Earnings call transcript: CVD Equipment’s Q3 2025 revenue up, transformation underway

CVD Equipment Corporation reported its Q3 2025 earnings, showing a revenue of $7.4 million, which marks a 44.9% increase from the previous quarter, though a 9.6% decrease year-over-year. The company also posted a net income of $384,000, or $0.06 per diluted share. The stock closed at $3.45, unchanged in aftermarket trading. The company is undergoing a significant transformation strategy aimed at cost savings and efficiency improvements.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 2025 revenue increased by 44.9% from Q2 2025.
• Year-to-date revenue rose by 7.1% compared to 2024.
• Transformation strategy includes outsourcing and workforce reduction.
• Focus on high-growth sectors like silicon carbide electronics and EV battery materials.

Company Performance

CVD Equipment’s performance in Q3 2025 reflects a strategic shift towards operational efficiency and market expansion. Despite a year-over-year revenue decline, the company showed substantial sequential growth. The transformation strategy, including outsourcing and workforce reduction, is expected to yield $2 million in annual cost savings from 2026.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $7.4 million (9.6% decrease YoY, 44.9% increase QoQ)
• Net Income: $384,000 or $0.06 per diluted share
• Gross Profit: $2.4 million (32.7% gross margin)
• Cash and Cash Equivalents: $8.4 million as of September 30, 2025

Outlook & Guidance

CVD Equipment aims to return to consistent profitability, focusing on new equipment orders and cost management. The company forecasts revenues of $28.89 million in FY2025 and $29.9 million in FY2026. The transformation strategy is central to achieving these goals, with a strong emphasis on capital expenditure control and leveraging core competencies in silicon carbide markets.

Executive Commentary

CEO Emmanuel Lakios stated, "Our goal continues to be enabling tomorrow’s technology today," highlighting the company’s focus on innovation and market adaptation. CFO Richard Catalano emphasized the importance of new equipment orders and cost management for profitability.

Risks and Challenges

• Proposed tariffs could impact material costs.
• Reduced U.S. government funding may affect research projects.
• Timing of product adoption in key markets remains uncertain.
• Potential effects from a U.S. government shutdown.
• Dependence on strategic transformation for future savings.

CVD Equipment Corporation’s Q3 2025 earnings reflect strategic initiatives aimed at long-term growth and efficiency, with a focus on innovation in high-demand sectors. The company’s transformation plan and market positioning in silicon carbide and electric vehicle technologies indicate a proactive approach to navigating current challenges and capturing future opportunities.

Full transcript - CVD Equipment Corporation (CVV) Q3 2025:

Paul, Call Moderator, CVD Equipment Corporation: Good afternoon and welcome to the CVD Equipment Corporation third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. We will begin with prepared remarks followed by a question-and-answer session. Presenting on today’s call are Emmanuel Lakios, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Catalano, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings press release and call replay information are available in the investor relations section of our website at www.cvdequipment.com. Before we begin, please note the comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements, including those related to our future financial performance, market growth, demand for our products, and overall business outlook. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

For a detailed discussion of these risks, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including the risk factor section of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2024. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today to review our third quarter 2025 financial results and to provide an update on our business and strategic initiatives. After our prepared remarks, we look forward to taking your questions. For the third quarter 2025, revenue was $7.4 million, a 9.6% decrease from prior year quarter, and a 44.9% increase compared to the second quarter of this year. Revenue to date was $20.8 million and was 7.1% higher than the same period 2024. Orders for the third quarter totaled $2.2 million, primarily driven by continued demand in our SDC segment for gas delivery systems. For the nine months of 2025, total orders were $9.5 million compared to $21 million in the same period last year.

At September 30th, 2025, backlog stood at $8 million compared to $13.2 million at June 30th, 2025, as we converted backlog to revenue in the quarter. Our third quarter and year-to-date bookings were influenced by several external factors, including uncertainties related to proposed tariffs, reduced U.S. government funding for university and U.S. government shutdown, and timing in the product adoption within our growth markets. In response to the ongoing fluctuations in our order rate and the recent decline in bookings within the CVD Equipment Division, our Board of Directors has approved a comprehensive transformation strategy aimed at significantly reducing fixed operating costs and creating a more agile organization. Key elements of this plan include transitioning CVD equipment business from vertically integrated fabrication to outsourced fabrication of certain components, enabling us to reduce our fixed costs and improve scalability.

A workforce reduction in the CVD Equipment Division to be completed by year-end 2025 expected to reduce the annual operating costs by approximately $2 million beginning in 2026. To note, the SDC division will not be impacted by these actions. Revising our sales approach by leveraging distributors and external representatives to complement our internal sales force and broadening our market reach. Exploring strategic alternatives for certain businesses and product lines, which could include asset sales and divestments. Together, these initiatives will allow us to focus on our core strengths, which are engineering design, assembly, test, installation, and customer service, all while driving greater efficiency and long-term profitability. We remain encouraged by the opportunities ahead in our target markets, aerospace and defense, industrial applications, which include silicon carbide on graphite, silicon carbide high-power electronics, and electric vehicle battery materials.

As an update on opportunities in the silicon carbide bull market, in October 2025, we announced a new order from Stony Brook University for two PBT150 physical vapor transport systems to support their center established by Onsemi Silicon Carbide Crystal Growth Center. We’re proud to play a role in advancing semiconductor materials research and support critical technologies in artificial intelligence and electrification. We are continuing the development of our 200-millimeter silicon carbide crystal growth process using our PBT200 system targeted at the high-power electronics market. This same platform is being evaluated for other wide-band gas backgap materials such as aluminum nitride. Our reactive design and control architecture deliver the precision and repeatability needed for next-generation material production. CVD remains well-positioned across multiple growth markets. We believe that our transformation initiatives will strengthen our foundation and will better support our goal of achieving profitability and positive cash flow.

With that, I’ll now turn over the call to our CFO, Rich Catalano, to review our financial results in more detail.

Richard Catalano, Executive Vice President and CFO, CVD Equipment Corporation: Thank you, Manny, and good afternoon, everyone. Third quarter 2025 revenue was $7.4 million compared to $8.2 million in Q3 of 2024. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was primarily due to the absence of revenue from our mesoscrybe segment, which ceased operation in 2024. Revenue from our CVD equipment segment was driven by three key customers, representing approximately 55% of total revenue for the quarter. A contract modification during the third quarter allowed us to recognize revenue in Q3, contributing approximately $1 million. This was a change only in the timing of the revenue recognition. Our SDC segment reported $1.7 million in revenue, down slightly from $1.9 million in Q3 2024 due to fewer contracts in progress, but they continue to have a strong backlog. The company gross profit for the quarter was $2.4 million, with a gross margin of 32.7%.

This is compared to $1.8 million and 21.5% in the prior year quarter. This improvement was primarily due to a more profitable contract mix in our CVD equipment segment, offset by the loss of the Mesoscrybe’s contribution, and we also had a $100,000 charge for a one-time certification cost within the SDC segment. Operating income was $308,000 as compared to operating income of $77,000 in Q3 2024. After other income, primarily interest, net income was $384,000 or $0.06 per diluted share versus $203,000 or $0.03 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. As for our balance sheet, at September 30th, 2025, we held $8.4 million in cash and cash equivalents as compared to $12.6 million at December 31st, 2024. Net cash used in operating activities for the first nine months of 2025 was $4.1 million, largely due to changes in working capital as well as contract timing.

Our working capital improved to $14.6 million as compared to $13.8 million at year-end 2024. As part of our transformation plan discussed earlier, we do expect to incur approximately $100,000 in severance and related charges in Q4 of 2025. In addition, we may recognize non-cash impairment charges in future periods if certain long-lived assets are sold below their book value. Looking ahead, our return to consistent profitability depends on new equipment orders, cost management, successful implementation of our transformation plan, and continued control over capital expenditures. Although order timing can cause quarterly fluctuations, we believe our current cash position and projected operating cash flows will be sufficient to meet working capital and capital expenditure needs for at least the next 12 months. With that, I’ll turn the call back to Manny.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: Thank you, Rich. Our focus remains clear: serving our customers, supporting our employees, creating value for our shareholders, and achieving a return to sustained profitability. Our goal continues to be enabling tomorrow’s technology today. Operator, we’re now ready to open the line for questions.

Paul, Call Moderator, CVD Equipment Corporation: Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you’d like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.

Thank you. Our first question is from Paul Cheka with MSE Resources.

Paul Cheka, Analyst/Shareholder, MSE Resources: Good afternoon, everybody. I’m a longtime buy-and-hold fan of CVV. Also, I’m a materials engineer that’s done a lot of work mainly in CVD coatings for high-temperature engines and semiconductor applications. So I’ve got a lot of hope for the company in those markets, especially. My question’s about markets for composite applications for combustion turbines for power generations, meaning stationary turbine engines. For example, GE Vernova is showing a growing backlog for stationary combustion engines. I was wondering if you can speak to orders or applications of the CVV systems for stationary combustion engines. Also, second question about just a little bit of insight on general locations of the materials outsourcing you’ll be doing. Is it quite regional? Is it across the country or abroad? Thank you.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: Paul, thank you for being a loyal shareholder. Two questions. First, the question on the ground-based gas turbine engines. As you’re likely aware, and many of the listeners are as well, the primary use of ceramic matrix composites are in the hot section of the engine. There are several engines out there that already are utilizing silicon carbide-based composite materials for shrouds and for nozzles. Those, to my knowledge, have not yet been brought into the ground station gas turbine engines in that they don’t burn; they’re not a hot section turbine. Where we anticipate use in the future for silicon carbide-based composite materials, CMCs, in the energy field would be more so in replacement of some specific materials for nuclear reactors and for pellet encapsulation. Those are future emerging opportunities.

Paul Cheka, Analyst/Shareholder, MSE Resources: Oh, excellent. I never thought of those. Thank you.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: On your second question, which is more on the supplier base, CVD has historically had a mix of both external and also internal-make components. We’ve had a focus on our sheet metal shop and also on the smaller machine components, both turned and milled machined elements. The larger chambers have typically been outsourced, so we’ve always had a mix of suppliers.

Over the last several years, we have combed through those suppliers, and we’ve evaluated our cost structure closely over the last 12 months to a little over a year, and we’ve determined that the vertical integration model, integrated model, has really become less efficient given both our order volumes and also from the sheer fact that when you’re vertically integrated, it’s very difficult to be best of breed in sheet metal cutting, bending, welding, painting, and those are things that our suppliers do, our merchant suppliers do, I would say, as well, and in some cases better than we do and are more cost-effective. So the outsourcing was inevitable, and this is the right time to implement that strategy. Now, answering your question, is it regional? It’s in the US. Our focus is to outsource our machining to the US.

We will extend to North America, specifically Canada in some cases.

Paul Cheka, Analyst/Shareholder, MSE Resources: Okay. That’s really great detail. Thank you. Just a side on that, the vertical integration, I think, was hugely valuable to the company 15, 20 years ago. I think it allowed you to really refine the quality and the control that you had over your systems, but I totally understand the change in the dynamics of the economies and economies of scale. I assume that your quartz, will that remain interior?

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: It’ll be a mix, but we will retain our IP and black art in the area of quartz fabrication, and we’ll also retain certain elements of capability in our machine shop, but the lion’s share of the components will be outsourced.

Paul Cheka, Analyst/Shareholder, MSE Resources: I see. All right. Thank you. Well done, everybody. Thank you.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: You.

Paul, Call Moderator, CVD Equipment Corporation: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d like to hand the floor back over to Emmanuel Lakios for any closing comments.

Emmanuel Lakios, President and CEO, CVD Equipment Corporation: Okay. Thank you, Operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support and confidence in CVD Equipment Corporation. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. This concludes today’s call. Thank you.

Paul, Call Moderator, CVD Equipment Corporation: We thank you again for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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