Oshkosh Corporation (OSK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE: OSK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated Jan. 29, 2026

Corporate Participants:

Patrick Davidson — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

John Pfeifer — President & CEO

Matthew Field — EVP & CFO

Analysts:

Jamie Cook — Analyst

Jerry Revich — Analyst

Mircea Dobre — Analyst

Christian Zyla — Analyst

Angel Castillo — Analyst

Tim Thein — Analyst

Kyle Menges — Analyst

Steven Fisher — Analyst

Chad Dillard — Analyst

Presentation:

operator

Greetings and welcome to the Oshkosh Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results Conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press Star0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Pat Davidson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you sir. You may begin.

Patrick Davidson — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Good morning and thanks for joining us. Earlier today we published our fourth quarter 2025 results. A copy of that release is available on our website@oshkoshcorp.com Today’s call is being webcast and is accompanied by a slide presentation which includes a reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial measures that we will use during this call and is also available on our website. The audio replay and slide presentation will be available on our website for approximately 12 months. Please refer now to slide 2 of that presentation. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain statements that we believe to be 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 or implied by such forward looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we have Described in our Form 8K filed with the SEC this morning and other filings we make with the sec, as well as matters noted in our Investor Day in June 2025. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward looking statements which may not be updated until our next quarterly earnings conference call, if at all. Our presenters today are John Pfeiffer, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Field, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Please turn to slide three and I’ll turn it over to you, John.

John Pfeifer — President & CEO

Thank you Pat and good morning everyone. I want to thank our over 18,000 Oshkosh team members that work together to deliver strong results in a dynamic external environment. Before we review our fourth quarter and full year highlights, I’d like to talk about the CES show in Las Vegas earlier this month. This was the second year of showcasing our products and technologies that serve everyday heroes by making jobs safe, intuitive and productive. Our Vision for the Airport of the Future the job site of the Future and the Neighborhood of the Future incorporates robotics, autonomy, AI connectivity and electrification, which we highlighted at our booth.

In particular, visitors to our booth saw our concept for a welding robot that utilized a JLG boom lift coupled with autonomous scissor lifts, AI software and sensing technologies. This concept highlighted our strategy to shift from providing equipment that enables jobs at height to offering equipment that executes jobs autonomously. We believe this technology is also applicable for a wide range of AWP use cases. In addition, we demonstrated how a modular airport robot platform can serve multiple roles on the tarmac. To support the airport of the future, we have trialed a perimeter detection robot at airports and are optimistic about our ability to commercialize this technology in the coming years and and expand it to other applications.

Lastly, through an immersive theater experience, we demonstrated how our equipment and technology, including the autonomous jetdock modular Runway robots and IOPS software work together in any weather to deliver the perfect turn for airlines, airports and travelers. Our industry leading Technology also received third party recognition at the show, winning two Best of Innovation awards, one for JLG’s Robotics on the Job site and another for our hybrid Electric Volterra arff. We were also named as Innovation honorees for our JLG Boom lifts and our McNeilis Volterra electric refuse and Recycling Collection Vehicle. As the show was happening, we were delighted that our racetrack inspired Collision Avoidance Mitigation System, or cams, was awarded a CES PICS Award.

The PICS Award recognize and celebrate brands at the forefront of innovation, honoring standout products and creative solutions. CAMS is the first purpose built technology to anticipate collisions for fire, firefighters and others on active roadways. Following a strong response to our showing this technology at CES last year, we have been field testing the AI powered solution with fire departments in large cities over the past year and the feedback has been powerful. We are working on scaling this safety platform to support everyday heroes such as EMS crews at accident scenes, police officers managing traffic or responding to calls, and even tow truck operators assisting motorists.

The awards we received at CES as well as the resoundingly positive response we received from show attendees demonstrate how our investments in innovation are creating safer, more efficient workplaces for America’s everyday heroes. We are excited about our next generation products and are confident they will lay the foundation for long term profitable growth as we transform industries and help our customers achieve their goals. Please turn to Slide 4 for some highlights for 2025. For the year, we posted revenue of $10.4 billion, leading to adjusted operating income of just over $1 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $10.79.

As we have discussed on prior calls, the team pulled together across the company to respond to the evolving tariff landscape, effectively managing our costs and supply chain. Throughout the year, we also continued to make strategic investments and strengthened our leadership team to execute on our 2028 goals as laid out at our Investor Day in June. Please turn to Slide 5 for a discussion of Q4 highlights for the quarter. We delivered adjusted operating margin of 8.4% on revenue of $2.7 billion. This led to adjusted EPS of $2.26 in line with the guidance we provided last quarter.

Strong performance in both our Access and vocational segments led to our solid finish to the year. Turning our outlook to 2026, we see a general continuation of recent economic conditions which includes expected lower capital investments at certain of our industrial customers, notably in our access equipment and refuse businesses without an improvement expected in non residential construction in 2026. Our outlook for the year is for adjusted EPS in the range of $11. Our EPS growth compared to 2025 reflects strong performance in the vocational segment, reflecting our higher production throughput for fire trucks and the continued ramp up of our NGDV in the transport segment, partially offset by our expectation for weaker market conditions in the Access segment.

Matt will provide additional details on segment performance and our 2026 outlook later in the call. Please turn to Slide 7 for segment highlights. Our Access team managed through challenges to finish the year on a high note with fourth quarter revenue of $1.2 billion, roughly equal to last year and higher than the third quarter as we benefited from strong demand in advance of 2026 price increases. As you will hear from Matt shortly, we believe that our strong Q4 sales will have an impact on Q1 sales. Orders were strong at more than $1.7 billion, leading to a book to bill ratio of 1.5 as customers continue to move toward more traditional seasonal ordering patterns.

We are pleased with this performance and we continue to work with customers on their plans for 2026. Our backlog is $1.3 billion, which we believe is reasonable in this environment. JLG products serve many end markets in our communities, but the primary driver for demand is non residential construction. While we continue to see underlying strength supported by data centers and infrastructure, many other construction sectors remain soft and we therefore expect revenue in the first half of 2026 to be down compared to 2025. We believe that elevated fleet ages and improving economic conditions in the second half of the year will provide momentum for 2027.

As I mentioned earlier, we generated tremendous excitement with our technology and vision for the connected job site of the future at ces. Customers, analysts and attendees recognize the value of our innovations and positioning JLG to build on its market leadership we look forward to the ConExpo show in March where we’ll be announcing new products and demonstrating our boom lift with robotic end effector concept that was such a hit at CES earlier this month. Turning to slide 8 vocational delivered another quarter of growth leading to full year revenue of more than $3.7 billion up nearly 13% and a robust adjusted operating income margin of 15.8%.

Our fire apparatus business continues to lead the way with sales up about 17% for the year. We made good progress on throughput with fire truck deliveries up nearly 10% in the second half compared to a year ago. We continue to execute our plan to reduce lead times. We with expected capital investments of about $150 million to support improved throughput across our three key locations with about $70 million spent to date. The airport products business continues to grow with sales up about 13% in 2025 and we remain confident in our outlook as we see strength in both air passenger and cargo traffic over the long term.

Airports and airlines are investing in critical infrastructure and embracing technologies like those we showcased at ces. This provides outstanding opportunities for us to grow this business. Before I turn to our transport segment, I want to briefly touch on our refuse and recycling vehicle business. We’re excited about the refuse contamination detection and service verification technology that we displayed at CES which we plan to launch in the first quarter. This technology uses AI and onboard edge computing to identify 14 different types of contaminants so customers can identify contamination in their waste streams in order to reduce the amount of recyclables going to landfills.

While we have seen a moderation of near term demand, we believe in the long term growth of this business and our opportunities to bring technology to to solve customer problems. Our backlog for the vocational segment of more than $6.6 billion provides excellent visibility as we expect the segment to deliver meaningful revenue over the coming years as we improve production throughput as outlined at our Investor Day, we expect our investments in production will reduce this backlog over time as we build units to meet continued risk robust demand for our products. Please turn to Slide 9. We made significant progress on transforming our transport business in 2025.

You will recall that we changed the name of the segment to reflect the growing importance of the delivery business and the expanded opportunities we see for this segment. About six months ago, Steve Nordland joined Oshkosh as the segment president. Steve’s outstanding experience and fresh perspective are shaping both the direction of delivery as well as our defense strategy. Going forward. We continue to increase NGDV shipments during the year and are delivering in line with or ahead of USPS expectations. We surpassed the production milestone of our 5000th unit and are pleased to share that the fleet has exceeded 10 million miles driven.

NGDVs now operate in nearly all 50 states, including Alaska. Postal workers continue to praise these vehicles, which include modern safety equipment and productivity enhancements that improve their working conditions and are a significant upgrade to the decades old vehicles being replaced. On the defense side, several key contracts that we announced in 2025 will be important for 2026 as we build and ship units for programs to support the US Armed Forces. In particular, both the FMTV and the Rogue Fires programs are essential for our nation’s security and they will become more meaningful in our defense results as the year progresses.

And just a little over two weeks ago we announced a follow on order for JLTV units for the Dutch Marine Corps. We expect to begin delivering on that order towards the end of 2026. With that, I’ll hand it over to Matt to walk through our detailed financial results.

Matthew Field — EVP & CFO

Thanks, John. Please turn to Slide 10 Consolidated sales in the fourth quarter were nearly $2.7 billion, an increase of $91 million, or 3.5% from the same quarter last year, primarily due to improved pricing in the vocational segment and higher sales volume in the access segment. Adjusted operating income was $226 million, down about $20 million from the prior year, primarily due to unfavorable product mix and higher manufacturing overhead costs, partly offset by lower incentive compensation costs and higher sales volume. As a result, adjusted operating income margin of 8.4% was down 100 basis points from last year.

Adjusted earnings per share was $2.26 in the fourth quarter, resulting in full year 2025. Adjusted EPS of $10.79, slightly above the midpoint of our most recent guidance on full year 2025 sales of 10.4 billion, which was also in line with our most recent guidance during the quarter. As we said on the last call, we stepped up share repurchases to approximately 912,000 shares of our stock for 119 million, bringing our total share repurchases in 2025 to 278 million, more than double the prior year. Share repurchases during the previous 12 months benefited adjusted EPS in the quarter by $0.06 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

Free cash flow for the quarter was strong at $540 million. For the full year, free cash flow was $618 million, or 96% of net income. This was above the high end of our most recent guidance due to improved customer advances and lower capital expenditures. This is a strong proof point supporting our investor day target of cash conversion in excess of 90%. Turning to our segment results on Slide 11, the Access segment delivered fourth quarter sales of 1.2 billion up 1% over last year. Adjusted operating income margin of 8.8% reflected unfavorable price cost dynamics including about 20 million of tariffs and adverse product mix partly offset by higher sales volume.

As we expected, the impact of tariffs was largest on the Access segment during the quarter. Across all segments the impact of tariffs was approximately 25 million. In line with our prior call, we believe that the announced 2026 tariff related price increases for Access products contributed to stronger sales performance in the fourth quarter compared to our most recent guidance. Our vocational segment achieved an adjusted operating income margin of 16.2% on 922 million in sales in the quarter. Sales increased by 42 million with improved pricing partially offset by lower sales volume. Lower volume in RCVs was partially offset by improved volumes in municipal fire apparatus and airport products.

Vocational adjusted operating income increased to 150 million as a result of improved price cost dynamics partially offset by unfavorable product mix within municipal fire apparatus in the quarter. Transport segment sales increased 33 million to 567 million in the quarter. Delivery vehicle revenue grew by 130 million to 165 million and represented approximately 30% of transport segment revenue during the quarter. Delivery revenue grew 13% sequentially compared to the third quarter of 2025. As expected, defense vehicle revenue was lower compared with last year due to the wind down of the domestic JLTV program. Transport segment operating income margin was 4% up from 2.8% last year reflecting the net impact of changes in CCAS and improved pricing on new contracts partially offset by NGDV ramp up costs.

Fourth quarter operating income margin was down sequentially from the third quarter due to the non recurrence of the one time sale of the JLTV related IP license to the US government. Turning to our expectations for 2026 on slide 12, we remain on our plan to deliver strong improvements to revenue and operating margin by 2028. For next year we expect sales to be approximately 11 billion on a consolidated basis which represents growth in the mid single digits. We are estimating adjusted operating income to be a little over 1 billion and we estimate that adjusted earnings per share will improve to approximately $11.50.

Our sales outlook assumes roughly flat non residential construction activity in line with many external projections. While we expect lower sales and access, we expect to grow both sales and adjusted operating income for the vocational and transport segments. Also, it’s worth noting that we are assuming that the present tariff rates remain in place throughout the year. The rough magnitude of these tariffs is estimated at 200 million or about 160 million higher than 2025. While we expect full year results to reflect improved performance, we we anticipate that the first quarter will be the lowest quarter of the year.

As we would traditionally see from seasonal factors, we expect the strong fourth quarter 2025 customer response to pricing actions at Access will also adversely impact Q1 volumes. As a result, we believe our adjusted EPS for the first quarter could be about half of last year. Building on John’s earlier comments, we believe our second half performance will be more favorable across the segments the than in the first half for the full year. At a segment level, we are estimating Access sales to be approximately 4.2 billion with an adjusted operating margin of 10% reflective of softer market conditions in North America.

We expect to fully offset the impact of tariffs by year end. We project vocational sales will be approximately 4.2 billion, about equal to our Access segment with expectations for adjusted operating margin of approximately 17% supported by a continuation of favorable price cost dynamics and volume growth from improved production throughput. For transport, we expect sales to be approximately 2.5 billion with expectations for operating margin of approximately 4%. As we continue to transition out of past fixed price contracts and ramp up NGDV production, performance in the segment is anticipated to improve throughout the year as we grow revenue on NGDV deliveries, receive follow on NGDV orders and build units under the new FMTV contract.

Our estimate for corporate and other costs is 180 million and tax rate is approximately 24.5%. We expect to invest approximately 200 million in capex and our estimate for free cash flow is approximately $550 to $650 million or about 80% of net income. We are announcing a quarterly dividend of $0.57 per share which reflects our expectation of strong long term cash flow generation and our board’s confidence in our ability to sustain profitable growth while continuing to fund our investments in innovation and to expand US Manufacturing. We also plan to continue repurchases of shares throughout the year.

With that, I’ll turn it back over to John for some closing comments.

John Pfeifer — President & CEO

Thanks Matt. We just delivered a solid fourth quarter to complete a great year and we remain confident in our long term growth opportunities driven by our people Innovative products and strong businesses. We believe our guidance for 2026 continues to support our plans to achieve our adjusted EPS range of 18 to $22 per share by 2028. We appreciate your continued confidence in Oshkosh and look forward to answering your questions. I’ll turn it back to you, Pat, for the Q and A.

Patrick Davidson — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thanks, John. I’d like to remind everyone to please limit your questions to one plus a follow up and please stay disciplined on your follow up question. After that follow up, we ask that you rejoin the queue if you have additional questions. Operator. Please begin the Q and A session.

Questions and Answers:

operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting the question and answer session. Again, we ask that all callers limit themselves to one question and one follow up. If you have additional questions, you may request and those will be addressed time permitting. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.

One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Jamie Cook

Hi, good morning. I guess just two questions. One, John, on the access guidance or the aerial guidance for the year, I think it’s implied, down 6 or 7%. You know, relative to United Rentals who came out and I think their Capex guide was up modestly. Cats retail sales in North American construction were up double digits. So there just seems to be a disconnect between, you know what I mean, like what’s implied in your guide versus what we’re seeing from competitors or peers or customers. So just color there. Is there a. You know, I guess so color there.

And then my second question, just on the transport margins, you know, it sounds like you’re ramping as you expected. I think implied sales are up 20%. The margins of only 4%. I know there’s some pricing that needs to happen on the defense side, but just color there. How we think about margins as we exit the year. Understanding. You said things should get better as the year progresses. Thank you.

John Pfeifer

Yeah, great, Jamie, thanks for your questions. I’ll take the first one. I’ll probably pass the margin question on transport over to Matt, starting with our access business and your question on our outlook. First of all, I want to make sure I state that we think we’re taking a balanced approach to 2026, the market is unfolding right now. Kind of what we all hear about on a regular daily basis in terms of what’s going on. Meaning really strong big mega projects and data centers, power gen, some large infrastructure projects. So that does drive demand and that’s very positive.

On the other hand you’ve got private non res construction which is a huge segment of non residential construction which is still under some pressure. And we just, we read the stats and we look at the outlooks for these markets and long term we feel really good. You know, eventually we’ll see some of these delayed starts start to come back online and when that does, that’ll be really good news. But right now we’ve taken a balanced approach on that. When you talk about United Rentals and what they reported today or last night, I guess it was, versus a lot of other businesses that are out there, they’re not all the same.

You know, if you’re highly. If one of our customers is highly exposed to these big mega projects, then that’s one story. On the other story you’ve got a lot of independent rental companies that are more exposed to the private non res which is still under pressure. And that kind of is what leads into our balanced approach on the market and what we’re seeing in 2026, you know, for example, manufacturing construction is still under pressure and that’s a big sector of non residential construction. We kind of need to see that turn a bit and if we do in a future call, we’ll let you know.

Matt, I’ll turn it to you on the transport question.

Matthew Field

Morning, Jamie. So first let me just say we remain confident in our 2028 outlook for the transport segment. Our guide in 2026 reflects a number of factors. There’s pricing for new contracts as you mentioned, with FMTV new pricing coming on in the second half, we’ll see steady production increases for the ngdv. We do anticipate further NGDV orders to come throughout the year. And then there’s a couple things that are maybe nuances worth noting. One is we do have lower defense volume in 2026, largely on export orders and then some investment in new product development, cost reductions and so forth.

Normal engineering that steps up over the year. That’s what results in the OI of 4% with the back half a bit stronger than the first half. But again, remain very confident in our 2028 outlook.

Jamie Cook

Thank you.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jerry Revitch with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Jerry Revich

Yes. Hi. Good morning everyone.

John Pfeifer

Morning Jerry.

Jerry Revich

Hi John. I know you have excellent telematics data from your fleet. Can you just tell us what you’re seeing in the US and European market for your products? United Reynolds spoke about good utilization for your equipment categories. Curious what you’re seeing.

John Pfeifer

Yeah, we’ve got a lot of machines out there that are connected, Jerry. I mean in the hundreds of thousands, a lot of equipment that’s connected. We’ve got really good insight into the health of the equipment that’s in the fleet. And it is. We see it as healthy. And same in Europe. The European fleet’s relatively healthy too. So that’s good news. Right. And the used market is also pretty healthy right now as we see it. You know, the prices in the used market, the amount of supply that’s in the used market, it’s in a healthy state.

So I kind of, you know, that’s all good news. And I think we’re all kind of looking forward and saying, okay, we’ve got a lot of non res under some pressure, but we’ve got big mega projects that are growing at a healthy rate. And we’re kind of all looking for the data to tell us that there’s an inflection point. And right now we don’t know exactly when that’s going to happen. We just know that at some point it will happen. And that gives us the reason for our balanced outlook on 2026 for access equipment.

Jerry Revich

Super. And Matt, can we just unpack the first quarter versus the fourth quarter? Because the guidance implies a really meaningful earnings acceleration. So you know, in Access it sounds like you’re expecting under absorption because of the pull forward out of price increases. But maybe we could just unpack that and talk about margin expectations and access in the first quarter. And the transport headwinds that you mentioned sounds like those might be heavier in 1Q than 4Q. Can we just maybe quantify those points just to build the comfort with the earnings acceleration?

Matthew Field

Yeah, so our first quarter, as we mentioned on the call, we expect that about half of last year, most of that decline is in the Access segment year on year in terms of the growth. And so if you think about that, we had a strong first quarter last year ending flowing through from 2024. This year we did see very strong sales in the fourth quarter as we just reported. We think that’ll have a moderate impact in the first quarter. We also have some adverse price costs. While we did announce pricing, we do have a full boat of tariffs.

And in the back half of the year we’ll start getting some of the cost reductions that we kicked off a couple years ago, which progressively increased throughout the year. So, so that’s the large driver of kind of the year over year EPS at roughly half of last year.

Jerry Revich

Thank you.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks, Jerry.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Meg Dobre with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Mircea Dobre

Hey, good morning. Sorry, I’m going to have to stick with Access Equipment too because I am a little bit confused here in terms of how we’re thinking about the first quarter. Can we be specific in terms of what you guys are thinking in terms of year over year revenue decline and margin and my follow up, you know, as you think about the full year guide. Right. I mean, if we’re recognizing that the order intake that you had it in the fourth quarter, maybe as you said, pull forward some of the demand because of the announced price increases. Where you’re. Guiding the full year revenue at 4.2 billion, frankly is still higher than what your order intake was for 2025. So to me, in that, in that guidance, you do imply that things are frankly getting a little bit better as the year progresses. What’s your visibility related to that? I mean, you know, are you hearing that from your customers in terms of how they’re deploying Capex or are there some other assumptions that you’re baking in?

Matthew Field

So I’ll take first quarter and kind of how to think about that and then hand off to John to talk about some of the backlog and how we see the year developing. So again for the full year we’re 4.2, as you mentioned, that’s about a 6 to 7% decline year on year. We think on a year over year basis that’ll be higher in the first quarter. Again, first quarter last year was very Strong. Coming off Q4, 2024. This year we are seeing a relative weakness in part because of the pricing we announced for 2026, which resulted in strong sales in Q4.

And so we would expect to see the revenue decline year on year first quarter higher than what we have for our full year guide.

John Pfeifer

Yeah. And with regard to how the year is going to progress, MIG. So we did in the fourth quarter, our orders were 1.7 billion. Our book to bill was 1.5 and we have a backlog of 1.3 billion. So I always pay attention to, we always pay attention to our backlog and how it’s continued to progress. And I always indicate that our backlog typically we say should represent three to six months of demand. And that 1.3 billion is right in the Middle of it. When you look at our guide, we do look at the first half being under a continued pressure because of some of the non residential activity that we see.

We also saw, you know, a heavy shipments in the fourth quarter which may impact the first quarter a little bit. As Matt just indicated and you indicated with your question. When you look at where our backlog is and that backlog also shows when customers need equipment because there’s shipment dates on every order we take. That’s what leads to our guide of the 4.2 billion, which is down a little bit year over year, but kind of consistent with our balanced outlook on where we are with the market.

Mircea Dobre

Lastly, if I recall, we were looking at $300 million of revenue quarterly at full run rate for NGDV. When do you expect that you’ll be able to hit that? Thank you.

John Pfeifer

Well, I want to thanks for the question on ngdv. We continue to make really good progress with this program. And as I mentioned, we’re at more than 10 million miles and the customer of delivery with these units, the customer is delighted with them. When you look at our performance, we are at or ahead of U.S. postal Service delivery requirements right now. The Postal Service is very happy with the delivery deliveries we’re making and we have a formal schedule that we have to meet and we’re at or ahead of that formal schedule. So when you look at our revenue for the full year, you know, we’ve always said that we will do between 16,000 and 20,000 units a year on this program.

And in 26, we’re right at the low end of that range. We’re in that range on the low end side of it. So we continue to do well with production. Sure, we’ll produce more units in the second half than the first half. But we’re running fairly well with this program and our customer is very happy with it. If you look at our guide for the transport business, kind of thinking about the revenue side of it, about half of that guide is NGDV or delivery units, to give you kind of some numbers. And it’s a little bit more on the back half than the first half.

Mircea Dobre

All right, appreciate that. Thank you.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks, Meg.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Barger with KeyBank. Please proceed with your question.

Christian Zyla

Good morning, this is Christian Zeilon for Steve Barger. Thanks for taking the questions just on access. Were there any other industry or customer specific ordering dynamics in Axxess that you don’t think would recur as we had later into the construction season or was it really primarily just the pricing pull forward on top of a regular ordering cadence from your customers.

Matthew Field

Hi, Christian, it’s Matt. So certainly we, I wouldn’t say there’s anything unique. I would just say we had, you know, a strong sale into independence in the fourth quarter. We think that’ll reverse out and that the year will normalize for 2025. You know, in general, we saw relative strength in independence. And I think we all expect that that’ll normalize more through 2026.

Christian Zyla

Got it. And then maybe a slightly different question. Just at ces, you guys showcased a delivery vehicle for non usps. As your team put together the concept, just kind of what drove you to pursue that plan? Was it the market size or unit. Economics that you liked? Was it the financials or kind of the cross synergies? Just any thoughts on that concept? Thank you so much.

John Pfeifer

Yeah, thanks for the question. On ces. I mean all of the above, based on what your question was. I mean, we, you know, when you look at our NGDV that we developed for the United States Postal Service, there’s a lot of technology on that vehicle. It’s the most advanced last mile delivery vehicle ever put into the market. It provides so much benefit for the operator to be productive, but underscore also safety, safety for people around the vehicle and safety for the operator.

And so at ces, we wanted to showcase that we have the capability to continue to deliver this type of a vehicle for other segments of the delivery market. These are purpose built vehicles. They’re not modified COTS vehicles, which you tend to see a lot in the delivery market, or body on chassis, which you see a lot in the delivery market. These are purpose built vehicles with technology on them to drive productivity, safety and economic performance for the fleet operator. And we wanted to showcase that because we, you know, we’ve always talked about future opportunity beyond ngdb.

So that was the intent of it.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Angel Castillo

Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to maybe get a little bit more color. Sorry to keep harping on the access side, but have you said exactly, I guess, how much pricing you anticipate to get in 2026 within your sales guide? And can you just kind of talk about that in a little bit more color? Just how much is kind of embedded right now at this point in your backlog? And not just for arrows, but for each segment?

John Pfeifer

Yeah, thanks, Angel. I’ll take the question. It’s a great question. Of course. So when we look at our pricing plans. You know, of course, we’ve been through a dynamic period. When you look at the cost side of the equation, it’s been headlined by tariffs, tariffs and more, and tariffs in that dynamic environment. So we go to work, and we went to work in 2025 doing a lot of tariff engineering work to try to do everything we can to take the cost of tariffs and mitigate it. And a lot of that has to do with engineering, re engineering.

You know, our sourcing teams work hard on where we’re sourcing, what product, and we try to localize or move product when we need to. So we’ve done a lot of that work, and we’ll continue to do that work. We try to minimize the impact to our customers, but you can’t eliminate all of it. So eventually you have to pass some through in price. So we’ve done that. And we believe that the price increase is reflective of something that our customers can manage as well as something that allows us to stay whole throughout 2026 on the price cost equation.

So that’s the gist of it.

Angel Castillo

That’s very helpful. And maybe just following up on that point of localizing costs. And one of the big kind of questions we’ve been getting is just what happens to kind of the bill of materials or just materials costs in general, whether it’s from commodity price inflation or memory chips and other things that we’re seeing out in the market. So could you just comment a little bit on what’s kind of embedded in your guidance in terms of just broader cost buckets and in particular for staying maybe on the access side, if you could just kind of unpack how much is maybe of the cost or the margin.

Potential dynamics here is tariffs versus materials versus mix of independence, you know, or any other kind of buckets here.

Matthew Field

Yeah, angel, thanks for the question. So, on the cost side, you know, I’ll give kudos to the Access team, which really kicked off a cost reduction initiative going all the way back to 2024, and that progressively has results. And so they’re continuing to identify cost savings throughout this year. So cost savings are kind of grow cumulatively quarter over quarter. So we’ll get more in the back half of this year than the front half of this year. You know, with those actions, with other actions, I’d say overall we’re seeing largely flat ish costs, set aside tariffs.

And so the team’s really doing a great job to manage the cost equation of this and offsetting as much of the tariffs as they can through those initiatives in terms of mix, you know, we’ve historically seen a higher mix of IRCs. I can’t be explicit about how that impacts the financials, but you know, traditionally that’s been 55% NRC, 45% IRC. We think that’ll shift kind of more normalized to those levels in 2026.

Angel Castillo

Very helpful, thank you.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks, angel.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tim Thien with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Tim Thein

Thank you. Good morning. I just have one on the vocational segment. Can you maybe give some comments in terms of the backlog there and how that’s kind of influencing the revenue, what you expect in terms of the revenue composition in 26. I take it that the RCVs will are likely to step down just given comments and some of the public waste tollers. But maybe if there’s some further handholding you can give there in terms of split across F and E and Aerotech, et cetera. Thank you.

John Pfeifer

Sure. Yeah. Thanks Tim, for the question. So vocational continues to be a great story, a great business for us will be for many years into the future. The backlog across the business is really healthy. When you look at the backlog one step down from that, which is your question, the fire backlog is still really healthy. We’ve had a big backlog. We’re continuing to increase increased output, yet we continue to see healthy order rates. I mean, customers want our products. So the backlog is really, really healthy in the fire market. It’s the same in the airport market with our airport and Aerotech business.

Healthy business conditions, healthy order rates. You know, customers are continuing to invest. You see the stats on both passenger and commercial demand for airport. It’s really good. There is some pressure in the environmental business with refuse and recycling. The business in total is very healthy and our customers are very healthy in this segment. There’s just a little bit of a reluctance right now to place a lot of capex that’s just temporary. We see the long term being fantastic, as we had indicated in our Investor Day through 2028. It just could be a little bit of a lull in capex so some downward pressure on that business in 2026.

But long term it’s fine. And the vocational business will perform exceptionally well even with that blip in 2026. So we feel great about this segment, the segment where we really showcase our technology that makes such a big impact for our customers and that’s one of the reasons it’s so healthy.

Tim Thein

Great. Thank you, John.

operator

Our next question comes from the line Of Kyle Menguez with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Kyle Menges

Thanks for taking the questions guys. I was hoping we could just go back to the transport margin and just how to think about the transport margin ramp throughout 2026. And then Matt, you still sounded confident in hitting the investor day target for transport margins in 2028. So would be helpful to hear some color on just how to think about the bridge from transport margin of around 4% in 2026 to meeting the investor day target by 2028.

Matthew Field

Yeah, thanks Kyle. So you know, as I think about going from the 4% that we got this year to the 10% we. All the building blocks are there, it’s just a matter of timing. And so we’ve talked about is new price on new contracts. So we’re building under FMTVs, sorry FHTVs now, which you see in the performance in the second half of 2025. We’ll build under the medium contracts, the FMTV second half of 26 NGDV ramp. So we’ll continue to increase our production progressively throughout the year. John mentioned that about half of our revenue for next year.

So the $2.5 billion is NGDV, which is right what we said we would be in the long term guide of 3.1. So you’re starting to see those elements come in with us seeing more of that in the second half obviously than the first half. So you will have some launch costs that we pick up in the first half. The other thing just to note is that with that half of the revenue being delivery, then you can see some of the defense decrease year on year from the export orders and we would expect defense volume to pick up into our future guide a bit as well relative to 2026.

So that’s kind of how to think about 2026. Again, all the building blocks there, it’s just a matter of timing for them and then the second half being stronger for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

John Pfeifer

Yeah. And we remain really confident on this business going forward and on the recovery of its margins. We’re very confident that that will continue to progress as we head towards 2028.

Kyle Menges

Helpful, thank you. And then a question on Aerotech, just how do you think you’ve been able to extract some margin synergies and what’s really the, the potential to squeeze out some more margin from that business. And I think you guys have hinted at doing some 8020 within Aerotech. So it would be helpful to hear just what some of those 8020 initiatives look like. Thank you.

John Pfeifer

Yeah, thank you for that q uestion. The Aerotech business is a great business for us because of the market that we’re in and the synergies that we get between our core synergies and the capabilities of Aerotech. And that’s what you see. So the market’s healthy. We’re continuing to drive technological innovations within that market segment. You already see our autonomous jet docking and autonomous cargo loading being deployed right now in production, so to speak. Meaning at gates there’s a lot more technology to come. Technology really helps customers be more productive. And when that’s the case, it also helps our margins, of course. But we do on the other hand, have operating synergies.

And we do 8020 similar to the way we do it in some of our other businesses, which has dramatically helped us transform margins over the years. And there’s opportunity there for us to continue to get margin through improvement in operating performance. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with the operations of Aerotech, there isn’t. But you can always make operations better. You can always do that. If you ever don’t have that mindset, you’re in trouble. But this is a great business. We expect margins to continue to expand because of technological synergies and continuing to be better and better with operations through our 8020 philosophy.

So thanks for that question.

Kyle Menges

Great. Thank you guys.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks, Kyle.

operator

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Fisher with ubs. Please proceed with your question.

Steven Fisher

Thanks. Good morning. Just on within the vocational side of things on Fireside, just curious, how much of a surprise was this municipal mix in the quarter relative to kind of what your expectations were at the start of the quarter? And what’s your baseline expectation of mix in 26 versus 25?

Matthew Field

Hi, Steve. So what we see in the fire business is some quarters you kind of have a mix of products that has a bit of a lower margin as you kind of work through the one offs and so forth. What we’ve seen in prior quarters is more batches and you’ve seen us talk about those even on the call where we have, you know, 13, 15 trucks being delivered to a department in the fourth quarter. We had a few more snowflakes, I guess I’d say, than we would have in other quarters. And that resulted in a little bit of adverse mix.

You know, I don’t see that being anything sustained. It’s more of a periodic thing. And over the year and kind of over the long arc, it really gets lost in the shuffle. But it was something we saw in the fourth quarter specifically.

Steven Fisher

Okay, that’s helpful. And then Just coming back to the access segment to the cost elements. Just curious how much visibility you have to the costs for for this year at this point. How locked in are you for what you expect to produce? And then I think John, you mentioned you expect to be whole on the price versus cost but just on the second half of the year. In particular, is price versus cost expected to be positive for that second half? Thank you.

Matthew Field

Yes, Steve. So we have good visibility into the cost at this stage for the year. We think we’re in as stable of an environment as we’ve seen for a while in terms of tariffs at least. And we’ve got good visibility into our raw material prices as well as our cost reduction initiatives. So we feel we’ve got a good handle on the cost for the year. We do anticipate price costs to turn positive in the back half of this year. That’s one of the drivers of some of the better performance in the second half and is a bit of a drag in the first quarter as we work through some of those cost reduction initiatives throughout the year.

Steven Fisher

Terrific, thank you.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks, Steve.

operator

Our final question comes from the line of Chad Dillard with Bernstein. Please proceed with your question.

Chad Dillard

Hey, good morning guys. I was hoping you could quantify the incremental tariffs in 26, split them up by segment. And then also you talked about taking price increases to cover them in the event that IEEE but gets overturned, I guess. How do you think about that? Are you able to maintain the margin or do you revisit the pricing discussions with your customers for 26?

Matthew Field

Thanks, Chad. So as I mentioned on the call, full year impact’s about 200 million. That’s roughly 160 higher than last year. I think of that as mostly in access. So about 3/4 is in Access segment. To put some ballpark numbers on that, if there is anything overturned, our assumption, and certainly our planning assumption is that something equivalent will go in place. So our guidance assumes that the present tariff rates sustained throughout the year. I think that’s a probably fair assumption based off everything I’ve read. But you know, as the situation evolves, we’ll adapt as we did in 2025.

Chad Dillard

Gotcha. That’s helpful. And then I was hoping you could bridge your incremental margins in the vocational business they’re pretty sizable. So I was wondering if you could split it out, you know, how much comes from price realization versus volume. And then secondly, you know, with 17% you’re kind of at that midpoint of your long term guidance. So I guess what’s stopping you guys from taking that target a bit higher now.

Matthew Field

Sounds like a CFO. So we’re at 17%. We’re really pleased with that margin. It’s a good step forward and what you see in that growth. And I won’t be explicit about the breakout between volume and price cost, but volume plays a larger driver in 2026 than it did in 2025 as we bring on more capacity. John referenced the amount of capital we’re investing into our assembly plants for fire capacity. So we start to see that come to the fore in 2026 relative to 2025. Price costs we do see still favorable in 2026. And then we do have some investments that.

That help us support our business growth. And that’s really what drives the 17%. But that’s a great margin. It is right within the sweet spot of the 16 to 18%. We got it in 2028 with revenue growth in the 2028 guide relative to where we are in 2026. So really pleased with the progress we’re making in that segment and pleased with the performance we’re seeing.

John Pfeifer

Yeah, I’ll just say that, you know, we’re at. We are expecting to be at 70% margins guidance, which we’d all look at and say that’s good compared to our 28 guidance. So we got a lot of good things still happening in this business. A lot of good things on deck to come. So we feel good about it.

Chad Dillard

Thanks, guys.

Patrick Davidson

Thanks.

operator

Mr. Davidson. I’d like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Patrick Davidson

All right. Appreciate it, Christine. Thanks for joining us. Everybody on the call today. We will be meeting with investors at several conferences during February and March. We’re also looking forward to another ConExpo show. As John mentioned earlier during his comments on the access business, if you’re interested in learning more about our company and our construction equipment leaders, consider a trip to Vegas in March for the show last held back in 2023. Right. Three years ago. So it’s a great opportunity to gain exposure to our industries and hear about the new products and technology. Have a good rest of the day.

operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.