture capital, given what's going on in, call it, aerospace tax and defense cared otherwise, have you got ought to make it bets there or not? Is that kind of outside of what you normally do? Have you thought about it? Just curious what you think?

Yes, this is Victor. As an overarching observation, I don't see us setting up a venture having a kind of a venture tech arm as other companies do because we don't see that in being in our remit broadly at this point. But having said that, we have invested in a handful of companies for strategic reasons that were -- that are venture tech investments, and then it worked out very well. We didn't do it just for the return. It wasn't sort of like we're betting on anthropic or something like that. It was because we needed something they were making or we wanted the relationship and we wanted it to be part of it. So I think we'll continue to do that very carefully, very strategically without becoming a VC fund.

And we'll take our next question from Jon Siegmann with Stifel.

This is [ Subash Naver ] on for Jon today. Maybe just quickly, last quarter, you had mentioned the DOW framework agreements were still being worked out and not sure where they land and that capacity investments around that would be anchored on kind of having those concrete LTAs in hand. Is there any update can maybe note there?

Yes. So we're beginning to see some of those come to fruition. I think there's a lot more to go, but we've definitely seen some POs contracts appearing for the multiple -- I'll call them the multiplier effect that I mentioned earlier in one of my other answers. And I would expect that to continue for some time.

And then maybe to kind of piggyback on Sheila's question, can you maybe just quantify how much Wencor has kind of enabled the margin step-up year-to-date in FSG and kind of what inning you guys are in, in terms of kind of like that PMA content replacement opportunity?

Yes. I don't know specifically that Wencor has created a margin step-up opportunity. We always thought that there were synergies that could be achieved, and we've been able to get them. And that certainly has helped I think there's a lot more that the businesses can do together. And to guess what inning we're in, that's hard to say, but maybe the fifth inning. I think we still have got plenty more to go. And depending on if certain plans and objectives and thoughts come into play, it could be the second inning. So -- but we're working on all that now. But it's been a phenomenal combination, and I'm very excited about the future for the combined company.

And we'll take our next question from Pete Skibitski with Alembic Global.

Nice quarter. A little bit of a follow-on to the last question, guys. With 1 quarter left in fiscal '26, I'm just trying to think about the levers still available to you to drive organic growth in FSG. Specifically in commercial, when we think about kind of maybe kind of slowing global air traffic growth, I was wondering if you can kind of walk through maybe the opportunity still available in market share gains, new product introductions, maybe pricing and whatever other levers you feel like are available to you to kind of drive organic growth in commercial and FSG in kind of a flattening traffic environment.

Well, there's a lot of, I would say, unsold potential throughout the entire business. And there's a lot more revenue, I think that we can get Frankly, our customers are very excited about what we are offering, both on the independent as well as the OEM align side. I think that there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in those areas. And I can tell you in speaking with our business leadership and our sales leadership, they're very, very excited going forward. So we've got customers with all sorts of big ideas and we're going to be here to support them. So I would say it's just the standard HEICO playbook, nothing different than it's been for the last decade.

Okay. Great. Maybe just one follow-up, Eric. I'm curious, as kind of like global air traffic kind of shifts to Asia. It's been going in that direction, obviously, but continues to. Do you guys have any thought about opening more repair stations in Asia to capture some of the demand there? Or is location not really as relevant to commercial aftermarket as with your positioning?

Yes. We've been able to do very well in commercial aftermarket with our positioning. We're always looking at various opportunities. But I sort of rather not get into the specifics of that, but we've been highly successful in our approach. We've got multiple sales offices over there, very deep relationships. And I think our customers are very happy with what we got -- what we've got. We also have operations in Asia, not component overhaul but other operations in Asia, which are very helpful. So I think we're -- time will tell what we end up doing in that area.

And we'll take our next question from Scott Mikus with Melius Research.

Eric and Victor, very good results. It seems like there's a lot of demand across all your verticals. We also saw Deputy Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg, issue a memo asking defense companies to accelerate production of various defense programs. So just curious how you're thinking about organic investments within the business and particularly CapEx given that your customers are asking you to expedite shipments, but your backlog continues to grow.

Yes. So as a general rule of thumb, this is not leading to a material change in our CapEx. Fortunately, the things we make and the way we make them, they tend to be smaller incremental items like a spectrum analyzer or a few pieces of test equipment or a paint booth or something like that. There are some instances where we will invest more. But if you look at our CapEx, we're spending, what, about 1.5 points on CapEx. I don't see that rising materially. If it got up to 2%, that would still be pretty manageable or extremely manageable for us. We are committed to making the investments that are needed. We will do that. We've made that very clear to our customers. And at this point, I still -- as I said, I emphasize that I don't see that being a herculean task. If there are ones that do require a much larger investment -- and we feel like our customers or somebody should contribute to that, then of course, we won't have any reservations about seeking that.

And I would also add, without going into specifics, that we are big supporters of what the administration is trying to do and get more product out there, and we're working very hard. We've got a number of teams very focused on this. And there are certain areas where we are going ahead and making the capital expenditure where we have a very high degree of confidence of the level of business. And we're, if you will, taking the risk to make sure that we're able to supply the product when the customer needs it. And I think that our customers are extremely happy about that.

Okay. And then to follow up on Noah's question earlier on acquisitions and the potential size of deals. You've seen a lot of aerospace defense IPOs break their IPO prices. Does that cause any shift in the M&A pipeline sponsors that we're thinking about taking assets public or maybe thinking about pursuing a sale to a company like HEICO that is usually an acquirer of choice?

Listen, I don't think it's had a material impact on the number of companies we're seeing and the desires of sellers. Most don't want to get into sort of what the private equity situations. But it certainly has influenced valuations and valuations, as you know, have increased in the sector. And that's something that we deal with. We've done with it successfully. But I would say that will probably be the most pronounced impact.

And also, my sense is that if some of these don't go well or don't go as well as expected, that could be future opportunity for HEICO.

And we'll take our next question from David Strauss with Wells Fargo.

This is Josh Korn on for David. I wanted to ask if you could speak a little bit about what the margins look like on some of the revenues from the recent acquisitions?

Do you want me to take it? We generally don't disaggregate down to the sub level margins. I will tell you that when we make acquisitions, our expectations are that most of the deals we closed the EBITA margin needs to be 20% or greater. That's sort of a gating factor in our thesis or our analysis of acquisitions. So -- and that's about as far down the food chain as we get on discussing margins at the subsidiary level. Our starting point anyhow.

But one of the things we can tell you is that typically, acquisitions have intangible amortization attached to it. So obviously, that can typically push down sometimes the reported margin. Yes. Not on the EBITDA or EBITDA level, but the operating income margin.

We'll take our next question from [ Rene Plester ] with [indiscernible].

Excellent, excellent results. I just wanted to call into because I did a little homework. In all of 1995, HEICO earned $2.7 million. In the latest 9 months, it earned $659 million. That's 244x as much profit, and the year isn't finished. I bought it 1995. Cash flow was $7 million versus today $816 million in only 9 months. So if the future is going to follow the same playbook, Eric, that you referred to I hope I live another 30 years. That's my state.

Well, we hope you live another 30 years as well. And I hope for the same thing for me at least. But for the rest of the people on -- thank you very much. And for the rest of the people on this call who don't know Mr. [ Plesner ]. Mr. [ Plesner ] is an individual investor who in 1994, really started learning about the company invested in '95. And added to his holdings over the years despite the advice from a lot of financial experts who said you need to diversify and diversify, diversify.

He is actually a very large shareholder in the company and has always been committed to it. And he's made his money and I won't say how much, but it's obviously a huge sum. Sorry for saying everything. But obviously, a huge sum, but he's made it by believing in the business and following this, the same approach, the same way we do it, believing in the people and the business, the long term and not getting too wrapped up in any momentary movement in either direction. So we thank you for being one of the smartest investors I've ever met.

And Rene, this is Eric. I add my thanks and gratitude as well. for your support and confidence and friendship over many, many decades. And to answer specifically your question, I remember talking to you about it the 30-something years ago, and we had a dream on what we could do. And we thought we were responsive and we found some opportunities where we could really help the airlines that we could build something. And it turned out to be obviously even more successful than we had dreamt at the time.

But I can tell you that our customers universally want to buy more from HEICO. And the reason they don't -- they aren't currently buying more from HEICO is we only have so much to offer them. And frankly, we had a sales meeting last week and somebody stood up and said, people aren't buying from our competitors because they want to buy from our competitors. Nobody starts out their day saying they want to buy from HEICO's competitors. The vast majority of our customers start their day wanting to buy more from us. And it's because of our people, our quality, our pricing. And frankly, the vision that we had to build a long-term business, not a one and done or where you run up the stock and run out the door, that kind of thing. We wanted to build a serious industrial company that was going to last for generations.

And I can tell you, we're well on the way. Who knows what the future holds, but I can tell you that the 3 of us at this table and our of leadership and the 13,000 people at HEICO are really, really excited about the future. So I thank you for your support and comment and friendship.

Thank you. Thank you, and go on to your next caller, and today is a great day.

And we'll take our next question from Gavin Parsons with UBS.

I guess in a more trivial pursuit, it sounds like repair is still growing good amount lower. Eric, is the supply chain bottlenecks you talked about last quarter? Any color there would be great.

Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that, Gavin. That is also a big issue for us. The ability to get parts in various areas. And you've got a component and you could have 99 parts, but you're waiting for the final part, you can't ship. And there's definitely a backlog about that. Throughout our businesses, and that also has definitely had an impact on the component repair space. Thank you for highlighting that.

Is that improving? Or has that actually gotten worse?

I would say it's consistent, not materially better. It's gotten better in some areas. The problems that we had a year ago in general are not problems today, but other things have popped up. And so as a result, it remains definitely a major headache for the industry and definitely has impacted those revenues.

Gavin, this is Carlos. Keep in mind, the gross margin on that business has been expanding. And even though the revenue growth, you have to remember that as we flood these repairs, component repairs consume a lot of parts, as Eric just pointed out. And as we are able to populate those repairs with more PMA product, the top line revenue does not grow as fast because we're offering a higher value proposition to our customers. The profitability on that job grows.

And so one thing that we've been experiencing in our repair business is a little lighter top line revenue growth because we're not passing through the exorbitant cost of OEM product on to our customers. We're trying to do these repairs as much as we can with PMA as a lower sales price, but it's a much more profitable venture for us. And I actually think that this pattern will continue. And if it does, we'll be very happy for that because, again, it's an expanded it's more cash to HEICO shareholders in that relationship versus passing on OEM product through the sales of charging a higher price. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's the phenomenon going on right now. in that business.

We'll take our next question from Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley.

This is [indiscernible] on for Kristine. Just a double-click on air traffic a little bit. There's been a lot of focus this year on how commercial aftermarket would hold up. And obviously, this in last quarter's results display significant growth despite these concerns. But in the last couple of months of data, we're starting to see RPKs dip a little bit on a year-over-year basis. If we continue to see this, is there a point at which you'd expect to start seeing this flow through to impact the commercial side of the business?

Yes. Thus far, we haven't seen that. And the other thing is when RPKs do slow down, airlines get even more serious about cost savings. So that will be a mitigating factor. But certainly, if the number of life is down, then the demand for parts would follow. But I'd point out, we've got so much unsold potential and so much opportunity out there that we typically mitigate that much better than most of the industry. So -- and again, we haven't seen that to date.

And we'll take our next question from Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen.

This is [ Barry Taylor ] on for Gautam. I was wondering if the DoD has approached the HEICO team directly regarding the rights to repair and build-to-print initiatives? And then could you provide any insight on how involved industry participants have been in those discussions?

Yes. We -- I can say that we're very aware of what's going on. I wouldn't want to get into any specific conversations. But again, we do think that there's very good opportunity for HEICO in this area. You know all the reasons why. So I think it's best probably just to leave it at that. But thank you very much.

Okay. Congrats on the quarter.

And we'll take our next question from Matt Akers with BNP Paribas.

Could you touch on working capital. It's been -- I mean to your point, your free cash flow has been, first of all, even though working capital has been a bit of a drag year-to-date? Should we expect that to continue as you keep growing here? Or is there an opportunity for some more working capital efficiencies there?

I mean -- this is Carlos, Matt. The working capital at HEICO is going to grow commensurate with organic growth. It's been kind of the pattern. We do have some strategic investment in inventories to deal with customer demands and backlog. So you saw that elevated this quarter. I expect working capital will not be any different in Q4 than what we saw this quarter. I think we'll have continued a little bit of use of cash for working capital to fill backlog and demand and nothing unusual other than that going on.

The only other thing I would point out on our operating cash flow, as I've mentioned on prior calls, is that we do have a payment going out to the estate of our past Chairman. And that probably will have a $70 million to $75 million drag on operating cash flows in Q4. We've talked about it before. I just point that out. It's not -- I don't know if it's working capital related, but it is related to our operating cash flows in the fourth quarter. So please keep that in mind as you do in your modeling.

And we'll take our next question from Louis Raffetto with Wolfe Research.

Maybe Victor Eric, just to follow up on Jon's earlier question on the sort of the other end markets and sort of some of the opportunities you see there? Do you see those markets having the same margin opportunity as in aerospace?

Some do. And I think some -- it's a mix, but they can. It all depends on the products. But we have some very strong margins in the industrial tech segment.

And also, in particular, in industrial gas turbine, there's a lot of opportunity for us in that space as well. Basically the same technology as those,and we really don't have the fixed costs associated with it.

Great. And then maybe, Carlos, just one for you. The interest expense in the quarter, did that include incremental costs from the debt issuance?

I did. For the -- with the debt issuance costs and then the amortization of the costs related to the line of credit, that all went through interest this quarter.

And at this time, I will turn the conference to Victor Mendelson for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much. We thank everybody for being on the call with us for the remainder of fiscal '26, we expect increased net sales at both the Flight Support Group and Electronic Technologies Group to continue to be supported by underlying demand for our products and contributions from recent acquisitions. As for those acquisitions, we remain focused on identifying and evaluating the acquisition opportunities that align with our strategic objectives and our capital allocation strategy, we'll prioritize those investments in organic growth and acquisitions while preserving adequate liquidity and financial flexibility. And as you heard, that acquisition activity remains extremely robust for us.

And as always, that will remain disciplined and only pursue acquisitions that meet our strategic and financial criteria that we believe will create meaningful long-term value for our shareholders. And with that, we end the call, and we look forward to talking with you on our next call. And should you have questions in the interim, you all know where to reach us. Thank you very much.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Welcome to the HEICO Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. My name is Samara, and I will be your operator for today's call.

Certain statements in this conference call will constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and contingencies. HEICO's actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by those forward-looking statements.

Factors that could cause such differences include, among others, the severity magnitude and duration of public health threats, our liquidity and the amount and timing of cash generation; lower commercial air travel, airline fleet changes or airline purchasing decisions, which could cause lower demand for our goods and services; product specification costs and requirements, which could cause an increase in our cost to complete contracts, governmental and regulatory demands, export policies and restrictions; reductions in defense, space or homeland security spending by U.S. and/or foreign customers or competition from existing and new competitors, which could reduce our sales.

Our ability to introduce new products and services at profitable pricing levels, which could reduce our sales or sales growth; product development or manufacturing difficulties, which could increase our product development and manufacturing costs and delay sales; cybersecurity events or other disruptions of our information technology systems could adversely affect our business and our ability to make acquisitions, including obtaining any applicable domestic and/or foreign governmental approvals and achieve operating synergies from acquired businesses; customer credit risk, interest, foreign currency exchange and income tax rates; and economic conditions, including the effects of inflation within and outside of the aviation, defense, space, medical, telecommunications and electronics industries, which could negatively impact our costs and revenues.

Parties listening to this call are encouraged to review all of HEICO's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, filings on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law. I now turn the call over to Victor Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you very much, Samara, and good morning, and thank you to everyone on this call. We thank you for joining us, and we welcome you to HEICO's Second Quarter Fiscal '26 Earnings Announcement Teleconference. As you've heard, I'm Victor Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer. And I'm joined here this morning by my fellow Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer; Eric Mendelson, as well as our Executive Vice President and CFO, Carlos Macau.

Before we get into our record results, let's take a moment to thank the people who produced yet another set of records for HEICO, and that's our team members. It's your resolute dedication, your diligent efforts and your focus on exceeding customer expectations that produced these results. We know you are what makes HEICO unique, and we're also grateful to call you our colleagues and our friends. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and our company's future with you.

We further thank our customers for your confidence and your support. We know you are why we exist. And we extend our sincere gratitude to the brave servicemen and women past and present of the United States Armed Forces and allied military forces around the world, including HEICO team members, customers, vendors and their family members, with Memorial Day just behind us, we honor and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country and to our allies.

We remain deeply grateful for their courage, for their dedication and commitment to protecting the freedoms we all enjoy. HEICO is very proud to support the United States and its allies defense needs. So getting to our results. Our record second quarter fiscal '26 results probably speak for themselves, and we'll delve into the details shortly. And though we are certainly proud of this quarter's results as well as the many preceding quarters where we repeatedly set records. It's the future that energizes us most.

HEICO is, as they say, firing on all engines, business is very strong for us virtually across the board, including in our biggest markets, commercial aviation, defense and space. orders continue at record or near-record levels for us in nearly all of these markets. These markets are themselves growing and they're growing rapidly. People are traveling ever more and ever more. And while short-term shocks like the current just war might create short-term disruption in the inexorable upward trend, the short-term disruptions are, by definition, always brief.

With more planes in the sky and an ever increasing need for what HEICO cost effectively provides. And I should add that, that list of what we provide keeps on growing. Fuel prices eventually settle back. spurring even more growth. And in defense, our country and its allies have recognized the need to invest more in defense and to replace depleted stocks. We are now experiencing this in our defense sales, in our defense orders and our defense backlog. We expect this to continue and to have a multiyear tail for which we are very well prepared.

In space, the industry is rocketing ahead, pun intended, and so are we. Our presence on key programs, both in the new space and traditional realms continues growing innovation and quality are crucial. They are crucial in everything we do and in every market we serve. We've maintained full investment in our engineering and production capabilities to handle what we're experiencing. Our company supports both historical customers as well as the new disruptors in the defense tech, new space and new commercial aircraft models. HEICO has always been and will always be where the industry goes and where it grows.

The adaptability has been one of our key traits since we took over the company roughly 36 years ago. When I ask people for words they associate with HEICO, the most common word is trust. They trust that our company will deliver real and sustainable growth that will deliver innovation that will deliver quality that will deliver real cash. That's very important. Real cash. And we will do all of this, honestly, among other things. They call it the HEICO culture, and we like that.

So our most recent quarterly and year-to-date results are just another manifestation of the HEICO culture. And summarizing those results, today, we emphasize that consolidated net income, operating income and net sales in the second quarter of fiscal '26, are, again, record results for HEICO, increasing by 49%, 41% and 25%, respectively, compared to the second quarter of fiscal '25. The Electronic Technologies Group set all-time quarterly operating income and net sales records in the second quarter of fiscal '20 and improving 56% and 34%, respectively, over the second quarter of fiscal '25. These increases principally reflect strong 17% organic growth driven by increased shipments and more demand for most of the Electronic Technologies Group's products as well as contributions from our fiscal '25 and '26 acquisitions.

The Flight Support Group also set all-time quarterly operating income and net sales records in the second quarter of fiscal '26, improving to 31% and 21%, respectively, over the second quarter of fiscal '25. And I might add that the second quarter of fiscal '25 itself was extremely strong as have been all the quarters surrounding it. These increases principally reflect strong 19% organic growth from increased demand across all of our product lines as well as the contributions from our fiscal '26 acquisitions.

Consolidated net income increased 49% to a record $233.8 million or $1.66 per diluted share in the second quarter of fiscal '26 up from $156.8 million or $1.12 per diluted share in the second quarter of fiscal '25. Very notably, our cash flow provided by operating activities increased 43% to $292 million, as I said, real cash in the second quarter of fiscal up from $204.7 million in the second quarter of fiscal '25. That strong cash generation remains a hallmark of our strategy, and it does permit us to invest in our people and our growth while increasing shareholder value. Consolidated EBITDA increased 37% to $408.3 million in the second quarter of fiscal '20 up from $297.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal '25.

Meanwhile, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 1.74x as of April 30, '26 and as compared to 1.6x as of October 31, 25. This increase results from our successful completion of 4 acquisitions so far in fiscal '26. In April, we announced that 3 of our subsidiaries, 3Ds, Xellia and VPT supplied mission-critical electronic components on NASA's ARTEMIS II mission which successfully marked NASA's return to deep space human exploration. We congratulate NASA and the thousands of people behind this landmark mission and our honor that our subsidiaries were selected as trusted suppliers on a historic program as they are on many other key and historic programs.

I guess you could say we are over the moon on this one. I'm getting some groans from that pun here in the room. I dedicate that one, by the way, to Rob Stallard. Our recent acquisition activity also remained risk. In April, we completed two more acquisitions. The Flight Support Group acquired 80% of the stock of Sherwood Avionics and accessories which is an FAA and the EASA Part 145 repair station specializing in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of complex, mission-critical mechanical and electromechanical components for defense and select commercial aviation platforms. The purchase price was paid with a combination of mostly cash using proceeds from our revolving credit facility and some shares of HEICO Class A common stock.

The Electronic Technologies Group acquired 90% of the stock of Southwest Antennas Inc. which is a well-known and very well regarded designer and manufacturer of high-performance rugged and mission-critical antennas, primarily for ground-based defense and law enforcement applications. The purchase price was paid in cash, using proceeds from our revolving credit facility. And we expect both of these acquisitions to be accretive to our earnings within the year following the acquisition.

In addition, we have an excellent potential acquisition pipeline consisting of great potential transactions, both large and small. And I'll now turn the call over to Eric Mendelson, fellow Co-Chair and Co-CEO to go into some more details about the business. Eric?

Thank you very much, Victor. Before reviewing the numbers, I would first like to recognize and thank HEICO's outstanding team members around the world for delivering another exceptional quarter. What HEICO's continues to accomplish is remarkable. And on behalf of our leadership, the Board of Directors and shareholders, we sincerely thank all of our team members for their continued commitment to our company, our customers and to one another.

The Flight Support Group's net sales increased 21% to a record $929.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal '20 up from $767.1 million in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The net sales increase in the second quarter of fiscal '20 reflects strong organic growth of 19% as well as the impact from 2026 acquisitions. The organic net sales growth reflects impressive double-digit organic growth across all of our product lines.

Flight Support Group's operating income increased 31% to a record $243.1 million in the second quarter of fiscal '26 up from $185 million in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The operating income increase principally reflects the previously mentioned net sales growth, SG&A expense efficiencies realized from the net sales growth and an improved gross profit margin. The improved gross profit margin principally reflects a more favorable product mix and higher net sales volume within our aftermarket replacement parts product line.

Flight Support Group's operating margin increased to 26.2% in the second quarter of fiscal '26 up from 24.1% in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The operating margin increase reflects a decrease in SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales primarily driven by the previously mentioned SG&A expense efficiencies and the previously mentioned improved gross profit margin.

During the second quarter, at our customers' request. We pulled forward some defense-related sales that had previously been scheduled for delivery later in this fiscal year. The incremental margin on these sales improved our second quarter operating margin by approximately 60 basis points. Given that the acquisition-related intangible amortization expense consumed approximately 240 basis points of our operating margin in the second quarter of fiscal '26.

The FSG's cash margin before amortization or what we internally call EBITA was approximately 28.6%, which has been consistently excellent and is 160 basis points higher than the comparable FSG cash margin of 27.0% in the second quarter of fiscal '25. While we remain grateful for these margins, we are particularly proud that we did so while simultaneously delivering significant cost savings, outstanding service and incredibly fast turnaround times to our customers.

Victor eloquently spoke of trust in his opening comments. And these results once again show both our customers and shareholders that we can satisfy their objectives, not at the expense of one another, but simultaneously and continue to build upon the trust placed in HEICO and our culture. I have never been more optimistic on the FSG's future. The incredible value we deliver to customers each day clearly is durable and in high demand.

Now I will discuss the second quarter results of the Electronic Technologies Group. Wow, the Electronic Technologies Group sales. Net sales increased 34% and to a record $45.5 million in the second quarter of fiscal '26, up from $342.2 million in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The net sales increase reflects strong organic growth of 17% and the impact from our fiscal '26 and '25 acquisitions. The double-digit net sales growth is mainly attributable to increased demand for our other electronics, defense, aerospace and space products.

The Electronic Technologies Group operating income increased 56% and to a record $121.8 million in the second quarter of fiscal '26, up from $77.9 million in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The operating income increase reflects the previously mentioned net sales growth and improved gross profit margin and SG&A expense efficiencies realized from the net sales growth. The improved gross profit margin principally reflects the previously mentioned higher net sales and a more favorable product mix of our aerospace products.

The Electronic Technologies Group's operating margin improved to 26.5% and in the second quarter of fiscal '26, up from 22.8% in the second quarter of fiscal '25. The operating margin increase reflects the previously mentioned improved gross profit margin and a decrease in SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales primarily driven by the previously mentioned SG&A expense efficiencies. Importantly, and this is really important, before acquisition-related intangibles amortization expense, our operating margin was 30.6% and yes, 30.6% as intangibles amortization consumed around 410 basis points of our operating margin and is 390 basis points higher than the comparable ETG cash margin of 26.7% in the second quarter of fiscal '25.

As we discussed last quarter, the ETG's operating margin is extremely sensitive to shipping mix, and we continue to expect volatility in our operating margin consistent with history. On a true operating basis, these are excellent margins, and we are very pleased with this quarter's profitability. While simultaneously satisfying our customers with industry-leading quality and turnaround time at very competitive prices.

We continue to expect overall GAAP operating margins between 22% and 24% for all of fiscal '26 and based on the group's current composition of companies. And now I turn the call back to my fellow, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO; Victor Mendelson, for his comments on the future outlook and closing remarks.

Eric, thank you very much. We expect the HEICO culture will continue propelling us forward. And for the remainder of fiscal '26, we anticipate increased sales in both the Flight Support and Electronic Technologies Group that continue to be supported by our underlying demand for our products and contributions from recent acquisitions.

Our capital allocation approach remains opportunistic with a focus on balancing organic growth and acquisitions while maintaining liquidity and financial flexibility. [ Eric ] also point out that acquisition activity remains robust, as we've talked about a little bit already in this call across both operating segments. And that's supported by a healthy pipeline of potential opportunities we are currently evaluating. Our long-term acquisition strategy remains unchanged.

You're all familiar with it, and we continue to focus on identifying high-quality businesses that complement our existing operations, strengthen our market positions and support our long-term growth objectives. As always, we will remain disciplined approach, and we'll only pursue acquisitions that meet our strategic and financial criteria and that we believe will create meaningful long-term value for all of our shareholders.

So at this point, I'm going to turn the call back over to Samara to introduce the questions. This is the question-and-answer section of the call. Thank you, Samara.

[Operator Instructions]. And we'll take our first question from Larry Solow with CJS Securities.

Eric, I think you described it really well by just one word, wow, really, really impressive quarterly results, I'm sure your dad is smiling up above.

I guess first question, just on -- Eric, for you, just on FSG. Can you just kind of give us the really impressive growth on the organic side. Can you just run down the mix between the commercial and the defense side, I mean, on the park side and what drove that growth? And nice step-up from last quarter other than the pull forward? Do you think -- does this feel sustainable? Is there anything unusual in there or...

Yes. So Larry, thank you very much. We are really proud about the performance that we had in the second quarter across the entire business, both in the FSG as well as the -- and I've commented many times in the past that I think we've got some of the greatest group of sandbaggers that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I joke around and call them Sam baggers.

But actually, I think they're really trying to estimate what they think is reasonable going forward. And frankly, they -- more than sand baggers, they're really super talented and they have very aggressive goals, and they always seem to outperform. And that's what really happened in this quarter, breaking down organic growth by product line. When you look at parts, it's around 2% specialty products is 21%, and component repair is about 10%.

And may say, well, why is component repair so much lower than the others. One is it's an extremely competitive business, as everybody knows. But number two, it's dependent on getting parts and from suppliers in order to complete these components. And if we're missing a single part, we can't build an assembly. And so as a result, there are still significant supply chain issues.

I mean there's no question that it's getting better, but we've got massive backlogs in all of our FA-approved repair stations. And frankly, a lot of them are waiting on part. So I think that component repair organic growth. I know the component repair organic growth would have been higher had it not been for the parts delays. But it is also a competitive business in all fairness.

One thing also, Larry, I might want to mention this is Carlos. I mentioned it last quarter. Just keep in mind, we have been seeing a lot more DER and PMA friendly repairs with the acquisition of Encore. So the one dynamic that brings to us is as we can populate these repairs with more PMA product, we have less top line but more bottom line growth. In other words, a more profitable repair without having to charge customers for the high-priced OEM parts. So keep that in mind also.

Yes. No, no, absolutely. And I think the defense specialty side, that's great numbers, and I think directionally not that big of a surprise, obviously, with what's going on today in the world on the defense side, but the commercial aviation and the parts growth this quarter really strong. And what we feel like there's a little bit of a slowdown just on the on the demand side, just from travel or a little bit. Have you seen any slowdown in travel? And is it just -- are you guys just continuing to take market share gains as oil prices continue to rise and companies look for discounts. Is that even stronger in this period?

Yes. I think it is market share gains. We have done exceptionally well. I'm glad Carlos mentioned what he did about the component repair business and adding PMA and DER to those component repairs. I mean I can tell you, I was at the MRO show roughly a month ago, and I'm on the phone with customers all the time. And they are -- I would literally use the word clamoring for more parts.

We -- I have never seen both our internal operations folks, our salespeople as well as customers literally pushing us to do significantly more. And yes, with regard to the war in Iran that has impacted some sales to the Middle East. But you can see that we've well overcome them elsewhere. And that's because of our market share gains and just the tremendous enthusiasm in what we're providing. Certainly on the commercial aerospace side, but frankly, also on the defense side, where we've been extraordinarily strong in that area.

We did have a situation where a customer asked us to pull forward some sales that we had originally planned for in the second half of this year. And so that did boost the second quarter a little bit. And we disclosed about 60% -- 60 points -- basis point improvement in our margin as a result of that because we've got the fixed costs associated with running the business. We just moved the sales forward. So as a result, we have that kind of impact. But the demand is just very, very strong across both our commercial and defense business.

And we'll take our next question from Peter Arment with Baird.

Victor, Carlos. Nice results again. Eric, I guess, sticking with you. Just maybe if you could level set us a little bit. I know historically, more of your revenue from MSC comes out of North America. But Middle East exposure, maybe if you've seen any behavior changes or maybe just give us any color just on globally, how you're seeing regional demand?

Yes. Peter, it's a great question. And all of the areas remain very strong. I mean there has been a little bit of a slowdown. I don't have the percentage number here. And I wouldn't want to give a misleading answer because -- the Middle East as a percentage of our total sales is relatively small. But we have seen strength really across the board. And I think one of the other things that's important to note is that whenever there's angst or concern anxiety, whatever, with regard to commercial aviation. Airlines realities they got to get more serious and cut costs. And that always helps us in the long term. We end -- there ends up being more interest in our products.

We get approved in more spaces and that inures to greater future revenue and earnings. So to answer your question, nothing significant in the Middle East, but tremendous knock-on effect around the world where people realize that they got to cut cost. And there's no reason why they shouldn't buy more of a product line. We've got the quality. We've got the turn time. And certainly, we have the price. And it's just a matter of them doing what they got to do in order to buy these parts.

Got it. Appreciate the color. And then yes, I appreciate that. And Victor, and just maybe quickly on kind of the space end market, which historically has kind of been a little more volatile, but the demand signals continue to be really robust there. Maybe if you could just describe how -- what you're seeing from a demand signal and just kind of the capacity to support that.

Yes. Thank you. I think your question was specifically on space, right? So commercial space. So space, I would say actually both defense and commercial, orders are strong. I mean the demand outlook is nice for that. But you'll recall that historically, it's somewhat volatile for us. And I would expect to continue that to be the case, so somewhat volatile by continuing up in, if you will, to the right and a positive place for us.

And that, by the way, in a sense, maybe a little bit of a metaphor in ETG generally. If you look at the ETG business, we don't panic when it's a lower quarter like it was in the first quarter. We don't become overjoydematic when it's great as it was in the second quarter. We're looking for a certain growth rate over time and over the course of the year. So we feel really good about that given the backlogs that we have, by the way, and the order flow that we've seen record backlogs and record orders.

And we'll take our next question from Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets.

Gentlemen, great results. Maybe just first on the ETG segment. Are these margins reflecting just purely timing of maybe some obviously better mix benefit in the quarter? Or is there anything else you would call out as maybe structurally we should think about? And Carlos, it sounds like you're maybe thinking about the margins for the segment could be a little bit better moving forward here relative to prior commentary.

Well, a couple of things. I think -- I'm looking at as the first half of the year. right? And that's the way I look at it. The 90-day slices of time, while they're important, I don't think they're necessarily always entirely reflective of where the business is going. So I look at the first half of the year with the first quarter being weaker than it should have been the second quarter being very strong. And I look at that average. And I think we continue to get the same growth rates in the ETG over time, and maybe we'll do better. I mean the order book certainly, I would say, is continues to amaze me.

And I would say we'll continue to look for that GAAP margin, which, as you heard, is 400-some-odd basis points higher and what we really look at and think of how the business runs. And I think there's potential to do better on the margin, but I would just encourage people to not get too excited yet. And like Eric said, it's not sandbagging. But our businesses are conservative and to talk to our folks they're pretty conservative. Carlos, I don't know if you have something to add to that.

I would just say, we were blessed with the quarter where all the verticals or industry place had double-digit organic growth. And when that happens, we're going to post nice margins. That doesn't always happen, right? And so it is a lumpy business. And so to Victor's point, I think for the 6-month period, the margins in the segment were 23.5%. And I think that that's pretty damn good. And my sense is that if we continue to catch this high growth, we'll probably be towards the high end of the overall range we've given you. But we don't want to overpromise something. And I think it's better to way on conservatism in that regard?

Thanks, Carlos. And just if I could, you've got, obviously, defense exposure in each of the operating segments. It sounds like there was some pull forward or accelerated shipments in FSG, maybe ETG as well. But I'm just curious, across the segments, if you can talk about your defense bookings, maybe across defense, what was book-to-bill for the company in the quarter or maybe just trends you're seeing in bookings because it clearly sounds like acceleration in defense is what we're seeing across both the segments.

Yes. Ken, this is Eric. That's a great question. Unfortunately, I don't have the booking information in front of me at the moment. But I can tell you, it's been very strong. in all of the areas, aerospace as well as defense in terms of the end markets. It's been incredibly strong. And I can tell you that conversations about additional business has also been very strong. So we -- if a lot of those conversations end up turning into orders, which we're hopeful they will, I think you're going to see continued growth -- continued significant growth over on our defense side. We have a unique suite of products. We deliver on time. Our costs are very reasonable, outstanding quality, and I think we're in a very, very good position to continue to fill our government needs as well as those of the needs of allies, and we're very optimistic on that.

It's interesting, Ken, from a macro standpoint, we continue to be about on a consolidated basis, just a tick under 30% defense of our sales, and that's been pretty consistent. Maybe 1% higher this quarter comparatively to the Q2 of '25. So I would say our defense business is growing at a nice clip, but what I'm trying to imply to you is that the rest of the business is keeping pace, too. They are -- all the verticals are growing at a really nice clip. So it's not just defense that's pushing the card up the hill, if you would. It's all the verticals really firing on all cylinders.

We'll take our next question from Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel.

Great results. On the comments on missile defense interceptors, just would you've in the past mentioned rate positions on some of the exquisite programs like standard missile and PAC-3. You also mentioned having some supply arrangements with some of the new emerging players. Is that specifically in missile defense, is your product competitive? Any kind of how does that rank in the growth vectors for the company that you're excited about?

Yes. The -- on the defense tech program, so it's a number of our subsidiaries are supplying into the defense tech firms. They're applied on a variety of programs. I don't think it's just limited to missile defense in the defense tech sector. I think it's actually pretty broad. I wouldn't -- it certainly does include some missile defense in that sector. And it would make sense given the other things that we supply.

But that business I believe we'll continue a growing business for us as it will be of the overall market. I don't think the historical programs are going away anytime soon. I think they still have a very important role, but the defense tech ones will continue to grow.

I agree, this is Eric. Just to add to what Victor just said. In addition to the missile defense in the new tech area, we also are very active in the drone and the -- the Unmanned missile business. So I think that continues to remain very strong. I mean don't get me wrong that the exquisite legacy programs continue to be of tremendous importance to us and our major drivers of the success of the company and frankly, the ability to intercept some of the most dangerous weapons. The only way you can take it down is with these very complex expensive programs.

And those continue to be very, very important to HEICO. But I think the comment is that we are also exposed on the new defense tech space. So as that gains business, HEICO is going to be able to serve that market as well.

And then I'll just slip another fun one for you. Just there is a proposal to go to just reporting earnings twice a year instead of 4x. Given the lumpiness in the results. kind of the consternation after last quarter, just kind of any thoughts on whether reporting only twice a year would be appropriate for the company.

I think this is something that we have to see. It's definitely a possibility. Definitely something that we'll talk about and our audit committee will talk about. But I think we have to really get a little more definition on where things are going and what shareholders would like to see. There's -- there are advantages and disadvantages to east. So I think we'll have to really understand those better. But I wouldn't -- I don't think we made up our mind.

Yes. And this is Eric. I can say that from an operational perspective, reporting quarterly, I think it's a good thing because it gets people 4 times a year to hurry up and get things done and to make sure they close out the quarter strong. And if they only have two opportunities to do that, I don't think that, in general, for industry, I mean, while it would be convenient from a corporate perspective for the corporations to report semiannually. I think from an operating perspective, having the cadence where you've got to do your shipments monthly and then you've got to report quarterly. I think in general, for industry is a good thing. That's my only my 2 cents. I think a lot of our operating people may not be excited for me to say that, but that's what I believe.

And the countervailing view on that, of course, is it causes a lot of short-term short-termism and 90-day slots of time and an overfocus on that. So we're going to have to discuss that and review the advantages and disadvantages.

We'll take our next question from John Godyn with Citi.

Eric, I wanted to just maybe ask like a bigger picture question about this idea of peak aftermarket. That's, I would say, skeptics are focused on basically whether aftermarket heavy players like yourselves have been over-earning in recent years. And of course, the implication is there's some sort of revenue or margin cliff. At the same time, Eric, you're saying things like -- and I don't mean to mis-call you, but never been more optimistic about S future, I heard you say customers are clamoring for parts. So there's obviously just a big delta there. I was hoping you could just take a second to reflect on it. what are the skeptics missing because you've been doing this a long time, and as you mentioned, set a lot of records along the way.

John, I really appreciate your question. I think the skeptics really should be more focused on people who are engaged in the parts trading business. people who have big inventories of existing product that is not in production are going to be hurt as there are -- if there are increased retirements of those parts. And I can understand them being concerned.

I think it is -- that concern is massively misplaced when a buy to a company like HEICO. Because the newer generation of equipment that we are coming out with is significantly more expensive than the order generation that it is replacing, number one. And number two, there's a lot more of it. So I heard people say, oh, 757 is -- and the engines on it is very important to HEICO. Excuse me for saying this, but that is BS. That is just absolute nonsense. There is 0 truth to that. I won't come out and say what percentage of our sales are from 757, but it's de minimis.

And for HEICO, I think the reason why I am more optimistic about the future is because I see all of these products, and I see how expensive they are. And that's why I think we're going to do very well. We have a new product development generation ability. And that new product development area, it has got more product than they can possibly handle in speaking with our operating folks last week and going over the backlogs in those areas. I mean we've got more parts than we've ever had, and we have customers literally begging us to do significantly more. And with the price of the new generation equipment, I think we're going to do extraordinarily well. So that's why I'm very optimistic. People who are in the parts trading business. I think they've got a different dynamic that is not HEICO's dynamic.

Yes, we have small parts trading an extremely successful parts trading business within HEICO, but it's very small relative to our Flight Support Group, and that's intentional. We want to focus on developing proprietary parts proprietary repairs, doing outstanding distribution, specialty manufacturing, that's our business.

And we'll take our next question from Sheila Kahyaoglu with the Jefferies.

I have three questions. The first one is to Victor and the second one as well. Victor, what did you have for breakfast? And secondly, what did ETG have for breakfast all quarter long. Like how do you think about what really accelerated versus Q1 and how that demand continues in your various end markets within ETG into the second half.

And by the way, Sheila, this is Eric. So I just have to tell you what Victor ate for breakfast was money.

I had high protein breakfast egg whites with toast and some avocado. But -- and what did ETG for breakfast, maybe it's money. But in all seriousness, and I thank you, by the way, for your generous comments. In all seriousness, we -- I've been alluding over the quarters to the very strong order rate, the backlog, the shipping rate and the fact that some quarters are stronger and weaker than others. And we just -- we have a very strong order book. It continues to grow. And that's a reflection in all the markets, interestingly enough, I guess, at the end of the day, it comes down to a combination of two things.

One, what we get what we design and sell to our customer, what we produce and do for our customers and their need, which seems to be growing in the markets, all the markets that we serve. And I'm excited about defense for -- as I mentioned, we see a tail on this. I know these framework agreements are still being worked on, and we're not sure where they all stand. But we have seen both an increase in orders over the last few months for a lot of those programs, the historical programs that we've talked about as well as new programs and R&D on those. And a lot of inquiry from our customers about how can you 6x, how can you ForEx, how can you 10x your production and components and what does that look like and give us a quotation for it. So it just feels like a good moment.

Great. And Eric, one for you to follow up on John's question. if possible. I know like a lot of misconceptions about what's going on in the aftermarket. Any color you could give us whether that's geography or when the aftermarket, and it's still hot when the aftermarket was really strong people thought about engine versus airframe? Like how are you seeing demand changes as capacity utilization comes down?

Yes. We're seeing tremendous demand across the business. Our PMA business is roughly 3/4 nonengine, roughly 1 quarter engine sort of in that area. And we've seen just tremendous demand across the board. As I mentioned, Middle East, a little bit lower, but that -- if you look at the total across the board, that's not as impactful to us. And frankly, as that flying gets absorbed by the European and the North American carriers and other Asian carriers, I think we're seeing a bit of an offset there. So just sort of a rerouting around the world. while this conflict is ongoing and hopefully gets resolved quickly. But it is strength really across the board for us.

And we'll take our next question from Mariana Perez Mora with Bank of America.

Good morning, everyone. So I'm going to switch gears a little bit to the industrial aeroderivative engines. You have owned that business for a full quarter now. Could you please discuss what were the surprises both to the upside and like the negative surprises getting into that vertical?

Maria, I'm sorry, the phone had cut out, you're saying with regard to which?

Can you hear me better?

Yes.

Perfect. So on aeroderivative engine, the industrial ones. You have teed business for an entire quarter, what were the surprises both to the upside or the downside as you get deeper into that end market?

Yes. We are very excited about that. I mean as you've seen, the aeroderivative market is incredibly strong. The industrial gas turbine market is very strong. Those are the two areas that Ethos, which is now part of Encore satisfies. And we think that that's going to be a very, very strong market for us. We've been working on this for a while, studying that business and negotiating on the transaction roughly a year ago.

So we're just divided that it's part of the HEICO stable. I think they've got tremendous capability in Connecticut, in South Carolina and then also in Everdeen, Scotland. I visited that facility this quarter and really great people, great technology, focus I think we are going. We are very well positioned as the AI boom increases demand for power generation. I think Ethos is going to be in and HEICO in a great position to be able to pick up that business. So I'm very happy with it.

Perfect. And then on defense, you just did the Southwest Montana acquisition and mentioned a little bit about your strategy of what you acquire on defense or more like robust businesses, mature businesses. But how strong is that pipeline? And how competitive are the prices to be able to acquire those targets, especially in a market where, as you discussed, there is a lot of demand recapitalization around the world, governments that are more open to have new entrants, both like from the innovative point of view, but also, I don't know, double, triple sourced for resiliency what is the role you want to play there? Where -- what areas are you looking at? And how competitive you could be in a market that I could imagine is relatively expensive today?

Yes. So we're looking at components or subcomponents that are used in next-level systems. That's been our strategy since we started doing defense. We've obviously been very successful at that. Pricing for assets for businesses has definitely increased over time. I think more people are attracted to it, they realized what we realized long ago.

Having said that, we continue to pay reasonable and fair prices. And we're looking for businesses that are not so much mature as they are growing businesses that have excellent placement and secure placement within their markets or within their product set. But very importantly, that they're growing businesses. And so we -- as you can see, we've continued to be able to do that. I think it will be a competitive market as it's always -- or as it's become over the past number of years. It's not a recent thing.

It's probably been that way for about 10 years now. And our pipeline is kind of in a sense, filled with those kinds of companies. In particular, by the way, I should add that we are the best buyer for a seller who is looking for a good home for the business. That's really, I would say, our particular strength is that people who want an owner or a partner that often will allow them to continue to own part of the business, a few people companies do that. That's not going to resell in a few years.

When we buy, we buy to own forever. Private equity is going to flip you out. and it's going to put pressure on to achieve short-term results. We don't do that. So somebody who's built the business for maybe decades, and in a sense, their name is on the door. They love the business. They want an owner is going to continue it in the same place with the same products, the same people, the same approach to life. Those people are generally attracted to us. And I think there are enough of them who want to transact with us that it works.

And Mariana, adding on to what Victor just so well said, if you look in our 10-K, we have third -- as of the end of last year, we had 31 partners, 31 minority partners in our businesses. In order to develop a corporate culture and a structure to be able to work with partners to be able to share and cooperate and be collaborative. That is not something that just happens overnight. And we've been doing this for nearly 30 years. We've had partners. And we understand how to work with partners, how to create a win-win.

As Victor said, when private equity buys a business, they're just looking to find the right time to sell. For us, all of our businesses are intended to be owned in perpetuity. We don't sell them. And that goes to all of the decisions that we make in with regard to operating the companies and the investments that our partners want to make. And these partners have spent their lives building these companies, and they really care about where they are going.

And that's why, as Victor said, that's our greatest differentiator. I would also add to your comment about pricing going up, that the aerospace and defense industry over the last number of years has attracted a lot of new entrants. Because people think, "Oh, this is a place, this is an easy place to make money." And of course, we came out of the whole industry came out of COVID. So it came off of a relatively low bottom, which caused people to get very excited about it.

But one of the other things that we're able to do since we've made about 110 acquisitions, we have a tremendous depth of knowledge into what makes a business work and what doesn't. And I can tell you that the aerospace and defense industry is littered with private equity and other corporate deals where people overpaid and they are significantly underperforming. And HEICO has been very careful to not go into those pitfalls. And as Victor said, when we find a business that is looking for a long-term owner, there is no better home than HEICO.

And I think with regard to pit falls, we see books on companies that want to come to market or they want to start talking early about coming to market. And you really have to understand the subtleties of that. And I think 1 day, there's going to be quite a shakeout with regard to those businesses.

I do agree that, that is your secret sauce when you go to acquire, and that's a culture that it's hard to mimic if it's not like coming from within. If I may, one more follow-up. On this new agreement, you mentioned the framework agreements before. There is a lot of like talk around like cash neutrality, but you generally don't approach businesses that way. You actually care about like operating profit and free cash flow generation. What is your appetite to acquire businesses that are less profitable than your core, at least for the near term?

Look, as a rule of thumb, we don't like to acquire businesses with less than a 20% operating or we call it EBITDA margin. There have been exceptions to that, which we've made where we felt that the margin would improve where we bought a money-losing business and we were consolidating with something else. And we knew that the margin would be much higher than that in short order.

So those are the exceptions. If there is something extremely strategic that we think will get to those margins. But the likelihood of us just buying something that we think will remain sub-20% operating margin in, let's say, perpetuity or for the foreseeable future is unlikely for us.

And look, we've also got a very strong balance sheet, and we're able to make investments. But the way that we have to anchor and justify those investments is with concrete long-term agreements. And assuming that we can get those, and we've been able to get a number of those, we are willing and able to spend the capital, hire the people, expand the facilities around the world to be able to do this. So it's really a matter.

I think the U.S. government would be well served with regard to these multiyear framework deals to make sure that the industry has got the money, can really rely on that because if you look historically, within aerospace and defense, it runs in boom-bust cycles. And that's not good when it comes to hiring or for capital allocation. And if the Department of War comes forward with these multiyear procurements, I think that that's going to be extremely helpful to both the Department of War as well as to the companies and most importantly, to the voters and to the people who really impacts.

We'll take our next question from Scott Mikus with Melius Research.

This is Matt Martello on for Scott Mikus. One more question for Eric. So you acquired the 777 AMS and 737 NG via product line day product lines a little over a year ago from Honeywell. So you now support Boeing's new builds on the 777 classic and 737 NG derivatives like the PA E7 in addition to servicing the aftermarket. If Boeing and Airbus were to launch next-gen narrow-bodies later this decade or in early 2030s, would your operating units bid for work packages, so they're specked into the program from inception?

First of all, I have to complement you with your knowledge of the business because it's exceptional, and you know it. And you're absolutely correct in everything that you said. And yes, we definitely would -- I can't comment specifically on whether those particular products, we would bid in terms of work packages. But I can tell you, across HEICO. We do have very good capability to be able to develop additional products. And for example, in our Gables engineering subsidiary, and they've got the ability and our -- I think, would be a phenomenal partner to develop additional products for both the airframers as well as for the avionics subsystem suppliers.

We are in a great position to be able to support both and that's what we currently do. With regard to the aftermarket for the products which you mentioned, yes, of course, over time, that is, if you will, a melting ice cube. And those products will decrease in demand. But frankly, we have been very, very happy with the performance of those businesses. And we think that there is a massive amount of business to be had over the next many decades on those programs.

And I do also have to -- just to call out frankly, to the folks over at Sunshine Avionics, who are probably on this call who have done a marvelous job on the display unit and the AMS and the VA business. I mean we've heard from our partner on that business that the integration that Sunshine Avionics accomplished on those programs has been the best that they've ever seen and that was due to a tremendous amount of hard work focusing on the details. And I can tell you that Carlos, Victor and I are just absolutely grateful to the people at Sunshine and Louis. More over at HEICO parts and repair, who made all of this happen.

And we'll take our next question from Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen.

Thank you. Good morning, and great margins. Just a follow-up on your earlier comment about a bit of a pull forward on sales. Did you -- could you quantify how much you think that was not just from a margin standpoint, from a sales standpoint.

Yes. Gautam, it's Eric. It's about roughly between $15 million and $20 million.

Got you. And I wanted to ask, since the fuel prices have gone up since the beginning of the award, have you seen new customers approach HEICO about PMA parts? Or I'm just curious if you've seen a change in customer behavior to take advantage of the lower cost offering that you guys have? Is that...

The simple one-word answer to that is yes. when we have in many different markets. I mean you can't go into the details, but I had a call with the head of a customer who we've been talking to for many years about doing product and it would be a new business and, I think, very powerful for us. Look, it's just continued. I think we've got a lot of kinetic energy built up at HEICO. We've got a lot of customer goodwill. We've got the ability to design these parts and repairs. The customers want it.

We are not a threat to our OEM competitors we're also in the OEM business. This just supplements what they do. there's always a demand. Some people want to stay in whatever the Ritz-Carlton and the Four Seasons and other people have a budget whatever, for a Marriott and the Hilton. And we, at HEICO can support both. So I think in the -- on the commercial side, we're very strong on the defense side, incredibly entrepreneurial and high-performing cost conscious, high-quality and we've got tremendous ability in that area and tremendous ability to scale. So I think we're just in a very good place.

And are you seeing those customers -- are they also saying, hey, can you reverse engineer these parts? Like are they giving you new product development ideas at a quicker pace than was the case prior to the conflict?

Same answer. Yes. Yes, that 100%. They are -- because they realize if you continue doing what you've done in the past, you'll get the same thing. And what's the old Thomas Edison quote, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And they know that if they want to get high-quality, short-term times at better prices, HEICO's the answer.

And last one, I think it's fair to assume, but since the quarter, demand has also been very good. It sounds like, right? There has not been a deceleration.

Correct.

If you're willing to -- okay.

With the exception, I mean I have mentioned about, of course, the Middle East, that's a little bit lower, but in general, your statement is correct.

And we'll take our next question from David Straus with Wells Fargo.

This is Josh Korn on for David. We talked about margins a lot earlier. Any way you could quantify the -- how much the mix impact was in each segment versus kind of the other levers?

Yes, I would say -- this is Carlos. I would say both segments experienced favorable mix during the quarter. And that also was coupled with high volume growth. So there wasn't a lever or it felt like for the quarter is a little unique. But all verticals, all end markets were pushing at similar paces. So there's nothing really to call out that was unique or unusual. I think it was just a situation where candidly, we're busting at the seams. And when that happens, we're going to get some margin expansion.

And some of that, again, is due to mix. And a lot of it, Eric mentioned it earlier, we do get a lot of leverage incremental margin growth on our fixed cost base because on our fixed costs are very low. And our G&A spend was down as a percent of revenue. So that's going to continue, by the way, I think, as we continue to grow and add more volume, our relatively flat structure allows us to get a little margin expansion as a result of that. We don't have to hire seven different more layers of Vice Presidents to manage the business or guys managed to juggle many balls at one time and get things done. So that's the story. I know what you're searching for. There's nothing -- there's not one area that I would call out as being more impactful than the other, it was just a solid push across the entire platform.

We'll take our next question from Louis Raffetto with Wolfe Research

So maybe, Carlos, you talked about the GAAP margin for ETG being 22% to 24%. Given what we've seen this year and over the last few years in FSG, how should we think about the margin potential there?

I knew somebody was going to ask. It's a good question and one that we've pondered quite a bit here. I do think that what we're seeing now -- two things with the incredible growth that we're seeing in our aftermarket business and the surge, if you would, in some of the military business in the FSG, I do think that we've got a little bit more of a stable margin lift. If I was impressed to give you a range, my thinking right now is probably 24% to 26% is that those two end posts that I think will float between. And depending on any given 90-day period, if we have one vertical outperforming the other, we'll migrate to the high or low end of that range. But I think that's kind of where we're at. And yes, it's my thinking on that has come up a little bit from prior quarters.

All right. I appreciate that. And maybe, Eric, I know, obviously, you've sort of given us the color on the accelerated deliveries. Just to be clear, was that -- does that flow through the specialty products? Or is that through the parts, you called out the 20% organic growth. So just curious.

I'm sorry, can you say your question one more time? I'm a little confused.

Sure. So you said that you had 20% organic growth in aftermarket replacement parts and also through specialty products. I was just curious, the incremental kind of $15 million to $20 million of pull forward was that flowing through your specialty products? Or is that flowing through the parts business?

Yes, that would be probably be a little bit in both the way we end up accounting for it. But it was all defense. It was all of the defense market.

We'll take our next question from Gavin Parsons with UBS.

Thank you. How many PMA parts are you introducing annually now? And what would be the considerations to taking that number higher?

I'd say we're in the 500 area, and we've got the ability to do more. We've got to scale the whole thing. There always is the question, do we do more or do we pick higher value potential product? I mean that's always up for consideration. But I'd say it's in the 500 area. And the other thing that's important to also understand is that when we're developing these parts, sometimes we do so in conjunction with our principles.

So sometimes they hold the PMA, sometimes we hold the PMA. And the other thing which is really important is the DER repairs. Because the DER repairs basically can frequently or very frequently perform the same function, the same effective function as the PMA part, and we achieved the sales through that channel.

And at this time, I will turn the conference back to Victor Mendelson for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Samara. Thank you, everybody, for being on the call. We look forward to talking with you on our next call. And if in between, you have other questions, feel free to contact us. Thank you very much for your confidence and your support. Have a good day.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Welcome to the HEICO Corporation First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. My name is Samara, and I will be your operator for today's call. Certain statements in this conference call will constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and contingencies. HEICO's actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by those forward-looking statements.

Factors that could cause such differences include, among others, the severity, magnitude and duration of public health threats, our liquidity and the amount and timing of cash generation, lower commercial air travel, airline fleet changes or airline purchasing decisions, which could cause lower demand for our goods and services; product specification costs and requirements, which could cause an increase in our cost to complete contracts; governmental and regulatory demands, export policies and restrictions; reductions in defense, space or homeland security spending by U.S. and/or foreign customers or competition from existing and new competitors, which could reduce our sales; our ability to introduce new products and services at profitable pricing levels, which could reduce our sales or sales growth; product development or manufacturing difficulties, which could increase our product development and manufacturing costs and delay sales; cybersecurity events or other disruptions of our information technology systems could adversely affect our business and our ability to make acquisitions, including obtaining any applicable domestic and/or foreign governmental approvals and achieve operating synergies from acquired businesses; customer credit risk, interest, foreign currency exchange and income tax rates; and economic conditions, including the effects of inflation within and outside of the aviation, defense, space, medical, telecommunications and electronics industries, which could negatively impact our costs and revenues.

Parties listening to this call are encouraged to review all of HEICO's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, filings on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law. I now turn the call over to Eric Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Samira, and good morning to everyone on this call. Thank you for joining us, and we welcome you to this HEICO First Quarter Fiscal '26 Earnings Announcement Teleconference. I'm Eric Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-CEO. I am joined here this morning by Victor Mendelson, HEICO's other Co-Chairman and Co-CEO; and Carlos Macau, our Executive Vice President and CFO.

We received many nice comments about Victor's extemporaneous remarks as he opened our last conference call to discuss HEICO's 2025 fourth quarter results. So we thought our listeners would appreciate a little insight into HEICO before we discuss HEICO's 2026 first quarter results.

Obviously, HEICO's 2026 first quarter results reflect continued growth, and we are very proud of them, especially considering that only 36 years ago, HEICO had only $25 million in revenue, $2 million in earnings and 200 team members. Our dad, Victor and I would often question ourselves, how is our 36-year 23% compound annual growth rate in share price possible, especially when we were rarely leveraged at more than 2x EBITDA.

First, we have to thank God for these results. But second, we realized that Dad always had a saying, do the right thing, which was our mantra 24/7 365 for the past 36 years. It wasn't just the same. It was embedded in every single decision, every part sold or repaired, every company acquired and simply everything we did.

Obedience to the unenforceable became our DNA from the time Victor and I were small children to now when we are 60 and 58 years old. Doing the right thing means making honorable choices when nobody is looking. It means spending tens of millions of dollars on quality systems, not because our customers or regulators require them, but because we know it's a good investment that protects our brand.

It means properly reserving for obsolete or excess inventory, not because our auditors require it, but because we know it's needed and mistakes must be learned from, recognized, learned from and never repeated, not swept under the rug in order to protect reported earnings. These are just 2 of the many things that HEICO has done routinely over decades and why we've never had a onetime unusual charge to earnings, whereby the economic earnings of the upcycle are largely erased following a black swan event and investors don't realize much of the earnings never existed in the first place.

Considering our terrific results, we're even more proud of them, given the added cost that many people don't appreciate, but everyone benefits from in the long run. HEICO was built for long-term and sustainable cash generation, which permits our earnings and cash flow to compound decade after decade, not just year after year. We are not into programs of the year, buzzwords or comparing ourselves to others hoping to get a higher multiple on our shares.

We're designed for long-term challenging but sustainable earnings increases. I hope this provided a little insight into HEICO's secret sauce as you listen to our first quarter results. Before reviewing our operating results in detail, I want to take a moment to thank and recognize all of the people who made our excellent performance possible. HEICO's sustained growth and consistent profitability result directly from our team members' talent, dedication and hard work.

Our team members drive our success and differentiate us from other companies. Thank you all for all of your continued commitment and for contributing to another strong outstanding quarter. We are very proud of the first quarter results, which reflect consolidated margin expansion, record net income and strong increases in operating income and net sales.

We remain very bullish and optimistic about HEICO's ability to win new opportunities in fiscal '26 and continue our growth, profitability and strong cash generation legacy. To summarize the highlights of our first quarter of fiscal '26 record results, consolidated net income increased 13% to a record $190.2 million or $1.35 per diluted share in the first quarter of fiscal '26, up from $168 million or $1.20 per diluted share in the first quarter of fiscal '25.

Consolidated operating income and net sales in the first quarter of fiscal '26 improved by 15% and 14%, respectively, as compared to the first quarter of fiscal '25. Net income attributable to HEICO in the first quarter of fiscal '26 and '25 were both favorably impacted by a discrete income tax benefit from stock option exercises. The benefit in the first quarter of fiscal '26, net of noncontrolling interests was $21.8 million or $0.15 per diluted share as compared to $26.5 million or $0.19 per diluted share in the first quarter of fiscal '25.

By the way, that means we got a higher benefit from the discrete income tax benefit from stock options last year as compared to this year. The Flight Support Group delivered strong results in operating income and net sales, achieving quarterly increases of 21% and 15%, respectively, as compared to the first quarter of fiscal '25.

The increases principally reflect strong organic growth of 12%, driven by increased demand across all of Flight Support Group's product lines as well as the contributions from our fiscal '25 acquisitions. The Electronic Technologies Group net sales improved 12% as compared to the first quarter of fiscal '25.

The increase principally reflects strong organic growth of 6%, driven by increased demand across most of our products as well as contributions from our fiscal '25 and '26 acquisitions. Cash flow provided by operating activities was $178.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal '26. Operating cash flow for the quarter was negatively impacted by distributions of approximately $22.7 million to a long-term team member over 40 years and participant in the HEICO Leadership Compensation Plan, the LCP.

The LCP is fully funded and all sources of cash for these distributions are derived from investments in corporate-owned life insurance policies, which are considered investing cash inflows within our statement of cash flows.

As a result, the LCP distributions are not an actual use of cash. We will have another large LCP distribution during the remainder of fiscal '26 of approximately $73 million, which will negatively impact operating cash flows. However, since the LCP, as I said, is fully funded, the distribution will continue to be net cash neutral to HEICO. Consolidated EBITDA increased 14% to $312 million in the first quarter of fiscal '26, up from $273.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 1.79x as a result as of January 31, '26, as compared to 1.6x as of October 31, '25.

The increase in our leverage ratio is a direct result of the successful completion of an acquisition during the first quarter. Acquisition activity in both operating segments remains very strong with a very healthy pipeline of opportunities.

We continue to target complementary businesses that align strategically and financially, focusing on disciplined accretive transactions that enhance HEICO's long-term value. In January '26, we paid our regular semiannual cash dividend of $0.12 per share. This represented our 95th consecutive semiannual cash dividend since 1979. Now I'd like to take a moment to discuss our recent acquisition activity. In January, our Electronic Technologies Group acquired 100% of Axillon Aerospace's fuel containment business, which was renamed Rockmart Fuel Containment. Rockmart designed to manufacture advanced fuel containment solutions, primarily for military fixed and rotary wing aircraft. The purchase price of this acquisition was paid in cash using proceeds from our revolving credit facility.

And we are very excited that Rockmart has joined HEICO family, and we are very excited about their future contribution to HEICO's earnings. Earlier this month, the Flight Support Group acquired 100% of Ethos Energy Group Limited. Ethos provides repair solutions for engine components and accessories for various industrial gas turbine, aeroderivative gas turbines, aerospace and defense engine platforms.

I'm sure everyone on this call is keenly aware of the tremendous increase in demand for power caused by the exponential demand in AI or artificial intelligence and LLMs or large language model adoption.

And this power is largely expected to be created through the use of industrial gas turbines in aeroderivative gas turbines. HEICO is obviously excited to enter this market and bring our technical capability and OEM relationships to serve this growing power demand.

And we believe HEICO's acquisition of Ethos provides us with the perfect platform to sell our high-quality repair solutions to satisfy these rapidly growing needs. The purchase price of this acquisition was paid with a combination of cash using proceeds from our revolving credit facility and shares of HEICO Class A common stock.

And this week, the Flight Support Group entered into an agreement to acquire 80% of the stock of a company that provides a range of services for commercial aviation and defense component platforms. Closing is subject to governmental approval and standard closing conditions and is expected to occur in the second quarter of fiscal '26.

The remaining 20% book continuing to be owned by certain members of the seller's management team. We expect these acquisitions to be accretive to our earnings within the year following the acquisition. I now turn the call over to Victor Mendelson, HEICO's other Co-Chairman and Co-CEO to discuss the first quarter results of our Flight Support and Electronic Technologies Groups in further detail.

Eric, thank you very much. Before we get into the details, I echo what Eric mentioned at the outset of the call, and thank our team members, the HEICO team members. The results we're discussing today are a direct reflection of their talent, their discipline and commitment to execution, their collaboration and focus on excellence in all they do and all we do is truly inspiring. .

The Flight Support Group's net sales increased 15% to $820 million in the first quarter of fiscal '26, up from $713.2 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25. The net sales increase in the first quarter of fiscal '25 stems from strong organic growth of 12% and the impact from our fiscal '25 acquisitions, the organic net sales growth reflects increased demand across all of our product lines. The Flight Support Group's operating income increased 21% to $200.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25, up from $166.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25. The operating income increase in the first quarter of fiscal '26 was principally driven by the previously mentioned net sales growth, SG&A expense efficiencies realized from the net sales growth and an improved gross profit margin.

That improved gross profit margin principally resulted from the previously mentioned higher net sales and a more favorable product mix within our repair and overhaul parts and services product lines. The Flight Support Group's operating margin improved to 24.5% in the first quarter, very impressive in the first quarter of fiscal '26, up from 23.3% in the first quarter of fiscal '25. The increased operating margin in the first quarter of fiscal '26 principally reflects a decrease in SG&A expenses as a percent of net sales, mainly reflecting the previously mentioned SG&A expense efficiencies and improved gross margin.

Acquisition-related intangible amortization expense consumed 260 basis points, approximately 260 basis points of our operating income in the first quarter of fiscal '26, so the FSG's cash margin before amortization, or EBITA, as we call it, was approximately 27.1%, which is excellent and has been consistently excellent and is 110 basis points higher than the comparable FSG cash margin of 26% in the first quarter of '25.

Obviously, we are very, very happy with the continued operational excellence and improving cash generation demonstrated by the businesses in the FSG. Now turning to the first quarter results for the Electronic Technologies Group. The group's net sales increased 12% to $370.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal '26, up from $330.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25. The net sales increase was occasioned by strong 6% organic growth and the impact from our fiscal '25 and '26 acquisitions. The organic net sales growth is mainly attributable to increased sales of our aerospace and defense and other product -- electronics products, partially offset by a decrease in space product sales.

The Electronic Technologies Group's operating income was $73.2 million in the first quarter of fiscal '26 as compared to $76.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal '25. That operating income decrease principally reflects a decrease in gross profit margin, partially offset by the previously mentioned net sales growth.

The decrease in gross profit margin, and this is important, resulted from a less favorable product mix of defense products and the previously mentioned decrease in net sales of space products, partially offset by the previously mentioned increase in net sales of our aerospace products. As you know, quarterly margin variability in our ETG is consistent with the group's history, and there are periods in which shipments of lower, though not low margin products are a greater proportion of our sales than in other quarters, which is predominantly based on shipment schedules.

Based on our backlogs and our shipment plans, we expect the ETG margins to improve as the year progresses, particularly in the second half of the year. The Electronic Technologies Group's operating margin was 19.8% in the first quarter of fiscal '25 as compared to 23.1% in the first quarter of fiscal '25 -- excuse me, 19.8% in the first quarter of fiscal '26 as compared to 23.1% in the first quarter of fiscal '25.

The decreased operating margin principally reflects the previously mentioned lower gross profit. And you may recall that we experienced similar unfavorable mixes from time to time, including the first quarter of fiscal '24 and the rest of the year was quite healthy for us, and we're expecting the same kind of thing this year.

Importantly, before acquisition-related intangibles amortization expense, our operating margin was approximately 24% as intangibles amortization consumes over 410 basis points of our margin. And that is, as you know, how we judge our businesses and it most closely correlates to cash. On a true operating basis, these are still excellent margins even though we would not be satisfied with them on a full year basis.

The ETG's strong margins resulted in another record backlog, demonstrating both strong demand for our products and robust end markets. Our shipments and shipment mix are typically uneven during the course of the year. We experienced some of that unevenness in our shipment mix this quarter, which was not a surprise and is a pattern we've often discussed on these calls and elsewhere.

We are pleased with the quarter's organic growth and are particularly excited about the opportunities in defense, commercial aerospace and space for the remainder of fiscal '26 -- and I should add that this optimism is supported by the record backlog and increasing order volumes we've experienced. Thank you, and I turn the call back over to Eric.

Thank you, Victor. Our team is filled with optimism as we look at the remainder of fiscal '26. We expect continued sales momentum in both Flight Support and the Electronic Technologies Group, supported by organic demand for our products, together with the impact of recent acquisitions. The current pro-business agenda in the United States continues to align well with our long-term goals, providing key markets like defense, space and commercial aviation with a very strong tailwind in funding.

We remain focused on pursuing selective acquisition opportunities that align with our growth strategy. Our disciplined focus to financial management continues to emphasize long-term shareholder value through a combination of strategic acquisitions and organic growth while preserving financial strength and flexibility.

Acquisition activity remains extremely robust across both business segments. supported by an outstanding pipeline of potential opportunities currently under evaluation. Our acquisitions teams are busier than ever working on these potential transactions as one of HEICO's core strengths is identifying high-quality businesses that complement and reinforce our strategic positioning. We believe HEICO is the preferred buyer for sellers seeking a great home for their businesses.

Consistent with our long-standing acquisition philosophy, we will only pursue opportunities that meet our strict financial and strategic criteria are accretive and have the potential to generate durable long-term value for our shareholders. We thank you for listening to this call. And now Samara, if you'd like to open up the floor for questions, we're happy to answer them.

[Operator Instructions]

And we'll take our first question from Larry Solow with CJS Securities.

I guess first question for Victor. Just I think maybe the ETG is putting a little pressure on the shares this morning. It sounds like and I know you referenced Q1 '24, it sounds like the mix issue is completely temporary. It was a pretty significant sequential drop. But any more color on that, your backlog, I guess, the mix doesn't sound like you have any remediation and we could balance right back to the low to mid-20s range for the year. Is that fair to say? .

Yes, I think that's absolutely right. That's our expectation. And based on the shipment schedules and what we have, that's what we're expecting. And it isn't unusual for us to move around, it may be lower than the average. But we get at times, we get the perfect storm of good shipment schedules. And sometimes, we got the perfect storm of unfortunate shipment schedules. But -- and that's why we really guide people to look at the full year on the ETG particularly as it moves on throughout the quarters. And the experience we had on this -- it was in multiple different products and subsidiaries, as I said, sort of the perfect storm on the downside, if you will, on margins, very heavily mix related, extremely heavily mix related. And right now, what we have scheduled for shipments and what our subsidiaries are showing on the -- as the year is pretty exciting. Of course, we'll have to see. There are no guarantees I always say in life. But right now, I'm feeling good about what our companies are telling us, feeling very good about what our companies are telling us.

Right. It feels like a great environment for a lot of your companies, right, the defense...

Yes. I mean if you look at our orders and you look at our backlog in the group and how it's been growing, it's very exciting. And the mix of what's been growing is a nice mix overall. So feeling good about it and nothing is ever easy, but feeling good about it.

Yes, sure. And while I got you Victor, a pretty nice size acquisition, I guess, renamed Rockmart Fuel. I think it's your third largest ever in HEICO history. So any more color on this? Is this your usual sort of type multiple and accretion we should expect over time?

It's a very nice business. It is a -- it's a supplier and has done a lot of business with one of our other subsidiaries, Robertson Fuel Systems. They will be operating steadily, but there's a lot that they can do to do for each other in terms of production, moving out production as well as new designs and being pretty innovative for our customers. And so that will actually -- that is reporting to the Robertson business to keep things streamlined and easy.

I think it's -- and we expect that to be -- it has been growing. We expect it to continue to grow. There's a big aftermarket, if you will, cycle to a replacement cycle that appears to be growing. We appear to be in the early innings of that. So we're pretty happy with it. As we said, and we expect it to be accretive to earnings in the first year of ownership. We've only owned it for about a month. So so far, it's so good. And I won't declare victory or anything else based on 1 month right now feeling pretty good about it.

Great. If I could just one quick, Eric. Just the organic growth is still very strong at 12% on a difficult comp. I'm just curious, historically, Q1, you usually have seen some seasonal slowdown. We have it in the last couple of years recovery and growth on the aerospace side. But just curious any thoughts on -- are we maybe just getting it to a little more normal seasonality where Q1 actually drops a little bit from Q4, which we hadn't seen in a couple of years, but we used to see if we go back.

Larry, thank you very much for your question. I mean, you're absolutely correct. I mean, in general, if you look last year, Q1 was the organic growth, likewise in 2024 as well. I'm particularly proud of these results given the high comps that we had in the prior years. We had very high comps basically for the last 4 years and to post 12% organic growth on top end, I think, is really outstanding.

And if you will, we don't stuff the channel. There is a whole bunch of inventory that could have gone out, which didn't go out for various reasons. But we're very careful to make sure that we do what the customers want. I'm very happy with these numbers, I think they reflect very well on the group.

And we'll take our next question from Peter Arment with Baird.

Nice results as usual. Victor, maybe we could just drill in a little bit to try to understand the space kind of mix. I know in the past, it's been a nice margin contributor for ETG. But could you describe a little bit, I think you were a little more geo-oriented versus like the LEO market. Is that still true, just given the overall mix and just how you see the overall kind of setup for HEICO, given all the demand for LEO market?

Yes. It's a very good question. Originally, the business was more heavily geo and over time, I would say now we're more heavily LEO and that -- in the businesses that were geo originally. Shifting to LEO isn't cheap, right? Margins are less. There's a lot of different that goes into that. And -- but that -- I think we're getting through, if you will, the sort of the other side of that over the course of this year. And we still have a pretty good offering for geo, but we go where the customers are, and that's really the LEO market.

And we have some great businesses with very strong margins in LEO too by the way. Actually, I think, now some really strong margins there. So -- but that, as you may recall, too, has been a very uneven -- very, very uneven business, I mean, from quarter-to-quarter, and we like space, but we're not going to be too much of a space company for that reason. And you probably noticed that we've. We've been careful how we've grown in space for that reason.

Got it. I appreciate the color there. And then, Eric, just briefly give a little commentary that a competitor bought a PMA business. And obviously, you guys still think are kind of the leader in PMAs. Is this a deal that had overlap with you? Or how should view of that?

Thanks, Peter, for your question. Well, you know how the old saying goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery. And for years, when we started doing this, people thought we were crazy to be in the PMA business. And then they thought we were crazy to be in the repair business in distribution and all the things we did. And those people who were smart enough to invest in HEICO did extremely well.

So we think this is a sign that the PMA market is incredibly strong, and there are a tremendous number of PMA candidates out there. People have asked me, what does this mean for HEICO's competitive positioning. And we feel very strongly about HEICO's competitive positioning, where we have a -- we've been running this company for 36 years, and we've always focused on the customer and always focused on generating value for the customer.

And I would venture to guess, we probably have the best customer relationships in the entire industry. And I don't anticipate that to change. And that's because we add value. We do what we say we're going to do and people know when they work with HEICO, they're getting a top quality product.

So we still have a tremendous presence in that market. We are totally committed to it. And I think it shows that others are recognizing the value of the PMA business.

We'll take our next question from Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets.

Yes, Eric, maybe just wanted to follow up on your just comments there. I think there's a belief that PMA represents one of the real secular growing markets coming out of the pandemic as the industry continues to face a lot of service challenges. Can you just maybe comment from an industry perspective, what kind of growth you're seeing in PMA? And where maybe you see specific opportunities for HEICO either in markets you typically haven't been in? Or maybe with customer sets or any other way you look at the market to help us better frame how PMA is actually really doing broadly and for you, obviously, here as we continue to see the recovery?

Yes, Ken, I would be happy to answer that. And first of all, I really recognize you as you were one of the early one of the analysts who very early on figured out that what HEICO was doing in the PMA space was going to be very successful both to the airlines as well as for our shareholders and team members and those who followed your advice have profited handsomely.

We are very committed and have never been more excited about the PMA business than we are today. We are -- we've got roughly 20,000 different parts. It is a huge catalog and a huge competitive advantage because when we want to develop a new part, I mean, there's very little stuff in this world, which is truly, truly new to us.

We've got this catalog. We're able to go back and reference the drawings, the specifications, the vendors, the manufacturing processes and the barrier to entry is tremendous in doing that. So what we really need is greater acceptance at the airlines.

And we've spoken about this for many years, why don't the airlines buy even more, why don't they push us to buy even more. We're very happy with what we've done. But why isn't it even more? And I do think, to your point, that coming at COVID, they recognize what we've said all along that PMA isn't only about price, it's about a turn time and making sure that you've got an alternate vendor and you have the part on the shelf.

I have got tremendous respect for all of our competitors, who supply parts to the industry. It's a very hard thing to forecast the demand for a particular part. You never know what it's going to be, and it depends on so many things, including the type of build that was done by either the airline or the repair station at the prior shop visit for the engineer the component.

If times were good and they had funny of money and then they put a lot of new parts in, then when the component comes back, you're not going to need a lot of parts. But if times weren't good and they did the minimum, then you're going to need a lot of parts. And the problem is for all of the vendors it becomes extremely difficult to forecast in that situation.

So what we've always said is that HEICO provides not only top quality and outstanding value and cost savings, but we also provide availability. And this is something that has become front and center since COVID. So we're happy about that. When you look at the U.S. specifically, the products that we're doing, our sales in the PMA business are roughly 3/4 nonengine, which would be components, airframe interior and about 25% engine. Our engine business is at a record level. We are doing extremely well.

We are developing more engine parts, the airlines want us to develop more engine parts. I think you've written about the cost of engine overhaul and the cost to overhaul some of these new engines is significantly higher than the cost to overhaul some of the existing engines. So we think that there's going to be tremendous opportunity for us throughout the entire value chain. And I don't want to pick on just engines, but on components as well.

The newer components are extraordinarily expensive. I mean they are off the charts, nuts on the prices that they are charging. So I think that HEICO is going to do extraordinarily well in our PMA and repair business as we help airlines reduce their costs and keep them somewhat manageable and provide an alternate source of supply. I can't get into obvious specific product types or manufacturer types for competitive reasons. We'd rather just go do our thing and satisfy the airlines.

Yes. I appreciate all the color, Eric. Just to put a finer point on that. Yes.

I might just add to what Eric just said, just to maybe put a few leafs on the tree, if you would. Our organic growth in our aftermarket business, which is our parts and repair business was up organically in the teens and specialty products is in the high single digits. So to echo what Eric said, I mean our end markets in aerospace are very robust and our guys are executing. I just thought you might find that and get helpful. .

I appreciate that, Carlos. And maybe just to put a finer point on it. Historically, the argument was the lessors and maybe some of the emerging market airlines didn't use PMA much. Are you seeing any shift in customer types and adoptions?

Yes. We are seeing shifts in customer option adoptions the airlines recognize they need this. I'm aware of all sorts of activity and initiatives which I'd rather not call out on this call for competitive reasons, but we think that they are going to benefit HEICO tremendously.

And we'll take our next question from Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

maybe my first question, I just wanted to clarify something I joined later on the call. With Ethos, was it paid through A class shares? And Eric, how do we think about those distributions happening? Because I think you were mentioning it and why was it A stock versus the common stock?

Yes, I'd be happy to answer. So most of the consideration was cash. So I think it was roughly -- Carlos knows the exact percentage, but I think it was over 80% in cash, if I'm not mistaken, Carlos, is that correct?

That's correct. It was a small -- it was a small quantity of A shares, and they wanted to feel like owners. It was their request.

They -- yes. And look, sometimes we do this because people are very happy to own the HEICO stock. The request was for shares. So that is why we granted the A shares. And that was the concept there. But we're very excited about that acquisition.

Okay. Got it. No, it certainly seems like the right end market to be in. And then maybe Victor, one for you. As we think about ETG profitability going forward, I know it ebbs and flows. Is there any way you could bridge us on the margins in the quarter and like how to look forward?

Look, we continue to expect 22% to 24% GAAP margins in the business, which is 26% to 28% over the course of the year. So you're going to have quarters that are above and below that amount, which is, again, historically the case. I mean there's nothing new to this. I try to remind people this as often as possible that there will be variability in the margins and the growth rate of the ETG. There's nothing that's changed, there's nothing that's fundamentally changed in the business. .

And by the way, Sheila, just to expand on what I said about Ethos. The sellers recognize that this market was really a tremendously growing market. And for them to part with one of the foremost repair and overhaul shops focusing on industrial gas turbines and aeroderivatives gas turbines, they really wanted to be compensated. And they the request for HEICO A shares was in order to help reward them.

We're very excited. Everybody is very knowledgeable about what's going on in the power generation space. And Ethos has incredible capabilities in developing and executing on partial repairs, component repairs and the access to that market. They've got 3 different facilities in Connecticut, South Carolina and Everdeen Scotland. So they've got great access to the market, great people, great technology. And by putting it with HEICO, I think that it's going to provide HEICO with the ability to access what is, as you know, a tremendously growing market.

So the A shares were just a component, if you will, a sweetener because if they're going to part with what we think is an incredible asset, they wanted something additional. And we were able -- the other thing which is important, it's very easy to buy companies, but to buy companies at prices where it's accretive in using cash is extremely difficult. And we were able to get this deal done at a reasonable price and the A shares were part of that entitlement.

And we'll take our next question from Scott Deuschle with Deutsche Bank.

Victor, there's some elevated inflation right now in certain parts of the microelectronic supply chain, particularly for memory. So I was wondering if you could speak to what ETG is seeing there. And if you expect to see any margin pressure there either now or in the future?

Thank you, Scott. It's a good question. We're definitely experiencing that elevated inflation rate in some of the components. We typically are able to pass those on to our customers. I think they accept that. They understand that. But there is a lag effect and that does take some time, you've got to work off the POs and items that are in the backlog.

It is what I would consider a headwind, but more in the noise level and not particularly notable. And by the way, varies business by business. But overall, on a consolidated basis, more in the noise level.

Okay. Are you generally able to get all the products that you need like a supply chain itself? Or is it just a cost this year?

I would say it's essentially normal what it's been outside of that supply chain crunch, which is to say that there's always something -- there's always a hot list item that's late and kind of holding things up somewhere in the system. And -- but for the most part, everything is running normal. So it's kind of like airline schedules on a typical day. There are a certain number of delays, and that's kind of how it's running now. .

Okay. And then for Eric, do you see any opportunity for AI to help accelerate any of the maybe reverse engineering analysis for PMA and the speed at which new products can be brought to market. We're alternatively do you think AI could help yourself for your airline customers better query parts catalogs and identify new maybe previously unexplored PMA opportunities. Just trying to better understand how HEICO can use AI to sustain or even accelerate growth .

Yes. That question has a lot of insight. And I think the answer is definitely with regard to both developing new parts, streamlining processes. It was just up at one of our subsidiaries last week, and they showed me there was a certain process in our quality acceptance area where we had multiple documents and multiple forms had to be filled out, and they were able through AI to come up with a revised process, which is significantly more efficient than what we were doing before.

So we're already using it in the operations at HEICO. As far as the engineering, I think there is a lot of opportunity there, and it is as well being used over in the engineering process. And I agree with you for customers to be able to figure out what they need to buy and look at the HEICO performance rate, our quality rate, our quality rating, how happy everybody is with us. I think that it will be a continued tailwind for HEICO.

I mean there's no reason why customers aren't buying more of our product line. And I think AI will accelerate our growth.

We'll take our next question from Ron Epstein with Bank of America.

Just as a follow-on here. If you looked at some of the evolving contract structures that are going on with some of the big defense primes there, in particular, the 7-year framework agreements. So far, we've seen a handful of Lockheed, a bigger handful of RTX. What kind of impact do you expect that to have on you guys if at all, where potentially you could get visibility on contracts out maybe 7 years? And how does that impact your business and how are you thinking about it? .

Yes. Ron, good question. We think it's a net positive. We have a number of companies that supply in a lot of those programs. So it's something that gives us nice visibility into the future, helps us plan better and on capacity, we've got really good capacity availability. It's usually a question of hiring people and bring more people in and figuring we do that in different ships. So overall, I think that's a net positive for us.

And also just to add to that, in the Flight Support Group Specialty Products division, we think that, that's going to have a very good impact because we've got -- we produce a lot of these different components and having the advanced visibility into what's coming down the road is going to be extremely helpful. And that's been a good tailwind for that business as well with record backlogs for products?

Got it. Got it. Got it. And then we've talked about some supply chain stuff. I mean have you had any impact from critical minerals or magnets or whatever else? And how you've been managing that in the places where you do?

Yes, it's very, very minimal. It has not been a significant issue for us. And so far, we do not expect that it will become one. And in fact, there could be opportunities for us as a result of that when some of the new supply comes online in the U.S. vis-a-vis acquisitions and things of that nature, but that's further down the road.

Got it. Got it. And then maybe one more, if I can, to both of you guys. What are you seeing broadly in the acquisition market around valuation and so on and so forth. I mean -- as you both know, no doubt, the sector has gotten pretty hot. And how is that impacting how you're looking at valuations and how you can do M&A going forward, where it is accretive in the framework of time that you guys like?

Yes. So Ron, it's definitely pushed multiples up over a long period of time. It isn't anything new, maybe a little bit more than historically. For us, certainly, that's why we're working so hard to make sure that we do as well as we've done in the past. And one of the important factors with us, I think, is the seller. And is the seller, someone who's looking for something unique, particularly a good home for the business, someone who's going to retain the legacy and the operations in a similar capacity has operated in the past. And that gives us a really big advantage we've discovered historically. It doesn't mean we're going to buy everything we want. .

But it means there's a very nice pipeline. We have to count on a little more future growth, I think and believe in the growth stories a little more than we used to. And so we're spending more time doing that to ensure that we think we're going to get the growth out of the businesses that's estimated.

And then also just to add to that for a moment, Ron. As we mentioned, our acquisition teams are busier than ever. Their pipelines are full. I would expect additional acquisition activity this year. I think our shareholders, my guess is they're going to be very happy about what we're doing. And the other key thing is that as Victor said by differentiating ourselves and providing the best home for the seller that has tremendous value. It's very easy to go out and pay high prices and win an acquisition. It's another thing to make it work financially. And HEICO has very rigorous cash flow requirements. And we model each deal on its own where it's got to support its own debt service, its own working capital needs, et cetera.

And that's how we've been able to compound, you don't compound by going out and paying crazy prices for something. You compound by buying something that can stand on its own and is very reasonable. And when you look at the -- some of the prices of switching topics for a moment of some of what I believe are the defense tech businesses, I think they're extremely exaggerated. And we look for businesses that generate cash now and in the future and paying extremely high multiples for something that really doesn't generate cash, it's just not what HEICO is about and not what we plan on doing.

And we'll take our next question from Scott Mikus with Melius Research.

I was curious, do you have a sense of how inventory levels are at your airline customers? Because you mentioned that you didn't want to stuff inventory into the channel. And then I was also curious, within your distribution businesses. Have there been any noticeable changes over the past several quarters and how fast they are moving inventory as the pace picked up as airlines perhaps for the summer travel season?

Yes. The -- I would say the inventory levels are very consistent to what we've seen in the past. There are certain parts that can be overstocked on other parts where they're understocked on. But in general, there hasn't been a big change. As far as our distribution businesses, we've done extremely well. They are extremely busy supporting the demands of the aftermarket. And -- but I really sort of see it very much as business as usual and not much of a change for HEICO there.

Okay. And then thinking back a year ago, a lot of us were asking about DOGE and how that could benefit your business? We're now 1 year into the current administration. Have you started to see the Pentagon get the ball rolling on acquiring more alternative parts to both reduce maintenance costs and improve readiness rates for military aircraft, are they at least doing it on the derivatives like the PH and KC-46?

We've seen some movement there, yes. We always said that this would be a medium-term project. It's very hard to get things fully moving at the speed that we would like. But we are seeing good progress there, and we do anticipate further progress to come. So we feel very good. You look at the President's defense budget and something has got to be a bill payer for these tremendous increases. And this is very logical. And I think what the Secretary of War is doing makes a lot of sense and they just can't keep on paying these high prices. So I'm still very optimistic in that regard.

I'll take our next question is from John Godyn with Citi.

Here. Eric, I wanted to follow up on the energy business and Ethos and what you did there. You offered a number of data points in breadcrumbs. We see different companies across A&D, attacking this in different ways. I just wanted to talk about the picture, but the types of questions in my mind are did you kind of go down this path based on reverse inquiries from customers? What types of components do you expect to supply? Is it based on your existing SKUs? Or do you think they're going to develop new SKUs? There are so many questions here. I can't go through all of them, but I just wanted to give you a chance to kind of talk through this a bit more.

Sure. And I think that's a great area, which, frankly, hasn't been focused on by a lot of people. We thought that this would be a great market. If you look -- we've been working on Ethos now for approximately a year. So we started that project a year ago. And we saw what was going on in the industrial gas turbine space and, to a lesser extent, the aeroderivative. And we thought that this would be a very strong area.

So we went out very aggressively to work with the seller and come up with a deal that made sense. I think we also developed a very good relationship with the operating folks at the businesses, and we were definitely the preferred buyer.

As far as the aeroderivative connection. I mean that makes a lot of sense. Everybody is very familiar with about HEICO does and really what we can bring to some of the aeroderivative parts should customers want that as well on the industrial gas turbine parts.

Both on the IGT and the aeroderivative, Ethos has very strong OEM relationships. And they have -- they're approved by various OEMs to support those products. And they've been doing so for a very long time.

So we are going to continue to support those channels and not offer an alternative if there is an OEM relationship there, where there aren't OEM relationships to try to form them with different companies.

And if not, we think very good opportunity to continue penetrating the markets there. There's just a huge demand. I mean you see what's going on with all the power companies, and Ethos has an extremely wide array of products that it services. It does blades, veins, all sorts of very static parts, rotating parts components.

And we think that their technology lines up perfectly with ours. And we are super excited to have made this acquisition, and we think that it's going to be extremely successful and a great entree for HEICO. If HEICO were to try to enter the industrial gas turbine or the aeroderivative market on its own, it would be extremely difficult.

We didn't have much of a relationship with those customers. And here, Ethos has been an incredible supplier for decades with these companies. Actually, ethos, the genesis of it is it used to be the Wood Group Aero accessories and components group. So they have decades of working with the energy companies and the turbine suppliers. So we think we've got a great platform to leverage and move forward.

And this is such a big market. I'm just kind of -- this is a very big picture question, but do you see this as something that could become so large for HEICO over -- in the fullness of time, that as symbolically, we might even have an IGT segment, a third segment for the first time or something like that? Could it be that big?

That would be very aspirational. So I don't want to get over my skis here and promise that, but we do have very high expectations for the business. It really -- I would say it's in early innings right now. The company has got great capability, great people, 3 locations and I hope what you're saying is correct, and I'm sure that our team members at Ethos and at Wencor are listening to this call. And they are inspired by your question and outlook for it.

And we'll take our next question from Matthew Akers with BNP Paribas.

Most of mine have been asked already, but I wanted to just touch on the balance sheet and just how you feel what point times leverage obviously has come down quite a bit since Wencor, I think historically, you've been a little bit lower. So just how you feel -- are you comfortable at this level? Would you prefer to be lower? It sounds like there's a lot of potential M&A deals in the pipeline. So just how kind of how you're thinking about the balance sheet here?

I'm happy to take that question. Our leverage right now is under 2x. So I'm very comfortable at this leverage point. And I expect that what we've done in the past will continue in the future. We'll continue to use a line of credit as a primary vehicle for funding acquisitions, which then affords us the opportunity to quickly pay that down and reload for the next deals.

And so we'll still use that type of a structure. Right now, our permanent debt or the bonds that we have are running less than 1 turn of EBITDA. So I think our capital structure is quite flexible, and we're not capital constrained. So from a balance sheet perspective, we could go higher on leverage.

I think if we did that, it would be very opportunistic and there have to be a pathway to generate significant cash to bring us back down in the 2x, 2.5x leverage ratio, I mean, I would think that, that's something that's doable for us.

I don't think HEICO is going to be a 7x levered business that's not in the cards for us. But I'm not going to rule out for an incredibly good acquisition. If we went to that level and had a pathway to get back down into the 2s over a reasonable period of time, we would certainly consider that and execute on if it was good for our shareholders.

I think that's really helpful. Yes. No. And then I guess just one on ETG. I guess was the government shutdown at all related to any of the mix impact that you guys discussed in the quarter? Or is that not the driver?

That wasn't the driver. It did have some impact a little bit, stuff shifting out, and so we'll pick up the benefit of that later on in the year. But I wouldn't call it a material impact.

We'll take our next question from Gavin Parsons with UBS.

We have Max Miller on for Gavin.

It's pretty clear that a lot of the tightness in the aftermarket and some of the OEM pricing, you're seeing actually increases the value proposition of HEICO alternatives. If we hypothetically flip that script, what are the implications for HEICO in a world where maybe the new aircraft come online, some of the older platforms come out of the fleet and aftermarket or at least the fleet age begins to normalize a little bit. Does that change the math for PMA utilization and where you see HEICO thriving?

We don't think so. I mean our business is always impacted by first and foremost, the growth in fleet hours or available seat miles. And then it is the subcomponents of that are -- you look at the age of the aircraft. I mean, you've got this 20-something-thousand aircraft fleet, which is aging 1 year per year. And the do a really good job of making sure that they escalate prices very aggressively to make up for any of that to take advantage of that.

And then when you look at the fleet retirement that typically hasn't been a big part of -- big part of the equation. But it is something that we continue to look at. There are also -- I think there's a very big opportunity for all of these new aircraft that have been delivered roughly over the last 10 years, the price of the spares on those aircraft is significantly higher than on the spares on the aircraft that they replace.

So if you look at line for line the same line LRU on an older aircraft versus a newer aircraft, the newer ones are significantly more expensive. So all of this is to say, I think -- I agree with you. I think our value proposition increases substantially. And I think that we're going to be in a very good place. We're already taking advantage of the opportunity in a lot of these markets, and I think that will continue.

We'll take our next question from Michael Ciarmoli with Truist.

Maybe quickly, Eric, just to go back to John's energy line of questioning, and I don't know if this is a quick one or a conversation for a bigger conversation for another time. But the CFM56 and its potential use in the power generation market. You've obviously got a lot of content on some of those legacy platforms. Should we expect that assuming it gains traction in the energy marketplace. Can that be a significant tailwind in terms of those platforms generating a materially more amount of parts thinking that they've got life after or additional life besides kind of in the traditional aircraft market?

Yes. I think definitely. When you look at the aeroderivative market, there is tremendous life in repurposing those engines. There are many companies doing that, whether it's on some of the old CF6s or the CFM56 is, but the use of the HEICO parts in those repairs and overhauls is, I expect going to be substantial. So I think that there is a very good tailwind for us there.

And we'll take our next question from Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel.

Congratulations on the quarter. Just one for Carlos. Just looking back at space organic growth in the Q last year, it was exceptional $13.5 million year-over-year. So you're going to give us how much it was down this quarter. Can you -- in this Q, can you preview what that decline is?

The decline was -- I can give you some color on that. So the decline in space organically was in the high single digits for the quarter compared to Q1 of '25. And as Victor mentioned earlier, Jonathan, it's not a result of order volume kicking down or backlog not being. It's really just a function of shipments always is it space.

And so I wouldn't read too much into that, to be candid with you. I think you'll see some of that recover in the subsequent quarters as we catch those shipments going forward.

I think that shows that has to do with that great strong comp last year. And the other question I heard folks ask us is, you have exceptional positioning with the legacy space and defense hardware providers. How is your penetration with new customers in this area? Are you guys able to maintain positions at these new people in space and defense?

Thank you, John. It's a good question. The answer to that is yes. We picked up a number of new space and defense tech customers along the way. And so far, we're holding on to them. The way we generally look at it is that we are going to supply the customer base. They need our parts, our products, regardless of who they are. And for the most part, that seems to be holding true. Thanks for the question.

We'll take our next question from Tony Bancroft with Gabelli Funds.

Great job. Mine obviously is revolving around the defense budget you saw the proposed potentially a $1.5 trillion budget even if that doesn't come to fruition over a number of years is still -- it's a big number, just directionally, how do you see that impacting your business, maybe just broad strokes on that. And then obviously, all the the announcements earlier this year from the Department of War or the programs, drill dominance, arsenal freedom, you name it. How -- what have you been told that you've spoken to Department Board and just maybe an overall view on those dynamics?

Well, first, Tony, thank you very much for joining us and for your comments and very much appreciate them. In terms of the outlook for us, the impact on first question, you're aware the impact on us of the increased defense budgets and some of these orders that definitely is beneficial. I mean, obviously, the devil will be in the details ultimately where that falls over the years. .

But from what we see and have heard, and we talked a little bit earlier about some of these multiyear buys that the government is doing on programs we're on, on both sides of the business. This applies to both the electronic technologies and Flight Support Groups. There's definitely an impact and a benefit and maybe we're even seeing some of that in our backlogs now, and that's a good thing.

And in terms of the Golden Dome possibilities, it's not that completely defined publicly, but from what we know and what we see, it consists of a lot of existing programs, particularly obviously missile defense programs. And again, we're on both sides of the business, Flight Support and Electronic Technologies.

We're on a lot of those programs, and there appear to be some newer tracking and reconnaissance parts of that system. And we are -- from what we're told, some of the things we're selling on, I can't go on obviously, specifics, but we're told that they are for Golden Dome. There's no Golden Dome department. You don't get a letter head that says Golden Dome is sufficiently golden done. There was this list of companies. They put out as primary vendors. But remember, we're down a layer in the supplier base.

And then, of course, as I've answered earlier, I mentioned the defense tech guys are participating there. It appears in a variety of ways, and we're picking that up as well. So overall, both are positives for us, and we feel good about them on again, both sides of the business.

We'll take our next question from Louis Raffetto with Wolfe Research.

Maybe 1 for Carlos. Just the stock comp expense was pretty high in the quarter. I know it was sort of called out in the press release as well. Just curious, does that level continue throughout the year? Or is it -- does it step down? Or does it ramp up?

It's a good question, Louis. The -- if you recall, you may remember last year, we talked a little bit about the performance feature that were attached to our options in and what winds up happening is when -- normally, our options historically have just been time-based, invest over 5 years. Now we added a performance feature last year for growth in the business. And what winds up happening is the amortization of that expense actually accelerates as a result of that. .

It's part of the accounting rules that drive us crazy sometimes, but nonetheless. So what will happen is we'll probably catch a little bit more of that elevated expense in the front half of this year and then it will taper off towards the end of the year. And in fact, as we get into the following fiscal year, it should taper down probably on par or lower than what it had been historically because we would have amortized a lot of those '25 grants in fiscal '26.

.

I appreciate it, Carlos. Yes. I know how much you love all the accounting on that. Maybe one for Victor and Eric. Just kind of, again, big picture here. Obviously, you guys have grown a ton over your 36 years. You're kind of in the $5 billion neighborhood. So just how do you guys think about the scale of the business, the sheer number of underlying businesses that are operating at some point, do you see some other potential portfolio action as making sense?

Yes. Listen, we've been able to adjust and grow with the business. And more, if you will, the organization as we've gone. There was a point in time where everything reported either to Eric or to me. This is Victor speaking, reported to one of us. And over time, we've gone to more of a bit of a working supervisor model, if you will, really extraordinary and talented people, who show an ability to handle multiple companies at one time and acquisitions as well multisite situations, for example, and they are leading groups, and we've been breaking this down into groups of the business and that's going to continue. And the acquisition, you probably noticed the acquisitions we've made have generally been into those groups or into or under reporting to another subsidiary. So we want to keep that talent doing it that way. And we think that's very scalable.

And at this time, I will turn the conference back to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everyone, for participating in our call and for those who ask questions, -- we are always available. It's Eric Victor Carlos for any of your additional questions that you may want to ask offline. And we look forward to speaking with you again on our second quarter fiscal '26 conference call at the end of May. So thank you very much, and this concludes our call.

Thank you. And this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Welcome to the HEICO Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Financial Results Call. My name is Samara, and I will be your operator for today's call.

Certain statements in this conference call will constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and contingencies. HEICO's actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by those forward-looking statements.

Factors that could cause such differences include the severity, magnitude and duration of public health threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic; HEICO's liquidity and the amount and timing of cash generation; lower commercial air travel, airline fleet changes or airline purchasing decisions, which could cause lower demand for our goods and services; product specification costs and requirements, which could cause an increase to our cost to complete contracts; governmental and regulatory demands, export policies and restrictions; reductions in defense, space or homeland security spending by U.S. and/or foreign customers or competition from existing and new competitors, which could reduce our sales; our ability to introduce new products and services at profitable pricing levels, which could reduce our sales or sales growth; product development or manufacturing difficulties, which could increase our product development and manufacturing costs and delay sales; cybersecurity events or other disruptions of our information technology systems could adversely affect our business; and our ability to make acquisitions, including obtaining any applicable domestic and/or foreign governmental approvals and achieve operating synergies from acquired businesses; customer credit risk, interest, foreign currency exchange and income tax rates; and economic conditions, including the effects of inflation within and outside of the aviation, defense, space, medical, telecommunications and electronics industries, which could negatively impact our costs and revenues.

Parties listening to this call are encouraged to review all of HEICO's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, filings on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law.

I now turn the call over to Victor Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Samara, and good morning to everyone on this call. Thank you for joining us, and we welcome you to HEICO's fourth quarter fiscal '25 earnings announcement teleconference. As you heard, I'm Victor Mendelson, HEICO's Co-Chairman and Co-CEO. I am joined here this morning by Eric Mendelson, HEICO's other Co-Chairman and Co-CEO; and Carlos Macau, our Executive Vice President and CFO.

As we start this call, Eric and I would like to take a moment to remember our father, Larry Mendelson, whom you all know was long HEICO's Chairman and CEO. As sons, we were beyond blessed to have a unique and loving father who instilled in us from our earliest days values and life methods based on fairness, on excellence, on quality. And as our father used to say, just doing the right thing.

Of course, these values and life methods apply in business too. And as a businessman, he knew how much these matter, along with a fixation on real earnings, that is to say cash flow. Many of you on this call will remember his unrelenting emphasis on cash flow, not artificial GAAP metrics, although he always lived by those GAAP metrics and enforced them. He knew what really mattered.

Eric and I were also blessed to have been partners with our father from well before the 3 of us became HEICO's largest shareholders. and mounted our effort to take over management. And by the way, in a few weeks, we'll mark the 36th anniversary of our taking over here. Working with him to build HEICO day in and day out was a pleasure and an honor that you get to experience. And I can say that through his example, not only were Eric and I imbued with these values, these life methods and his business approach, but more important, all of HEICO, all of HEICO became so imputed.

That was his succession plan, and was nearly always -- as was nearly always the case with our father, it worked perfectly. Our father is profoundly proud of HEICO. He was also one of the greatest optimists we ever knew. And in his closing days, even after nearly 36 remarkable HEICO years, he was more optimistic than ever about this company's prospects. I can tell you that we and the HEICO team share that optimism. And I can also say how grateful we are for all that we learned from him.

Thank you for indulging us for a few moments there.

Before turning to our fourth quarter fiscal '25 record-setting results, which you know capped another exceptional year for HEICO, we recognize our team members' extraordinary efforts. Our team members' dedication to our customers, our endeavors across the organization were the reason for our very strong results this quarter and this year, leaving us quite optimistic about HEICO's future. We and HEICO's Board thank you for all you have done in 2025 and before. And we look forward to an even more prosperous 2026.

So taking a moment to summarize our record results during the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, we note, first, that consolidated net income increased 35% to a record $188.3 million or $1.33 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $139.7 million or $0.99 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. Consolidated operating income and net sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25 represent record results for HEICO, which improved by 28% and 19%, respectively, as compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal '24.

The Flight Support Group set all-time quarterly net sales and operating income record in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, improving 21% and 30%, respectively, over the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The increases principally reflect strong 16%, strong would be an understatement, but 16% organic growth, stemming from increased demand across all of the group's product lines as well as the impact from our profitable fiscal '25 and '24 acquisitions.

The Electronic Technologies Group also set all-time quarterly net sales and operating income records in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, improving 14% and 10%, respectively, over the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. These increases principally reflect strong organic growth for most of the group's products and the impact from our profitable fiscal '25 and '24 acquisitions.

Consolidated EBITDA increased 26% to $331.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $264 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. And our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved to 1.6 as of October 31, '25, down from 2.06 on October 31, '24.

Cash flow provided by operating activities increased 44% to $295.3 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $205.6 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. Yesterday, HEICO's Board of Directors declared a semiannual $0.12 per share cash dividend on both classes of HEICO stock, payable in January 2026, representing our 95th consecutive dividend and reflecting the Board's ongoing confidence in our company's strong cash flow generation.

We completed 5 acquisitions in fiscal '25, 3 in the Electronic Technologies Group and 2 in the Flight Support Group, further enhancing our sales, our earnings and our cash flow. Each of our Flight Support and Electronic Technologies groups recently entered into agreements to acquire 2 separate and unrelated businesses, 1 of which, Ethos, was just announced earlier this week. As of now, we anticipate both should close in the first quarter of calendar '26, though they are, of course, subject to customary closing conditions, including, among others, antitrust clearance and the sellers complying with typical representations and covenants. So we can't be certain of actual timing or actual closing. We expect these acquisitions would be accretive to HEICO's earnings within the year of each transaction's closing.

I now turn the call over to Eric Henderson to discuss our Flight Support and Electronic Technologies groups' fourth quarter results in greater detail. Eric?

Thank you, Victor. Before we turn to the results, I want to pause and recognize the remarkable performance of HEICO's team members. What we are reporting today is the product of extraordinary talent, relentless execution and a culture developed over decades that consistently turns ambitious objectives into real outcomes. Time and again they have demonstrated the ability to rise to the challenges, adapt and deliver at the highest level. Their commitment, collaboration, determination and creative approach are the foundation of these results and make them especially rewarding.

We are all sure that our dad is looking down on us today as we report these outstanding results and we close our 36th year with HEICO. As Victor said so eloquently a few moments ago, we are both so grateful for all that we learned from our dad and from all the time that we had with him.

Now moving on to the results. The Flight Support Group's net sales increased 21% to a record $834.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $691.8 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The net sales increase reflects strong organic growth of 16% and the impact from our fiscal '24 and '25 acquisitions. The net sales growth reflects increased demand across all of our product lines.

HEICO's operations continue to exceed our expectations, underscoring our highly successful combination with Wencor. Customers increasingly recognize the value of our expanded aftermarket parts and repair and overhaul offerings, which has driven strong growth opportunities and continued success across the company.

The Flight Support Group's defense business remains a compelling opportunity, particularly as both the U.S. administration and our foreign allies emphasize defense readiness and cost efficiency. HEICO is extremely well positioned to support these priorities by delivering high-quality, lower-cost alternative aircraft parts that help reduce costs for the government and taxpayers while expanding our addressable markets.

Our missile defense manufacturing business is also experiencing very significant growth, fueled by rising demand from the United States and our allies. We have substantial orders and backlog to support the continued expansion of this business, and we are committed to providing cost-effective solutions in industry-leading quality to our U.S. military and our foreign allies.

The Flight Support Group's operating income increased 30% to a record $201 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $154.5 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The operating income increase reflects the previously mentioned net sales growth and improved profit margin and SG&A expense efficiencies realized from the net sales growth. The improved profit margin principally reflects net sales growth within our repair and overhaul, parts and services product line and a more favorable product mix within our specialty products product line.

The Flight Support Group's operating margin improved to 24.1% in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from 22.3% in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The increased operating margin principally reflects the previously mentioned improved gross profit margin. Since acquisition-related intangible amortization expense consumed approximately 250 basis points of our operating margin in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, the Flight Support Group's cash margin, which is before amortization, or what we also call EBITA, was approximately 26.6%, which has been consistently excellent and is 160 basis points higher than the comparable Flight Support Group cash margin of 25.0% in the fourth quarter of '24.

As I have previously discussed, we are laser-focused on cash generation at each of our businesses. I am very happy with the continued expansion of our cash margins and believe the decentralized operating structure has permitted us to expand these margins while simultaneously delivering high-quality products and services to our customers at substantial cost savings with lightning-quick turnaround times.

Now I will discuss the fourth quarter results of the Electronic Technologies Group. The Electronic Technologies Group's net sales increased 14% to a record $384.8 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $336.2 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The net sales increase reflects strong organic growth of 7% and the impact from our fiscal '25 and '24 acquisitions. The organic net sales growth is mainly attributable to increased demand for our other electronics, defense, aerospace and space products.

The Electronic Technologies Group's operating income increased 10% to a record $89.6 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, up from $81.8 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The operating income increase principally reflects the previously mentioned net sales growth and an improved gross profit margin, partially offset by higher SG&A expenses, mainly reflecting increased share-based compensation expense. The improved gross profit margin principally reflects a more favorable mix of our medical and other electronics products.

The Electronic Technologies Group's operating margin was 23.3% in the fourth quarter of fiscal '25, as compared to 24.3% in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. The operating margin change principally reflects an increase in SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales, primarily from the previously mentioned higher share-based compensation expense, partially offset by the previously mentioned improved gross profit margin. Importantly, before acquisition-related intangibles amortization expense, our operating margin was a very healthy 27.3% as intangibles amortization consumed around 400 basis points of our operating margin. This is how we judge our business as that most closely correlates to cash. On a true operating basis, these are excellent margins and we are very pleased with them.

And now I turn the call back to Victor Mendelson to discuss our outlook.

Thank you, Eric. Looking ahead to fiscal '26, we anticipate net sales growth across both the Flight Support Group and the Electronic Technologies Group, driven by organic growth from increased demand for the majority of our products as well as growth through our recent acquisitions. We'll continue to pursue selective acquisition opportunities to complement this growth. And our disciplined financial management remains dedicated to creating long-term shareholder value through a balanced combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions while maintaining financial resilience and flexibility.

Acquisition activity, of course, continues to be robust across both operating segments, supported by a healthy pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities currently under evaluation. And as such, we remain focused on identifying high-quality businesses that complement HEICO's existing operations and, of course, further strengthen our strategic positioning. Consistent with our longstanding acquisition philosophy, we will only pursue acquisitions and opportunities that meet our strict financial and strategic criteria, that are accretive and have the potential to generate durable long-term value for HEICO and for our shareholders.

So thank you very much for attending our call. Those are our prepared remarks, and we ask Samara, the operator, to please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Larry Solow with CJS Securities.

Great. I appreciate the comments on Larry, and I'm sure he's smiling down on the really strong free cash flow this quarter. So congrats on that.

First question, Eric, I guess, for you. Just on the growth in -- as we look out at FSG, I think we used to do U.S. sort of a high single, low double-digit grower and growth in mid-teens plus on the core business for about 5-plus years. Maybe the first couple were COVID recovery. But just trying to -- as we look out, it feels like all the positives continue to align in your direction. But could you just help us just kind of bucket what these drivers? Clearly, the market is growing nicely, but I don't know if growth has accelerated above historical levels where we are today. But is it just your expanded parts offering? Is it market share? Is it just more acceptance of your parts? Just trying to -- if you could just bucket those multiple positives that's been driving your business.

Sure, Larry, I'd be happy to do that. And thank you very much for your kind comments. Yes, we're sure dad would be very, very happy with these results. I'm sure he is. So you're right, the organic growth has been tremendous. And frankly, it's even surprised us and me. I've always been optimistic and I've always thought that we would continue to outgrow the market, but we continue to do so in a much more meaningful way. So you're right.

Why is that? I think it's a number of things. Number one, of course, we want to be grateful for the rising tide environment in the industry. So that's been terrific and that's been very strong for us.

But I think the other thing that's been really good is the value proposition that HEICO offers our customers. The thing that perhaps I'm most proud about is that we've had 16% organic growth in this quarter and another 5% acquired on top of that, for a total of 21% sales growth. but operating income increased 30%. And at the same time, our customers are incredibly happy in getting huge value from us.

So we've been able to drive operating income, if you will, primarily off of the organic sales growth, and our customers are still very happy. So I think that speaks to a tremendous sales opportunity that we have really in all of our businesses, whether it's in the PMA parts, repair, distribution, specialty manufacturing, defense, the same. And I'm talking over on the Flight Support Group side, and then, of course, on the ETG, more growth opportunity there.

But I really think it's the value proposition that we offer combined with our decentralized and very entrepreneurial structure. I get e-mails after we announced the earnings from a number of different people within HEICO, and basically thanking me for the incredible results. And I turn around and say, "No. Yes, we've been very good on capital allocation, but they are the ones who really deliver these results." We're just reporting the results that they deliver. And it's as a result of being very intimate with their product line, understanding their customers, the whole competitive dynamic. So I think that as there are more aircraft out there and there's increased demand in both commercial aircraft as well as defense products and missile interceptors, I think that we are just incredibly well positioned.

So look, the organic growth has surprised me. That's one of the reasons why we don't give guidance, because we don't know where it's going to be. We just know at HEICO that we've got 11,000 people come to work every day, put their heads down and work as hard as they possibly can, and frankly, the results are the results, so -- but I do think that the value proposition is tremendous.

And I guess, lastly, one of the other things that I think we've seen over the last number of years is that other manufacturers are increasing their prices substantially. And I think that just further supports the HEICO value proposition. So we're -- I think we're just in a great [ position ] right now.

No, no, I appreciate all that color, yes. No, that was great. Victor, how about a question for you, just I think you obviously had a little sluggishness last year, but a good year this year. It feels like most of your end markets, or if not all of them, now are kind of pointing up to the right, obviously, led by defense, I know the National Defense Authorization Act was just passed recently. It feels like that was positive. So any just general thoughts on state of the union on your outlook?

Yes. We're projecting growth next year in ETG. As I always do, I guide people to look for, on an organic basis, mid, low single digits organic growth. If we do better, that's great. We'll see where everything shakes out a year from now and over quarters, but we feel very good about our businesses. We did our budget reviews, our subsidiary annual reviews, and as a rule of thumb, our companies are feeling good. Not every company is going to march ahead next year in the way we'd like to see. But overall, we're very [indiscernible].

We'll go our next question from Ron Epstein with Bank of America.

And again, my condolences about your father. On the quarter itself, a couple of quick things. How are things looking for M&A as we go into 2026?

Very strong. I mean we're working on a lot of opportunities. I would say, each quarter, we seem to feel like it can't get any busier. Our pipeline is busier and busier. But that's exactly what happened at -- in this past quarter, and actually in recent weeks since the quarter ended. So we've got a lot we're working on, a lot that we're looking at.

Of course, as you know, Ron, it doesn't happen until it closes. And there's just a lot of work, a lot of diligence. We're extraordinarily discerning in what we'll buy. But there, we're fortunate in that we are known as a great home for sellers, particularly entrepreneur, founder-managers and others who are really going to take care of the businesses, not only honor the legacy but keep the entrepreneurial environment. So there's a lot of opportunity for us. We'll see what we're able to mine out. But we're cautiously optimistic.

And Ron, I would also just add to that. So we started really our acquisition program in earnest about 27 years ago. And we really acquired, I don't know, 110 companies. And we really have a track record. It's not just 1, 2, 3, 5, 10-year track record. It's a very, very long track record and DNA, which is embedded in the company.

So when we talk to sellers, I think we're viewed in a very, very different light. And as a result, we've got just a tremendous -- we got a lot of bandwidth and we also have a lot of different sellers who really view us as the buyer of choice. So I think we're in a really good position there.

Got it. And how comfortable are you guys leveraging up to do a deal given the balance sheet is so strong?

Ron, this is Carlos. So I would say, similar to history, we're not afraid of leverage. For the right transaction for the right deal for our shareholders, we would take on additional leverage. I don't think that our company, the culture and the way we do business would suggest we'd like to have permanent leverage in the 5 or 6 range. But if we had to spike up 4, 5, 6x to do a deal, and I felt comfortable that within 12 to 18, 24 months, we could get that leverage back down to a manageable number, we would certainly do that if it was good for our shareholders.

I think as a sort of status quo, we like leverage to be somewhere around 2x. That's a comfortable spot for us. Right now, we're -- our permanent debt, if you would, or our bonds are sitting at about 1 turn of EBITDA. That's very comfortable. I think we could probably carry 2 turns of debt in permanent sort of financing posture and be very comfortable at HEICO with the cash generation that we have.

Got it. Got it. And then maybe just one last one for me. How is it working -- you guys had mentioned last year about doing PMA parts for defense. And how is that going? Is there any progress on that front?

Ron, this is Eric. So yes, there has been progress on that front. But as we always said, it was really going to be more of a medium-term project. As you know, it takes a little bit of time for the government to do all the stuff that they've got to do. But we think that there is a very, very big opportunity there for us, and we're quite excited about it.

We'll take our next question from Peter Arment with Baird.

Eric, Victor, Carlos, nice results. Eric, you talked a lot about -- a little bit about defense and missile defense. And it's about -- if I remember correctly, defense and space is roughly about 1/4 of the FSG segment. Do you see that mix changing much just given all the growth you're highlighting?

I think actually, it's going to probably remain pretty consistent because we have so much growth over on the commercial side that they're doing a great job keeping up with the huge growth over on defense. So I think it's probably going to be somewhat consistent going forward. But I do think that there are massive opportunities for us over on the defense side. And as these -- as our customers become more familiar with our broad capabilities -- and by the way, not only our long-time large defense customers who we continue to support and have a great relationship with, but also the defense tech community, we're doing a lot of work for those guys as well and delivering huge value. We've got design capability, manufacturing capability across a very wide array of products. We're able to solve all sorts of complex problems for them. And so I think that that's just going to continue to be big opportunity for us, along with the launch business.

We've grown -- we don't -- we're very careful at HEICO, we don't talk about specific programs, specific customers, because, frankly, we don't want to give a road map to our competitors on what we're doing. And we say, just look at our results. But I can tell you that there have been very well-known companies coming into HEICO, into our specialty products group, into our other manufacturing businesses, asking to help solve some of this country's major, major problems. And we've -- really I'm super proud of our team. So I think there's a big opportunity there.

I appreciate the color. Maybe Eric and Victor, you could both comment on maybe Golden Dome. Just how you see HEICO's business kind of positioned. Obviously, there's been a lot in the classified circles and behind the scenes, not much public. How do you view the opportunity set for HEICO?

Yes, this is Victor. It's a good question. Obviously, we're excited by it. Golden Dome consists of a number of existing programs, and from what we understand, because it's not, I think intentionally, so it's not entirely publicly defined or maybe not entirely that we can discuss on a public call. But you have the existing programs on which we have great presence, and have had for years, some of which Eric is alluding to in his comments, but the same in both, by the way, both ETG and FSG within the business. And then there's a lot of reconnaissance, surveillance, tracking that's being added to it, and networking it together. And a number of our businesses have been told that some of the things they're working on, some of the development contracts they've been getting are related to that, without being able to go into the specifics on each one of those programs, of course. And subsidiaries, we'll take our customers at their word, there is no order that comes in at the top that says Golden Dome Department, right? So we will have to judge as we go down the road how much it will be.

But it's definitely additive and we're definitely excited about it. And we, of course, think it's the right thing to do for the country given the success, for example, of Iron Dome. And a number of our companies have components on a number of the Iron Dome constituent parts.

And we'll take our next question from Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets.

Very nice results. Maybe, Eric, just -- yes, just to start, you've grown FSG margins pretty substantially, about 300 basis points from '21 to -- or '22 to '25. I can appreciate part of that's been mixed with Wencor. You've also seen some opportunities on pricing in other areas. How do we think about FSG margins into fiscal '26 and beyond? And is there any reason we don't see a continued pace of improvement?

Ken, so thank you for your question. And yes, I would -- while we don't give guidance, you're right, we've grown margins substantially. And at the same time, the thing that I'm really proud about is we've kept our customers very happy at that -- while doing that simultaneously.

I do think there's continued margin opportunity. for us, continued margin expansion as we have basically greater absorption of our, what I'll call, our fixed costs, whether it's in cost of sales or SG&A. I do think that we've got additional leverage there. We've made a number of significant investments over the last number of years to broaden our manufacturing and design and distribution capabilities. And so I think we'll continue to see improved margins there.

It's hard for me to guess what that is because the truth is I really don't know. As I mentioned, I think, before, we've got this great decentralized organization and they all submit budgets, which tend to be on the, let's just say, very conservative side. So it's very hard for me to predict going forward what it's going to be. But I just know that at the end of the day, they end up outperforming.

So I think Carlos may have some additional thoughts on that.

[indiscernible]?

I am.

Ken. So here's the deal. I continue to believe that the FSG is going to play between 23.5% and 24.5% GAAP operating margins. And the reason that I have kind of a wide sort of vector there is because we have noticed and talked about some mix impacts on the margin, particularly in specialty products and repair and overhaul. So historically, the FSG margin story has always been about volume. So until that mix sort of settles down a little bit, it's kind of hard to tighten that up. But I think you could expect between those ranges. And hopefully, it will be towards the high end of that, and there'll be reasons that are quarter-specific if we're not. But I think that's the range you should expect. .

That's helpful, Carlos. And if I could, Eric, just one other question. It seems like each time this year, we have a debate around better deliveries out of Boeing and Airbus and the implications of what that could mean for aftermarket spending. Can you just comment on what you're seeing in airlines today as they think about 2026 around aircraft retirements, obviously, fuel prices are low, continued use of legacy or older assets? Just what's your view on aftermarket fundamental into 2026?

Yes, it's a great question. And we've got the utmost respect to Boeing and Airbus. And we think that -- as well, of course, Embraer. And we think that they're going to get a lot of the supply chain issues worked out. These are phenomenal companies that put out the best products, unbelievable products, and the world really needs them, and they will get all those -- their situation worked out.

So then the question is what happens to the rest of the aftermarket there on the order aircraft. And we think that the order aircraft will continue to be in very good demand. You can see what the retirement rates have been. And again, you've got this older fleet that is a very large fleet, which is continuing to age 1 year per year and consume a massive amount of parts. So we think that we're in very good position.

Again, we're long-term investors, if you will, citizens, residents in the stock. And so if there's a dip, things move up and down a little bit, it doesn't change our view on it. So we're -- for us, we don't really look at the, if you will, the quarter-to-quarter and sort of the micro moves. We're looking out saying the airlines recognize that there's massive need coming down the road, they need more suppliers. We're there to fill that opportunity on both the independent side as well as the OEM align side, it's whatever our customers want. And so I think we're in a good position, but it should remain quite strong, to answer your question.

And we'll take our next question from Ms. Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Maybe if I could start, and I want to give you guys condolences on Larry, because I think we're also lucky to have known him and he's impacted all of our lives in some ways. So maybe going back to the performance for '25 [indiscernible] the quarter as well, Eric, I wanted to ask you, I know everybody's harped on FSG growth and just because it's accelerated in the quarter. If you could give us any detail on maybe the parts of the business that you think will outperform as we head into fiscal '26. And also you've announced some pretty new transactions like EthosEnergy recently and another transaction. So can you talk about how those fit into the broader, both Wencor and the broader FSG?

Sure. I would be happy to. And Sheila, thank you also for the very nice comments about dad, and he always respected you and your fellow analysts and really enjoyed his time very much with you all. And so thank you for that.

As far as for the subsectors within Flight Support that are going to outperform, I mean, I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but I think it's really across the board. It's in everything that we're doing. We're seeing strength across the board. So I wouldn't say that there's one area in particular. We are very excited -- you bring up Ethos, and we're very excited about that because they're strong in the IGT market. And of course, you've got all these industrial gas turbines, of which some are aeroderivatives, supporting the AI power demand. And there's, as you know, there's a massive amount of power that has to be created. And these IGTs are, industrial gas turbines, are expected to play a major role there.

So we think that we're in very, very good position to help Ethos continue to support their program. And we think that there is just a tremendous amount of opportunity. We like the people very much. They have 3 different facilities. It's a very decentralized organization, very entrepreneurial. I think there's going to be a big increase in demand on the various components that they overhaul. And we think that it's just a great addition to Wencor. Wencor has been, as HEICO has been, Wencor has been very successful in their markets. And we allocate out the acquisitions according to bandwidth and who got time and capacity to be able to take on these acquisitions. We're really happy that Wencor has got the talent and the technical ability to help drive that business forward. And we think that we'd get very good performance out of it.

Can you maybe also talk about the Axillon Fuel Containment business? Does that work with [ Robertson ]? How do you think about how that will fit into the framework? And can we think about annual revenues in the $125 million range for that one?

Well, so this is Victor. The business is separate from Robertson. It's a supplier to Robertson, so Robertson has been a customer. I think working together, they can bring additional benefits to our customers and to the marketplace and make things, in fact, even more competitive for our customers. There's opportunity there. In terms -- we didn't break out the revenue from the business, so I'm being careful, of course, on that. And of course, when it closed, of course, if it closes, right, no deal is ever certain, but that timing issues and approvals and things like that that we've got to go through will also influence the amount of revenue that we recognize in fiscal '26.

Got it. Sure. Sorry, Victor, I forgot Robertson was in ETG.

We'll take our next question from John Godyn with Citigroup.

I wanted to -- I completely appreciate that we've gone away from annual guidance a long time ago in HEICO. But at the same time, every few years, you guys reiterate that 15% to 20% net income growth kind of multiyear target. And we've had a couple of years of amazing net income growth. And I'd just kind of offer the observation that consensus expectations are for a very sharp deceleration over the next few years. And I just wanted to kind of revisit this idea, take the temperature. How do you feel about 15% to 20% as sort of the multiyear growth number from here a target? And is there anything that you're seeing that suggests a sharp deceleration in growth rates is likely?

So John, first of all, thank you very much for your question. This is Eric. I'd be happy to answer that. As you know, the 15% to 20% has always been an aspirational number. The company is designed in a decentralized way, but rolling up into groups. So we can harness the individual and entrepreneurial efforts of our people in the businesses and combine them with technology, market access, capital that the larger groups bring.

So I can tell you that all of the subsidiaries have organic growth targets that are consistent with the numbers that you mentioned. And we believe that on the acquisition side, we are in a very good position and continue to be the buyer of choice.

The important -- obviously, the important metric for us is EBITA, which is really operating income plus intangibles amortization due to purchase accounting, because that's really a made-up number, if you will. But I think in terms of growing our EBITA, nothing has changed going forward. Obviously, as we get there, it may become more difficult. But of course, as we've gotten bigger, we hit the numbers and it's become easier.

So all I can tell you is we remain very focused and I think we're in a good position going forward. As far as giving guidance, for us to give guidance, as I've mentioned, is very difficult because our subsidiaries tend to give very conservative guidance to us and then we have to add a number on top of that, and who knows what that number is going to be. But I can tell you, Victor and I spend a lot of time out in the field with our businesses. We're aware of all the technology they're developing. Carlos is out there as well. And I think the future is going to be very good for us, and we're going to continue to outgrow the market. So nothing has changed with our focus on outgrowing the market.

So despite a few great years above that range, it sounds like you don't see it likely that we're below that range for a number of years going forward. It sounds like the algorithm is still intact as far as you can tell.

Well, as I mentioned, look, those numbers are aspirational numbers. I think 15% is a great aspirational number. And we're working very hard to make that happen. Again, we don't provide guidance, so I want to be very careful what I say. But we are -- everything here at HEICO is structured to continue this growth.

John, this is Carlos. Let me refer you to history here. We've done for 35 years, compounded our bottom line at 18%. So we've proven that we can do it. Every year, we sit down, we do our budgets, we look at the performance, the atmospherics in the markets, and we shoot for 15% to 20% bottom line growth, and we're capable of doing that. As Eric mentioned, as we grow larger, it becomes more challenging. But as we look out over the next 3 to 5 years, I don't see anything impeding those aspirational goals. That's what we target as a group, as a Board and as a company to grow. So I think that's all intact.

And also, I would just add to what Carlos said, when you look at our leverage, roughly 1.5x, I mean we've got tremendous ability to make acquisitions. I mean when you generate, what was the number, $934 million, from operations, I mean the cash is really very, very strong. And we're able then to take that cash and go buy other entrepreneurial businesses where people want to be part of HEICO. So there's no change to our program.

And we'll take our next question from Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

Great. Yes. Those were nice comments about your father. It was great to be able to work with him.

Just staying on these FSG margins a bit. Carlos, you talked about mix I guess when we look at the incremental being better in '25 than '24, are you able to parse out the pieces of that? How much of it was that mix? And can you tell us what those mix items are and what you expect them to do next year? And how much of it was any change in pricing philosophy?

So the price part of that, we'd probably get, Noah, 2 or 3 points' worth of price in our numbers every year. Now we're basically covering our labor inflation. I mean raw materials for us is a lower piece of the overall build material. So the concerns we have around here really are labor inflation, and we seem to be getting enough price out of our customers to cover that. and still provide them with great value and make them feel like the value proposition is huge with HEICO to do business with us.

The components of the mix -- so I would say this. We've noticed a nice increase in the gross margin with our repair and overhaul business. And most of that has been attributed to heavier PMA and DER repairs that we've been doing this year. I would say the mix shift there has been a little bit more favorable towards the PMA and DER. We've also expanded our avionics repairs quite a bit this year. So those components there have had a positive lift in the gross margin, and repair and overhaul, which has translated into the overall segment margin.

I'd also say that within specialty products, the core of that business, if you spun the clock back 5 or 6 years or so ago, it was really a commercial OE play, pre-COVID, let's say. It was all about seats and thermal blankets and insulation and things like that. What we've noticed post-COVID is a real uptick, and Eric has talked about it earlier, in the defense business we have there, whether it's missile hardware, whether it's drone hardware and things like that, structural pieces that we're making. And that shift towards more of a heavier defense play within specialty products rather than the commercial OE has had a little bit of an improvement on the margins.

So I think those 2 things have helped. And then, of course, our parts business has been off the charts. It's been growing at a tremendous pace, outgrowing the other verticals. And as that business continues to outperform, it absorbs a lot of the fixed cost that Eric has talked about earlier. It does have a little bit of a, I guess, an efficiency play within our SG&A and our fixed cost spend.

So those are really the key contributors to the FSG. Most of that is very durable, Noah. I mentioned earlier on the margins, I kind of said 23.5%, 24.5%, it's kind of a wide spread on my expectation. But it is because mix can play heavy or light in any one particular quarter. So I'll be able to narrow that down as we get further into next year and the year after and then see how the mix footprint plays out. But, Noah, it's all been positive. I think it's very durable margin improvements. And as we continue to grow, I think we can eke out small improvements just on our leverage and our fixed costs, 20, 30 bps a year, something like that. So all positive, Noah. I don't see anything that's like onetime or not durable.

Okay. That's really helpful color. Yes, I mean, I think, obviously, you want to have some conservatism in what you're saying about the forward, but your -- the operating margin is still pretty far below the gross margin. So just all else equal, if you're growing volumes, you would have your normal incrementals and be able to just expand margins over time. Obviously, it's not always all else equal, but -- okay.

You got it.

Can you size how much revenue you generate from missile and missile defense?

Well, we don't size it. If you look in our public filings, you'll see that within the FSG, we do break out specialty products in our defense business. So you can see how that business has grown. But we, for competitive reasons, don't size it.

Okay. And then how do you expect capital deployed towards acquisitions in '26 to compare it to '25 size-wise?

I mean, Eric and Victor like to buy every shiny object they can get their hands on. So I expect that we'll continue [ at that pace ]. But look, we have -- we're not capital constrained, Noah, and we have a tremendous opportunity set in front of us. We're able to be very selective at this point in time on what we deploy capital on, which is a good thing, and that the basket of opportunities is as big as it's ever been. So I think we probably should have a repeat of what we did last year into '26, would be my hope and my expectation. But again, you never know.

And remember, we are guided by -- we want to grow 15% to 20% bottom line. It is a controlled growth strategy. So that guides us, but we do not walk away from extraordinarily good opportunities for our shareholders. So in the event that we outgrow that metric, it's because we had great opportunities in the acquisition front that we just couldn't pass on, right? And so that will also guide our thinking on how we deploy the capital.

And Noah, just also to add a little bit of color why we're so optimistic on the acquisition front. I mean, if you look, we're leveraged at 1.5x. So we've got -- we're under -- 1.6x. So we're underleveraged. We've got plenty of firepower. Our businesses generate a lot of cash. Just putting that cash to work is a big task. We've done 110 -- our commercial, we've done 110 acquisitions. We are experienced. We know what's important. We know how to motivate people. We've got dozens of entrepreneurs for sellers to speak with, explain why HEICO is the best home they could possibly imagine. And frankly, we've got an incredible acquisitions team, which is out there pounding the pavement, working really hard, making sure that we're in every process and we -- we're constantly talking to people.

And we're talking to them years in advance of when they want to possibly sell their company. Somebody may be interested in a liquidity event 10 years from now. That's no problem, because there are so many points of contact at HEICO where we can start working with them and connecting them to the HEICO system and help their businesses, help our businesses. And when they're ready, they're ready.

So I think we're in great -- really great positioning there. And if you look, so many of the businesses that we buy were not available to sell for other people to other people. They didn't -- they were not interested in selling. They were only interested in selling to HEICO. And actually, Gables Engineering is a perfect example of that, where this business was sought after by so many people in the industry and they only spoke to HEICO. And of course, they got a very full price, so -- but they only spoke to HEICO and they wanted to make sure that they were able to continue their growth, and HEICO is able to do that.

I appreciate all the detail.

We'll take our next question from Tony Bancroft with Gabelli Funds.

Obviously, pass along my condolences to Mr. Mendelson. He really was the best of the best and he's going to be sorely missed here at Gabelli.

With the Ethos acquisition, like you discussed, is sort of in one way is sort of going outside your scope of traditional M&A, but another way, obviously, there's a lot of adjacencies. With the backdrop of the amount of strong growth looking into -- going forward, is there maybe a sort of a new world order or a new outlook on where you would go across aerospace in a sense or maybe other areas of high growth? Maybe you could talk about -- there's so many opportunities out there, and as a sense, whether you're seeing strength there. Maybe you could talk about anything that could be outside your typical adjacencies.

Sure. Tony, so first of all, thank you very much for your nice comments about dad, and he always enjoyed his time with you and Mario and held you in the highest regard, both of you.

And as far as Ethos, we really like the IGT area. We've been in the IGT area through a number of our businesses for a number of years -- or for decades. And we like growing, as we say, into adjacent white spaces where we understand the technology, whether it's the engineering or the operations of the turbine, whether it's the manufacturing or the repair technology, distribution we think that there's a lot of point of commonality. It's not -- some of them are aeroderivatives so they're very, very similar to the aero side. But other ones are pure industrial gas turbines, very, very large machines.

And we think that we understand that space quite well. There's going to be a lot of tailwind for a long period of time. We think we can add a lot of value. Our initial approach there is to go into that market with a very much OEM aligned strategy, and try to continue to develop and grow that. But we think it's just another very good business for us to enter.

And Tony, this is Victor. Adding to that, that's really been our history. If you look back over time, when we started out and we took over HEICO, it essentially had 1 product, right, the combustion chamber and the JT8D engine, a PM part, that was it for the most part, and did some machining and milling. And over the years, we've stepped very carefully, but I think very intentionally and successfully into, as Eric would say, these white space adjacencies, and it's worked out very nicely.

So our product offering today is vastly expanded. It doesn't look anything like it used to. But it's happened over time, the saying about boiling the frog is, in a sense, applicable here, that we just do this carefully, slowly, a lot of singles and doubles, no bet the company situations, but we just keep at it.

And so I would expect we'll continue doing that. We don't have any other specifics or data that we can share at this point on exactly where we're going, but you can rest assured that they will be sensible and they will be somehow connected to what we're already doing.

And we'll take our next question from Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel.

Condolences again to your family and company for your fallen Chairman. We look forward to you keeping the legacy alive by preserving the culture.

Thank you. And Jon, we've known you a long time. He always admired you back when you were at Fidelity, and we appreciate your confidence and your comments.

So I wanted to ask, Eric, you've constantly characterized PMA for military as this medium-term opportunity. But there's been lots of executive orders and directives and we had, in particular, a pretty spirited opening statement at AUSA by the Secretary of Army, specifically about parts. So just could you give us a sense of what's really changing? Is the opportunity for you being pulled forward? And then maybe talk about the difference between qualifying a PMA part for military aircraft relative to commercial? Is it longer or more complicated?

So look, the U.S. operates a lot of -- U.S. military operates a lot of commercial derivative aircraft, and these a lot of these parts and repairs have been approved by the FAA. And there's no reason the government shouldn't be taking advantage of them. So we think that, sort of big picture, that's where the opportunity exists.

As you know, the gap between what comes out, as they say in the -- with the senior people in the "building" versus what ends up getting done sometimes can take a fair amount of time. And I think this administration is very focused on getting that done. We have to get that done. And so that's why we're very bullish on the opportunity.

I hate to provide super detail into what we're working on because we do have competitors in everything we do. I don't like giving them a road map. But we do think that there is very good -- there continues to be very, very good opportunity. And now it's up to the government to really execute on that. And I think that as they execute, the opportunity will be very rewarding for HEICO.

Good luck with the new year.

We'll take our next question from Scott Deuschle with Deutsche Bank.

Carlos, just to clarify your response to Noah's question, are the specialty products gross margins generally higher or lower than the gross margins in the other submarkets at FSG?

It's a good question. We don't get into vertical margin profile. I would say that, obviously, our -- we said over the years, obviously, our PMA business is our highest-margin business. But the other verticals within the FSG all float around the average margin of the segment. So that's about the best I could do for you.

Okay. And then, Eric, if we were to think about the largest and most established customers for FSGs, PMA and repair solutions from like United, Delta or Lufthansa, are those customers generally running flat out in terms of buying essentially everything from FSG that they can? Or is there still a lot of white space with those existing big customers for FSG to be doing even more for them?

Yes. I mean without commenting on who the largest customers are, they're buying a lot of our product, but there still remains tremendous potential at each of them. And you may ask, well, why is that? Why is it, if they're such big customers and they're buying most of your product or a lot of your product, why don't they buy all of your product? And I agree with you that's very frustrating and something that we talk about all the time. Sometimes they have an arrangement, a contract with somebody else. Other times, it's the time, the inertia that it takes to get these parts approved within the organizations.

But I can tell you that we continue to have very big opportunities in many areas, and we are [ comparing ] those opportunities quarter-by-quarter. I continue to learn of great wins with major airlines and products, whether they're parts or repair services that they had not done with us in the past. So that's why I remain very bullish.

We'll take our next question from Scott Mikus with Melius Research.

Eric, Victor, condolences.

Thank you very much.

I wanted to ask, so you operated decentralized operating structure with many disparate operating units when it comes to pursuing new business opportunities whether it be for Golden Dome or other programs, do you ever find situations where your operating units are competing against each other for the same work package? Do you force them to collaborate or do you let them pursue those business opportunities independently just to give the overall organization as many shots on goal as you can get? Just your thoughts on that.

Sure. It's extremely rare that we find our businesses in competitive situations. It's far more common that they actually have cooperative situations, they can help each other out or sometimes they'll go to a customer together, occasionally, with a package or something like that. We don't, as a rule of thumb, police our businesses. We don't tell them what they can sell or they should sell. We encourage them to work together. And they're very practical and they do, I think they find a way to rationalize things where they should.

They're always, tell you the truth, always most focused on finding the most cost-effective solutions for our customers, because that's what we're known for and the best solution for the customer. So I have seen it in the rare case where there is something that's dual offering, that they're just happy to let the customer make the decision. And what we don't do is curtail dual offerings. We're very careful to not do that.

Right. And we also -- I can tell you, in some of our businesses whereby we have multiple locations, customers may want to deal with the location or the business that's physically closest to them because it's more convenient and they may get competing offers from different HEICO businesses, and we're fine with them deciding where they want to send the business. I mean we want to make the customer happy. And likewise, if the customer wants an independent solution with PMA or DER, we do that. If they want an OEM solution, we do that too.

So we're really agnostic. We want to make sure that we're serving the customer in whatever way they want to be served. And we think that it works out quite well to have multiple businesses in the space constantly striving for lower cost, better turnaround, better quality. And that's what makes HEICO such a strong competitor out there.

Okay. I'll stick with 1 question, but I wanted to wish you and your families happy holidays. And Victor, a happy belated birthday as well. Your birthday was on the 11th.

Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it, and we wish you happy holidays as well. I'm going to have to find your birthday.

And we'll take our next question from Gavin Parsons with UBS.

I guess maybe sort of along those similar lines, how integrated are the HEICO and Wencor part and repair catalogs? And how long can that be a growth tailwind from cross-selling?

Well, they are -- we offer a lot of different products across the businesses. There is some overlap. And whatever the customer wants. If they want to buy it from one business or the other, that's fine. If they want to work new development projects with one business or the other, that's fine. As I've said, there's -- I always use the analogy, there are many different types of food out there. And some people may want Italian food or American food or French food, whatever. And at HEICO, we really don't care, as long as we're selling them the product.

So I think that there are a lot of additional opportunities to work together, but we've already really taken advantage of those and we've really helped the various businesses forward. And I think you can see in the results, it's really worked out quite well.

Great. Also love a diverse diet.

We'll take our next question from Alexandra Mandery with Truist Securities.

This is Alexandra Mandery on for Michael Ciarmoli with Truist Securities. In terms of your PMA portfolio, what is the exposure like in terms of new engines, including the [indiscernible] [ GTF, GNX], and do you see that as an opportunity including first-time shop visits on the PMA front?

Yes. So we normally don't get into details about specific product types or competitors. But in general, I can tell you that when an engine is new, it tends to be under warranty, and that's not a big opportunity for us over on the PMA side. It may be more so over on the repair side. And it's as those platforms age and customers want alternatives, that's when it sort of comes into focus with us.

So I would just sort of leave it at that. And -- but I can tell you that our technology that we use to be able to engineer parts is consistent across all engines, all components. And we're very confident about our ability to technically develop the current generation, the next generation, as far as we're concerned, all within our wheelhouse.

Great. That makes sense. Can you provide any additional color on general trends in ETG given the portfolio being well suited for space and defense tech, including next-gen systems and where you see bookings going?

Yes. So this is Victor. And I think that the trends that we talked about a little bit earlier in the call and the optimism for our various markets is intact, and for some of the reasons that you mentioned. Not -- by the way, not all of every market is good and not all of every market offers opportunity. So in space, there's a lot of opportunity, but there's a lot of profitless opportunity there. And I think we've been pretty good at avoiding those situations and really going where we can add particular value to our customers and get recognized -- or be recognized for that in terms of profitability and market position and so on.

And the same applies in defense. There's opportunity, which we take advantage of, in the more established segments of the market as well as some of the newcomers in the defense tech sector. So we sell to both and are proud to do so. And we also believe that the market will continue to evolve such that there will be very important places for both, that one won't necessarily just replace the other. So it's important for us in a sense to be everywhere. And I think our business is, not I think, I know, our businesses have been particularly successful at doing that for a long time.

One other note on defense. As we look at the government's focus on cost and we look at the government's focus on speed, and particularly somebody earlier in the call mentioned the comments from the Army Secretary. HEICO has always been based on speed. We're not a cost plus fixed fee company. overwhelmingly. We have very little, tiny amount of revenue on the cost plus fixed fee column. It's all on our dime. We develop it. It may be developed to specification, it may be developed to something else, but we develop it on our dime and sell it. And it's based on doing it and doing it quickly and responding very quickly to our customers. So we are used to doing that and we are extremely well situated for the environment should it evolve to more of that.

We'll take our next question from Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen.

My condolences. Larry was a fantastic, kind of a legend in the industry, always very generous of his time.

I just had a couple of quick ones. One, I remember asking Larry, probably like 7 years ago on an earnings call, how he viewed the Class A stock and just what the -- if there's ever going to be a desire to remove it and just get the common. What are your opinions on that?

At the moment, I believe status quo. We've talked about the issues over time with dad. And of course, the idea of collapsing them requires an exchange value. And were we to do that at 1 to 1, then we'd have perhaps upset common holders. And if we did that at current market prices, we'd have upset Class A holders. And as you know, the 2 classes are identical in all respects, except for voting. So identical the dividends, the economic benefits, the share of earnings, everything. So they really belong ultimately at the same price. There have been times over the years where they've converged. We do believe at some point they will converge and that the Class A is really sort of a screaming value. And in fact, you may notice that when we recently bought shares or directors, purchase shares every year equal to a certain portion of their retainer. And when they bought the shares, they all bought, I think, all bought Class A common shares. So that really is a screaming value. And I think over time, a rational market will recognize that and push them together.

Got you. Okay. And I wanted to ask also just in terms of demand by region, other companies in the sector have said like China may have bought spare parts, pulled forward some purchases. Have you seen any sort of trends that would suggest anything to that -- of prebuying or -- of the PMA parts?

No. We see strength in all of our areas. So I would not say that we've seen that. It can be lumpy a little bit because people may buy parts a couple of times a year for each part number, and therefore, it can be a little lumpy. But no, I wouldn't say that we've seen any region particularly stronger than the others.

Okay. And then just my last one. In terms of pipeline of new PMA parts that are going to be introduced, typically, you guys have given a range, could be as many as 500 in a given year. What does the pipeline look like for '26 in terms of what you're introducing to the market?

Yes. I would say it's consistent with what we've done historically. Really, no change there. We're very happy with the with the number of parts that we've come out with. We've been at a similar number for a number of years. It went up when we bought Wencor. But I think you can see from the numbers that I think our decision has been quite good in that regard. And so I wouldn't see any substantive change.

And we'll take our next question from Cashen Keeler with BNP.

This is Cashen on behalf of Matt today. I guess just going off that last question, just wanted to ask on PMA. How supportive has the FAA been regarding parts approvals there? It seems like everything related to FA approvals, whether it be interiors or new aircraft, has just taken longer, so has that had any impact on your pipeline of new parts?

No. We've got a great relationship with the FAA, and we interface with them in many different ways. And I would say it's really business as usual for us. We -- no change there. All is progressing very well for us.

And we'll take our next question from Louis Raffetto with Wolfe Research.

Victor, maybe I missed this, but could you give the end market growth within ETG for the quarter? I don't know how -- defense versus electronics.

We did not break that out publicly.

Okay. I'll take a look in the 10-K. Maybe, Carlos, for you. CapEx, you guys aren't one to really spend, but you spent a little bit more in the fourth quarter. Anything you could sort of point to what that extra spending went to?

I think it was sort of business as usual, Lou. We had around yearend, you wind up getting projects accelerated sometimes because you get yearend deals as the calendar year closes out. So we still spend around, I think, 1.5%, maybe 1.6% of our revenues on CapEx. That's about where we've been historically on the CapEx expense side. And I think as we look into '26, it should be in a similar range, 1.5%, 1.6% revenues or something like that.

And at this time, I will turn the conference back to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Samara. We appreciate your coverage of the call for us. We wish everybody on the call a wonderful holiday season. and we thank you for listening today, and we look forward to talking with you on the next call or, if not, sooner. Thank you very much.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.