Acme United Corporation Small-Cap Virtual Conference

symbol is ACU. We're one of the leaders in safety solutions and cutting technology. When you think of that, things that save lives, bleed control kits, tourniquets, first aid kits for minor injuries, we're a major player in that area, and we're consolidating parts of that business. The company started in a different business, and that was in the cutting area. On the lower right, you can see one of the Westcott scissors. This is an incredibly good business. It's about 30% of our total sales, 70% is first aid. Don't underestimate the Westcott business. It's the leading brand. We sell 70 million scissors a year, has a very, very strong cash flow. A growing market, not a fast-growing market, but people are opening boxes from deliveries and packing all sorts of things. They're doing crafts, they're in the school area.

It's an important part, and there's an overlap of our customer base. We're growing through innovation, and in the first aid area, we'll give you some examples of that. You'll also see in the Westcott area, things that we've done on coatings. We've got 150 patents on that either enhance the hardness of a blade or make them non-stick or antimicrobial. We've had 15 consecutive years of sales growth from ongoing operations, and I can tell you that's through every kind of crisis you can think of and consistently adding to the size of the company. We've had a history also of successful acquisitions. We throw off a lot of cash flow, and it's an increasing amount of cash flow as we've gotten bigger. We've been able to grow from about $70 million in sales to about $230 million in the past 12 years or so.

It's been without raising any outside capital. It's because of our cash flow. We've been investing in domestic production and expanding our international sourcing, and we do a lot of work in the trade area, as you can imagine, because we've got a broad product family and we're getting the costs at the lowest price in the world, or at least we try to, internationally or we domestically produce it. We think we're positioned for excellent growth going forward, and our track record demonstrates that we've been able to do that. Here's a corporate overview. On the right side, you can see Westcott, and that was where the legacy products, the scissors started. Then we began doing titanium coatings, margins increased, and then we moved into industrial cutting with Clauss and then sharpening with DMT.

On the left side, we had instrument packs and medical devices, being made off the same equipment as scissors. Then we started to move into first aid. As we did that, we discovered that the industrial business, and that would be the Graingers and the Fastenals and the large factories globally, have tremendous need for first aid. When we bought Pac-Kit First Aid, we got the first taste of that. Then we bought First Aid Only, which had hundreds of thousands of first aid boxes on the shop floor throughout the U.S. It was such a good acquisition, we named the major part of our business First Aid Only.

Then we bought Spill Magic, which does spill cleanup powders. Then we moved it into bloodborne pathogen kits, where margins are better and where you're dealing with things that are either from bleeding and you're cleaning up or it's bodily fluid kits. In 2020, we bought a company vertically integrating to make alcohol prep pads and BZK wipes for our first aid business and outside customers. That Med-Nap is based in Florida. We've put a tremendous amount of work in getting that to be an important supplier of our components in first aid. We also bought in 2020 a company in Canada, First Aid Central. For the first time, we had an entity in Canada in first aid. We discovered it was a very fragmented industry in Canada with small competitors, high margins. We've had four plant expansions since 2020 with that acquisition.

It's done terrifically. We bought Safety Made in 2022, which personalizes first aid kits. Then in 2023, we bought Elite First Aid, which was a higher-end first aid kit than we'd previously been selling, and it had a military background. We bought Hawktree Solutions out of bankruptcy in Canada. We bought it for less than its inventory. That's now merged with First Aid Central. In 2026, we bought My Medic. That's our latest acquisition. It's a company that I'll give you more of an overview on the next slide. My Medic is direct to the consumer. There's a half million social media followers. This product line saves lives, not cuts and bruises. Yes, it deals with that, but if you've got a serious wound, you can die in 90 seconds. These products are designed so that you've got a tourniquet that works and is safe.

You've got chest seals, you've got bleed control bandages with QuikClot material. It was actually started by a wife and her son. They'd lost her husband when a truck ran over them and he bled out, and nobody was able to. They didn't stop the bleed. They started in their garage. They started to sell directly. They built quality products. That's what we bought in January 2026, a $19 million business, 500,000 direct-to-consumer followers, and a momentum to be able to transport these items into our other areas in the first aid category. We're doing that. We're very excited about this deal. Of our 11 most recent acquisitions, they've been either in the U.S. or Canada, and they've been manufacturers.

Although we do import about 40% of our products, a lot from China, some from India, some from Egypt, some from Malaysia, and other places, we're also producing 60% of our products in our factories. On the left, you can see our corporate headquarters are in Shelton, Connecticut, but we have operations in Vancouver, Washington; Santa Ana, California; Rocky Mount, North Carolina; Marlborough, Mass; Mount Pleasant, Tennessee; Brooksville, Florida; Keene, New Hampshire; and Salt Lake City. Our footprint in Canada includes our production site with First Aid Central in Laval, outside of Montreal, and a distribution center in Mount Forest, headquarters in Toronto. In Europe, Solingen, Germany is our headquarters and our major distribution site. In China, we have four offices which are working on quality, engineering, sourcing, and logistics.

This footprint has the room to support far bigger business, and we believe we will be able to identify new growth areas organically, as well as additional acquisitions, as we've done in the past. Here are the financial results. As you can see, the company has had consistent growth, and it's been good growth. And I am very pleased with where we're headed this year. Although it looks like it flattened out a little in sales between 2023 and 2025, in fact, we sold our Camillus hunting and fishing business, which was $12 million in sales, for 100 times what we paid for it, received $20 million and paid down debt, and that positioned us then to take on other acquisitions such as My Medic.

We'll finish this year, as you can see, $115 million halfway through, so it'll be somewhere, we believe, somewhere between $220 million and $230 million in revenues for the year. The EBITDA, you can also see consistent and growing EBITDA cash flow. This matters to us. This is the lifeblood that allows us to self-finance the growth, and we also pay a small dividend. In the first half of the year, we've had $12.5 million of EBITDA, and we're on for another record year in EBITDA 2026. Our profitability has been consistent. 2023, we all may remember there was a huge transportation crisis in the U.S. due to over-stimulating our economy, and the ports were plugged and the demurrage, and the cost of getting things out were very expensive. I attribute that to poor policy, and it wasn't our fault, so take that note.

In 2026, we've had $6 million in fully taxed net income, and we're on track for another record year. Earnings per share, $1.46 per half. Also on track for a very significantly profitable year. And you can see, yeah, there's a little variability, but mostly it's up, and it's up because obviously the EBITDA, the earnings, and the sales are up. The dividend history continues to increase. We increase the dividend assuming we have sufficient cash flow, and that's number one priority. We tend to increase it every six to eight quarters. In the first half, we had declared $0.48, but at the current track rate, that would mean $0.64 for the year. The growth drivers. First, if you look at the first aid to safety market, it's large. And depending on how you define it can be very large.

In the North American market, it's a little under half the global market. And we're a big player in the U.S. and in Canada. We are moving aggressively into Europe in our first aid efforts. I'll be in November at the MEDICA show for the second time. We're building our staff there, we're building our presence, we're building our product line, and that will be a growth segment, we hope, for our first aid business. The overall growth, as we define first aid, is about 4.5%, and that's what's projected. However, as you keep increasing what you make in your first aid, well, then the market gets bigger.

For example, first aid supplies is one piece, but when you broaden it to include AEDs, these are defibrillators, and first aid training, and consumer first aid kits, and bleed control kits, all of a sudden you get to be a much, much bigger market. You have the growth of the underlying piece that we define as just first aid supplies, and then on top of that, the other pieces as you broaden the shoulders of what you sell. Growth drivers, rising injury rates, workplace safety regulations, and consumer focus on preventative healthcare. But more importantly, as an employer, you want your workers safe, and you do that by law, but you do it because you want it, and you equip your vehicles with bleed control or your municipalities or your schools, because if there's a serious accident, you don't have a long time to respond.

But if you have the products, you can save lives. Here's a smart compliance kit, and this is a typical industrial first aid kit. You can see it's white, it's on the wall, and there are components. Each of these components in these boxes are bar-coded and in our kits, each box contains RFID tags. As I talk about the next generation, the automation of refills of these through RFID tags is a major step forward, we believe, and it's about to occur. The bleed control kits come in many shapes. You've got some for limbs, some for your torso, some for your chest, some that does everything. The key thing is chest seals, hemostatic gauze, QuikClot bandages, and tourniquets. Our tourniquets are safe, and from years ago, people said, "If you put a tourniquet on, you lose a limb." That's not the way it works today.