Landis+Gyr Group AG

Thank you. Welcome to the Landers in Gear Q1 2026 Trading Update. Please note that the call will be recorded. During today's call, webcast participants will be in a listen-only mode until we conduct the session. If you would like to ask a question, we ask that you please use the raise-time function at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

Further instructions will follow at the time of the Q&A.

I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Christian Waelti, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, good evening, everyone. I'm Christian Waelti, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by Peter Mainz, our CEO, and by Davinder Athwal, our CFO.

As you know, earlier today, Lennison Geared issued an ad hoc release and related presentation from the Q1 FY2026 Trading Update, which are available on our website.

This session will follow the structure of the presentation, so we encourage you to follow along. We'll conclude with Q&A, where the operator will provide further instructions and where you will be able to ask questions.

Please take a moment to review the usual disclaimer in slide 2 of the presentation. After a short introduction, I'd like to hand the floor over to our CEO, Peter Mainz.

Thank you, Christian. Good afternoon and good evening, everyone. I'm here at our US headquarters in Alpharetta with Davinder, our CFO, and we are pleased to provide you with an update on our first quarter performance.

With that said, let's now start with a review of the key strategic developments over the past three months.

Let's move to slide three.

As you know, we held our Capital Markets Day in New York on June 1st, where we presented our growth strategy and mid-term value creation plan for the next phase of LandSync Year. Following the successful divestment of our EMEA business, we are now operating with a clearer strategic focus and a structure that is better aligned with our core growth opportunities. As part of this, we introduced our new segment structure around Connected Platforms and Grid Intelligence.

We believe this new structure enhances transparency for investors and improves operational focus across the business. Connect platform brings together our intelligence endpoints, secure grid communications and deployments, and lifecycle services, while grid intelligence includes our grid operations software, data analytics, and managed and advisory services. We have also put dedicated segment leadership in place with announcements forthcoming.

This is an important step as we continue to sharpen accountability, execution and commercial focus across the organization. In parallel, preparations for US listings are progressing well and internal readiness is essentially complete.

As we have said before, we remain committed to maintaining our Swiss listing while also advancing our preparations for a US listing to better align our capital markets presence with the majority of our operational business activity. And finally, the acceleration of our ShareBabek program through a fixed price offer underscores our commitment to returning value to shareholders following the successful closing of the EMEA transaction.

I will come back to this in more detail later in the presentation.

With that, let's move to slide 4 and look at the highlights of the first quarter. Overall, business performance in Q1-26 was in line with our expectations.

In our first fiscal quarter, which is seasonally low historically, net revenue was down 6.8% year-over-year, primarily due to the timing of project deployments. At the same time, we continue to see pipeline activity at record levels, and our backlog remained very solid at 3.8 billion US dollars. Importantly, Grid Intelligence now represents around 47% of our backlog, and backlog in this segment increased by 5.4% compared to June fiscal year 2025. This underlines a continuous momentum we see around great edge solutions and the increasing relevance of software and services in our business mix. Our trailing 12-month book-to-bill ratio remained at one time, which reflects continued demand across our core markets and supports our confidence in the business outlook.

A key highlight of the quarter was our profitability performance.

We achieved a record quarter adjusted gross margin of 37.4%, up a staggering 286 points year-over-year.

This improvement reflects operational efficiencies as well as a favorable shift to its recurring software and services. Adjusted gross profit increased to $87 million compared to the prior year quarter despite the lower revenue base. Taken together, the quarter demonstrates that while revenue timing can vary from period to period, the underlying business remains resilient, our margin profile continues to improve, and our pipeline remains exceptionally strong. Based on our Q1 performance, backlog visibility, and current business momentum, we are reiterating our fiscal year 2026 guidance. I will now hand over to Davinder, who will take you through the financial performance in more detail. Thanks Peter, and good afternoon and good evening everyone. I'll begin with our first quarter of financial performance, starting with the order intake and backlog on flight 5. Order intake for the quarter was $167 million compared to $171.7 million in the prior year period.

While quarterly order patterns can vary, the underlying demand environment remains healthy and continues to track in line with our expectations.

Our backlog remains one of the core strengths of the business. The majority is supported by long-term, customer programs and contracted software and services, providing strong visibility to future revenue streams and reinforcing the quality of our backlog. Especially encouraging is the continuity relation of that backlog mix.

Grid Intelligence backlog increased 5.4% compared to June 2025 and now represents approximately 47% of total backlog. This reflects growing customer investment in grid modernization, software, analytics, and grid edge solutions. Areas that support a higher quality and more profitable revenue mix over time.

Our trading 12-month book-to-bill ratio remained at 1, while commercial activity and pipeline development continue at healthy levels. Overall, we remain confident in both the quality of our backlog and our ability to convert that backlog into revenue over the coming quarters. Turning now to revenue margins on slide 6. Revenue for the quarter was $232.3 million, a decline of 6.8% compared to the prior year. The decrease is primarily driven by the timing of customer deployments within connected platforms and was consistent with our expectations in the year. More importantly, profitability improved significantly.

Adjusted gross margin reached a record 37.4%, an increase of 280 basis points compared to the first fiscal quarter of 2025. This improvement reflects the same strategic drivers we have discussed previously, a more formal mix, including a higher proportion of software and software-enabled services, continued operational efficiencies across our product portfolio and supply chain, and disciplined execution across our customer programs.

As a result, adjusted gross profit increased to $87 million, up 1% year-over-year despite lower revenue. While revenue timing affected the quarter, the underlying trajectory of the business remains consistent with our expectations. The first quarter highlights the continued improvement in the quality of our earnings and the operating leverage inherent in our business model, turning now to our segment performance beginning with connected platforms on Flight 7. Connected platforms generated $116.5 million of order intake during the quarter, resulting in a trailing 12-month book-to-bill ratio of 1. This reflects continued customer demand for our products and services, combined with disciplined commercial execution, Revenue was $161.4 million, down 13.9% from the prior year period, reflecting the expected timing of project deployments and customer implementation schedules.

While revenue was lower year-over-year, profitability improved materially.

Adjusted gross margin increased 520 basis points to a record 34.3% This improvement reflects ongoing operational efficiencies and disciplined execution across the portfolio.

Our focus remains on converting backlog into revenue, while continuing to drive profitable growth and margin expansion.

Turning to Grid Intelligence on flight 8. Grid Intelligence delivered another strong quarter. Order intake was $50.5 million, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 45%. Revenue was $70.9 million, an increase of 14.8% year-over-year. Growth was driven primarily by software and SaaS related offerings, further advancing our transition toward a more recurring and higher margin revenue profile.

Adjusted gross margin remained strong at 44.7%, demonstrating the attractive economics of this portfolio and the value of our continued investment in software and analytics capabilities. Grid Intelligence continues to become a larger contributor to both growth and profitability while increasing the recurring revenue content of the business and improving the predictability and durability of our earnings.

Turning now to guidance on slide 9.

Based on our first quarter performance, the strength of our backlog, our visibility to customer deployment schedules, and the momentum we continue to see across the business, we are reiterating our fiscal year 2026 guidance. We continue to expect net revenue in the range of $1.075 to $1.125 billion. We also continue to expect adjusted EBITDA margin of between 14.5% and 15.5% of revenue.

Overall, the first quarter reinforces our confidence in the underlying fundamentals of the business, the strength and quality of our backlog, continued commercial momentum, and improving profitability support our outlook for the remainder of the year.

That concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Landless and Gyr.

I'll now hand it back over to Peter to discuss the share buyback plan. Peter, over to you. Thank you, Davinder. Before we move on to Q&A, I'd like to provide a few more details on the acceleration of our share-by-bid program.

Following the successful closing of the EMEA transaction, we remain committed to returning a total of $175 million of the proceeds to our shareholders. This is an important element of our capital allocation approach and reflects our confidence in the company's strategy, financial profile and long-term value creation potential. Under the current share buyback program, we have repurchased approximately 1.2 million of our own shares over the past nine months, representing approximately 4.2% of our share capital for a total consideration of approximately 74 million US dollars or 60 million Swiss francs. To accelerate the return of capital to shareholders, we intend to launch a fixed-price offer for a total amount of up to 50 million Swiss francs. The offer is expected to run over a 10-day offer period and the details of the offer, including the buyback notice, are expected to be published on August 3, 2026. Following the completion of the fixed price offer, we intend to resume daily share repurchases to complete the remaining portion of the $175 million share buyback program.

This accelerated buyback is fully aligned with the priorities we outlined at our Capital Markets Day.

Focusing the business, improving the financial profile, maintaining disciplined capital allocation and returning value to shareholders. This concludes my remarks.

Thank you again for joining us today and we are now happy to take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raised hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. When it is your turn to ask a question, you will receive a prompt. Please accept and what's called upon you may unmute and then proceed. If you wish to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raised hand function. Our first question today comes from Akash Gupta at JP Morgan. You may now unmute your line and ask your question.

Yes, hi Peter and Davinder, and thanks for your time. I got a couple. The first one is on the phasing of quarterly revenue growth this year. If you look at the midpoint of your earlier guidance, that roughly implies 66% year-on-year sales decline, and Q1 was minus 7. So can you please help us, how should we think about the phasing in coming quarter, and would there be prospect of returning back growth in Q4? That's question number one.

Thank you, Akash. You prefer us to respond to them one by one? I can take the first one. I think if you recall, at the year-end results for 2025, when we gave the guidance for this year, we articulated that in the fourth quarter, the ramp-up 1-1 contract in Canada will be at the pace That will match the revenues from a year ago. So that one we will see at the final quarter of the year and if you think of the transition of the revenues through the year to get to the guidance you just mentioned, the first half from this year and the first half from last year, Pretty decent match on the pattern throughout the year to arrive at the full year numbers and I think we disclosed that in the fourth quarter we'll be quite strong with the contract up in Canada deploying at the pace of the contract it is replacing.

Thank you. And my follow-up is on what you are hearing from your utility customers. I think you mentioned that your pipeline is at all-time high, but we also hear from utilities that they are seeing big demand for PowerGen from data center customers. There are some concerns that they may prioritize their Capcax on adding more power to the capacity to accommodate these hyperscalers and other industrial customers that are asking for more power from CRED. So yeah, just curious what you're hearing from your QT customers and what should you expect for pipeline and conversion from pipeline into quarters in the course of 2026. Thank you. So a couple of things.

The pipeline, and I think I articulated that already in our last call, is the regular pipeline that we've seen. I haven't seen a pipeline of magnitude since I've been in this business, and it keeps on trending upwards. And what we really like about the pipeline is that we saw the evolution of the pipeline going consistently. We're sort of trending to the Revelo, to the grid edge. Offering that we brought to the market and today when we talk about the REC pipeline that we see, it's 100% made up on the electric side from customers and utilities transitioning from AMI 1.0 to AMI 2.0 to great edge.

So we really see the ROI that the utilities expect to be one that makes them go and purchase this off right. So we see the pipeline continue to grow and we're really excited how quickly it will grow.

and it's really all in EMI 1.0 to EMI 2.0 transition. There's nothing out there anymore that was greenfield. So we like that one a lot. And obviously there's always this discussion, where does the money go? We are closely aligned with the distribution spending of utilities.

That's the portion that continues to grow extremely nicely.

And if you follow the US utility industry over the past decade, there was a substantial amount of

Dissegregation of integrated utilities and regeneration entities are not the ones we talk to or transition entities. We usually end up talking to distribution entities where entities where all they do is focus on distribution of electricity in the most resilient, most affordable, most efficient way and that's where

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature and when your name is announced, you may unmute your line and ask your question. Our next question today comes from Louis Billion at Baidu Europe.

Louis may now unmute your line in line and ask your question. Thank you.

Hi, good evening and thank you for taking my question.

My first question is on the grid intelligence. Could you give us more details on the reasons for this decline in gross margin year on year? Hey Louis, this is Davinder, I can take that one.

Happy to respond and thanks for the question. So I think it's really just a quarterly impact rate.

So given that one quarter is not really representative of the whole year, it's just a mix of what's in that revenue for the quarter that we're seeing here. So we don't expect that to continue. If you look at the four-year guide to reiterating, it kind of unwinds itself over the course of the year.

Okay, thank you. And maybe on Grid Intelligence, what proportion of the revenue is derived from subscription-based revenue versus maybe one-time revenue related maybe to installation? Or is there also fees based on usage?

How recurring is the revenue in Grid Intelligence?

So a couple of things. You mentioned installation services. To be clear, that's something that we really do not do. And if we do it, it would certainly not be part of that segment. We articulated our annual recurring revenue.

I think that's what you're referring to for fiscal year 2025. That's $207 million. And so that is really the majority of that segment, the grid intelligence segment. And if you look at the quarter trajectory of that segment on the revenue base,

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jeff Osborne at TD Cohen.

Jeff, you may now unmute your line and ask your question. Thank you, appreciate it.

Just two quick ones on my side. Peter, I was wondering if you could just update us on the semiconductor in particular memory situation. Have things gotten any worse since the capital markets day that you had a short time ago? No, I think it's a couple of things. Obviously, if you think of great edge devices, memories and processes create great intelligence. And not just for our industry, those prices have been trending upwards.

If you look at the gross margin evolution for this quarter, we've been coming out ahead, we've been able to deal with it. I think exceptionally well, we confirmed the guidance, but I would also say that our supply chain expert team is probably more active in this space than they were 12 months ago. I think that's part of the task. So I think it's quite similar to when our capital markets day was just

Thank you very much.

It's great to hear. And then I may have missed this, but it would be helpful if you could share what the units in backlog are and how many of the Revelo meters have been installed. I think in the past you talked about it with those 2 million installed and 8 million or so in backlog. It would just be helpful as you progress to track those metrics if possible.

Okay. I don't have the exact numbers available here. Maybe there's a different way to supply them. I don't want to give you a wrong number because we've been shipping, continuing to ship Revellos at exceptionally high levels. So we can provide that in a later time. But I don't want to miss any numbers and give just a guess if that is okay for you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Akash Gupta again at JPMorgan. You may now unmute your line and ask your question. Thank you.

Yes, hi, thanks for the follow-up. I have a question on the gross margin for your connected platform business.

If we look at the big jump in gross margin year-on-year, more than 300 basis points, but sequentially they are stable.

And when we look at the distribution of gross margin in 2025, there is a big jump in Q4 compared to the remaining three quarters of last year, and margin in Q1 this year are flattish. I just wanted to ask what was the factor behind this big jump in gross margins in Q4 of connected platforms that has sustained in Q1 and should we expect a similar level to continue for the rest of the year? Thank you.

So I can tackle one. If you think the big driver on the platform is really the Revelo or GreatEdge device, which as we go down the cost curve, as we continue to shape more and more and more of that device, it keeps also driving the margin levels down.

That's kind of like the new product offering, the existing offering.

We have cost optimized for 20 years here. We are fairly early on in the cost down curve and we continue to have success with the volumes that we ship on the cost down that continues to show and certainly started to show magnitude in Q4 of last year. It's also transitioning into the first quarter of fiscal year 26.

Thank you.

Thank you again for joining us today. Appreciate your time and interest in Landes & Gyr and I look forward to meeting all of you soon either virtually or in person and definitely looking forward to the next quarterly update call which for us is a happy ourselves call. Thank you so much.

This concludes today's call. Thank you everyone for joining.

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