Earnings call transcript: Decisive Dividend misses Q3 2025 forecasts

Decisive Dividend Corporation reported its Q3 2025 earnings, revealing a significant miss on both earnings per share (EPS) and revenue forecasts. The company posted an EPS of CAD 0.04, falling short of the expected CAD 0.0914, marking a 56.24% negative surprise. Revenue also missed projections, coming in at CAD 33.97 million against the forecasted CAD 37 million, an 8.19% shortfall. Following the announcement, Decisive Dividend's stock price dropped by 6.37% to CAD 7.50 in after-hours trading.

Key Takeaways

• Decisive Dividend's Q3 2025 EPS and revenue both missed forecasts significantly.
• Stock price declined by 6.37% in after-hours trading following the earnings release.
• Despite the miss, the company reported a 5% year-over-year increase in consolidated sales.
• The company improved its free cash flow by 53% compared to 2024.
• Diversification in product segments helped mitigate some market challenges.

Company Performance

Decisive Dividend Corporation showed resilience in Q3 2025 with a 5% increase in consolidated sales compared to the same period last year. The company's diversified portfolio, which includes hearth, agricultural, and industrial products, contributed to its steady performance. Year-to-date sales rose by 21%, and adjusted EBITDA increased by 39%, highlighting the company's growth trajectory despite macroeconomic challenges.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: CAD 33.97 million, a 5% increase from Q3 2024.
• EPS: CAD 0.04, down from the forecasted CAD 0.0914.
• Adjusted EBITDA: CAD 5.8 million, a 3% increase year-over-year.
• Free cash flow improved by 53% compared to 2024.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Decisive Dividend's Q3 2025 earnings were below expectations, with EPS at CAD 0.04, missing the forecast by 56.24%. Revenue also fell short by 8.19%, coming in at CAD 33.97 million versus the expected CAD 37 million. This performance marks a deviation from previous quarters where the company generally met or exceeded market expectations.

Market Reaction

The market reacted negatively to Decisive Dividend's earnings miss, with the stock price dropping by 6.37% in after-hours trading. The stock, which was trading at CAD 8.01 before the announcement, fell to CAD 7.50, moving closer to its 52-week low of CAD 5.81. This decline reflects investor concerns over the company's ability to meet financial targets amid challenging market conditions.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Decisive Dividend remains optimistic about its future performance. The company expects strong results in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, supported by a 10% increase in current order backlogs compared to last year. The focus will be on organic growth through new product development and geographic expansion. Capital expenditure is projected at 2% for maintenance and 2% for growth.

Executive Commentary

"Our operating results in Q3 2025 reinforce the benefits of the diversified nature of the portfolio of businesses we own," said Jeff Schellenberg, CEO. He emphasized the company's ongoing acquisition strategy, stating, "We are continuing to see a steady stream of new acquisition opportunities." Schellenberg also expressed confidence in the company's long-term strategy: "The long-term game here is very much intact, and we are really excited about the overall portfolio."

Risks and Challenges

• Declining demand in the commercial vehicle and oil & gas sectors.
• Potential permanent decline in oil & gas customer demand.
• Macroeconomic conditions affecting specific customer segments.
• Delays in product certifications, such as the smaller stove now expected in 2026.
• Currency fluctuations impacting international sales.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Decisive Dividend's acquisition strategy, focusing on smaller, vertical-specific targets. Questions also centered on organic growth potential in the hearth, agricultural, and international markets, as well as the sustainability of dividend payouts. The company reassured investors of ongoing due diligence for potential acquisitions and a commitment to maintaining dividend sustainability.

Full transcript - Decisive Dividend Corp (DE) Q3 2025:

Danny, Conference Operator: Good morning. My name is Danny, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Decisive Dividend Corporation Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference 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. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. We remind you that today's remarks may include forward-looking statements and non-IFRS financial measures that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please see the applicable sections of Decisive Dividend's news release on MD&A, which are on their website and have been filed on SEDAR.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Rick Torriero, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Goodchild, Chief Operating Officer. Please go ahead.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Thank you, Operator. Hello and good morning, everyone. This is Jeff Schellenberg. I want to welcome everyone to our Q3 2025 earnings conference call. Our operating results in Q3 2025 reinforce the benefits of the diversified nature of the portfolio of businesses we own and the differentiated products these businesses produce. While customer-specific demand declines based on U.S. economic conditions negatively impacted businesses like Hawk and Northside, others like IHT, Unicast, and Tech Belt witnessed strong year-over-year increases in demand for their products. The CAD 34 million in consolidated sales in Q3 2025 were 5% higher than Q3 2024 and generated CAD 5.8 million in adjusted EBITDA, which was 3% higher than in Q3 of last year.

That brought year-to-date 2025 sales to CAD 109.4 million, which was 21% higher than the first nine months of 2024, and drove a 39% increase in adjusted EBITDA to CAD 18.1 million for the first nine months of the year, record levels in both of these metrics for Decisive. Each business vertical has realized year-to-date sales increases in 2025 versus the same period last year. The hearth businesses, Blaze King and ACR, realized a 6% increase in sales compared to the first nine months of 2024 on stronger order levels in the first half of the year as Q3 hearth sales were consistent with Q3 2024. The agricultural businesses, which is Slimline's Orchard and Vineyard sprayer product and IHT, generated 73% higher sales in the first nine months of the year and 111% higher sales in Q3 2025, specifically driven primarily by strong order activity at IHT.

Year-to-date sales for the industrial products businesses, which includes Northside, Hawk, Capital I, and Slimline's evaporators, remained 11% higher than the first nine months of 2024 as the impact of certain commercial vehicle and oil and gas customer demand declines we referenced in our August call resulted in a third-quarter industrial product sales decline of 16% compared to Q3 2024. Merchandising product sales were 8% higher on a year-to-date basis and 4% higher in Q3 2025 versus Q3 2024 as Marketing Impact began to integrate its newly acquired Vendure business. Lastly, our group of wear parts businesses, specifically Unicast, Procore, and Tech Belt, achieved a 41% increase in wear parts sales over the first nine months of 2024, and Q3 2025 sales were 14% higher than Q3 2024.

The improvement in sales and adjusted EBITDA in the first nine months of 2025 resulted in a 53% improvement in free cash flow less maintenance capital expenditures compared to the same period in 2024, which is our key metric in measuring our dividend payout ratio. The significant improvement has resulted in our trailing 12-month dividend payout ratio sitting at 76% compared to 96% at the end of the year 2024 and demonstrates. Sorry, a technical difficulty there. It demonstrates the strength in free cash flow generation capabilities of our businesses and the sustainability of the current dividend level. The strong year-to-date operating metrics also greatly improved our leverage ratio from 3.1 times at December 31st to 2.5 times at September 30th, which, combined with the increase in the maximum debt-to-EBITDA ratio to 3.5 times, bolsters our capacity at our credit facilities.

This, along with the improvement in our share price since the beginning of 2025, which materially improved our cost of equity capital, supports our ability to fund acquisition opportunities, which I will discuss shortly. We have seen steadily improving results since the third quarter of last year, which was an inflection point in operating results for the business. Demand decreases seen in the form of increases in orders and backlog position the group for a strong end to 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025. Looking forward from today, current overall order backlogs are 10% higher compared to this time last year, and that, combined with seasonally strong periods we are in, new products recently launched, as well as improved performance in certain businesses, are expected to support results over the next two quarters.

With over 50% of our overall sales being made in the U.S., the impact of U.S. trade policy on the U.S. economy and our U.S. customers is important to our outlook. As we noted on our August conference call, sorry, during Q3, certain commercial vehicle and oil and gas customers signaled demand declines for the second half of 2025. As U.S. economic conditions have negatively impacted their businesses directly, which impacted our Q3 results and will also impact Q4 results. While some of these same customers have noted that they expect to see a rebound in activity levels in 2026, certain oil and gas customers have signaled a more permanent decline in demand, and depending on actual United States economic activity levels in the coming months, this will continue to impact sales and profitability over the next few quarters.

As a result of this potentially more permanent decline in oil and gas customer demand, we are working with Hawk Management to determine how best to position Hawk moving forward. That being said, the strength and performance across the other parts of our business are expected to mitigate these impacts, and the comparative strength in order levels and backlogs relative to 2024 and 2023 support our expectations around this. Further, across the group, subsidiary leadership, along with support from Decisive Head Office led by Chris Goodchild, our Chief Operating Officer, are undertaking significant efforts to strengthen teams, improve operational efficiency, and add profitable new customers in both the U.S. and other non-tariff impacted regions to help support the growth objectives established for Decisive subsidiaries, while also working to mitigate the impact of reduced demand stemming from trade policy or U.S. economic conditions.

On the acquisition front, the three acquisitions we announced in Q3 were aligned with our focus of acquiring within the industry verticals we are already invested in, which should accelerate integration and enhance post-acquisition performance. Vendure was acquired by Marketing Impact as a complementary business in the U.S. with cross-selling, operational, and cost synergy opportunities, and Tech Belt completed two strategic token acquisitions in the U.K. that diversified and expanded its product offering while adding a servicing component. We are still in the early days of owning these businesses, but we are encouraged by the integration progress being made by the teams at Marketing Impact and Tech Belt and look forward to more meaningful contributions as these integration processes progress. This approach of acquiring within verticals we are invested in is an important strategic focus.

Within this focus scope, we are continuing to see a steady stream of new acquisition opportunities and, as previously mentioned, have both increased financing capacity and improved cost of capital to support further M&A activity. We look forward to further providing updates to our shareholders as our M&A program unfolds. With that, I'll now open up the call for questions.

Danny, Conference Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star key followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star key followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment while we assemble the queue. Your first question comes from Kyle McPhee of Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Hi, everyone. Just first one from me on the topic of your capacity to deploy acquisition capital and drive your financial profile higher. Do you now have enough comfort with your much-improved leverage and liquidity profile and your organic footing to now go out and do more meaningfully sized M&A versus the kind of smaller token stuff we've seen in recent quarters? Is that resumption of meaningful M&A back in the cards anytime soon, or still want to see how macro plays out? Still want to organically build more financial capacity in the coming quarters?

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think, Kyle, I appreciate the question, Jeff. Two thoughts on that. Number one, I think we want to continue to see within verticals smaller acquisitions really being led by our management teams in those businesses, identified and led by those management teams, especially with respect to the integration process. I think that's a really critical element of the model, especially as we see some strengthening of our teams within the verticals that we've invested in, including their ability to integrate the business. I think Marketing Impact, as an example, with the Vendure acquisition, has built a pretty robust shared services team with a really high level of capability across a lot of important areas of the business, from financial and administrative to operational and sales, that as we acquire a business within that vertical, for example, we can very seamlessly plug the business into.

Marketing Impact and have those shared services teams go to work. I think that's the vision of what we're looking to build across the platform within the verticals we're invested in and want to continue to invest in M&A in those types of areas. That's number one. I think also from a head office perspective, we're going to then be able to focus on more meaningful acquisitions like you suggest. I think the opportunity exists. We've discussed and thought about what the type of model of more meaningful acquisitions look like, and I think that's something that building the teams to the level that they can do the smaller deals frees us up to really manage and focus on the larger deals. That's, I think, the priority of what we're looking at moving forward, and I think that's an important step for Decisive as a whole.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Got it. Thanks for that, Kyle. I'm curious if your pocket of time here where you pulled back a bit on the pace of acquisitions, has that resulted in any lost acquisition opportunities? Is there a list of other bidders out there picking up any of the slack, or is your pipeline pretty much intact and you do have decent flexibility on timing the deal flow in your pipeline? Owners are waiting for you.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think we're working around opportunities that fit within the business profile of the types of business we're looking for. I think there's an active market for these types of deals for sure, but it's just a very fragmented market with a lot of different opportunities that are available. While other small businesses absolutely are continuing to transact, I think we are fairly comfortable with the position we find ourselves in and understanding what deals are out there that fit within our space. We have a very active outreach program with broker networks across the areas we operate in. Yeah, I don't feel like we're missing out on significant opportunities within the space that we're in, that deals have gone away as we've managed the pace of our deal process. I think the focus has been we've done three acquisitions this year as well, right?

I think even though some of these deals were smaller, they still require a significant amount of work to work through the diligence processes and the papering processes, deal structuring. I think we are within pace of what we expected. I think we are seeing some deal opportunities that could kind of help us achieve the objectives that we have set, and then it is just a matter of timing of when will those occur. I think we are in good shape, definitely financially, with respect to our ability to fund the deals and with respect to identifying opportunities in the areas that we focused on.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Okay. Thanks for that, Kyle. Jeff, I'll pass the line for now.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Thanks, Kyle.

Danny, Conference Operator: As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question is from Russell Stanley of Beacon Securities. Please go ahead.

Russell Stanley, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Good morning, and thank you for the questions. Just following up on the acquisitions. The outlook there, you've talked in the past about focusing on adding to the existing vertical. I'm wondering how you're thinking about that now. Given the weakness you've observed in a couple of specific businesses, are you biased now towards prioritizing certain verticals over others, given what you see from a macro perspective? Any color there would be really helpful. Thank you.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. Yeah. I guess what I would say about that is I think we have. We would absolutely be focused on acquiring in verticals that feel like we're in a stable footing around. I think that's important for us. I think there's, you can see across the group, yeah, we've identified areas of weakness with respect to specific customers in specific areas, right? The challenges we're seeing in our business are pretty, I would call it, isolated in terms of some very specific challenge, really driven by the weakness that our business's customers are feeling in the United States economy.

I think for us, we would absolutely be looking at areas where we do feel like we're in a stronger footing with respect to the ongoing operations of those businesses, the businesses within that vertical, but also within the leadership teams in terms of their level of preparation or ability to integrate a business if we were able to acquire it. Yeah, I think you're right about that, Russ, that's where we would be focused.

Russell Stanley, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Great. Thanks on that. Maybe moving to the hearth business now into November, can you talk about or elaborate on what you're seeing there, given seasonally now into a period where all cylinders should be firing? Any around how this season compares to prior seasons would be really helpful.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. Hey, Russ. So far, it's actually looking really strong. From an order perspective, both ACR and Blaze King are slightly ahead of last year at this time. And backlog is slightly ahead as well, which is positive. I mean, they had a great finish to the year last year. It was really the first half that was a challenge for those growth businesses. That's definitely, we're seeing the trend in our Q4 seasonality continue where that's their strongest period. On the flip side, we've got some new products which really haven't hit the sales line yet. The European-styled, with the Blaze King technology type stove, was launched in the U.K. here recently, and we're starting to see some good order flow for that. Those haven't translated into sales just yet. Just some timing there, and we're expecting good things here in Q4 beyond where we're at.

Blaze King, unfortunately, had a bit of a delay on the certification for their smaller stove, so that's probably delayed till 2026. Again, order flow is still stronger despite that, and we expect that to continue to bolster things into next year as well.

Russell Stanley, Analyst, Beacon Securities: Great. Maybe my last question. I'll get back in the queue just around the integration of Vendure. You talked about some success there with Marketing Impact establishing shared services. I'm wondering just around cross-selling, can you elaborate on any progress you've made on that front? Thanks.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think we're really encouraged about some of the cross-selling opportunities we see in that business. I think both the benefit of Marketing Impact and Vendure working together is that we had different strengths and different customer profiles across both those businesses, which you could use the services that either Vendure provides or Marketing Impact provides. We've seen some early wins with respect to some of Vendure's largest customers exploring opportunities with respect to Marketing Impact products that we would not have had access to if we didn't complete that acquisition. I think the Vendure acquisition opens the door into some really meaningful and important potential US-based clients in large groceries specifically. In the US, that's an area of strength for us in Canada, and we have a whole set of products, especially on our merchandising business, that do very well.

In the Canadian marketplace from a market share perspective that we can bring into the U.S. marketplace, we're seeing some early opportunities around that with some large U.S.-based grocery businesses that I think will expand as we execute and deliver results. That is, within a very short period of time, we surfaced these types of opportunities, which I think is very encouraging for us in that vertical in the future.

Russell Stanley, Analyst, Beacon Securities: That's great. Thanks for the color. I'll get back in the queue.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Thanks, Russ.

Danny, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Kyle McPhee of Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Hello, again. On the topic of organic growth, it sounds like you have many plans in place across your portfolio companies to drive organic growth medium term. Is there any material CapEx spend needed to support your growth plans, or is there plenty of capacity in place to drive forward, meaning we can expect very favorable free cash flow conversion over the next year or so? Any color on that would be helpful. It looks like your CapEx spend has really thinned out recently.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah, for sure. We had a really big CapEx spend in 2024. We did talk about that last year as positioning a number of our businesses, including Northside, with a brand new OEM customer, which has been very beneficial here as one customer has dropped off. The other one is continuing to operate strongly. That kind of investment was important last year. Most of our businesses are fairly capital-light. We do not have a lot of capital-intensive businesses. In terms of the organic growth, there would be some product development costs for sure, but do not think we would return to the level seen back in 2024 in terms of the level of CapEx spend that year, which was an outlier for us. Yeah. I think, Kyle, I think we can still guide you to that kind of two and two, right? 2% on maintenance and 2% on growth.

That we see kind of it'll differ between levels we execute at within different businesses. It won't be 2% across the board in each of those areas in each business, but I think that kind of is a pretty decent benchmark you can continue to use as you think about the level of capital intensity of the businesses we operate.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Okay. That's helpful. On the topic of net organic growth over the next year or so, you have a lot of moving parts. You have some pockets that are growing quite nicely now, like IHT. Some pockets are declining with macro, like Northside. Other stuff mostly seems stable to up. Can you give us some thoughts on how this may all net out during the foreseeable future here? Should you continue to generate net organic growth at a similar rate to what we see here in Q3, or maybe it speeds up a bit throughout next year? Or is it just too hard to call given the macro? Any thoughts on that would be helpful.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think what we're. There's been some. We've positioned ourselves well for organic growth in the future in a few specific areas. I think with respect to Hearth, as per Russ's questions. We're pretty well positioned, we think, with some of the new products we're adding. Fortunately, we were hoping to see some of the benefit of that at the end of 2025. That's moving forward into 2026. I think we're really well positioned with respect to that segment to take advantage of, to leverage off the investments we've previously made. Those are hard investments to get through because there's pretty significant regulatory approval processes that we have to go through with respect to that. The European product we're introducing is brand new technology. We actually work with the regulator to design the regulatory framework to approve a stove like that because there is no long.

Burn type of stoves available in that marketplace. Those are pretty protracted processes. We are really encouraged about the situation we find ourselves in there. I think there has been a lot of work done in the background of a business like Slimline, as an example, that has worked through a number of product improvements with respect to some of its agricultural products, as well as scaling or building this larger scale evaporator product that we would say have yet to really turn into kind of the organic growth we might expect, given the level of effort that is put into that product. There are a number of factors in the orchard and vineyard space that drive that, including counter-terror impacts, a few things like that that have impacted that business. We think we are in a really strong position, including with the deferral of some.

Opportunities into 2026 that could position us really well in that space. IHT is working on some geographic expansion opportunities to further expand the marketplace as it offers its best-of-breed product into the market. Northside has very successfully executed on its Packer onboarding, which was the new customer it added in 2025. We want to build some more capabilities, and we're investing in some personnel to help replicate that and do that again because as much as it's been painful to have one level of customer activity drop off, the fact that we had onboarded this additional customer really buffered some of the impact of the reduction in activity of the other customer. That is something we want to continue. We can point to some very specific areas in a number of our businesses where there's kind of very systematic, methodical progress being made around.

Developing products and markets and capabilities that should support organic growth in the future. The exact timeline of when those things are going to hit is obviously always difficult to predict, but we're very, very, this is just an important piece of the overall growth of the business. I think with the teams at the businesses, with Chris leading our team of support resources we have here at head office, we're keenly focused on building the people, programs, and the processes, and market growth and customer growth to be able to achieve organic growth in our businesses in the future. Yeah. In terms of the businesses we buy, we hold them for the long term, and we got to think about our overall business for the long term now.

It is not going to be necessarily 50% organic growth every year, but we need to ensure we are making progress, and we are working with our teams to make that happen. I think the long-term game here is very much intact, and we are really excited about the overall portfolio.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Okay. It seems like you guys are executing well with all the controllables, so great to see that. That's it for my questions. Thanks.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Thanks, Kyle.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Thanks, Kyle.

Danny, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Steve Hanson of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Steve Hanson, Analyst, Raymond James: Yeah. Hey, guys. I apologize. I dropped off earlier with my line, but just might have asked Ben or Russ already. Just can you speak to the margin profile going forward? Again, I think the organic growth question earlier relates to this, but given some of the pressures at Hawk and Northside relative to the other things that are going well, I mean, how do we think about the margin profile here into the balance of the year and into next? Thanks.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: If you look at our margins, they've actually held up pretty well. They've been pretty consistent through the year, obviously, with some seasonality in Q2 as that dips down, the margins dip down on scale a bit there as well. Hawk, in particular, is one of our lowest margin businesses that we have. Although a strong contributor of revenue every year, the EBITDA margin is one of the lowest we have in the businesses. As much as it will impact the business, not expecting that to really drive a material degradation in terms of EBITDA and margin going forward. Northside, the drop-off there we're being told is more temporary in nature, and what temporary means to a customer of theirs may differ, but again, think that they're in a good position with the other customer they've onboarded and have held margins in pretty well.

The customer that did drop off in activity, that's the one where we moved a lot of the work to a lower-cost jurisdiction. We did not have a material overhead component in their manufacturing plant supporting that business. That has been beneficial as well.

Steve Hanson, Analyst, Raymond James: Okay. Great. That is super helpful. And then just to follow up on the IHT because the business has been so strong there, I know there is probably part macro tailwinds going on in that space, but there is also some new products. I mean, how do we think about the backlog of growth there? Trying to just get a sense for how much stronger, how long that sort of strength we are seeing now can last. Is it something we will see through 2026, you think?

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think the vast majority or the entirety of the organic growth has been around their heating product. I think it's really been supported by pork macro, like you've suggested. We've seen some decent growth in other markets all produced out of Canada. I think that's an important opportunity for IHT to continue to pursue. The vast majority of its sales are in the US at this point in time, and yet the product benefits are applicable across any global pork markets. There's markets that are much more significant and larger than the US pork market that we're working to gain access to and have, I would call it, footholds in already. We have distributor relationships in Asia, some in Europe as well. I think the South American market is a really important market. I think what you'll see in that product is.

Geographic growth really being a material driver in areas where we're very under-penetrated in, right? The energy benefits, I think what you see with this product is it's significantly beneficial to the users of the installers with respect to the energy efficiency of their operations. This can save somewhere in the neighborhood of up to two-thirds of their energy costs by installing this product. There are significant animal welfare benefits. We have a differentiated product that is useful in other markets where North American energy is actually relatively inexpensive compared to some other jurisdictions in the world. I think that kind of paints the picture of the organic growth potential of this business as we expand it.

Into more international markets, as well as continuing to penetrate the U.S. where it's still relatively under-penetrated and where we have great relationships with large enterprise farmers across that market, going direct to farmers. Yeah, we're encouraged about the results and see the pork industry is obviously going to do what the pork industry does, and there's going to be some volatility in that marketplace. I think our positioning within it, both in our current markets as well as the opportunity internationally, are really exciting for that business.

Steve Hanson, Analyst, Raymond James: Super helpful. Appreciate the comment time. Thanks.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Thanks, Steve.

Kyle McPhee, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Thanks, Steve.

Danny, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Christian Nelson, private investor. Please go ahead.

Christian Nelson, Private Investor: Hi. Congratulations on the improvements on the dividend payout ratio. In regards to that, I know you're within your targets now. Is the plan to stay on the low side of the targets for the payout ratio, just given the uncertainty in the economic climate right now?

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think. It's a good question, Christian. Appreciate the question. I think what. In my year-end letter to investors last year, we talked about the importance of maintaining flexibility in our balance sheet, including with respect to our dividend payout levels. As we look at kind of some of the cyclicality and volatility in some of the markets that we operate in. I think that remains our primary focus. We absolutely. Our objective is to have a growing and sustainable dividend. I think in periods of volatility, our first priority was to demonstrate the sustainability of the dividend. I think with the improvements you've seen in the payout or investors have seen in the payout ratio, I think we've done that very effectively. I think what we want to see is continued strengthening in the operations of our business to be able to support dividend growth.

The comments and questions about organic growth and growth by acquisition are really important because I think those are going to be the levers we pull to improve our per-share financial metrics, which in turn allow us to improve our per-share dividend levels. Yes, growth is absolutely a priority, but sustainability is critical to maintain. I think the guidance that we provide in that investor letter I wrote around kind of the levels where we see flexibility being important kind of will dictate where we're seeing our dividend payout ratio go in the future here.

Christian Nelson, Private Investor: Okay. Thank you for that. My second question would be regarding the length of the due diligence process for acquisition. Are you currently in the middle of those processes, or is it kind of the beginning with potential deal flows? Just curious if we could expect likely acquisition in the coming quarters.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I think what we're trying to do is have. M&A opportunities at all stages of the deal flow process. So some in diligence, some at earlier kind of expression of interest stages, and then a backlog of opportunities, a pipeline of opportunities in front of that that can move through the. Process. As we move other deals along. So I think what we have. We're kind of. Within that right now. We see opportunities at a variety of stages of the deal process. Just because a deal's in diligence doesn't guarantee it's going to close either. I think. That's the purpose of being diligent is to ensure that those transactions are ones that you actually want to follow through, that have the right ingredients to be a good fit within our portfolio. And so I think.

That so I would say we have deals at different stages of our deal process, but with respect to the probability or likelihood of those closing, I think that'll depend on how the deals progress through the diligence stages. We have some clear objectives around the target level of acquisitions we're looking to do in any given year. We also have to make sure the deals are right for the business and that we don't take on kind of the types of opportunities that could create unnecessary risk or shift in trajectory of those businesses coming off a high or whatever it might be. We need to be cautious about those types of things, which is exactly why we do diligence. Yes, we have deals at different stages, and we're working through those different stages.

Christian Nelson, Private Investor: Okay. Thank you. And again, congratulations on the improvements to the per-share metric.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. Thanks, Christian.

Danny, Conference Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Jeff Schellenberg. Please continue.

Jeff Schellenberg, Chief Executive Officer, Decisive Dividend Corporation: Yeah. I want to just thank everybody for attending our Q3 2025 conference call. We look forward to updating you on our progress continuing into the next quarter and beyond. Thanks very much.

Danny, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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