Aebi Schmidt Holding (NASDAQ:AEBI) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

0:00 Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aebi Schmidt Group Fourth Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Simone Grancini, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead. Thank you, Sharon. Good morning, and welcome to the Aebi Schmidt Fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty five earnings call.

0:46 I'm Simone Grancini, the company's Investor Relations Director. Joining me on the call today are Baron Pruitov, Group CEO, who will provide the fourth quarter and full year highlights, outlook and concluding remarks Stefan Schiwerda, CEO, North America and Henning Schroeder, CEO, Europe and Rest of World, who will detail the performance in the respective segments and Marco Portman, Group CFO, who will provide a financial overview. Before I turn the call over to Biren, 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 filings with the SEC.

1:32 And with that, I hand the call over to Biren. Good morning, everyone. 2025 was a historical year for Aebi Schmidt, marked by the acquisition of the former Shift Group and our listing on NOSDOC. I'm extremely proud of our fourth quarter performance. As we see on page five, our order intake increased 46% in the fourth quarter versus 2024, and we ended 2025 with a record high order backlog. Our adjusted EBITDA increased 31% year over year for the fourth quarter, delivering a significantly higher adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.1% versus 7.4% in the prior year.

2:23 And our strong cash flow enabled us to reduce our leverage to 2.8 times, strengthening our balance sheet heading into 2026. I thank our employees for their exceptional contribution and our customers for their continued trust. On page six, I provide you with some more details on these outstanding achievements. Our exceptional order momentum was driven by strong orders in airport and municipal, and especially by a recovery in the walk in van orders. We believe this reflects a structural recovery in demand. On the other hand, we expect a continued softness in truck body and commercial markets with only a slow recovery in 2026.

3:17 In terms of net sales, our fourth quarter grew 6% versus prior year. A 5% decline in legacy Shift was more than offset by the rest of the group. Europe and the rest of the world was a strong contributor to this performance with substantial organic growth in almost flat market. We also accelerated and increased the cost synergies from the acquisition of Shift with an additional procurement and revenue synergy expected to materialize in the second half of twenty twenty six. Ultimately, our adjusted EBITDA improved by 31% in the fourth quarter twenty twenty five compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four.

4:09 Europe contributed to this with an outstanding 234% increase year over year. Continuing on page seven, we look at the foundations we have built that will deliver our 2026 growth path. First, our M and A strategy continues to deliver, and this goes beyond the Shift acquisition. Both our smaller acquisition LWS in The U. S. And Lotte in Germany continue to provide outside growth to the group, and we see further opportunities for small bolt on acquisitions. Second, we have launched multiple new products. This includes the first service body jointly developed by Monro and Royal presented last week at the NTA.

5:00 The launch of new compact airport products to enlarge our addressable market, and we are exploring to design a more cost competitive offering of our BlueWork truck. Finally, we opened new locations and secured major first time customers, which will support revenue and profitability in the second half of twenty twenty six. Let's also briefly look at our brands on page eight. We're simplifying our brand architecture, sharpening our market presence, and sending a clear signal that we are one powerful group. This makes it easier for our customer to navigate the group's broad range of solutions, simplifies customer engagement, and allows us to communicate in a more meaningful and cost effective way. And now, I turn the call over to Stefan.

6:00 Thank you, Byron. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for having me. We are on page number 10. So to put it in one sentence, 2025 was an outstanding year, especially in terms of order momentum. Our airport business is seeing very strong order entry, also supported by the launch of our new products. These products are gaining really nice traction and first deliveries have been made to customers already. On the walk in vent side, we see a recovery of the markets combined with what we believe is market share growth. On the commercial side, we see some softness, which we are able to partially offset by stronger fleet demands. And our municipal segment shows very strong quoting and order entry.

6:47 That confirms our strategy to expand our geographical footprint. Slide 11, please. As you can see, our backlog increased by 25% in the fourth quarter versus prior year. That was driven by a 63% increase year over year in order entry. Net sales and adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was slightly below the fourth quarter in 2024. This was mainly driven by the softness in walk in van and truck bodies, and included ramp up expenses for walk in van production and additional locations. And looking at these KPIs, it is clear what the focus points for 2026 are. It is order conversion and profitability, and I will explain this a little bit more in detail on the next slide number 12.

7:40 So, based on our strong backlog, we are positioned to deliver growth in 2026, which we expect to accelerate throughout the quarters. On the market side, we expect that we will continue to realize strong order entry. This is driven by market recovery, market share expansion, and also the introduction of new products. On the sales conversion side, our new location in Chicago is now fully operational. We are starting to deliver the first municipal snow and ice trucks to a major DOT starting in April. The new outfit centers in Minneapolis and Toronto are also gaining traction. And on the walk in vent side, we are already starting to increase output, which we expect to accelerate in the second quarter.

8:26 And on the profitability side, we are executing on vertical integration in our commercial segment. In addition, we expect to realize material cost savings in the second half of the year, and our cost structure is being aligned as we speak. Our increased output will also result in higher plant efficiencies, of course, and on top of that, we are planning to consolidate some of our warehouses in the Midwest to gain efficiencies in logistics and networking capital. And with that being said, thank you, and I hand it over to Henning. Good morning. I describe 2025 as a landmark year for Europe and the rest of the world in terms of order intake growth and strong profitability development throughout 2025. As written on Page 14, our markets are gaining strong traction, particularly in airports, municipal compact sweepers, and agriculture.

9:19 The airport segment is entering a pivotal year with multiple large tenders expected fueled by rising defense budgets, driving military related demand, and increasing local content requirements. The municipal sector continues to be powered by compact sweepers delivering double digit growth for our core products in 2025. Lava products have exceeded expectations. We are accelerating our capacity expansion plans, while RITA products show a mixed performance due to limited snowfalls across many European countries. Agricultural products showed strong momentum in 2025, growing more than 30% versus 2024, supported by the rollout of the new generation of EBI CombiCut motor mowers.

10:06 Slide 15, please. In Q4, we sustained growth in order intake and delivered a significant 25% year over year sales increase driven by airport, municipal, and spare parts. I'm especially proud of the team for delivering an exceptional 235% year over year increase in profitability, an outstanding achievement powered by strong volumes, solid gross margin performance and disciplined OpEx control. Proceeding to Page 16, our strong 2025 performance provides the foundation for positive year over year quarterly and sequential improvement throughout 2026. On orders, we expect to leverage our expanded dealer network to accelerate the Europe wide LABA rollout, build on strong municipal and agricultural momentum following successful product launches and capitalize on our centralized airport tender team to secure large global deals and increase win rates.

11:09 On sales margin, we expect to implement factory efficiency programs and finalize production relocations to reduce material costs. We will utilize our EU pricing engine to optimize margins and spare parts and realize the benefit of implemented price increases across new business and aftermarket segments. On cost control, we expect to capture the benefits of regional back office consolidation, further leverage our Eastern Europe corporate center and convert disciplined OpEx management into tangible cost savings. That concludes my comments, and I turn it over to Marco. Thanks very much, Henning, and good morning, everyone. As you have heard already, 2025 ended with significant order momentum as we captured many market opportunities following the acquisition of the former Shift Group.

11:58 On page 18, we see this exceptional order performance resulting in a very healthy order backlog of over $1,200,000,000 up 21% year over year and providing good visibility into 2026. And we expect to see significant improvements in net sales materializing in the second quarter and especially the second half of twenty twenty six out of that backlog. On the topic of seasonality, our demand cycles generally lead to a strong year end with a comparatively slow start into a new year. For 2026, we expect this quarter by quarter seasonality throughout the year to be even more pronounced than in an average year, more on this later by Variant. Moving on to slide 19, net sales in the fourth quarter reached $528,000,000 representing a 6% year over year increase and bringing full year sales to 1,900,000,000 a 2% increase compared to 2024.

12:56 Looking at our fourth quarter net sales in a bit more detail. Sales in North America decreased 2% versus the fourth quarter twenty twenty four due to the pronounced weakness in the acquired shift businesses with a five percent decline, which could not be fully compensated by the 2% growth in the legacy AEBI North American businesses. Sales in Europe and the rest of the world increased by a notable 25% contributing to over one third of total net sales in the fourth quarter. Looking at profitability on slide 20. On a full year pro form a basis, we turned a 2% net sales increase into a strong 13% increase in adjusted EBITDA year over year, delivering $156,000,000 in full year 2025 or an 8.2 adjusted EBITDA margin.

13:47 In our fourth quarter specifically, we converted a 6% net sales increase including price of 31% growth in EBITDA versus prior year fourth quarter, delivering $48,100,000 of adjusted EBITDA in that fourth quarter twenty twenty five equal to a 9.1% margin. North America's EBITDA margin was flat on the back of that 2% net sales decrease, while Europe and the rest of the world delivered a significant EBITDA growth with over 600 basis points improvement. Finally, having a look at our balance sheet on slide 21. Networking capital decreased by $29,000,000 or 6% since September to $423,000,000 as of December 2025.

14:33 This decrease was driven by a $38,000,000 lower inventory, reflecting both improved efficiency and the seasonal decrease at year end. On the back of a strong cash flow in the fourth quarter, our net debt decreased to $437,000,000 as of 12/31/2025, a decrease of $32,000,000 compared to September. With this, we have also delivered a first significant step to reduce our leverage, improving almost half a turn to 2.8 times as of year end 2025, with our communicated targets to improve to below 2.0 times by year end 2026. That concludes my comments, and I hand it back to Bond for closing remarks. Thanks, Marco. Let me start my concluding remarks with a summary of the key achievements in 2025 shown on page 23.

15:25 We're outperforming on Synagis, expecting to deliver over $40,000,000 versus our initial 25,000,000 to $30,000,000 target. Our intake increased by 22% versus 2024, and adjusted EBITDA improved by 13%, reflecting strong operational execution. At the same time, we launched new products and opened new locations, further strengthening our foundation and positioning the company for sustainable growth. Continuing on page 24, looking at 2026, we expect a pronounced quarterly seasonality mainly driven by market conditions and geopolitical uncertainty.

16:14 Q1 will start slow as our strong walk in van orders will convert into revenue beyond the quarter, while the commercial market remains very soft despite some signs of recovery. In Q2, we expect order conversion to accelerate supported by our ramp up of production and operating capacity. By Q3, we expect improving market conditions in the commercial and fleet markets and the realization of procurement synergies. And finally, in Q4, we expect to benefit from the usual seasonal strengths, especially in Europe and the rest of the world. Moving on to page 24 for the outlook. Let me conclude with our 2026 guidance and priorities.

17:08 We expect net sales between 1,950,000,000 and $2,150,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA between 175,000,000 and $195,000,000 and an average at year end 2026 at or below two. To deliver this, we expect to maintain strong order momentum and accelerate backlog conversion into net sales through better production efficiency. We expect to drive profitability through efficiency gains at legacy shift, optimized footprint utilization, and delivering our synergies. And at the same time, we will maintain our strong focus on leverage and balance sheet.

17:56 In short, our 2026 focus is on disciplined execution to sustain and build on the strong momentum achieved in 2025. That concludes our presentation. I now turn it over to our operator to open up the line for questions. Operator? Thank you. We will now go to our first question. And the first question comes from the line of Greg Lewis from BTIG.

18:43 Please go ahead. Yes, thank you and good morning and good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. You know, I was hoping you could talk a little bit more, I mean, it looks like you've we got finished and started with some order momentum in the walk in van market. Kind of as you see that playing out, like what's kind of some of the things that customers are talking about in driving that? One of the things that we had heard last week was around just, hey, the fleet is just it's just time for some renewal. Any kind of sense for how much of this is renewal? How much of this demand? How much like, how can you kind of frame that, just given your confidence in potential increases in walk in?

19:33 Right. Greg, good morning. This is Stefan. I'll take that question. So what we are seeing and believing is that it is both. We are entering a phase of renewal at this point in time, and one market participant is buying more than the other one. I mean, we know who the big two big players are. But we believe it is a combination of renewal and additional demand. And we see this going forward, not just a blip here over one or two quarters. When we talk to the customers, there is structural and sustainable demand here. Okay. And then I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the backlog.

20:19 You mentioned you called out that the backlog points to about 15 is spread out over fifteen months. Is that something where the backlog is the duration of the backlog increasing, decreasing versus maybe where it was a year ago? Is part of that a mix of what is being ordered? So, Greg, thank you very much for this question. So, I mean, we were able to increase our backlog on a pro form a basis if you compare it with 2024. And you know, there is a bit of a mixed picture, you know, a mixed picture. So, we have a very strong backlog in our municipal business, as well as in our airport business, for example.

21:04 We were also able to increase our backlog in Europe versus previous year, which is a very good development given the market circumstances. And at the same time, we were also able to massively increase our backlog in the walk in man business. We're having some challenges in the commercial market as well as in the truck body market, So there we need to do some more work, and you know, we expect that the market will improve, and we see already first signs in that area. Okay, super helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now take the next question.

21:50 And the question comes from the line of Mike Schlitzky from DA Davidson. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Thanks for taking my questions. Well, some of your truck body comments that you made, you mentioned that it's been slow, but there was so much excitement about the new truck bodies that you introduced in at the NTA show last week. Do you think that your truck body business will outperform the broader market in 2016 just on that new product? And just tell us about how it may have been received while at the show? What were customers telling you about the new product there? So Mike, good morning. This is Stefan. I'll take that one. So what we introduced on the show was a new service body on the commercial side.

22:39 Basically, that is part of our committed integration here, more vertical integration. We talked about this numerous occasions here. So the service body on the commercial side has very, very good feedback. On the truck body side, the new product we showed was you could see this on the Isuzu stand. This is a cooperation together with Isuzu. It's called the ADVANTIC. We are the exclusive partner for Isuzu getting this into the market. To answer your question, I do not really believe that we will outperform the market here in 2026, but I truly believe that we will put a strong foundation here into place over the next quarters then to accelerate in 2027.

23:30 Great, great. Thanks for that comment. Secondly, a large e commerce company has announced in the last couple of days that they plan to scale back or stop using the USPS for a lot of their deliveries. They're one of USPS's biggest customers. Assuming they're gonna have to take some of that delivery volume in house as well as far enough to the other large delivery providers. If they're using the other providers, if they're using their own vehicles, I know that they have some of their own kind of custom made vehicles, but they are a mixed fleet, If that changes away from the USPS, is that a positive for Aebi Schmidt going forward as far as mix of, you know, how much business you can capture now?

24:19 Or was USPS a pretty big customer and there won't be much of a change here? Mike, I believe that this is an advantage for Aebi Schmidt. I mean, this context, there was also the notion of, hey, we do it within one hour delivery or three hour deliveries where customers pay a little bit more. We're talking about the same article here and the same announcement. So I believe it will drive additional demand. The question is what kind of vehicle, what kind of concept will this be? But I believe in our product portfolio, we have something to participate in that market, and we are in active discussions. Great, thank you so much. Thank you.

25:06 Your next question today comes from the line of Matt Koranda from ROTH Capital. Please go ahead. Hey guys, good morning. I guess I wanted to hear on the midpoint of the adjusted EBITDA guide for '26, looks like about nearly $30,000,000 in improvement. But I guess you guys have said synergies in total are north of $40,000,000 from the combination. Obviously, that gets realized over a couple of years. So just wanted to hear a little bit about how much gets realized in 'twenty six and what's built into the full year guidance? Yes. Good morning, Matt. This is Marcus speaking. So yes, midpoint 185 of our adjusted EBITDA guidance. And I mean to reiterate in 2025, right, so we always said, we're going to deliver at least $40,000,000 total now.

25:58 And out of that, we have realized in 2025 somewhere in the mid teens, that's predominantly cost synergies. And we expect the same amount to realize also in 2026 on top of that. Keeping in mind that, specifically the procurement synergies, they will kick in, in the third quarter of twenty twenty six. Again, that's relating also to what we just talked about with the service body. And we have also revenue synergies, which are predominantly kicking in, in the second half of twenty twenty six as well, before we will then see the full realization by summer twenty twenty seven, as you have initially announced pre merger. So we're still fully on track to that. But also keep in mind, it's not just the synergies. If you look at the difference between 2025, 2026, there's also one off expenses that we have to account for 2025.

26:48 We faced some additional stuff that isn't in part of the adjusted, some ramp up expenses that are operational, some sub compliance topics, a couple of these things. And also in Q1 now 'twenty six, we'll still have some ramp up expenses, specifically in the walk in van business. Okay, got it. And I wanted to hear a little bit more about the seasonality commentary that you gave in the prepared remarks. It sounds like you said first quarter, usually your lower quarter in terms of seasonality, but might be a little bit more pronounced this year. Could you unpack some of the factors that are causing the more pronounced seasonality? And is that more pronounced in one of the two segments in North America or Europe, or is it both? Just want to hear a little bit more about how to think about it.

27:36 Yeah, I mean, as we commented, right? Generally speaking, we do have quite a bit of seasonality, a bit more than maybe typically would be expected, coming especially a little bit from the ordering cycles we see in Europe, but also generally the snow business or snow related business that we have. And as we said, in 2026, this is going to be quite a bit more pronounced. So we will see, of course, a slower start in Q1, because these walk in van orders, while we do have the backlog now, while we still see the good momentum, it will materialize only beginning in Q2 really. And we still have some one off expenses associated with that ramp up in the first quarter. So we don't have the revenue yet, but also some costs already flowing in. And also from a segment view will hit us, of course, in The U. S. So you will see that if you compare Q1 U.

28:24 S. Or North America as the segment officially is called versus last year. In Europe, you will see quite a good improvement Q1 over Q1. But of course, keeping in mind that Europe has had a slow start in 2025. So yes, you see that basically coming in out of the order backlog that wasn't there in Q4 that now leads to that lack of revenue basically in Q1 walk in vans and again, commercial truck body, we commented on that. It is a soft market, we still see that and that will persist through Q1 or does persist through Q1. We can say that as of today. And of course, the geopolitical environment also didn't really help in the last couple of weeks. So you'll feel that as well. And then you have basically Q2, Q3 of the ramp up as we explained, and the fourth quarter really will be, I would say similar to what you have seen now in the dynamics in 2025, but again, more pronounced that this is really the strong quarter that we bring the year together.

29:23 And we just wanted to be precise on that to rightsize expectations on our quarterly momentum of 2026. And Matt, just to add one point, you know, as you know, we have built a new office center in Chicago, and that will help to accelerate our backlog in the municipal area, you know, into more sales, and we will see already an improvement in March, and that will then go up already in the second quarter, And that's also a good thing then to reduce our backlog and turn it into sales in the municipal area. Okay, very helpful guys. Thanks.

30:10 Thank you. This concludes the Q and A for today, and I will now hand back to Simone Grandshidi for closing remarks. 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 investor. Relationsebbyschmidt dot com if you have any follow-up questions. And with that, Sharon, please disconnect the call. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.