Q1 2025 Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Kyra Yates; Vice President - Investor Relations; Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Wabtec first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kyra Yates, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kyra Yates

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Wabtec's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. With us today are President and CEO, Rafael Santana; CFO, John Olin; and Senior Vice President of Finance, John Mastalerz. Today's slide presentation along with our earnings release and financial disclosures were posted to our website earlier today and can be accessed on the investor relations tab.
Some statements we are making are forward-looking and based on our best view of the world and our business today. For more detailed risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentation. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to read our disclosures and reconciliation tables carefully as you consider these metrics. I will now turn the call over to Rafael.

Thanks, Kyra, and good morning, everyone. Let's move to slide 4. I'll start with an update on our business, my perspectives on the quarter, and progress against our long-term value creation framework, and then John will cover the financials.
Before we get into the numbers, I'd say that we had a strong start to the year, delivering results ahead of our expectations. While we have favorable business outcomes in the quarter, such as business mix and timing of expenses, more importantly, we have amplified our cost control levers as a direct result of the uncertain economic environment that we're anticipating to play out over the remainder of the year. With that said, we are approaching the remainder of the year with caution, with discipline, and the focus to take the necessary actions to deliver against our commitments in an uncertain and volatile economic landscape.
Having that in mind, sales were $2.6 billion which was up 4.5%. Adjusted EPS was up 21% from the year ago quarter, and total cash flow from operations for the quarter was $191 million. The 12-month backlog was $8.2 billion, up 6%, reflecting the continued momentum and visibility across the business. Shifting our focus to slide 5, let's talk about 2025 and market expectations in more detail.
While key metrics across our freight business remain mixed, we are encouraged by the strength of international market activity in our current pipeline of opportunities across geographies. However, we are cautious with regards to our North American business as the current tariff activities play out over the remainder of the year.
North American traffic was up 3% in the quarter. Despite its traffic cut off, the industries and Wabtec's active locomotive fleets were largely flat when compared to last year's first quarter. As we look forward, we continue to see significant opportunities across the globe in demand for new locomotives, modernizations, and digital technologies as our customers continue to invest in solutions that drive fuel efficiency, reliability, productivity, and safety.
Looking at the North American railcar belt, last quarter, we discussed the industry outlook for 2025 to be about 35,000 cars to be delivered, which is down 17% from last year. This industry forecast has remained unchanged.
Internationally, activity is strong across core markets such as Africa, Asia, and CIS. Significant investments to expand and upgrade infrastructure are supporting a robust international locomotive backlog and orders pipeline. In mining, and aging fleets continues to support activity to refresh and upgrade the truck fleet. Finally, moving to the transit sector, we continue to see underlying indicators for growth. Ridership levels are increasing in key geographies, along with fleet expansion and renewals. Next, let's turn to slide 6 to discuss a few business highlights.
In Kazakhstan, we continue making progress on finalizing orders associated with our installed fleet by signing a $300 million multi-year service agreement to increase the availability, reliability, and productivity of KTZ's locomotive fleet.
In North America, we secured a $140 million order from a Class 1 customer for new locomotives. This order demonstrates the need for our Class 1 customers to upgrade their aging fleet by investing in new locomotives.
Moving to the APAC region, we secured orders totaling $130 million for new equipment and service contracts. This included orders for new locomotives and mining drive systems. These orders continue to highlight the growth opportunity we see in the region.
Moving to our transit segment, Transit 12 multi-year platform door contracts valued at $85 million for the Madrid Metro and the new Hamburg Metro U5 line. And finally, we secured a $50 million order to provide brakes and couplers for servicing the New York City Transit Authority. These wins signify the European and North American Transportation Authority's commitment to investing in solutions that enhance passenger safety and modernize metro networks.
Overall, the successes continue to demonstrate our leadership in the markets we serve and the commitment of the Wabtec team to deliver meaningful results for our business and for our customers. Moving to slide 7.
Before turning it over to John, I want to briefly discuss the positive momentum we have in our international markets. Over the last several quarters, we have highlighted that our international pipeline of opportunities continue to be strong. Our international revenue has grown over the last couple of years at a high single-digit growth rate and delivers a higher level of profitability than our North American region.
The continued growth in our international locomotive install base has enabled us to leverage our international footprint and has underpinned our share gains in services, components, and digital solutions. As we walk around the world, let's discuss some of these drivers.
In Europe, our transit business is supported by urbanization trends and growing infrastructure funding, which has led to resilient and steady revenue growth while providing safer, cleaner, and more cost-effective commuting. The CIS region growth is driven by the locomotive fleet expansion, which has led to robust growth in services and digital products in the region.
The sub-Saharan Africa region is benefiting from new mining projects and volume growth. The new equipment orders for the Simandou mining project that were secured in 2024 are expected to provide further opportunity for services and digital growth in the region. Beyond Guinea, there are more opportunities for African expansion in 2025.
Moving to the APAC region, we see trends supportive of growth for both freight and transit. Urban infrastructure investment and our growing stall base of equipment is driving transit growth; while mining, fleet renewals, and a growing locomotive install base supports straight growth, particularly in Australia.
And finally, South America is upgrading fleets, exploring alternative fuel and automation technologies, as well as implementing various digital products such as street optimizer, suite of onboard products, PTC 2.0, digital mining, and our inspection technologies. This is in support of the region's needs for efficient transportation of goods to help with increased freight demand.
We expect our execution, the strength of our business, and our leading products and technologies will result in Wabtec continuing to convert the opportunities in our pipeline into orders and growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to John to review the quarter, segment results, and our overall financial performance. John?