Gates Industrial Corporation Ltd. (GTES) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Gates Industrial Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Rich Kwas. Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Greetings, and thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2026 earnings call. I'll briefly cover our non-GAAP and forward-looking language before passing the call over to our CEO, Ivo Jurek, who will be followed by Brooks Mallard, our CFO. Before the market opened today, we published our second quarter 2026 results. A copy of the release is available on our website at investors.gates.com. Our call this morning is being webcast and is accompanied by a slide presentation. On this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and the slide presentation, each of which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Please refer now to Slide 2 of the presentation, which provides a reminder that our remarks will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we've described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in other filings we make with the SEC, including our Q2 quarterly report on Form 10-Q that is expected to be filed later today. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. This quarter, we will be attending the Jefferies Industrial Conference and the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference both in September and look forward to meeting with many of you. Before we start, please note all comparisons are against the prior year period unless stated otherwise. And with that out of the way, I will turn it over to Ivo.

Thank you, Rich. In the second quarter, we delivered strong performance as sales came in near the high end of our guidance supported by incrementally constructive industrial end markets and contributions from our strategic growth initiatives. Sales grew approximately 7% and with core revenue growth of 4.9%, which enabled us to achieve record quarterly sales and adjusted earnings per share. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was above expectations, led by solid improvement in our adjusted gross margin. Importantly, we believe that we are in a good position to achieve our second half adjusted EBITDA margin target outlined earlier this year. Core growth in our industrial channels was up nicely, led by double-digit growth in industrial OEM with strength building as we exited the quarter. Broadly speaking, we generated year-over-year growth in most of our end markets during the second quarter, and book-to-bill remained above 1. Given our solid second quarter financial results and the favorable shift in demand trends, we observed exiting the quarter. We have raised our 2026 full year guidance for core sales growth and profitability. Our updated guidance implies incrementally better performance or second half of the year relative to our initial expectations. We believe we are also on track to deliver adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.5% or higher in the second half of 2026. Brooks will provide more details on guidance later in the presentation. Please turn to Slide 4. Our second quarter sales were $942 million, which represented record quarterly sales for Gates. Total sales expanded 6.6% inclusive of foreign currency benefits. Core sales grew 4.9%. The underlying demand continued to improve with year-over-year growth strengthening during the second half of the quarter. We saw momentum across most of the portfolio, highlighted by approximately 25% growth in personal motility and 20% plus growth in commercial on highway. Industrial OEM sales expanded low double digits and our industrial aftermarket saw improved demand trends which resulted in mid-single-digit growth. In general, the bulk of our end markets have begun to inflect positively, and we are in a strong position to capitalize on the building and market momentum. Adjusted EBITDA was approximately $211 million and represented an adjusted EBITDA margin of 22.5%, modestly better than expectations. Adjusted gross margin increased by 50 basis points, while we continue to make targeted investments to support our enterprise initiatives. Adjusted earnings per share increased 13% to a quarterly record of $0.44. The growth was driven by improved operating performance and other items. On Slide 5, we will review our segment highlights. In the Power Transmission segment, sales were $589 million, and translated to over 5% core growth. The expansion was led by high single-digit growth in our industrial end markets, which was driven by mid-teens growth in the industrial OEM channel globally. Our transmission industrial aftermarket increased mid-single digits and supported by double-digit growth in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Automotive aftermarket grew high single digits, with solid growth achieved across all geographies. At the end market level, Personal Mobility grew in the mid-20s and commercial on-highway increased similarly. Segment adjusted EBITDA margin increased 60 basis points. In the Fluid Power segment, sales were $353 million, and increased 4.2% on a core basis. Similar to Power Transmission, industrial OEM sales were strong, growing double digits. Industrial aftermarket increased low single digits. Fluid Power strongest end markets for commercial on-highway, which increased high teens and construction which grew mid-single digits. Of note, diversified industrial grew mid-single digits and represented a good contributor to the segment's growth given its relative size within the segment. We continue to grow our data center business, which expanded more than 2x versus the prior year quarter, and we anticipate sales contribution to step up in the second half as certain high-value project launches occur. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the Fluid Power segment decreased 120 basis points, primarily due to footprint realignment costs as well as targeted investments into our enterprise initiatives. I will now turn the call over to Brooks for additional comments on our results. .

Thank you, Ivo. I'll begin on Slide 6 and review our core sales performance by region. All 3 regions had positive core growth during the second quarter. Americas grew 1.5% with low single-digit growth in North America, more than offsetting a decrease in South America, which was primarily driven by soft agricultural demand. In North America, industrial OEM sales were up mid-single digits, fueled by solid growth in commercial on-highway. North American automotive aftermarket grew high single digits, Importantly, overall North America sales momentum grew as the quarter progressed with an exit rate in the mid-single-digit range. In EMEA, core sales grew 6.4% led by double-digit growth in the industrial channels and many industrial end markets. Industrial OEM sales increased at a mid-teens level and industrial aftermarket grew in the double digits. At the end market level, commercial on-highway, diversified industrial and personal mobility drove the strong growth in EMEA in the second quarter. APAC growth accelerated in the second quarter, increasing 11.5% with China and East Asia and India delivering comparable growth led by strong double-digit growth across several industrial end markets. On Slide 7, we show the primary drivers of our double-digit growth in adjusted earnings per share. Underlying operational performance and favorable foreign exchange combined to contribute $0.02 per share. A lower tax rate, share count, interest and other represented $0.03 of adjusted earnings per share contribution. Slide 8 offers an overview of our cash flow performance and balance sheet metrics for the second quarter. Our free cash flow was approximately $60 million and trailing 12 months free cash flow to adjusted net income came in at 94%, which is above our historical average. Our net leverage ratio declined to 1.8x, which was a 0.4x improvement compared to the prior year period. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately $22 million of our stock. Our trailing 12-month return on invested capital was 21.6% up 30 basis points. We continue to fund high-return projects that we believe will improve our growth and profitability over the midterm. On Slide 9, let's discuss our updated 2026 outlook. We are increasing our guidance for core sales growth, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share. We anticipate our full year core sales growth to be in the range of 2.5% to 4.5%, representing a 100 basis point increase at the midpoint. We expect our full year adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $800 million to $830 million, which is a $10 million increase at the midpoint. Our full year adjusted earnings per share range is $1.62 to $1.70, a $0.06 increase relative to our prior guidance midpoint. Our guidance for capital expenditures and free cash flow conversion is unchanged. For the third quarter, we estimate total revenues to be in the range of $880 million to $920 million and core revenues to be up approximately 5.5% at the midpoint. We anticipate our adjusted EBITDA margin to increase in a range of 50 basis points to 90 basis points compared to the third quarter of 2025. I will now turn the call back to Ivo for summary remarks.

I'll summarize our thoughts and views on Slide 10. First, we've generated strong top line growth in the second quarter, and we believe that we have entered the early stages of an industrial recovery. Industrial OEM schedules are generally improving with some end markets further down the recovery curve and industrial distributor orders are solid. We are well positioned to generate attractive growth and margin expansion as the cycle evolves. As such, we anticipate producing incrementally stronger core growth in the second half of 2026 relative to our second quarter performance. Our updated 2026 guidance implies 6% core sales growth year-over-year in the second half, representing a significant uptick from approximately 1% core sales growth realized in the first half of the year. Second, we are delivering on our commitment to our investors and shareholders. Our first half adjusted EBITDA margin outperformed the initial guidance we outlined on our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call in February. More importantly, we are on track to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 23.5% in the second half of this year, putting us on a good path to achieve a midterm margin target outlined in 2024. With the industrial markets turning positive, we intend to deliver attractive incremental adjusted EBITDA margins through the cycle. Third, we are highly focused on accelerating our top line growth and delivering above-average shareholder returns. The strategy we deployed a few years back is yielding results. Our focus on improved operational performance has resulted in significant improvement in gross margins, and we are approaching our midterm adjusted EBITDA margin target. We believe our investments in strategic initiatives support future sales outgrow in excess of market growth rates. In our view, our strong second quarter execution and the clear inflection in our underlying end market demand trends provide a solid backdrop to deliver differentiated performance. Our balance sheet is strong. We have significant optionality to deploy capital and will be judicious and responsible. We are broadly excited about the opportunity ahead and anticipate generating significant value for our shareholders. Before taking your questions, I want to thank the 13,000 global Gates associates with their dedication and perseverance in meeting our customers' needs. With that, I will now turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Steve Volkmann from Jefferies.

Can we just unpack the -- it seems like we're sort of on plan here. We're getting past some of these margin headwinds as we expected. As we think about the second half margin -- how much of the improvement is kind of these temporary headwinds going away versus the better organic growth fall through. And I guess what I'm really trying to get at is as all the dust settles, how should we think about incrementals sort of on a more medium-term basis within the kind of adjusted cost structure, et cetera?

So I would say we're seeing the results of our footprint optimization, our restructuring, our cost optimization, that's all starting to come through. And as you said, as the headwinds go away, the core growth improves -- we expect to continue to improve margins, as we said, in the second half. If you think about the incrementals for Q3, we're implementing pricing to offset some of the oil-related cost increases, and that's going to cause a slight bit of dilution in Q3 are incremental. So we expect them to be in the 35% to 40% range. We expect those to then move back to 45% plus as we move into Q4. And then for the first half of next year, we expect that trend to continue as the footprint optimization and the cost optimization work that we've done rolls through. And then after that, we'll update you at the end of the year on our full 2027 guide, but that's how to think about it over the next kind of 12 months or 4 quarters.

Great. Very helpful. And then just a follow-up. I was kind of surprised by EMEA, up 6.4%. That seems pretty healthy given what we're hearing from a lot of folks in that region. Just anything to call out relative to that growth?

Yes. Look, I mean, I think we have seen a pretty reasonably broad strength across our end market exposure. We are well diversified, and we have put the company on a trajectory to continue to deliver that growth. So the end markets that are performing quite well. Obviously, in EMEA, our automotive aftermarket, actually, the industrial -- diversified industrial expanded very, very nicely and highly expanded very nicely as well as personal mobility. So we feel pretty well about how our business is performing in Europe.

Our next question comes from Mike Halloran from Baird.

So it sounds like you guys are pretty constructive on the trajectory of your demand curve right now. Ivo, maybe put this in context of history. When you guys have organizationally seen this type of thing before, what does that mean? Put it in context, it's been a bit since you see -- it seems like you've seen this kind of momentum -- and so trying to get a sense of pervasiveness to the portfolio and then what it can mean for the organization if this has legs and it seems to be that you think it does have rights.

Yes. Thanks, Mike. There's a lot to unpack. Now obviously, when we look backwards and we see some of the market recoveries from a historical perspective, you should anticipate a reasonably solid acceleration for kind of the first 4 to 6 quarters. So the recovery. We have seen a nice extension in PMI. So obviously, that's no secret to anybody else. And what we are seeing is reasonably broad-based recovery and support across the exposure that we have in the end market. Now obviously, not everything is in solid shape yet, agriculture as an example, is still in bottoming out and troughing conditions today. But we should see a very constructive demand. And look, that's reflected in our second half guidance. We are stepping up our forecast for core growth rather substantially year-over-year. And we certainly believe that it's just the beginning of what we should see. Now let me remind you, we have also done lots of work internally on self-help. So we've developed nice exposure to some secular end markets that we believe will continue to deliver incremental performance on the top of the end market support that we anticipate. And as I said on during my prepared remarks, we feel very constructive about where the company sits presently, and we are in a very good shape.

And then maybe some thoughts on pricing, price cost environment and how that's being managed and how you think about it moving into the second half of the year.

Yes. So we've -- we've implemented price increases to offset what we've seen from an oil and petroleum materials base increase. And so we feel good. We've got pricing in place, as I said earlier, it's a little bit dilutive to our incrementals as all the pricing gets in place for Q3, and then it will be fully in place for -- and it's impactful, but it's not really that big of a deal when you kind of look at some of the stuff that's happened in '22, '23, '24. So it's manageable. We've got all the pricing in place. And we feel pretty good about where we stand as we move through the back half of the year. And we expect to be at least price cost neutral in the back half of the year.

Our next question comes from Deane Dray from RBC Capital Markets.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Maybe you can put the spotlight on personal mobility and the construction on highway because you don't typically see 20% numbers like that in those verticals. I just -- what are the dynamics there? Are there any new products? Is this a catch-up? Is it an inventory sell-in higher? Just take us through that, that would be great.

Yes, sure. Thank you, Deane. I think as we spoke on our last call about the rebound in order trends in on-highway. Let me start with that, please. So as you start seeing some reports coming through very significant improvement in Class A truck orders for the industry in North America, in particular, they were up kind of a couple of hundred percent year-on-year, so very significant recovery there. The Class 5 and 7 truck orders are also trending nicely positively. So we feel that the market has definitely inflected as we anticipated. And we have been the beneficiary of that performance. On Personal Mobility side, Look, maybe a year or so ago, we have committed that Personal Mobility should deliver kind of a mid-20% to 30% core growth for next couple of years that has been driven to our effort penetration, new design wins, broadening of our product portfolio across significant a broader-based set of applications. And so you see that playing itself out. And we have not really changed our mind about delivering 25% to 30% core growth in personal mobility over the next couple of years, and we are just on point to do just that.

Great. And second question, just to be clear, I'm not expecting the next analyst meeting to be in Bermuda, but I'd love to know just some more specifics around the redomicile move -- our understanding is England Wells had some pretty onerous restrictions on your capital allocation flexibility for buybacks and dividends and so forth. We just take us through what we should know about the redomicile and what changes, if anything, that might entail being in Bermuda now? .

Well, the biggest change is we don't have to do 2 annual reports and IFRS reporting and things of that nature anymore. So it's a pretty good thing for us folks on the accounting side, it's going to make life easier. So it's going to eliminate some costs. It's going to eliminate some kind of bureaucracy that we have to do in terms of filing annual reports in the U.K. and in the U.S., having audits in the U.K. and in the U.S., things like that. And then -- and so it's going to make it a lot easier from that perspective. Ivo, do you want to do the capital allocation? .

No, look, I think that the overall governance environment is getting more complex globally. And we just felt that as a North American company North American-based company, we wanted to make sure that our shareholders have shareholder rights that are very well aligned to the ones of companies that operate in this country. And I think that we accomplished that by redomiciling in Bermuda, where the governance is very, very similar to the governance of companies that are domiciled in the U.S. So I would say that between those 2 attributes. Those were the predominant drivers. And then obviously, capital allocation flexibility with capital allocation has been another component of our thoughts. But we had a reasonable level of capital allocation flexibility being domiciled in U.K. and Wales. So I just think that it's better for our shareholders and it makes it less complex for our company to operate.

Great. That was really good to hear, and it sounds like that was a smart move.

Our next question comes from Jeff Hammond from KeyBanc Capital Markets. .

If you had given me the growth rates and to put on the map, I would have been completely wrong. That was not what I was expecting. Just on the the North America comment about going to mid-single digit. Is that just kind of timing of cycle inflection? Or would you say 2Q was still a little muted around ERP and facility consolidation versus the other geographies. And if you look to the second half map, would it look pretty balanced across the 3 geographies.

No. Thanks for the question, Jeff. I would say that North America, demand has been improving very, very nicely as the quarter progressed. And so you should almost think that we were exiting June kind of already in a mid-single-digit growth rate. And I would say that North America -- North America, in particular, was more impacted by ad, which is still weak and by automotive OEM that production output obviously has not been terrific in North America, but that has inflected by strength that we have seen in some of the other exposures like diversified industrial, personal mobility, construction and such and on-highway. Obviously, as I mentioned as an answer to Deane's question, so we feel quite well about that inflection, and we believe that that's going to continue to accelerate in the second half of the year. Certainly, all the indications are there. South America, on the other side was reasonably weak, and that's predominantly driven by the fact that we have a large exposure to agriculture end market there and that has been reasonably weak. It has had a couple of very strong years in '24 and '25, and it's in an inflection in 2016. .

Okay. Good color, Ivo. Just on the short-cycle recovery, I'm just wondering if there's any want or visibility that your distributors are doing anything in terms of wanting to restock? Or are they wanting to run lean, and this is just all sell-through?

Yes. Right now, Jeff, we just sell through. We have seen a very nice recovery with our OE customers and as we monitor our channel partners -- channel partners in general, kind of delayed 1 to 2 quarters as the recoveries take a firm hold. So I would anticipate that kind of end of -- towards the end of this year or beginning of next year, that should be very supportive for continuation of growth into '27. But presently, the channel partners are being pretty judicious and inventories are reasonably lean. They are in a good place, and we don't see any significant rebound that would be restocking driven, certainly, we haven't seen that globally yet.

Next question comes from Andy Kaplowitz from Citigroup. .

Though your outperformance in Asia has continued to be relatively significant. So maybe you can give more color there into what's going on. I think you said China and East Asia about the same growth. What do you think about the durability of the strength you're seeing? Is it sort of more of your self-help? Or is it just the markets there being pretty strong.

Look, our teams are executing extremely well in Asia, not just in China but also in East Asia and India. We have put a strategy in place to capitalize on, frankly, on the broad-based industrial activities that you see in those regions. We are well exposed to all of those -- and frankly, outside of maybe energy, which we have a very little exposure to in Asia, everything has seen really a very, very decent performance -- so I'm quite optimistic about the fortunes in Asia for our company and certainly expect that we will continue to outperform our peer set as well as the underlying end markets there.

And then Brooks, could you give us a little more color on the impact on Fluid Power margin back in Q2? I think you had cited footprint realignment costs, investments in R&D and commercial front end costs. How are those impacts trending in the second half of '26? I know you said you're confident in 70 basis points of year-over-year improvement for the company in Q3. Does Fluidpower trail power transmission a little? Like how should we think about that?

Yes. So as we said at the beginning of the year and we reiterated in our Q1 call, the footprint optimization is almost entirely around the Fluid Power business. between that and some of the investments we're making and some of the enterprise initiatives, that's what drove the second quarter margin compression. That was expected. It was embedded in our guidance. going forward, that should normalize, and we expect to see that to continue to expand kind of a long well. the company margins as we move forward. So as I said, we knew that was coming. We telegraphed it, we highlighted it, and it should be nothing to see as we move forward.

Our next question comes from Chris Snyder from Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to ask about the ERP dynamic in the first half. I think you guys called out maybe a 250, 300 basis points headwind in Q1, if I remember. I think you talked to maybe some opportunity for modest catch-up here in Q2. Just wondering if that came through and how it contributed to that 5% organic growth number, then do you guys anticipate any further catch up into the back half of the year?