Astec Industries, Inc. (ASTE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Hello, and welcome to the Aztec Industries second quarter 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is my pleasure to introduce your host, Steve Anderson, Senior Vice President of Administration and investor relations. Mr. Anderson, you may begin. Thank you and good morning everyone.

Joining me on today's call are Yaku Fundramova, our Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Harris, our Chief Financial Officer. In just a moment I'll turn the call over to Yaku to provide his comments and then Brian will summarize our financial results. For your convenience, a copy of our press release and presentation have been posted on our website under the Investor Relations tab at www.aztechindustries.com. Turning to slide two, I'll remind you that our discussion this morning may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future performance of the company. Factors that could influence our results are highlighted in today's financial news release and others are contained in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In an effort to provide investors with additional information, the company refers to various GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes provide useful information to investors. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results are included in our news release and the appendix of our slide presentation. And now, turning to slide three, I'll turn the call over to Yaku.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As you will see, we delivered a solid quarter with record revenues and adjusted EBITDA. We continue to make progress with our strategic initiatives as we drive greater consistency, profitability, and growth. Moving to slide four, net sales were up 23.6% over the same period the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA increased 26%. adjusted EBITDA margins to the 10.4%, which was a 20 basis point increase over a solid second quarter in 2025. And we reported positive free cash flow. The infrastructure solution segment remained healthy as net sales grew 11.6% over the same period the prior year. largely due to demand for concrete, mobile paving, forestry equipment and inorganic contributions. For asphalt plant customers, order patterns remain consistent with the prior year. However, macro-driven events such as higher oil prices and uncertainty over the timing of the federal high-well bill have caused select deliveries to shift to future quarters. Much of our second quarter backlog growth was driven by the anticipated resurgence of our material solution segment, and we are optimistic about the future. Federal, state, and local projects are expected to drive multi-year demand. And the global mining sector is poised for significant investment. The surge in demand for lithium, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements is expected due to the electrification of transportation and growth in the construction of data centers. Dealer inventory levels in the material solution segment are healthy, and we are seeing increased demand for mobile plans. rental inventory versions were active throughout the second quarter, and this provided dealers with the ability to replenish inventory. Our new product development efforts are also beginning to show benefits as new crushing and screening units manufactured in our Omaha Northern Island facility gain traction. Providing excellent availability of parts and service to ASTI customers remains a key priority. In the second quarter, we generated revenue of $135.5 million of parts and service, which which was a 34.8% increase over the same period the prior year. As a percentage of net sales, parts and service reached 33.2% for the quarter and trended upward to 35% on a year-to-date basis. Backlog of 601.1 million increased 57.9%. segments contributed with most of the increase being derived from our material solution segment Overall, order activity in both segments remains encouraging. However, as stated, some asphalt plant customers have begun to schedule their deliveries for the fourth quarter of 2026 and first quarter of 2027. As such, we are revising our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance from the previous range of 170 to 190 million to 160 to 175 million. For modeling purposes, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA for the second half of the year to have a split of approximately one-third in the third quarter and two-thirds in the fourth quarter. Turning to slide 5, we had a spectacular show at the ULED 2026 Squaring, Construction and Recycling event held in the United Kingdom in June. Hillhead drew thousands of attendees to see live inquiry equipment demonstrations over a three-day period. During the show, ASTEC was proud to launch eight new models, including our Frontier series units produced in our Omaha facility in Northern Ireland. The frontier crushing, screening and washing material handling lines are now available for the global market. All equipment is engineered with the latest innovations, underpinned by proven technology, and is fully compliant with CE standards. We were also pleased to display and operate two new prototypes of the show that will be available for sale later this year. Lastly, two new UK dealers for Aztec products were introduced at the show as part of our overall growth strategy internationally. On slide 6, we provide a status update for the renewal of the Federal Highway Bill. Two eras of federal surface transportation funding are shown side by side. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which runs through September 2026, and its proposed successor, the Build America 250 Act, covering 2027 through 2031. At first glance, the $580 billion headline number in the Build America 250 Act appears smaller. As it pertains to ASTEC, however, that comparison can be misleading. ASTEC is a company that has been in the business for more than a decade. Plastic equipment is primarily used to process aggregates and produce asphalt and concrete that goes into our nation's infrastructure. We are pleased with the proposed 7% increase in highway funding from roughly $351 billion to $376 billion, an approximately 12% increase to improve our nation's bridges. Money also gets more certain as the formula funded share climbs from 87 to 90%. These guaranteed non-discretionary portions increase every year, beginning with $65.54 billion in 2027 and progressively stepping up to 69.54 billion by 2031. So the takeaway is this. The Build America 250 Act may make a smaller headline, but it channels more government guaranteed formula-based money into the core highway and bridge programs. The Federal Highway Program provides a meaningful volume of work for the infrastructure industry. This is good for our customers and in turn good for our state. The exact timing of the Federal Highway Bill renewal has yet to be determined, but a temporary extension in the form of a continuing resolution appears likely. That said, whether the bill is renewed by September 30th or extended, a longer-term bill is a matter of when, not if. For ASTEC, this provides a baseline for achieving our 2030 revenue and EBITDA targets. Our implied orders and book to bowl trends are showed on slide 7. On a consolidated basis, implied orders of $460 million grew $151.5 million, or 49.1%, for the same period the prior year. and 6.7% sequentially. As I mentioned previously, we are seeing strong across the board order intake by our material solution segment, while micro uncertainty has created the shift in deliveries for selected asphalt customers. Moving to slide 8, backlog of 601.1 million increased 57.9% over the same period in the prior year. The majority of the increase was derived from our material solution segment, which grew 150.6% from a combination of organic and inorganic growth. Infrastructure Solutions posted a 12.7% increase, primarily due to additional orders for concrete, mobile paving, and forestry products. I will now turn the call over to Brian Harris, our Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Yacoub, and good morning. Our consolidated financial results are highlighted on slide 10. Net sales of 408.1 million increased 77.8 million, or 23.6%, over the same period in the prior year. Net sales include parts and service revenue, which grew 34.8% to $135.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased 26% to $42.6 million. compared favorably to $33.8 million of adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 10.4% for an increase of 20 basis points. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.94 in the quarter compared to a strong adjusted earnings per share of $0.90 in the second quarter of last year. Moving on to the infrastructure solution segment shown on slide 11, net sales grew 11.6% to 228.3 million from a combination of organic and inorganic contributions. This included aftermarket parts and service, which increased $2.9 million, or 4.6%, compared to the second quarter the prior year. Operating adjusted EBITDA in dollars increased slightly. However, margin compression of 130 basis points was primarily due to a change in mix between asphalt plant and mobile paving equipment. The material solution segment is shown on slide 12. Net sales for the quarter grew 43% to $179.8 million due to organic and inorganic growth, while adjusted EBITDA grew 54.5% to $22.1 million. segment operating adjusted EBITDA margin grew 90 basis points to 12.3% and compared favorably to the same period the prior year. Moving to slide 13, we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity. The quarter ended with cash and cash equivalents of $75.7 million, available credit of $190.1 million, for a total available liquidity of $265.8 million. Net leverage of 2.2 times was well within our target range of 1.5 to 2.5 times. We expect net leverage to further reduce to approximately 1.7 times by end of 2026. As we have previously communicated, our 2026 outlook includes the following anticipated full year ranges. adjusted EBITDA of 160 to 175 million. An effective tax rate of 26% to 30%. Depreciation and amortization of 55 million to 65 million. capital expenditures of $35 million to $45 million. We also expect the following quarterly ranges, adjusted SG&A of $70 million to $75 million, interest expense of approximately $7 million. I will now turn the call back to Jakob. Thank you, Brian.

Slide 14 reiterates the Aztec Build to Connect way and the key performance metrics shared during our 2026 investor day. These are the measures we believe matter most to investors as they deliver significant value. While progress will not occur in a straight line, we remain confident in our ability to achieve these targets by 2030. Slide 15 summarizes our key investment highlights. We have built a strong reputation as a dependable provider of internationally recognized brands and high quality solutions. Our team remains closely engaged with customers and ongoing conversations indicate continued optimism about activity levels across the construction market. We are encouraged by the results of our operational excellence efforts and expect continued improvement over time. We believe our manufacturing and procurement initiatives are increasing efficiency and will support further adjusted EBITDA growth. Several attractive opportunities and growth drivers support our path to 2030. we have launched a significant number of new products, including the models introduced at the ULED 2026 construction show. These products have been vetted through our discipline, stage gate approval process. We have additional products scheduled for launch over the next 12 to 18 months, each targeted at specific areas of market opportunity. Continued growth in our parts and service businesses will support margin expansion over time. Public funding remains stable and modestly growing, while our public end markets are generally non-cyclical. Our robust digital offering enables us to meet customer needs for unified connectivity suites that aggregate data across product types. Next, industry megatrends point to multi-years of growth in demand for construction materials. These megatrends include the construction of data centers, reindustrialization, and the domestic mining and rare earth minerals. Lastly, our strong balance sheet provides attractive options for capital allocation, including strategic inorganic growth opportunities aligned with our financial objectives, growth opportunities in both established and emerging international markets.

With that operator, we are ready for questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David McGregor with Longbow Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning everyone and thanks for taking my questions. I wonder if I could just start by asking you to talk about the different scenarios and assumptions behind the upper and the lower ends of the revised EBITDA guidance.

Yes, hey morning David, Jaap here. Yes, when we look at the new guidance range, obviously we talked in the earnings release around the shift that we've seen in asphalt plant delivery. So we've actually seen bookings comparable to the to 2025. But interesting, you know, earlier than normal, We've seen some deliveries from customers being scheduled for Q4 and then already for Q1 next year. So what we've done there is we looked at our ability to react In the short term, we feel that there's still an opportunity for us to fit all orders in to the fourth quarter that will drive us to a higher end of the range. and you know the bottom end of the range we feel that we have great visibility to achieve at least that range so it just depends a little bit on timing here in the next couple of weeks of orders coming in um One thing that I will say is that we actually had very strong bookings towards the end of the quarter for asphalt plants. July turned out to be one of our best bookings months. And we've also seen a very strong bookings month for parts year in July. So, The momentum that we've seen late in the quarter is definitely giving us confidence that we can play within that range. And if we get one or two plant deals to fall, we can get to the higher end of the range.

Right. And just to clarify on that, do you think the delays are related to the continuing resolution around BA 250 or? I'm just curious what you're seeing as maybe an explanation for why these are being pushed.

Yes, no, good question. We actually looked at the order pattern for last year and we've seen a similar pattern last year, although I will say, there was maybe a three, four week period at the beginning of Q2 last year. where bookings were slow. This year it was more the first six to eight weeks. And then obviously orders started to flow through strongly in June and July. I mean, as you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market right now. Our customers are affected by the spike in oil prices, diesel fuel prices. And smaller customers are definitely looking at the highway bull to give them confidence while our larger customers, you know, they typically have a capex cycle and they, you know, apply that as they see fit. David, I will say there's a difference maybe of three, four weeks this year compared to But the development and orders here in June and July, gives us confidence that they still demand out there. We have a good pipeline. And, you know, when we talk to customers, there's still a lot of work out there.

Right. Okay. And as a follow up, I guess, you know, you made passing reference to the spike in energy prices and some of the cost inflation that's in the market today. I just was wondering if you could talk about the infrastructure solutions results this quarter, which, you know, didn't really show much operating leverage and you kind of explained that or Brian did with regard to the mix and the asphalt plants versus mobile concrete plants but to what extent was that lack of operating leverage maybe a function of price cost pressures and if so, you know, how does that play out from a cadence standpoint over the second half.

a little bit of a mix difference compared to prior year. We saw a little bit of a slower, lower parts mix and we did see a little bit a little bit of margin pressure on parts. But, you know, David, we don't see that to be the norm. We feel that the team is putting the right actions in place to drive that higher. You know last year Q2 obviously was a very strong quarter for the ISP and our visibility into H2 and H3 And into early part of next year, you know, we feel the pricing action that we've taken will hopefully drive that, you know, back to the margins we've seen last year.

Got it. Okay, thank you very much and good luck. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Farazani with Sidoti. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Morning, Jaco, Brian. Jaco, I do have to follow up some of the previous questions because I'm trying to think about what your what your guide does your guidance now assume we're just going to get the one year extension because that seems to have developed much more recently and then have you gone back and looked at asphalt plant demand when we get into this, you know, extension cycle like we did in 2009? And what's the downside risk, do you think, from that, given a Congress that appears to be relatively dysfunctional?.

Yes, so just on the bull, Steve, we're obviously very close to our trade associations there and we're very active in those conversations. I will say, unfortunately, the delay in the bull is not necessarily because of this bull, it's because of other priorities. That's that's overshadowed this. So we did get an indication that they will be a probably continued resolution. until the end of the year and then hopefully either a new bowl introduced or further resolution. If you look at the historical periods around the infrastructure bill, I mean, basically since the 50s, we've always had a bill. Now, there was a couple of years where we saw a slowdown in in orders due to that one year extension. Steve, looking at our bookings here the last two months, been very strong. We have a very active pipeline. Our parts booking is very strong. So at this point in time, I mean, there's no indication that we have that, you know, we're going to see a slowdown here. There's a lot of work to be done. We all know the state of our country's roads. So at this point in time, we have no indicators to give us a view that this will cause a slowdown.

Great. That's very helpful. And then clearly, I mean, we can look at the numbers, look at what was actually very strong IS revenue, just on the lower margin, and that's clearly mixed with the lower asphalt plant deliveries. But that clearly indicates outside of that, some of your other IS product lines have to be doing quite well. Can you talk a little bit about what's driving that and how much of that's driven by new product innovation, all the new ones you've come out with, or just gaining share?.