DNOW

Good morning. My name is Carrie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the DNOW first quarter 2026 earnings 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 followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. Mr. Brad Wise, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Carrie, and good morning, and welcome to DNOW's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We appreciate you joining us, and thank you for your interest in DNOW. With me today is David Cherechinsky, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Johnson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We operate under the DNOW and MRC Global brands, and DNOW is our New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol. Please note that some of the statements we make during this call, including the responses to your questions, may contain forecasts, projections, and estimates, including but not limited to comments about our outlook for the company's business. These are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws based on limited information as of today, May 7th, 2026, which is subject to change. They are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.

No one should assume these forward-looking statements remain valid later in the quarter or later in the year. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason. In addition, this conference call contains time-sensitive information that reflects management's best judgment at the time of the live call. I refer you to the latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q that DNOW has on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the major risk factors affecting our business. Further information, as well as supplemental financial and operating information, may be found within our earnings release on our website at ir.dnow.com or in our filings with the SEC. To supplement the information provided to investors under GAAP, we present certain non-GAAP financial measures in our quarterly earnings releases and other public communications.

We encourage you to review our earnings release and securities filings for further details on our use of these non-GAAP metrics and for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. These documents are available on our website. Unless we specifically state otherwise, references in this call to EBITDA refer to adjusted EBITDA. As of this morning, the investor relation section of our website contains a presentation covering our earnings presentation for the first quarter of 2026. We expect to file our Form 10-Q later today, and it will also be available on our website. A replay of today's call will be available on the site for the next 30 days. Now, let me turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. It's been almost 11 weeks since our last earnings call, with 1Q 2026 representing DNOW's first full quarter as a combined entity with MRC Global. Our teams have been focused on merger integration and two key parallel ERP initiatives, stabilizing the MRC Global U.S. ERP platform and accelerating a migration of locations and activities to the DNOW SAP platform. I want to recognize the exceptional performance of our ERP conversion teams and the collaboration across numerous functions, including IT, operational excellence, finance, and supply chain. Most notably, our on-the-ground customer-facing sales and operations teams have played a crucial role. Together, these groups have worked in true choreography, driven by a strong sense of urgency made possible by their deep understanding of our systems, workflows, and customer requirements, all with a singular focus on serving our customers.

I'll begin with an update on the MRC Global U.S. ERP stabilization initiative. At this point, the system is stabilized to a level that allows us to conduct business, though it is not yet optimized. Importantly, we have removed much of the ERP-related friction with meaningful improvements in system responsiveness, customer service levels, and operating cadence. We're making good progress under a sequenced remediation plan that continues to improve system performance and operational throughput across the MRC Global U.S. locations. This is a critical area of focus as the MRC Global U.S. business represented approximately half of our U.S. revenues and 42% of our consolidated global revenue in the first quarter. We are pleased that the ERP system is now supporting consistent daily operations, and our focus is shifting from recovery to business enablement, improving efficiencies across the quote-to-cash cycle.

We're seeing progress across quoting, pricing, fulfillment, and invoicing, which is translating into better service levels, reduced rework, and improved cash collections, though there is still work ahead, and we continue to absorb considerable temporary costs to stabilize and enhance the ERP. We expect these temporary stabilization costs will continue to moderate as remediation progresses through the year. In terms of accelerating a migration of activities to the DNOW SAP platform, as discussed on our February call, we are migrating 20 U.S. MRC Global locations. These locations are almost entirely focused on upstream and midstream markets, where there is significant overlap in both customer and inventory profiles across the legacy businesses. This move is driving improved customer service and better visibility while unlocking access to a substantial upstream and midstream inventory investment.

I'm excited that as of late April, all MRC Global Permian operations are now transacting on an optimized SAP platform. This conversion is already producing tangible commercial benefits. For example, we now have easy access to approximately $40 million of additional MRC Global inventory that is now visible and deployable, supporting faster fulfillment and improved service levels. Our teams view this unlocked inventory in the Permian as a powerful commercial lever, giving us a speed to customer advantage, supporting revenue and margin recovery, and positioning the business to return to growth. Looking ahead, we have 14 additional upstream and midstream locations scheduled for migration, with approximately half targeted for completion in the second quarter. Most of these also involve service facility consolidations, which sharpens regional focus and contributes to cost synergies earlier than initially expected, which I'll touch on later.

A key consideration in this process is the one-to-one digital integration with our customer's ERP and procurement systems. These integrations take time to replicate and validate, and we are managing them carefully to minimize disruptions. From a commercial standpoint, we are taking targeted actions to recover leakage and reinforce margin discipline as system performance improves. Cash generation remains a priority, supported by inventory rationalization, improved collections, and tighter working capital discipline. Moving to business results. In the U.S., legacy DNOW first quarter revenues were up sequentially and year-over-year, despite rig counts being down 7% and completions showing no growth year-over-year. MRC Global U.S. revenues on a standalone basis were down $94 million or 16% year-over-year.

About three-quarters of the decline was in upstream and downstream, while gas utilities and midstream were more resilient, with declines of 5% and 9% respectively. MRC Global U.S. revenue sector declines were most pronounced in upstream, driven primarily by ERP disruptions and rig count decline-driven volumes in the U.S. upstream space. Legacy DNOW is well-positioned to recover upstream revenues, specifically those which carry the margin profile we desire. That now has only improved as we integrate talent, systems, locations, and inventory. More than 40% of our U.S. upstream revenues occur in the Permian. Now, as of last week, all of the Permian locations are on optimized ERP platforms. For downstream industrial, about 2/3 of the decline was attributable to ERP frustrations, the balance due to general market declines in the chemicals market.

A downstream recovery is more challenged. Our view on upstream, midstream, and gas utilities is much more optimistic with the revenues being easier to recover. In midstream, DNOW, MRC Global, and Whitco Supply each enjoy strong customer relationships, and we're combining their capabilities into a more focused competitive force as we optimize the tools and talent we've added. In midstream, demand continues to be a bright spot, supported by customer investments in natural gas infrastructure, driven by LNG-related export activity, power generation demand, and data center-driven load growth. Gas utilities distribution is the sector that MRC Global pioneered and expertly cultivated in the market very well. We are expecting demand growth from several of our gas utility customers, some of whom have issued positive updates to their longer-term spending plans. As we improve the systems that support our business, we expect to capitalize on that growth.

For some additional insight, nearly all the year-over-year MRC Global U.S. revenue decline is concentrated across two dozen customers. This gives us clear line of sight and targeted action plans to recover those sales over time. We continue to make steady progress on cost synergy realization and have increased the pace of delivery for this year. As we head into the second quarter with additional actions implemented and better visibility into the run rate, we are raising our annualized synergy expectation again to approximately $30 million, significantly higher than our original estimate to realize run rate savings and $17 million by the end of the first year. This reflects a full pull forward of timing rather than a change in scope. Our three-year annualized synergy target of $70 million remains unchanged at this time.

In the first quarter, we acquired Edge Controls, our 26th acquisition, a leading U.S. regional automation and control business. Edge Controls is a key differentiator within our Process Solutions business, an offering which is inherently fungible across many of the end markets we serve today. They design and install technology that controls and monitors operations, including PLCs, touchscreens, and a range of measurement devices while enabling customers to securely monitor, visualize, and manage their systems through SCADA platforms. These capabilities are not asset class specific. Rather, they are application-driven, allowing us to deploy similar automation, controls, and integration solutions across energy, industrial, and infrastructure-oriented markets with minimal modifications. This flexibility is particularly valuable in fast-growing infrastructure-intensive end markets, such as data centers, where customers have complex requirements around power management, fluid handling, redundancy, uptime, and system reliability.

Edge is highly complementary to both our Process Solutions platform and our broader PVF Plus business, enabling us to better leverage our existing customer relationships while expanding our addressable market. We welcome, and I'm excited to work with the leadership and team from Edge as we chart this next chapter. As Process Solutions expands, it creates more opportunities to pull through our pipe, valve, and fittings products. The merger with MRC Global further enables our teams to introduce Process Solutions products and services into downstream industrial and gas utility markets. Turning to capital allocation, let me start by saying that I think this is one of the most important topics we discuss with our shareholders as we continuously and critically evaluate our capital allocation priorities against the opportunities in front of us.

Our capital allocation strategy is driven by a disciplined and pragmatic framework focused on driving long-term value for our shareholders. We invest organically in the business to support growth, maintain a strong and flexible balance sheet, and allocate excess capital toward opportunities that generate the most attractive returns for shareholders. Because free cash flow and capital allocation go hand in hand, let me give you some context about our cash flow generation. As a reminder, we historically consume cash during the first quarter due to working capital timing. As expected, our first quarter use of cash increased further due to the U.S. ERP conversion challenges. I want to be clear that the U.S. ERP challenges are transitory, and our confidence in DNOW's medium and long-term cash generation profile remains high. The combination with MRC Global has created a more diversified and less cyclical business.

We are now more aligned with attractive structural growth markets, which gives me confidence in the durability and visibility of future free cash flow. Against this backdrop, our board of directors and management believe our current equity valuation presents a compelling opportunity to return capital to shareholders. We seized this opportunity with a record $50 million in stock repurchases made during the first quarter. At March 31, we now have purchased $87 million or 54% of our $160 million share authorization program. Since late 2022, we have repurchased $167 million in stock so far. At the lower share price levels like we experienced in the quarter, we expect share repurchases to play an increasingly important role in our near-term capital allocation priorities. I want to place high emphasis on this next part.

We are currently in a unique situation in which our free cash flow is temporarily suppressed and our stock is trading at what we believe is a meaningful discount to intrinsic value. We have taken advantage of this deep valuation gap caused by the stock market's reaction to our ERP conversion challenges. In the first quarter, we used our balance sheet, specifically debt, for the first time in our history to fund share repurchases at prices that will likely look highly attractive in hindsight. Moving now to managing our debt leverage. DNOW's net debt position grew to $455 million at March 31. We expect our EBITDA results to improve meaningfully in the coming quarters, and consequently, we expect our net debt leverage to be in the 1-2x range as early as year-end, depending on share buyback volume.

We believe this range appropriately balances DNOW's financial resilience with efficient capital deployment while preserving our strategic flexibility. We have meaningfully reduced our exposure to hyper-cyclical end markets and have grown our presence in sectors which exhibit durable, secular demand characteristics, areas where customer re-relationships are stickier and growth is not as dependent on a favorable rig count-driven backdrop. Let me turn now to another key element in our capital allocation strategy. Executing M&A is an important long-term growth lever. While we continue to evaluate potentially accretive acquisitions, we recognize that M&A may not always represent the highest return of capital versus resolving U.S. ERP challenges and pursuing share repurchases. The board and management regularly review our strategy, capital structure, portfolio optimization, and deployment priorities in the context of market conditions, shareholder feedback, and long-term value creation objectives.

We maintain an active dialogue with our shareholders and continuously evaluate opportunities to enhance returns, improve capital efficiency, and ensure alignment between business performance and shareholder returns. Our intent is straightforward: allocate capital pragmatically, act opportunistically during valuation disconnects, and compound shareholder value over time while preserving financial flexibility to pursue attractive growth opportunities. With that, let me hand it over to Mark.

Thank you, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $1.2 billion, an increase of 23% or $224 million from the fourth quarter of 2025 and up $584 million from the first quarter of 2025. Increase was primarily driven by a full quarter contribution from MRC Global. We provided a view of 1Q 2025 revenue and adjusted EBITDA figures of DNOW and MRC Global as they were separately reported for 1Q 2025. For total companies and using segment estimates illustrating a bridge to our first quarter 2026 results, this view represents a $128 million year-over-year first quarter revenue decline. Approximately three-quarters of that decline was attributable to MRC Global U.S., where upstream and downstream end markets saw the steepest year-over-year declines.

I'll also note the adjusted EBITDA bridge highlights a higher than normal decremental of 31% for the MRC Global U.S. business as gross margin pressure and temporary, yet considerable costs to stabilize the ERP environment impacted profitability in the first quarter of 2026. Moving to the geographic segment results for DNOW. U.S. revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $985 million, an increase of $220 million or 29% from the fourth quarter of 2025. year-over-year, U.S. revenue increased $511 million. The upstream sector contributed approximately 37% to total U.S. revenue in the first quarter, followed by the gas utility sector contributing 27%, midstream 20%, and downstream and industrial 16% for the U.S. In Canada, revenue for the first quarter totaled $51 million, flat sequentially.

International revenue was $147 million in the first quarter, up $4 million or 3% sequentially. As the full period contribution from MRC Global was offset by $35 million of MRC Global project-related revenue in the fourth quarter that did not repeat in 1Q 2026, as I mentioned in February. That project revenue was tied to the completion of a multiyear project award cycle in Europe, contributing close to $200 million in revenue over a two-year period ending in 2025 for MRC Global International. These project cycles go in waves as customers initiate life extensions on existing platforms or incremental development in response to the energy needs in the region.

Adjusted gross profit for the first quarter was $256 million, or 21.6% compared to the $217 million or 22.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The decline in margin percentage was primarily attributable to the inclusion of a full quarter of MRC Global's historically lower gross profit margin profile, paired with reduced higher margin international project sales. In addition, margin compression was experienced in the first quarter in the U.S. as MRC Global works to better recapture various costs from tariffs, freight, and pricing enhancements through system optimization initiatives, among other things.

SG&A expense for the first quarter was $243 million compared to $226 million in the fourth quarter, reflecting a full quarter of MRC Global expenses, increased bad debt expense of $5 million in the quarter, partially offset by reduced transaction-related costs. Moving to operating profit by geographic segment. In the first quarter, the U.S. reported a $54 million operating loss, while international delivered $3 million operating profit, with both segments impacted by transaction costs in the quarter. The Canadian segment reported $1 million of operating profit. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $39 million, or 3.3% of revenue, down $22 million sequentially. The decline in EBITDA dollars was primarily driven by MRC Global U.S. operating at a loss, reflecting higher costs on lower than historical revenue levels.

A reduced international bottom line contribution due to the absence of project revenue recognized in the fourth quarter and an increase of bad debt expense mentioned earlier. Depreciation and amortization expense totaled $23 million in the first quarter, with approximately $24 million forecast for the second quarter depreciation and amortization. Interest expense was $8 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $4 million in the fourth quarter, reflecting higher average debt balances. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.7%. Cash taxes for the quarter were $2 million, whereas we expect to pay approximately $11 million in the second quarter. The majority of this expected cash taxes in the second quarter are outside the U.S. from Europe. For modeling purposes, we expect a full year 2026 effective tax rate of approximately 26%-27%.

Net loss attributable to DNOW for the first quarter was a loss of $44 million or a loss of $0.24 per diluted share and was unfavorably impacted by $41 million in inventory step-up to the fair market value amortization charges related to the merger, reduced margins and increased SG&A expenses. On an adjusted non-GAAP basis, Q1 2026 adjusted net income attributable to DNOW was $3 million, or $0.01 per fully diluted share. Moving to the balance sheet, at the end of the first quarter, accounts receivable was $889 million, an increase of $15 million from the prior quarter. Days sales outstanding or DSO was 69 days. Inventory was $1.2 billion at the end of the first quarter, relatively flat from year-end with an annualized turn rate of 3.3x.

As we move through 2026, inventory reduction and optimization are key focuses as we continue to realize integration synergies and align working capital and demand trends. Accounts payable was $662 million at the end of the first quarter or 61 days payable outstanding. With working capital excluding cash as a percentage of annualized first quarter revenue was 25.5%. In the first quarter of 2026, net cash used in operating activities was $95 million due to changes in working capital balances, most notably the reduction in accrued liabilities as merger-related costs, including change of control severance payments, were made in the first quarter. Consistent with historical seasonality, we typically consume cash in the first quarter and expect improving cash generation in the second half of the year, supported by improved working capital efficiency and synergy realization.

During the quarter, we invested $46 million in acquisitions and $8 million in capital expenditures. Additionally, we opportunistically returned capital to shareholders by repurchasing $50 million in shares, retiring 4.2 million shares in the quarter. To date, we've repurchased $87 million under the current share repurchase program and a total of $167 million in shares under both the $160 million current share repurchase program and the previous $80 million completed share repurchase program. Our total debt balance was $571 million at the end of the first quarter, and net debt was $455 million, resulting in a trailing 12-month net debt leverage ratio of 2.3x.

Turning to liquidity, our balance sheet remains strong with total liquidity of $379 million, including $263 million in availability under our revolving credit facility and $116 million of cash at quarter end. Our $850 million revolving credit facility with access to a $500 million accordion matures into November 2030, providing us with long-term financial flexibility. With that, let me turn the call back to Dave.

Thank you, Mark. Today, our priority is to reinforce the fundamental strengths of the business by reclaiming, safeguarding, and expanding revenue streams that optimize earnings, support growth, and durable free cash flow. We are pursuing opportunities where customers clearly perceive differentiated value, avoiding commoditization to drive higher gross margins through an efficient operating model and achieve stronger flow-through to profitability. We are actively addressing the defined set of customer relationships where revenue attrition has been the most acute, implementing targeted account-level initiatives aimed at arresting leakage while ensuring the economics of those relationships are aligned. We have an ample supply of inventory and are aligning inventory with demand to drive cash generation in 2026. We have targeted efforts to speed collections currently aggravated by ERP challenges to produce cash.

We are aligning our cost structure with revenue on a phased basis to maximize revenue recovery, maintain organization agility in response to market dynamics. Alongside this focus on the fundamentals, we are executing a set of offensive initiatives designed to grow revenues and expand market share. An important opportunity lies in the growth of midstream feed gas infrastructure driven by rising power generation needs, particularly from expanding data centers, while we simultaneously increase our broader exposure to midstream markets in line with continued investment in natural gas infrastructure, supported by power demand and growing LNG exports. This growth highlights the need for midstream PVF infrastructure to support additional demand. Our products and service offerings match both current and future investments, putting us in a strong position to benefit from this multiyear demand trend.

At the data center level, we are successfully targeting opportunities to supply industrial PVF and pumps that are critical to cooling systems and associated infrastructure. We are also ramping revenue opportunities tied to gas meters through our MTech solution to grow share in gas utilities, a sector we expect to continue expanding. We are focused on unlocking revenue synergies across the portfolio by extending Process Solutions pump products into downstream markets, expanding fabrication capabilities into gas utilities, and increasing EcoVapor product penetration in Europe. Overall, we are committed to executing a clear strategy, strengthening the core of the business, and positioning the company for sustainable, profitable growth going forward. Now, switching to our outlook for the second quarter and full year 2026. 2026 is a transition year focused on execution in both DNOW's home field and emerging markets, alongside merger benefit realization.

We expect sequential second quarter growth in the U.S. as we continue on our path to stabilize then optimize ERP issues for our U.S. businesses. We also expect sequential growth in the international segment. In Canada, seasonal factors are expected to result in a sequential revenue decline. Historically, second quarter breakup conditions have driven an approximate 20% decrease from first quarter levels. However, we expect the decrease to be less pronounced this year. Taken together, we expect DNOW's second quarter revenues to be up sequentially in the mid to high single-digit percentage range from the first quarter, with EBITDA flow-throughs to revenue approaching 25% at this revenue growth rate, well above our normal expected flow-throughs of 10%-15%. On a full year basis, we expect 2026 revenues to approach $5 billion, with EBITDA as a percentage of revenue to approach 4.5%.

In closing, I am confident that the overall DNOW business has bottomed in 1Q 2026. We expect EBITDA dollars to improve as we progress throughout the year when compared to the first quarter. Finally, we anticipate 2026 full year cash from operating activities could range from $100 million-$200 million. As we look ahead, we are increasingly confident in the trajectory of the business and the strength of the platform we are building. I'm excited that we are beginning to see tangible benefits of operating together. Our combined capabilities are enabling us to compete for and win opportunities that would not have been accessible to either company on a standalone basis. For example, the integration of our customer relationships, supplier partnerships, and expanded inventory visibility is already translating into incremental wins and a broader project pipeline.

At the same time, we are making deliberate progress in aligning our physical footprint. The consolidation and co-location of facilities is not simply about efficiency, it's about enhancing our ability to deliver a more comprehensive suite of solutions. We are also seeing encouraging signals from our core product and service offerings. Growth in areas such as valve automation and actuation continues to support both our upstream and midstream exposure while improving manufacturer activity levels are creating additional quoting opportunities for the team. Taken together, these factors reinforce our view that the foundation we are building today through integration, expanded capabilities, and disciplined execution position us well to capture growth and create value over time. With that, let's open the call for questions.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question will come from Adam Farley with Stifel.

Good morning, everyone.

Morning, Adam.

You know, first on the ERP optimization, could you quantify the impact of the temporary cost to stabilize the ERP system in 2026? You know, what additional resources are required to optimize the system? You know, how long in duration do you expect these temporary costs to persist?

Okay. Let me give some color a little more than I did in the last quarter. In terms of the cost of the teams in place to stabilize and enhance the MRC Global platform, that's around $4.5 million a quarter. That's gonna be pretty stable for much of the year. There are additional costs, some of which I did talk about in the last call, which are we have additional overtime, we have additional temp cost, and we've added warehouse people for example, as one of the big bottlenecks was experienced at the warehouse level. Now that number has come down a bit. On the last call, I said we had about 200 additional people that we added to cope with the system issues.

That number is almost half. It's about 115. Those costs, overtime, temps, added personnel at the warehouse cost about $4 million a quarter. There's the stabilization cost about $4.5 million and $4 million for overtime, temps, and warehouse people. In terms of looking at those costs on a go-forward basis, I expect that $4.5 million a quarter to be pretty stable during the year. But the $2 million for overtime, temps, et cetera, that number will come down. We saw some progress there in the first quarter. I expect that to come down. We characterize the Oracle platform that MRC uses primarily as stabilized.

As such, you should see some of those costs come out of the system, which is part of the reason we're talking about pretty generous flow through is going into the second and third quarters. In terms of what additional resources we need, you know, I think the answer is none. You know, like I said, I expect some of those operating costs to decline as we go through the year. In terms of, what was the last question, Mark? What was the last part of your question, Adam? I'm sorry.

Just the duration. I mean, should we expect this issue to be almost fully resolved by the end of the year? Should we expect that to continue into 2027?

That's a good question. I think, you know, I talked about us being on dual tracks. We are migrating as fast as possible all upstream and midstream activity to an optimized platform. In the meantime, we're making improvements to the systems that MRC uses primarily on the downstream and gas utility side, and we think we'll make substantial progress by year-end. You know, an exact end date, you know, I don't have that right now. We are seeing progress in our ability to compete and, you know, we, you know, we're forecasting some growth on the MRC side, and we expect that to stabilize as you go through as we go through the year.

In terms of, you know, a better, you know 2027 is gonna be where we'll start to see real meaningful change in ERP not being the standard conversation around here. We're gonna be moving into growing market share and gross margins and becoming more efficient and driving significantly improved earnings. I don't have an exact time date to that question, Adam.

That's really helpful, Dave. Thank you for that.

You're welcome.

Additional color. You know, and to that point, you know, if we look ahead, into the, you know, into the near medium-term future, say the temporary ERP issue costs are resolved, the growth environment's, you know, relatively stable. You know, how should we think about, you know, the normalized earning potential of the DNOW business?

Normalized earnings. Let me talk a little bit about what I expect to happen in the sectors and then, you know, we gave some color in 2026, and maybe I'll give a glimpse into 2027. Where we're seeing some real strength in our business today is in midstream. We're seeing nice growth there. When you combine the MRC talent from a centralized perspective on relationships, manufacturers around the world, the procurement talent, the negotiating talent, the inventory that MRC has with DNOW's presence in the Permian and DJ basins, especially in the upstream and midstream space, MRC's VAMI or valve actuation shops around the country, we expect midstream to be a big opportunity for growth for us. You know, we grew year-over-year in midstream in 1Q. We grew sequentially.

We see some real opportunity there. Gas utilities is, you know, probably the second sector we're most interested in. Well, actually it's upstream and midstream is what I was speaking to initially. Upstream and midstream, we will gain market share in upstream and midstream from here forward. Gas utility has been the most durable sector impacted in the first quarter due to ERP issues. We expect growth in that sector in 2026. As we improve our ability to service our customers, we expect it to capitalize on that growth. That's some sector perspective. Downstream is gonna be one of the trickier end markets for us to recover revenues in.

We think we have a shot at significantly improving our credibility in that space, you know, come later in the year when we start bidding on early next year turnarounds. In terms of sectors, it's gonna be upstream, midstream, as, you know, a real powerhouse for regaining lost revenues and gas utilities in terms of sector growth. In terms of a look forward into what happens with earnings. We gave some guidance on how 2026 ends. You know, we'll update that guidance each quarter of course. In terms of 2027. In 2027, I expect meaningful improvements in the systems that support how we delight the customer.

You know, going into next year as we regain revenues, as we're better able to regain revenues, you know, we could see revenue growth in the 7% range, especially as we expect midstream growth to continue, gas utility growth to continue, and then recovery of revenues. We expect revenues could grow 7% going into next year. If you look at adjusted gross margins, we can improve that by 30 basis points, which would be about 60 basis points in the MRC arena, where we've lost the most in terms of gross margins. Then we get more efficient at the SG&A line. You know, we could be at $350 million in EBITDA next year. Now we're not guiding to that, but those are the internal marching orders we're discussing.

You know, how do we align? You know, I alluded to it in my prepared remarks. We're keeping some extra costs in the business because we wanna go and retrieve that revenue. That's our first order of business. Retrieve revenue, grow gross margin in absolute dollar terms, get pricing right, increase gross margins, and then become more efficient, in part due to more revenues, in part because we're going to be on a platform that makes it easier for us to perform. You know, I'm looking forward to looking at 2026 as a transition year and 2027 to be where things start to really kick in.

That's incredibly helpful. Thank you. I'll hop back in queue.

Thank you, Adam.

Your next question will come from Alex Rygiel with Texas Capital.

Thank you. Do you quantify the potential improvement in working capital by year-end?

I'll take a shot and then Mark might chime in. Good morning, Alex. Right now, although we view our inventory position, and pardon the term, as a commercial weapon, we on the one hand, we really like all the inventory we have. On the other hand, we have excess months of supply. We think we could generate $100 million by reducing inventory by year-end. We think most of that's gonna happen in the second half of the year. In terms of collections, I think I said this on our last call, MRC was better at collecting bills than DNOW was as, you know, in terms of the metrics. Some of their customers paid faster, their DSOs were lower.

We expect to revert back to a better DSO picture for the MRC side of the business, which is 50% of our U.S. business. We think we could generate, you know, at least $50 million in cash from AR. Of course, these are approximations. Finally, as we march through the rest of the year, earnings improve, driving increased earnings and cash being generated from those improved activities. In the meantime, we'll be buying back shares and paying down debt. Like I said on our last call, I think we'd be able to generate cash this year in the $100 million-$200 million range. We're sticking with that range right now, I think those are the main movers for generating that kind of cash.

You mentioned data center demand and load growth a couple different times. Any chance you can kind of bracket the revenue opportunity in that sector?

I'll give a little color on that. We've generated orders, most of which will ship this year in the $30 million range. This is kind of early going. We were able to do so because of MRC Global's connections with manufacturers, relationships DNOW didn't have. In the meantime, over the last three or four years, our team's been cultivating relationships with the companies that are gonna drive these revenues. DNOW's sales efforts for these particular customers, MRC's ability to negotiate the right kind of product availability, timing, and pricing enabled us to significantly improve our position, yes, in data centers. This is early goings. We, you know, we expect we'll generate at least $30 million this year.

We expect that will grow. You know, I said earlier that we see our inventory position as a, as a competitive tool, a softer term, That's we're gonna be helped by our inventory position in terms of grabbing market share in this emerging market.

One last question, if you don't mind. You know, last year, you had sort of the one-off kind of project in the international market. On your radar right now, do you see any potential uplift from project opportunities that sort of pop into sort of backlog or visibility in the next kinda six, nine months that could generate revenue later in 2026?

Well, we do have, you know, data centers is one of those projects. Discretely to the international arena, that was MRC, one of their European operations had a $200 million project that spanned primarily 2024 and 2025. We don't expect a project like that to occur, and certainly not this year, maybe not next year. We're of course, we're working to secure a position in big projects like that. No, we don't have any large international project along those lines. We are seeing increased, significantly increased bidding in the U.S. for projects. We're starting to see some bigger ones. Of course, the most attractive near term, you know, new revenue line for us is in data centers, but not in particular in terms of the international projects, Alex.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Okay.

Your next question will come from Chuck Minervino with Susquehanna.

Hi, good morning.

Hi, Chuck.

You touched on some of the expenses. I think you said something like $4.5 million a quarter related to ERP and then something like $2 million related to temps on top of that. I'm sure there was even more of an EBITDA impact from maybe lost revenues. I don't know if you have a thought there or an estimate on how much maybe sequentially 4Q to 1Q was the EBITDA in total impacted related to ERP.

Well, in terms of SG&A, and what I said was we have in the first quarter, about $2 million in overtime and temps and another $2 million in terms of additional personnel to I call it coping with the more burdensome system compared to an optimized platform. That's about $4 million a quarter in SG&A. That doesn't consider, you know, on the MRC side, and if you look at the deck we published, it gives some pretty good specificity of where revenue's changed per segment. We give some granularity between MRC and DNOW. That'll give you some flavor for it. There's excess cost in the business on a relative basis because revenues are down.

Like I said earlier, we've largely kept our cost structure in place, although we do have about 100 fewer people in the business today than we did 11 weeks ago. We, you know, we see excess cost in the business, which is an opportunity, to the extent we don't see the revenue growth we expect later in the year and in 2027. There's at least $4 million in excess cost. It's probably, you know, probably much higher than that if you consider the relative increase in SG&A expense as a percent of revenue given the drop in revenues.

Gotcha. The cash flow from operations range, $100 million-$200 million for the year. Can you just talk about, you know, what needs to happen for the bottom end of that to be hit versus what you think could happen for the top end for that to hit? Is there a timeline on ERP that you're kind of using as your baseline there, or is it a collections issue? Just any kind of thoughts there.

I feel pretty good about the bottom number. I think we're gonna get there just through collecting bills faster and some inventory declines. I think the biggest, you know, opportunity there is how much inventory can we reduce. Now again, as a distributor, inventory is very important. It's the lifeblood of the business. We have some excess inventory. We have an estimate for how much we're gonna pull out of the system. All the same, we wanna win every project out there. Whether that number is $200 million, $175 million, $150 million, it's gonna be probably most dependent on our success in reducing inventory.

Then just one last one for me. You made some comments there about upstream or the U.S. market inquiries picking up, it sounds like the business might be strengthening there or that there's some prospects for the business strengthening there, obviously, given the commodity environment. Can you just give us a little bit more detail on what you're seeing there potentially on the upstream side?

Yeah. You know, I think the biggest opportunity for us is to recoup lost activity during the disruption period of the ERP. I think that's gonna be the biggest opportunity for us as we go through the year. You know, in the U.S., 40% of our upstream business happens in the Permian. Now, all of our overlap DNOW MRC locations are on our optimized SAP platform. Our teams have access to a lot more inventory than they did, I see the opportunity for growing, recouping lost upstream. I said earlier in the call that our biggest percentage revenue decline happened in upstream on the MRC side. We see it. That's the, you know, that's prime targeting.

We can get so much of that revenue back because we have combined organizations, we've co-located, we've begun synergies at the field level by combining locations or consolidating locations, we're focused on the customer. I see upstream growth is going to be mostly organic or mostly coming from efforts to recoup what we've lost on a temporary basis. You know, we could see some upstream momentum going into 2027. We're not forecasting that. We don't sense we'll have the market expanding much in 2026. We think most of that's going to come from us combined now no longer competing in the Permian, where we were going head-to-head against each other, we're going to grow organically.

We do expect, as we see oil prices in the $90 range, we do expect the majors to kind of stick to their capital discipline strategies. We expect, you know, the smaller firms and larger independents to start spending some money. We do expect some benefits there, and we're seeing a little bit of that so far.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chuck.

There are no further questions at this time.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Carrie, and thank you for everybody joining us today and your interest in DNOW. We look forward to discussing our second quarter 2026 results on our next earnings call in August. We hope everybody has a wonderful Thursday. With that, we'll turn it back to the operator.

Thank you for joining today's conference call. You may now disconnect.