Applied Aerospace & Defense closed its first full quarter as a public company with record revenue of $167.3 million, up 47.4% year-over-year, and record non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA of $36.4 million, up 38.5%, which is the load-bearing event of the quarter because it confirms that the company's three-end-market, roll-up-and-IPO thesis is generating operating leverage at the same time the balance sheet was structurally refinanced. The quarter also produced a $154.0 million GAAP net loss, a $1.04 loss per share, and a swing in operating result from a $13.9 million operating income a year ago to a $96.2 million operating loss this quarter, the entire deterioration traceable to $110.1 million of share-based compensation that vested at IPO and $5.2 million of transaction costs. The June 2026 IPO raised $635.6 million of net primary proceeds, $570.1 million of which repaid term-loan principal and dropped pro forma net leverage (the ratio of net debt to trailing-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA after the IPO and paydown) to 2.7x from the 4–5x range carried into the listing.
The equity case for the next six to twelve months turns on whether organic-plus-acquisition revenue can compound at the 20%+ pace management has signaled for FY2026, and on whether the CBI and Ultracor acquisitions close cleanly into the existing 11-facility footprint. Guidance is $670 to $690 million of full-year revenue and $150 to $155 million of Adjusted EBITDA, which implies roughly $400 million of revenue and approximately $90 million of Adjusted EBITDA in the back half of the year. Backlog of $1.13 billion is roughly 6.7x annualized Q2 revenue, which is the multi-year visibility argument. The falsifiable data point, dated and specific, is the Q3 2026 revenue print relative to the $390 million implied run-rate (the back-half guide of roughly $390M times two, divided by two to get the Q3 floor); a print below $185 million in Q3 would force a re-rating, because organic growth would have decelerated below the 20% floor implied in management's prior M&A-speak.