7/30/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2024-2025 Generic Holdings Inc. earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Roseman, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

speaker
Chris Roseman
Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

Good morning and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings call. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. With me today is Aaron Yagfeld, President and Chief Executive Officer, and York Reagan, Chief Financial Officer. We will begin our call today by commenting on forward-looking statements. Certain statements made during this presentation, as well as other information provided from time to time by Generac or its employees, may contain forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in these forward-looking statements. Please see our earnings release or SEC filings for a list of words or expressions that identify such statements and the associated risk factors. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAP measures during today's call. Additional information regarding these measures, including reconciliation to comparable U.S. GAP measures, is available in our earnings release and SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Aaron.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and

speaker
Chris Roseman
Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

thank

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

you for joining us today. Our second quarter results exceeded our expectations driven primarily by C&I product sales to our industrial distributors, as well as increased shipments of residential energy storage systems. Additionally, adjusted EBITDA margins came in well ahead of our prior forecast for the quarter as a result of continued strong gross margin performance and better than expected operating leverage on the higher shipment volumes. On a -over-year basis, overall net sales increased 6 percent to $1.06 billion for the quarter. Residential product sales increased 7 percent from the prior year, driven by significant growth in shipments of residential energy technology solutions, as well as higher portable generator sales. C&I product sales increased 5 percent -over-year, with increases in shipments to our domestic industrial distributor and telecom channels, as well as higher European shipments partially offset by softness in certain other C&I and markets. Favorable price realization helped gross margins expand by 170 basis points in the quarter, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margins increasing to nearly 18 percent. We also continued to execute on numerous new product development initiatives during the quarter, most notably the formal introduction of our large megawatt generators for data centers and other C&I backup power applications. We have experienced very strong receptivity to our initial entry into the data center market in particular, with our global backlog for products serving this important end market growing quickly and now standing at more than $150 million today. Given increased visibility into our full-year 2025 financial results, including our second quarter out performance, and lower than previously anticipated tariff-related price increases in the second half, we are narrowing our full-year net sales growth assumption and increasing the low end of our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range, resulting in an increase to our full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook at the midpoint of these ranges. This guidance assumes that currently implemented tariff levels are maintained for the remainder of the year. We will continue to optimize our pricing strategy within the evolving tariff landscape while aiming to fully offset the cost of tariffs in dollar terms. Additionally, we are executing on a number of supply chain and cost reduction initiatives that will help to further offset the impact of tariffs and other cost increases over the next several quarters. Now discussing our second quarter results in more detail, home standby sales were flat from the prior year as the category held a new and higher baseline level of demand despite power outage hours being down significantly as compared to a strong prior year period. As expected with lower outages, home consultations decreased on a -over-year basis given the strong comparable period that included the benefit of severe storms in the South Central region last year. However, home consultations outside of this region were up nicely from the prior year, highlighted by continued strength in the Southeast resulting from last year's high-profile outage events. Close rates improved sequentially in the second quarter and we continue to expect further improvement as we move through the remainder of the year with strong signs of recovery here in the month of July. Importantly, activations or installations of home standby generators increased modestly from the prior year also driven by the strength in the Southeast region. We ended the second quarter with roughly 9,300 industrial dealers in our network, an increase of approximately 400 over the prior year. Our growing dealer network is an important competitive advantage and continues to support a new and higher baseline of consumer awareness for the home standby category and we remain committed to investing heavily in growing and developing our dealer base. Additionally, we have had continued success in expanding our aligned contractor program which targets electrical contractors that purchase our products through wholesale distribution. And drives incremental engagement and training within this important distribution channel. Collectively, these efforts represent a critical element of unlocking the growth potential for the home standby category by expanding our sales, installation, and service bandwidth. Additionally, we continue to work towards the upcoming launch of our next generation home standby generator line, representing the most comprehensive platform update for the product category in more than a decade. In addition to the introduction of the market's first 28 kilowatt air-cooled generator, the new home standby generator line features a lower total cost of ownership, lower installation and maintenance costs, as well as quieter operation and improved fuel efficiency. The new platform also offers a number of benefits for our channel partners, including lower commissioning times and improved remote diagnostics, enabling operational efficiencies for their businesses and greater uptime and cost savings for their customers. Portable generator sales increased at a robust rate from the prior year despite the -over-year decline in outage activity. This growth was primarily due to market share gains, resulting from our team's success in driving increased shelf space with key retail partners. While we expect these recent wins to support greater baseline demand for these products going forward, the second half of 2025 will face a challenging comparison to the prior year, as our guidance does not assume any major outage events in the second half of 2025. Moving to residential energy technology solutions, shipments for these products and services exceeded our expectations and grew at a significant rate during the quarter. Our team continued to execute extremely well on our Department of Energy project in Puerto Rico for our energy storage solutions, and combined with a record quarter for Ecobee sales, resulted in strong outperformance for this part of our business in the second quarter. Our Ecobee team continued to add to their recent strong sales momentum and drove significant margin improvement compared to the prior year, resulting in positive EBITDA contributions through the first half of 2025. Additionally, the connected homes count for Ecobee devices increased to more than 4.5 million residences during the quarter, with energy services and subscription attach rates also continuing to grow, contributing to a rapidly expanding high margin recurring revenue stream. We view Ecobee's premium feature set and user experience as a key differentiator within our growing residential energy ecosystem, and further integration of our residential solutions with the Ecobee platform will continue with every new product we launch. Importantly, we continue to expect Ecobee to deliver positive EBITDA contribution for the full year as the team further scales these products and solutions. Shipments of our energy storage systems also increased at a dramatic rate during the second quarter. We are very pleased with the progress we've made in Puerto Rico through the first half of 2025, as this has enabled us to build strong relationships on the island, which is the second largest storage market in the U.S. behind California. In addition to our success in Puerto Rico, we began taking orders in the second quarter for Powercell 2, our next generation energy storage system, with first shipments of these products beginning earlier this month. We are also making very good progress toward the launch of PowerMicro, our new microinverter product line, which we anticipate will begin shipping during the second half of this year. The impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on residential solar and storage markets has been well documented over the last several weeks. Despite the policy-related changes that will reduce or eliminate incentive structures for these products, we continue to view these technologies as important elements in the residential energy ecosystem we are developing that is focused on providing the kind of resiliency and energy savings that homeowners are increasingly demanding. The secular trends of rising power prices and declining component costs within the solar and storage markets provide an attractive long-term backdrop for these markets to further develop and grow as the overall economics improve, absent the incentives. That said, we believe the residential solar market in particular will contract in the years ahead. And as a result, we are evaluating the adjustments necessary to recalibrate our level of investment in these technologies as we are laser-focused on significantly improving the adjusted EBITDA contribution from the residential energy technology portion of our business in the coming years. Now let me provide some commentary on our commercial and industrial product category. Sales to our domestic industrial distributors increased again during the quarter given resilient end-market demand and strong operational execution that drove further reduction in C&I product lead times. Project quoting activity and win rates in this important channel also increased on a -over-year basis during the first half of the year. We do expect, however, -over-year shipment declines to develop in the second half of the year given the continued reduction in backlog resulting from our accelerated production output in recent quarters. Shipments to our national telecom customers grew at a strong rate from the prior year during the second quarter as this channel continues to recover and is expected to deliver robust growth for the full year 2025. The telecom market remains a long-term growth opportunity for Generac given the secular trends of expanding global tower and network hub counts and increasing reliance on wireless communications that require much higher power reliability. Replacement opportunities within the telecom channel are also becoming more relevant given our large install base of product and our long history of serving this market. As expected, shipments to our national and independent rental equipment customers remain soft during the quarter and we continue to anticipate weakness throughout the second half of the year. Despite the current cyclical softness with our rental customers, we believe that this end-market has substantial runway for growth given the critical need for future infrastructure-related projects that leverage our products sold into the rental equipment channel. Internationally, total sales increased 7% from the prior year due to higher intersegment sales and C&I product shipments in Europe partially offset by softness in other international markets. Adjusted EBITDA in our international segment increased at a robust rate from the prior year given the solid sales growth and favorable price-cost dynamics in certain markets. We expect the combination of recent order trends across multiple C&I product categories and the favorable impact from foreign currencies to drive continued -over-year sales growth in the second half of the year. We also anticipate an incremental benefit beginning in the third quarter from the initial shipments of our new large megawatt generators to international data center customers. With respect to the important development project around our new large megawatt generators, these products are expected to enable a very significant incremental opportunity for the global C&I part of our business, particularly within the large and growing data center market. These mission-critical solutions are a necessary part of the substantial investment in data centers which are enabling the accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence. Given the tremendous power requirements of increasingly large data center campuses, demand for backup power for these applications is expected to continue to grow at a dramatic rate for the foreseeable future. This rapidly growing demand for data center power infrastructure has resulted in market supply constraints for backup power equipment. Our highly competitive lead times and the strength of our reputation in the power generation industry contributed to the strong initial response to our formal entrance into this market during the second quarter. And we have quickly built a global backlog of more than $150 million for these applications, with momentum continuing to build around a growing and significant pipeline of new opportunities. We expect global shipments of these products to begin in the second half of the year, with the large majority of our existing backlog to be realized in 2026. Additionally, further global market opportunities exist for these products within our traditional end markets, in particular providing backup power for large manufacturers, distribution centers, healthcare facilities, and other critical infrastructure that have higher backup power requirements. As we continue to ramp our capabilities for large megawatt generators, with our expected annual production capacity sitting well above our current backlog, we believe that we are well positioned to take share in this market over time given our unique focus, which allows us to provide customized sales, engineering, and aftermarket support, while also providing data center customers with a robust service network to ensure uptime for these critical applications. In closing this morning, our second quarter results reflect strong execution and a dynamic operating environment, with broad-based strength across our product categories. We will continue to lean into our core corporate value of agility, as we navigate evolving market and policy conditions, while maintaining focus on the significant growth opportunities that exist as we further execute on our enterprise strategy. The mega trends of lower power quality and higher power prices are being further supported by numerous underlying trends, providing incremental avenues for future growth in our business. And we firmly believe our portfolio of products and solutions is uniquely positioned to deliver value and protection to homes, businesses, and institutions around the world. I'll now turn the call over to York to provide further details on our second quarter results and our updated outlook for 2025. York?

speaker
York Reagan
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Aaron. Looking at second quarter 2025 results in more detail, net sales during the quarter increased 6% to $1.06 billion as compared to $998 million in the prior year second quarter. The combined effect of acquisitions and foreign currency had a slight favorable impact on revenue growth during the quarter. Briefly looking at consolidated net sales for the second quarter by product class, residential product sales increased 7% to $574 million as compared to $538 million in the prior year. This growth in residential product sales was driven by a strong increase in shipments of energy storage systems and Ecobee home energy management solutions. Portable generator shipments also contributed to this sales growth, while home standby generator sales were flat with the prior year. Commercial and industrial product sales for the second quarter increased 5% to $362 million as compared to $344 million in the prior year. Core sales growth of approximately 4% was driven by strength in shipments to our domestic industrial distributor and telecom customers, as well as strong growth within Europe, partially offset by weakness in shipments to national rental accounts and other international markets. Net sales for the other products and services category increased approximately 8% to $125 million as compared to $116 million in the second quarter of 2024. Core sales increased approximately 6%, primarily due to growth in aftermarket service parts and accessories, Ecobee and remote monitoring subscription sales, and other installation and maintenance services revenue. Gross profit margin was .3% compared to .6% in the prior year second quarter, primarily due to favorable pricing and lower input costs, partially offset by unfavorable sales mix. The favorable price cost dynamics were partly due to the timing differences between the realization of recent price increases and the higher tariff related input costs. In addition, gross margins exceeded expectations for the quarter, partially due to a lower tariff impact relative to our previous guidance. Operating expenses increased 33 million, or 12%, as compared to the second quarter of 2024. This growth in operating expenses was primarily driven by higher variable costs due to higher shipment volumes, increased employee costs to support future growth across the business, and ongoing operating expenses related to recent acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA, before deducting for non-controlling interest as defined in our earnings release, exceeded expectations at 188 million, or .7% of net sales in the second quarter, as compared to 165 million, or .5% of net sales in the prior year. I will now briefly discuss financial results for our two reporting segments. Domestic segment total sales, including intersegment sales, increased 7% to 884 million in the quarter, as compared to 827 million in the prior year, which included approximately 1% sales growth contribution from recent acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was 158 million, representing .9% of total sales, as compared to 140 million in the prior year, or 16.9%. International segment total sales, including intersegment sales, increased approximately 7% to 197 million in the quarter, as compared to 185 million in the prior year quarter, including an approximate 1% benefit from foreign currency. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment, before deducting for non-controlling interest, was 30 million, or 15% of total sales, as compared to 25 million, or .6% in the prior year. Now, switching back to our financial performance for the second quarter of 2025 on a consolidated basis, as disclosed in our earnings release, gap net income for the company in the quarter was 74 million, as compared to 59 million for the second quarter of 2024. Our interest expense declined from 23.3 million in the second quarter of 2024 to 18.2 million in the current year quarter, as a result of lower borrowings and lower interest rates relative to prior year. Gap income taxes during the current year second quarter were 15.4 million, or an effective tax rate of 17.2%, as compared to 19.6 million, or an effective tax rate of 25% for the prior year. The decrease in effective tax rate was primarily driven by a favorable, discreet tax item related to an immaterial business disposition in the current year quarter. Diluted net income per share for the company on a gap basis was $1.25 in the second quarter of 2025, compared to 97 cents in the prior year. Adjusted net income for the company, as defined in our earnings release, was 97 million in the current year quarter, or $1.65 per share. This compares to adjusted net income of 82 million in the prior year, or $1.35 per share. Cash flow from operations was 72 million, as compared to 78 million in the prior year second quarter. And free cash flow, as defined in our earnings release, was 14 million, as compared to 15 million in the same quarter last year. The change in free cash flow was primarily driven by higher working capital and capital expenditures, causing a greater use of cash during the current year quarter, partially offset by higher operating earnings. We expect working capital to be a use of cash again in the third quarter, as we continue to replenish portable generator inventories for storm season and prepare for our next generation home standby product launch later this year. Additionally, we opportunistically repurchased approximately 393,000 shares of our common stock during the quarter for $50 million. There is approximately 200 million remaining on our current share repurchase authorization as of the end of the second quarter. On July 1st, we amended and extended our existing term loan A and revolving credit facility, resulting in a new maturity date of July 1, 2030. This agreement updated the term loan A outstanding principal balance to 700 million and reduced the revolving facility borrowing capacity to 1 billion. In addition, the amendment eliminated a 10 basis point credit spread adjustment that was included in the previous agreement and also resulted in a more favorable pricing grid based on our leverage ratio. Quarterly principal payments on the term loan A will begin in October 2026 with a lump sum due at maturity in July of 2030. Total debt outstanding at the end of the quarter was 1.4 billion, resulting in a gross debt leverage ratio of 1.7 times on an as reported basis. With that, I will now provide further comments on our updated outlook for 2025. As disclosed in our press release this morning, we are updating our full year 2025 outlook, given our first half actual results driving increased visibility to expected full year 2025 net sales. As a result of our second quarter outperformance being mostly offset by lower pricing assumptions in the second half of the year, primarily due to lower than expected tariffs, we are narrowing our net sales growth guidance range while holding the midpoint of that range. In addition, we are increasing the low end of our adjusted e-bidot margin guidance range and raising our free cash flow conversion guidance for the full year 2025. This guidance includes the following important assumptions. We are assuming that current tariff levels that are in effect today stay in place for the remainder of the year. This includes 30 percent tariff levels for China compared to 145 percent assumed in our previous guidance and 20 percent tariff levels for Vietnam compared to 10 percent previously assumed. We continue to assume 10 percent reciprocal tariffs on all other countries and the continued qualification of USMCA for Mexico and Canada, consistent with our prior guidance. Incremental tariffs have also been levied against steel and copper imports since our previous guidance update, and we have assumed higher market prices for these metals in the second half of the year as a result. Finally, consistent with our historical approach, this outlook assumes a level of power outage activity for the remainder of the year in line with the longer term baseline average and does not assume the benefit of a major power outage event in the second half of the year, such as a major landed hurricane or major winter storm. Considering all these factors, we now expect consolidated net sales for the full year to increase between 2 to 5 percent over the prior year, which includes an approximate 1 percent favorable impact from the combination of foreign currency and acquisitions. This compares to our previous guidance of 0 to 7 percent net sales growth over the prior year. We now project full year 2025 residential product sales to be slightly lower compared to our previous expectation, given lower assumed tariff related pricing in the home standby category. We also now project full year 2025 CNI product sales to be modestly higher compared to our previous expectation, given second quarter outperformance and favorable foreign currency rates relative to our prior forecast. As a result, we now expect residential products and CNI products net sales growth to be more level loaded for the full year 2025 relative to our prior expectations. From a seasonal pacing perspective, we expect third quarter overall net sales to be slightly ahead of the prior year, with fourth quarter overall net sales approximately flat versus the prior year. Recall that the prior year periods included the benefit of multiple major outage events, which results in a strong prior comparison in particular for residential products. Looking at our updated gross margin expectations for the full year 2025, we now expect gross margin percent to increase approximately 50 to 100 basis points compared to the full year 2024, coming in at approximately 39.5 percent at the midpoint. This represents an increase from our prior expectation of approximately 39.0 percent due to our second quarter outperformance and lower tariff assumptions related relative to the prior guidance. Turning to our adjusted EBITDA margin expectations for the full year 2025, given the factors I outlined in our net sales and gross margin update, we are increasing the lower end of our guidance range for adjusted EBITDA percent to approximately 18 to 19 percent compared to our previous guidance range of 17 to 19 percent. In line with normal seasonality, we expect third quarter adjusted EBITDA margins to improve 150 to 200 basis points sequentially from the second quarter, given the projected significant operating leverage on seasonally higher sales volumes. Additionally, we are raising our free cash flow conversion forecast, given the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on our federal income tax payments. Given the favorable tax impact of immediate expensing of research and development costs and bonus depreciation on certain capital expenditures, we now expect free cash flow conversion from adjusted net income to be approximately 90 to 100 percent for the full year 2025, as compared to the previous guidance range of 70 to 90 percent. Importantly, this would result in over $400 million of free cash flow in fiscal 2025, which provides for further near-term optionality within our disciplined and balanced capital allocation framework. As is our normal practice, we are also providing additional guidance details to assist with modeling adjusted EPS and free cash flow for the full year 2025. For full year 2025, our GAAP effective tax rate is now expected to be between 23 to 23.5 percent, a modest decrease from our prior guidance of 24.5 to 25 percent due to the second quarter off performance. Our GAAP effective tax rate for the remaining two quarters of the year is expected to be approximately 25 percent. Importantly, to arrive at appropriate estimates for adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share, add-back items should be reflected net of tax using our expected effective tax rate of approximately 25 percent. We continue to expect interest expense to be approximately 74 to 78 million for the full year 2025, assuming no additional term loan principal prepayments during the year. This contemplates a lower interest rate due to our recent amend and extend transaction, mostly offset by modestly higher outstanding borrowings. This guidance is a significant decline from 2024 interest expense levels due to a decrease in outstanding borrowings and the full year impact of lower SOFR interest rates. Our capital expenditures are still projected to be approximately 3 percent of our forecasted net sales for the full year in line with historical levels. Depreciation expense, GAAP intangible amortization expense, and stock compensation expense are also expected to remain consistent with last quarter's guidance. Our full year weighted average diluted share count is expected to be approximately 59.4 to 59.5 million shares as compared to 60.3 million shares in 2024. Finally, this 2025 outlook does not reflect potential additional acquisitions or share repurchases that could drive incremental shareholder value during the year. This concludes our prepared remarks. At this time, we'd like to open up the call for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question. And our first question will be coming from Tommy Mall of Stevens. Your line is open.

speaker
Tommy Mall
Analyst, Stephens Inc.

Good morning and thank you for taking my question.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Tommy.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

speaker
Tommy Mall
Analyst, Stephens Inc.

Aaron, on the recent entry into the data center market, it sounds like things have gone pretty well so far, but I just wanted to ask for anything else you can give us there. When could these revenues start to be meaningful? Are the lead times for some of the incumbents there still as extended as they have been in recent years? What have you learned so far?

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks Tommy. So, yeah, I mean, that this has been something we've been talking about for the last few quarters. You know, the entry into this market and something frankly we've been working on for a couple of years. We haven't been talking about it much because we wanted to get to the finish line, but it'll begin to impact revenues this year in the second half. Our initial shipments in the international market will start in Q3 and then, you know, very late this year we'll start to get our first domestic shipments out to those customers. But not much of an impact this year. It's really a 2026 story right now. What we're being told, and this is just, you know, kind of to kind of size the opportunity for us anyway, because I think this is by far and away one of the biggest needle moving opportunities that I've seen in my time here in my three decades with the company. Just both in the size of the market opportunity that data centers in particular present, but also obviously the growth rate there and the fact that, you know, this feels like something that's going to go on for a long time. You combine that with the structural deficit in the availability of these backup power products. In our early conversations here over the last several months, nearly every data center developer, operator owner, and customer has told us that there are two major components that they worry about in the lead time for construction of new data centers. The first is transformers and the second is backup generators. And so what we've learned to answer your question is that we believe based on our conversations that there appears to be about a structural deficit just in 2026 of something on the order of maybe 5000 machines. Based on current capacity in the market and based on current construction completion timelines for the projects that are underway for data centers. So obviously 5000 machines is a lot of machines. You know, if you look at kind of on the high side, every single copy of every machine would be about a million dollars all in. So it's a huge, you know, one it's a huge market just being served on an annual basis today, much greater in size than anything that we've ever approached. And two, the structural deficit that's there, I think will allow for a pretty rapid entry for us into the market. I'm shocked at the over 150 million that we've already booked in hard orders and the size of the pipeline that we're cultivating in this market. We've been very well received with the, with, you know, not only just the product, but I think our brand, our reputation, the quality of our distribution, the quality of our balance sheet, frankly, you know, the ability to stand behind these products in these very critical applications. I think, you know, we've been very well received initially here. Now we've got to deliver, we've got to execute. So, you know, it's not, we're not, this isn't a layup by any stretch of the imagination, but we're taking this very seriously. We do have good capacity, you know, to grow in the next year or so. But given the kind of situation that this market is facing from a structural deficit standpoint in terms of supply versus demand, we believe that, you know, based on our early, the early learnings here and then our early success, you know, we are going to have to make some potentially bold moves around additional capacity if we want that to be available for 2027 and beyond. We think we're in really good shape for 26 and really probably even for parts of 27. But given the size of the deficit, that 5,000 machines just for next year, we think there's, there's real opportunity for us if we lean into this and be aggressive. Again, like I said, I've never seen something that can move the needle like this. I think if we, if we do things the right way, I think this part of our business, which has always been a good solid business, right, it's over a, call it a $1.5 billion opportunity today. That's the size of the CNI products part of our business. You know, that's something that I think can grow dramatically in the next several years. And, you know, this, we could be in a situation in several years where the CNI products are larger than the rest of the company. And so I think it's, you know, this is just an exciting time and something that we're, you know, we're going to lean into. And it's a global opportunity. And it's a global opportunity. I think that's the other exciting piece of that. Good add.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And one moment for our next question, which will be coming from George Deanerikis of Canter Corps, United. Your line is open, George.

speaker
George Deanerikis
Analyst, Cantor Corp.

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I'd like to concentrate on some of the comments you made around Ecobee and the solar market opportunities. At least to me, it appears to be a little bit of a change in tone here around your willingness to continue to invest in the inverter market over the long term, over the medium term. I was wondering if you could sort of paint a broad brush and help us understand a little bit around how you might be changing your philosophy around those markets and maybe just update us on what the dilution was from the clean tech business during the first half of the year. Thank you.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, George. So I don't know if it represents a change in tone. Perhaps, you know, maybe that's the right way to characterize it. Let me say what hasn't changed. And I think the comments we wrote, the specific commentary was we're laser focused on reducing the drag on earnings from this business, i.e. we want to get it to be in positive territory. We will get it to be in positive territory. Now, we have to obviously recalibrate if the overall market size for solar in particular, if that's going to decrease in the years ahead, and it's likely that it will. The question is how much, right? I think there's still some things that need to be vetted and understood as the one big beautiful bill kind of now moves from, you know, it being passed as legislation into kind of interpretation by Treasury and what happens there in terms of, you know, the actual impacts to the market. But clearly the market is going to contract for solar. It's just is it going to contract 20% or is it going to contract 50%? So but take a range. Maybe it's 20 to 50%. We believe that that market, if you just step back, has been heavily impacted, obviously, by the incentive structures over the years. It's been distorted. That's the word we keep using internally here. It's a market that's been frankly, this is this is one of the major problems you run into in terms of distortions that can happen in markets when you have subsidization for as long as you've had with this market and the changing kind of timelines around those subsidization, the changing quantums of those subsidizations. We actually believe the elimination of subsidies for solar is a good thing for the market in the long run. It will help this market grow structurally grow in a way that normal markets grow right now. It doesn't look anything like a normal market. In fact, you can look at how a typical solar system is transacted. That transaction almost looks like nothing else on the planet in terms of how it's structured. The financial engineering, the craziness around it. And I think a lot of that has had a negative effect actually on the underlying structural integrity of the market in terms of, you know, it's had kind of a distorted effect on the overall ASP for a project. I think the ASP for projects are higher. There's a reason that they're considerably higher here in the US than they are in Europe. And I think a lot of that has to do with the, you know, just the amount of subsidization, the amount of incentives that go into that and the structures that come out of those transactions with tax equity structures and other elements. I think if we get rid of all that over time, what will be laid bare is a market that can work. You can see what's going on in Europe. It works. Power prices are going up. You can look at your own power bill, look at your neighbor's power bill, look at power bills across the country. This is without a doubt a story that's underreported. You know, we can talk about power outages is all we want, but at the end of the day, the cost of power is going up and there's lots of reasons. People can pick their reason and it differs by utility. It differs by region. It differs by type of customer. But at the end of the day, your power costs, my power costs have gone up over 30% in the last five years and are expected to double in the next 10 or greater. You're already seeing this play out in parts of the country. As power costs increase and as the cost of these technologies, i.e. solar, storage, energy management, all of these technologies continue to come down rapidly in cost. They have done that over the last couple of decades and they will continue to do so. You can get to economic outcomes there that are very beneficial to homeowners and businesses by installing solar, even without the incentive structures. And that, I think, is where this ultimately lands. Now, there's going to be a couple more years of noise here as the incentives taper off. You're going to have some pull forward of demand with safe harboring maybe in the second half of this year. And all of that has to wash through the system. But for us, we think that solar and storage are still important technologies in a residential energy ecosystem. And parts of that, now they're not the only parts. Okay, we believe EV charging is going to play an important role. We believe that energy management with the Ecobee products are going to play an important role. We believe generators are going to play an important role in the energy ecosystem. All of this linked together is how we're going to keep homeowners and businesses resilient. And we're going to help them save money on their power bills. We're going to give them a lot more independence going forward. It's going to take time to build that out. But we are not going to continue to lose money on this business in perpetuity. We've said that. The drag on this, I think, York, for the first half of the year was about...

speaker
York Reagan
Chief Financial Officer

First half, three to four hundred base points. But overall for the year, let's call it three hundred to three hundred fifty. That's

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

our expectation for the full year. But continuing to improve. We've seen that improvement already in Ecobee. And we're going to continue to see that in the rest of the business. Now we'll adjust our spending. If the market's smaller, we're going to have to adjust the level of our investment, recalibrate our investment. We've got a lot of new product coming to market this year. We won't have a lot of that new product cost, if you will, the development cost. We'll start to taper and we'll go more into a sustaining mode on those new products going into 2026. So I think we're in a good place to make the recalibrations that we need to make there. But we are still committed to this being part of an energy ecosystem, we think, is an important element for us to plant the flag in going forward here at the company.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Mike Halloran of Baird. You're live on this open mic.

speaker
Mike Halloran
Analyst, Robert W. Baird & Co.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning. Aaron, can you just continue that train of thought then? What is the next call at 1218 months look like as far as the iterations go for how you get that back to kind of a neutral profitability level, the clean energy piece? What are the types of things you're thinking internally? What's that timeline look like? Is this the clean energy piece specifically or does that include Ecobee, which, correct me if I'm wrong, but that is already at a profitable level. So is that the net of the two or is that exclusive of Ecobee?

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

So, yeah, no, so correct, Mike, you know, Ecobee is profitable year to date and we expect to be fully profitable for the year. It's done it. That team has done an outstanding job and the growth rate there has been fantastic. It's a huge part, obviously, of our whole energy technology business. When you look at it together, the big, you know, kind of drag remains in what we refer to as our clean energy products, which are the storage products, the solar products, where we've had very heavy development cycles ongoing to bring these new products to market. And as I said, kind of on the previous commentary, you know, those new product cycles of new product introduction costs and those cycles should start to taper as we get these new products into market. So PowerCell 2, which is our new storage device, just started shipping here earlier in July. And our PowerMicro, our new micro-inverter product line, is going to hit the market later this year. So, you know, the development cycles, you know, are starting, we're getting in the final endings of the development cycles, and that's where a lot of the spend has been. Now, transitioning that spend over to support, right, and sustaining efforts, you know, was kind of the next phase anyway. And so that was already kind of in the plan. And obviously, though, if the market is smaller, you won't need as much support. You won't need as much, you know, in terms of sustaining, in theory. And so I think there's an opportunity there to look at recalibrating, you know, that depending, again, on where we think the market's going to be. The answer to your question directly over the next 12 to 18 months is difficult because we don't know where the market's going to be over the next 12 to 18 months. That's a piece that we're still, you know, kind of, we're vetting out. We want to get a very clear understanding of where it's going to go. We know it's going to contract from current levels. And by the way, current levels are depressed. I would just point out that current levels are also depressed, though, because of two factors. One, you had the change in the net metering rules in California from net metering 2.0 to 3.0, which had an impact, a negative impact on the market. Now, that's largely started to wash through. But the second kind of effect that's been depressing the market is high interest rates. And I think it's, you could make a case that it's more likely than not that interest rates are going to go down as opposed to up in the future, which should provide a backdrop for a bit stronger market dynamics, you know, all things equal in these, in the clean energy types of products. So, you know, I do think the market's going to contract. There's no doubt we're going to recalibrate spending. We are still targeting. We had we had said at our investor day a couple of years ago that by 2027, this was a profitable area for us. That's still a focus for the company. We think that we've got to find a path to do that. Equal B certainly has done their part. They are well on the way. In fact, I would say they're ahead of plan in terms of where we're coming out there, which is great. Now we've got to turn our attention to the rest of that part of the business. And again, like I said, we're super excited about the new products we've got coming to market and the receptivity we've had with our with our early discussions with the solar channel in particular. And, you know, we've got to see where the market kind of shakes out here, the overall market in terms of a forecast for 2026 in particular, but also, you know, as we think about the next three years.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Our next question will be coming from Jeff Hammond of KeyBank Capital Markets. Jeff, your line is open.

speaker
David Tarantino
Analyst, KeyBank Capital Markets

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is David Tarantino on for Jeff. Hey, David. Maybe on home standby, could you give us more color on the underlying trends here and how we should expect the category to progress through the rest of the year, particularly around what the dealers are telling you around the demand after glow from the outage events last year and how inventories look in the channel.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, David. So, you know, home standby, it's pretty what's really amazing about home standby is, you know, outages have been kind of light here in the first half of the year. We had a great second half of the year, obviously, in terms of outages, very active, not great. Of course, if you experience those and some of the reasons why you experience them, but we're there to help our customers with our products. And, you know, we had a very active second half of last year that as we would normally expect, right? We've always said six to 12 months of after glow, if you will, from those big events. And that's really kind of played out here in first half of the year. Installations of products are up here to date, which is great. They were up in the second quarter, so they were kind of holding on to that, that new and higher baseline. We continue to add dealers, which I think is is always one of those things that we watch very closely is the pace at which we can continue to add dealers has remained, you know, has remained robust. I have these were down in the quarter, but you would expect that with with lower outages seasonally. The second half of the year is really important, right? So no doubt we're watching with great attention to what happens in the second half of the year. You know, we don't have just remember we don't put any major events in our guide, which, you know, so we're guiding our that business that part of our business. We're guiding to a baseline level of outages, which is generally significantly lower, particularly in the back half if you do get major outages. So, you know, I would tell you that it's almost like there's a free option there on home standby if we do get some kind of event in the second half. And we've always said those events are, you know, between 50 and 100 million dollar impact. We saw that play out pretty much on on point last year. And we would, you know, we would say that that that would probably be the situation again this year. I might I might say the only difference might be we've done a really nice job in portable generators. We've got a new team there that's leading that business, that part of our business, those products. And they've done a great job getting some really major wins at some some incredible retailers and expanding our shelf space. So we're feeling really good about where we sit for a market share standpoint in portable gens. So if we were to get some major outages, we might actually have a nicer tailwind there. We're going to be set from an inventory standpoint. The little bit of the cash flow in the quarter, you know, in terms of our working capital needs in Q2, we're driven by kind of replanting portables a heavy storm season from last year, but also getting ready for this year's storm season and the fact that we've got increased placement with our in the retail channel with those products. So, you know, what the market's telling us around home standby, though, is, you know, it's it's and it's always been kind of a regional story. So the southeast remains pretty robust, right. Coming out last year, the activity there is great. There are other parts of the country where it's weaker because we haven't had the outage activity. But, you know, I think if you if you stand back and you look at it on a whole and you look at kind of the the home standby business or the products there as a segment as a group, it's been incredible how it continues to grow. And after every one of those major events like we had last fall, it holds on to that higher baseline level and it grows from there. Now, it might be slower growth for a little bit of time here until we see another inflection point with more outages. But it's an incredible part of our business in terms of the ability to grow that business on the back of outage, high profile outage events and then to hold on to that growth and move from there. So really pleased with kind of how that business has continued to to pace.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Brian Drabb of William Blair. Your line is open.

speaker
Brian Drabb
Analyst, William Blair

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Can you just hey morning, can you just talk about pricing and the so we have the seven to eight percent increase, I guess, in March and and you said that it had some positive impact on gross margin. But how is that received overall in the in the market? Any effect on demand and how are you adjusting your plan for pricing on the new product line given how tariffs have evolved?

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks for the question, Brian. So pricing, you know, obviously, dynamic environment we're in. We're all kind of glued to the 24 hour news cycle here on where these trade agreements are coming out. It sounds like the administration is making progress here. You know, it's slow going. Obviously, these are major deals and it takes time to get these deals put together. But I think in the end, you know, we we we put price into the market in response to what we understood the tariff environment to be. Those were effective. I think at the beginning of April that that was roughly the 78 percent, Brian, that you reference there. That's and I'm talking specifically now about the home standby impact there did not see much material impact on demand. We did just to remind you, you know, we had our updated guidance at the time did contemplate some demand destruction on higher price for the remainder of the year. So, you know, there's there is some demand destruction that we built in. And, you know, I think we've largely based on our results. I think it's kind of played out the way that we saw it playing out. The second part of your question, kind of where are we going from here? So we have a new product line coming out in the second half of the year. It's our next generation home standby product line, which is it's it's phenomenal. Actually, the product itself is just so far advanced from even the existing platform and so far ahead of where the market's at today. We're super excited about that. There is a bit more cost in that product with some of the feature sets that we've added, which is which is good. But that will require some additional pricing adjustments. And of course, we've got some new, you know, we've got additional knowledge on the tariff, the trade deals that have been inked so far and where we're sitting. So, you know, there's probably as we release product into the market, we just announced the availability of our new 14 kilowatt and 18 kilowatt units. That's the first part of the new product line to be released. Those just went on order here this week, as a matter of fact, early this week. The order book opened on those and we'll begin shipping those next week. And those contain a price increase somewhere in the depending on the skew in the mix, five to seven percent, call it of additional price that will go in related to that kind of again, mostly because of the additional feature sets that we're including with the products. But there's a little bit of kind of rebalancing with some of the tariff information that is now known that wasn't known back when we did the last round of pricing in April. We still have a good chunk of the product line to be released here in the second half of the year, our larger nodes. So everything from the 20 kilowatt nodes all the way to the 28 kilowatt nodes, which represents, you know, an important part of that product offering. And so we haven't released pricing on those nodes yet. So we'll continue to watch the tariff environment. We may have to go back and touch pricing again on the 14s and 18s if something changes, but probably not material at this point. It's probably small. So we feel pretty good about where we're sitting with respect to pricing. And again, the demand destruction, if you want to call it that, that may have occurred. We think that played out largely in line with with our guide.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mark. So JP Morgan, Mark, your line is open.

speaker
Mark
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Thank you. Good morning. A couple of questions going back to the data center opportunity. Can you just kind of talk about the the backlog you have so far in the initial conversations that you're having? Are those with kind of larger hyperscaler type data centers or the more traditional data centers? Any color there you can provide and then going back, Aaron, to your comments about potentially expanding capacity. Can you just talk about kind of looking at your footprint, looking at your supply chain, you know, other factors that go into that? How I don't want to use the word easily, but how quickly can that be done? And can you talk about the capex requirements, you know, if you're going to double capacity, triple capacity, whatever it ends up being, how we should be thinking about that? Thank you.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Mark. So just on the pipeline, our opportunities include both, you know, I would call it traditional data center owner operators as well as hyperscalers. But but the where we're getting traction is with the hyperscalers because they are their power needs are greater. And frankly, that's where the biggest part of the deficit in the market seems to exist is around those. But but but it's a market wide deficit in terms of supply versus demand. So we're seeing those opportunities manifest across the board. But we are having I would say some of our more interesting conversations are with the hyperscale side of the business. And and we're not just talking about 2026 planning with these customers. We're talking about twenty seven and beyond at this stage because they are they're planning out. Obviously, they're trying to lock up supply further out. And they're they're out twenty seven, twenty eight, some cases, twenty, twenty nine. The conversations are out. So then the second part of your question on footprint. So we have nine facilities around the world that are capable of producing commercial and industrial products. And so we have three here in the US. We have one in Mexico, one in Brazil, one in India, one in China. We have a facility in Italy and a facility in Spain. I think that's nine if I did my math right. And so those facilities are capable of producing CNI products. Not all of them are capable of producing the large megawatt products. But what I would say is by by the by expanding capacity in the mid range of our products, we're able to create additional capacity opportunities for large megawatt. I'll give you an example here in North America or here in the US. We just opened a new plant here in Wisconsin, our biggest plant in the US. Three hundred forty five thousand square feet in Beaverdam, Wisconsin. We just commissioned that plant back on April 1st, cut the ribbon on it locally here just as past last week. And so that plant's operational. What that plant allows us to do, it's focused on our mid range gen sets up to basically up to one megawatt. And so that's going to be more of our traditional market and markets like telecom and some of our traditional backup markets. But what it allows us to do is take a product that we are currently manufacturing, those higher output products that we're currently manufacturing in one of our other facilities nearby, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and free that facility up to be focused not quite 100 percent, but close to the opportunities that exist with these large megawatt units. And so by the very nature of that, we've added a lot of capacity in the system by bringing this new plant on, even though the new plant wasn't maybe aimed directly at the large megawatt product. That plant that we just brought online is about a sixty five to seventy million dollar investment all in. So as we think about and it took us about 15 months to bring the plant on 12 to 15 months, depending on it's pretty actually closer to 12 months than 15 to bring it up to speed and to get it constructed and get it going. So as we think about the future and again, 2026, we're fine. We have plenty of capacity. We're well over the 150 million backlog we've got. And we're going to get orders of magnitude over that in terms of what our raw capacity is globally for these large systems. But when we think about the opportunity that exists for 27, 28 and beyond, I want to get ahead of this and I want to get ahead of it now. And so we're going to have to take and make some big bold bets on additional capacity. And that could come through organic efforts. We could build some factories. We could buy some buildings. We can do some things there that are frankly in our wheelhouse in terms of again. I referred to this in my prepared remarks, but our core corporate agility, one of them is our core corporate value is agility. We just move fast at the company. We know how to do that. We're comfortable with that. It's a legacy of serving kind of honestly it comes from our residential side of our business. It's a legacy of being able to react to exogenous events that happen. We think that our our supply chain, we've got a we've got great partnerships built in the supply chain for these large megawatt units and they are prepared. They've got a lot of capacity already. They're prepared to add more. What we need to do is continue to look at all elements of the value chain there and and to make sure that there are not other constraints that that exist. And if there are, how do we solve for them? So this is going to be an all out effort by the company to figure out how we grow this segment of our business very, very quickly in the years ahead. And it's going to come. We're going to need to invest. The good news is we've got a really great balance sheet. We generate a lot of cash flow. You know what we generate, you know, 400 million, 400 million this year. So we've got a head of steam and we've got a head of steam. Yeah. In terms of our momentum going forward here. So with our backlog, so we feel like we're well positioned to, you know, maybe you want to call it a rotation of investment, you know, somewhat out of some of the energy technology things we've been focused on and into this C and I opportunity, which we just want to we just think we can win there with with with our approach. So super excited about that.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And our next question will be coming from Keith Howsam of North Coast Research. Your line is open, Keith.

speaker
Keith Howsam
Analyst, North Coast Research

Good morning, guys. And thanks for the opportunity here. Do you hope you guys could perhaps just to mention a little bit of the current industry capacity for these data centers? You mentioned a deficit of about 5000 devices. How much can the market do today? And then perhaps what is your capacity? Is it 300 million, 400 million? As you guys currently have it built?

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thank you. So the overall market size again is there's a lot of a lot of moving pieces there. But, you know, it's it's it's significantly above the 5000 deficit, obviously. But it's continues to evolve. And a lot of that is going to be it's going to be defined by how quickly the data centers can come online. You know, the one of the one of the challenges that still has to be solved by the data centers is the ability to connect to the grid. Right. So what we're seeing and I think what you for those of you who track some of the companies in the marketplace that provide different solutions for what we refer to as bridge power. Right. Maybe unique solutions, individual solutions that can create a somewhat independent, almost microgrid, if you will, for a data center site so that they can operate independent of the grid and they can stand up that micro that that data center and bring it online more quickly. Those solutions are also there's there's capacity constraints within those solutions as well. So, you know, a lot of the the the overall size of the market is being dictated by how quickly can these data centers be put into service, either by connecting to the grid or through their self sufficiency with some kind of bridge power solution until they can connect to the grid. So it's a moving number. It's a moving target. Again, the 5000 deficit that we reference is kind of based on what they what the individual market participants have told us that they believe and not market participants in terms of gen set participants, but the customers for data centers. What they believe that to be a deficit in the market. So they're not telling us how big the whole thing is. They're just saying they believe there's, you know, there are thousands and thousands of units short here, even for 2026. Our own capacity is kind of looking at what we think we can do in terms of capacity for next year. I think it's easily north of 500 million in terms of what we have as capacity today based on the nine facilities we have based on bringing Beaver Dam online here this year and also some expansion that we're doing investing in some areas and some of our other plants to allow them to do even more to expand their capacity of large megawatt product in particular, either to the grid or to the grid. Whether it's through additional test capacity, which is generally the constraint or through some of the other production capacity. What we need to do is size that with our supply chain as well. We think right now our supply chain could keep up with that. But this is where I think real quick, you know, very quickly. You know, you think about 500 million. I mean, that's that's a third of our entire CNI business today. You know, so I mean, it's a again, I keep using the term needle moving because that that is truly a needle moving opportunity. But the good news is, you know, we've got good capacity in place. We've got, as York mentioned, momentum with our backlog, and we're willing to commit to additional capacity as the market grows and as our participation grows alongside of it.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Dimple Bussai of Bank of America. Dimple, your line is open.

speaker
Dimple Bussai
Analyst, Bank of America

Thank you. I appreciate the time today. You raised EBITDA margins to 18 to 19 percent from 17 to 19 percent previously. My question is, what's driving the confidence in margin expansion? Right? How much of this is due to structural improvements? You know, saying input costs or temporary tailwinds from mixed pricing as opposed to uplift from tariffs. Right. And how sustainable are these margins into 2026?

speaker
York Reagan
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, no, I think we've been our gross margin performance has been quite strong, I would say, for the last four quarters. So we've we've demonstrated that we can we can execute on on strong gross margins. So that alone gives us confidence that that can continue on now. From a tariff standpoint, the market has absorbed the pricing and you can see from our our Q2 performance that we were able to withstand that. We believe in the second half will continue that we've we've got confidence that the impact of tariffs will get offset by price and that will allow us to hold those strong margins. And I think the increase from our prior outlook is just a function of holding those margin dollar levels on slightly lower sales on slightly lower pricing. So that alone will drive your margins up. But what we've seen today is we believe we can we can offset those tariffs impact.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

I would say I would add to that dimple that when you think about longer term margins, again, as we continue to focus on reducing the drag from some of the energy tech products that we talked about earlier, and then if we if as that C and I business begins to rapidly grow, the leverage that we're going to get from that growth is going to also be, I think, a positive overall for our margins. So the combination of those two factors as well gives me confidence longer term that our margins have opportunity to continue to expand. I mean, we had we had laid that out also at our last I are event. We were targeting higher margins even than where we're operating today. We believe that that is still very achievable. You know, and that's even kind of before we get to some of the potential opportunities within the data center market that we've been talking about this morning.

speaker
York Reagan
Chief Financial Officer

It definitely on the on the line on the even dollar, the operating leverage on the line will be large.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Absolutely. And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Sean Milligan of Janie. Your line is open.

speaker
Sean Milligan
Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Thank you for taking the question, guys. In terms of the data center piece, you just kind of hit on it, but I was trying to understand how we should think about margins for that book of business. You know, are they I guess both from a gross and the side within the C and I piece like, are they they're going to drag that margin profile higher over the next couple years also?

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

I think at the gross margin line, if you just looked at those projects on their own, you know, they're they they don't look they don't look tremendously different than our than our C and I product margins. You know, there may be a little bit softer than that on a percentage basis, but actually they're quite a bit stronger than our initial business case going into this market presented. We thought that those percentages would be more challenging and they would they would be potentially dilutive at the gross margin line. I don't necessarily see it happening that way with C and I products now, given where because of the structural deficit in the market pricing of those products to the market has gone up from our initial business case and is putting us in a place with gross margins on those products that look a lot more like our traditional C and I products. And as a result, and even even if we were to do the business case that we if we were to talk about the business case we originally had, we were going to see accretion on the EBITDA margin line because of that leverage. We're going to see it's going to work out even better now because the gross margins also will be stronger than we had initially planned for. And you'll get the leverage on the operating leverage at the EBITDA margin line. So Ned, Sean, I think it's you know this is again where kind of my previous answer to Dimple's question, you know why I've got confidence that our EBITDA margins can continue to expand in the future is in particular on the back of what we're looking at doing here in data centers. Even on

speaker
York Reagan
Chief Financial Officer

a consolidated basis. Even on a consolidated basis. Maybe slightly maybe dilutive at the gross margin line on a consolidated basis, but a creative to EBITDA margin. Absolutely a creative

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

on a consolidated basis EBITDA margin for sure.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, which will come from Joseph Osha of Guggenheim Partners. Joseph, your line is open.

speaker
Joseph Osha
Analyst, Guggenheim Partners

Hi, thanks. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about your diesel sourcing strategy. I'm wondering whether for starters that supply chain is showing some signs of stress as well given how busy data centers are and also how you're thinking about where you might procure, in particular what your opportunities are outside of China. Thank you.

speaker
Aaron Yagfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Joe. It's a great question because obviously at the heart of every one of those machines is a lot what we refer to as a large board diesel engine that produces the kind of output that is required in each of these machines. And these are engines that they've been around a long time, but they've been traditional and they've been used in power generation in the traditional market sense. But typically you see them in rail. You see them in mining. You see them in marine in those larger power applications. You know, when you look across the planet, there are a handful of manufacturers of these large diesel engines and, you know, a couple of them are very well known. Caterpillar Cummins, you know, and they also have very well known power generation divisions or groups that are leading the charge forward on, you know, kind of serving the data center markets. But that's where the constraints lie. For them, you know, they've both, both Cat and Cummins have announced expansion plans for capacity in those diesel engines, in the diesel engine production capacity that will come online in the next several years. You know, and that's somewhat unique for them because normally those markets, the primary markets of rail, marine and mining can be cyclical, right? And in the past, I think the reticence to add capacity in those large board diesel engines for manufacturing capacity, it's expensive. And so it's a capital intensive, you know, a bit, a bit expensive to add capacity. So typically they've kind of, you know, I think held the line on doing that and just, you know, waited for markets to roll over in terms of cycles. But this time they, I think they all view it differently. I think which is actually a very bullish sign. I think overall that there's a belief that this part of the market is going to run for a lot longer and is, you know, going to be relevant in a big way going forward and is worthy of making that next level of capacity investment. That said, our supply chain, Generax, you know, we've worked very hard over the last few years to put a deal together with a supplier there that is not new to the market, but maybe new to the U.S. market. And so we've been working with that partner to get those products qualified for U.S. certification. They were qualified last year for use in Europe. And that's why our European team is maybe a quarter or two ahead of where we're at here in the U.S. And the products are now qualified for duty here in the U.S. market. It's a world class manufacturer and they have a tremendous amount of capacity and they have a very large appetite for additional investment. So we feel that we're paired there with a very competent supplier and one that is going to give us a lot of room to run in terms of, you know, with this initial foray into the market. One of the major reasons why we've been successful is we've been able to quote, you know, considerably shorter lead times than where the markets have, maybe half the lead time of the market today. And, you know, that's great. But that's not what you build a business on. You know, we've got to build a business on a reputation that's staked by our performance as well. Performance of the equipment itself, but also the uptime of the equipment and our ability to serve and support those customers in a way that we think we know how, given our long history in serving some areas like telecommunications as an example on a direct basis. So we think our supply chain is in really good shape there, Joe. We think we've got the right partner. And again, I think we're poised for some significant growth.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

I would now like to turn the conference back to Chris for closing remarks.

speaker
Chris Roseman
Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

We want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. We look forward to discussing our third quarter 2025 earnings results with you in late October. Thank you again and goodbye.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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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