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W. Matthew Tonn

Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everybody. Throughout 2024, we experienced strong and sustained inquiry activity, reflecting the continued demand for high-quality purpose-built railcars. For the full year, we secured orders totaling 4,245 railcars valued at approximately $447 million.
We maintained our leading position in open top hoppers, driven in part by our continued success and strong customer preference of our VersaFlood aggregate hopper car. The VersaFlood's versatile design, featuring both transverse and longitudinal discharge options, superior payload capacity, and enhanced durability through its hybrid steel and aluminum construction has enabled us to effectively meet diverse customer requirements for transporting a wide range of aggregates and minerals.
Additionally, we saw notable gains across flat cars, gondolas and medium to large covered hoppers further demonstrating the breadth of our product portfolio and the responsiveness of our team to evolving customer needs. Our ability to translate this demand into meaningful order wins underscores the strength of our commercial strategy and differentiated market position. We closed the year with a robust backlog of 2,797 units valued at approximately $267 million, providing the strong foundation as we enter 2025.
With overall industry railcar deliveries held steady at roughly 42,000 units, Order activity for the trailing 12 months totaled around 25,000 units, well below typical replacement demand. Despite these shifting industry dynamics we successfully increased our market share, underscoring the effectiveness of our commercial strategy, agile, manufacturing presence and resilient supply chain capabilities.
In 2024, we achieved a 21% share within our addressable market segments and captured approximately 12% of the total railcar market, demonstrating our ability to compete and consistently win in this dynamic environment. From a broader industry perspective, we continue to see sustained long-term demand with forecasts projecting annual industry deliveries in the range of 35,000 to 40,000 railcars driven primarily by replacement cycles as cars approach mandated retirement thresholds. These structural factors reinforce the ongoing need for the high-quality versatile railcar solutions that we are uniquely positioned to deliver.
Our continued focus remains on manufacturing excellence, delivering the industry's finest products and engineering expertise and deepening our long-standing customer relationships. Our strategic approach emphasizes tailored offerings rather than a one-size-fits-all model, enabling us to effectively address specific product and order requirements. Importantly, our unique operational flexibility sets us apart and allows us to rapidly ramp production efficiently switch between railcar types and accommodate smaller specialized production runs.
This agility, combined with the versatility of our four production, our active production lines and an optional fifth line positions us extremely well to respond swiftly and effectively as tariff-related uncertainties dissipate and customer demand increases. Our steadfast commitment to operational excellence and innovation, we remain confident in our ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities ahead of the competition.
I'll now turn the call over to Mike for comments related to our financial performance. Mike?

Michael Riordan

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin with an overview of our full year 2024 financials and then share a few fourth quarter highlights. For the full year, we achieved revenues of $559.4 million, representing a 56% growth over the prior year. These results reflect some minor timing delays for the fourth quarter, which resulted in some delivery fulfillment getting pushed into early Q1.
It is important to note that this time and shift is not due to broader headwinds, rather normal transit timing of deliveries crossing the border. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year was $43 million, representing a $22.9 million increase or 114% improvement from 2023. I am pleased to note that 2024 signified our second consecutive year of delivering over 100% growth in adjusted EBITDA, underscoring the strength of our operational execution, favorable manufacturing cost structure and an enhanced product mix.
Adjusted net income for the full year was $24.5 million or $0.15 per diluted share, accounting primarily for the impact of certain noncash items, including the change in fair market value of warrant liability, which fluctuates each quarter in line with the change in our share price during the period. For the full year, we recognized a $99.5 million noncash adjustment due to the change in the fair market value of the warrant liability due to share price appreciation in the year.
As a reminder, this valuation adjustment solely reflects accounting for the warrant holders investment. The noncash valuation adjustment does not have an effect on the shares outstanding included in our earnings per share calculation. All shares underlying the warrants have already been reflected as part of the weighted shares outstanding since their issuance in prior years.
As a result, if the warrants were to be exercised, there will be no incremental dilutive effect on the shares outstanding in our earnings per share. In 2024, we took significant steps led by the commercial and operational successes of 2023 and 2024 to lower our cost of capital. The first action we took was to replace our preferred shares with a lower-cost term loan facility that will significantly reduce our ongoing capital costs by approximately 40%.
Second, we entered into a new $35 million asset-based revolving credit facility to provide working capital flexibility and facilitate our growth initiatives with a new lender that will result in an approximate 35% reduction in facility borrowing costs. In February, we renewed the universal self-registration we previously had on file with the SEC. Additionally, PIMCO has now registered shares of common stock as a selling shareholder. Importantly, this will not cause further dilution among common shareholders as their warrant shares have consistently been reflected as outstanding in our earnings per share calculation. While we value our relationship with PIMCO, over time, this will strengthen our balance sheet and allow investors to more clearly focus on the underlying power of our business to generate consistent profitability and cash flow.
Turning to fourth quarter highlights. We delivered solid revenue growth on consistent railcar deliveries. Consolidated revenues for the fourth quarter of 2024 totaled $137.7 million with deliveries of 1,019 railcars compared to $126.6 million on deliveries of 1,021 railcars in the fourth quarter of 2023. Gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $21 million with a gross margin of 15.3% compared to gross profit of $12.1 million and gross margin of 9.6% in the fourth quarter of last year. Higher gross margin performance as compared to the prior year was primarily driven by a favorable mix shift in railcars delivered and higher productivity.
SG&A for the fourth quarter of 2024 totaled $9.4 million, up from $7.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Excluding stock-based compensation, SG&A as a percentage of revenue increased approximately 70 basis points. In the fourth quarter of 2024, we achieved adjusted EBITDA of $13.9 million compared to $6.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, again, primarily driven by product mix between the comparable periods as well as realizing the operational efficiencies of running four lines in the fourth quarter of 2024 versus three lines in the comparable period.
For the fourth quarter of 2024, our adjusted net income was $8 million or $0.21 per diluted share compared to adjusted net income of $1.7 million or a loss of $0.16 per share in the fourth quarter of last year. As I said earlier, when discussing the full year results, the warrant liability adjustment is a noncash item and has no effect on the shares outstanding in our earnings per share. It only reflects the change in the warrant holders investment in our company during the respective reporting period.
As we have mentioned on prior calls, we are laser-focused on enhancing cash generation. This year marked a significant inflection point as we delivered $44.9 million in operating cash flow and $21.7 million in adjusted free cash flow. This strong cash generation further supports our strong balance sheet as we currently hold $44.5 million in cash. In 2024, capital expenditures totaled $5 million, including $1.3 million in the fourth quarter, primarily reflecting ongoing investments consistent with our current maintenance cycle. As part of our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we are providing the range of $5 million to $6 million in capital expenditures during 2025. This largely represents maintenance level capital spend as well as an early investment in the first half of 2025 of approximately $1 million to outfit our facility for the tank car retrofit program we have in our backlog, as we continue to fuel new customer inquiries for tank car retrofit orders.
For 2025, we will prioritize deploying free cash flow to reduce leverage and enhance our financial position with an objective to achieve a normalized leverage ratio in the range of 1x to 2.5x. That will position us to access lower cost financing and enable flexibility to pursue strategic growth opportunities in the future.
With that, I'd like to now turn the call back over to Nick to share our outlook for 2025.

Nicholas Randall

Thanks, Mike. For the full year 2025, we are forecasting deliveries between 4,500 to 4,900 railcars, an increase of approximately 7.7% at the midpoint of the range. Revenues will be between $530 million and $595 million, up approximately 1% year-over-year at the midpoint of the range. In terms of cadence, we expect to build momentum with a stronger back half of the year that will scale up towards our guided numbers.
We expect adjusted EBITDA guidance between $43 million and $49 million for the full year representing a year-over-year increase of 7% at the midpoint and are further underscoring the strength of our operations. Finally, I'd like to conclude with our expectation that 2025 will represent a second consecutive year of positive free cash flow generation.
With that, I'd like to now open the line for Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Mark Reichman, Noble Capital Markets.

Mark Reichman

Yes. So would you elaborate on the fourth quarter product mix and also just how changes in the product mix may affect the quarterly cadence of railcar deliveries, revenue and margin in 2025?

Nicholas Randall

Mark, it's Nick. I'll take that one. And then Mike can add some color if I don't fully answer your question fully. But overall, say, first of all, we are very pleased with the overall year and our execution of the year, including the fourth quarter. Just a reminder, we significantly outpaced the market and gaining share.
Revenue deliveries grew 56% and 44%, respectively, landing well within our guidance, although at the lower end. There is a large variation in average selling price, which we call mix, which can influence the revenue, but really focus on driving despite movements in revenue being lower than -- at lower end of our guidance. We delivered an outside EBITDA, well above our guidance for the year, which is a testament to our commitment to drive in portable growth.
So there is a movement on ASP, which we manage locally on our SIOP process. But really what's driving is making sure we're driving that EBITDA growth as we've seen through the last year.
Mike will talk a bit more about how that impacts into 2025.

Michael Riordan

Our quarterly cadence in '25 is going to ratchet up. We delivered a unique new railcar in 2024 on the higher ASP side, specifically in Q4. We ended up dedicating two production lines at the start of the first quarter of 2025 to build some ancillary large spare part fabrications for that unique railcar for our end customer.
As a result, you'll see lower deliveries in revenue in the first quarter, but similar overall gross margins on railcar deliveries. The second quarter will grow as all four lines switch back to producing railcars. But second quarter will still be a little lower than I'd say the back half because of the changeovers to go into building new railcars. And then the back half, we'll be heavy on railcars revenue, very few changeovers and just really producing at a constant rate to get to the guidance we provided.

Mark Reichman

And then obviously, I'm getting a lot of questions about the tariffs. And so I was just kind of wondering your thoughts on how freight car is positioned relative to its competitors to respond to potential tariff actions taken by the US or other countries?

Michael Riordan

Sure. I'll start with that one. Our current guidance for 2025 balances, both opportunities and risks. There's a stable demand, operational efficiencies, lowering finance costs providing tailwinds while we remain mindful of the supply chain dynamics, commodity price and tariff uncertainty.
That said, railcar industry operates from a stable replacement cycle driven by the essential role of rail transportation and moving bulk commodities even during these periods of elevated steel prices, customers continue to invest in new railcars demonstrate and we believe the industry is resilient. Also, while post-election years can bring temporary order slowdowns, history shows this is a deferment not truly a lost demand and inquiry levels remain strong, and our agility allows us to quickly convert interest into orders. Given our size and our agility, I think that positions us well in the market we in and as those market conditions stabilize, I think it's to our advantage.

Mark Reichman

Well, Nick, just to put a finer point on it. One of the questions that I've gotten is, are there -- do you have we know that Greenbrier Trinity and FreightCar all produced in Mexico. But is there the potential that FreightCar could lose same market share if one of your other competitors has greater capacity to move production around either in the US or elsewhere?

Nicholas Randall

There isn't a large capacity footprint in the USA, the building railcars. There are a couple of smaller repair shops that can build a couple of hundred railcars, not a couple of thousand railcars. So I don't think there are large enough operations to make a quick switch to move things to the US generally for the industry, there may be some very unique products that can do that, but not generally. And certainly, we think about our products on Versa flood or the open-top hopper.
We are clearly number 1 in that manufacturing space. So I think there's a low risk of that being moved anywhere else given the product differentiation we have. So there's some product-specific items which give me confidence that there's only a limited ability to do that. I think there's some areas where products that we don't compete in that may be at a tailored to move to the US. But there's -- I balance that with if manufacturing of bulk materials does recenter in the US, and that helps the rail industry overall, then that would be more of a positive net impact to the rail industry rather than the I believe, rather than the potential impact on across the Mexico border. But our ability to be agile is really what I think sets us apart at the moment. We've spent the last four years dramatically changing how we operate and run our business.
So we've got a lot of key management players, key leadership players who are well versed in how to respond very quickly to a change in dynamic and how to respond very quickly to any change in supply chains, change in customer demands, change in profile. I think we demonstrated that last year was certainly some uncertainty, not necessarily around tariffs. There's uncertainty around supply chain demand. As you saw, we've won significant market share gains against very large competitors which is a testament to our ability to compete and win in those situations.
And I do believe that tariffs are a level of uncertainty at the moment. They've been in, they've been out. There's a steel tariff in at the moment. And our job is to digest that, keep an eye on that and respond quickly for the benefit of our customers and make sure that our end users get the products they need to move their bulk materials. So I guess that's a bit of a long-winded answer, but I think overall, there is uncertainty in tariffs, that's true. And I believe the FreightCar America, that uncertainty represents an opportunity for us to continue to demonstrate market share gains and to continue to meet our customers' expectations with speed and high-quality products.

Operator

Brendan McCarthy, Sidoti & Company.

Brendan McCarthy

Great. I just wanted to talk about the fourth quarter. I think you mentioned there were -- there was a timing issue that might push some deliveries to the first quarter of 2025. Are you able to quantify that for us?

Michael Riordan

There was no timing. It's just the normal transit time. Just cars in transit to the border that count as the delivery, but nothing of massive substance now.

Brendan McCarthy

Okay. Got it. And then looking at the 2025 guidance, it looks like you're expecting almost 8% growth at the midpoint for deliveries and then a little bit of a smaller 1% expectation for revenue growth. Can you just talk us or walk us through what's baked into that variance with the midpoint of guidance?

Michael Riordan

Yes. I'll start that, Brendan, and then Matt can probably fit in some great details. There's a couple of things. As you know, we primarily produce new railcars. And even on new railcars, there's a large variance in the average selling price. At the top end, you've got things like box cars or some of the complex flat cars, which can be double the price of some of the open hoppers or some of the smaller parts.
So there's a large average selling price, we call ASP variance, which can change revenue but doesn't change, I guess, our ability to deliver EBITDA. So while you just look at revenue, it's 1% growth, what we are looking at there is change in ASP or upselling price Also, do we have our rebodies or rebuild program where the customers provide a donor body, and we reconvert it into a fully functional almost new railcar. And they have a lower average selling price as well.
So the revenue at 1% is more to do reflecting a change in average selling price or product mix changes. What I focus on is driving that EBITDA growth up and that's where we generate our real growth of value, earnings and then consequently into cash. But that's a very high level just to explain why that's revenue isn't reflecting the same growth as EBITDA. But Matt, if you.

W. Matthew Tonn

Yes, Brendan, this is Matt. The overarching commentary is that we see demand across multiple market segments -- levels. We're seeing good order activity as we enter into 2025. We do expect the mix change to Nick's point. So I think that's probably where you'll see some of the biggest differences in terms of overall revenue versus still very strong performance on the EBITDA side.

Brendan McCarthy

Great. That's helpful. That makes sense. And then on the delivery guidance, obviously, it looks like you're assuming pretty nice growth at the low point for the 4,500 deliveries in 2025. But just curious as to what's baked into that from a tariff perspective, I guess, -- is it kind of fair to assume that maybe worst-case tariff scenario, you're still going to see you have a nice kind of growth rate in the delivery number for 2025.

Michael Riordan

Yes. I think that's a reasonable way of looking at it, at the moment, Brendan. We've taken into account everything we know up until this point. And everything we've reviewed and revisited as Matt touched on his notes, the inquiry level and the level of customers working and rather than just low-quality inquiry, customers who are working with us on designs and shipment timings and delivery profiles, et cetera, investing time and effort into being prepared to place an order is vibrant and it's really encouraging. It would be helpful if there was some clarity on tariffs. But right now, the guidance we've given is based on how we interpret the current tariff sort of nervousness on taming of other places. But I would expect that as we move forward, we will meet that guidance range even with what's perceived to be in today, if that makes sense.

W. Matthew Tonn

Yes. Brendan, Matt again. I'll just add that the conversations we're having with customers tariffs is clearly top of mind. But I will tell you that inquiry levels certainly paint a very positive picture and from a free car America perspective, we're very bullish on our guidance. We're having the right kinds of conversations with the right types of collaborative discussions with customers and feeling very positive about our position in the marketplace and the ability to continue to grow within our addressable market share.
And all of that comes from the fact that customers buy railcars as one of my colleagues has referred to frequently because they need to ship freight. So you may have some delays, you may have order activity that's somewhat lumpy. But at the end of the day, railcars remain to be the most efficient method of transport particularly when we look at both commodities, which we're seeing a lot of inquiry activity on, and we're really well positioned to pivot and to meet the needs of our customers that, frankly, have a preference for the FreightCar America position in the market.

Brendan McCarthy

Got it. That's helpful. And then one more question for me on the tank car retrofit order, the 1,000-car order that you're looking to deliver in 2026 and 2027. Are you able to provide the addressable market on the, I guess, the total addressable market for tank car retrofit orders? And I guess what that 1,000-car order kind of represents?

Nicholas Randall

No, we would -- the short answer is I'm not going to provide the addressable market. But we will -- as Mike alluded to in his commentary, we are pulling forward on the CapEx. So we'll have the CapEx to be a plant ready for recertification work, I would expect sometime late Q2 -- be ready late Q2, early Q3.
So -- and we do have -- we are fielding more inquiries from customers on conversion work. So as those become real, we will provide updates and guidance as they are -- those orders are placed to become in our backlog. So -- but we're certainly pulling ahead on the investment of the CapEx. So that will be invested in the first half of this year, it's in a position to be ready. And as those inquiries convert to orders, obviously, we'll update accordingly. But I think the addressable market is there's a couple of factors that go into it, which is why I just don't want to mislead either good or bad on what that size could be whether we are fielding inquiries, we will be ready ahead of schedule, the order we do have. And if -- as customers convert those inquiries into order placement, we'll update update accordingly.
Matt, I don't know I think I missed it in there, but that's --

W. Matthew Tonn

No, I think you covered it, Nick.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Mark Reichman, Noble Capital Markets.

Mark Reichman

Yes. During the call, you mentioned that once you get the leverage ratio down that you would be more open to considering kind of the strategic growth opportunities. And I was just wondering, is that -- are you referring to maybe growth around the parts business? Or are you looking even further out in terms of potentially adding a fifth line.

Nicholas Randall

So I'll take that. I don't, Mike, mentioned it in his commentary about the work to get there. I guess your question is, okay, but when you get there, what are you going to do with it? We would always keep a very good review of how do we deploy capital in the best interest of our shareholders. A couple of things you mentioned there. So Parts group, obviously Parts group is a very important part to us, parts and distribution. That is always going to be a worthy candidate of a constant review. And as we make any investments in there, we'll update accordingly.
But parts now broken out in our 10-K as people can see that group in there. You mentioned about the fifth line. So the fifth line is just a reminder, the fifth line we have is under roof -- it's already prebuilt out. We don't lease it at the moment. It's available to lease and then notice. The fifth line could be made ready in less than 90 days.
So if demand or product type demand comes upon us converting that to a fully operational. It's probably going to be less than $1 million of CapEx and less than 90 days in time. So that's always a low risk opportunity we can have at our disposal when customer demand dictates that. And then beyond that, so when you think about two to three years, that's where we've -- we'll constantly keep an eye on what's the best way to deploy our capital.
As we change from being focused on just debt management to be having free capital to use, we will take a good look at what represents the best for shareholders and what's good at the time to be adjacent or more robustness in our core markets. So we're always on the look out for that. That is something that is clearly in our next phase of strategic growth for our company overall.

Mark Reichman

And then just lastly for Michael. If he might be able to comment on the recent registration and how investors should think about that?

Michael Riordan

Yes. So we filed the S-3 registration statement. We -- it's a universal shelf, the same one we had back in 2021 that had expired. So we renewed that. But as everyone will probably notice, PIMCO has registered the shares under their warrant as a selling shareholder. That gives them the opportunity over time at their election to sell shares and begin to unwind their investment in us. And as I mentioned, we value our relationship with PIMCO tremendously as they were a key partner in getting us to this point. And I think one important part of this is that them exercising their warrants or then selling shares does not have an effect on our EPS.
The way the accounting treatment works. We've always treated those shares as outstanding since their issuance and so that's one key point that I think everyone should really understand with the registration statement and the warrants themselves.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no other questions at this time. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Randall for final comments.

Nicholas Randall

Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment to really summarize our call. So 2024 was a year of execution and results, achieving significant revenue growth of 56% and gaining market share despite a decline across the broader industry.
We delivered exceptional financial performance exceeded EBITDA guidance for the year and per railcar EBITDA increased substantially as we enhanced our mix, leverage productivity improvements and efficiency gains. We improved our capital structure by redeeming outstanding preferred shares and securing a $35 million ABL credit facility to enhance financial flexibility and ultimately reduce borrowing costs.
We generated strong adjusted free cash flow of $22 million and heading into 2025, we anticipate a second consecutive year of past positive free cash flow generation. And overall, with market share gains, a major multiyear tanker conversion deal, financial flexibility through an optimized capital structure FrieghtCar America is well positioned for sequential profitable growth in the year ahead. And with that, thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.