ATCO Ltd. (ACO-X) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the second quarter, 2026 results conference call and webcast for ATCO LTD. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Financial Operations. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased you could join us for ACCO's second quarter, 2026 conference call. On the line today, we have Katie Patrick, Chief Financial and Investment Officer, and Adam Beattie, the President of ACCO Structures. Before we move into today's remarks, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous traditional territories and homelands on which our global facilities are located today i am speaking to you from our aqua park head office in calgary which is located in the treaty seven region this is the ancestral territory of the blackfoot confederacy comprised of the sixka the kainai and the pagani nations the soutina nation and the stony nakota nations which include the Chinniki, Bearspaw, and Good Stoney First Nations. I also want to recognize the city of Calgary is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Districts 5 and 6. During our second quarter, we proudly celebrated National Indigenous History Month in Canada, a time to honor the stories, achievements, and resiliency of Indigenous peoples. May we continue to respect and celebrate diverse history, languages, and culture of Indigenous peoples beyond the month of June. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the Canadian security regulators. During today's presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, including adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA. These measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and as a result they may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. And now I'll turn the call over to Katie for her opening remarks.

Thanks Colin and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll start today with some perspective on our current operating environment and the strong tailwinds for our businesses, and then Adam and I will provide some detailed quarterly performance updates. We're operating in a significant period of opportunity for ACCO, one shaped by shifting geopolitics, growing demand for secure and resilient infrastructure, and a renewed focus on the essential services that support communities and economies. In many ways, this moment dates to the company's early days, when ACCO's ability to move quickly, build boldly, and solve complex challenges was foundational to creating the business we are today. The critical concerns that face the communities and the countries we operate in include housing, energy, and defense. These sectors are being shaped by economic demand and geopolitical factors and will result in significant opportunities, creating a growing need for resilient infrastructure and services for industries partners and governments with decades of experience operating across each of these sectors in diverse locations including Canada's challenging northern environment atco is well positioned to benefit from these tailwinds as investment in these areas continues to accelerate our experience and key partnerships across housing energy and defense over the past 80 years aligns to what the world needs. Our purpose-built strategy supports sustainable growth in these key areas and will drive stable earnings and dividends to share owners in the years to come. Focusing on Canada's north, we remain optimistic about the significant growth opportunities in this region, specifically those tied to the defense sector. In recent months, the federal government has publicly committed a sizable investment in Canada's defense sector with a focus on Arctic sovereignty. The funding announced to date is specifically earmarked for developing, modernizing, and building up key infrastructure projects, including $32 billion for defense infrastructure upgrades over the next 10 years, and $2.7 billion to build on a network of support sites and hubs. In addition to this, there is approximately $80 billion in government defense infrastructure spending between the modernization of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States' proposed Golden Dome for the America Project. While we view these projects as critical developments, contracting for these opportunities is still very much in its early stages. As these projects materialize, we believe ADCO is well-positioned to capitalize on current and future opportunities in the North for several reasons. We have executed and supported operations including defense-specific projects in Canada's Arctic since 1987. That is almost 40 years of operational expertise, demonstrating our long history and success in the North. Importantly, over that period of time, we have developed Indigenous partnerships, which has led to meaningful participation. This is a fundamental part of our history, culture, and our ongoing commitments to partner and collaborate with Indigenous communities. And lastly, we have the construction knowledge needed to successfully build in Canada's north. As you see on the slide, we have unique Arctic expertise from coast to coast in the north. We're a trusted defense partner who maintains and operates mission-critical infrastructure. Earlier this year, we announced a $10 million investment in West Katipmiut Resources who will develop the Grays Bay Road and Port Project in Nunavut. The Graves Bay Road and Port Project is a critical piece of infrastructure in the north and will include a deepwater port with access to the Northwest Passage Shipping Corridor. We are optimistic this development will grow into a strong foundational investment for the actual portfolio longer term. The project has been referred to Canada's Major Projects Office and at the end of June was named as one of the first of three projects to be considered under the federal government's Build Canada Act. As I said, we are very excited for the opportunities ahead, with ACCO's position to play a central role in some of these nation-building initiatives. With that, I will now turn it over to Adam.

Thank you, Katie, and good morning, everyone. ACCO Structures delivered $36 million of adjusted earnings in Q2, marking the 16th consecutive quarter of year-over-year earnings growth. Earnings this quarter were driven by space rentals activity in the United States, Canada and Australia. Our Stibknight Gold project and new contracts tied to permanent modular construction as well. While it was an impressive quarter across all our geographies, our rentals and sales business lines in the United States were a key driver and saw significant earnings growth year over year. The earnings uptick was driven by four of our newer branches including Phoenix, San Antonio, Louisiana, and Seattle, which are now operating at a significantly increased capacity, attaining optimal targeted utilizations. Our continued success across the business is led by the execution of our industry-leading teams. We are improving fleet performance and have considerable demand, favorably positioning us through to the end of 2026. As you can see on the slide, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $82 million, up 17% year-over-year, along with the average rental rates for our global space rental business, which averaged $896 per month, a 10% increase year-over-year. We continued to progress our Stibnite Gold project, a key contract for our US business, and during the quarter we completed manufacturing for phase one of the project and continue to expect the first handover milestone to occur in the later part of fourth quarter of this year. By demonstrating our ability to execute and deliver complex remote project sites, We put ACCO structures on the map for other major developments across the United States, which helps to grow our market share and gain a stronger foothold in the US. Last quarter, we were pleased to highlight some additional projects in our queue. I'm happy to share more about them today. In Canada, we successfully secured a handful of contracts during the quarter, totaling $89 million. These contracts include space rentals, workforce housing and permanent modular construction solutions, encompassing over 365 modular units. In the United States, we secured $23 million in contracts for space rentals and workforce housing solutions, which includes 250 modular units. And in Australia, we successfully secured a $57 million contract to provide workforce housing solutions for a mining project in Western Australia. This contract will include 160 modular units. In addition to these we have been highly successful in securing space rental contracts for a number of data center projects in New South Wales and Victoria where we see continued opportunities going forward. These projects have strong economics with high fleet numbers required per project and long rental durations averaging 24 to 36 month terms. We are seeing positive growth across the geographies we operate in. Last quarter I spoke about the $100 million in limited notices to proceed or LNTPs and contracts we received, several of which have now materialised into secured projects that I just highlighted. I'm pleased to share that this momentum is continuing And this quarter, we have received another $80 million in new notices of award and LNTPs, which we expect to commence in 2026. As Katie mentioned at the outset, ATCO is focused on housing, energy and defence. ATCO Structures is a key pillar of this strategy. We see strong demand for our products in our commercial, industrial and residential sectors. When I look ahead to the back half of this year, many of our manufacturing facilities have strong backlogs through to the end of 2026 and into 2027. Overall, we are experiencing strong demand across our major geographies and sectors, including the emergence of new customer groups, particularly in data center construction and as I mentioned earlier increases in energy and mining sector performance and continued success in urban affordable housing with that I'll now pass the call back over to Katie thank you

looking at this quarter's results I'm pleased to share that I've achieved adjusted earnings of 114 million dollars or one dollar and one cent per share in the second quarter of this year.

This is up 13% year over year. Higher adjusted earnings in the second quarter were driven by ATCO Structure's increased space rental activity and earnings from the Stib Night Project. As I mentioned on this morning's CU call, inflation indexing on rate base and increased rates at ATCO Gas Australia also supported earnings for our utility business. We see positive momentum across the ATCO portfolio as we execute on our strategic roadmap heading into the back half of the year. Looking at our specific businesses, AXO's investment in Canadian utilities delivered adjusted earnings of $74 million for the quarter, up $11 million year over year. This is an impressive result and importantly, all three of our key businesses within CU delivered strong growth in the quarter. AXO's structures and logistics delivered adjusted earnings of $35 million, up $3 million compared to the same period in 2025. Looking at our cash flows, our stand-alone ACCO businesses, which excludes Canadian utilities, reported cash flow from operating activities of $122 million in Q2, up almost 70% compared to the prior year. This increase is reflective of higher fleet sales in ACCO structures and the timing of accounts receivable collection. This growth in cash flow gives us the flexibility we need for future growth within the ACCO businesses. Quarter after quarter, we've demonstrated the value of ACCO structures by continuously driving earnings growth. We are pleased with the progress we've made so far this year and the strong foundation we've built across the business. While there is still a lot of work ahead, our priorities are clear, our teams are focused, and we remain confident in our ability to execute. As we look ahead, we see consistent earnings growth for the entire ACCO portfolio in the back half of the year. That concludes our prepared remarks and I will now turn the call back to Colin.

Thank you, Katie and Adam. In the interest of time, we ask yourself to limit yourself to two questions. If you have additional questions, you're welcome to rejoin the queue. I'll now turn it over to our conference coordinator, Cole, for questions.

Thank you, sir. And we will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. And once again, anyone that wishes to ask a question may press star then 1 at this time. Our first question today will come from Ben Pham with BMO. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for everybody. I wanted to maybe touch on the regulated CapEx. I know that's more of the C-level, but I wanted to flesh that out a bit. You have the Yellowhead project in there. That's roughly a quarter of the backlog. CTO is now complete. When you think about the remaining CapEx, is it mainly mostly a bunch of smaller projects that are paying that, or is there a couple more CETL projects in there that drive that?

Yeah. Hi, Ben. Thanks for the question. I think you're correct that it does become smaller projects when you compare it to the $2.9 billion Yellowhead project, which is obviously very large. So, yes, they're smaller in magnitude, the rest of the projects that are in there. We did provide a detailed breakdown of sort of the categories of spending in the appendices to our IR materials. So you can kind of see the types of spending that there is, including resiliency and IT investments, et cetera. So in short, yes, it is smaller projects, but only when you compare it to a $2.9 billion project. There are still some, on a relative basis, larger projects included in that, including some transmission opportunities, et cetera, that would be on the larger side, but they don't compare to the large yellowhead project.

Okay, I got it. I was thinking more of the CEDAW comparison, but I totally appreciate that. Maybe just on the structure side, you think about the last couple of years, earnings has had a nice uptick, I think 80 million to 90 to 100 and moving higher. When you think about even the past, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think its structures peaked out at something like $200 million in the past cycle. Is there still ability when you think about your backlog, your manufacturing capacity, the current policy backdrop, market backdrop? Is there a blue sky scenario that you can theoretically get back to $200 million over time?

Thanks, Ben. Our peak wasn't $200 million. But it was probably closer to the $150 million at the structures level, maybe a little bit less than that, but I'd have to confirm that. Certainly, I think that's future opportunity very achievable. We've expanded capacity, certainly within the business, and our fleet sizing. So if you look back to 2017, our fleet size was about 13,000 units. and it's now up to 27,000 units. So if you look at the mix of earnings is different. Those peak years were very driven by large one-off workforce housing camp project opportunities, particularly within the oil sand. That mix of where our revenue or income has come from has highly shifted to our fleet business. So if you both look at the foundational business of our fleet, that is over doubled and then you add on the project opportunities that are ahead of us with those kind of resource sector cycles i think you can look at some pretty good indications of where the market could potentially go for us with additional increased capacities in both our manufacturing facilities and our human capital our resources to execute these large scale projects, as well as that supporting foundational business, plus the housing and residential sector that we weren't operating within in that previous times.

Okay. Got it. Thanks for the caller.

And our next question will come from Rob Hope with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Morning, everyone. Maybe just sticking with structure. Sure. So, you know, you mentioned increased space, rental activity and rates. When you take a look across your large fleet, where are you seeing the most incremental demand as well as the most incremental kind of price movement upwards?

Yeah, thanks, Rob. Good morning. Look, I think we're probably seeing it in all of our sectors. So if you look at it across, all of our geographies have improved space rentals performance. The ones that are driving significant improvements, I would say, are the US. We've got high utilisation there. We have high utilisation in Australia that's performing very well, and there's some very good tailwinds that we're seeing there, particularly with some of these new market sectors like the data centres that I mentioned, And also Canada is very strong. But not to be underplaced is our Chilean and Mexican businesses are also performing extremely well in the space rental sector.

I appreciate that.

And then also in the MDNA, permanent modular construction sales in both the U.S. and Canada were kind of called out as being a tailwind. can you provide us an update on kind of the permanent sale you know what the strategy is there as well as you know ballpark what percent of the business is that now yeah so like as we said it's more of an emerging business but we've certainly we've seen increased activity in those sectors and if you give some indication there that probably sits I think I've given some previous indication that that's probably about 10 to 12 percent of our revenue stream in a consolidated as a percentage of our consolidation thank you and the opportunities there are really we have the affordable multi-family and then we have our triple m business arm that is very focused on single family housing as well and then we do a lot of other products education and some community buildings, O&M buildings, some other sort of permanent office establishments, health care facilities, other sectors like that. But they're on the smaller scale to the residential penetration that we're having in the market.

Thank you.

And our next question will come from Maurice Choi with RBC. Please go ahead.

And good morning, everyone. Over the past few years, SNL has been able to successfully diversify its customer base. But I suppose if you look historically, SNL has, you know, fairly focused its business on the resource sector. If you think about the potential growth in the WCSB, I wonder if you could share your outlook on securing, you know, space rental, workforce housing, or even permanent modular construction solutions as the energy sector does take off in the coming years?

Yeah, certainly strategically, if you look at those business lines, they don't cross over to distort resource capacity to service each of those sectors independently. So we're very confident in that model where we've built those channels to be resourced and have capacity to service each of those sectors effectively for the future growth that certainly we see in each of those markets.

Maybe this is a quick follow-up. I suppose historically you've been able to secure fairly large deals whenever a new pipeline, for example, is built. I assume those sales, those connections, those relationships are still in place such that if we do see quite a bit of pipeline growth, for example, or SNL should be positioned to secure some contract wins?

Definitely. So we've got very strong relationships within those customer sectors in each of our geographies, and they're only increasing. And I think certainly our ability to execute, like it's not lost on any of you that we've gone from basically one manufacturing facility in Canada to five. And so our ability to even service a broader geographic footprint in Canada and in the US and in Australia, 13 manufacturing facilities globally, actually increases our ability to service that customer base in a more timely fashion.

So we have more capacity available so we can actually execute multiple projects simultaneously. easily and i think adam touched on it but i'll just add i think as we've diversified our customer base it doesn't mean we've left any customer behind from our past so i think correct it's only additive that makes sense um if i could shift from energy customers to more defense and housing type of spending um i think you've mentioned earlier that there are a number of federal initiatives to support spending here and i wonder if you could help share your thoughts on the timing or roadmap ahead before we start seeing some of these initiatives meaningfully lead to earnings or contract wins at SNL?

Yeah, I can talk generally about sort of the overall spending profile. Maybe Adam can chime in more specifically around the modular opportunity with the defense So we referenced that there's been $35 billion of announcements around defense spending, particularly in the north and those are targeted on a few specific opportunities to upgrade some of our existing defense locations in the north the government of canada has been very those are 10 year type of numbers just to be clear so the 35 billion dollars is over 10 years so this is a long-term opportunity the government of canada it came out quite aggressively with their timing on trying to get some of those awards. There have been some delays in fully getting out the RFPs for those contracts, but they still are trying to move quickly to get some of those contracts and the upgrades around the five main facilities that they're looking to upgrade. And they have said publicly, I think, that those will be coming in the next year, trying to get all five of those out. So that gives an idea where I think everyone is somewhat waiting on the government to get these out there, but I do think that the first phases of this will come pretty quickly, but it is over that 10-year period, and I'll let Adam comment on sort of the modular side of the opportunity there.

Yeah, just expanding on that, Maurice, like I think when you look at certainly defence or some of the northern projects and where they're being located and you link that back into housing. We feel housing comes before major, or we believe, whether that's temporary workforce housing or permanent infrastructure to support communities that are expanding or even defence-based, on-base housing for military personnel. Those are going to come a little earlier. we believe as these contracts start materialising. So your solution for personnel needs to come prior to projects. So I think over the next six to 18 months, you'll see a lot more materiality in terms of housing requirements for some of these project opportunities or funding allocations that have been put into defence, particularly in regional areas, on base, and even in the north, that needs to be started to be thought about prior to the projects kicking off. Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And our next question will come from John Mould with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Just one for me, maybe, on the structure side. I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of M&A markets there, specifically I think the U.S. you've called up before that things there were looking pretty frothy. I'm just wondering how active you've been in considering any potential opportunities on the M&A side within your structures business, not just in the U.S., but I would say more broadly, any insight there appreciated.

Yeah, certainly, John. We're actively looking at opportunities, both what comes to us and what we seek out more strategically. So that's a key part of our strategy. The US still has a pretty high expectation in terms of multiples in this sector. And our growth plan, our organic growth plan there has certainly been very successful and we we certainly want to keep prioritization on that but if you look at m&a we're certainly uh active in that market in terms of looking at what opportunities will present themselves over the next couple of years and targets if you look at regionally i think our main areas would be australia canada and the u.s okay i was also So trying to tease out if there's any other markets, you might be looking at entering, but it sounds like that's not the case at this point.

Is that fair?

We're always looking. We are a global company. We look at global projects. So we do keep our finger to the pulse in other markets, but certainly the synergy value from our existing operations is advantageous, particularly in the M&A sector.

That's fair. Okay, all my other questions are answered. Thank you very much.

And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star than one. Our next question will come from Mark Jarvie with CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanks, everyone. Katie, you mentioned that you think you can see, I believe your term was consistent earnings growth. How would you frame consistent? Is that what you've seen in the last 12 months? What's happened the first half of the year? How should we interpret those comments?

Yeah, I think consistent. Consistent would be consistently up for sure. I think we don't provide forward specific guidance, but our track record that we've had with structures over the past couple of years, I think we can expect that to continue in the near to medium term. And from the CU side. And, you know, I think we've laid out a pretty clear roadmap to the type of capital growth and deployment that we can expect from CU.

Yes, certainly on the utility side, I think it's pretty transparent and obvious. I guess it's more on the structure side, you know, given the LNTP stuff that you guys flagged last quarter, this quarter, good end market demand. I'm just curious if you'd be disappointed if you only, you know, had the same growth you had last year or the expectation that growth can maybe tick up from this level right now?

I don't think anyone's going to be disappointed when we continue to have double-digit growth that we've had. I think that's a very solid – that's where we've kind of been, and I think it certainly wouldn't be a disappointment if we were able to continue to deliver that.

Got it. And then, Adam, how would you frame the competitive landscape just overall in terms of your peers' ability to deliver on the business? It seems like all the end markets are seeing strong demand. You've talked about your manufacturing footprint, your human capital being in a good position. Do you feel like the demand is starting to exhaust some of your peers' capacity? And does that allow you to take maybe market share? Just curious on how you're seeing the competitive landscape right now.

Yeah, look, certainly we're seeing that we're certainly taking a portion of market share and we think some of our advantages, certainly into the near future, around our capacity to manufacture is highly advantageous. Like, you know, it drives a lot of fleet demand or growth. Like there's different strategies for how companies grow and we think we have a multi-pronged strategy. We have a strong fleet growth strategy. We have manufacturing capability and capacity. We're well funded and we're generating good cash flow that we're reinvesting in growth in the business. So we feel that we're very well positioned compared to our competitors. Now, that doesn't mean that they're not competitive or not highly competitive. So we've got a lot of respect for them as well. but we feel like we're in a strong position to execute on the strategies that we have ahead of us.

And then just in terms of the rental rate trends we've seen, could you kind of parse the part? What do you think is driving that?

Certainly some of the, see, the advantage that you get from the rental fleet business is new capital goes in plus you have existing fleet assets that are all capital costs that are built quite a period ago. That certainly supports the growth in average rental rate plus demand. Once you get demand in new sectors coming in, like data centres and those kind of projects, obviously it puts an increased demand on the amount of accessible fleet in the market. And that supports the ability to have slight increases on your rental rates.

Great. Thanks, everyone.

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Colin Jackson for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Cole. And thank you all for participating today. We appreciate your interest in ATCO, and we're looking forward to speaking with you again soon.

And this brings today's conference call to a close. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. And thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.