Aebi Schmidt Group Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Europe Drives Profitability Surge as North America Ramps Walk-In Vans

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aebi Schmidt Group first quarter 2026 earnings call. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Simone Grancini, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead.

Simone Grancini, Investor Relations Director, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Sharon. Good morning, and welcome to the Aebi Schmidt fourth quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Barend Fruithof, Group CEO, who will provide the fourth quarter highlights, outlook, and concluding remarks. Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, and Henning Schröder, CEO of Europe and Rest of World, who will detail the performance in the respective segments. Marco Portmann, Group CFO, who will provide a financial overview. Before I turn the call over to Barend, I remind you that today’s comments include forward-looking statements subject to the safe harbor language contained in this morning’s press release and in Aebi Schmidt’s filing with the SEC. As a reminder, all Q1 2025 comparative figures referenced in today’s material, like all figures prior to the merger closing day, are presented on a combined basis for Aebi Schmidt and the acquired Shyft Group.

Accordingly, all year-over-year comparisons are based on combined Q1 2025 financial information of both companies rather than standalone historical results. With that, I hand the call over to Barend.

Barend Fruithof, Group CEO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Good morning, everyone. As shown on page 5, Q1 2026 was marked by strong order momentum, increased sales, and profitability, especially in Europe and the rest of the world. In Q1 2026, our order intake increased by 9% and order backlog by 23% versus Q1 2025. Net sales reflected an underlying like-for-like growth of 7%. Our adjusted EBITDA increased 6% year-over-year, delivering a significantly higher adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.3% versus 6.9% in the prior year. Net income improved by 7% year-over-year. On page 6, I will provide you with some more details on these achievements. In Q1, we launched our new brand architecture, completed key facility ramp-ups, and positioned the company to execute on our record backlog of EUR 1.3 billion.

We also announced a strategic partnership with Yeti Move, a leading provider of autonomous and driver assistance solutions to accelerate the future of autonomous mobility for airports. Both our segments secured major wins, including a landmark EUR 40 million European airport deal, a $50 million truck body contract, a $45 million orders from multiple state departments of transportation, and a $30 million award with an American airport. Net sales delivered an underlying growth of 7% on a like-for-like basis, with Europe and the rest of the world as a strong contributor to this performance, driven by the successful launch of the new eCleango compact sweepers and continued momentum from the Load Hog product. Ultimately, our adjusted EBITDA improved by 6% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter of 2025.

Europe contributed to this with an outstanding 201% increase year-over-year. Now I turn the call over to Steffen.

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Barend. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for having me. If I had to summarize it in one sentence, 2026 started with strong order entry and solid progress of the integration, especially of our commercial truck business. Our airport business is still growing strong with over $30 million of recent awards. This also includes the new products we introduced last year, the Badger and the P-Series. Barend mentioned earlier the partnership with Yeti Move. This is very compelling for North America because we have exclusive rights to bring Yeti Move’s autonomous technology to the airports here in the U.S. Our chassis team continues to demonstrate operational excellence. Spartan RV Chassis received Newmar’s 2025 Supplier of the Year award for industry-leading quality, innovation, service, and customer support.

On the goods transport side, we secured a $50 million contract over the next 3 years with a leading e-commerce player, starting with an initial order of several 100 units. Walk-in vans continued to improve month-by-month, our commercial business achieved growth year-over-year, also driven by the vertical integration of our service bodies.

Our municipal business is still seeing strong quoting activity, including EUR 45 million of awards for Monroe and Swenson. Slide 9, please. As you can see, our backlog in Q1 increased 29% year-over-year. That was driven after a strong Q4 2025 by an 8% increase year-over-year in order entry. The successful order momentum was driven by the product and services from airports, chassis, municipal, as well as strong signs of recovery for walk-in vans. Net sales increased by 3.6% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis, excluding the Blue Arc sales in Q1 2025. Finally, we saw a profitability impact during the ramp-up of the walk-in van production to meet our full-year revenue goals. With that being said, I hand the call over to my colleague, Henning Schröder. Henning.

Henning Schröder, CEO of Europe and Rest of World, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Steffen, and good morning from Switzerland. Europe and rest of the world delivered an outstanding Q1 2026 performance, supported by solid order intake, high net sales, and a significant improvement in profitability. As illustrated on page 11, our markets are showing increasing momentum, particularly in airport and municipal, with aftersales making a substantial contribution to profitability growth. The airport business is entering a key phase with several large tenders announced or anticipated across major civil and military airports. In Q1, we secured a landmark EUR 40 million strategic contract with Paris Airport, covering up to 29 airport machines, including a 20-year service agreement. In parallel, we are building a solid footprint in the APAC region by broadening our local product portfolio. Within the municipal business, the launch of the new 4 cubic meter eCleango 550 and continued market share gains by Ladog drove strong order momentum.

Street cleaning demand remains on an elevated level, with particularly strong traction in Southern Europe. The aftersales business once again proved to be a core profitability driver, fueled by strong post-snowfall demand in Central Europe. In parallel, we are investing in technician capacity and pricing optimization to underpin continued growth. Turning to page 12, we see continued order momentum driven by solid volume execution and margin expansion, supporting our ongoing improvement trajectory. I’m particularly proud of the team for delivering an exceptional 201% year-over-year increase in profitability, a standout achievement driven by improved pricing, higher volumes in new business, and a significant contribution from aftersales. Net sales performance remained robust, supported by efficient operations, high production output, and improved material availability. That concludes my comments, and I now turn the call over to Marco.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Henning, and good morning, everyone. As we see on page 14, our first quarter saw solid order momentum underpinning consistent backlog growth against the challenging markets and despite various uncertainties given the geopolitical situation. This order performance resulted in a very healthy order backlog of now EUR 1.3 billion, up 23% year-over-year, providing good visibility for the remainder of 2026. Moving on to slide 15. Net sales in the first quarter reached EUR 456 million, representing a 7% year-over-year increase on a like-for-like basis, overcoming that challenging environment and, as we believe, representing a continued growth in relevant market shares. Sales in North America increased by 3.6% versus the first quarter 2025, excluding EUR 26 million of BlueArc sales realized in 2025.

Net sales in Europe and the rest of the world organically grew by an impressive 16%. As mentioned, we expect to see significant improvements in net sales materializing in the 2nd quarter and especially in the 2nd half of 2026. This is due to the typical seasonality of our business. Our demand pattern results in a softer start to a new year with a continuous quarterly improvement and ultimately a strong year-end. Looking at profitability on slide 16. In our 1st quarter of 2026, we converted an overall stable net sales into a 6% growth in adjusted EBITDA versus prior year 1st quarter, delivering EUR 33.1 million of adjusted EBITDA in Q1 or a 7.3% margin, representing a strong 40 basis point improvement.

North America’s EBITDA margin decreased by 40 basis points, which was driven by ramp-up expansion of new facilities and preparations to convert walk-in van orders into revenue beginning in the second quarter. As highlighted earlier, Europe and the rest of world were a key contributor to the group’s performance with substantially improved margins, tripling their adjusted EBITDA versus prior year. Finally, having a look at our balance sheet on slide 17. Net working capital stood at EUR 449 million as of March 2026, reflecting a typical seasonal increase of EUR 26 million from year-end 2025, while improving EUR 4 million versus prior March 2025. This is driven by required inventory investments to facilitate the expected growth in net sales, which we offset by efficiency gains and improvements in collections of accounts receivables.

Our net debt increased to EUR 455 million as of March 2026, an increase of EUR 18 million versus year-end 2025, driven by that seasonal and temporary increase of working capital. With this, we have maintained a stable leverage ratio of 2.88 and are on track to our targets to improve to a leverage of 2.0 times by year-end 2026. That concludes my comments, and I’ll hand it back to Bernd for the closing remarks.

Barend Fruithof, Group CEO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Marco. Continuing on page 19, Q1 performance was in line with the expected pronounced seasonality and supports our full year 2026 outlook. Europe and the rest of the world delivered an exceptional Q1, particularly on profitability, while North America showed strong order momentum despite geopolitical and commercial market headwinds. The strong order intake and backlog will drive net sales conversion through the second quarter and into the second half of the year. We will see further materialization of merger synergies throughout the year. Moving to page 20, our priorities remain firmly focused on converting our strong momentum into profitable growth and delivering on our full year guidance. In North America, the priority is execution. We are focused on converting our record backlog into revenue, supported by accelerating walk-in van deliveries and increasing throughput at our Chicago super center.

At the same time, we are capturing merger synergies, expanding vertical integration, and optimizing our operational footprint to further improve efficiency and margins. We also continue to strengthen our after-sales organization, which remains a key driver for profitable growth. In Europe and rest of the world, we are driving operational improvements through factory efficiency programs and continued pricing initiatives. In parallel, we’re accelerating our after-sales capabilities and expanding our electrical municipal vehicle solutions to capture long-term growth opportunities tied to sustainability and fleet transformation. Overall, we believe the actions we are taking across both segments position us well to improve execution, expand profitability, and support sustainable growth. Moving to page 21, covering our outlook and summary.

We confirm our full year 2026 guidance net sales in the range of EUR 1.95 billion-EUR 2.15 billion, adjusted EBITDA between EUR 175 million and EUR 195 million, and year-end leverage at or below 2 times. Q1 has put us on track to deliver these targets, supported by strong order intake growth, exceptional performance in Europe and Rest of World, meaningful profitability improvement, and solid progress on working capital. In addition, we expect North America to return to significant growth from Q2 2026 onwards, driven by strong order momentum, new locations, and the further realization of synergies. That concludes our presentation. I now turn it over to our operator to open up the line for questions. Operator.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please limit yourself to 1 question and 1 follow-up only. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now go to our first question. Our first question today comes from the line of Michael Shlisky from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Hello, and thank you. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about the autonomous airport product agreement that you made? I guess I’m kinda wondering what will Aebi Schmidt’s role be in that. It’s just upfitting, but just of a vehicle that’s on a tarmac. And also any sense of the size of what that, what that might mean for your EBITDA in the coming years?

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Mike, this is Steffen. Good morning. I take this one. What that means is we will integrate that technology into our products. That goes beyond upfitting because we will integrate the entire system into the vehicles that go on the airports, and we take the full ownership of the entire system. That also requires very close cooperation with the airports. When you are asking about the impact, the financial impact, there will be one in the mid and the long term. These things are usually in the development phase for a couple or several years. There’s nothing in the short term, but what we expect here in the short term is that we will have some prototypes running on airports. I hope that answers your question.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Yes. Thank you so much for that. Also wanted to follow up with the details on your walk-in van comments, Barend. You had mentioned, you know, things are getting better there, orders are increasing. Just interested that when things are up and running again, it sounds like you had some automation or some outside help or help from Europe brought over to the U.S. to help that walk-in van business ramp up this time around, this brand-new cycle here. Curious as to A, how all that’s going. Are things on schedule with hiring, with making the production improvements? Secondly, whether there could be some large margin expansion this cycle versus what The Shyft Group saw last time around.

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Michael, thanks for that. I’ll take that too. Indeed, we had some ramp-up procedures here through the first quarter, and we commented on that as well. The comment related to the support from Europe is we have expats over here, which are here also on a long-term base to support that ramp up. We are through this at the moment, and we see a massive improvement here through Q2 into Q3, supported by strong order entry. On the margin expansion, I don’t want to comment that too much in detail, but we see an improvement here, significant improvement over the last months, month-over-month.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: I mean, Mike, this is.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Yeah.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Marco Portmann speaking. To add on that.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Yeah.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: I mean, that’s really the underlying basis here, right? You’re fully on point with that question. We have seen a depressed walk-in van market in the past 2 years. We now see that structural recovery from the order momentum. Yes, of course, not just with the improvement of our production setup and efficiency, but also generally with the recovering of the walk-in van market. We will see that margin that you’re asking about coming back and be realized over the coming quarters. Absolutely.

Michael Shlisky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Great. I appreciate the color, guys. I’ll pass it along. Thank you.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you.

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Yep, bye.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Lewis from BTIG. Please go ahead.

Gregory Lewis, Analyst, BTIG: Yeah. Hey, thank you, and good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. You know, hey, appreciate the strong order intake. You know, it would be helpful, I think for us if you could kind of bracket kind of the timelines of converting that, you know, as we look at airport municipal and even the walk-in van. Just kinda curious how we should be thinking about that, you know, maybe this year and maybe even in the next year.

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thanks, Greg, for this question. You know, as we mentioned in our presentation, we still have a huge backlog in the municipal area with, you know, the launch of the supercenter in Chicago. We really started to ramp up and to convert. There you will see definitely much higher revenues in the second quarter. You know, airport, as we already mentioned with fourth quarter results, I mean, it’s still we’re booking into end of 2027, beginning, also 2028. There we also ramped up our output, there we are well on track. Also on the walk-in van, we improved our output. At the same time, we also were able to reduce our net working capital in that specific area.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: We also received already orders for 2027 in the walk-in van area, so that’s a bit high level. Europe is like, quite stable as we had in the past. The only area where we see slow activities is in the area of commercial business. Also here we see some positive trends. Marco, I don’t know if you want to add a few things. Yeah, I mean, look, Greg, to be a bit more specific, as much as I can at least, we have guided and still do so also in our today’s earnings materials that we expect to realize about 45% of our revenue this year in the first half and about 55% in the second half.

You already see if you take that, you know, that math from the midpoint, you see that’s a 22% increase that we expect for those 2 half years. You can expect to see already a sizable step-up now in the second quarter, which as Barend just alluded, right? It’s the walk-in van orders coming in with a lot of other things then materializing in the next couple of months on top of that.

Gregory Lewis, Analyst, BTIG: Okay, great. Just following up, Greg, as we think about, you know, the guidance, you know, what kind of, what kind of swings us between the low end and the high end on revenues?

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Well, I mean, look, in terms of airport and municipal, we do have the very strong backlog, which now also is indeed looking very healthy in the meantime in walk-in van orders, which I should point out is a little bit unusual, right? Typically, walk-in van is a lower cycle between orders and realization, but this is really now the bigger recovery with the bigger orders. You can see that this also has built up some backlog, which we now translate. What drives us then consequently between the lower and upper end of the guidance, as you know, we also have the other segments, commercial specifically, and that’s also very commented on. That is still soft, and that’s still unclear how it will develop for the second half year.

We will see how much of that we can realize in the, in the coming months and how the market is developing. That will be ultimately one of the key drivers between the revenue guidance of EUR 1.95-EUR 2.15 we’ve given.

Gregory Lewis, Analyst, BTIG: Helpful. Thank you.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Matt Koranda from ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Matt Koranda, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Hey, guys. Thanks. Is there any way to break apart the North American order flow of EUR 366 million that you called out? I’m just curious sort of the breakdown between walk-in van and then municipal and airport. I guess the reason I ask is trying to get a sense for the flow of walk-in van order demand. I know it was quite strong at the end of last year. It sounds like it’s continued strong in the first quarter. I guess there’s some crosscurrents at the parcel fleets if you listen to their sort of commentary around average daily package volume and whatnot. Just trying to get a sense for sort of how sustainable the walk-in van order demand is.

Marco Portmann, Group CFO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Yeah, I’ll take this one. This is again, Marco speaking, Matt. I fully get where your question is coming from, as you do know, we are not necessarily giving too much details out, especially on the order data between our end customer segments. I can confirm that, you know, that walk-in van recovery, as we said at the full year guidance. Let me actually take a larger bracket even, right? We saw the recovery coming in end of 2025, as we commented in November with our third quarter 2025 release, we didn’t know at the time that this was structural because it was a few customers, it was some selected orders, it was a very good healthy sign.

As we said then with the full year release, we have really seen that this is now broadening. It’s throughout the customer portfolio, and that’s exactly what we also can confirm today. We see that this is really a healthy development. As we said, we believe this is really now structural with that market coming back after a long depressed phase in the last couple of years following the COVID times. It is a sizable part of that EUR 300+ million order intake. Again, unfortunately, I can’t give you the exact specifics. We’re not breaking that down into the actual customer end segments.

Matt Koranda, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay. That’s fair, and I appreciate the comments. Then on just the cadence of the year, especially for North America, sounds like you’re signaling the steady ramp up in production throughout the year. Probably sequential improvement across the year in terms of revenue. Should we assume that EBITDA sort of improves commensurately with sales growth as well sequentially throughout the year?

Steffen Schewerda, CEO of North America, Aebi Schmidt Group: Yeah. Matt, this is Stefan. I take this one. Yes, this assumption is correct, and we see this trend kicking in and that’s a correct assumption, yes.

Matt Koranda, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay, got it. Just last one from a broader perspective in terms of the guidance reiterated for the full year. How did you, or if at all, I guess, factor in any increased component costs associated with higher oil prices, and freight across the globe?

Barend Fruithof, Group CEO, Aebi Schmidt Group: Matt, a very good question. I mean, in certain areas where we have a very high backlog, there we have a few challenge, but honestly that is already factored in into our guidance because we were always kind of cautious there. We already have taken measures given material and commodity price increases. We also have increased freight costs, and we also have done a few things on the after-sales. On that end, we feel so far quite comfortable. That will not heavily impact our EBITDA. I think we feel comfortable. As you know, normally we log in the steel, we have long-term contracts with our suppliers. We feel quite comfortable and that will not heavily impact our EBITDA guidance. Does this help?

Matt Koranda, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay. Very much so. Thank you. I appreciate it. I’ll leave it there.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. This concludes the Q&A for today, and I will now hand back to Simone Grancini for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Simone Grancini, Investor Relations Director, Aebi Schmidt Group: Thank you, Sharon. I thank everyone for joining today’s call and your interest in the Aebi Schmidt Group. As always, please reach out to [email protected] if you have any follow-up questions. With that, Sharon, please disconnect the call.

Sharon, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.