Tennant Company (TNC) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Tennant Company's 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you for participating in Tennant Company's 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Beginning today's meeting is Mr. Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations for Tennant Company. Mr. Bassi, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tennant Company's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Dave Huml, President and CEO; and Fay West, Senior Vice President and CFO. Today, we will review our first quarter performance for 2026. Dave will discuss our results and enterprise strategy, and Fay will cover our financial. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. Our earnings press release and slide presentation that accompany this conference call are available on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, please be advised that our remarks this morning and our answers to questions may contain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expectations of future performance. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from those contained in the statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in today's news release and the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We encourage you to review those documents, particularly our safe harbor statement, for a description of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our results. Additionally, on this conference call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures that include or exclude certain items. Our 2026 first quarter earnings release and presentation include the comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results. I'll now turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Lorenzo, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q1 2026 earnings call. This morning, I will begin with an overview of our first quarter performance, highlighting the key takeaways from the quarter. I will also provide an update on our North America ERP recovery, discuss progress in our AMR business and TNC robotics venture, share our outlook for the year and outline how we think about capital allocation more broadly. Fay will then walk through the quarter's financial results in greater detail and cover our full-year guidance. With that, let me start with our performance in the first quarter of 2026. Orders totaled $327 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year, demonstrating demand momentum. Growth was broad-based and driven by increased customer demand, execution of our enterprise growth strategies, and continued strength in robotics. Backlog increased approximately $32 million from year-end to $109 million. This growth provides clear evidence that our customer relationships remain strong and end market demand is healthy. Overall, our performance underscores the strength of our foundation and reinforces that our portfolio, service model and growth strategies are resonating as execution has stabilized. Net sales increased almost 3% year-over-year with pricing realization and favorable currency largely offsetting North America volume declines. As operations stabilized in North America, customer activity and fulfillment improved meaningfully in February and March, consistent with our expectations following the January inventory shutdown. As anticipated, gross margins were pressured in the first quarter, driven by incremental labor, freight and expediting costs associated with ERP recovery efforts earlier in the period. Importantly, margins improved sequentially each month as execution and throughput strengthened. The gross margin exit rate on an enterprise level was approximately 40%, and this supports our confidence for continued gross margin recovery as the year progresses. The gross margin improvement flowed through to EBITDA and reflects improving operational momentum. Fay will further walk through the details and outlook in her remarks. Next, let me spend a few minutes on our ERP recovery, which was the central operational focus of the quarter in North America. Our top priority entering 2026 was to stabilize our North America operations, restore reliability for our customers and reestablish a solid operating foundation following the ERP go-live disruption. The actions we took in the first quarter were deliberate and aligned with that goal and are reflected in the operating performance I just highlighted. By the end of the quarter, core workflows, including order management, production scheduling and fulfillment, were stable and operating at scale. Stabilization was the first phase, not the end state. With the system operating reliably at scale, our focus has shifted from fixing functionality to driving efficiency and optimization. The work underway today is centered on addressing the friction points identified during the stabilization phase, phasing out remaining manual workarounds and strengthening end-to-end execution across the business. As we move through the second quarter, the emphasis is on improving throughput, labor productivity and system-enabled performance. These efforts are already underway and the steady improvement we saw through the first quarter, including a stronger exit rate in March, supports our confidence in continued efficiency gains and gross margin recovery in the second half of the year. The lessons learned from our North America ERP implementation are informing how we approach the remaining phases in EMEA, which were originally scheduled for early 2026. We have intentionally pushed the EMEA implementation beyond 2026, allowing the organization to remain fully focused on recovering North America execution before advancing to the next phase. As our plans continue to evolve, we will keep you updated on timing and expected costs as we gain greater clarity. I want to thank our customers for their continued partnership and patience as we work through this transition. I also want to recognize the extraordinary effort of our employees across the entire organization. This was truly a company-wide effort with teams working together every day to support our customers and restore reliable execution. The dedication of our people and the strength of our customer relationships are 2 of the reasons I remain confident in the path ahead. I now want to provide an update on the exciting progress we are driving in our robotics business. Since 2018, we have earned the trust of the largest, most forward-looking flagship customers globally. We have shipped over 11,500 robots cumulatively. We have built a growing and profitable U.S.-based robotics business and established ourselves as a world leader, driving the robotic cleaning disruption. I'm proud of what we've built, but I also believe we're just getting started. The signals from the market today are clear. We are seeing double-digit market growth rates and increasing demand from customers across vertical markets around the world who are serious about adopting robotics. In Q1, our AMR sales, inclusive of equipment and autonomy service fees, were approximately $27 million, representing 9% of total net sales in the quarter and 85% year-over-year robotics growth. We see the inflection point in customer interest, and we are acting decisively to capture near-term growth and drive this market towards the tipping point in adoption. More specifically, I would like to highlight 5 key activities this quarter. First, we are ramping our TNC robotics venture by hiring and onboarding new roles and activating our growth strategies. We're operating with the speed and urgency of an entrepreneurial start-up to accelerate AMR growth by leveraging the full power of our $1.2 billion global core business. Our proven product portfolio, preferred brands, extensive channel reach, 4,000-plus employees, including 1,000 field service technicians, position us to drive a winning disruption of our own core industry over the long term. Second, we delivered another defining milestone by extending our exclusivity arrangement with Brain Corp until 2029 with an evergreen notice period. This preserves Tennant's exclusive access to the BrainOS autonomy platform in our category, strengthens our partnership alignment and reinforces our clear division of responsibilities. Leveraging the strengths of each partner, Tennant owns the customer relationship, equipment design, direct sales, service and life cycle support, while Brain Corp advances the foundational AI, spatial intelligence and software that power our portfolio. With exclusivity secured, we have the conviction to invest aggressively, and we plan to bring 10 new AMR products to market over the next 24 months. This is the power of 2 global leaders joining forces to aggressively drive tangible results. Third, the strength of this partnership was demonstrated with the launch of BrainOS Clean 2.0 and SelfPath AI. SelfPath enables advanced autonomous navigation, allowing machines to independently generate and continuously adapt cleaning routes in real time, eliminating the need for manual route training and retraining. This increases customer adoption, improves deployment efficiency and optimizes performance in the real-world applications. Together, these capabilities represent platform-level innovation and a compelling example of physical AI delivering measurable value in dynamic commercial environments. Fourth, we significantly expanded our addressable market with 2 strategic product launches. The X16 SWEEP, our first robotic sweeper, is an industrial-grade machine built for rugged, reliable performance in demanding warehousing, logistics and manufacturing environments. This launch is another growth catalyst. Sweeping is a broad-based need across nearly every industrial vertical. And because pre-sweeping is required before scrubbing in most cases, the X16 expands our robotics portfolio from best-in-class scrubbing to adjacent sweeping use cases. Our customers made an industrial robotic sweeper a clear priority. The X16 SWEEP meets their needs and early demand signals are very strong. We also introduced the X2 ROVR, our small format scrubber that brings superior cleaning performance, ease of use, competitive value proposition and unmatched maneuverability through robotic cleaning of small shared spaces in retail, grocery, schools, convenience stores, and the tight spaces inside larger facilities that bigger machines simply cannot reach. This positions us to further expand our addressable market and capture share in this high-growth segment. Together, the X16 SWEEP and X2 ROVR extend our robotic cleaning benefits to more customers, more verticals and more applications, accelerating our growth trajectory and reinforcing our leadership position in robotics. Fifth, we are aggressively expanding our channels to market for Tennant robotics. We are launching new products, programs and compelling offerings specifically designed to accelerate adoption with building service contractors and grow with our distributor partners worldwide, making it simpler and more rewarding for them to promote our robotic solutions. Our new X2 ROVR is tailor-made for these channels and their end customers in vertical markets like retail, grocery, schools and convenience stores, customers they already support every day. And we're not building this from scratch. Tennant already has deep established relationships with BSCs and distributors across the globe. One thing that truly differentiates us and is highly valued by building service contractors is our unmatched support ecosystem, over 1,000 factory direct service technicians worldwide who can service and support our robots like no competitor can. That is a significant competitive advantage that gives our partners and their customers total confidence to adopt and scale with Tennant robotic cleaning. The global robotic cleaning market is dynamic, and we remain closely attuned to the competitive landscape. Our focus is on what we can control, the proven strength of our business, the entrepreneurial agility of our T&C venture and a robotic product portfolio that continues to expand. Our market coverage is broadening. Our partnership with Brain Corp is stronger than ever and the demand trajectory we are seeing reinforces our conviction. Taken together, these advantages give me real confidence and genuine excitement in delivering our target of $250 million in AMR revenue by 2028. Turning to the remainder of 2026. Our first quarter performance, strong order momentum and continued ERP progress support our confidence in the full year plan, and we are reaffirming our 2026 guidance. Before I turn the call over to Fay, I want to briefly frame how we think about capital allocation more broadly because it is a core part of how we create long-term value. Our capital allocation framework is straightforward. We invest first in the business to drive durable, profitable growth. We maintain a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity. We pursue strategic M&A opportunities that enhance our portfolio, and we return excess capital to shareholders. Strong execution and disciplined working capital management have supported solid free cash flow and the flexibility to advance our priorities. While operating cash flow has been temporarily impacted by the ERP disruption, we expect that impact to be transitory, and our overall free cash flow profile continues to support both growth and shareholder returns. We prioritize organic growth investments, particularly in R&D and operational improvements that strengthen our competitive position and enhance long-term returns. On average, we invest around 3% to 3.5% of sales in R&D and spend between $20 million and $25 million annually on CapEx, and we expect these levels to continue in the near term. We also manage liquidity and leverage with discipline so we can navigate market conditions and act decisively when opportunities arise. We remain within our stated leverage target of 1 to 2x adjusted EBITDA, and we intend to keep our balance sheet position to support both shareholder returns and strategic growth, including M&A. Returning capital to shareholders remains central to our capital allocation strategy. We intend to continue our long record of disciplined competitive dividend growth, and we also repurchase shares opportunistically when we believe the return profile is compelling. In the first quarter of 2026, we accelerated buybacks amid an event-driven dislocation in our share price that we believe was tied to the ERP implementation and not reflective of our core performance. We deployed $60 million to repurchase approximately 950,000 shares or 5% of beginning of year shares outstanding at an average price of $63 per share, an intentional high conviction decision we believe represents an attractive return for shareholders and is fully aligned with our stated capital allocation priorities. To execute this opportunity, we utilized a portion of our borrowing capacity, which increased leverage, but we remain within our targeted leverage range of 1 to 2x adjusted EBITDA. Importantly, we expect leverage to trend back toward the lower end of that range by the end of 2026, and this action does not preclude us from continuing to invest in organic growth or pursuing other strategic initiatives, including M&A as opportunities arise. As a result of our share repurchasing activities, we expect an approximately $0.15 net positive impact on EPS on a full-year basis. Reflecting our continued confidence in Tennant's strategic direction and commitment to disciplined capital return, our Board recently authorized a new 2 million share repurchase program. Together with shares remaining under our existing authorization, this brings total repurchase capacity to approximately 2.56 million shares or roughly 15% of basic shares outstanding, providing meaningful flexibility to continue returning capital opportunistically. M&A remains an important lever within our framework. Recent tuck-in acquisitions of distributors in EMEA have strengthened our portfolio and expanded capabilities, and we continue to evaluate opportunities that meet our strategic and financial criteria. Taken together, these actions reflect a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation, investing to drive long-term growth, maintaining financial resilience, pursuing strategic opportunities and returning capital when we see an attractive risk-adjusted return. We believe this approach positions us well to create long-term value for shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to Fay for a deeper discussion of the financials.

Thank you, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Before walking through the quarter, I want to briefly address the impact of the North America ERP implementation on our first quarter financial results. As Dave noted, operational performance improved meaningfully as the quarter progressed. However, we estimate that the ERP disruption reduced first quarter net sales by approximately $23 million and gross margin by approximately $17 million. Of the lost sales, roughly 1/3 relates to parts and consumables and service, which we do not expect to recover. The remaining 2/3 relates to equipment, which we believe we can recover within the year. The net sales impact was driven primarily by a 2-week manufacturing and distribution shutdown in January to complete a full physical inventory count. The gross margin impact is comprised of approximately $11 million due to the lost volume from the shutdown, and approximately $6 million from elevated labor, freight and expediting costs during the post-implementation ramp-up. With that context, I'll now turn to our first quarter financial performance. In the first quarter of 2026, Tennant reported GAAP net income of $0.2 million compared to $13.1 million in the prior year period. The year-over-year decline was driven by gross margin compression associated with ERP recovery efforts and shifting customer mix, coupled with higher operating and interest expense. Operating expenses increased year-over-year, driven by unfavorable foreign currency, legal and financial advisory costs, higher compensation and benefits, and increased software subscription fees. Interest expense net was $3.4 million compared to $2.3 million in the prior year period, reflecting higher average debt balances, including borrowings to fund share repurchases, partially offset by lower average interest rates. Income tax expense declined year-over-year, reflecting lower operating income. For the quarter, our effective tax rate increased to 80.5%, primarily driven by discrete tax costs related to share-based compensation as a percentage of pretax book income. This elevated rate in Q1 is largely due to timing, and we continue to expect our full year effective tax rate to be within our guidance range of 24% to 29%. Adjusted diluted EPS was $0.58 for the quarter, down from $1.12 in the prior year period, reflecting lower operating performance as just outlined. I'll now provide some additional color on our non-GAAP items for the quarter. ERP project spend totaled $8.8 million in the first quarter. This included $5.6 million of implementation expense that were reflected in S&A and $0.6 million of ERP amortization. The remaining $2.6 million of costs were capitalized. We also recorded $2.9 million of legal and financial advisory costs related to the cooperation agreement with Vision One and $0.8 million related to restructuring, legal contingency and acquisition integration costs. Let's now look at the quarter in more detail. Consolidated net sales totaled $297.9 million, up 2.7% year-over-year. On an organic and constant currency basis, sales declined 1.9%, driven primarily by lower North America volumes early in the quarter related to the 2-week plant shutdown in connection with the physical inventory count. As a reminder, we group our net sales into the following categories: equipment, parts and consumables, and service and other. In the first quarter, equipment sales increased by 3.1%, parts and consumables decreased by 4%, and service and other sales increased by 10.6%. Equipment growth reflected continued momentum in our commercial product portfolio, including strong contributions from recently launched models and our growing AMR product portfolio, along with continued strength in our distributor and strategic account channels. This was partially offset by lower industrial equipment volumes in North America tied to the ERP-related plant shutdown earlier in the quarter. Parts and consumables declined year-over-year with the shortfall driven primarily by North America, where the 2-week plant shutdown delayed parts shipments in the quarter. Outside of North America, underlying parts and consumables demand was resilient, benefiting from disciplined pricing realization and continued strength in our distributor channel. Service and other growth was driven primarily by increased autonomy subscription revenue associated with our AMR products. The core service business experienced growth in EMEA and Latin America as we continue to make progress filling open service routes, gaining productivity across our field service organization and benefiting from prior year pricing actions. The strength of service and other, reflects the durable recurring nature of these revenue streams and the underlying growth of our installed base, including our expanding AMR fleet. Shifting to regional performance. On an organic basis, performance across the regions was mixed. In the Americas, sales declined 3%, driven primarily by lower volumes in North America due to ERP impacts earlier in the quarter. This was partially offset by continued pricing realization, reflecting the benefit of tariff-related pricing actions implemented last May. Latin America delivered a strong quarter with net sales up 9% organically, driven by volume growth and favorable mix. We continue to see strong commercial execution in Brazil and Mexico, including the rollout of the T260 and the expansion of our rental and strategic account programs. EMEA grew 1% organically, reflecting our second consecutive quarter of volume growth in the region. Growth was supported by disciplined price realization and strong equipment sales in France and Germany, where volumes increased at a double-digit rate, highlighting the strength of our commercial execution and the resonance of our products. In APAC, organic sales declined 2%. Growth in India and Korea continued and Japan returned to modest growth, but these gains were more than offset by ongoing softness in China due to excess manufacturing capacity and pricing pressure in mid-tier product categories as well as softer demand and project timing in Australia and parts of Southeast Asia. Gross margin in the first quarter was 38.1%, a 330 basis point decline compared to the first quarter of 2025. Sequentially, margin improved 350 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2025. Approximately 3/4 of the year-over-year decline was driven by incremental labor, freight and expediting costs associated with our ERP recovery efforts. The remaining 1/4 came from a shift in customer mix towards strategic accounts, which carry a different margin profile. Tariff and other inflationary pressures were fully offset by price realization and cost-out initiatives. Adjusted S&A expense for the first quarter was $88.2 million compared to $83.2 million in the prior year period. The increase was driven primarily by unfavorable foreign currency of approximately $3.4 million, higher compensation and benefits and higher software subscription and license fees. As a percentage of net sales, adjusted S&A was 29.6% compared with 28.7% in the prior year period, reflecting deleverage from these cost increases. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026 was $29.1 million or 9.8% of net sales compared to $41 million or 14.1% in the prior year period. The year-over-year decline primarily reflects gross margin compression, coupled with deleverage in S&A expense. Turning now to capital deployment. In the first quarter of 2026, Tennant used $31.2 million of cash for operating activities compared to $0.4 million of cash in the prior year period. The year-over-year decline in operating cash flow reflects 3 primary factors. First, lower operating performance in the quarter. Second, an increase in accounts receivable, driven in part by the timing of collections as receivables built in the first quarter from the strong shipment activity in March, while collections in the period reflected the lower shipment volumes from the fourth quarter of 2025. And third, a build in inventory and other working capital movements as we ramped production to serve demand. We expect operating cash flow to improve meaningfully through the balance of the year as receivables normalize, inventory levels rebalance and operating performance strengthens in line with the sequential improvement we are guiding to. We continue to view the first quarter dynamic as transitory and remain confident in our underlying free cash flow profile for the year. Liquidity remains strong. We ended the quarter with $82.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, and approximately $289 million of unused borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facility. We ended the quarter with a net leverage ratio of 1.78x trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, maintaining a strong balance sheet and financial flexibility. Moving now to our 2026 guidance. Based on our first quarter performance and the momentum exiting the quarter, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 guidance. Specifically, we continue to expect net sales in the range of $1.24 billion to $1.28 billion, reflecting organic sales growth of 3% to 6.5%. Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $175 million to $190 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin between 14.1% and 14.8%. GAAP diluted EPS of $4.05 to $4.65, and adjusted diluted EPS of $4.70 to $5.30, which excludes ERP modernization costs and amortization expense. Capital expenditures of approximately $25 million and an adjusted effective tax rate between 24% and 29% also excluding ERP modernization costs and amortization expense. As we indicated on our last call, we continue to expect results to be weighted towards the second half of the year with sequential improvement in each quarter. The first quarter results are consistent with that framework. Gross margin is expected to expand progressively as we complete our ERP activities, realize the carryover benefits of our pricing actions and drive productivity and cost-out initiatives across our supply chain. We continue to actively manage the evolving tariff landscape and believe our pricing and cost-out actions position us well to navigate that environment within the guidance ranges we have provided. We are also monitoring the situation in the Middle East and its potential effects on freight and input costs. While we do not anticipate a material impact on demand, we have factored the potential cost implications into our outlook and believe our current guidance range appropriately reflects that risk. Our confidence in the full-year outlook is further supported by the strong order momentum and expanded backlog entering the second quarter, along with the continued acceleration of our AMR and robotics portfolio. While we recognize there is still work ahead, we are appropriately positioned to deliver on our full year commitments. With that, I'll turn it back to Dave.

Thank you, Fay. Before we move into the Q&A section, I want to close with a few simple messages. Our first quarter results reflect meaningful progress on the issues we discussed on our last call. We entered the year focused on stabilizing our North America operations, restoring service to our customers and delivering on the commitments we made to our shareholders. We are executing against all 3. At the same time, the underlying fundamentals of our business remain strong. Order momentum is robust and broad-based. Our international regions continue to execute well, and the momentum in our autonomous and robotics portfolio continues to build. Our balance sheet is healthy. Our capital allocation priorities are clear, and our teams are focused. I want to once again thank our employees for their resilience and dedication through a demanding period and our customers for their continued partnership. We remain confident in our path forward and in our ability to deliver on our 2026 outlook. With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Tom Hayes with ROTH Capital Partners.

Dave, maybe starting with a multipart question on the order environment, real solid results in the quarter. I was just wondering, one, was there maybe some catch-up on the order growth from Q4 when you guys sort of had some challenges? And then maybe could you talk about the order growth momentum for robotics within that order growth?

Yes. I'd be happy to, Tom. So your first question about was there any catch-up from Q4? We talked about growing some backlog as we exited Q4 in the $15 million range. And obviously, we serviced that in the quarter and added additional backlog as we came through Q1. So I don't think we can attribute much of the order volume in Q1 based to -- based on sort of carryover or catch-up from Q4. We have been working very closely with our customers, especially those that have been impacted in North America by the ERP transition, to make sure that we are servicing their demands and meeting their requirements as we strove to drive system stability, but then also support them through this period of ERP disruption. Robotics did contribute materially to our order demand. And I think it's worth noting that our robotics demand in Q1 is in large part due to the efforts of the entire company over the last 6 months to a year as we've been developing a very robust funnel of opportunity for robotics. Strong orders from robotics in the quarter. We referenced in the script, $27 million in robotic equipment sales, inclusive of the ARR from autonomy subscriptions, represents an 85% year-over-year increase, and robotics represented 9% of our enterprise sales in the quarter. And I think that we had a strong pipeline. I think we began to capitalize on that pipeline. We articulated in the script really 4 to 5 really key actions we've taken in the quarter in standing up our TNC robotics venture, launching 2 new exciting products in the X16 SWEEP, which starts shipping in Q2 and the X2 ROVR, which starts shipping in Q3. We solidified our exclusivity agreement with Brain Corp through 2029, which really allows us to focus on those areas that we are both strongest at, and aligns us towards the singular goal of driving unit volume growth and tipping -- driving towards a tipping point of adoption in robotic cleaning equipment. So I think we've got a number of specific actions that we've taken in the quarter to help drive demand not only in the quarter, but also as we proceed through the year.

I appreciate the color. Maybe a little bit on Brain Corp. And then I think one of the things that I thought was interesting was I'd like to get your thoughts on how it kind of continues to differentiate you from the competitors. Just the new release of the BrainOS, that seemed to be kind of a big deal. I just want to get your thoughts on that.

Yes. It's a really big deal, and it's really the next evolution of our partnership with Brain and the operating system that is embedded in our market-leading robots. We released Clean 2.0, which is really the next-generation navigation autonomy software. And within that Clean 2.0 platform, we specifically introduced SelfPath AI. And when you think about the SelfPath AI feature, software, what allows the robots to do is really self-train themselves, self-train the cleaning paths within their environment. So it has dynamic self-training of the cleaning paths within an environment. So as opposed to teach and repeat where we showed the robot where to go and it would reliably repeat that specific path. These robots with SelfPath AI embedded on the machine actually learn the entire store, the entire environment and optimize the cleaning paths within that environment. It's a big difference. And the customers notice the difference in the performance on the ground. Another benefit of SelfPath AI is faster deployment, because we don't have to trace every square inch of the facility to show the robot where to clean, we can just go through the major pockets of floor, it can learn the space. We can greatly reduce the deployment time that it takes to deploy a new robot. I'm talking about like a greater than 50% reduction in time, which makes it easier and faster for us to deploy robots at scale as well as for our customer, if they change their store layout or if they want to train it themselves, retrain it themselves, they can do it much more quickly than they could before. I think the other key point I would talk about on SelfPath AI is around obstacle detection. Our older operating system was great at obstacle detection. With SelfPath AI, we moved from detection to identification. So now we don't -- the robot knows not only is the path blocked, but what is -- what the path is blocked by, whether it's a human or its box of inventory or it's a forklift in industrial applications. And then it makes real-time decisions on the floor in front of the object depending on what gets identified, whether it should slow down, it should pause, it should wait or should just leave and return later to that path. So it's much smarter about not just detecting obstacles, but identifying what the obstacle is and responding accordingly. So we think all in, this Clean 2.0 is really the next generation sets us apart from competition and especially those that have had any exposure to our robots in the past are going to see a marked difference in performance in real-world applications. And really sets us up to continue to drive not only our existing X4, X6 Series product, but now the new X16, X2 and more new products to come. All in, the SelfPath AI and Clean 2.0, the new product launches, the TNC robotics, the new amendment with Brain really gives me confidence that we can deliver the $250 million in AMR revenue by 2028.

I appreciate the color. And maybe just one last one on the margin outlook. And maybe I missed the details. Did you indicate you put in pricing actions so far? And if so, when? And can you quantify the size of those price actions?

Yes. Let me dimensionalize price as a contributor to our margins. And then Fay, you can put some color on sort of the margin trending in the quarter, if you'd like. We did an annual list price increase like we normally do at the beginning of a calendar year. And though we sell those in, we did great realization on that. That was a global effort. I think the -- in addition to that, what you're seeing bleed through in North America is an incremental impact from pricing action we took in May of 2025, which was tariff-driven. If you recall what was going on in the market back then, tariffs were layering post-Liberation Day. So now we're lapping a quarter that did not have that tariff-driven price increase benefit in 2025, and we're bleeding that through in our Q1 2026 results.

Yes. And if you just look at Q1, Q1 gross margin was 38.1%, which was 350 basis points better sequentially than Q4 of 2025. We exited March at approximately 40% at the enterprise level. And so we expect gross margin to expand as we go throughout the year and we complete our optimization in the second quarter, and continue to realize those pricing benefits that Dave just recognized as well as continue to capture cost-out activities and productivity initiatives. So this implies that the second half gross margin embedded in our full-year guidance will be in the low 40s, which is consistent with our long-term framework with Q2 stepping up sequentially from Q1 as the optimization work progresses and as some of those period expenses that I identified in our -- in my prepared remarks no longer carry through to Q2.

And our next question comes from the line of Steve Ferazani with Sidoti.

Appreciate all the detail on the call. Certainly, a lot of numbers and I just want to make sure I'm thinking about this right. And I do want to follow up with the final responses to the last question, just in terms of your expense and gross margin. So you said you exited the quarter, which is [Technical Difficulty].

We did [Technical Difficulty] related to just decreases. And so we saw improvement in margin from January, February to March. And on the enterprise level, we exited at roughly 40%. But when you look at margin year-over-year and the 350 basis point increase that we outlined, approximately 3/4 of that decline was related to, I'll just say, ERP recovery efforts that I just highlighted. The remaining 1/4 is really a shift in customer mix towards strategic accounts, as you mentioned, and also just a mix between -- mix away from industrial, when we look year-over-year. We do believe that tariff and other inflationary pressures that we recognized in the quarter were really offset by price realization and cost-out activities.

Got it. And so when I think about what you believe the long-term gross margin should look like because over the last couple of years, obviously you had the backlog pick up and then that normalized. So it's harder to kind of figure out what do you think a normalized Tennant gross margin on an annual basis should look like, and that may change over the years. But how do you think of that right now?

Yes. I think it's going to change within quarters, mix and other things do impact that. But I would say roughly 42% is kind of a gross margin target. And we've been there, Steve. I mean when you look at how we exited Q3 of last year and performance in other quarters, we think that that's a good range. Certainly, we'll strive to make that higher as we look to expand our margins, and we do believe that we are investing in our business to differentially take cost out, and to optimize our operations and still remain price disciplined. So I think 43% is a good level, but we will always look to see how we could improve upon that.

Of course. As we've gotten into earnings season, we've had a lot of companies raise top line, but not raise EPS primarily because of incoming inflationary pressures, which some expect may get worse. How are you thinking about that?

So when we -- so there's certainly a couple of macro headwinds that we are facing along with all other companies, and that is including kind of increased costs related to what's happening in the Middle East, if you think about potential kind of increase in freight charges and other costs. We've baked that in and think that it's not going to be very material at this point. We'll see how the landscape evolves. But we think that we're covered within our guidance range, certainly from an EBITDA margin perspective, to absorb those costs. And so I think that we've got enough flexibility that we could absorb that within our guidance range.

Got it. And when I think about your guidance range, given the significant share repurchase, which I'm guessing wasn't in there to begin the year. I mean, if I looked at it, if you hit the midpoint of all your other guidance that went unchanged, that puts your EPS at the upper level.

Correct. Yes, that's fair. I think we mentioned during the prepared remarks, Steve, that we expect roughly $0.15 coming from the net impact of share repurchase. Remember, we do some debt. So there's a positive accretive effect of share repurchase based on additional interest expenses, but that $0.15 gets covered within the range.

Got it. That's helpful. If I could get one more in. Dave, when you talked about the new Brain agreement, the extension of 3 years, you mentioned an evergreen notice. Can you explain that?

Yes. So typical in arrangements like this, rather than having to redraft an entire agreement every 2 or 3 years, we built in an evergreen -- I'll call an evergreen clause, and I'm not a lawyer, but I'll just tell you how it works. We kind of mutually agreed that if this is still working for both parties, then we would continue as is without having to redraft and renegotiate an entire agreement. And there's a notice period. The notice period really just gives us each an opportunity, if we were to assess this arrangement and decide that we wanted to exit in some period, it gives us each a lead time to prepare for that exit. So nobody can sort of -- neither party can kind of leave in the dark of night without letting the other one know about it. Where we would then align around ongoing support going forward. It's a lengthy notice period that gives us each plenty of time to adjust our business accordingly. So I think it's pretty standard in agreements of this type, and it really just reduces or eliminates the need to renegotiate entire agreement or contract over time. I think the fact that we got to this exclusivity extension to 2029, and an evergreen clause with the notice period, these are signals that the partnership is really strong, that we're both aligned and committed and motivated to go out and drive this disruption in this cleaning robotics business.

And where are you now with -- I think you noted when you formed the robotics group, the importance of channel expansion. Can you talk about your progress there?

Yes. We're making great progress. And so I think if you look back at our history, we've done really well integrating robotics in with our strategic accounts, for example, channels and direct channels as well where we sell on direct basis, whether it be strategic account commercial customers or industrial customers. Where we're starting to lean in more heavily is, and I mentioned it on the prepared remarks in the script, we're leaning in more heavily to building service contractors and our distribution channels. Let me put a little color on that. Building service contractors, their business is largely based on labor, right, and cleaning labor. And so it's been challenging for them to consider how to integrate robotics into their offering to their end customer in a profitable way, in a meaningful way, and adopt it in a way that delivers real value to their end-use customers. And so we've been -- we've had some success with building service contractors, some of them more forward-thinking and progressive, but they've kind of had to figure it out along the way. We think that the demand for robotics and building service contractors is accelerating. And we think with some of our new product launches and the feature sets of our new products as well as our support ecosystem, we are better positioned than ever to go help building service contractors adopt robotics. At the same token, our distribution channel, we have sold robots through our distributor partners. And we have a vast distribution network around the globe, 35% of our revenue goes through distributor partners. We just haven't fully cracked the code on how to leverage that channel to grow robotics differentially. And so one of the actions that the TNC robotics venture leads into was working with our distributor partners to understand what would it take to accelerate robotics adoption through a distribution channel. It's partially a product solution. You got to have the right product that fits that channel, the ease of moving the product and setting the product up, to successfully deploying, as well as a price point and a value proposition that's going to meet the type of customer that most distributors call on, because they want to sell something as a complementary product to customers that already service and support. There's also a pricing component. Any time you're 2-stepping product to market, you've got to build in room for your channel partner to participate and drive some acceptable profitability. And there's an aftermarket service component. If our distributors offer direct service themselves, we've got to be able to train and equip them to service the robots. And if they don't offer direct service, they need to rely on Tennant service. We need to have the ability for the distributor to sell the service contract that we then honor with the end-use customers. So there's some interesting opportunities that we had to design our products and our programs and our value proposition to make sure that we have a winning pitch when we more fully engage our distribution channel. When you look at the products we're launching, the work we've done around our value prop, the aftermarket support, I think we are going to make meaningful progress in 2026, penetrating that existing channel and maybe earning some new distribution partners as well with our robotics platform.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from the line of Aaron Reed with Northcoast Research.

Just a couple of questions here. So on demand, so orders grew 10% in the first quarter with backlog building at $32 million. Help me think about this, how much of that order strength is underlying demand versus customers placing orders earlier because of the earlier lead times? And just a quick little follow-on to that. How should we think about the conversion of the backlog through the balance of the year?

Yes. So really proud of the results we delivered. I'm going to stick on orders for a minute. 10% order growth is really a great way to start the year. That's our highest quarter since Q1 -- first quarter since Q1 of 2022. And so for this business, it's a really strong start to the year, $327 million enterprise-wide. There is some of that order book, and some of the backlog is future orders out of the period. I'm estimating around 1/3 -- 1/3 of it is customers that gave us an order because they know they want the product in Q2 or Q3 of this year. It's large strategic accounts who are planning for large store deployments across multiple stores, and they want to make sure that they've got the production slot paced to their rollout schedule. So that's really just the customer planning their business. It's not induced by our performance, our output from the plants, our ERP challenges or anything that we're doing. The rest of the order volume that we saw is really customer demands turned on for our products and our services. And so I think it's real and it's durable. And then we can point at the specific growth strategies we've invested in to drive that order volume in the quarter.

Super helpful. And then the second follow-up question here is switching gears on capital allocation. So you repurchased about 5% of shares outstanding in the first quarter. So at an average price, I think I thought it was at $63 or around there. And the Board just authorized an additional $2 million for additional or 2 million share repurchase. Where are you on leverage in the ERP recovery? And how should we think about the appetite for any further share buyback versus M&A through the rest of the year?

So Aaron, I think when you think about the Q1 activity and the buyback, we really view that as an opportunistic really high conviction decision that was in response to what we think was an event-driven dislocation in our share price, following the ERP disruption. It was not reflective, we believe, of the underlying value of Tennant. Going forward, repurchases will continue to be opportunistic. As you mentioned, we have ample authorization, including the $2 million increase that was just provided by the Board, share authorization. And we will continue to deploy capital where we think that there is an attractive return. We continue to invest in our business. We'll continue to pay dividends and we'll continue to pursue M&A, and that's all in line with our capital allocation framework that Dave spent time discussing earlier in the call. We did end the quarter with net leverage of about 1.78x trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, which is within our targeted range of 1 to 2x. And so we're comfortable at that level. We have strong liquidity with about $290 million of unused borrowing capacity under our revolver and cash of roughly $83 million on the balance sheet, which gives us meaningful liquidity and flexibility. And so we do have room for additional opportunistic activity, but our framework prioritizes maintaining flexibility and also looking at other options within our framework as we've outlined.

And since there are no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for your time today and your continued interest in Tennant Company. This concludes our Q1 earnings call. Hope you have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.