Flux Power Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call - Cost Cuts Offset Tariff Headwinds as Robotics Pivot Begins

Conference Call Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Flux Power’s fiscal fourth quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today’s conference call, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, August 20, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Leanne Sievers of Shelton Group Investor Relations. Leanne, please go ahead.

Leanne Sievers, President, Shelton Group Investor Relations: Good afternoon, and welcome to Flux Power’s fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 earnings conference call. I am Leanne Sievers, president of Shelton Group, Flux Power’s investor relations firm. Joining me today from Flux Power are Krishna Vanka, CEO, Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, and Stu Jacover, Vice President of Sales for Material Handling. Before I turn the call over to Krishna, I would like to remind our listeners that during the course of this conference call, the company will provide financial guidance, projections, comments, and other forward-looking statements regarding future market developments, the future financial performance of the company, new products, or other matters.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that we discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically our 10-K and our most recent 10-Q, which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Also, the company’s press release and management statements during this conference call will include discussions of certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures. These financial measures and related reconciliations are provided in the company’s press release and related current report on Form 8-K, which can be found in the investor relations section of Flux Power’s website at www.fluxpower.com. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time, a recording will be available via webcast on the company’s website. Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Flux Power CEO, Krishna Vanka. Krishna, please go ahead.

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Thank you, Leanne, and thank you everyone for joining us on today’s conference call. I am very pleased to report fourth quarter revenue increased 25% sequentially and even slightly better than the expectations conveyed on last quarter’s call. We are encouraged by the improving order patterns we saw throughout the quarter across both our ground service equipment and material handling business. On a year-over-year basis, the quarter was below our historic revenue level due to our most significant material handling customer continuing to navigate its capital freeze, as we conveyed previously. Our business has also been impacted by the broader economic disruptions related to tariffs and higher fuel prices. I want to reiterate that our partnership with our significant customer remains strong, and we expect business with this valued customer to resume in the future.

As mentioned on prior calls, we have been taking decisive actions over the past year to lower product and operating costs, as well as improve operating efficiencies. We reduced operating expenses by 33% over the fourth quarter of FY 2025, and a decrease of 28% when comparing full year 2026 versus 2025. These actions have included headcount reductions, cost containment, and broader efficiency measures. We also continue to work aggressively to improve margins through near-term supply chain optimization, vendor pricing negotiations, and product redesign efforts. Additionally, we have been closely evaluating all of our component costs and meeting with vendor partners in low-cost regions. Also, this initiative will take time to implement. It should have a meaningful benefit to overall product costs over time. Another initiative I mentioned last quarter was optimizing our sales team and launching aggressive new marketing programs.

These programs are aimed at diversifying our customer base, so we are less dependent on any one customer. We are beginning to see positive results from new lead generation programs that have increased our customer activity. As a result of these marketing programs, we are also very excited to announce we entered a new and growing vertical robotics in the last quarter. We are doing this in close collaboration with a very large global technology platform company. They already deployed more than 70 of our batteries for their robotics testing and are looking at full-scale production starting in a quarter or two. I cannot wait to share more details soon. We also successfully added senior sales veterans to the team, including a new VP of sales for material handling, Stu Jacover. Stu has more than three decades of dealer network, OEM, and national account leadership experience.

I would now like to turn the call over to Stu to tell you more about himself and his initiatives aimed at accelerating growth across North America. Stu, please go ahead.

Stu Jacover, Vice President of Sales for Material Handling, Flux Power: Thank you, Krishna, and thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself and talk about my primary objectives and our go-forward strategy. I am certainly excited to be part of the Flux Power team. As Krishna mentioned, I have spent the last 25 years in the material handling industry, most recently as General Manager at Mitsubishi Logisnext, and previously in various sales leadership roles, including Toyota Material Handling. Over that time, I have built and led sales organizations across the industry, and I have done it with a consistent focus on profitable market share growth. Whether it was managing dealer networks or building out enterprise account strategies, my track record has been about identifying where the real growth opportunities are and building the right team and process to capture them. That is exactly the lens I am bringing to Flux Power.

Flux has built its business on a strong dealer sales network, and that foundation will be further enhanced. Our dealer partners remain central to our go-to-market strategy. That said, I believe there’s a significant opportunity to add a second growth engine. Throughout my career, I’ve spent a substantial amount of time calling directly on large enterprise and national accounts. These are the big fleet operators who run hundreds or thousands of forklifts across multiple sites. I know how these organizations make purchasing decisions, I know the stakeholders involved, and I have existing relationships with many of them. My plan is to leverage that experience and build a direct enterprise sales engine that runs alongside and complements our dealer channel. This will not be in competition, but complementary to. That gives us a hybrid strategy with two ways to win business instead of one.

It positions Flux Power to go after large fleet opportunities directly with a tailored approach. I wouldn’t be as confident in this strategy if I didn’t believe in what we’re selling, and Flux Power’s products give us a real edge. One differentiator I’m especially excited about is our end-of-life recycling program. This matters, as a lot of our corporate customers have significant green and sustainability initiatives. This is an area where Flux is ahead of the industry and not just working toward it. Flux has a documented, robust program that utilizes a named, certified recycling partner specializing in lithium-ion battery processing, and a written take-back guarantee. This provides our customers a formal end-of-life agreement, not just a verbal promise, so our customers know exactly what happens to their batteries at a nominal expense. We offer our customers multiple paths to being environmentally responsible.

Depending on the condition, battery modules can go into second life uses like grid storage or emergency power. Components can also be refurbished to be utilized again, or the unit goes to certified material recovery. Being able to walk a large enterprise fleet operator through an actual documented program with real paths to recovery, rather than an industry that’s still figuring this out, is a genuine differentiator in the conversation. In addition to recycling, we back our product with best-in-class customer support during the life of the battery. When you’re asking a large fleet operator to trust their operation to us, they need to know we’ll be there after the sale, not just at the point of purchase. The combination of a strong sustainability program and dependable, responsive support is exactly what gives me confidence in our ability to win and retain these larger accounts.

As you can tell, I’m very excited about Flux Power’s product differentiation, reputation in the industry, and opportunities that lie ahead for what we believe will be a very promising future. We look forward to providing you with more updates in the coming quarters. I’ll turn the call back over to Krishna.

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Thank you, Stu. Once again, it’s great having you on the team. Let me turn back to the other notable progress made during the last quarter. I will start with the positive developments made on our OEM partnership programs that our Director, Brian McKenzie, discussed last quarter. First, one of our OEM white label customers increased their yearly order commitment by 50%. This is the first time we were able to get that commitment from a white label customer and serves as a strong validation of our OEM program success. I am also very pleased today to announce that during the last quarter, Flux received official certification from Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc., a key OEM partner who is a global leader in lift truck manufacturing. This important certification is for all of Hyster-Yale’s Class 1, 2, and 3 forklifts.

These three classes of forklifts represented $3.5 billion in Hyster-Yale’s revenue during their fiscal year 2025. This represents a major growth opportunity for Flux Power as it significantly expands our market share across the largest segments of the electric material handling industry. The certification not only validates our technology, but also strengthens our credibility with OEMs and dealers, while also reducing adoption barriers for large enterprise fleets. We are now selling to the top four OEMs, which account for more than 60% of the North American market. When combined with the direct enterprise sales strategy Stu outlined, this gives us multiple avenues to grow. Also, on June 30th, we made one of our most significant platform leaps in the company history with the launch of AI-driven SkyEMS 3.0. This was not a minor update, but rather a fundamental redesign of how our customers manage and optimize their energy assets.

This plays a key role in shaping Flux Power’s competitive position. As many of you know, Flux has historically competed as a battery hardware manufacturer. SkyEMS 3.0 enhances that equation. It layers AI-powered intelligence, predictive analytics, and a fully customizable dashboard experience on top of every battery we deploy. It turns fleet data into a personalized command center. This software-driven differentiation is difficult for hardware-only vendors to replicate quickly and also strengthens our moat in the market. As I mentioned previously, 100% of our GSE batteries now come with SkyEMS access, and airline customers are actively using it. We look forward to making it part of every material handling battery sale as well. Why does all this matter for Flux Power? First, it deepens our engagements with customers and increases customer retention. Once a fleet operates on SkyEMS, the platform becomes embedded in their daily operations.

Next, it also expands our value delivered beyond the battery sale, which is a foundation for future recurring software-attached revenue. Finally, it positions Flux Power as a technology company, not just as a lithium battery manufacturer. Also for our customers, it provides 15%-40% faster time to awareness on battery issues, so operators catch problems before they become downtime issues. Fleet uptime is improved 10%-30%, a direct measurable productivity gain. It is built on more than 90 platform enhancements delivered in just the past six months, showing sustained execution velocity, not just a one-off release. Overall reception in the market has been strong since the launch, reinforcing this platform meets a real market need.

As we look to fiscal 2027, the Flux team remains intently focused on driving future growth and executing on our five strategic initiatives that include profitable growth, operational efficiencies, solution selling, building the right products, and integrating value-added software to generate recurring revenue streams. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Kevin Royal, who will review our fourth quarter and full-year financial results in more detail. Kevin, please go ahead.

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2026 was $8.2 million, up from $6.6 million in the prior quarter and compared to $16.7 million in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for the full year 2026 was $42.1 million, compared to $66.4 million in 2025. Gross margin for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2026 was 27.4%, compared to 27.3% in the prior quarter and 34.5% in the fourth quarter of 2025. Gross margin for the full year 2026 was 30.2%, compared to 32.7% in 2025. The year-over-year decline in gross profit as a percentage of revenue was largely due to changes in product mix, a full-year impact from tariffs, and a loss in operating leverage due to lower volumes resulting in higher unabsorbed labor and overhead.

Operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $4.4 million, a decrease from $4.8 million in the prior quarter and $6.5 million in the same quarter a year ago. Full year 2026 operating expenses were $19.2 million, compared to $26.8 million in the prior year. The year-over-year decrease in operating expenses primarily reflects the benefit of our previous actions to reduce headcount and streamline the operating model, as well as the fiscal year 2025 included cost of $2.9 million associated with the restatement of previously issued financial statements. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $2.3 million or $0.11 per share, compared to a net loss of $3.2 million or $0.15 per share in the prior quarter, and a net loss of $1.2 million or $0.07 per share in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2025.

Net loss for the full year 2026 was $7.4 million or $0.38 per share, compared to net loss of $6.7 million or $0.40 per share in the prior year. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding the above referenced stock-based compensation cost, the fourth quarter net loss was $2.1 million or $0.10 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.9 million or $0.14 per share in the same quarter, and a net loss of $0.1 million or $0.01 per share in the same quarter a year ago, which also excluded the above referenced restatement cost. The full year 2026 non-GAAP net loss was $6.5 million or $0.33 per share, compared to net loss of $2.8 million or $0.17 per share in 2025, which also excluded restatement cost.

Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was negative $1.6 million, compared to a negative $2.5 million in the prior quarter, and a positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.5 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2026 was negative $4.5 million, compared to negative $0.1 million in 2025. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $0.3 million, compared to $0.4 million in the prior quarter. Before turning the call back over to Krishna, I want to provide some insight around our near-term revenue expectations. For the first quarter of 2027, we are currently expecting revenue to be down in the range of $6 million-$7 million. However, we expect the second fiscal quarter revenue to rebound and be in the range of $8 million-$9 million.

I’ll now hand the call over to Krishna for closing comments before opening it up to your questions. Krishna?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Thank you, Kevin. In conclusion, the company has faced a number of headwinds during my first 18 months as a CEO. This in turn led us to reassess our business priorities and implement changes that we expect to benefit us in the fiscal year 2027 and beyond. We have the right team in place to execute on our sales and marketing initiatives with multiple growth engines to drive a more diversified customer base and a new vertical. With our lower cost base, we are well positioned to achieve renewed growth and profitability in the future as broader economic conditions improve. We look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead and remain confident in our ability to deliver long-term value for our shareholders. With that, let’s open the call to questions. Operator?

Conference Call Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today is from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Hey. Good afternoon, everyone. Krishna, Kevin, Stu, thanks for taking my questions. First, congratulations on the nice quarter and the SkyEMS launch as well. The question is about the SkyEMS 3.0 launch. Do you have a sort of targeted pipeline for this already that you are targeting? Do you have existing customers that would deploy this alongside your already installed base? How should we look at it from a revenue standpoint over the next 2, 3, 4 quarters?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Sameer, thanks for the great question and thanks for your compliments. Yeah. SkyEMS 3.0, as I mentioned, is built from ground up with AI embedded in it. It is not just managing the battery analytics, it is also managing the entire energy matrix. This includes some charger data that can potentially come through OCPP type protocols. It is really gathering all the data that the fleet needs for managing their energy efficiently. This is the first time we actually did this type of connection. At this point, it is being deployed, as I mentioned, again, with the airline customers. All our batteries since quarter or quarter and a half are going with SkyEMS, as a default option for airlines. We have also reached out to our material handling customers, a few significant ones, and having them start using this new SkyEMS platform.

As it stands today, our intent is to obviously deploy this 100% with both the verticals. As we explore these new verticals, including the robotics, we see a potential of having something like this for our customers to embed and work through the SkyEMS for their energy decisions. At this point, that is our plan. This is adding on top of our hardware sales, not a standalone software product yet.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Understood. Got it. Thanks for that. You did mention robotics. My next question was about that. Do you have a plan, or at least in terms of the size of the market that you could access for robotics? How should we see it shaping, as a component of your revenues in fiscal 2027 and beyond?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. The opportunity we are working on is a very significant one. It’s with one big technology company that is on the forefront of using robotics. We are very thrilled about it. As I mentioned, we deployed or we are deploying and testing as we speak about 70 batteries with them to start with. If everything goes well and the testing goes well and it goes into production, this is going to be one of our marquee customers, and there’s a good potential that they’ll have a significant revenue coming up in the next couple of years. Not just for one quarter or two quarters. We are looking holistically for multiple year contracts and deployments. I would love to speak more with you as soon as the testing is done and we know that we are deploying at scale. Yeah.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Yeah. No, that’s a big emerging market and I’m sure you’re all excited for it. Just shifting, I just have two more questions. I think there was a global cargo airliner that you mentioned last call. You had received around a $1.2 million order from it. Is there a follow-on or have those been delivered and is there going to be a follow-on order, or how do you see that customer contributing?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: They have been delivered. Stu, why don’t you talk about the follow-on orders? Yeah.

Stu Jacover, Vice President of Sales for Material Handling, Flux Power: Yeah, sure. Thank you for the question. Yes, we have delivered the initial order and installment of product. We are actively involved in several other open projects. However, at this time, those are not secure, but we are looking very favorably on those additional opportunities.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Understood. The last question, I think I should start with, again, complimenting the team on the cost cuts over the last year. It is really good to see a nice tightening of the belt there. In terms of gross margins, though, sequentially, the revenues were up almost 25, 20% plus. But the gross margin improvement was just like a 10 basis point improvement sequentially. When and at what revenue levels should we see a meaningful moment, upside moment on the gross margin?

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. I think we will see improvement when we are above the $12 million quarterly run rate. So between 12 and 14, we would expect to get up above 30% once again.

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Understood. That is all I have. I will step back in queue. Thanks for answering my questions.

Conference Call Operator: The next question is from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Rob Brown, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Good afternoon. First on your largest customer, the pause, I know you gave some order cadence or some revenue cadence outlook. How is your visibility with that large customer in terms of the recovery of order activity?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. Rob, thanks for the question. We are in close communication, as I mentioned, constant communication, trying to get updates. As far as we heard, they are now working on planning for the next fiscal or the calendar year, I would say. It is in good progress. We are literally awaiting. We are seeing the positive signs, and we are awaiting to hear some good news pretty soon.

Rob Brown, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Okay, excellent. On entering the robotics market, are these battery systems a standard product or are you designing a new configuration for that market?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. The batteries we deployed are one of our UL certified standard offerings. It was a great use case for us to be able to find new verticals for our existing products. That said, we are very open to find new opportunities in this industry, and we may be able to accelerate the product roadmap as needed.

Rob Brown, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Okay. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I will turn it over.

Conference Call Operator: The next question is from Craig Irwin with ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. Krishna, we have been hearing good things about potential demand from the airport ground equipment market. Can you maybe update us on your conversations with customers there? I know you have a very wide sales funnel, and when they do start buying again, we would expect an uptick. Is this something fair for us to expect at Flux maybe in the next couple of quarters?

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: The airline industry, particularly, as we mentioned, has been hit a little bit because of the fuel costs, right, in the last few quarters, again, because of the wars and whatnot. But we have just started seeing, through our partner, some good progress, some renewed interest to start buying the equipment again, which we see it as a positive sign. And, yeah, I would say all the signals are pointing to more airline business in the next 2, 3 quarters to pick up.

Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Understood. The next question I have is around gross margins. Are there any changes to the long-term target? Do you still think you can get well above 30%? With the revenue contraction in the September quarter and just modest recovery in the December quarter, should we expect similar margins to what you had in the fourth quarter? Is it possible we see modest margin depreciation from that level before the revenue starts to tick back up in the back end of the year?

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. I think the latter part of your observation is what we’ll see is, a little bit of a degradation before the revenues pick back up and we get up above 30% and into that mid-30s range.

Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay, excellent. For us to understand the materiality of the robotics revenue, you said you’re working on delivery of 70 packs. I think you’d said you’d already delivered 30. Can you remind us which UL-certified product you’re supplying in there? Roughly what a fair or MSRP, a fair price to use sort of as we do back of the envelope math to look at the materiality for the September and December quarters?

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. Craig, the model is our C48, and a good ASP to use, a good round ASP would be $10,000 per battery.

Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Excellent. If you were to scope out the long-term potential with this customer, 70 is not a bad number to start with. It’s a great number. Do they have the opportunity to buy in the hundreds, thousands, many thousands, tens of thousands? I mean, how would you scope out this individual customer?

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Yeah. I would say that these are batteries that we’ve provided for prototype build and testing, so that when they go to scale, it’ll be hundreds per year.

Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Understood. Well, congratulations on the progress. I’ll hop back in the queue.

Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer, Flux Power: Thank you.

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Krishna Vanka for any closing remarks.

Krishna Vanka, Chief Executive Officer, Flux Power: Thank you again for joining today’s call. One final note. We will be in New York, N.Y. on September 10th, 11th, 14th, and 15th, with opportunities to meet with investors at the Lake Street and H.C. Wainwright conferences, as well as an additional day of non-conference meetings. If you are interested in meeting with us while we are in the city, please reach out to Leanne Sievers at Shelton Group to schedule a time. I really look forward to some good discussions. Operator, you may now disconnect.

Conference Call Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.