Zebra Technologies Corporation ($ZBRA)

All right. So continuing on with Day 3 of our conference. Up next, we have Zebra Technologies. Very pleased to have the CFO, Nathan Winters.

Great. It's great to be here.

Thanks for joining us. So Nathan, maybe just start on kind of state of the union in terms of demand, where do you see demand tracking? You guided to 5% organic growth at the midpoint for 2026.

Yes. So I think, again, off to a great start to the year. We saw broad-based demand across our regional markets across different verticals as well as both our product segments. So -- with the strong start to the year, the visibility we had here in the second quarter, we raised our guide a point, as you said, 5% at the midpoint. We can talk more about it. But I think, again, we feel great about the start to the year. We have line of sight to the memory we need. I know we'll talk about that in a little bit to achieve the midpoint of our guidance and really look at the high end of our guidance range around where we see unconstrained demand in the market. And so really is now just working through some of the memory capacity to get there through the balance of the year. But again, the broad-based strength and particularly the strength in manufacturing drove a bit of the upside here in the first quarter, which was great to see.

So as you think about kind of the puts and takes, what do you see as the biggest factors that could drive you to the high end versus the end of the range for the year?

Yes. So really the -- I mean today, the mitigating for the limiting factor is memory supply. We feel, again, -- the good thing is all of our memory suppliers delivered on their commitment for the first quarter. They're delivering on what they said they'd deliver here in the second quarter. We have no reason to believe we'll get any less demand or less capacity or supply through the back half of the year. . But clearly, it's not enough to us to achieve where we see some of the underlying market momentum that gets us to the high end of the range. The team's got a lot of actions in place to increase supply in the back half of the year in terms of second and third supply choice opportunities redesigned on to where some of the incremental capacity is coming online later this year and into next. So there's definitely options and actions to take to get to the high end of the range, particularly on the supply side. We just didn't think it was appropriate at this time to bake that into the guidance and wait to see how that plays out here as we go through the year. But I think outside of that, the strength in manufacturing, where we saw double-digit growth from that from our machine vision business, strength again, that drives a lot of volume in our print and supplies business and scanning, which again helped on the margin profile. I think -- and that's been great to see because that was one of the vertical markets that was lagging throughout last year. So the strength of manufacturing Again, we feel like it's getting some nice momentum to help underline the increase in the guidance.

As we think about kind of the cadence throughout the year on top line, kind of implying modest sequential increases -- are there any particular verticals or geographies where you expect that kind of sequential development to be more or less pronounced?

Pretty consistent across. I mean if you look at it by region, North America again, in line with the overall growth rate for the year. I think EMEA has been remarkably resilient despite everything that's going on. So we see good, resilient demand. And then we've seen great growth from Asia Pacific and Latin America. . Again, we mentioned manufacturing strength. Retail and e-commerce continues to grow with the demand for higher e-commerce growth the ability to drive that omnichannel experience for the consumer and our products help deliver that for our customers, particularly when we think about the new AI-enabled devices and what they can do from a consumer experience, I think, is really exciting and what our customers are continuing to invest in.

Okay. And maybe in terms of the refresh cycle, -- so you mentioned on the call that you expect refresh activity in 2026 to be similar to 2025 levels. Just curious where we are in the refresh cycle by vertical?

Yes. So refresh activity is a great long-term opportunity for us. I mean given our market leadership, the size and growing installed base, that's something we believe we can continue to monetize over time. And you really have to think about it between all customers and verticals are a bit different. I think front of store retail, I'd say is there's no longer a cycle. It's just every quarter, every year, we have different customers who are refreshing their portfolio, just going back to Q4 '24. So that's kind of in the baseline. Again, everyone is on a little bit of a different cycle what's really different from where we were, call it, pre -- going back to 2019 is that think about it from a T&L, really last mile delivery. The last mile delivery refresh and really upgrade the entire portfolio in the '21, '22 time frame. Those devices tend to last longer. That's our TC7 portfolio, which are kind of the super rugged. They tend to run less applications. We're in the front of store retail story, you can be running 60 different applications on those mobile computers. So this the need for more compute power processing memory is a bit more intense. But on that last mile delivery, again, huge opportunity. It's very active right now in terms of RFPs, request for quote, proof-of-concepts, piloting different types, piling our new technology -- we announced the win from an AI perspective around picture proof of delivery. So again, the ability to take a picture at your doorstep that an agent and on the back end confirmed that it was delivered store that image and make sure it's a proper image so that if there's a claim that it wasn't delivered, they have a good quality picture of that package at your doorstep for that proof, which can save tens of millions of dollars that's a real differentiator than where we were at a couple of years ago. So that activity has absolutely accelerated over the last 6 to 9 months, and it gives us that confidence as we go into 27 and 28 around that step change in growth that can really be driven from that T&L refresh.

Maybe along that line, your long-term growth algorithm is 5% to 7%. If we think about it versus 2019 levels, you've been kind of running a little bit below trend. You talked about the potential for a refresh to accelerate growth in 2017. How do you think about the potential for that growth acceleration relative to the long-term algorithm?

Yes. Look, I take one, we feel very confident in the long-term growth algorithm. I think any -- going back to 2019, the last whatever it was now 6, 7 years, has been anything but a normal cycle between COVID and coming out of that. But if you include this year, we'll now have 3 years in a row of growing above within that 5% to 7% range. The -- the refresh opportunity in T&L is absolutely a driver that can get us to the higher end of that range here as we go over the next couple of years. So we're excited about that. But we're also excellent with the rest of the portfolio can bring. I mean, again, you seeing the need for visibility, real-time visibility across the supply chain, whether that's using machine vision, RFID or more just scans with kind of our traditional portfolio. continually increasing and providing new opportunities for the company as well as, again, having the capability in the hands of frontline workers, so more technology in the hands of frontline workers to provide that better consumer experience, provide more efficiency as a continuing trend that we think, again, continues to drive the underlying growth of the business.

Okay. Great. And then maybe switching back to the memory topic. So you sound pretty confident on being able to secure the memory supply I think you said on the call, a consistent level of memory supply in the second half of the year, expected versus in the first half. But maybe just talk about the inflationary side of things. How do you see that kind of playing out throughout the year?

Yes. So from an input cost, again, it was playing out as from a trajectory perspective, as we laid out in our original guidance back in February. So we had planned for price increases, input cost increase -- those are in line with what we had modeled out at the beginning of the year. Some memory types, some suppliers are higher and lower than in aggregate, it's played out as expected. And look, I think we look at it and say if that changes, we'll make sure be the first to be transparent around that. We'll raise price, if necessary, to continue to mitigate that exposure as we move forward. And then our own price increase, we announced that back in March, it went into effect at the end of March, but we were really pricing deals with the higher price going back into early February. And I think we haven't seen any change in demand -- a fundamental change in demand from that price increase. Customers aren't coming back, changing project timing or putting projects on hold because of that. And again, back to what I was saying before, there's some real significant value that can be created with the newer technology in our mobile computing platform that it will have a nominal impact on that ROI, but it's still a positive net ROI from some of the value you can get even at a 10%, 15% higher price. And then we're not alone in that. Our competitors raise price -- they're obviously seeing that across other type of electronics that they're seeing. So again, this isn't us alone in the market driving that price increase. So again, we haven't seen any change in underlying demand from it. obviously, we've built the higher price increase into our guidance in the back half of the year. So it's driving about 1 point of increased volume -- or point of increased revenue for the year. And look, we'll -- as a market leader, we have the ability to adapt. And if we need to raise prices further to further mitigate memory, we will. If we need to pull that back as we start to see impact on demand, we can make that decision here as we go throughout the year.

And to be clear, I think you also kind of implicitly embedded kind of a 1 point headwind from lower volume that would kind of offset that 1.8, right?

That's purely driven by capacity. Again, if you think about the guidance framework we had -- the high end of our guidance range is underlying -- what we see as underlying demand, both from the pipeline of opportunities, what our sales teams are seeing from our customers. Even if you look at historical sequential improvement from first half to second half, would point you more close -- ploy towards the high end of our guidance range. So the real cap is around, again, supply assumption. And again, not that we don't have opportunities and actually we're doing to drive that incremental to volume. But again, we just felt that it wasn't appropriate at this time so that as we set out a baseline guide for the year.

Okay. And then maybe switching gears to the tariff side of things and supply chain. I think 2025, you had about a low $20 million gross profit headwind from tariffs. Where do we stand this year? What's kind of the state of the union on tariffs? .

Yes. So tariffs somewhat flip. So now from a year-on-year perspective, it's a $20 million tailwind. So we fully mitigated the tariff impact as we exited last year between the price increases, production moves, I think the team has done a great job. I mean even going back on the member I mean it's not -- it's a muscle that we built up going back to the first round of tariffs to semiconductor shortages, some of the freight challenges a few years ago. And now we feel like we have -- we've moved 80% of our North American volume used to come out of China. That's now less than 20%. So obviously, there's a direct tariff benefit, but also I'd just say from a -- we feel really good about the resiliency of the supply chain we have in place today, the diversification across different geographies to mitigate whether it's tariffs, geopolitical, natural whatever it might be, it's really around having both a resilient and efficient supply chain that we have. And again, tariffs are 1 of the many factors helping us offset the memory cost headwind this year from a year-on-year perspective because of the actions we took last year.

Okay. And then as we think about the -- going back to the long-term algorithm, the 5% to 7%, there's a lot of kind of moving pieces with AI and some of those impacts -- it sounds like you're still kind of confident in that range. As we think about the moving pieces, I think you previously said 4% to 5% in the core. And then the expansion of the adjacent categories high singles to low doubles to us. Is that still the right way to think about it in terms of the components there?

Yes, it is. Again, we look at we think whether it's -- again, our business is the history of Zebra is around driving productivity, driving efficiency for our customers Whatever the technology was over the past 50 years and AI is just the next evolution of that. And so we think it's, again, an opportunity for us to be the to provide that incremental value, be the AI provider for the front line that makes us unique and different than many others that are out there in the marketplace. But you go back to that core business kind of growing 4% to 5% is the foundation augmenting that with RFID machine vision, AI-enabled software you throw on the refresh opportunity we have around frontline delivery that kind of gets us into that high end of the range here as you go over the next several years. So again, we feel good about the overall algorithm and how we can continue to complement the core business with our new markets.

And in terms of what you've seen so far from the AI impact, have you seen any evidence that for some customers that could be kind of shortening the refresh cycle?

I think it just so happens that the technology and the applications there are coinciding with many customers need to refresh. But absolutely, I mean if you go back to some of the first refreshes we had post-COVID in the retail front of store retail were the retailers who are really at the forefront around technology in their stores and they move to the next-generation mobile computer, so they can take advantage of those capabilities and they needed additional speed and capacity. So it's absolutely a driver for maybe not I don't know if it's early or the need to or why they wouldn't extend any further. And so again, that last mile delivery example of in order to do that picture proof of delivery that they're excited about, they need the next-generation mobile computer. So they need to refresh and drive that refresh in order to take advantage of the opportunity to have. So the 2 are going coincide hand in hand.

As we think about your leveraging of AI, I mean you guys have showcased for a couple of years, at least like the trade shows, NRF for example, of how you guys are using AI internally. Should we think about that more as like a monetization opportunity or is that more of like a way to kind of increase customer stickiness?

Yes. So we think about opportunity we have for AI in the market, kind of multifaceted. And I'll end with the point you brought up. I think if you go back to -- the core of our business is driving real-time visibility to assets across the supply chain, feeding that data back into AI models for our customers to provide better insights is foundational to what we do. . Our AI-empowered mobile computers, again, kind of completing the circle of then how do you get that intelligence back to the front line. Again, that's what our portfolio is set up to do in terms of making those frontline workers more productive and more efficient by having those capabilities. And we've augmented that with -- and somewhat is to prove out the value to some of our customers are going to do this on their own, build those models and agents. Some are going to have an ISV or a partner do it and some may use our capabilities. But we've tiered our AI suite to think of an enabler is -- which comes with any mobile computer now of APIs specific APIs that help generate a better workflow, better AI experience. So this could be the capability of optical character recognition from the device -- this could be the camera, again, dialed in to be able to -- that's built for taking that image of a door in a package in that environment. The blueprint is a combination of enablers. So packaging those together so we can monetize that in an offering to our customers, and that's what the picture proof of delivery is. So it's, again, multiple enablers packaged together to provide that experience and that improve that workflow to our companion, which is think of a full-blown agent where -- and it could be more tied to that frontline worker in a retail store that's they're being asked what wine should I buy, and we didn't this at the last NRF. Again, any of us could ask any agent, that's not the secret. But it's partnering in that with their proprietary information so that it's this wine at this price point that's on the shelf and on that shelf location, so you can provide that comprehensive experience if you're a brand-new store associate who may not know much about wine. -- you can ask and provide that real experience right there at their fingertips. And I think that's, again, what the power of AI can bring to our frontline customers. we can help them part of that journey. Again, whether that's helping them be do it themselves because they that they want to control that by having those easy interfaces to building out the full-blown agent for them.

As we think about kind of bigger picture, longer term, kind of the path towards a more fully autonomous warehouse over time what does that look like for Zebra? What kind of impact do you think that can have on the growth profile of the business?

Yes. If we look at a couple of different ways. One, the journey to fully automating a warehouse is absolutely an opportunity for us as a company. I mean, that is what we do is drive solutions that provide productivity. Again, whether that's in our core business of having mobile technology in the hands of those frontline workers to RFID, machine vision, -- and I think what's important in context, people tend to look at that as a negative for the company is, one, about 10% to 15% of our business is mobile computers in the warehouse, right? So if that's kind of the worst-case scenario, but that doesn't even contemplate the opportunities along the way because any 1 of those systems need vision, right, whether that's our machine vision capabilities to see the packages -- scan those packages along the Photo neo, which we added, which we talk about added 3D machine vision capabilities. So they do a lot of vision-guided robotics. So as they're going into pick the eyes for those systems are photoneo cameras, look, we think there's -- again, back to the original, it's only 25% of the warehouses across the globe are use automation. And so if you're a warehouse that is still today having to manually do cycle counts every week by week, once a month to even know what you have to go pick. You're a long ways away before putting in fully autonomous warehouse. And so how do you go from there to win into the spectrum to the other is our technology, right? And I think we can help provide the spectrum of that irregardless of where you are on that journey.

Maybe we'll pause there and see if there's any questions from the audience. Yes. Let's see if we have a mic that we can -- 2 related questions. You have a competitor who's spinning off a business that competes with you. And so the 2 related questions are: one, -- is that driving any change in personnel? Are you picking up people that are maybe looking for a new home -- so that would be the first part. And then secondly, what are your customers saying about that transaction and any potential change in customer motivation around it. .

I'd say on both fronts, we haven't seen a meaningful change, right? I mean there's not been meaningful changes in force that would cause, I think, from a people perspective, -- and then I think the competitive dynamic hasn't changed. I mean, that transaction won't be complete until later this year. And I think throughout the process, they continue to be active in the market, competitive in the market, and we've stayed just focused on what we always have been, which is win and show our advantage in both the portfolio and the strength of the portfolio and the long-term relationship and commitment we have to the business. And I don't see those changing here in the near future because of the transaction.

Any other questions? Now, we can keep going. Maybe in terms of margins, for the year, at the midpoint, you're guiding about 80 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion I know you have that 1 point headwind from the memory inflation. Just maybe walk us through that dynamic of how the margins progress throughout the year?

Yes. Look, I think we feel great about where we are from a margin perspective, and I'd love to not have the memory headwind, but I think we've put ourselves in a position to manage it through the year. Q1, we had ended at a little over 23% EBITDA rate. We had 50% gross margin for the first time in at least a decade since the Enterprise transaction. So I think that just shows the underlying strength of the business. . And then as we step through the year, we guided 22% EBITDA rate for the year. That includes 2 points of gross headwind from higher memory costs, -- we're offsetting a point of that with our own price increase that ramps up through the year, ramps through the year. And another point which is call it other operational benefits, some of the restructuring actions, the tariff -- rollover of tariff that I mentioned. And I think you saw that strength in with the 23% rate in the first quarter. So again, we feel good about the mix of the price increases we took to offset memory, the underlying strength of the business and the other actions we've taken to offset the other half of the memory exposure. So if you kind of think about the EBITDA rate through the balance of the year. Q1 to Q2 is a step down of 2 points from '23 to '21, almost entirely driven by the step change in memory pricing. And then if you go through the balance of the year, we expect margin rates to step back up, at least at an EBITDA rate as our price increases start to flow through the P&L, along with some of the incremental restructuring actions the benefit of tariff from a year-on-year perspective as well as just some normal seasonality we have in our OpEx and cost structure. So I think the combination of all that gives us the confidence that the marginal step up in back half EBITDA rate from where we are in Q2 is not a big hurdle and that we got a lot of levers we can pull as we go through the year if we need to adjust based on whether memory pricing were at or other inflation pressures as we go.

Okay. Right. Because it seems like you're implying that the Q4 margins are going to be exiting the year lower than where you actually were in Q3, even though by the -- or sorry, in Q1, despite the fact that your memory offsets are going to be greater in Q4, your revenue should be higher than it was versus Q1. So -- is that kind of 1 of the areas of conservatism that you think you would point to there? .

Yes. Look, I think if you look at -- let me say a little bit differently, we guided 22% at the beginning of the year for the rate for the year. We maintain that overall 22% rate here in the -- in our most latest guidance despite the beat in Q1 both on revenue and margin dollars and despite having higher volume, which you would think comes with -- typically comes at a higher -- and I'd say some of that was just derisking the back half, right, not for any other reason other than give ourselves a little bit of cushion given everything that's going on from -- in the back half of the year. So I think that's a different way of saying. Yes, a little bit more conservative on the rate. If you kind of step through those changes, it would have implied a little bit -- a slightly higher rate for the year, but I just didn't think it was appropriate at this time and give ourselves a little bit of cushion here as we go.

So maybe in terms of capital allocation. So you're at around 2 turns of net leverage currently. How do you think about capital allocation going forward? Where does the pendulum stand between buybacks versus M&A?

Yes, like I said, our debt leverage is at too very comfortable at that level, I think, between the capital structure, the free cash flow profile gives us a lot of flexibility to continue to invest in the business organically, continue to be active in the market from a share repurchase perspective or if an M&A opportunity comes along to engage there as well. And again, post the Elo acquisition and completing that in the early part of the fourth quarter, we've put our work into share buyback. We did $300 million in Q4, $300 million in the first quarter, $200 million in April. . So we've -- again, we thought where the price is at, we think it's an attractive opportunity for repurchase and to buy into the market. So -- and then we guided -- as part of our guide for the remainder of the year, we assumed another $100 million of share repurchase as part of our EPS guidance. But can absolutely go to 100% free cash flow, which imply another $300 million on top of that here as we go through the year, particularly if we stay kind of at these attractive price levels.

Okay. So fair to say the pendulum kind of skews a little bit more towards the buyback side of the things.

Absolutely. I think given where the price is at, but again, we have the capital structure there's -- I think we can be more active from a debt perspective if we need to if an attractive opportunity comes along from an M&A perspective. But look, there's no reason to wait for that given the opportunity we have here in the short term with our own stock. .

As you think about the pipeline, is that more bolt-on type of deals? Or like what does an ideal M&A deal look for you guys going forward? .

Yes. We want really focused around assets that are complementary to the portfolio we have today near adjacent, give us scale in the businesses that we're already existing in today. We think both Eland Photon kind of fit that profile, right, Photon bolt-on technology to our machine vision business, Elo a scale business that's complementary to our connected frontline portfolio. that was immediately accretive and an opportunity to drive significant synergies as we integrate that business. So we think those are good profiles of companies we'd like to add to the portfolio. And again, it's just finding the right asset at the right price that meets all the financial hurdles, but there's -- we don't think there's a -- we like the portfolio we have today. The primary focus is around driving organic growth and if we can find an asset that complements it and augments the growth, that's great.

I guess we'll pause there again, see if there's any audience questions.

Nathan, outside of memory. Any other see out there, number one? And then secondly, -- what's the pipeline of projects, warehouse development, et cetera, projects you're seeing back half of this year 2027?

Yes. I think in terms of risk, I mean, obviously, we have an eye on all other inflationary items, whether that's oil from a transportation logistics perspective. which we see as a marginal headwind that we baked in -- baked into our last guidance. I think it's on a relatively small basis. We can manage through that at this point in time. So that's the one we're paying attention to paying attention to do just from a broader conflict, more just changes in logistics and managing through kind of -- as the geopolitical conflicts kind of just caused more disruption in the short term of how to move things around the world. But the team has, I think, done a great job of managing through those. Look, I think from a warehouse, it's interesting. You still look at the underlying -- I think warehouse growth is exposed to grow 7% this year in terms of new warehouse capacity. Number of employees in the warehouse are expected to grow year-on-year. So we look at -- and then we look at our own portfolio, even with all the automation over the last 5 years, the need for more warehouses, more people to fill those warehouses is still growing. Our installed base has grown over that time frame. So again, I think you look back and say the automation is just required to keep up with demand, right? And so I think that's where we think about kind of the excitement around the need for productivity, automation, using AI are all -- again, technologies that are required just to meet the underlying demand of those kind of across the segment, and we can play across that spectrum and help our customers meet those needs and how they embed it, how they think about those and where to incorporate into those workflows because we're deeply embedded in it, right? I think that gives us a position of strength across any one of those is to help our customers calibrate how to use it and use those technologies even I talk about RFID is one that some of the new use cases around RFID weren't even contemplated a year, 1.5 years ago, right? Think of fresh food and putting an RFID tag on a loaf of bread that's baked fresh in the back of a grocery. I mean -- and -- but then you look at it and say the unit economics of the spoilage and the amount of money that's wasted around spoilage of that and what RFID enables them to, just with this quick scan, know exactly the age, where it's at in terms of its life cycle and how to promote it in a way that is sold versus thrown away or how much you really need to produce. And by the way, that's a great opportunity for us because we print that label in the back using the chip and the inlay. So we'll print it and then we're the leader in RFID readers, readers, whether that's fixed or mobile. And then you think about how that even expands to now mobile computers being -- have embedded RFID. So again, is this pretty exciting in terms of where these different use cases are opening up new opportunities that people weren't thinking about a couple of years ago. And I think that's the excitement you see across the spectrum that both things like RFID, AI are enabling for our customers and then we can help them on that journey.

I think we're out of time. So we'll draw the line there. Thanks for joining us, Nate.

Yes. Appreciate it. Thank you all. Appreciate it.