NACCO Industries Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Strong Profit Growth Driven by Utility Coal and New Infrastructure Contracts

Tina, Conference Operator: Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NACCO Industries first quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, NACCO Industries: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our 2026 1st quarter earnings call. I’m Christina Kmetko, and I’m responsible for investor relations at NACCO. Joining me today are J.C. Butler, NACCO’s President and Chief Executive Officer, and Elizabeth I. Loveman, our Senior Vice President and Controller. Yesterday, we released our 1st quarter results and filed our 10-Q with the SEC. Both documents are available on our website. During today’s call, we will reference several non-GAAP measures which we believe provide additional insight into how we manage our business. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are also available on our website. Before we begin, let me remind you that today’s remarks include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated due to a variety of risks and uncertainties which are described in our earnings release, 10-Q, and other SEC filings.

We undertake no obligation to update these statements. With that, I’ll turn the call over to J.C. for his opening remarks. J.C.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Thanks, Kristi. Good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to say that we delivered a strong start to 2026, reporting significant growth and profitability. First quarter operating profit increased 43% over last year and 45% sequentially. Meaningful growth in our utility coal and contract mining segments drove the year-over-year improvement, while contract mining led to sequential growth primarily due to the commencement of a new construction project in Florida. These operating results contributed to the 28% year-over-year and 15% sequential increases in adjusted EBITDA. These results reflect a business executing well and delivering as expected. Let me walk through each of our businesses in more detail. Our utility coal mining segment remains the foundation of our business. This quarter, Mississippi Lignite Mining Company was one of the main drivers of our operating profit increase.

During our year-end earnings call, I discussed the customer’s power plant outage that began in mid-February. During the outage, we pivoted effectively and redeployed crews to work on planned reclamation activities. This reduced our asset retirement obligation rather than being recognized as an expense which would have impacted first quarter earnings. Lower cost per ton helped minimize the effect of reduced deliveries in the first quarter. I’m confident that as long as the customer’s power plant operates as planned, the team will continue to mine effectively and control costs, driving improvement in year-over-year results at Mississippi Lignite Mining Company. Its strong first quarter operating profit reflects the benefits of our strategic initiatives to expand this business.

During the quarter, we commenced activities under a multi-year dragline services contract as part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction project in Palm Beach County, Florida. We’re excited about this opportunity because it advances our growth into large-scale infrastructure projects, it showcases the efficiency and environmental advantages of our new electric drive MTECK draglines. We have 2 MTECK draglines on site and plan to add a third to this project later this year. We’re encouraged by the early project progress on this project. In addition to the Florida project, we expect to commence operations during the second half of 2026 on a limestone quarry in Arizona, where we will be operating a dragline for an existing customer. This is a great opportunity that expands our footprint into a new region of the United States.

Contract mining continues to build a growing portfolio of long-term contracts through great geographic and mineral expansion, which is expected to lead to increasing profitability in this segment. Turning to minerals and royalties, this segment reported comparable year-over-year operating profit. While first quarter results exceeded our forecast, we continue to expect a year-over-year decrease in operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA in 2026, despite higher oil prices. Natural gas remains the primary driver of our near-term results, so higher oil prices certainly contribute to our results, but they do not have the same level of impact. That said, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the oil and gas market, so we’ll have to see how the situation in the Middle East plays out. At Mitigation Resources, we expect increasing profitability over time from the sale of mitigation credits and as reclamation and restoration services expand.

While performance is currently variable due to permit and project timing, Mitigation Resources is expected to generate profit in the second half of 2026 and move toward more consistent results as the business expands. In mid-April, Mitigation Resources acquired 958 acres in Wilson County, Tennessee, which is east of Nashville. This marks an important step in their growth strategy, representing significant expansion into an area experiencing steady economic growth. The project is expected to deliver a new mitigation bank with high-quality stream and wetland mitigation credits, with availability anticipated in 2029. These credits will support continued residential, industrial, and infrastructural development in a 14-county area around Greater Nashville. We are very excited about this project because it allows us to serve 2x the typical service range for similar mitigation projects, and we will be serving an area that has experienced steady economic growth.

Across the board, we continue to invest in our businesses to drive future growth. We made capital expenditures of $33 million during the first quarter, and we anticipate making additional capital investments through the remainder of 2026, primarily in business development opportunities that meet our strict investment criteria. Overall, I continue to believe we are well-positioned for meaningful growth. We entered 2026 with clear opportunities to build on our 2025 momentum, and we are executing. I remain confident in our businesses and our ability to deliver strong 2026 results as we continue to execute our growth strategies and create long-term value for our shareholders through long-term relationships, long-term contracts, and investment in long-term assets. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Liz to provide a more detailed view of our financial results and outlook. Liz?

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: Thank you, J.C. I’ll start with some high-level comments about our consolidated first quarter 2026 results compared to the 2025 first quarter. We generated consolidated gross profit of $14.3 million, an increase of 48% year-over-year, despite first quarter revenues of $62.8 million decreasing 4%. Consolidated operating profit of $11 million increased from $7.7 million in 2025, driven by improvements in both our utility coal mining and contract mining segments. These favorable results were partly offset by higher unallocated expenses. These strong operating profit results, combined with an improvement in other investment income, resulted in net income of $8.8 million or $1.17 per share. This was an 80% increase over first quarter 2025 net income of $4.9 million or $0.66 per share.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 28% to $16.4 million versus $12.8 million for the same period last year. Turning to the segments. The utility coal mining segment reported operating profit of $7.4 million in 2026, a substantial increase over the $3.8 million generated in the 2025 first quarter. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased to $9.7 million from $5.8 million in the prior year. Efficiency actions and reclamation progress at Mississippi Lignite Mining Company during the power plant outage drove a meaningful improvement in gross profit compared with the prior year when results were affected by a $3 million inventory impairment charge. Looking ahead, we expect a meaningful increase in operating profit compared with 2025, primarily in the first half of 2026.

Improvements at Mississippi Lignite Mining Company, driven by an increase in the contractually determined per ton sales price and a lower cost per ton delivered, are expected to be partly offset by lower earnings at the unconsolidated mining operations. The lower unconsolidated mining earnings in the second half of 2026 are due to reduced income from The Sabine Mining Company associated with the wind down of reclamation services. In the Contract Mining segment, current quarter results benefited from the commencement of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dragline services contract J.C. discussed. This contract, combined with increased customer requirements and deliveries at the limestone mining operations, led to a 32% increase in revenues net of reimbursed costs and substantial year-over-year increases in both operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA.

During the quarter, contract mining changed its depreciation method for draglines and other large mining equipment from straight line to units of production to better align depreciation with asset usage. This change contributed approximately $900,000 to first quarter operating profit. As activity increases, particularly with the dragline services project in Florida and the commencement of operations in Arizona, depreciation expense will increase accordingly, and we expect full-year depreciation to be generally in line with 2025. Looking forward, as a result of earnings contributions from new contracts and continued momentum from 2025 activities, we anticipate a substantial year-over-year increase in both operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA at the contract mining segment.

In the minerals and royalty segment, higher 1st quarter 2026 earnings from our Eiger equity investment mostly offset lower natural gas revenues, reflecting the benefits of our diversified portfolio and resulting in comparable year-over-year operating profit. For full year 2026, we expect the increases in income from our equity holding, combined with higher oil prices, will be more than offset by anticipated production declines in our natural gas assets and a changing mix of production and development activity, resulting in an overall year-over-year decrease in minerals and royalties operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA.

At the consolidated level, we anticipate meaningful year-over-year improvements in consolidated operating profit, net income, and adjusted EBITDA in 2026. Excluding the effect of a $6 million after-tax pension settlement charge in 2025, we expect year-over-year growth to moderate in the second half of the year as anticipated results are compared against stronger prior year operational performance. Looking at our liquidity, at March 31st, we had outstanding debt of $126.4 million, up from $100.9 million at December 31st, 2025. Our total liquidity was $102.7 million, consisting of $53.2 million of cash and $49.5 million of availability under our revolving credit facility.

As a result of the anticipated capital investments, we expect a greater use of cash before financing in 2026 compared with 2025. With that, I’ll turn the call back to J.C. for closing remarks.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Thanks, Liz. To wrap up, our first quarter of 2026 results reflect continued execution of our business model and the strength of our operations. As we move forward, we plan to build on this momentum through additional investments in our growth platforms that are expected to deliver improvements in profitability and cash generation. I am encouraged by our performance and remain confident in our ability to generate long-term value for shareholders. We’ll now turn to any questions you may have.

Tina, Conference Operator: As a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Doug Weiss with DSW Investment. Please go ahead.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Hey, good morning.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Morning, Doug.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Congrats on the good quarter. I guess, starting with Mississippi Lignite, it sounds like the plant maintenance has been completed and it’s back to business as usual.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah. Yeah. The outage that occurred, the, you know, the unplanned outage that occurred earlier in the year has been completed, and the plant is actually running pretty well, which, you know, helps us because the best situation for us is to, you know, be mining at a steady rate so we can, you know, operate most efficiently. That’s a nice positive.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Right. Are you able to say whether that plant is now providing attractive returns to its owners given the evolution of electricity markets?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: You know, we don’t have a lot of exposure to the electricity side of that equation, I think it would be reckless for me to speculate on, you know, how exactly that’s playing out right now. I mean, generally, there’s, you know, high demand for electrons, that’s supportive of prices. You know, you’d have to work through the mechanics of the PPA that they have to sorry, the power purchase agreement they have with TVA in order to really figure out how that works. I’m not privy to those details.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Right. Okay. On the contract, on the North American Mining, you’ve had a contract to start this quarter, and then you have a couple more starting through the year. you know, last year, I guess there was a big drop-off in the second half, and I think that was partly weather-related. Would you anticipate a steady sort of cadence through this year and even growth through the year?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah. I mean, I You know, it’s always subject to, you know, what could happen in the interim that would, that would cause something to go, you know, directions we don’t anticipate. As we added, you know, we’re ramping up production at the new project in Palm Beach County, the US Army Corps of Engineers project. We’ve got one dragline operating. Another one is just it’s either just been commissioned or will be shortly. Third dragline is gonna be in there later in the year. We’re gonna see increasing levels of production there in support of that project, which is great. In the second half of the year, we’re gonna start, you know, operating the dragline in Arizona, which is great.

Those are the main 2 new contracts that we’re layering on to our existing contracts this year.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Right. Right. Okay. You had one other question on North American Mining. In terms of how you account for capital expenditure on that division, what is the sort of decision point on whether something gets expensed in the quarter as opposed to allocated to capital?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Liz, that’s a you question.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: I mean, you know, normal repairs and maintenance are expensed. If it’s something that, you know, is going to benefit us over the long term, like, you know, a dragline, you know, a rebuild on a dragline tub, those kinds of things that are, you know, expected to generate, you know, we’re gonna be able to use those over a longer period and they meet our capitalization criteria, we would capitalize those. Just general repairs and maintenance is expensed, other things are capitalized.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: It’s kind of a major component, I guess, is the way you can think of it. The tub, for a large dragline, the tub is the base that the dragline sits on. You know, these things, the big ones walk, which is, you know, fascinating technology, but it sits and rotates on a tub. Others, you know, are on very large tracks, kind of like you’d see on a, you know, mobile crane or a bulldozer kind of thing. It operates on tracks. Large components get capitalized, everything else gets expensed.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: Yeah. If it’s gonna extend the useful life, it gets capitalized, I guess is another way.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: to say it.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah. Like if you know, take a boom down and do a complete boom rebuild, that probably gets capitalized.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Okay. That’s helpful.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Hey, Sorry, Doug, just on that point.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Yeah.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: You know, we talk about the fact that we pursue contracts that not all contracts have capital upfront, but we do contracts that have initial capital upfront when we may put a dragline in place or in mitigation resources, we’re buying mineral interests. In minerals and royalties, we’re buying mineral interests. Mitigation resources, we might buy land. Generally, the maintenance CapEx that we have in our projects going forward is a low number as a percentage of the original. You know, I don’t want you to think that any of these things that Liz was describing, you know, tub repairs, boom rebuilds, I mean, they come up every so often, but they’re a small portion of the, you know, depreciation expense that we incur over the life of a contract.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Right. Right. makes sense.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Sorry about that.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Let’s see. In terms of Thacker Pass, you know, I believe that’s supposed to ramp next year. Any, you know, I think lithium prices have come up quite a bit. Anything you’re seeing there that’s worth updating on?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: I’m actually headed out there next week. The, you know, the plant is progressing very nicely. We’re doing initial work on mine development. We’ve got our, you know, our office trailers established where the mine site will be, which is directly adjacent to the processing plant. That, I mean, that project’s moving along nicely. I look forward to being out there next week to see it. You’re right, later this year, early next year is when we anticipate. It’s really late next year we anticipate.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: Late 2020s.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Sorry. I’m off a year. It’s late 2027 when we anticipate, you know, making lithium deliveries to them, which they’ll then be processing. Everything seems to be on target.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: They do a very nice job of updating their website.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: what’s going on. If you wanted to look there, they update that regularly.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: They do a great job giving the project updates.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: I think they just filed their annual report today, so there’s probably good information out there.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Okay, good. Yeah, I’ll check that out. Let’s see. You had a large expenditure this quarter for mitigation resources. I think that’s independent of your comments on buying land in Tennessee. What was the $32 million? What did that relate to?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Our total CapEx for the quarter was $33 million, right, Liz?

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: Yes. Yes.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Kristi, you’re nodding. That was made up of the purchase of land in Tennessee and expenditures on the drag lines for the project in Florida we just discussed, the Army Corps of Engineers project. That’s really what makes up that $33 million.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Got it. Got it.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: Some sold expenses too. There’s other things mixed in.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: There’s other things in there too. That’s not 100% of it’s certainly a majority of those expenditures are related to the land purchase from, for mitigation resources and the drag lines for contract mining.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: I see. When you make a large land purchase like that, what’s the payoff in terms of time? You know, when do you start to see cash realizations from that?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: I mean, you know, the nature of our projects, typically, there’s always exceptions, but typically we expect to get assets deployed pretty quickly and start generating cash returns. You know, if you look at I’ll give you 1 example. In our minerals business, we, for the most part, look at projects that have payback, complete payback, within 5 years. You know, these assets deliver for decades after that. You know, we always look at as we’re measuring, you know, NPV and IRR on these projects, you know, the speed with which you get your capital back is a big factor in all of this.

Of course, you know, as we discuss internally all the time, the faster we can get our capital back means we have capital we can then redeploy and can redeploy into other assets, other contracts, other opportunities that build on this long-term business model that we’ve described in our investor deck.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Right.

Elizabeth I. Loveman, Senior Vice President and Controller, NACCO Industries: If you were asked about the Tennessee land, we had issued a press release, when we acquired the land, and we noted that credits we anticipate will be available in 2029.

Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, NACCO Industries: You know, there’s just permitting that has to happen before the credits are available.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: I see. I see. When you buy an asset, like, does that improve the utilization of your, you know, heavy equipment that you’re using to improve that land?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah. Within the Mitigation Resources business, you know, when we started, we were just really doing the credits and contracting the dirt work. Very quickly, we realized that we should be doing our own dirt work ’cause we can better control our costs and our schedule. Honestly, we’re pretty good at what we do. We established a business inside Mitigation Resources that we call MitRes Services, LLC that does dirt work not only for Mitigation Resources’ own projects, but from time to time, we go identify that team identifies other restoration and reclamation projects that can be done for third parties. We’re able to utilize the equipment. This is smaller equipment. This is not like stuff that we would operate at a big coal mine.

This is smaller kind of things that you can haul into the road. We do not only our own dirt work, we do real work for third parties as well, which has turned out to be a really interesting business with a huge addressable market and I think a lot of opportunity.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Okay, great. I guess last question on the minerals business. Given, given the increase in oil prices and appreciating that there’s a lot of volatility in those prices, are you getting any indications on whether that’s gonna lead to more wells over the rest of the year in terms of your partners or, you know?

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Yeah, you know, I mean, they, like everybody else, are watching what’s going on with caution. You know, several years ago, we went through the period where not all, many of the producers were. It’s almost like, you know, an internet business where it’s all about the clicks. It was about how many rigs did they have going and how many wells they were drilling and not what was going on with their cash flows. A bunch of them got burned by that. You know, amongst the more sophisticated producers, which are primarily the folks that we work with, they’re being cautious not to get out over their skis by taking on too much debt or bringing in private equity money that they need in order to fund a huge drilling program.

Now, do I think that it’s sustained? Look, I mean, I read the same stuff you probably read in The Wall Street Journal and other places. You know, if we have continued higher oil prices, they don’t necessarily have to be at the level they are. Would that probably lead to future increases in development? It probably would. I think they’re all waiting to see how this plays out and what really happens to oil prices over the long term. My own view is, you know, if all of a sudden somebody waved a magic wand in the Middle East and everything was settled, which I don’t think is gonna happen, oil prices are gonna drop because the immediate stress will come out of the system. Oil will begin flowing through the strait more regularly.

I think there’s gonna be a risk premium added to global oil prices for quite a while. You know, that’s gonna affect how people think about drilling in the Permian and other oil-producing regions of the United States. Purely my opinion based on what I’ve been reading, I just it feels like how it plays out.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Ultimately, you know, that should be good for the oil reserves that we own. I think ultimately that spills over into natural gas to some extent, although we really haven’t seen much movement in natural gas prices thus far, even though, you know, what’s going on in the Middle East has disrupted LNG shipments. My own opinion is over time, this is a positive for U.S. LNG exports. We’re, you know, we’re heavily weighted toward we’re less heavily than we used to be, but we’re still significantly weighted towards natural gas. Ultimately, that should play into a really nice long-term benefit for our natural gas asset.

Doug Weiss, Analyst, DSW Investment: Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. Well, thanks as always for the time. Congrats on the good quarter. Talk to you next quarter.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: We’ll talk to you next quarter. We appreciate your interest and your questions.

Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, NACCO Industries: Thanks, Doug.

J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, NACCO Industries: Thanks, Doug.

Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, NACCO Industries: Thank you.

Tina, Conference Operator: Again, as a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. With no further questions in queue, I’ll now hand the call back over to Christie for closing remarks.

Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, NACCO Industries: Okay. Thank you. We’ll conclude our Q&A session. Before we wrap up the call, I’d like to provide a few reminders. A replay of our call will be available online later this morning. We’ll also post a transcript on our website when it becomes available. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. My phone number is on the press release. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll turn it back to Tina to conclude the call. Thank you.

Tina, Conference Operator: Thank you very much for joining us today. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.