... excited to have Cadre with us today, and Brad Williams, President and COO, along with Blaine Browers, CFO. And maybe just to kick things off, if you can give us a high-level overview of the core Cadre business, major product offerings, key end markets. You know, what's the comfortable long-term growth algorithm? And maybe split between organic and inorganic opportunities, just given you've been pretty active around M&A.
Okay, absolutely. So thank you, guys, for coming today. I'll give a quick overview of all that, and then Blaine can talk about the growth algorithm. So for those that don't know us, Cadre Holdings, fairly new publicly traded company, November twenty twenty-one is when we went public. But we're an old company. We've been around over 55 years.
We are a global leader in equipment, safety equipment for public safety and nuclear. Our core product categories are EOD, so Explosive Ordnance Disposal, so think of that as bomb suits for technicians around the world, with mainly our largest customer being militaries around the world. We do have high share in that category. We estimate about, you know, 87%-90% share of all militaries and law enforcement have our Med-Eng-branded bomb suits around the world.
Second main category for us is duty gear. That's where the company started. Think of duty gear as anything on military or law enforcement belt, with the main product category being the holster. We do have high share of that category in the US market, mainly law enforcement and military. So about 90% of the time, you'll see law enforcement officers that'll have our Safariland-branded holster.
So that's the second category, major category for us, and then the third major category is body armor. So we are one of the leaders in the market from a body armor perspective, both hard armor and soft armor. Think of hard armor are things like helmets, plates, shields that have a higher level of threat protection, and then soft body armor is our overall body armor category.
We do have a solid share in the U.S. market also for body armor, which we estimate in the high 30-low 40% range, in terms of share in that category. Then lastly, of our product categories is nuclear. So when we went public in November 2021, we said we were gonna transform ourselves into more of a diversified industrial-type company. So we were seeking that next vertical for us to go into.
So it took us a while since 2021, but last year, we decided to go into the nuclear segment, and I'm sure we'll spend some time on nuclear here in a little bit. But, you know, we had some very specific reasons why we went into nuclear and felt like that the macros around nuclear were as solid and consistent as we've seen in law enforcement. Blaine, you want to talk about the algorithm going forward?
Absolutely. Thanks, Brad. So when we think about the growth algorithm, maybe first talking about just the end markets. So when we think about the public safety, law enforcement, and military side, what we've seen historically is a pretty consistent, you know, 3% growth in that market. Nuclear, on the other hand, is really 4%-6%. So we have really GDP, maybe GDP-plus-like growth in the markets.
What we think is really exciting, though, about the business is the stability and the consistency of that, and then what we're able to translate that into. So one of the things, you know, Brad has a really industrial background with IDEX and Danaher, myself, IDEX and GE, is really about the operating model and what can we do with that growth. So we really think about it as three legs of the stool on how we translate that, that top-line growth into double-digit EBITDA expansion. You know, the first leg is really around price.
So where we sit competitively and the value the products bring is we're able to consistently get 1% price net of material inflation. So if we just stop there, that, that alone drives kind of 5% EBITDA expansion. The second component is really leveraging the growth on SG&A. So those, with these mature market, with mature markets, we don't require significant SG&A investments, so we get, you know, not quite gross margin like flow-through, but near gross margin like flow-through.
And the third leg of the stool is really about the operating model. So, you know, the company's developed the Cadre operating model, leveraging some of the tools we've all learned along the way, and, you know, we target another, you know, call it 50 basis points to 1% improvement there. When you take a step back, you look at and say you have 3% growth on public safety, you're able to take that 3% and make it double-digit, you know, EBITDA expansion.
You know, incrementally from that, we're a low CapEx business, you know, generally less than 2% of revenue for CapEx, which allows us to generate cash and really fund the M&A. We view this. We've always viewed Cadre as really a, you know, diversified industrial play with high free cash flow generation, which allows us to lever up for acquisitions and pay down pretty quickly with the cash we generate.
And then maybe if you can talk about competitors in the core duty gear and armor segment, and kind of how you think about positioning relative to peers. I mean, you called out pretty high market share in the opening, but maybe if you can just talk a little bit about, you know, how you've kind of gained that position.
Yeah, so we've gained that position. You can imagine the brand recognition is one, which is really important. When you're providing products that are safety equipment, like body armor, you know, we've got over, we're up to 2,254 saves in our Saves Club. So, you know, when you have that many, men and women that have found themselves in a life-threatening type situation, and they've lived, wearing or using our products, it's really important.
So, you know, they've known this brand, and the brand I'm talking about with body armor is Safariland, for many, many years, and the same with holsters. You know, for those of you in the audience that don't know what a duty holster is, it's not like your everyday consumer holster, where it has friction retention. So if I had a holster on stage, and I asked you guys to take the weapon from me, you likely wouldn't be able to get the weapon out of the holster.
So it locks the weapon in place. So very important from an engineering perspective, high quality, the retention mechanisms are very, very important. So that brand recognition and just knowing that if you used our products in the military, and then you transitioned to law enforcement at some point, that somewhere along the way, if you do have one of those experiences, you know, we're gonna save your life. So that's critical. The other one has been innovation.
So when I got here, that was a very positive thing I've found in this company, which is just continuing to innovate, and not just innovate to innovate, but really getting close to your customers and spending time to make sure that we can design products that are solving that next-level problem for them. So those are really the strengths that we have to continue to differentiate ourselves as we go forward. And you can imagine from a competitive standpoint, you know, I talked about three of our... four of our product categories.
We have a bunch of other categories that are just smaller. There's a competitor for each of those categories. But typically, we're the main product and the brand that everyone knows within the industry.
And then we'll get back to the innovation in the next question, but just wanna touch on tariffs a little bit, which have come up on each of the calls. There's obviously a lot of movement. You know, where do we kind of stand in terms of that, just given, I think you've talked about some flexibility to navigate-
Okay
... anything that does come through?
Yeah. No, appreciate the question. Yeah, obviously, it's been a pretty dynamic year when it comes to tariffs. I'd say one of the great attributes of the business is we're generally regional in our supply chain. And what I mean by that, even if you go back to COVID, you know, pre-tariffs, we don't source a lot of goods from Asia.
You know, majority of our materials for the U.S., and let's say, the North America markets are really made here in North America. So I think that helps with that general exposure, and the same is true for Europe, right? Generally sourced in Europe. So there's, on the face of it, very limited exposure there. You know, the one piece, you know, we do a lot of goods movement within North America.
We have a large manufacturing facility in Tijuana, we have multiple plants up in Canada, and we do movements across the border, both from the US to Canada, US to Mexico, and vice versa. The great thing, and we're happy to see it still in place, is really USMCA. So almost all of those goods movements are covered under USMCA. So I'd say that the large impact we were concerned about coming into the year, when USMCA was really up in the air, has really, you know, disappeared.
So I think that's the great news out of the gates on that. You know, for the remainder of the tariffs, when we talk about 15 possibly broad 15% tariffs, there's certainly some exposure there and, you know, we launched a price increase in Q2, really to help mitigate that. You know, going back to what Brad talked about, that positioning the products, we've been able to get price. You know, we don't have to, in those examples, get 10%, 15%, 20% increase on price, so we're able to pass that through, you know, to our distributors and to our end users.
You know, the second piece is, we have some flexibility in our manufacturing footprint. So when you think about, you know, body armor that Brad talked about, you know, we have plants in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., and Europe. So we do have some flexibility. I would tell you, though, it's not a flip of the switch. You know, in some cases, there's different sizes of facilities.
So we do have some capability to ramp up and ramp down where needed, but, you know, if this was a, you know, real significant change, it would take some time to transfer, let's say, a majority of manufacturing from plant A to plant B. But in the short term, we do have some mitigating impacts. And, you know, even within our supply chain, going back to COVID, you know, one of the things I mentioned that large facility in Mexico is we realized we had a single point of failure, you know, during COVID with that large facility.
And so we've opened up, you know, really a second source to help really move some of that volume outside of Mexico into another country, another vendor, which allows us to have that flexibility again. So, you know, even prior to tariffs, we've taken some opportunities to have a more flexible, more nimble supply chain. You know, again, there will be limitations on that, but we feel like we're in a really good place when it comes to mitigating tariffs through leveraging our supply or leveraging our manufacturing footprint, as well as price.
And then maybe going back to the innovation point, I mean, you talked about R&D, innovation, proximity to the customer, you know, and just kind of the quality and share of the brands. I mean, is there an algorithm when it comes to new products and how that kind of gets, you know, filtered into some of those growth rates that you talked about?
I wouldn't necessarily say there's an algorithm for those growth rates, because our share in those categories are so high. Most of our innovation, you can imagine, ends up being cannibalization of existing products, so that's the way you have to think about it. You know, but it's still a good thing, because every time we come out with a new product, so we've come out with two new holster families in the last 18 months.
We've come out with a couple new body armor packages in the last 24 months, et cetera, et cetera. All those packages always have something new and innovative built in that adds value to the customer. So, you know, typically, we then charge, obviously, additional premium for those products, even though they're becoming cannibalized by some of the existing products.
Now, this industry, like a lot of other industries I've been in, is a bit slow to change, too. So it's not like you turn on one product, and then another product supersedes it, and it's gone at that point in time. It can take quite a few years for those products to work their way out, for the new product to be there and fully 100% in place.
And then maybe just kind of as it relates to, you talked about public safety, 3% growth rate, I mean, if we think about, you know, how much of that is just budgets, what you're seeing trending, you know, by agency, whether federal, state, local, you know, and how sensitive is organic growth to maybe changes in funding?
You're talking public safety. So on the public safety side, if you go back many years, 10. We've mapped these out 10, 12, 14 years, you look at budgets for public safety, law enforcement budgets specifically, and then you look at expenditures for safety equipment within those. You don't see huge variations. It's typically a 2.8%-3% type CAGR over a long period of time. And Blaine already expounded on and talked about, you know, what we can do with a 2.8%-3% growth, and what matters to us is what we can do with that through our operating model to the bottom line. So it's been very consistent over time.
Even during COVID, defund the police, which headcount and law enforcement in the U.S. dropped quite a bit, and then now it's stabilized, we didn't see major changes in our business, and you might say, "Well, why is that?" Well, the average selling price per officer typically then just increased, okay? Because, you know, at that point, you're doing upgrades that are needed, so they're using budget money to do those upgrades for products that they need. There's things like active shooter kits that become important now, unfortunately, here in the U.S.
An active shooter kit, think of it as your normal, everyday patrol officer, if you're wearing soft body armor, that round, if you're shot with a round that's a handgun round, it'll stop a handgun round, but it's not gonna stop a rifle round, which is typically what an active shooter will have in that situation. So, you know, what we've seen over time, when there's active shooter situations, agencies will stop, review, "Do we have our folks fully protected for an active shooter?" And then that also ends up driving, you know, plate sales, shields, helmets, things like that, which gives you a higher level of threat protection.
Can you imagine being an officer, a patrol officer, you're the first to the scene, and there's an active shooter, and you don't have a product that can stop a, you know, a rifle round? That's pretty scary situation to be in. So, you know, if you throw up in the trunk of your car, you grab an active shooter kit, it could be a vest that goes over top of your vest with plates preloaded in it. You grab a helmet if you've got a helmet, you grab a shield, things like that.
Those are just some of the trends that you end up seeing also in the market that average selling price increases as you go forward. So, you know, the good news is, we love the budgets, we love the consistency that we see in public safety. That's why we're in the business and have been in the business for so long, and then we also think the same for the nuclear side of things as we go forward.
Yeah, and maybe just add on the law enforcement side. I think the, you know, additional point that's really compelling about our business is, you know, we're not discretionary. And so, you know, we've... You know, Brad, I've been with this about eight or nine years, and we've heard stories prior to that about the resiliency of our products because every officer needs them, even during, let's say, perceived or real budgetary constraints.
And we saw that during COVID, where there was a perception that there was gonna be some, you know, tax revenue shortfalls. And what really happens in those cases is they cut on discretionary. So in many cases, you may have an allotment for a given agency of three, I don't know, three to five uniforms per year. They'll cut that back, but every officer who goes out in the street has to have body armor, has to have a holster for the gun.
So going back to Brad's earlier point about being tied to the personnel, that's absolutely true, and even in those tougher times, you see that you're not gonna send those officers without that. And the body armor is not transferable, right? It's a semi-custom product, meaning, you know, what if Brad was an officer, and I'm retiring, he can't take my body armor and wear it. It's not gonna have the right level of protection.
Yeah, no way.
You don't have to look at my belly when you say that. But it's just very unique. So you have that recurring theme. So during COVID, when we talked with, you know, uniform makers, right, they were seeing changes in their volume, right? Pretty dramatic, whereas we saw a pretty steady trend line on that, the armor and holster business.
And then maybe just digging into the nuclear market a bit more. I mean, you've called out three core end markets: environmental safety, national security, and nuclear energy. Can you maybe talk about the core growth drivers across those three markets and maybe exposure to those markets?
Yeah, so we did a lot of work up front on the nuclear side. This was a bit before nuclear became such a hot discussion, let's call it, overall. So a lot of people immediately start coming in and asking us questions about SMRs and, you know, thinking that's why we got into the nuclear business. It's the icing on the cake, right? So that's good, as SMRs take off at some point.
So within nuclear energy, you have SMRs that we've all read and spent time on and understand the potential high growth rates there and the investments that are going on, but then you have just nuclear power in general. So you've got power plants that need to be decommissioned, and then you have plants that the life of those plants are being extended, okay? Within the product categories that I'll talk about here in a minute, our product categories work within the life cycle of that nuclear power plant, which is good, right?
Because you wanna have no different than body armor every five years. I didn't mention that before, but the warranty on body armor in the U.S. is five years. Agencies like to have their folks in body armor that's under warranty, so when the warranty expires, you get a new set of body armor, and it just recurs. Holsters, there's a refresh cycle every five to seven years. We love that, right? So when an agency adopts a new weapon, because remember, the holster is designed to fit the specific weapon, you'll get a replacement cycle every five to seven years. When you add a light to a gun, it drives a replacement.
When you add optics to a gun, it drives a replacement. So we love that type of model. If you go over to the nuclear side of things, it's similar, where, you know, as that power plant is operating, there's waste that's being created, and that waste needs to be identified, stored, transported, so that the professionals that are working in that world, you know, they're not getting exposed to radioactive materials, okay?
So we look at that, and we think the long-term outlook when it comes to nuclear power, you know, will continue to be strong and solid. You then add SMRs on top of it, you know, it looks really good. All right? So that was one of the three sub-segments that we really like.
The second sub-segment within nuclear that we liked and we made this decision to get into was because of modernization of nuclear arsenals, okay? When you think of military, especially the U.S. military, the same thing's going on within the U.K., for example, and there's a lot of money being spent in the U.S. to restart what's called pit production. A pit is a core. Think of that as, like, a nuclear core. It's kind of like a... If you have a firecracker or fireworks, you need a fuse to make it go bang, right?
Same thing, you need cores. If you don't have the cores, and those cores degrade over time, you're gonna have issues with things like nuclear subs, warheads, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a mandate in the U.S. to go from zero pits produced a year up to, you know, it's like 80 pits by like 2037. So we look at that as billions of dollars being invested and spent in increasing pit production. That's capital, that's people, that's equipment, you name it.
Same discussion that we just had about nuclear power. The type of products that we have work in that entire life cycle of beginning pit production, through waste that's created through the process, through taking a pit. You just can't pick up a pit and move it and transport it, you know, someplace. You can't put it on a FedEx truck and send it there. You have to have highly, highly engineered, specialized containers to be able to transport, store those materials. You can't touch those pits, okay?
A human can't what y ou could, but you don't want to, right? You need a robotic arm that a human can stand on one side of a protective wall, what's called a cell, and work and move those radioactive materials around. That's why we bought Walischmiller, which is one of the global leaders in robotic arms in the nuclear industry. Globally, they have customers in almost every country when you look at their installed base. Again, we love that type of product that's involved in that entire life cycle.
That's the second one, and then the third one that we like is environmental cleanup. The U.S. alone has $520 billion-some of liability around Cold War, World War II cleanup that needs to be done. So materials that have been stored, and you don't know what the materials are, so they've got to be classified. They've got to be identified, those materials. They've been stored improperly, so then you have to engineer and design containers to be able to store and transport those in.
I think you guys are seeing that common theme across all three of these. So we always like to have backup plans, so we felt like if we're going after nuclear, we're gonna be in three sub-segments of nuclear. And then if anything happens from a demand generation standpoint within those three, it gives us a fallback plan within either a combination of two or one of those.
And then maybe just going back to the pricing point you brought up before, you know, I think you did plus 1% net pricing in Q2, early Q2 price increase, you know. And how does that flow through Q3, Q4? You know, how much is tied to kind of what's in backlog, and how do you think about price mix and volume contribution, you know, into the second half of the year and into next year?
Yeah. So when we think about, you know, the price increase, you know, we typically do, like a lot of businesses, a January price increase. You know, one of the things is just the normal planning process, is we're able to start increasing price for quotes that are done, you know, well prior to January. So that when you enter the year, you generally have a backlog and existing quotes that reflect that, that new price.
You know, that April price increase or Q2 price increase was really reactive to tariff. So one thing we didn't have, is we had backlog, you know, that was already booked at previous pricing. We have quotes outstanding that are previous pricing. So that Q2 price increase will take some time to flow through.
And to give you a feel for just the makeup of our backlog, when we think about EOD and nuclear, those businesses will generally have six to nine months of backlog on hand, you know, plus quotes. So when you think about that funnel from beginning to end to get that price increase through, you know, it looks like, you know, if you launch it in Q2, it looks like more six to nine months. Contrast that with the armor and duty gear side of the business, where they only carry about forty-five days of backlog. So when we think about the back half, you know, you'll see some of the price flow through in the very end of Q2.
You'll see some of the businesses, not all of them, but some of them have it in Q3, and then as you get into Q4, you know, towards the tail end in early 2026, you'll start to see those longer cycle businesses have that price flow through. So when we think about that price increase, it's gonna happen over time, just because of the nature of that backlog. Again, very different from how we do our annual price increase. So by the time we get into Q1, we'd expect to see the full impact of that across all the businesses.
When we think about that contribution in the back half, you know, again, going back to my prior comment, is, you know, the tariffs are not hugely significant impact to us. So we're not talking about double-digit price increases. We're talking really single-digit price increases.
And when you kind of do the math, and you lay out the single-digit, along with how it cycles through those businesses, you're not talking a real significant uptick in price in the back half. So, you know, based on our guide, that. I would think about that as mostly volume, you know, consistent with what we guided to. It won't be dramatically different in that back half.
And then maybe just sticking with backlog, you know, flat sequentially, organically in Q2. You know, I think you saw some big funnel opportunities, maybe push out a little bit. You know, what are the milestones that we should watch as it relates to, you know, gauging conversion, and are there specific end markets or order timing that's improving?
Yeah, one thing, I talked just briefly about that backlog makeup and the differences between the businesses. So, you know, backlog's absolutely important, but you can never really look at it as absolute number just because of that makeup change. And, you know, a good example would be in the nuclear businesses, there's some of those businesses that get their orders for the following year in December.
You know, so for those businesses, you really kind of expect that backlog to bleed throughout the year and then replenish in Q4, early Q1. So when we look at the backlog, I think as you're thinking about as an investor, you know, Q3 is not really the point in time that's gonna be the make or break. It really comes to Q4 is when we...
A lot of those orders we expect to come in. So I wouldn't think about it as backlog in Q3 is gonna be a real telling indicator of Q4 just because of that mix, and we've already, you know, adjusted guidance for some of those order timing pushout. So those really, I would expect more to land in Q4 backlog versus Q3. And that's just really typical what we see in our business. There's a pretty wide fluctuation because the customer base and products are very different when it comes to the replenishment ordering cycles.
And then maybe just going back to nuclear, you know, Carr Engineering, you've outlined a phased integration playbook, starting with finance, IT, legal, compliance first, and then, you know, the operating model. Could you maybe provide an update on where integration stands and, you know, how maybe some of the KPIs are tracking over the first 120-180 days?
Sure. Yeah, our initial focus really in that first 90-120 days is really around the functional integration, so think legal, IT, you know, finance and accounting. You know, one of the things we've been, you know, really pleased with is the strength of the teams in the Carr's businesses. So when we think about that back office integration, you know, we are exactly where we want to be, and honestly, towards the tail end of that. Which is, you know, exciting for us 'cause, you know, that's the work we have to get done, and then we get to really, I would say, more of the fun stuff, the operating model.
This year, Cadre has done boot camps for the operating model, so we've brought in all the leadership, so operational leadership, functional leadership, you know, into different geographic sites to really spend, you know, three to five days learning about how we operate. We've been able to check that box for the European operations, which we're excited for. A lot of enthusiasm, right? It's fairly new to these individuals, to these teams, so we're excited about the future on that. Then, you know, KPIs, really the first step in that operating model and boot camp is really daily management and monthly business reviews. You know, we are not prescriptive, I'd say, on the specific KPIs that each business will use, right?
It has to be, to a degree, molded to the way the business operates and the characteristics of that business. So right now, the teams are working through daily management. They have it in place. It will be a process, though. Today's daily management will look different from daily management in a month.
But I would say we have a lot of the basic KPIs around, you know, delivery and cost and safety in place that we're happy with, will continue to evolve over time. But we've seen. You know, I think really the most exciting thing has been the excitement from the teams around the operating model, around what it will mean to the business and how they can continue to push the business forward.
I think maybe digging into that point a little bit, I mean, you've alluded to some of the opportunity to cross-sell Alpha Safety products into the legacy Carr relationships and, and vice versa. I mean, how do you think about the first cross-sell plays you're executing, and, and when do you think those maybe show up in orders or revenues?
So I mentioned on the public safety side that, you know, that segment is very slow to change. Nuclear is even longer. So when you look at the opportunities, you know, when we bought Alpha Safety, part of the Alpha Safety strategy was, 98% of their revenue is all U.S.-based. They only have, like, one customer in, in Europe, actually in the U.K.
And so part of the strategy there was to, you know, take some of their products, especially their containers, their high-end stainless steel containers that are used, you know, typically for plutonium, and take those containers and then hopefully land customers outside the U.S., so specifically in the U.K., because Bendalls, which was part of the, Carr's acquisition, it's a bespoke engineering company in the U.K. They have a great relationship with, with Sellafield. Sellafield, for those who don't know, is a large storage location in the UK, one of the largest, actually, in the world.
A very important customer to us. Bendalls has a great relationship, does a lot of work with that customer, Sellafield. Also, through Walischmiller, which was another one of the businesses we bought in the Carr's acquisition, they also have a great relationship, and we have a facility in the UK for that business also. We have two inroads there, and then the next step is just continuing to introduce the containers and the other products that we don't have in the UK that we have from an Alpha Safety perspective. You know, these are not short selling times. These are typically what we've seen so far in the nuclear industry.
You're talking, you know, twelve plus months or even longer as they look at these opportunities. And if you think about it, we may be impatient about that, you know, as business leaders, but when you think of the type of products and solutions that they're putting in place, they've really got to make sure that things are being engineered properly, fabricated properly, produced properly, and they're selecting the appropriate suppliers for those. So, you know, it's definitely a longer sales cycle within nuclear versus public safety.
And then maybe just two more, just thinking about margin. I mean, the 2025 guide, 18.2%, you know, there's a little bit of an impact from CAR, and then I think you've talked about some H2 uplift from just mix, given EOD and Armor mix. Can you maybe talk about that path forward? You talked a little bit about price, but what some of the largest opportunities are to kinda drive productivity and how mix plays into that?
Yeah, you know, longer term, you know, we believe, you know, firmly, like from an EBITDA margin basis, we can be in the mid-20s. And, you know, Brad and I, again, have been with the company for a while, private and public. If you look back at the track record, it's been very consistent, pushing those margins forward. And we don't view that as an end of the journey, where there's really no stopping.
Even for the mature businesses, when we think about the opportunity there, it still exists. And in fact, you know, when we think about the operating model deployment, you know, we would really view it as early innings, right? We're not at a high maturity level on some of those tools.
So even the businesses like Armor and Duty Gear, we still think have room to expand margins and grow, and they have done. Even those mature businesses over the past five years, they've continued to expand. You know, we don't, we don't think about mix as a driver to that profitability. You know, when we think about those, that margin expansion, we really view it as what do we do to change the business, not how does the business change outside your control.
So we wanna focus on, you know, how are we producing on the floor. What are we doing really in the back office to support the businesses. How do we make that leaner and more efficient and improve those processes to drive the margin. So for us, it's you know, mix can always be an impact on our business.
You know, when you look across the portfolio, you know, if you look at the average margin, there's probably a plus or minus 5% across the different products. So it can have an impact, but for us it's really more important, excluding that mix impact, you know, are we continuing to expand margins? And then as long as we continue to focus on what we're good at and what we've historically done, which is focus on price and productivity, we believe there's a, you know, clear path to get those margins, those EBITDA margins, into the mid-20s. That doesn't require mix change, and it doesn't require us to buy, you know, assets to lift that margin. You know, we view, even in the absence of M&A, that Cadre is a really compelling story because of that margin expansion opportunity.
And then maybe just sneaking in one last one as time comes to an end. You know, I think you ended Q2 at 1.8% leverage. You've obviously been very active with M&A. I mean, how do you kind of think about that going forward, or are there targets? What are you seeing in the broader market, and maybe how does that kind of play into that, you know, playbook that you laid out in the beginning?
Yeah, I mean, we're obviously very comfortable at, you know, 1.8 times levered. You know, our range, our... Let's say our upper end is really three and a half, maybe 3.75 on leverage, and that would be for the right acquisition. That makes a lot of sense. But then the plan is, how do we quickly delever to kinda two? So if you look over our history, actually this is probably the highest leverage we've been as a public company.
And, you know, 1.8 not being high, and that's just been reflective of the M&A opportunity. So we'll fluctuate in that. We think, again, two times is probably the right number for returns for investors long term, but it is gonna fluctuate up and down, dependent on M&A markets. You know, when we think about that capital allocation, it is very focused on M&A. That's where we believe the biggest return for our investors is really, so you know, we're not contemplating share buybacks or, you know, significant changes to the dividend. It's really gonna be M&A and organic opportunities within the business.
And, you know, thank you both, and we'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.
Appreciate it.