Full Transcript: Star Equity Hldgs Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Star Equity Hldgs (NASDAQ:STRR) reported first-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation. The full earnings call is available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/w9gi95w5/ Summary Star Equity Hldgs reported a 57% year-over-year revenue increase to $50.1 million in Q1 2026, driven by a merger completed in August 2025, resulting in $2.6 million annualized merger synergies. The company faced mixed division performance: Energy Services showed strong market share gains, while Business Services underperformed in a challenging talent market, and Building Solutions was impacted by delayed projects and weather disruptions. Star Equity Hldgs ended Q1 with $10.3 million in total cash and used $1.4 million in operating cash flow, while repurchasing $700,000 of stock, with $1.8 million remaining under current authorization. Strategic initiatives included continued investment in growth, operational efficiencies, and a disciplined approach to capital allocation, with a focus on share repurchases due to perceived undervaluation. Future outlook remains positive, with expectations for improved financial performance driven by operational and cost focus, new business wins, and continued investment in growth and strategic M&A opportunities. Full Transcript OPERATOR Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Star Equity Hldgs First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised that the discussions on today's call may include forward looking statements. Such forward looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward looking statements. Please Refer to Star Equity's most recent 10-K, 10-Q and other filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please also note that on this call management may reference non-GAAP financial measures including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share, which are all financial measures not recognized under US GAAP as required by SEC rules and regulations. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. If you did not receive a copy of the earnings release and would like one after the call, please contact Star Equity at 203-489-9500 or its investor Relations Representative Lena Katie of the Equity Group at 212-836-9611. Also, this call is being broadcast live over the Internet and may be accessed at Star Equity Hldgs' website via www.starequity.com. shortly after the call, a replay will also be available on the Company's website. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jeff Eberwine, Chief Executive Officer of Star Equity. Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Thank you Operator and welcome everyone. We greatly appreciate your interest in Star Equity Hldgs and we thank you for joining us today. I'll begin by reviewing the first quarter results for 2026 at the holding company level. After that, Jake Zabkowicz, Global CEO of Hudson Talent Solutions, will give us an update on the performance of our Business Services division. Finally, Rick Coleman, our Chief Operating Officer, will provide additional insights into the performance of our Building Solutions and Energy Services divisions as Highlighted on Slide 3 of our earnings slides deck, our first quarter results reflect the merger we completed last August with revenue and gross profit showing strong year over year growth. These increases were driven largely by the inclusion of Star Operating Company's results beginning after the merger closed August 22, 2025. We have realized approximately 2.6 million of merger synergies on an annualized basis as shown on Slide 4, and that beats our initial expectation of about 2 million in merger synergies. Going back to the first quarter. We were impacted by the timing of new project starts and broader macroeconomic conditions. Despite these near term pressures, we continued to make progress advancing our strategic priorities and strengthening our operating platform. Revenue increased 57% year over year to 50.1 million. Gross profit increased 25% to 20.6 million. We reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of 1.6 million compared to a loss of 0.7 million in the prior year period. At the division level, our performance was mixed. Energy Services delivered a strong quarter and continued to gain market share across key end markets. Business Services was worse than expected in a challenging talent environment and we continue to invest for growth. Building Solutions was impacted by delayed project awards and weather related disruptions. That said, we're already seeing signs of improvement as we move through the second quarter supported by new business wins, improving activity levels and continued operational and cost focus across the organization. As shown on slide 5, we ended the first quarter with 10.3 million of total cash, including 2.2 million of restricted cash. During Q1 we used 1.4 million in operating cash flow. We generated a little over 3 million from the sale leaseback transactions. We repurchased about 700,000 of stock on our share repurchase program and we have 1.8 million remaining under the current authorization. Over the last 12 months we've repurchased approximately 3.3 million of stock and we continue to believe our stock is undervalued and we view share repurchases as an extremely attractive use of our capital. Across the company. We remain focused on disciplined execution, cost management and investing in growth initiatives that we believe will enhance our competitive position and drive improved financial performance over the balance of the year. Now I'll turn it over to Jake to discuss our Hudson Talent Solutions business. Jake Zabkowicz (Global CEO) Thank you Jeff and good morning. Our Business Services division continued to demonstrate solid top line growth in the first quarter despite the challenging macroeconomic environment impacting many industries. As shown on slide 10 of the deck, revenue increased by 9.8% and HTS year-over-year. Gross profit increased 6.4% reflecting steady improvement despite continued macroeconomic sustained pressures and in the talent market. Regionally, the Americas and EMEA performed well with gross profit growth of 21 and 11% respectively, partially offset by 8% decline in Asia-Pacific market where the conditions remain more challenging. We have maintained a strong focus on innovation operational efficiencies including the expanded deployment of our AI solutions to enhance recruiter productivity, improve candidate matching and deliver greater value to our clients. These efforts are helping us navigate the current environment while positioning us to capitalize on improving market conditions in the future. As an example, new business activity accelerated meaningfully in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding levels seen in any quarter of 2025. We've also achieved multiple renewals in Q1, with many of our existing clients opting for a non competitive engagement process. This shows the depth and breadth of our partnerships in a very competitive market. We continue to take steps to strengthen our partnerships, maintain a disciplined approach to our investments and grow the business. We are executing our playbook of land and expand with recent wins coming off the acquisition in Japan giving us a foothold to address previously untapped opportunities. We have also taken steps to recalibrate our business in the Middle East, maintaining our commitment to have a presence in the region but being realistic about the opportunity there given the broader macroeconomic environment. Additionally, the enhancements to our geographical footprint and our product offerings, particularly our digital offering, have driven robust new logo interest. We have seen an uptick in customer conversations in recent months and are focused on forging long term client relationships. We'll continue to take a disciplined approach as we execute our playbook for the remainder of the year. Looking ahead, we are focused on creating a more resilient, agile and growth oriented business for a longer term. Now I'm turning the call over to Rick who will discuss the financial and operational performance of our Building solutions and our energy services divisions. Rick Coleman (Chief Operating Officer) thanks Jake and good morning everyone. I'll start with Building Solutions highlighted on slide 8. First quarter performance which normally while normally soft in the quarter, was below our expectations. A combination of delayed contract awards, severe winter weather across our key markets and continued macroeconomic pressures put downward pressure on both commercial and residential construction activity. Revenue for the quarter was 11.6 million, gross profit was 1.6 million and adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $900,000. While these results were impacted by near term factors, our sales pipeline and customer conversations indicate underlying demand remains intact. We're also encouraged by recent wins, including a $4.2 million New Hampshire multifamily housing project we announced in April. Moving on to Slide 9, our quarter end backlog was $8.0 million. While the book-to-bill ratio of 0.72 is a significant decline from Q4, it partially reflects the timing of significant projects which slipped from Q1 to Q2. We expect backlog to rebuild as activity normalizes throughout the remainder of the year. Consistent with the strategy we outlined previously, we remain focused on disciplined project selection, operational execution and margin management. We believe these priorities, combined with improving market conditions position the business for stronger performance as the year progresses Turning to Slide 13, the Energy Services division delivered a strong quarter, maintaining the momentum we highlighted. last quarter revenue was 3.5 million, gross profit was 1.5 million and adjusted EBITDA was 1 million. The business continues to gain share in core markets with particularly strong mining and geothermal performance. These results reflect disciplined execution and the benefits of our diversified exposure across billing applications, which continues to differentiate the platform and support consistent growth. Importantly, the division's strong growth has come as a result of market share gains in a declining rig count environment. We continue to invest in new tools to support this growth and believe the division is positioned to perform well in all conditions. Recognizing that we represent a relatively small percentage of our customers, our largest customers purchases, we're also incorporating their specific needs in our investment decisions. In general, we believe we have significant opportunities to expand our presence in the geographies and markets we serve. I'll now turn the call back over to Jeff for closing remarks. Jeff thank you Rick. Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) While the first quarter reflected seasonality and some near term challenges, we're encouraged by improving activity levels, recent business wins and the continued strength of our energy services platform. As we look ahead, our priorities remain consistent, driving organic growth, improving operational efficiency and maintaining a rigorous approach to capital allocation. In parallel, we continue to evaluate accretive M&A opportunities across our operating divisions as well as potential new verticals where we can apply our operating model. Our confidence in the path forward is grounded in the progress made over the past year. 2025 marked a pivotal period for Star Equity Hldgs. Following the August merger, we're beginning to realize the benefits of shared services, enhanced collaboration and a more diversified holding company structure. This has strengthened our operating and financial position, expanded our strategic flexibility and increased our capacity to execute on a multi-pronged growth strategy across the organization. We're investing in people, technology and processes to enhance scalability, deepen competitive advantages and drive margin expansion and cash generation. This disciplined approach, combining organic execution with targeted external growth positions us to compound value over time. With a stronger platform and a clear strategic roadmap, we believe we're well positioned to navigate the current environment and deliver improved performance over the balance of the year. We remain confident in our long term outlook and continue to believe our shares are undervalued relative to the strength of our business and the opportunities ahead. Operator, can you please open the line for questions? OPERATOR We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the Keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Joe Gomes with Noble Capital. Please go ahead. Joe Gomes Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Jeff. I don't know if you could give us a little more insight into your. Your recent announcement on G Group and what you think your game plan for that investment is. Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Sure, thanks for asking, Joe. We identified G Group as an interesting investment partly because it was trading below cash per share, which you don't see very often. And also we thought it could potentially be a good fit for our business services division and could have some synergies with our Hudson talent business. And on top of that, Star Equity Hldgs itself is an amalgamation of a few different companies. And we completed a merger last year where we initially thought we would realize cost savings of 2 million. And that number came in at 2.6 million. So we've shown, we believe, we've shown that merging another microcap into our structure, we can reduce a significant amount of unneeded duplicative costs. And on G Group specifically, glad that they hired a financial advisor and that they decided to run a more formal process. we are participating from the outside. We only have public information, we don't have any material non public information on G Group at this time. And we decided to really kick off the bidding process, by throwing a number out there. And importantly, our bid is contingent on the management team there agreeing to customary severance. So we'll see how it plays out. There's scenarios where we could be the winning bidder. There's scenarios where other people outbid us. And when we enter into these situations, we like to own somewhere between 5 and 10% of the target. So if we are outbid, we make money in our investment. And it also gives us more credibility when we go public and bid that we are also a shareholder. So we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. But either way, either one of those outcomes would be positive for us if we end up being the winning bidder or if someone outbids us and we make a nice profit on our investment. Joe Gomes Okay, thanks for the update. And then one of the things we talked about in the past is monetization of some of the real estate assets and, or some of the private investments that you guys have. And maybe you could give us an update there kind of. Similarly, you've got the Oxford, Maine plant that you've talked about potentially restarting. Where does that stand at this point? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Yes, another great question, Joe. So we have talked about having, we believe, at least $20 million of assets that don't really generate any EBITDA,, or certainly not meaningful EBITDA, that we believe will get converted to cash over time. We did demonstrate that by completing the sale leasebacks on the assets that came with the Alliance Drilling Tools acquisition, that we made a little over a year ago. And the two remaining significant pieces of real estate we own. One is the real estate that came with the Timber Technology acquisition,, two years ago. And then, as you pointed out, we have an idle factory in Maine. And both of those pieces of real estate, we believe could either be monetized via sale leaseback transaction or just sold for cash. And I think, I can't remember the estimate off the top of my head, but it's in our investor deck. It's somewhere in the 8 to 10 million range for those two added together, we believe. And then on the Catalyst MedTech, investment, the majority shareholder there is a private equity firm in New York City, and that business is doing well once again, completing acquisitions, having nice growth, having a nice future. And like all private equity investments, the private equity firm will exit at some point. And our policy has always been we're just going to mark this investment using the same methodology that the Private Equity firm does. And so there was a downturn, a temporary downturn in the performance of that company. And so the Private Equity firm marked it down on their books. This was in the, I think, really the 2024 timeframe that might have continued into 2025. And so we just marked it down on our books the same way they marked it down on their books. And then now that performance has improved, they have marked it back up to our original mark from when we closed that transaction in May of 2023. But under GAAP accounting, we are not allowed to do that. So we're in the uncomfortable spot of having a different nav for the exact same investment as what the Private Equity firm has. But long story short, that will get converted to cash whenever the Private Equity firm feels like it's right to investigate alternatives. Joe Gomes Okay, thanks for that. I'll get back in queue. Thank you. Thank you. Theodore o' Neill The next question comes from Theodore o' Neill with Litchfield Hills Research. Please go ahead. Oh, thanks very much. For Rick, on the Building Solutions, can you talk about geographically, where you're seeing some strength going here in the second quarter? Rick Coleman (Chief Operating Officer) Go ahead, Rick. Thanks, Theo. Sure. Happy to address that. We have good Visibility to our pipeline, particularly in in KBS, our modular home company in Maine where we have larger projects so higher revenue projects. And we can see beginning at the early stage of the pipeline where the opportunities are. And then as we move through the pipeline and we begin talking about building modular components for our construction partners, we call that the active pipeline. The active pipeline are those projects where we're negotiating the terms, we're doing the initial design work but we still haven't signed a contract. So as we look into the active pipeline, we feel pretty confident there's strong demand still for more construction activity. But with interest rates where they are and a lot of uncertainty about interest rates as well as now we have war in the Middle East and a number of other things, it's just been very difficult to move those projects out of the pipeline and into construction ready mode. But I think that based on what we're seeing here recently, we're going to see significant improvement in the second quarter. Theodore o' Neill Okay. And I don't know if this is question for you Rick, but on the energy services, you or Jeff, could you talk about if there are any dynamics related to the change in oil price and the drilling service business? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Yeah, I'll take that. Theo, being from Texas, recently, this is a sector I've followed most of my career and we're very happy. I'll get to your question in a second. We've been very happy with this acquisition and we feel like it's really thrived inside of star. We have invested for growth. They had a plan to increase their market share and we have executed really well on that plan since we completed the acquisition in March. And if we just look at Q1 results, 2026 versus 2025, for example, if you look at the pro forma table on our press release, pretty nice year on year growth. And that was way before any increase in oil prices. And in fact the industry shrank in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025. If you just look at the rig count in the US for example, and they did a very good job of growing in some non traditional sectors and winning business in things like geothermal, which has a really good growth outlook in the US They've always been active in mining opportunities, water wells. They've also gotten into some carbon capture and some hydrogen drilling, which were really kind of off the radar screen a few years ago. We're excited about that business. It was performing very well and if activity improves later this year and into next year, and we think it will, we're poised to Continue to have good growth there. So I'd say it's a little early for the clients to all of a sudden just flip a switch and start spending more capital. But the early indicators are certainly there and the conversations are happening. Theodore o' Neill Okay, my last question is about can you give us any sort of thoughts about Q2 operating expenses and whether we should be looking for them to be similar to Q1 levels? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) You know, we don't get. That's a good question. We don't give guidance line by line on that, but we do look at where the consensus is on Bloomberg and the Q1 results were disappointing to us. We didn't hit our budget and it's short-term, temporary factors. But when we look out into Q2, when we look into the second half of the year, I think the Bloomberg consensus for adjusted ebitda is above 2 million, 2 to 2 and a half, something like that. We're comfortable with that. And if we hit that number, we'll be positive, we'll have positive results, for the first half of the year. So in other words, the Q1 positive EBITDA, should exceed the Q2 positive EBITDA, should exceed the q1 loss. And then if we look out to the second half of the year, the Bloomberg consensus is that our adjusted EBITDA should be, I think it's 9 million, it's in the 8 to 10 range and we're very comfortable with that. Is that an absolute guarantee? No, it's not, but that's what we're projecting internally. Could be higher than that, could be lower than that, but that is our best guess based on everything we're seeing in the business and based on what we see in the market and conversations with customers, what we see in our pipeline, historical conversion rates of that pipeline into backlog which then translates into revenue. Theodore o' Neill Okay, thanks Jeff. Thanks very much. OPERATOR As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star then one to join the question queue. The next question comes from Michael Mathison with Sidoti. Please go ahead. Michael Mathison Good morning you guys. Good morning. Couple questions from me first. Sort of a big picture one for business services. In light of higher energy prices, global tensions, inflation, all the things we read about. Can you comment on hiring trends in the three regions where business services operates? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Yeah, I'm going to turn that over to Jake, but just at a high level I would say our clients predominantly are Fortune 500, companies. And in general we're asking them to sign multi year contracts. And we had some really nice significant long term contract renewals from two of our five top clients in Q1. And so that was really refreshing. But whenever there's uncertainty, regardless of the cause, just everything else being equal, it's not conducive to the Fortune 500, making long term commitments. So it's not helpful. But we don't want to use it as an excuse. We want to fight through it and keep, keep pushing and keep providing good services. Jake, I'm going to turn it over to you to get a little more granular. Jake Zabkowicz (Global CEO) Yeah, thank you. Jeff and Michael, good morning. How are you today? Real good, thanks. Thank you for the question. So when you look at the overall macro hiring, what we're seeing, it's truly spotty. And what I mean by spotty is we definitely see some green shoots and some tailwinds in certain areas with some of our businesses. And quite conversely, we've also had some of our clients say, hey, hold on a second, let's reevaluate where we're investing. But if you look at each region and you take the Asia-Pacific region in general, at first the hiring volumes in Asia-Pacific were still relatively strong, but the mix was different. And what I mean by the mix, you saw a lot of more internal mobility or internal hiring and movement internally versus hiring externally and bringing new people into the businesses in some of our fee structures in that region, an internal placement is on a lower fee structure than an external placement for multiple purposes. One is that we're sourcing internally and two is there's an optics of that cost of just moving internal placements around. When you look at EMEA, and you look at the broader EMEA, market, I don't have to give you guys an update on what's happening over there, but it's causing a lot of pause in rethinking investments across all of the countries in emea. As I mentioned in the earnings call, we did take a structured approach to reevaluate our Middle East presence. We're going to continue to be in the Middle East, we're going to continue to have entity and resources there and will help support our enterprise level clients in the Middle East. But it is taking a drain in a lot of the hiring activity there and having our clients rethink again and pause in certain pockets rethink of where they're going to make investments in the Americas. We're seeing some pretty good signs of strength in the Americas right now. Latin America, continues to be a growth market for us. We're signing new contracts there, a couple this week already. So that's exciting. But it is at a smaller clip and a smaller pace than what we normally see. So we will see contracts, as Jeff mentioned, multi year contracts. We can hire anywhere from 100 to 1,000 people, if not north of that every single year. But now we're seeing some more project based hiring and what we're saying, project based hiring is a specific time frame of less than a year and a specific number of anywhere from 20 to a couple hundred. So you get to more of the project base versus that long term forecast. I would say as a whole we're still seeing relatively low attrition across all of the markets. There are some pockets where we are continuing to see some growth which is great in many of our businesses. But to Jeff's point, into what we were talking about before with our land and expansion strategy and offering services in markets that were untapped to us before is a critical strategy for our business and we're doing that in the likes of Japan, Latin America, and we're going to continue to grow in those areas. So Mike, I hope that answered your question, sir. Michael Mathison It certainly did. Thank you, Jake. Very, very helpful. Turning to energy services, the revenue growth is striking as you pointed out in your prepared remarks. Speaking of market share gains and so forth, do you feel like past a certain point alliance will have to invest in more drilling equipment just to fulfill demand? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Yeah, we feel like we've already done that. The capex levels there might we see them basically being flat with the Q1 run rate. So we did, after we acquired it we kind of took a counter cyclical approach and we saw an opportunity to increase share and enter some of these new markets. And so we approved one step at a time, a higher capital expenditures (CAPEX) spend. And that higher capital expenditures (CAPEX) spend very quickly led to revenue growth. And so we got positive feedback on our thesis very quickly. But really a lot of that was just kind of a one time increase that was needed to grow the business. And I think from here we can keep that level flat and still have really good growth. Great, great, thank you. I'll close out with one more question. Michael Mathison Coming back to building solutions, obviously the weather in the northeast was horrendous and that clearly played a role in the balance of the year. Do you see the book to Bill coming back to 2025 levels? Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Short answer. Oh, I'm sorry Jeff, why don't you go ahead? Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say short answer. Yes. And turn it over to Rick. Rick Coleman (Chief Operating Officer) Go ahead, Rick. That's what I was going to. The problem is the numerator in that equation. So as revenue picks up, we expect that that's going to continue to improve. So I guess that's all the color that I can provide on that for now. Michael Mathison Well, great. Thank you for taking my questions and good luck in the coming quarter. OPERATOR Thank you once again. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star then one to join the question queue. That's Star Then one to ask a question. That concludes today's question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Jeff Eberwine for closing remarks. Jeff Eberwine (Chief Executive Officer) Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your interest in our company and we're available. Our contact information is on our website and is in the press release and our corporate materials. So reach out if you have any follow up questions. Thank you for your interest. OPERATOR Thank you for joining the Star Equity Holdings first quarter conference call. Today's call has been recorded and will be available on the Investors section of our website, www.starequity.com. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant. Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.