speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Good day and welcome to the second quarter 2026 Zebra Technologies Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Steele, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mike Steele
Vice President of Investor Relations

Good morning and welcome to Zebra's second quarter earnings conference call. This presentation is being simulcast on our website at investors.zebra.com and will be archived there for at least one year. Our forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially, and we refer you to the risk factors discussed in our SEC filings. During this call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance with reconciliation shown at the end of this slide presentation and in our earnings press release. Throughout this presentation, unless otherwise indicated, our references to sales performance are year-on-year on a constant currency basis and exclude results from business acquisitions and dispositions for 12 months. This presentation will include prepared remarks from Bill Burns, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nathan Winters, our Chief Financial Officer. Bill will begin with perspectives on our second quarter results, our value proposition and strategic priorities. Nathan will then provide additional detail on our financial results and discuss our outlook, followed by Bill's closing remarks. Then Bill and Nathan will take your questions. Now let's turn to slide three as I hand it over to Bill.

speaker
Bill Burns
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. There are three key points I'd like to focus on today. First, our team executed well, driving record results with broad-based growth and significantly increased profitability. This strong performance, together with the continued momentum we are seeing across our business, supports our meaningful raise to the full year outlook. Second, our results reflect Zebra's unique value proposition. Customers are investing to digitize and automate frontline operations, and our integrated portfolio is central to their progress. Zebra's AI-powered solutions are helping customers globally to improve outcomes to enhance productivity, visibility, and real-time decision making. Third, We are executing on our clear strategy to create long-term shareholder value by driving sustainable growth, building on our industry leadership and track record of innovation in enhancing our financial strength and flexibility. With that, let's turn to our second quarter results. Turning to slide four, we delivered results exceeding our outlook, driven by our team's execution and positive demand trend across our portfolio. We had strong performance across all segments and regions with double-digit growth in our retail, manufacturing, and healthcare end markets. ELU Touch contributed strong, profitable growth with robust customer interest in our combined portfolio of solutions as we drive synergies with the acquisition. For the quarter, we generated sales of more than $1.5 billion, growing more than 20%, or 9% on an organic basis from the prior year. An adjusted EBITDA margin of 27.7%, including the benefit of $73 million of tariff recovery and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $6.35, a 76% increase over the prior year. Excluding the benefits of tariff recovery, we expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by two points Thank you for joining us today. in the first half of the year, following more than $300 million in the fourth quarter. This elevated level of capital return reflects our conviction in Zebra and our long-term value creation opportunity. Our business momentum and progress navigating the memory supply environment gives us confidence in raising our outlook for the full year. Moving to slide five, I want to share some additional details on our key end markets. In retail, e-commerce and convenience stores were bright spots, driven by consumers' elevated expectations for faster delivery and expanded fulfillment options. A recently acquired Elo Touch business delivered strong growth benefiting from self-service trends. We were also encouraged by customer interest in our Zebra Frontline AI Suite and new devices that can best deliver these solutions. In transportation logistics, sales were flat on a strong prior year compare with relative outperformance in third-party logistics and warehousing. Our AI software solutions and recently launched portfolio of AI optimized mobile computers has positioned us well with industry leading companies who recognize Zebra's ability to bring increased productivity and service levels to their operations. As we look ahead to 2027, we have a robust multi-year pipeline of large deployments. In manufacturing, our strong double-digit growth was driven by continued macro improvement and our customers' need for increased visibility across their operations. Electronics and pharmaceuticals were particularly strong in the quarter. Machine vision has also outperformed as our team has been executing well on growth initiatives as we invest in the business. Healthcare was our highest growth end market in Q2. We realized particularly strong performance in mobile computing as customers equipped more caregivers with enterprise grade solutions. We're excited about our opportunity to improve the patient care journey. Now turning to slide six, we continue to build on Zebra's unique competitive positioning as the foundation for intelligent operation. Our solutions capture data at the front line turn that data into insights and enable customers to take action in real time. AI strengthens its ongoing process by enabling faster decision-making, greater automation, and continuous workflow improvement. Benefits include increased productivity and better experiences for frontline workers as well as consumers. We are deeply embedded in our customers' workflows and understand how work gets done on the frontline. This allows us to serve as trusted partners to our customers and to co-innovate with them to digitize, automate, and deploy AI. With our integrated portfolio, we meet customers where they are today in their automation journey while also continue to expand our value as their operations evolve. Turning to slide seven, our results reflect the progress we are making in executing on our three strategic priorities. On our first priority, long-term profitable growth, we continue to see meaningful opportunity across both our segments, supported by a large and diverse market and a long runway for adoption in many of the environments we serve. We believe both connected frontline and asset visibility and automation have a 5% to 7% organic sales growth profile over a cycle and are confident in our ability to deliver. Penetration remains low across the markets we serve, highlighting the opportunity in front of us. For example, based on third-party research, nearly three-quarters of warehouses globally are in the early stages of their automation journey. Our growth prospects are augmented by investments in RFID, machine vision, and AI that enhance our differentiation and expand our relevance with customers. We're also driving efficiency initiatives in our business to enhance profitability, which include operating as French leverage through cost discipline, including our previously announced restructuring actions that were substantially completed in the second quarter, accelerating software development by deploying new AI tools, enhancing our go-to-market model to improve market coverage and efficiency. We also continue to make progress on our second priority, building on our market leadership by advancing innovation. We're seeing early traction in our new line of enterprise mobile computers and wearables that embed RFID and optimized AI processing capabilities, as well as new RFID and 3D machine vision solutions. Finally, our strong earnings and cash flow generation continue to enhance our financial strength and flexibility. who are executing on a balanced capital allocation strategy, prioritizing investments in our business that elevate our portfolio solutions while consistently returning capital to shareholders. Let me wrap up before I hand over to Nathan. We have significant runway for growth with our clear and differentiated value proposition, supported by trends in automation, digitization, and AI across a $35 billion serve market. Our broad portfolio of integrated hardware and software solutions enables us to deliver value across the entire workflow, not just a single use case, creating a meaningful competitive advantage. Our industry leadership puts us in a unique position to be the supplier of choice of AI for the frontline. And we have a resilient financial model with strong margins and cash generation, supported by disciplined capital allocation that drives long-term shareholder value. I will now turn the call over to Nathan to review our Q2 financial results, progress in navigating memory supply, and our improved 2026 output.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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