Operator
Hello, my name is Bailey, and I will be your operator this morning. I would like to welcome everyone to the Garrett Motion 2nd Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded, and a replay will be available later today. After the company's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. I would now like to hand over the call to Cyril Grinjon, Garrett's Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Bailey, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to review Garrett Motion's second quarter 2026 financial results. Our presentation and press release are available on the investor relations section of our website. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, for discussion of factors that could cause our results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes certain non-GAAP measures, which we use to help describe how we manage and operate the business. Please review the disclaimers on slide 2 of our presentation, as the content of our call will be governed by this language. With me today are Olivier Rabier, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sean Diesen, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Olivier will begin by sharing highlights from another strong quarter, both in terms of financial performance and strategic wins. Sean will then review our second quarter financial results and updated 2026 outlook. With that, I'll turn the call over to Olivier.
Thank you, Cyril, and thank you all for joining us today. Indeed, I'm very pleased to report another strong quarter driven by growth, solid operating performance, and margin expansion. We delivered growth across all of our verticals. Net sales were $976 million, up 7% on a reported basis, and 5% at constant currency. Against a backdrop of lower light vehicle production in the quarter, Garrett's growth reflects continued share of demand gains in light vehicle, recovery in commercial vehicles, and increased demand for industrial. So far this year, we sold over $80 million of turbos for industrial applications, and we expect further growth in the second half with a view that is now about $200 million of sales in industrial for the full year. In the second quarter, we kept on with our discipline, execution, and thorough productivity actions, enabling us to deliver strong operating performance, achieving a record adjusted EBIT of $152 million and an adjusted EBIT margin of 15.6%. Along with this operating performance, we generated a healthy adjusted free cash flow of $122 million, and in line with our capital allocation framework, we repurchased $28 million off common stock and paid $15 million in dividend. In light of our first half performance, we are now raising our outlook, and Sean will take you through all these details later on. Let me now turn to slide four to discuss GARET's continued progress across our differentiated We continued to build momentum across our turbo portfolio and secured multiple gasoline awards this quarter, including a large program in North America. During the quarter, we also secured several power generation awards as well as the first award for the Garrett MEG 200 turbo for data center power generation, one of the largest turbo ever made by Garrett. Turning to zero-emission technologies, we also made further progress during the quarter. We kicked off pre-development activities for our commercial vehicle electric powertrain solution with a Japanese truck manufacturer, and on the passenger vehicle side, our high-speed the e-powertrain continues to generate positive test results and encouraging feedback from OEMs. Further to our previously announced e-coulding partnership, we see growing interest across multiple HVAC OEMs for various target applications, and we are now in active dialogue with all of them to support this growing opportunity. The strong progress we are making both on the turbo and the zero-emission applications emphasize the strategy that was presented to all of you during our Technology and Investor Day in May. With that, I will now turn the call to Sean, who will walk you through the financial results and outlook.
Thanks, Olivier, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin on slide five. As Olivier noted, we did not have delivered another strong quarter of financial performance. Net sales were $976 million, supported by sequential growth in commercial vehicle, industrial, diesel, and aftermarket. Adjusted EBIT was $152 million, which equates to an adjusted EBIT margin of 15.6%, representing both a year-over-year and a sequential improvement from strong volume conversion and positive operating performance. Adjusted free cash flow was $122 million, in line with expectations, demonstrating continued strong earnings to cash conversion. Turning now to slide six, this bridge highlights our Q2 net sales performance by product category compared with the prior year. In the quarter, net sales increased by $63 million year-over-year, or 7% on a reported basis, and 5% on a constant currency basis, with growth across all verticals. We continue to benefit from share of demand gains in gasoline, strong demand for our light commercial vehicle diesel applications, and recovery of aftermarket. We also continue to see growth in the commercial vehicle and industrial vertical, up 10% in the quarter. This increase is driven by on-highway demand in China and, as Olivier mentioned earlier, growing demand for our industrial turbo applications, primarily in power generation, a trend that we expect to continue. Turning now to slide seven, you see our Q2 adjusted EBIT performance compared with the prior year. Adjusted EBIT was $152 million in the quarter, up $28 million, and adjusted EBIT margin was 15.6%, representing an increase of 200 basis points year over year, including an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 80 basis points. These improvements are primarily driven by increased volumes across all verticals and a favorable mix from strong growth in commercial vehicle industrial and aftermarket. Additionally, operating performance contributed $14 million in the quarter as our productivity measures continue to ramp up. Turning now to slide eight, you see our adjusted EBIT to adjusted free cash flow bridge. We generated adjusted free cash flow of $122 million in the quarter, representing a strong adjusted free cash flow conversion of 80%. All bridging items were in line with our expectations. Turning to slide 9, we ended the quarter with $788 million of total liquidity, including $630 million of available capacity under our revolver and $158 million of unrestricted cash. We made a voluntary early repayment of $50 million on our term loan during the quarter, further strengthening the balance sheet. With no near-term debt maturities and net leverage of 1.8 times, down from the prior quarter, we remained in a strong liquidity position. Turning to slide 10, in the second quarter, we paid $15 million of dividends and repurchased $28 million of common stock under our $250 million authorization, bringing year-to-date repurchases to $115 million. We continue to return capital to shareholders in line with our capital allocation framework, returning approximately 75% of adjusted free cash flow to shareholders over time through dividends and share repurchases, the amount of which can vary based on market conditions and other factors. As Olivier noted earlier, the Board declared a third quarter dividend of $0.08 per share payable in September. Let's now turn to slide 11, where I'll discuss our 2026 outlook. We are increasing our 2026 outlook across all measures to reflect strong first-half performance and a positive mixed trend, which we expect to continue. While we have updated the industry outlook to reflect softer, light vehicle demand, we expect to continue to benefit from share and demand gains and accelerating demand for our commercial vehicle and industrial applications, contributing positively to net sales performance. Operating performance will continue to contribute to margin improvement through the balance of the year. Our foreign currency assumptions have also been updated to reflect a stronger U.S. dollar to euro exchange rate. At the midpoint, our updated outlook implies net sales for the year of $3.8 billion, or 4% growth at constant currency. Adjusted EBIT of $580 million, representing a 15.3% margin. and adjusted free cash flow of $430 million. Now, turning to slide 12, this bridge summarizes a full-year increase of $20 million in adjusted EBIT versus our prior midpoint outlook, driven by stronger product mix and operating performance and partially offset by unfavorable foreign currency impacts. Let me now turn the call back to Olivier for closing remarks.
Thank you, Sean. Let me turn to slide 13, and this is a reminder of what we've shared with all of you in May during our Technology and Investor Day. Gareth's long-term strategy is clear. We are leveraging our differentiated technologies and proven execution model to continue driving shareholder value. Now, let me wrap up on the final slide. First, I'm very pleased with the performance we delivered for the second quarter, with growth across all verticals and year-over-year operating performance. We continue to secure a world for our differentiated turbo technologies, including several wins in commercial vehicle and industrial turbochargers. chargers. We made further progress in zero-emission technologies and see growing interest across multiple HVAC OEMs for various target applications. We secured our first production award for our centrifugal air compressor technology. Finally, based on the strong start of the year, we raised our full-year outlook, reflecting the strength of our execution and our confidence in the trajectory of the business. Thank you for your time and operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Operator
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw the question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my question. I was hoping we could start out on commercial vehicle. We've seen over the last few weeks several European CV manufacturers are speaking to strength in their order books. Volvo and Triton both raise their order deliveries so is there a timeline that we can expect these improved order books to flow through european class eights and and conversely off highway in north america seems relatively stable but i was wondering if you could update us in a little bit more detail on what you're seeing there for uh the rest of the year and then maybe a glimpse into 2027 yeah i would say, James, it's a very good question.
Let's open up a little bit beyond Europe and the U.S. As you can see, we've seen growth in commercial vehicle in the first half on highway, and then I think we've been clear that we see a significant part of that growth coming also from off-highway industrial, and that's mostly coming from the industrial side. So I would say on highway, in H1, it was not entirely driven by Europe. We've seen that coming up from China. So if Europe now picks up, balances China, I think all that is good signal for us and we'll see the way it develops in the second half. That's only one element of the total picture. When it comes to the growth we experience indeed, and that's the reason why we are updating on the number on sales in industrial, the growth we experienced, most of it, this first half was coming from industrial, which is the bigger turbos, the genset applications and beyond.
Off-highway, quite frankly, we see the same thing as what you'd see on off-highway. And off-highway in this stage, in that respect, I need to be a bit more precise. I need to say constructions and agricultural demand. So it's in line with the comments you made.
Okay, great. And then And I guess on light vehicle, you've downgraded your industry outlook for the year, but raised your overall sales. And a lot of that, it sounds like it's coming from share gain. So I was wondering if you could contextualize what you're seeing there for the rest of the year to drive that raise. Is that sort of share gain something we should expect going forward? I think in past you've soft-guided to, you know, half a percent, one percent a year, but that feels like it's a little bit stronger. So is that just a function of this period, given launches and cadence, or is that something that could be a little bit more lasting going forward in the short term?
I would say this is also the result of what the strong performance we did in H1 as well, if you look at it with these eyes. We have a strong performance in H1, and we are not expecting that performance to collapse in H2. So if you put everything together, it's one of the drivers of the race. We are still extremely prudent about the underlying of the macros. The current geopolitical situation, the current macros, are not exactly the clearest that you would expect when you look further for the end of the year. But we felt that we were significantly confident so that we would translate some of the share gains that we've demonstrated in H1 into the performance of H2.
Okay, thank you very much, guys.
Operator
Our next question comes from Jake Scholl with BMP Peribus. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. I just wanted to take a closer look at the GenTED Turbo Awards you announced. So, you know, first, can you talk a little bit about your relative positioning on diesel generators versus natural gas generators? And, you know, is there any way to think about the impact of, you know, these new awards on next year's revenue? And then also, can you just realize what size of generator, you know, is supported by this largest MIG? that you're shipping, that you're warning now.
So, Jake, this is a good question. This is an interesting technical question, the balance between natural gas and diesel. I would say that traditionally the company has been quite strong on the diesel side and we've been gaining shares on the gas side for the last few years. It's not like it's a different technology. It's different aeros. And we got to develop that. And now we are, I would say, quite competitive on both sides. When we win a business on those big engines, clearly, even if the timeline is getting shorter and shorter because of the demand growing up, if we get significant revenue in one year, that's a little bit of a stretch. Usually it's taking a little bit longer than that. Remember, the cycle time to develop a car is about three years, and the cycle time to develop an engine is, although it could be shorter than three years, in a year, that would be very, very quick. We'll see it's not, this single award will not be a significant contributor to 2027, but it's part of all the trajectory that we have announced. And what we see today, to put that back in perspective, is that the number of awards that we secured already for the last few years is what is generating our performance on industrial today and enabling us to tell you if last year we said that industrial we were expecting to be at $100 million plus for the year, this year we are telling you already we see that we have a trajectory to work $200 million for the year, which I think is a little bit ahead of what we even shared with you two months ago. But that's not the trajectory. It's the result of all the applications that you are accumulating over time. I'm very excited about this 200 meg, but we should not expect that it represents a high share of our revenue next year. We have many other applications at the same time that we've launched already.
Thank you. That's very helpful. And then for the e-compressor, Can you talk about just the types of opportunities that you guys are pursuing right now? Obviously, you've already secured a few awards in HVAC space, but the program with Ingersoll Ranch shows their applications beyond just cooling. Thank you.
Well, first in cooling, there is a full spectrum of application, if you remember what we presented in terms of size of the cooling compressors from, I would say, small industrial sites up to the big e-cooling compressors, even the biggest one that we did not show in May for the big cooling needs which those days are around data centers. Cooling is a very strong underlying macro that goes far beyond data center themselves. So that's why we lack that field. But today, clearly, that field is a lot of various applications with different use cases. When we get to air compressor, we are indeed pleased. We have an innovation process in the company that also screen the match of the technology building block that we have versus the needs of the different industries. And that's our job, and we do that very often during the year, to re-challenge the taxonomy of the different industries to understand how far we can bring those differentiated elements into new verticals, and air compressor was one of them. And believe me, there are some others on the table. But we'd like to talk about it once we've committed to that vertical with a clear offering that we can co-public with in the sense that now we put the resources of the company behind it versus and we pull it off the innovation pipeline process into the production process.
Thank you, and congrats on another great quarter. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Arjun Gupta with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. And thanks for doing the questions. This is Rajat Gupta from JPMorgan. Just wanted to follow up on, like, the, you know, the train question previously. You know, previously you've talked about, you know, the HVAC opportunity, you know, extending to data centers. I think at Invest today you talked about 2028 startup production. You know, curious if you can give us an update on that and how that's tracking, you know, the testing, compliance, et cetera.
And I have a quick follow-up. that's a very good question the investor day was 8 weeks ago so believe me we have not deviated from what we told you at the investor day we are fully committed to bring those technologies to the marketplace and in the meantime we had a number of meetings and points with our customers and as we've said earlier today we are working with a full scope of customers that go beyond what we've announced so far for very various applications. So I'm very pleased with the progress we are making. And indeed, we like speed. So anything we can do to anticipate to all of that will do it. But I think we said during the investor day that the first production will be 2027, not 2028.
For the data center as well, I thought like the 27 was like, with train was more industrial and not specific to data centers, if you could clarify that.
I would say it's between the end of 2027 for data centers and beginning of 2028.
But the first product we ship will be in 2027, that's for sure. Understood.
That's helpful. And then, you know, just following up on the commercial vehicle industrial, you know, you know, you're flagged in prior quarters, you know, particularly in China, you know, that some of those products maybe start at lower margins, you know, you know, as you think about the next few quarters, you know, how should we weigh those dynamics against each other, you know, the growth and traction you're seeing versus the margin profile? Any way to like parse that out, you know, you know, as you get more traction and the products start shipping there? Thanks.
I'm not sure on the commercial vehicle side, the margin is hugely different from China to the rest of the world. That's for sure on the passenger vehicle side. Therefore, if there is a change of mix and dynamics between one region and the other, that would be a small one.
Yeah, just to add that overall on a volume perspective, again, light vehicle is down. And if you look at our guide, it would indicate that we're going to have slightly lower volumes on light vehicles in the second half, but still expect to outperform the market. I mean, we were above where we grew. The light vehicle market shrunk. And in that regard, we do see a lower volume, but an enhanced margin with a slightly better mix. But overall, our guide is more to a full-year margin of 15.2 to 15.3. Again, being cautious about the macroeconomic overlay as well.
Yeah, but specifically to commercial vehicle, I don't think it's making a huge difference between the two.
That's correct. No, the CV margins tend to be fairly stable across all regions. What does vary a bit is the mix. We're more heavy on off-highway industrial in North America and more heavy on on-highway in Europe and a nice mix in China.
Understood. Great. Thanks for all the color, and good luck.
Operator
Our next question comes from Nathan Jones with Stiefel. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. This is Andes, Loretta Mola, on for Nathan Jones. Can you discuss some of the customers involved in the GEDSET Awards? Are they mainly new customers or more wins with existing customers just to get a better idea of an update there with GenSet TurboWins?
So that specific win that we've announced is coming from a customer that has been a customer for a long time, a great customer for a long time, and with which we are developing our portfolio. so we have today we have not announced yet but we are indeed working with new customers that are focused on that size of engines but the one we've announced is with a long lasting and gross customer of Garrett.
Thank you appreciate it. Just as a follow up regionally I know you noted or more broad based regionally. Is there any specific areas regionally that you're seeing the most demand for the Genset products just to get a better idea there?
In all fairness, it's coming from all over the world. We are seeing demand. The need for energy, I think people are making a very quick shortcut between data center and gensets. The need for more energy to support the grid is going beyond the genset needs. If you think about renewable, if you think about all the weaknesses that you are on the grid in many regions, and therefore we see that demand coming from everywhere. Indeed, the demand that comes to us comes from people that are making engines. And you have basically three regions that are making engines for the rest of the world today. It's North America, it's Europe, and it's Asia. But even in Asia, we are starting to see big engine players putting factories in some regions where they were not present before. So it really starts to be a global demand, quite frankly.
Awesome. That's the last question for me. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Operator
Our next question comes from Hamid Korsen with BWS Financial. Please go ahead.
Just on the commentary you've made about some of the areas in light vehicle being weak, are you being forced to lower prices at all, or how are you competing to maintain volume?
There is a good thing in our industry that even if we were to make a discount on the turbo, we would not sell more because if a car is made to have one turbo, I cannot put one at the front on the engine and one at the back in the trunk. So it all depends on the capacity of our customers to sell those cars. And I don't see such practice as reducing the price in exchange of more volume shop-term. That's not the way – that's usually not the way it works.
Okay. And just given your outlook that you are seeing, what would it take for your margins to improve further? Would it just be a stable production outlook, or is there anything else that could skew it for you?
You're not happy with the progress already? It's a strong progress we made versus the other quarters, versus our guidance, versus everything. So indeed, I mean, no, I'm joking. there is something that we are working on you start to know us and you've been knowing us for quite some time and we like the way you've been following us but this company is all about performance I think we said that and we found saying that again and again so we are really working on everything, working on our internal cost, our fixed cost, our material cost and not only the cost but all the other things also that you have on the P&L. And that's a relentless focus, and we'll never change that. Indeed, we have a variable cost structure, which means that when volumes are coming up, if they come up a little bit stronger than we think, the conversion is quite good. And this is what we're experiencing right now. In all fairness, if we could have a stable macroeconomic environment, with a demand that would be having a shape that everybody knows for the next not only quarters, but last two, three years for the automotive industry, which I realize is a dream because it has never been working that way, we would be able probably to push the bar even higher right away. All right. Thank you. Today, we need to recognize that we are not exactly into that situation. So that's why I'm extremely, extremely happy with the performance of the company with the current situation we are in. Thank you, Audrey.
Operator
At this time, there are no further questions. The Q&A session has now concluded. Thank you for joining Garrett's Q2 earnings call. This concludes today's session.