Wabtec Inc. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you, operator.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Wabtec's third quarter 2026 earnings call. With us today are Chairman and CEO Rafael Santana, CFO John Olin, and Senior Vice President of Finance John Mastalerz. Today's slide presentation, along with our earnings release and financial disclosures, were posted to our website earlier today and can be accessed on the investor relations tab. Some statements we are making are forward-looking and based on our best view of the world and our business today. For more detailed risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentation. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to read our disclosures and reconciliation tables carefully as you consider these metrics. I will now turn the call over to Rafael.

Thanks, Kyra, and good morning, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter, and we are proud of the progress we have made year to date. These results reflect the strength across the portfolio, disciplined execution by our teams, and the continued success of the strategic actions we have taken to enhance our growth profile, expand margins, and increase the earnings power of the company. Our teams continue to translate healthy customer demand into profitable growth while investing in technologies that will advance the future of transportation. These investments are strengthening our competitive position and reinforcing Wabtec as a leading industrial technology company. With that, let's move to slide 4. I'll start with an update on our business, my perspectives on the quarter, and progress against our long-term value creation framework, and then John will cover the financials.

We delivered a strong quarter evidenced by continued growth in our backlog, sales, margin, and earnings. In addition, our recent acquisitions continue to perform very well. Sales were $3.1 billion, which was up 8%. Adjusted EPS was up 22% from the year ago quarter. Total cash flow from operations for the quarter was $455 million. Backlog remains a key strength. Twelve-month backlog was up 8.8% from the prior year, while the multi-year backlog exceeded $31 billion, up 22.9%. These results demonstrate sustained revenue and earnings momentum and provide enhanced visibility for the fourth quarter and into the future. Our financial position remains strong. We continue to execute against our capital allocation framework, and we expect to continue to compound long-term value for our shareholders. Shifting our focus to slide 5, let's talk about our 2026 end market expectations in more detail.

While key metrics across our freight markets remain mixed, we continue to be encouraged by the overall strength and resilience of our business. We are pleased with the momentum in our North America and international markets, and our pipeline of opportunities across geographies continues to support our long-term growth outlook. In North America, carload traffic was up 3.5% in the quarter. As a result of this growth, Wabtec's and industry's active locomotive fleet was up compared to last year's third quarter. Internationally, carload growth during the quarter was mixed, but the long-term carload growth trends continue to be robust. Significant investments to expand and upgrade infrastructure are driving our international orders pipeline.

Looking at the North America railcar builds, last quarter, we discussed the industry outlook for 2026, which was approximately 25,000 cars to be delivered and which now has been reduced by industry sources to approximately 23,000 cars. This forecast represents a 26% reduction from last year's car build. Finally, turning to the transit sector, we continue to see encouraging indicators for growth. Ridership trends remain favorable in key markets, including Europe and India, while car builders continue to maintain strong backlogs supported by robust levels of public investment for fleet expansions and renewal programs. Next, let's turn to slide six and highlight several recent business wins that demonstrate the strength of the demand across our markets and the momentum we are seeing globally. International demand for our products and services remains strong.

During the quarter, we secured $1 billion of locomotive and service orders, which included significant awards in Africa and in Brazil. These wins further expand our global installed base, strengthen our long-term customer partnerships, and create opportunities for attractive recurring revenues over time. In North America, we converted over $600 million of pipeline opportunities into new locomotive and modernization orders for two Class I customers. These orders reflect our customers' continued investment in fleet modernization, productivity improvements, and network efficiency. Moving on to transit, we were awarded $159 million in brake equipment orders from various customers, reinforcing our strong market position and the healthy underlying demand we continue to see across the transit sector. Taken together, these wins highlight the value of our technology, the strength of our customer relationships, and our ability to help customers improve reliability, durability, efficiency, and safety.

They also reinforce our confidence in the long-term growth opportunities across our freight and transit businesses. With that, I'll turn the call over to John to review the quarter, segment results, and our overall financial performance.

John? Thanks, Rafael, and hello, everyone.

Turning to slide seven, I will review our results in more detail. Sales for the third quarter were $3.12 billion, which reflects an 8.1% increase versus the prior year, with strong contributions from both the freight and transit segments, including acquisitions. Excluding the impact of currency, Q3 sales were up 8.3%. As discussed on our last earnings call, we raised our full-year revenue guidance $110 million at the midpoint, reflecting the incremental flow of business activity we experienced during the second quarter and our expectations for continued demand in the back half of the year. While timing of certain locomotive deliveries shifted out of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter, these shifts do not change our view of the strong underlying demand environment or our full-year revenue guidance.

From a margin standpoint, we anticipated third quarter's margin expansion would be generally in line with the performance achieved during the first half of the year. In actuality, our operating margin expansion exceeded those expectations. The better than expected margin performance included favorable product mix, strong operational execution, including productivity benefits from Integration 3.0 and other efficiency initiatives, as well as lower operating expenses as a percent of revenue resulting from disciplined cost management. Having said that, GAAP operating income was $625 million, which was up 27.3% versus the prior year. The increase was predominantly driven by higher sales and improved gross margin. Adjusted operating margin for Q3 was 22.9%, up 1.9 percentage points versus prior year. GAAP earnings per diluted share was $2.42, which was up 33.7% versus the year-ago quarter.

During the quarter, we had net pre-tax charges of $5 million for restructuring, which were primarily related to our integration and portfolio optimization initiatives to further integrate and streamline Wabtec's operations. In addition, versus our Q3 expectations, our earnings benefited from a non-operational item, which is reported as other income, resulting primarily from the impact of currency fluctuations. In the quarter, adjusted earnings per diluted share was $2.83, up 22.0% versus the prior year. Overall, the quarter reflects the strength of our execution, the resilience of the business, and solid momentum as we move into the fourth quarter. Now turning to slide eight, let's review our product lines performance in more detail. Third quarter consolidated sales were up 8.1%. Equipment sales were up slightly from last year's third quarter.

During the quarter, revenue benefited from increased mining sales, which were largely offset by lower locomotive deliveries, partly driven by units shifting to the fourth quarter. Services revenue was up 6.7% from last year's third quarter, driven by strong core services sales growth and higher modernization deliveries, as expected. Component sales were up 5.3% versus last year due to industrial, maintenance of way, and international demand, partly offset by the industry's decline in North America railcar build and behind our portfolio optimization efforts. Digital Intelligence sales were up 24.2% from last year. This was driven by contributions from the Frauscher Sensor Technologies acquisition and strong core digital demand. In our transit segment, sales were up 11.3%, driven by the Dellner acquisition and growth across our products and services businesses. Foreign currency exchange had an unfavorable impact on sales in the quarter of 1.1 percentage points.