Cadre Holdings Q3 2025 Earnings Call - Strong Organic Growth and Strategic Acquisition Expand Market Leadership
Summary
Cadre Holdings delivered a robust third quarter in 2025, with 42% year-over-year net sales growth driven by organic expansion in armor and duty gear, and a significant $20 million sequential increase in their backlog. The company continued to leverage disciplined pricing strategies and operational improvements leading to margin expansion, while successfully deploying a $400 million M&A strategy, highlighted by the acquisition agreement of Tier Tactical. This deal enhances Cadre’s capabilities with advanced manufacturing and broadens their international military and law enforcement footprint. Key contract wins, such as the $50 million U.S. Department of Defense Blast Monitoring System IDIQ, underline the company’s market leadership and innovation strength amid favorable industry tailwinds in public safety and nuclear sectors. Cadre reaffirmed their 2025 revenue and EBITDA guidance, emphasizing strong free cash flow and balance sheet health to fuel both organic growth and strategic acquisitions despite macro uncertainties like government shutdowns.
Key Takeaways
- Cadre reported 42% year-over-year net sales growth in Q3 2025, driven primarily by armor and duty gear segments.
- The company’s gross margin improved significantly, up 610 basis points year-over-year, supported by pricing, productivity gains, and favorable product mix.
- Backlog rose by $20 million sequentially, including a $10 million initial purchase order for the $50 million U.S. Department of Defense Blast Monitoring System IDIQ contract.
- Cadre agreed to acquire Tier Tactical, a global leader in mission-critical protective equipment, expanding international reach and manufacturing capabilities.
- Tier Tactical’s advanced pressing capacity (up to 7,000 tons) materially augments Cadre's armor production capabilities, reducing dependence on external suppliers.
- The acquisition of Tier Tactical will increase Cadre’s footprint in international special ops and military markets, with minimal customer overlap with existing Safariland business.
- Cadre’s capital allocation supports ongoing dividends (16 consecutive since IPO), organic growth, and disciplined M&A, maintaining a pro forma net leverage of ~2.7x post-Tier acquisition.
- Favorable industry tailwinds exist in public safety due to growing government investment and in nuclear sectors driven by policy and private investments in national security and energy.
- Management expressed confidence in meeting full-year 2025 guidance ($624-$630 million net sales; $112-$116 million adjusted EBITDA) despite risks from the government shutdown.
- Leadership highlighted strong cultural adoption of the Cadre Operating Model in international subsidiaries, enhancing execution and margin performance.
- Sales pipeline includes noteworthy large orders in law enforcement and nuclear sectors, with expected additional bookings in upcoming quarters.
- Management is optimistic about potential security-related demand upticks tied to federal events like the World Cup, leveraging a broad product portfolio.
- Input cost inflation remains stable with no significant changes expected; pricing strategies and operating model productivity tools help offset cost pressures.
- The $50 million BMO contract places Cadre's MedEng business as a global leader in wearable blast sensor technology, opening doors internationally.
- The government shutdown's impact is considered in guidance; operations and sales teams are proactively managing potential disruptions.
Full Transcript
Conference Operator: Good morning. Welcome to Cadre Holdings’ third quarter 2025 conference call. Today’s call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute. If you would like to ask a question at the end of the prepared remarks, please press the star key, then the number one on your touch-tone phone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Matt Berkowitz of the IGB Group for introductions and the reading of the Safe Harbor Statement. Please go ahead, sir.
Matt Berkowitz, IGB Group Representative, IGB Group: Thank you. And welcome to today’s conference call to discuss Cadre’s third quarter results. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that during today’s call we’ll be making several forward-looking statements, and we make these statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimates and assumptions based on our understanding of information known to us today. These forward-looking statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that face Cadre and the industries and markets in which we operate. More information on potential factors that could affect Cadre’s financial results is included from time to time in Cadre’s public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please also note that we have posted presentation materials on our website at www.
CadreHoldings.com, which supplement our comments this morning and include a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures. I’d like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through November 19, 2025. The webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in yesterday’s press release as well as on Cadre’s website. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Cadre’s Chairman and CEO, Warren Kanders.
Warren Kanders, Chairman and CEO, Cadre Holdings: Good morning. Thank you for joining Cadre’s third quarter earnings call. I am joined today by our President, Brad Williams, and Chief Financial Officer, Blaine Browers. This continues to be an exciting time for Cadre, marked by outstanding execution, disciplined growth, and meaningful progress against our strategic objectives. The Cadre operating model is driving improvement every day, which is clearly reflected in another quarter of strong results. In addition to delivering financial performance above expectations in Q3, which Brad and Blaine will outline, we continue to capitalize on Cadre’s robust M&A funnel. With the agreement announced last week to acquire Tier Tactical, a leading manufacturer of mission-critical protective equipment, we again delivered on our commitment to expand our portfolio and enhance Cadre’s market leadership across categories.
Tier Tactical brings world-class engineering capabilities and global reach, which importantly includes relationships with key military customers in Northern Europe that we believe will help Cadre unlock new growth opportunities in high-value end markets. Under the leadership of Jason and Jane Beck, Tier has seen impressive growth since its founding in 2010 and shares with Cadre a long-standing commitment to innovation, quality, and a lifesaving mission. We are excited to partner with Jason and Jane and welcome them both as significant shareholders. For Cadre, this agreement marks our sixth and largest acquisition since going public. Along with our recent deals in the nuclear and robotics markets, it underscores our relentless focus on disciplined M&A that strengthens our diversified platform of durable safety businesses. In total, over the past 24 months, we have deployed more than $400 million. Consistent with this strategy.
Looking ahead, we continue to see robust acquisition pipelines in both the public safety and nuclear markets. We will remain patient and disciplined in our approach to identify high-quality, high-margin businesses that align with our operating model and can deliver sustainable growth and strong cash flow generation over time. Before I turn it over to Brad, I want to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication in upholding our mission. Together, we save lives. The results this quarter once again demonstrate the strength of our culture, the resilience of our businesses, and our team’s ability to deliver consistent execution. We are confident that the foundations we have built will continue to drive long-term value creation for our shareholders. With that, thank you for being with us today, and I will turn the call over to Brad. Brad, over to you.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thank you, Warren. On today’s call, Blaine and I will provide a Q3 update and business review, including recent trends, financial performance, and full-year outlook, followed by a Q&A session. We’ll begin on slide five. During the third quarter, we again delivered on our strategic objectives, advancing Cadre’s track record of consistent and stable growth despite a dynamic operating environment. We continue to successfully implement our pricing strategy, which reflects both the strength of our brands and the value our customers place on our mission-critical products. Third quarter mix was positive, driven by strong demand for EOD and favorable product mix in our nuclear categories. Importantly, our organic backlog increased by $20 million sequentially, reinforcing our confidence in the outlook for the remainder of the year. Based on our discussion last quarter, you’ll recall that we saw a higher mix of large opportunities that had been delayed.
This significant backlog growth is a very promising sign reflective of our progress booking some of these previously delayed opportunities. I will speak more about this progress shortly. In terms of capital allocation, Cadre’s strong free cash flow generation enables the company to make dividend payments while also supporting core organic growth and M&A objectives. Our November dividend will mark our 16th consecutive since our IPO. As you heard from Warren, we also delivered on our commitment to enhancing Cadre’s market leadership through disciplined M&A. Our agreement to acquire Tier Tactical represents a significant step forward in advancing Cadre’s strategic focus on mission-critical products with high margins, strong cash flows, and compelling growth tailwinds. It further opens the door to international markets and provides access to new customers based on long-standing relationships that drive demand.
Blaine will speak more about the deal shortly, specifically about Tier’s differentiated customer base and highly unique manufacturing capabilities. Overall, Tier is exactly the kind of high-quality, strategically aligned business we seek to add to our platform, one that enhances our leadership, accelerates growth, and delivers long-term value for our shareholders. Turning to slide six, I’d like to highlight another major win for the company. In September, Cadre’s EOD business, MedEng, was awarded the BMO contract, known as the Blast Exposure Monitoring System, by the U.S. Department of Defense. This is a $50 million IDIQ contract signifying a major achievement for our team and a significant milestone in our work with the U.S. military. Those who have followed us since our IPO know this award has been a part of our long-term roadmap and something that we have been working towards since 2019.
While the formal press release has been delayed due to the government shutdown, the award information has been made public through sam.gov and the DOD website. Links are available in the materials we shared yesterday. The BMO award builds on MedEng’s legacy as the global standard in bomb suits, with market share of approximately 90%. Its reputation as the most trusted brand in the industry is based on decades of experience evaluating blast effects on personnel and protective equipment. For the last 20 years, the team has been designing, manufacturing, testing, and commercializing several generations of wearable blast sensors, culminating in this latest technology. We are incredibly proud to win this award, which is a testament to Cadre’s long-term commitment to innovation and also positions MedEng at the forefront of efforts to better understand and mitigate blast exposure in the field moving forward.
Next, on slide seven, we lay out industry tailwinds supporting Cadre’s long-term growth opportunity across both our core, LE, and nuclear safety sectors. On the law enforcement side, we see rising safety threats globally, coupled with resilient and growing spend on protection equipment. In both the U.S. and in Europe, support for public safety is bipartisan. Turning to nuclear, long-term demand continues to be driven by policy and commercial tailwinds across our three market segments: environmental management, national security, and nuclear energy. Support across these markets continues to build both in the public and private sectors, with the government clearing the path and private investment flowing in. Landmark announcements dominate the headlines, from federal partnerships to state-level investments, all reinforcing the recognition that nuclear must play a central role in achieving energy security and reliability in the years ahead.
Combined with nuclear material waste processing and expanding national defense initiatives, Cadre Nuclear Group is strategically positioned at the forefront of a rapidly evolving industry with large-scale and collective capabilities to support the full nuclear life cycle. On slide eight, I’ll take a moment to zoom in on a couple of market trends and their impacts on our core law enforcement business. Trends in North America law enforcement remain positive, highlighted by significant federal investment in government agencies, including substantial focus on recruitment. Looking at another market trend highlighted on the slide, new products and innovation drive everything we do at Cadre. We continue to hear enthusiastic feedback about new products launched over the past 24 months, including our tactical carrier system HyperX and the Safariland SX HP package, the thinnest, lightest, and most protective hybrid ballistic armor on the market.
Before I turn it over to Blaine, I would like to briefly address the macro environment. Last quarter, we spoke about how our full-year outlook was slightly affected by our higher mix of large opportunities that had been delayed. There was a level of uncertainty related to timing and whether these opportunities would be booked this year or early next year. We are pleased to report that we have made considerable progress in the third quarter booking some of these, reflected in the significant backlog growth that I referred to earlier. One of those opportunities is the blast sensor five-year IDIQ that the U.S. Department of Defense has disclosed on its website, as well as sam.gov. We received our first BMO purchase order for approximately $10 million, with shipments being planned throughout 2026. Additionally, we received large duty gear, armor, crowd control, and EOD purchase orders in Q3.
Our expectation has not changed that other larger opportunities will book in the coming quarters as we continue to track well on these opportunities. I’ll now turn the call over to our CFO, Blaine Browers, to speak more about M&A, Cadre’s Q3 financial results, and 2025 outlook.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Thanks, Brad. I’ll kick off my comments with a review of our latest acquisition, as well as our M&A strategy more broadly. As Warren and Brad discussed, we’ve agreed to acquire Tier Tactical, a specialty provider of high-performance advanced tactical gear, including soft armor, hard armor, and tactical nylon products to US and allied militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world. It is a business that fits squarely within the strategic criteria that define our disciplined approach to M&A, outlined on the right side of the slide. Key attributes include a leading market position, strong brand recognition, differentiated manufacturing technology, as well as exceptional product quality and commitment to innovation. A key point to underscore is that the Tier Tactical customer base has minimal overlap with Cadre’s existing Safariland armor business.
On slide 11, we showed Tier and Cadre’s global armor revenue by customer channel, which illustrates how complementary the two brands will be in the marketplace. Tier serves a worldwide customer base, including top-tier special ops units, government agencies, and militaries. You can see that 66% of its revenue is derived from international customers, while U.S. federal and U.S. military total 27%. Both areas where Safariland does not have a major foothold today. In addition, Tier brings significant hard armor capabilities via their large presses and autoclaves that will be a significant resource addition to the Cadre armor business. We are excited about how the strengths of both companies will complement each other and enable new growth opportunities. In particular, we believe the Cadre operating model will unlock significant value for both brands.
Taking a step back in terms of M&A strategy, this latest transaction demonstrates that we are not done building upon our leadership positions in our core law enforcement military categories, despite our long-term vision to launch multiple new verticals. We continue to see attractive opportunities to broaden our product range, enter new markets, and increase customer wallet share. Overall, the M&A market remains strong, and we’re excited about the prospect of add-on opportunities across both nuclear and core law enforcement targets moving forward. Turning now to a summary of Cadre’s financial performance, slide 13 details our third-quarter results. Q3 net sales of $155.9 million increased 42% year-over-year. Of note, third-quarter gross margin improved 610 basis points year-over-year and 180 basis points sequentially. Year-over-year, it’s driven by favorable pricing, the absence of inventory step-up amortization in the prior year, and the cyber incident in 2024.
Illustrated on slide 14 is net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth year-over-year, including our 2025 guidance, which I’ll discuss more in a moment. Our full-year outlook implies a year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 10.5% and 8.7%, respectively, at the midpoints. On slide 15, we present our capital structure as of June 30, 2025, prior to the agreement to acquire Tier Tactical. Our pro forma net leverage will be around 2.7 times when the deal closes. We believe Cadre’s strong free cash flow generation, coupled with the strength of our balance sheet, gives us ample financial flexibility to continue to pursue organic and inorganic opportunities ahead. We are reaffirming our 2025 guidance on slide 16. Net sales are expected to be between $624 million and $630 million. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance is between $112 million and $116 million, implying adjusted EBITDA margins of 18.2%.
I’ll now turn it back to Brad for concluding comments.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thank you, Blaine. We’re excited. We’re executing well against our strategic priorities, and our strong Q3 results underscore the effectiveness of the Cadre operating model and the dedication of our talented teams around the world. Complementing our core organic growth initiatives, we are particularly happy about the recent progress we have made on our M&A program with the agreement to acquire Tier Tactical. We can’t wait to get started and begin the integration process following the expected close in the first half of 2026. Supported by Cadre’s entrenched positions and favorable industry trends across our law enforcement, first responder, military, and nuclear end markets, we’re excited to continue to build our platform and further enhance our market leadership moving forward. With that, operator, please open up the lines for Q&A.
Conference Operator: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Larry Sopo with CJS Securities.
Larry Sopo, Analyst, CJS Securities: Great. Good morning, guys. Congrats on a good quarter. Really nice margin improvement sequentially. I think I was just looking at it because I guess year-over-year is a little tough to look at because of the cybersecurity comp. But I do not know. Any thoughts, any color on the nice sequential improvement? It looks like gross margin was up almost 200 basis points, which dropped to EBITDA. I imagine the operating model cannot work that fast, so I am just curious. Any thoughts on that and just color on how CARS is progressing under that operating model, which you obviously only have for a few months, but any thoughts on that would be great too.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Yeah. No, appreciate the question, Larry. When we look at the margin improvement, I’d say the really positive piece we see is it’s pretty broad-based. This isn’t margin-driven by one particular business. Sequentially, we saw improvement really in all our major categories. Kind of within that, you’re going to have some price sequentially. A lot of that’s driven by productivity and then some positive mix in the quarter as well. Again, kind of going back, it is very broad-based. This isn’t a case where one particular business was driving that improvement, but it’s what we really like to see, which is everyone really executing well and seeing those margins drop through.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Hey, Larry, it’s Brad. On the CARS side of things, you asked about the operating model and kind of where we’re at on that. Really good progress. We’ve actually had the gentleman that leads our Cadre operating model over to Germany and also the U.K., meeting with Bindels and also the Wallace & Miller businesses and taking a look at the progress they’ve made with the initial tools in the operating model. As of the week before last, the team reported just exceptional progress. Culturally, they’re excited about the tools. They’re adopting the tools. It takes a while to learn these tools and master them as you go forward, but we’re really excited about what’s going on and the progress that’s happening.
Larry Sopo, Analyst, CJS Securities: Great. Just to switch gears, like, kind of just on the meta end, and I know you discussed this a little bit more at your analyst day, $50 million IDIQ. I imagine or I suppose this could expand significantly over the longer term. It is a much larger market opportunity. I think this was an exclusive award for you too. I think just color on that longer-term opportunity there.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Yeah, absolutely. If you remember back in IPO days, we had this listed as one of our kind of longer-term opportunities. Like a lot of bigger R&D projects like this with the U.S. Department of Defense, things get pushed around and delayed. That is where we kind of ended up at this point. The good news is, at this point, it looks like that award, the $50 million IDIQ, and then the initial $10 million purchase order, which is great, by the way, for those that know IDIQs, sometimes those initial purchase orders are not that large. That just shows you the commitment that is behind the program at this point from the DOD. We are going to take one of these at a time.
This obviously gives us an upper hand on any competitors out there in the marketplace that have been looking at blast sensors or working on blast sensor technology. Because now with this adoption for us, it gives us that opportunity to take this technology to other countries. I will not disclose which countries have already reached out, but we have had other countries reach out asking for sensors, having meetings with our technical teams, etc. We will see where it goes, but we feel like it is a good future forward with the blast sensor program.
Larry Sopo, Analyst, CJS Securities: Great. Thank you. I appreciate all that.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thanks, Larry.
Conference Operator: Your next question is from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen with B. Riley Securities.
Jeff Van Sinderen, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to touch on or circle back to, I guess, gross margins, SG&A leverage. As we’re thinking about Q4. Anything in the expected mix of business that’s likely to impact gross margin, also realizing it’s early. You haven’t closed the Tier acquisition yet, but assuming the closure of Tier. Second-half contribution from Tier next year, among other business inputs, would you expect gross margin to increase next year? Just thinking about all that together.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Yeah. I appreciate the question. For gross margins in Q4, we expect them really to land somewhere between Q2 and Q3 rates, maybe a little bit on the higher-end range based on what we’ve seen in Q3 and the backlog makeup for the rest of the year. I think, as you’ve seen before, if you look back to Q4 last year, the operating leverage can be pretty powerful with bigger volume quarters. That is what we kind of look out as the rest of the year. Very positive outlook for the remainder of this year. When we layer in Tier, keep in mind we’ll have inventory step-up amortization as well as some intangibles amortization, which will impact the GAAP gross margin that we’ll report.
There is probably a little bit of pressure there into next year, but that is really only at that gross margin line as we move down to adjusted EBITDA. Yeah, as we have said, it will be accretive on the bottom line. We are getting very excited about that. Really bringing those two businesses together, as we talked about, we think there is tremendous value on both sides of the business and looking forward to having the Tier business join the Cadre family and really the opportunity for both sides to learn from each other.
Jeff Van Sinderen, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Okay. I know you touched on this a little bit at the analyst day, but maybe you can kind of speak to the manufacturing capabilities of Tier. On that side of the business, how close will you be to vertical integration and manufacturing once you have Tier in-house?
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Yeah. Great question, Jeff. Just to kind of go over the capabilities that Tier has and kind of contrast that to what I’ll call our Safariland brand and a couple of other armor brands have. First of all, it’s the pressing capability. That’s the biggest one from an equipment standpoint. As raw materials become more advanced in the armor market from suppliers like Honeywell and DSM and others, as those become more advanced, they require a higher level of pressing capacity. The reason you need that is to press materials so that you can elongate molecules in the raw materials so that you can continue to have strengthened materials within that process. Just to give you an idea, Safariland capabilities from a pressing tonnage standpoint is anywhere from 250 to we max out around 500 tons of pressing capacity. Tier.
Has two large presses at 7,000 tons. Okay? At this moment, what we have been having to do with our hard armor business, I am talking plates and shields with some of the newer materials, is we have to go externally with a few other companies to press some of these materials so that we can get to the level of pressure that is needed. We are very, very excited about these capabilities that the Tier folks have in the Peoria facility there. As we go forward, that pressing capability will be used by both companies. All right. In terms of vertical integration, Jeff, our vertical integration will not be any more than what it is today, right? Because we press today, Tier presses today. In the armor business, if we were going to go additional.
Vertical integration in the supply chain, that would be into the raw material side of things. Ballistic materials, for example, nylon materials and that side of the supply chain, which we’re definitely not in that space.
Jeff Van Sinderen, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Okay. Excellent. Appreciate that. Seems like overall it gives you a pretty nice competitive advantage in manufacturing capabilities. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ll take the rest offline.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Okay. Appreciate it, Jeff.
Conference Operator: Your next question is from the line of Egan McDermott with Jefferies.
I’m taking the question. Organic growth in the quarter looks to have been driven by armor and duty gear. Do you have a sense of how much of that is the step-up in demand for these end markets versus easier comps?
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Yeah. You were a little tough to hear, but I think you were asking about organic growth for armor and duty gear and. On a year-on-year just because of the tough cyber comp. Is that correct?
That is. Sorry if I’m not coming in clear.
No, that’s all right. That’s all right. Yeah. When we look at, and it’s a difficult number, let’s maybe start with that, trying to adjust out the cyber and spread it out. When we look year-on-year or sequentially, we did see growth in the armor business. And when you kind of spread out prior year for duty gear, our run rate was up from last year. We look at that and say we’re in a pretty good position. Then based on the bookings and large orders that have come in and outlook for the year, we’re pretty confident we’ll have organic growth in those businesses. Very excited about kind of where they positioned. Q3 makes it very difficult to kind of unpeel them. Appreciate the question.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Yeah. I would just add to that by saying just to underscore. Last quarter, we talked about the higher number of large opportunities that we had in our funnel that the teams were working on. We got asked quite a few questions about our confidence level in those. I think we’ve shown that, right, with our increase in our backlog. The backlog increased to $20 million, $10 million of that’s BMO, and then another $10 million are these larger orders that we were tracking and doing really well on. The team’s lining up those orders, knocking them off one by one. Grabbing those wins. As we get into the rest of the year, we’ve got additional opportunities that fall in that large order bucket that we spoke of last quarter.
We are still in that lead position and really excited about those when they do come through. Some of those are very noteworthy type opportunities that we cannot wait to talk about externally if we win those.
That sounds great. Thank you. That’s helpful. If I could maybe ask a follow-up. The offset, I guess, in the quarter was order timing in the nuclear business. With, I think, $6.5 million taken out of the nuclear backlog last quarter, would you call it any risk in that end market in terms of demand or funding, whether it be U.S. or international?
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: No, great question. This is going to be part of that. I’ll also say, if you think about that nuclear business with large opportunities, because it is more concentrated on fewer large opportunities, just naturally, we’re going to see some timing around that backlog build and then backlog bleed as they execute on projects. When we look ahead and look at the funnel of opportunities for both the Zircaloy businesses as well as the CARS businesses, formerly CARS businesses and Alpha, we’re still very bullish on that look for next year and beyond.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Conference Operator: Your next question is from the line of Matt Koranda with Roth Capital.
Hey, guys. Maybe just attacking sort of the growth question because I know the comparison is a little wonky from last year. Attacking it from a different angle. What was the nuclear contribution, I guess, to product revenue in the third quarter between CARS and Alpha?
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: The CARS businesses would be kind of right what you’d expect based on what we disclosed for revenue. If you kind of split it out, that gets them just a little bit under $20 million. Alpha was slightly less in the quarter than you’d expect on a runway basis.
Okay. All right. That helps. Maybe just switching gears and thinking about the guidance that’s implied for the fourth quarter, just curious how the government shutdown might impact things if the shutdown drags on deeper into the fourth quarter. Is there any impact that’s contemplated in the guidance, or how should we just be thinking about sort of delivery schedules and the disruption that could happen?
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Hey, Matt, Brad, hey, appreciate the question. We have considered that in the guidance overall. There’s a couple of our business units and a couple of our product lines that we’re watching closely that are connected more to government being open and whether that’s sign-offs on various shipments that need to go out or just the fact that with the government shutdown, if folks aren’t doing training and doing work to then pull through some of the shorter cycle type businesses that we have. Those are contemplated in the Q4 side of things. We’re going to keep watching them. We’ve got our teams. We’ve got our hit list of which ones those are. The teams go through those on a weekly basis when they go through their daily management sessions, daily and weekly. They’re on top of those to continue to push those as we go forward.
At this point, we’re optimistic that we’ve got it covered in there.
Okay. All right. Great. And then maybe just if I could sneak one more in. Great to see the PO on the blast sensor for $10 million. I know we’re always asking for more detail here, but any thoughts on sort of the cadence of how that could be delivered? Is it going to be like a lumpier within one or two quarters next year, or should we just be kind of thinking about a ratable delivery on that PO throughout next year?
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Matt, I think we expect it to be a bit lumpier. There’s kind of two, I wouldn’t say challenges, but two things you got to think about. I mean, we have the first PO on the IDIQ. We’ll work to deliver those as soon as possible to the end user, which likely kind of weights it towards the kind of front half to middle of the year. What we don’t know yet, right, and certainly the government shutdown isn’t helping, is kind of visibility on any follow-on orders. That’s when we’ll just have to wait and see.
Totally fair. All right. I’ll leave it there. Thanks, guys.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thanks, Matt.
Conference Operator: Your next question is from the line of Jordan Lipani with Bank of America.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to ask, on your guide, is there any downside risk just on if the government remains shut down through the rest of either the quarter or just late into November? Then two, how are you guys thinking about opportunities for next year with the DHS funding from the reconciliation bill starting to go out for the World Cup?
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Hey, I’ll take the first part of that. That’s a similar question to what Matt just asked in terms of the what’s going on from a government shutdown perspective, what’s affecting us. Again, we feel like we’ve got any of those potential slippages covered in the Q4 guidance side of things or the full-year guidance side of things. When you look at some of those opportunities within some of the business units, they do exist of potential delays, but we feel like we’re covered at this point.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: On your question about the DHS and World Cup, we would likely expect some uptick in spending around security. I think it’s difficult for us at this point to really point to particular products or opportunities just because it hasn’t kind of gone through the funnel. The great news is the teams are out there, staying close to our end users, our customers, our distributors, and just making sure we’re in a position to fulfill those needs if and when they ask. At this point, really difficult for us to put an estimate out.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: I’d just add to that. When you think about security when it comes to those kind of larger scale events like that, if there’s any federal folks involved, state and local, when you go head to toe, when you look at those folks, right, with the Tier Tactical acquisition, with Safariland products, whether it’s holsters, body armor, if there’s helmets involved, shields involved, crowd control products, you name it, that type of stuff. That’s why we continue to build out in our public safety side of things. We’ve been in it for a long time, very comfortable with public safety, who’s out there, who’s in the market, opportunities to go after. This is squarely within what we do. I’m sure when that continues to move forward as it firms up, with the breadth of products we have, we’re going to be right in the mix of that.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Great. Thank you, guys.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thank you.
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: Thank you.
Conference Operator: Your next question is from Mark Smith with Lake Street.
Hi, guys. I wanted to ask about input costs and inflation. Is there anything that you see kind of going up significantly? And similar with that, has anything changed in your outlook or ability to take price at and above inflation?
Blaine Browers, Chief Financial Officer, Cadre Holdings: No. Thanks. Great question. Yeah. Our inputs have tracked pretty consistently what we’ve seen recently. Obviously, there’s some variability coming into the year with tariffs and the likely impact, but we haven’t seen any price come through from destocking from any of our suppliers. It is one we’re staying close to, but that has not been anything unexpected at this point. We don’t have any indications that next year is going to be significantly different. We’re comfortable there, staying close to it. The other pieces, we kind of look to kind of the two pieces to counteract any of that pressure if it was to occur. Right. On the price side, as you asked, nothing’s changed in the dynamic. It is one, a tool we need to be and will continue to be thoughtful in the application of it, right?
No different than how we always approach it, that we want to be thoughtful, make sure we’re getting the value that the products deserve based on their performance in the field. The second piece is really the opt model, right, and making sure we’re leveraging those tools to offset, whether it’s material or labor inflation, or drive increased throughput or better margins. As we kind of look at it, we feel pretty good about that material inflation environment as we see it today. We also feel really good about the tools we can leverage to counteract that and really maintain the business and the margins.
Okay. I also wanted to ask about new product mix. I know this is tough with nuclear and acquired business and maybe not as much on a year-over-year comp. Just as we think about the legacy business, how have new products mixed here recently versus kind of historical averages? I am curious, similar to that with Tier, if there is a history or legacy of innovation and new product mix that drives that business.
Yeah. No, it’s a tough number for us to track, but I can tell you when we look at a couple of the business specifically, compared to what we’ve historically done. Our portfolio is significantly refreshed in the last few years. We’re seeing gains in those markets with those new products. That is very exciting for us. On the Tier, Tier was really built on innovation. Jason and Jane and the rest of the team have done a fantastic job of innovating both around the tactical carrier, the nylon, as well as the body armor. We expect as we bring these two teams together that we’ll really get the best of both worlds and continue that innovation journey for both of us. Very excited about the future.
Great. Thank you.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thanks, Mark.
Conference Operator: At this time, there are no further questions. I will now hand today’s call over to Brad Williams for closing remarks.
Brad Williams, President, Cadre Holdings: Thank you, operator. I’d like to thank everyone again for joining us on today’s call and for your continued interest in Cadre. Have a great day.
Conference Operator: This concludes the conference call. Thank you and have a great day.